‘Of Sprints and Marathons’ indeed!

The amount of progress that can be made when we all pull towards a common goal is astounding. Qworky, working as a distributed team has tackled quite a few ‘sprints’ on multiple fronts. Establishing our presence in social media during product development, reaching out to our community for feedback – proactively, documenting both our engineering processes and our team time capsule,  and making rapid progress on all aspects of product development.

Now on to the next sprint!

Thank you Qworky Followers, Fans and Community members- and special thank you to the entire Qworky Team- you make this Chief Executive Cheerleader proud.

On your mark.

Today I wanted to restart my PC (running Win7 which I looove). No particular reason just to keep my PC healthy- well, I’m one of those people that has 30 browser windows or tabs open at one time- which makes my shutdown experience one big stressful window of decisions. What to keep, what to save, where to bookmark, a nomenclature that makes sense. In the past delicious has helped some- but overall I still struggle with these types of decisions. This time around- I took note of my emotions. I felt extremely pressured, and a bit stressed at the weight of this entire experienced- this got me to wondering am I alone?

And what do you think the cause is of this and other stressful software experiences? I’m beginning to think software causes me stress by an army of small decisions- many of which seem unnatural.

What do you think?

Starting a new job is always stressful because everything is new, and because I am the first Social Media Intern at Qworky we are actively establishing the blueprint for my role. Using social media and Qworky has allowed me to organize my tasks which prevented me from being overwhelmed. To get started, I sat in on some meetings and have been interviewing the team. I was able to get a better feel for everyone’s role within the company through the interview process. So far I have been able to speak with Jon Pincus, the company’s Chief Technical Officer as well as Harry Waisbren who is the Community Manager. I still have more people to interview and look forward to talking about them. I am learning about broad concepts as well as step-by-step instructions on how to execute the technical aspects of social media and the programs that go along with it. The first week here has opened my eyes to a whole other world that I didn’t know existed. Looking forward, I am excited to work with everyone at Qworky and gain experience using Qworky Meetings, Twitter, Google wave as well as learning about the new innovations that are on the horizon.

Please take it for a spin!

- log in to Qworky (you can choose whatever name you want)

- join the meeting

- leave a comment in the chat room

If you run into any problems (did I mention that it’s version 0.01?), here’s an screenshot of what it looks like after you log in.

And about that feedback … the more the better! Please fill out our short survey — or, if you prefer, leave a comment here, tweet it to us, write on our Facebook wall, or send via carrier pigeon.

Thanks much!

jon

Before I was able to click the drop down. UPS started to translate their greeting into international languages.

Could UPS be implementing a deft tactic in branding?

 By doing a simple drop down, such as choosing my location, I am actively engaging with their brand, and selecting my location from their plethora of global options. This reinforces UPS’ brand message “UPS is Global”.

While I was mildly annoyed, in hindsight I think this is genius- they only make you choose your location once, and the payoff is you encounter and engage with their business (to see how it works try visiting UPS.com in the ‘private browsing mode’ of your browser).

I’m impressed by the way they communicate their brand positioning through multiple touch points.

Lessons for small businesses: Defining your brand characteristics, and brand positioning is vital to articulating a clear brand message.

Question: Beyond your logo, and color scheme, what are the vital ingredients of your businesses brand? How do you communicate them in innovative ways to your clients or customers?

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for a passionate Front End Designer with strong (X)HTML, CSS Development Experience to partner directly with startup co-founders to define/develop a User Interface that expresses our brand style and user experience. Must be able to commit 20 hours per week working directly with our engineering team as a freelance professional, with a mutual interest in developing into a permanent role.

The role will:

• Envision, develop, and define an inviting and differentiated, and intuitive user experience
• Propose ideas and new approaches for implementing pre-defined user requirements
• Work with Engineering to integrate frontend design with backend systems
• Have an opportunity to influence feature sets, and learn the funding/startup process
• Work alongside industry leading strategists, computer security/engineering experts
• Work offsite, via digital (Blog, Twitter, Google Wave) and coffee shop collaboration

Candidates should be self-directed with an entrepreneurial drive and a keen attention to detail, and a passion for usable and seamless user experiences.

Compensation: Open/Negotiable – Likely beginning as a $5K contract role (negotiable) with goal of evolving into an equity role based on success working together and experience.

–

About Us: Our name is Qworky :-) and we’re out to create a better world through better software.

Diversity: We view diversity as a vital ingredient to sustained business success. We value unique perspectives and traditionally under represented view points in the software design process. We welcome collaborators from every walk of life. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, experience level, education background, culture, or political opinion.

Perks: This is a great opportunity for you to get to know us, and Qworky to get to know you. We envision this role transitioning into our next equity employee joining our startup team.

We’re an experienced startup team (with successful VC funded exit experience) tackling our next opportunity.

