michael's blog

It doesn’t have to be amazing to learn something (PART 2)

So on 5th March 2012 it was 2 years exactly since I swung the bat – a lot of base hits since then.

What’s happened since the last post:

One of the key changes to the site since my last post about the site, a year ago, detailing how and why I chose to start World War Alliance Cheats, is the introduction of a premium element to the site. On the afternoon of 5th June 2011, I launched the WWAC Pro Membership option to the site which basically allows visitors of the site the chance to earn points at a much faster rate than a non-pro member would. I knew based on the current interest in the site, based on traffic statistics, feedback I was receiving, and general engagement that monetising the site in some way was worth having a go at. Until this point I had held off from adding a commercial element to the site because I wanted the site to get used and focussed more on the value being provided - but something now felt as though it was missing. Adding a premium element simply felt like the next logical step - I couldn't put it off any longer. I hadn’t implemented a payment system to a website before so I was a little nervous at first. “What if people wouldn’t buy my stuff” was just one of the many concerns that ran through my head. I knew that if it were to have any chance of success, it had to be inexpensive, it had to provide value, and it had to seem like some kind of an advantage yet not so much of an advantage that it would ruin it for non-pro members of the site.

What value did I create?

The WWAC Pro Membership had to be a careful balance of the aforementioned factors. As a result I took a conservative incremental view on the ‘upgrade’ and opted for the following new features:

1. Feature: 2 points instead of 1 each time your code is added to the battlefield.
   Rationale: A slight increment on the staple method of earning points. The battlefield option is always there and you’re only limited to earning extra points on this by the rate at which other visitors are engaging with the battlefield. The more visitors, the more you can add your code again and earn more. Earning 2 instead of 1 is surely a good thing ;)

2. Feature: Highlighted that WWAC Pro Members earn points at least 2-3 times faster than non-pro members.
   Rationale: As evidenced by the statistics on the homepage.

   
   Image 1: Visitor stats visible on the homepage for all to see the current level of site activity. This maintains itself and is live.

3. Feature: Exclusive access to 3 new highly charged missions (Reinforcements, Toxic Spill, Strike Force)
   Rationale: 3 new exclusive missions equals less competition for bonus points. It promotes the feeling of privilege. The point value ranges for each mission on average are about 2-3 times larger than they were before. I felt it was important to scale up the risk (or lack of risk) by a fairly constant factor. This way people can more easily see the value in ‘pro’ because it works in the same way that ‘free’ does, but there is just more on offer.

4. Feature: Increased 24-hour limit for mission usage to 4 missions (normally only 3).
   Rationale: One of the limiting factors of the bonus point options that are the ‘missions’. Specifically, the fact that as a unique visitor you are limited to winning only 3 of them in a 24 hour period. This was originally introduced to prevent players from exploiting their availability and to allow others a chance to win. Naturally it seemed wise to increase the maximum value from 3 to 4 in a 24 hour period for the purposes of exclusivity and value for money.

5. Feature: Battlefield Point Injection: currently worth 194 points! (or 90% of the point total for the player currently ranked #50).
   Rationale: While I recognised that the pro membership may well be attractive to existing active members of the site, I thought that another group of people may be interested in the Pro Membership too. Brand new members who saw a daunting 4 figure set of points against some codes would probably be put off by the prospect of earning enough to ‘catch up’ and get high enough on ladders to make engagement in the site worthwhile. Therefore I introduced a ‘90% of the code ranked 50th’ value add, because it gave would be buyers the opportunity to be within reach of getting “on the board” quite easily. Of course they would still have to earn that extra 10% themselves, but that wouldn’t be so hard with all the other faster ways of earning points that were now available ;)

6. Feature: Pro Members are recognised not only by the increased amount of points they win, but also by the WWAC PRO ribbon on their WWAC Profile Page 
   Rationale: It was going to be important that Pro Members were distinctly different to their non-pro member counterparts (visually). As a result I introduced the ‘pro’ icon next to their name in their own profile to signify to other visitors that they were pro ;) This is not too dissimilar to what Flikr or LinkedIn does.

