Just hours after the official announcement, it’s probably not news to you that Steve Jobs has passed away. His family has lost a husband and father; Apple has lost their founder and leader; and we have all lost one of the greatest minds the world has known. I’ve lost one of my heroes.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I can’t quantify the number of ways that Steve’s work has made my life better. Besides the fact that he made incredible products that have inspired and enabled me to explore my own creativity, the way that he approached work and life has served as a roadmap whenever I doubted my own convictions.

I was first introduced to Steve’s famous Stanford Commencement Address around the time that I began my own creative journey. I had recently come to terms with the fact that I had such a burning desire to follow my own curiosities and passions that I couldn’t possibly – in good faith – work for someone else. I wasn’t quite sure what I would wind up doing, but – scary as it was – I was looking forward to finding out. I cashed out a bunch of Apple stock that I had made a healthy profit from (thanks for that, too, Steve), and vowed to obey whatever made my heart beat a little faster.

I honestly don’t recall the very first time that I saw the video, but I know that it rang true enough that I have watched it dozens of times since then. Any time that I doubted myself or felt frustrated with the entrepreneurial process, I watched the video. If a friend ever needed motivation, I told them to watch it. I was jealous of them for having, still ahead of them, the experience of watching it for the first time. Steve put into clear words what had been merely a high-volume murmur in my head.

If I were to quote every phrase that has echoed through my head at some point in the past few years, I’d end up transcribing the whole thing. Here are a few of the principles – which now inform my every action – that I’ve taken away from Steve’s wisdom.

You are already naked

Life is too short to not do what you love. You are here temporarily, and in the grand scheme of the universe, you are really less significant than a grain of sand. It sounds dramatic; and maybe by pure faith, you simply disagree. Your brain will try to trick you, filling you with “fear of embarrassment or failure.” People around you will off-load these fears onto you, trying to “drown out your inner voice” with doubts that are really of no consequence.

At the same time, life is long enough (if you’re lucky), that you should build something that matters to you. One little thing you do today, you may be thanking yourself for 10 years from now.

You can’t connect the dots moving forward

The world is constantly changing, with seemingly disparate subjects occasionally serendipitously colliding to create innovation. While the obscure topic that arouses your curiosity today may seem insignificant now, it may bring a new perspective in your approach to another challenge. The only way you’ll find out is if you heed its call.

The lightness of being a beginner again

Sometimes we become so familiar with our main domain of expertise that we can’t possibly see it in a new way. When you’re presented with something unfamiliar, embrace the lightness of being a beginner again. Seek out new things of which you have no knowledge. The new dots may later connect, after all.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

It’s easy to get too comfortable: to rest upon your past achievements, and stay the conservative course. This can be a nice reward for a job well done, but it’s a dangerous place to stay for too long. If you haven’t felt “hungry” for awhile, look hard for something to be hungry for – it’s out there. Don’t be afraid to be “foolish” – to risk what you’ve earned to once again follow your stomach.

That’s what Steve taught me. If you haven’t seen his talk, do yourself the favor of a lifetime and watch it. Live your life by these words, and you won’t regret a moment.

Thank you so, so much, Steve.

What did Steve teach you?

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Since then, I expanded the idea as I moved to Chicago. Now, Kadavy, Inc. is taking a big step with this new name, and dedicated social network. The San Francisco events will remain Flatmate Meetup for the time being, but here in Chicago, (as announced on our new blog) it will now be known as HeyRoommates. This new name will make it easier for us to bring in people who are looking for roommates in Chicago, and ultimately make it easier for them to find a place to live. Our dedicated social network (powered by Ning for now) will give us tools and data that will help us market the service more effectively.

Best of all, the roommate-mixers (like speed-dating, but if it goes well, you sleep in separate beds) will still be FREE, and tons of fun.

So, if you’re looking for a roommate in Chicago, sign up, and come to a HeyRoommates mixer.

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I already have a couple of amazing panelists in mind:

David Weekly: Had a number of small ventures before building PBwiki (now PBworks), which “had more attention in two weeks than [his] year-and-a-half old project.” More on that in a presentation by him.

Paul Bragiel: Founded Meetro, a location-based IM client. Then, shut it down and took the lessons learned, and the same team, to then build Lefora.com – a hosted forum solution.

Please provide your input in the comments section of the panel picker. Who else is an expert on fucking up?

