Austin Startup Week 2017 - Notebook Scribbles and Shortform Insights

I've spent the last week floating between my office, the usual coffee shop routine, and a variety of coworking spaces, incubators and downtown startups who opened their doors for Austin Startup Week. A bevy of sessions, lots of new connections, a few familiar faces, and a notebook full of nuggets of wisdom. In the spirit of celebrating the diversity of ideas Austin's startup scene invited this week, I'm going to share verbatim notes from my handy journal and translate them into actionable objectives.

"Give away ideas! to create a position for yourself"

The frustrating thing about blazing your own trail is, appropriately enough, not having a clear path to follow. When you're fighting to differentiate yourself in the wild competitive landscape, it's easy to become guarded over your ideas until you're in a position to execute them yourself. However, by giving away a taste of ideas, you can create opportunities to demonstrate your value to potential employers / clients and leave them wanting to learn more about you. Plus, being good and helpful to others tends to pay off in the long-run.

"Hierarchy - 'If everything is important, then nothing is'"

Hierarchy specifically refers to one of the fundamentals of visual design in this context. However, just as arranging a layout where every element is emphasized to the point of homogeneity winds up looking dull, or calling every new movie you see your new favorite movie makes it seem like you have questionable taste, so too do priorities and accomplishments lose their luster when you accentuate everything you do. Learn to appreciate small victories for what they are, and realize that not every problem demands immediate action.

"Commit to community"

Networking isn't just about you. It's not just about the reciprocity between you and the new connection you just made, either. The true value of networking is in the sense of community it cultivates. That's not "community" in the sense that you need to get 15+ people together in the same room, but rather, it's acknowledging the linkages between people you know, and contributing to the ongoing flow of networking. So join a meetup, bring new ideas from the outside, introduce people, or, best of all, start building your own community if you see a pattern of people who don't have the benefit of that inclusive connective tissue. 

"Succession planning & inclusive design will set the org. up for sustainable growth"

Within a large organization, you need to be realistic about the kind of impact you're able to make. You can make small, immediate improvements in your area, and if you're really committed, you can build up enough momentum to see some major organizational improvements, but the moment you step away and loosen your grip, things tend to naturally snap back to the status quo. The only way to maintain that momentum is to plan for succession so that others seamlessly continue to carry the torch or, better yet, build a system around your improvements that involves others within the organization in a meaningful way to take the burden off of the torch-bearers. This goes back to giving away ideas: you could market yourself as the solution your company needs, in which case you've committed to carrying the torch yourself ~or~ you could market the solution as something that anyone can be trained to carry out so that you can see it through and give others the tools they need to carry on when you move on to bigger and better things.

"Beacon Effect - People who light up like the bat signal"

Every campaign needs its advocates. It's crucial to show that others believe in the product or future that you're promising. But what does advocacy look like when the time for campaigning is over and the time for execution begins? One might argue that, at that point, it's simply a matter of cleanly following through on your promise and that the only advocate you need is yourself. If you can find the right clients, supporters, participants, etc. to enthusiastically demonstrate the impact you've had on them, though, they will attract more of their kind and you will see growing success. Testimonials are good, but if you can wow someone into being your advocate without even asking, then you've got a real winner on your hands.

"No one puts into writing what they're really thinking"

I mean, aside from yours truly... This obviously doesn't pertain to the pursuit of thought leadership; my world view isn't that glib. Rather, this contextualizes the importance of being present within an organization, both physically and mentally. While it can be easy to rely on e-mail and chat platforms to communicate with your colleagues, when it comes to those modes of communication, no one puts into writing what they're really thinking. Not only is it usually much more efficient to pick up the phone or put in some face time to get an answer you need, that interpersonal communication usually yields much richer information.

"Everyone is a designer"

Many simply don't know it. My soul did a fist pump when I heard this because it resonates so much with my mission. Anyone can innovate: they just need to be properly incentivized and they need to be open to continuous learning, but innovation is largely an exercise in common sense. And anyone can be a designer: they just need to have the drive and support to do so. Design thinking, much like innovation, is something we can all grasp and apply to any number of situations. Playing devil's advocate, I asked the panel "Is everyone really a designer, or are there certain non-designer types that are necessary to serve as a counterbalance for designers to thrive?" The response? While many people are certainly inclined to be more paint-by-numbers, there is no reason that even the most slavishly process-oriented people can't use elements of design thinking to thrive alongside other designers. A heartening message about the power of creativity for people like myself that tend to think of themselves as decidedly uncreative.

Did you get a chance to attend Austin Startup Startup week? Have any handwritten notes that can be translated into valuable insights? Want to hear more about my adventures at #ASW2017? I'd love to hear from you!