Quite some time ago on Aridni I wrote about a dilemma I had in getting a project done.  I didn’t have the technical skill to actually write the software myself and I did not have the time to learn it adequately enough.

Now that I am actively trying to restrict the number of projects I’m working on, I wanted to get these ideas out of my head.  They are not quite as powerful as they were when the ideas were born, but they might be of interest to someone out there.  If you decide you want to take on one of the projects, great!  Go for it.  I’ll even help you with getting hosting.

The three projects are right after the break.  They are ‘Hivemind Snapshot Project‘, ‘Articles of Organization and Operating Agreement Generator‘, and ‘Auto-task generation… thing‘

Hopefully you will find at least one of them useful!

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Have you been wondering if now is a time to start your new business or quit your old project? Right now is a great time to get going with your new business. There are plenty of opportunities out there and with so many people focused on the recession or the depression or whatever you want to call it, there is a perfect distraction away from what you are doing.

Building something amazing.

It is interesting that this company is selling phone services, but still they made a great video. So get out there. and get focused. Get determined. And when the economy is running full steam again, you will be ready.

Something has dawned on me over the past couple of months. I might be a packrat for ideas. By ‘dawned on me’ I mean it has been smashing me over the head with a hammer.

Over the last couple of years I have had so many projects that I wanted to get done. And new projects and million dollar ideas were sprouting up all of the time. Some of them were online, some of them off.

These ideas were across a broad range, everything from building a chess board, building a giant ‘colony size’ ant farm, to creating a program that sent out lottery numbers after every draw (And most of them were just as dorky sounding!).

It’s time that I start retiring a couple of projects of mine. When I get ideas, I want them to happen, so I’ll begin. The problem is that new ideas come and I want them to happen, so I’ll begin. Of course there hasn’t been enough time to complete the original project before starting on the next. This basically means the old project is doomed.

Soon there is another great flash of inspiration and a new project emerges and another becomes doomed.

My final stance is I’m officially closing down some projects. A big problem is that juggling so many things, none of them ever got completed. It’s time to start filling that filing cabinet with those ‘million dollar ideas‘ and start focusing on fewer and fewer.

I’ll be posting quite a few ideas and one-day projects. By one-day projects, I mean “one day I’de like to…” Hopefully there is someone out there that can benefit from some them.

Now that you have seen a couple of games that are great for developing strategy in groups, what about good old ‘one on one’ games? Well there are some great ones out there, just waiting to be discovered and played.

1. Hive - In this two player game you control half of the hive, a collective of insects and spiders buzzing, jumping, and scurrying around. You’re goal is to surround your opponent’s queen bee completely.

   Each insect has a different movement path that it can follow. Grasshoppers can jump over clusters. Ants can march around the perimeter. Beatles can crawl over the top. You can never break the hive into two parts, so everything is connected at all times.

   You will be able to either move one of your pieces, or place a new one on the table. The game is quick, and it jams in quite a bit of thinking into that time. I like to compare it with chess, every piece has specific move it can make, and the goal is to take out one piece.

2. Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers – While this game can be played with up to 5 people, it really plays well with only two. So I have decided to include it here as well.

   The idea in the game is to control different sections of the land as they are ‘discovered’. Each turn you draw a tile and have to fit that into the game in a way that all the edges match. (Forests on Forests, rivers on rivers, and plains on plains) Then from there you have an option of placing one of your ‘meeples’ (miniature people) onto the board. Once that section is complete, you will score the points of it and get your meeple back.

   The game isn’t huge on strategy, you are at the mercy of which tile you draw. But there is quite a bit of tactics in where you place that tile, and if you do add a meeple to the board. It is defiantly worth a play.

3. Scrabble – Now Scrabble is a game that you have to have heard of before. Because of that, I’m not going to go into much details on it.

   Simply use your rack of letters to play words on the board in a crossword like manner. Placing the letters so that you get to that triple word score is key, but creating good words is also going to make a big difference.

   Like Carcassonne above, this game can be played with more players; however, Scrabble plays the best with only two.

I hope that these will be able to challenge you, and whoever you decide to play against. As in most games, the more you play the better you get, and the more ideas you can try. So give them a shot, and see what you think.

Do you have a favorite two player game that forces you to think?

I just picked up a book from Seth Godin. If you haven’t heard of him, then you are really missing out. He has published quite a few bestselling books and is quite the knowledgeable fellow. His site is www.SethGodin.com and he has some great marketing and business ideas. I haven’t finished the book ‘Free Prize Inside’ yet, but I have made it through the first section. It has a lot of really great ideas about ’soft innovations’ which are inventions and add-ons to products. An example is the free prize in cereal that makes the kids want Fruit loops over Captain Crunch. Things that aren’t exactly world changing, but product pushing.

I am going to share a clip from the book that I found interesting.

My argument so far:

1. Advertising doesn’t work so well, because you can’t buy attention.
2. Big R&D hardware innovations don’t work because they’re so risky and ever more expensive.
3. Soft innovations are the sweet spot, the free prize, the means that will allow your organization to grow and thrive.
4. Anyone, including you, can create a successful soft innovation, even (and especially) if you’re not in the marketing department.
5. Not only is it profitable, but it’s empowering, engaging and fun.

So, you may be wondering, if this is so effective and so productive and requires so little training, why doesn’t everyone do it?

Exactly.

The Reasons Everyone Doesn’t Do It

They’re scared.
They’re organized to resist change of any kind.
They don’t understand that soft innovation isn’t risky, it’s free and important.
They don’t realize how much their bosses want them to pursue soft innovations.
They’ve never been sold on doing it, and they’ve never been taught how to do it well.

This Means There’s Huge Opportunity

Everywhere that you go, when you start to, you can come up with ways to make products better. Or perhaps a more attractive way of displaying them. Once you get your mind exercising, the ideas just begin to flow.

Not only have I enjoyed this book so far, but I went to Amazon to see what else he has available I ran into “The Bootstrapper’s Bible” which is available as a PDF. I just purchased and downloaded that for less than three bucks, and I’ll let you know how it is.

I should also include a link to his blog here, Seth Godin provides a wealth of information here as well.

Ever try to tell someone about an idea and it the process it seems to grow at an alarming rate? Ideas have a tendency to quickly spawn new ideas at a rapid pace, but only when your mind starts to think about them and the possibilities.

Just having ideas and encouraging them to grow will help you gain an entire arsenal of fresh ideas. You might not get a chance to try them all, but you will certainly be prepared if one of them doesn’t work out as well as you planned.

Using your mind for developing concepts and ideas takes a bit of practice. The amount of ideas that you can generate are up to you, as is the quality of them. You won’t always get all winners, but you will certainly be able to get a good number of them. Honestly you really only need one of them to take off, so don’t stress out to much if you can’t quickly come up with a great idea right off the bat.

Two ways to help your ideas expand quickly is to tell somebody about it or write it down. These both force you to think about the idea. More neurons will fire off and more connections will be made. So the next time you are not sure exactly what you want to do with your idea, tell somebody about it. Draw it out and use your brain. That is what you have it for after all.

**There is a similar post from earlier this month that has just been recovered from a database error right after I finished this post. How to have ten thousand ideas in five minutes**