7. Feature: WWAC Honour: You will be keeping WWAC afloat and supporting future development.
   Rationale: Naturally, any contribution to the site was always going to be a plus for me. I am massively appreciative of all the feedback I’ve received to date – it was surprisingly very helpful in keeping me motivated to continue improving the site. Yep, even the negative stuff even made me want to continue making it better. Monetary contributions were going to be rewarding in a different sense. The option for visitors to donate was there too although to this date no one has done that.

Image 2: WWAC Pro Membership landing page outlining all the benefits.

Managing Pro Membership:

For the most part, there wasn’t much to do. The offer was there – all people had to do was use PayPal to make the $1.99 payment. I really wanted to integrate PayPal into the site from day 1 in such a way that when you pay, you’re automatically converted into a pro member – subject to payment clearing. However at the time I didn’t know how to make that happen, and while I could have spent some time investigating and testing, I was still able to accept payments and manually add people into the pro member database – so I stuck with that option (even today). What does this mean? Well, I get an email within minutes of someone making a payment, from PayPal. In the email message from PayPal I can see the code that they’ve entered in at the time of making the payment and their email address. I switch the code over to ‘pro’ in the database, add the necessary bonus points, and use the e-mail address they provided to let them know it’s now active. To try and minimise the likelihood that someone would complain about the delay, I added a note on the payment page that advised them that memberships will be processed within 48 hours – this seemed reasonable to me. I never received a complaint about the delay and was subsequently able to fulfil most memberships within about half a day.

Image 3: PayPal email received: This is what I get when someone has paid for a new wwac membership.
 
I still remember the first day I launched with this – within an hour someone had bought it. Now I know we’re only talking US$1.99 here, but when someone buys your own self-made stuff for the first time, it’s an awesome feeling. I was celebrating the launch and a sale all in one day! Waking up the next morning was even more exciting – 6 new members while I was asleep! Although memberships tapered off after the first month, a new member still crops up here and there.

Key Challenges:

The biggest challenge over the past two years by far is giving the site the support and development it has needed to keep it going. Yes, the site looks relatively simple but you’d be surprised how quickly it can eat a lot of your time – particularly if you’re not a full time developer (like me) or have never worked as one professionally. I am not spending anywhere near as much time as I used to on it, but during its busiest point I would be spending about 5-10 hours a week on it – developing new features, answering emails/questions on user voice, and general promotion of the site. When you combine this on top of working 5 days, 9-5, and completing a masters degree part time, playing cricket and having some kind of a social life – allocating time to these kinds of hobbies requires some discipline.

Another major challenge over the past year has involved the migration of all WWAC web content and database information from a server located in Australia (where I am based) to a self-built cloud server in the US, Chicago to be specific. Why? Well, I am gearing up for a new project which I will explain shortly and also wanted to reduce costs without inhibiting the performance of the site for visitors. Do I build servers for a living? No. Have I played with some linux distro’s before? Yes. Armed with some basic knowledge and a desire to learn something new, I explored the provider landscape and decided to settle with rackspace hosting. I have to commend them on the supporting documentation to get everything up and running, including their live support which I utilised via live chat and even called them. They were extremely helpful despite the fact that my questions probably showed that I was quite the novice – ultimately, I didn’t care – I was up and running : ) I had just installed a new webserver by command line (like DOS), the php framework, a database, and an ftp server. It was certainly frustrating at times and I think I even installed most of what I had now, scrapped it completely (despite spending a couple of hours on it) and started again – because “something wasn’t working properly”. Now that I had these new skills under my belt I also brought a couple of other sites of mine across and have been very happy for the past few months.  The other key benefit of moving the server to the US was ultimately to reduce the latency between the server and the visitor for the majority of people that visit WWAC.

Image 4: Logging in to the WWAC server via command line. This is where I keep all the server software up to date and generally maintain access to the system.

What’s next?