When you’re done voting, tweet this:

Find out “How to Fuck Up Properly” in @kadavy’s SXSW panel. Vote for it here: http://tr.im/wMDL

Other Panels of Interest

Online workteam building and management platform, oDesk is heading up an interesting panel on remote-work best practices, called Kill Your Cubicle.

Online dating tips expert Russ Ruggles plans to explain his theories in a presentation called How to Get a Date Online.

Go vote! Thanks for your support!

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It all started with a Blogger account (I’ve since migrated platforms twice). I still get a kick out of reading the first blog post:

Okay, I’m finally trying out this blog thing. I don’t really have any particular intentions for this blog, except to ramble (and perhaps inform) about design, web design and the like. I looked around and saw some very impressive blogs all organized into categories and I was pretty intimidated…only to find out blogger.com seems to make all of that pretty easy. I’m glad I decided to just jump into it. I have a tendancy (sic), when I’m learning something new, to try to take in every detail of something before I attempt it. The result is a sort of paralysis. So, since I don’t know much about blogging yet, and it seems there is a decent amount to know, I’m just going to barf this out and clean it up later.

My favorite part is where I say “I’m just going to barf this out.” It’s amazing how a tiny little snowflake of an impulse can snowball into something greater. When I started this blog, so many people in my life were downright confused as to why I would put my precious evenings, weekends, and even an entire week of vacation time, into doing essentially the same thing I did for a living (I’m not sure if that sounds strange to people – but if it does: keep in mind, I grew up in Nebraska, which I connect to the fact that almost nobody surrounding me had genuine interests or passions that they actively pursued). I had no explanation for them – nor for myself – other than that I couldn’t think of not wanting to do this. I felt a sensation not unlike hunger in the pit of my stomach, and restless urgency in the first knuckles of my fingers.

But it’s those things for which you can stay up until 4am – those things that make you get out of bed in the middle of the night because you can’t get them out of your head – that are most worth pursuing. Having this blog provided a place where I could do things my way. Whenever I may have been coerced throughout the work day to cut corners and sacrifice quality – or to not take risks – to not let things be fun, there was always the blog. Through this blog, not only did I hone professional skills that enabled me to escape the cornfields of Nebraska to work in the richest entrepreneurial environment in the world, I was also able to unlock an undiscovered passion for writing, for sharing knowledge, and – in turn – helping others.

I’m still hungry and restless; but to me this is much more than just a blog. It serves as a reminder that you can’t connect the dots moving forward. You have to have a mound of clay (or barf) before you can make a sculpture people. Barf it out!

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Here’s some general instructions:

• Make/find your beard design. Draw a picture on my face with skitch. Or just find an nice beard pic on the web. Just have some visual representation you can link to.
• Submit your design. Twitter an @reply to @kadavy, and add the hashtag #kadavy30
• Tune in to see what designs win.

Also, you can use this template, designed by Arlo:

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Paralysis.

Remember when it was fun?

Make it fun again.

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Fun photo by -Gep-

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Facebook disabled my account, and didn’t tell me why. The other day, as I was trying to comment on a Lifehacker thread using their super-cool Facebook Connect integration, I received this message:

HUH?! Disabled? How could my account be disabled? How could they take away from me my main means of communicating with my friends back in San Francisco, and everywhere else? Now I can’t even play Scrabble with my own mother!? Oh, yeah, AND WHY THE FUCK WAS MY ACCOUNT DISABLED?

At first I thought maybe it was this Tweet:

I figured, probably the words “teen sex”, followed by a link, set off some sort of flag when it was syndicated to my status message. One would think they would have a more sophisticated system for screening these things, but whatever. I sent them a message explaining this may have been it.

Then it was pointed out to me that since this tweet started with an “@” it probably wasn’t syndicated to my status message. The mystery continues.

Then I remembered a message I got a few weeks ago, regarding a video I posted that included a song by Spoon.

Hello,

We have removed your video entitled “Proportional Design Technique Time Lapse” uploaded at 8:20pm February 4th, 2009. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.

If you are the copyright owner, or have permission from the rights holder to upload and distribute this material on Facebook, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.

Please note that if you re-upload this video without filing a counter notice, or if you upload another video that infringes on the rights of a third party, our system will again remove the content. This could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.

