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Status report

March 10th, 2010

“Keacher! Where’s that status report?” my boss bellowed.

It was an unusually quiet bellow, completely inaudible to those around me, for in this context, my boss and my self are coextensive. No matter. It’s still a reasonable question.

I seem to like starting named projects:

  • Keacher.com: Active. My personal blog since 2001.  At least one post per month for the past nine years.  Depending on my whims, at times a place for personal updates, and at others an outlet for thoughts targeted at general readers.
  • BonnevilleClub: Dead. Site dedicated for Pontiac Bonneville owners. Founded it eight years ago, sold it two years ago. New owner killed it.  About a million page views per month in its heyday.  Lots of lessons learned about people management, product management, and asset sales.
  • Tagg: Dead. Tagging physical objects with virtual identifiers. Project for a class at Stanford two and a half years ago. Never got traction. Didn’t continue after class. Valuable networking with entrepreneurs and investors.
  • Zoitz: On hiatus since 2008. A capricious webcomic for engineers and scientists.  One of the many things I did during a period of unusual productivity in the spring of 2007.  Millions of views over the past three years despite having only a few dozen strips.  A good deal of attention on Digg, reddit, Stumbleupon, and Slashdot.  Still gets tens of thousands of views every month.  Confusion of early strips with xkcd material prompted a drawing style change.  A number of additional strip ideas are in my notebooks; haven’t gotten around to publishing them.  Never figured out how to monetize it.
  • Nesota LLC: Active. The umbrella/holding company for my business activities.  Name comes from the final six letters of “Minnesota,” in the style of “Cisco” coming from the final five letters of “San Francisco.”
  • Northstartup: Active. The official blog for Nesota, discussing entrepreneurship and topics related to Nesota’s products.
  • Whitespacecomic: Inactive. An experiment in ultraminimalist art: just words, no drawings.  Or, put another way, each caption was structured so as to be the punchline for a blank white space.
  • Photography: On hiatus. My on-again, off-again relationship with photography is currently in the “off” part of the cycle.  Not really a named endeavor, but I have it on the list anyway.
  • Blurity: Active. My photo-deblurring startup, though technically Nesota is the startup and Blurity is a product.  I’m still working to improve the quality to a level that I find acceptable — a prime example of software projects taking longer than expected.  Still, it’s been under development for a solid nine months, and reactions to the initial prototypes have been positive.  I’m more confident than ever that I can pull it off.
  • Stopping in Every State: Active.  A half-year road trip to visit and play hockey in every American state and Canadian province.  Scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011.  I’m currently writing the blog as a past-tense retrospective of what in reality are future events.  There is a temptation to switch styles to something a bit more entertaining, akin to my favorite account of a road trip: the “When You Wish Upon a Star” series from Chris Welty’s “Porsching” column.

So there you have it.  Throw in my other current hobbies, like baking, goaltending, backpacking, and writing meta blog posts, and it makes for a full plate.  Good; my productivity tends to increase when I have more to do.

Back to work…

  1. January 21st, 2011 at 23:19 | #1

    Lessons learned? Dead? You allowed people to remain in power at BC that killed it. Wren demanded Peter give all control to him and butt out. This after you took Peters good money, pocketed it and turned your back. Wren and company began to tear the forum down piece by piece. He Killed your BC, Not the owner you sold us to. Peter pulled it offline only after Wren created total anarchy. I resurrected the forum. The Forum is very much alive BTW. And I Doubled the membership of what you and the people I sent packing did. And in only 2 years, with traffic and members on never seen in it’s former version. I renamed it GMForum.com but BonnevilleForum.com or BonnevilleClub.com will still get you there. Dead, Sir? I beg to differ with you. Come by sometime and see the entire database still intact.

    GXP Venom, formerly known as GXP Rules.
    GMForum.com
    BonnevilleForum.com
    BonnevilleClub.com

    Any one will take you there. And you will find the dead walks. And on stronger legs than ever before.

  2. keacher
    January 22nd, 2011 at 00:52 | #2

    My perspective is a bit different, but regardless, I readily admit that I made plenty of errors when selling BC. I would do it differently if I could do it again. I consider the entire experience to be a valuable lesson. Furthermore, I hope to use what I learned to improve the next time I sell a company.

    I wish nothing but the best for you and the forum.

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