Well, I finish my master’s degree in the middle of this year and will have some time free for a new project. For the past 6 months I have been exploring ideas and developing concepts for a new project of mine, Star Econ. Inspired by all the support and interest I have received to date for WWAC, and for the love of games and a challenge, I am working on my own game. Most of the work done to date has been conceptual – laying out how the game might work, etc. No major development has begun yet, although I have had some really awesome artwork designed for it by a very talented artist. I’ve had the artwork printed out in A3 to sit around me and inspire me to build. There’s surprisingly a lot of things to think about and do when building a game all by yourself. Daunting but exciting and I look forward to writing a blog post one day about how I got started, just like I did with WWAC.

Image 5: Star Econ landing page: Used to capture interest and keep people up to date with progress.

Key Statistics:

• There are quite a few members of the site that have clocked up almost 600 days of active duty! That’s pretty awesome to know that someone has used the stuff you built for that long. AYQSX5 has been very active and very supportive of the site, becoming a pro member and making many suggestions for improvement.
• There are over 17,000 unique alliance codes in the site.
• There are about 6,500 visits and over 50,000 pageviews to the site in one month.
• The majority of visitors come from the US – which is a key reason behind why I moved the server there recently.
• The site has earned 39 Pro Members in the 9 months it has made the Pro Membership option available to visitors. This has given the site $77.61 USD in sales, or $63.18 USD after PayPal fees (PayPal take $0.30AUD and 2.4% per transaction). This equates to about half a year of free server time and about 1 new member every week.

To finish up - thank you, if you've made it this far in the post. I am extremely appreciative of all the support that the World War community has shown towards this site. I know only a small portion of that community has made its way over to WWAC but I am still very appreciative of those that have. Congratulations to Storm 8 as well for making such a fun and addictive game! I wish them every success, as a studio, now and in the future as well.

If you'd like to get in touch with me - visit my homepage.

How other people’s problems helped me to become a better person

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to make things for others that they would enjoy. My ideal outcome would be that my creation has somewhat bettered someone’s life. This continues to be my goal even to this day. By wanting to achieve this goal for as long as I have, I believe it has given me a highly receptive eye towards the actions and reactions of others – since the success of my efforts very much depends on how much I see and how I choose to use it. All the minute factors in a person’s reaction such as talking speed, choice of words, emphasis on particular words, the frequency of word usage, a person’s facial expression, their tone, how fast their eye lids batter, and so much more, are all pieces of information I am often very consciously aware of. This information helps me to gauge, open-mindedly, a probable reality together with an appropriate response aimed once again at trying ascertaining the strength of my assumptions. Often this is a careful juggling act between what was expressed in the past together with what is being expressed now, all of which may or may not correlate with my assumptions of an underlying reality. Having confidence in my awareness and a desire to create something beneficial to others lead me to offer my time on a voluntary basis in telephone crisis counselling.

At the time, the idea of talking to others over the phone about a vast array of issues was my last concern. I was incredibly shy and I knew that by training to become a telephone counsellor, I was going to have to talk – in front of others! Not just any old talk either. The ability I prided myself in was going to be put to the test in front of my peers. What if it wasn’t good enough? With a fear like this, I basically signed myself up to jumping into the really deep end of the pool, to try finding my way to the edge again. The first 30 minutes of training was no exception either as I quickly learnt that participation was going to be mandatory and for most of every training session over the next few months. I kind of new it would involve this anyway, but your fear jokingly has a way of making you think as though it might not happen. Over the next few months I began feel more and more prepared. Towards the end of training (about 6 months worth) I was becoming a little restless, because I just wanted to ‘get out there’ and do the real thing on the phones.

