collaboration over competition

CollaborationCompetition

Joshua StrebelFounder

1Thursday, September 9, 2010

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3Thursday, September 9, 2010

Competitorsor

Collaborators?

4Thursday, September 9, 2010

Competition

• Animals compete over water supplies, food, and mates, etc.

5Thursday, September 9, 2010

Competition

• Humans compete for water, food, and mates.

• When these needs are met deep rivalries often arise over the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and fame.

What’s up with Jersey?

6Thursday, September 9, 2010

Competition

• Necessary and Healthy for business, but...

• Us vs. Them

• Silo’s of Information

• Zero sum game

• Marketing Charades

• Scarcity Mindset

7Thursday, September 9, 2010

Collaboration

• Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature — by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus

8Thursday, September 9, 2010

A Story

• 8 years in the business

• The Phoenix Skulls

• Gangplank (http://gangplankhq.com)

9Thursday, September 9, 2010

BE DANGEROUS

10Thursday, September 9, 2010

Gangplank Manifesto• collaboration over competition

• community over agendas

• participation over observation

• doing over saying

• friendship over formality

• boldness over assurance

• learning over expertise

• people over personalities

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12Thursday, September 9, 2010

1/3 actual size | total space is 16,000sqft

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Let’s Work Together

• 90% of patents are improvements to existing products (I made this up)

• Sometimes you must invent something new, but most of the time you can improve what is there.

17Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let’s Work Together

• Pair Programming

• Side-by-side, or long distance teams.. 4 eyes are better than 2.

18Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let’s Work Together

• WordPress forked b2

• b2 was a good product but inactive.. forking made sense to build upon what was there.

19Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let’s Work Together

• 10,968 plugins in extend, most of them crap.

• Do we really need 110 (Tweet button) plugins that do virtually the same thing? Why not work with an author and improve existing code.

20Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let’s Work Together

• More themes than you can shake a stick at, most of them crap. (and now frameworks)

• Why not design themes that are compatible with existing frameworks.

• Guarantee framework developers would promote your theme for you

• WooThemes has done a good job of bringing in outside designers

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22Thursday, September 9, 2010

What’s Worked for meYMMV

• Competitors can be your allies. (obu + drawbackwards + forty)

• Engage the tribe and tribal elders early. (page.ly + SP + Woo + Press75)

• Partner with specialists that do it better.(9seeds, wphelpcenter)

• Leverage existing products and services in a win-win-win. (you, them, and the customer)(page.ly + akismet, page.ly + themes, page.ly + firehost page.ly + vaultpress), mojothemes

23Thursday, September 9, 2010

Speak up, we can’t hear you

• How are you Competing?

• How are you Collaborating?

24Thursday, September 9, 2010

Who wants a free iPad?

• Goto http://page.ly (upper right corner of site)

• Tell us why you love WordPress

• Ends September 6th

25Thursday, September 9, 2010