For any other questions, view our Help page.

The Facebook Team

“Okay,” I thought. A little anal, considering the video is only being shared with my friends, but whatever. Typical sort of language for this thing: “this could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.” Surely this language is for flagrant offenders. Anyway. Done deal. I can go on with my life, and spend the rest of my days throwing as many sheep at my friends as I wish.

Well, I guess there was one other video I had up that had a copyrighted song. A little experiment I did with processing.org and a Crystal Castles tune. I uploaded this video well before the Spoon one, so I didn’t think to take it down. Besides, they’ll just take it down and send me another message. Right? Right?

So, I’m left to assume that this was the egregious violation I had committed – putting up a video with a soundtrack that included a copyrighted song. By a group that, incidentally has had some copyright troubles themselves.

It’s been about 48 hours since my account was disabled, and still no comment from Facebook, or response to my inquiry. It’s as if my very existence has just gone into the ether. All those comments from my regular status updates via Twitter – shall be no more. Unless I get my account back.

Oh yeah, and that Facebook application that I spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours developing (which was also just about killed by the new API) what happens to that?

• Something is fucked here: yes, I did violate the Facebook Terms of Use by uploading a copyrighted video. In fact – TWO of them. But really guys? Disable my account? And cut off access to a portion of my business without word of when, why, whatTF? That’s a dick move. Would the same happen were I to publish a picture of the Eiffel Tower at night, or a picture of The Lone Cypress?
• Everyone should know: Facebook needs to know that if they are going to encourage users to invest their entire social lives in their platform, and to entrust them with housing and managing all of this personal data, those users – excuse me – PEOPLE are going to need to know that access to their own personal data isn’t going to be destroyed on little more than a whim.
• So, those of you on the inside can you start one of those Facebook group thingies? Join this group (thanks, Fayza). Get the word out that Facebook is very unforgiving with their policies, and can destroy this account you hold dear without notification.

If you’re on Twitter, please tweet this:

Save @kadavy! Facebook disabled his account: http://tr.im/h7Ji Please ReTweet!

Be careful what you trust Facebook with. After this experience, I made this video about it:

Photo by willgame

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So, give it a shot! Buy me a tea (NOW!) and see the rest of the puppy.

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Puppy photo by Ryan Halvorsen

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Most of the time, I would kindly nod my head; but secretly, it felt as if my ears had vomited into my brain. “There’s only so much dirt on the earth, and everyone needs a place to live, so housing prices will always go up,” I would hear. The popularity of this opinion, and the intensity with which it didn’t make any sense to me, was enough for me to begin to wonder if I was the crazy one.

When I thought about buying a house, it all seemed like a big freedom suck to me. It was mind-numbing to me the amount of time, money, and autonomy people were expending on this supposed, “best investment.” Paychecks were spent re-roofing them, nights and weekends were passed tending to their yards, job offers and moves were turned down because of their ownership, and the opportunities for serendipitous experiences were traded for “neighborhoods” as monocultural as the cornfields that surrounded them. These costs were exponentiated by the accumulation of stuff to fill empty rooms in these vessels.

It simply didn’t make sense to me, so I did other things with my money. I got a cheap apartment in a neighborhood of character, followed the principles of my instinct, stowed  away in my Ameritrade account, and spent those precious nights and weekends persuing my curiousities, and building my skills. Thrift store scores of old Billy Joel records, books from the library, friends made in professional organizations, and hours spent coding and writing on my blog. When all of this paid off and opportunity called, there was no housing market to consider. I brought my investment with me.

I don’t want to make it sound as if I believe that buying a house is always a foolish endeavor. I’ll probably own one myself at some point, and I’m sure that for many people’s situations it was a great decision. However, for many, it didn’t turn out to be such, and the blind pursuit of this goal is at the root of the troubled financial times that we face now.

I’m also not disillusioned to the point of believing that I am some fantastic example of success; but I’m glad that I didn’t succumb to the frenzy. I was free to pursue the unexpected opportunities that came my way. 

So what are the lessons to be learned? 1) Be strong in processing decisions for yourself and your priorities 2) Be wary of popular goals, because they quite often bananas 3) Sometimes, you don’t have to look much further than the bathroom mirror of your rented apartment, to find the best investment you can make.
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Money photo by tracy_olson. House photo by Per Ola Wiberg.

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