Soon enough my time had arrived – it was a Wednesday night, 7:30pm, my turn to complete a supervised shift on the phones. Despite knowing that I would have someone right behind me, listening to what I was saying, ready to save me, it was still a daunting event – someone was now about to depend on what I had to say, to console them during their period of acute pain.  I was pumped. I had just switched my workstation over to ‘ready to take calls’. I stared at the phone waiting for it to ring and didn’t have to wait long. My phone lit up. I let it ring a couple of times, which seemed like forever. Watching it flash away oddly felt as though I was looking at the person I was about to speak to. They were calling for me and I was about to touch them. I know that sounds kind of odd, but it did feel as though I was reaching for them when i reached for the phone. Here we go. The person on the other end has no idea that it’s your first call, nor that you’re new to this, they’re too pre-occupied with their own concerns at this time – it’s why they are reaching out in the first place. I at least had this in my favour. The call was now live and I had to quickly find my feet. I remembered feeling massively reassured for having just completed months of training – all the little phrases and structures for channelling a call to ascertain the issue, empathise with the person, and to help them work out what an suitable bandage would look like all during the short time you have together on the phone, went a long way towards keeping me calm and focussed. The words just came out of my mouth as though it wasn’t me speaking. Almost uncomfortably script-like. That’s where you can offer some level of personalisation through tactfully exploring issues and providing empathetic statements at the right moments. I know that sounds kind of mechanical and inhumane in some way, however these tools help you more clearly explore the issues being presented and help guide the caller towards beneficial courses of action. In hindsight, and more importantly, I think the counselling microskills are also there to help preserve your own inner wellbeing. Your own health in this context is something that is so easily overlooked and so easily damaged. You're in the firing line here. We spend so much time doing things for others, working for others, investing energy in others, that we don’t often reflect or learn about ourselves. I didn’t know that then. Over time I became worn out. The potential effects of being frequently exposed to stories or scenes of human tragedy across a spectrum of mediums have been studied thoroughly over the years. That being said, not every call was about human tragedy, so I am sure that any influential effects may be somewhat lessened?

The kinds of conversations I had varied massively in topic. I’ve spoken with someone that was upset because the person they were playing doubles tennis with earlier in the day was someone who didn’t actually exist. This other person was laughing at them for not playing very well. What made the situation even more interesting was that they admitted that they knew that the other person did not exist. They were looking for a way to manage their anxiety from the intimidation the were receiving from someone who didnt exist. The source of anxiety doesn’t have to be real – it just has to be perceived to be real. That point made sense to me during my undergraduate studies in psychology however it was really driven home after speaking to countless other people that saw reality in a similar way.

It’s not every day you get to talk to someone about a bird outside that is preventing the person from leaving the house because the bird is carrying a shotgun and threatening to kill them. Or, alternatively talking to someone that thinks the people passing them by on the street know a lot about their personal life and are seeking to conspire against them in some way.

They weren’t all that fascinating. Sometimes they were just downright awful. I spoke with people that had just lost a family member that they were both financially and emotionally quite dependant on. The rawness of a particular situation was often conveyed by there being more crying than there was talking. It’s hard to sit comfortably, listening to them, while they’re doing that. You just want to give them a hug or tell them it will all be ok. But you cant. Telling them that things will be ok is not fair either as you can't say for sure that it will be. You can’t even pretend like it is going to work out - however there are ways to suggest that there is the possibility. Instilling hope offers some relief. These thoughts do arrive in your head though, simply because it’s natural to be uncomfortable with the situation and you want to fix it immediately. There is even debatable evidence to suggest that it's even hard wired into most of us to empathise with each other (see Mirror Neurons). Reducing the intensity of the situation and finding a way forward, no matter how small, is the goal. Telephone crisis counsellors are there to provide mental health first aid, not long term support.

I once spoke to man for 30 (long) minutes about the fact that he’s about to lose custody of his child following divorce. He began to claim also that there was also a growing pile of evidence suggesting that his child was being sexually abused by his now ex-partner’s new partner. Resolving horrific issues like this can often take time – particularly because the outward signs (or evidence) don’t immediately show themselves. Each second that something like this goes on is one second too long. You start to imagine what it would be like for the parent in question. If you haven’t experienced it – you can only imagine. Listening to them talk about it though gives you a fast tracked insight.