To Apply:

Please email hr@qworky.net your resume and or cover letter, including your geographic location. And please either describe your most challenging project or direct us to your online presence/portfolio.

hr@qworky.net

More and more I realize that Qworky’s success in 2010 will come from our ability to infect our users, advisors, community, and collaborators with the spirit of Qworky. And if enthusiasm is contagious consider yourself infected. We have a great team. A great passion for what we’re doing – creating a better world through better software, beginning with software for better meetings.

With our goal comes a responsibility to continuously challenge ourselves to define what Better Software / Better World is all about– we owe that to ourselves and to all we touch through our products and communication.

So to kick start the New Year we’d like to know What does “A Better World through Better Software” mean, or look like to you?

We’re still defining this ourselves so your thoughts are valuable inputs to shaping how we take steps towards our goal. Looking forward to your thoughts!

The study’s purpose is described by Facebook as part of their effort to be as open and connected as possible while working to understand how different populations of users join and use their service. Despite such lofty goals, the original question that brought about the criticism, first poised by Shireen Mitchell (@digitalsista), Beth Kanter (@kanter), and Allyson Kapin (@womenwhotech), is about flaws in their methodology. However, the charge, first made by Tracy Viselli (@myrnatheminx), that the conclusions “seem self-fulfilling prophecy ish” would hold more serious implications.

The methodology aspect is quite tricky, as Facebook does not request information on race as they do for gender. Cheri Mullins (@cherimullins) analyzed this in some detail within her post Facebook “Diversity” Study Fact or Fiction, explaining how “the Facebook Data team has skewed the results to be highly self-referential.” The questions regarding the motivation of the study ask whether the data specifically answers a question “that has already been asked or assumed“, which is Shireen Mitchell’s rationale when referring to Tracy Viselli’s self-fulfilling prophecy description as semi-correct.

The methodological issues are important, especially considering the broad conclusion drawn that Facebook’s user demographics nearly mirror that of the U.S. population. Moreover, the criticism and skepticism has everything to do with the potentially alarming research from danah boyd (@zephoria), which paints a very different picture of diversity within Facebook. In her speech on The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online, she explained:

It wasn’t just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality…What happened was modern day “white flight.” Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook.

…

MySpace has become the “ghetto” of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.

boyd’s warning about this “digital migration” is a stark contrast to the more techno-utopian depiction from Facebook. The draft of her forthcoming article, White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook, further compares the social media landscape to the historical dynamics of segregation.

Within her response to the Facebook Data Team’s study, boyd discussed how although the data does correlate with what she has seen in the field, the focus on access misses the divergence in how different groups are using and experiencing the service. The Facebook depiction does not address the impact racial and ethnic backgrounds have on social media usage, and the resulting limitation on the extent to which users will interact with a diverse set of other users because of it.

However, boyd also professed disappointment that academics began critiquing the Facebook study while not first “appreciating the glimpse that we get into the data they get to see.” Indeed, the open study did also spark public dialogue on the issue, and their treatment of this uncomfortable subject does show a willingness to assess it further.

Yet if boyd is right that racist and classist attitudes are shaping digital media, action must be taken to shift the debate. If the internet will ever reach its democratizing potential, industry leaders and the social media community at large need to accept and address these serious, systemic issues.

Our team has decades of experience in creating venture backed technology startups, and proven marketing, branding, and social media experience. This represents a great opportunity to build your resume, and learn how to intersect community and marketing plans, alongside some of the industry’s best. We’re an open collaboration team so you’ll be involved in brainstorm, and have an opportunity to give your feedback on strategic planning- and even be involved in product reviews.

We believe: Better Software / Better World. We fundamentally believe and are passionate about improving the world through better software experiences- and we’re looking for like minded individuals ready to join our journey.

Internship Requirements: Able to commit 20 hours per week (official start date: January [negotiable] concluding in March/April), strong initiative, writing skills, strong ability to collaborate, implement individual feedback, willing to apply deep and creative thinking, rigorous problem solving skills, ability to drive toward deadlines, self directed, ability to work hard, dedication to high quality work.

We welcome individuals from a range of backgrounds including: Marketing, Social Media, Journalism, Visual Communication, and more to apply- provided you meet the above requirements and this internship aligns with your interests.

Work Environment: As a startup we do a lot of coffee shop collaboration, in Seattle/Capitol hill as well as Bellevue/Redmond. So we’ll need to team members who are very self directed and capable of producing results independently, and via electronic communication.

About Us: As a company we view diversity as a vital ingredient to sustained business success. We value unique perspectives and traditionally under represented view points in the software design process. We welcome collaborators from every walk of life. We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, experience level, educational background, culture, or political opinion.

If interested in an UNPAID internship, please e-mail us your resume/curriculum vitae at HR@Qworky.net
Please include: Community + Social Media Internship as the title.

http://qworky.com http://twitter.com/qworky

Craigslist Posting: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/mar/1504493268.html