When you listen to someone like this, together with the fact that they are crying while explaining their situation to you, you find yourself being put in a position where the only way to be helpful to them is to become cold. At least it was this way for me. You begin to ignore the issue or the context of conversation on an emotional level and become completely objective. You begin to experience things being said to you, not in the way you would normally, but rather as just words on a piece of paper. I was protecting myself. I would insert moderated emotion into conversation at suitable points without setting the other person off down an unecessary track, but enough to convince them that I gave a shit. I did care. I cared immensely. But when you're protecting yourself the way I was, you can't let the 'real' emotions slip out. Sentences like the following really tested your ability to protect your emotions - “my child is getting raped when they visit my ex-wife’s place every second week”, “I am sitting next to a gun… I really don’t want to live anymore”, “my parents don’t know I am gay and I’d rather not live than tell them” or “I’ve taken a crap load of medication five minutes ago…” – and then have them fade in and out of consciousness while you try keep them awake for the ambulance to arrive soon enough.

In the lower intensity corner you’d be speaking to people that were completely drunk. When faced with a question like “how many wines have you had tonight”, they would often give you an answer that would be drastically different to what they said when they answered the same question a couple of minutes ago. They weren’t as thirsty as they would unknowingly claim to be. Other times you might speak to an elderly person that is lonely and the raging weather outside is causing some anxiety – they needed someone to talk to. Crisis counselling is not a chat service so you have to bring them back to the reason they called and try help them see a way to improve the situation for them self. Some callers would become abusive, often swearing at you and blaming you for things, hanging up in the process. This can leave you feeling as though you’ve let them down at first, particularly if you had spent some time with them already and thought you were making progress. People even call up to talk about their sexual fantasies whilst on the phone with you so that they can get off while you’re both on the phone talking about it. If that ever happened to me I was not aware of it and there were also a number of strategies to identify and correct the course of conversation early.

All of this was all very normal to listen to.

Often after some calls I would place my phone down, switch my workstation into ‘unable to take calls’ mode, calmly walk to the tea room, and flick the kettle on and tune out of life to the sound of the water boiling away. You know those moments when you stare at something with your eyes blurred, not really thinking about anything in particular? At those moments I was feeling a mixture of awe from having just heard what I heard along with a sense of how lucky I was in life not to encounter some of the issues some people faced on a daily basis. At other points I also felt overwhelmingly humbled for having just connected with a complete stranger who opened up to me completely. People were sharing their darkest and innermost precious concerns with me, often at a point where they felt most vulnerable. Things that they would not dare tell anyone else in this world. An amazing feeling – I can tell you that!

Coming home after a 3-4 hour session, which I often did on a week night out of work hours all while holding a 9-5 job, often left you with a mixed feeling of great accomplishment together with a great amount of mental exhaustion for having concentrated for so long in the day. My favourite post-crisis counselling activity was to grab a beer on the way home, curl up on the couch with it and some re-heated dinner, in front of the TV to unwind. It really didn’t matter what was on TV. I was happy to be home. I was happy my life was ok.

I ended up having to give it away after a year due to some personal relationship issues that were happening at the same time. There’s only so much emotional stuff you can deal with effectively at the same time. I wasn’t being of much use to myself at the time, let alone trying to help others. I needed to take care of myself. Aside from having an amazing experience – the time I spent as a crisis counsellor has paid off in all other facets of my life, particularly in the context of workplace ‘crisis’ which often pales by comparison. We all face the prospect of tactfully managing workplace crisis and the skills I learnt allow me to go straight for the heart of the issue and productively reach an equitable outcome. Thanks to the experience I now have a massively un-prejudice view of people from all walks of life and a great respect for individual differences. I also have an amazing respect for those that aspire to become a crisis counsellor or continue to be one. Their work is tireless, frequently overlooked, often underfunded and yet it is very much in demand.

Thank-you so much for reading this – if you’re interested in what I might have to say in the future, subscribe to my RSS feed - http://michaelwills.posterous.com/rss.xml

It doesnt have to be amazing to learn something

**UPDATE - 11 April 2012** It doesnt have to be amazing to learn something (Part 2) is now available.

So on 5^th March 2010 I swung the bat – base hit!

How it all started:

It is so damn easy to get lost in the plethora of fascinating entrepreneurial insight that exists in blogs, interviews and magazines, that after a while you can’t help but develop an itch to do something yourself. Everything you read, watch and listen to consolidates (or doesn’t) into one giant conceptual framework that forms the basis for your very prospective entrepreneurial being. It’s kind of like building a house, brick by brick, in your mind without even knowing that you’re doing it. The problem however is just that – it’s all in your mind. This is particularly a problem if you consider yourself entrepreneurial and are yet to build something in the real world. Without realising it your conceptual house is getting larger and larger while the materials used to build it are getting poorer. It can be intimidating to build something at first as we often only hear about success stories – and not just any success stories. They’re usually the ones that have done very well which often make the grass root aspects harder to grasp or convert into any meaningful set of instructions to first timers. With this in mind, I figured I had nothing to lose by simply giving something a go and doing the best I could along the way. For me, it didn’t have to be the next wheel, it just had to be something useful to a few other people, relatively simple to produce and my first project would have been completely worth its while.

Some points of reference:

Armed with all the insight and hindsight value I had mustered up through my entrepreneurial studies via daily reads on the internet, books, and university studies, I decided to build a website with the following key factors in mind:

-          Keep spending to a minimum (Domain name and hosting costs were the only I could foresee).

-          Don’t introduce functionality unless demand is there (Wait til they scream was the plan).

-          Get a rough cut of the site live ASAP (No matter how it looked).

-          Obtain and follow up on feedback ASAP (Send the site to a few fellow gamers for their opinion).

-          Enjoy myself.

At the time I was addicted (just mildly ;)) to Storm8’s World War game for the iPhone. If you’re not familiar with this mobile RPG, you’re essentially building your own army up whilst progressing through ranks – there are a lot of stats involved and Zynga-like methodologies in place to temp you to part with coin. Adding people to your army is a process of sharing your own uniquely identifiable in-game code and there were a handful of websites out there already that assisted with the code sharing process. I was dissatisfied with the quality of these sites for the fact that they appeared to exist primarily for the purpose of chasing enough money to buy a cheeseburger every other week.  In exchange for money these sites would offer you a “premium position” – which just means your code would feature higher up on the page and perhaps in larger text. The more you ‘donate’ the higher up you sit on the page. I thought this was an embarrassing way to make money as the concept wasn’t exactly scalable. Additionally, increments of 1 cent were permitted, which seemed to cheapen the whole experience. Hey, I am all for some extra cash, but…. … …   you get where I am going (I hope)? So I saw it as an opportunity to introduce some competition by offering a similar service in a more exciting and innovative way – oh, and for free. Why for free? Because I was hopefully going to learn something from this whole process and that was worth more to me than cheeseburgers.

What did I come up with?

Initially I drafted up a concept image in Photoshop (see image below). I had heard so much about keeping it simple and of the importance of just sticking to the core concept that it was very hard for me to settle with the fact that my site would start out this way – shit looking (at least at first).

Image 1) Concept image for WWAC.

After a weekend of hard ‘labour’, a healthy, functioning version of http://www.worldwaralliancecheats.com (WWAC) was born in the evening of 7^th March 2010 to its proud parent, me. WWAC makes the process of code sharing fun through the introduction of competitive, statistical, and addictive gameplay elements often seen in those annoying (because they’re addictive) games you can’t leave alone – because you really DO need to get to that next level or mine for that extra 15,758 in gold!

While I would essentially be trafficking ‘world war alliance codes’ on the site, I decided to use ‘world war alliance cheats’ as the domain name in the hope of drawing (and converting) those ‘looking for an edge’ (*cough* prospective cheaters *cough*) in the game itself… and the domain wasn’t taken : ).

What did I do differently?

Reward (and punish) visitor activity:

Other sites would typically offer a code rotation list. If you add your code to the list, it wouldn’t be removed until it had gone through the entire pipe (usually 40’ish codes long). Once it went completely through you were able to add it to the list again – making your code visible again, which meant you had a better chance of someone adding your code in the game – which improves the size of your army without doing any work.

Getting people to bring their credit cards out of their wallets to buy something is no easy task (bare with me). There has to be perceived value in your offer. Those that actually pay for something you’re selling deserve your respect and should be rewarded with good service. Since this level of achievement was above my current set of goals, I knew that ‘buying’ should be treated the same as ‘using’ in my situation. Therefore I decided to reward people that added their code and the more often they did it the more they were rewarded. Instead of paying for a “premium position” they had an opportunity to earn it for free.  

When people misbehaved (rarely) – I was able to identify and correct the issue swiftly.

Publicly follow up on and acknowledge faults and feature requests:

There were no issue logs or obvious means to capture faults on competitor websites. I wanted to create a level of transparency that conveyed the message to visitors that I give a shit. I had an email account designated to receiving new message alerts via the free version of UserVoice. I would get these emails on my mobile phone and be able to respond immediately, which I considered important, even if I couldn’t fix the problem immediately. My iPhone sleeps next to me at night on the bedside table, so occasionally during the early AM hours of the morning while rolling over in bed to drift back to sleep, my phone would buzz (new email!). Thinking that it might be a WWAC related email I checked and sure enough, sometimes it was. While any concern raised could wait til the morning, I took the opportunity to send a quick reply to the effect of “Thanks for your message – I will look at this shortly” just so that I could get that fast (and appreciative) response in. Faults were fixed and the issue/fix announced on the homepage of the website for all to see – and I always made a special effort to include the name of the person/s (and/or their code) who submitted the issue in the first place. Hey – while it might seem minor, I’d love to see my name “in lights” on a site I was active in… so I made sure they were rewarded with that experience too. I was amazed and excited just to receive faults and messages from people that actually gave a crap about the site – and this consistently fuelled my energy to follow up promptly and continue to improve the site. Gary Vaynerchuk was my inspiration behind the emphasis I put into this.

React to Growth:

It became quickly apparent that some people visited the site more often than others and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the gap between first and last on the Global Ranking list would only grow as a result. Initially to accommodate this I had expanded the list from the original 30 top players, to 40, and then to 50 and quickly realised this wasn’t going to cut it in the long run. To alleviate this situation and allow new players to catch up I introduced the ‘missions’ element.

Missions are opportunities to get more than one point (or lose some) at a time and appeared regularly at set hourly intervals. I included a cool little count down timer for each mission which I figured would attract people to come back to the site regularly to check whether they could win. While seemingly a good idea at first it later turned out to be an issue as people would be sitting there waiting for it. It was the quick and the dead, literally. This lead to grumpiness and fortunately for me, voiced grumpiness! To fix this, I removed the timers changed the fixed hourly availability to an hourly range of availability which satisfied those concerned.

 

Leverage existing behaviours:

Players of world war are used to “levelling up”, they are fascinated with statistics and strategy, have a persistent urge to compete at their own pace and enjoy completing simple tasks that relate to their personal upkeep. With this in mind, most of the functionality built over time in WWAC utilises and was assessed against these behaviours, which made the leap from the game to the website quite intuitive.

Minimalistic functionality:

You don’t need to sign up to use the site – anyone can essentially add anyone’s code if they wanted to however it is against the Conditions of Use and the behaviour is also moderated for (either by myself or people using the site will alert me to it – which is really cool J I love it that they care). For the most part people behave. This was something I worried about initially as being a potential issue and it caused me to develop a front end interface that let me keep track of visitors and their IP addresses, deliver warnings or 24 hour bans to players, or permanently ban them from the site. Any misbehaviour has always been swiftly followed up on in order to preserve the quality of the site and ultimately the time and effort invested by those using the site genuinely. I have even been able to include player profiles which simply display some statistics of their own WWAC usage to introduce some personalisation – all without requiring a sign-in process AND each profile had their own unique URL.

 

Some interesting points

I learnt a lot during this past year through developing and supporting WWAC. I am not entirely sure where it’s headed, which is pretty much where I was on day one. But it has been an exciting mini attempt to complete some of my own personal goals and no doubt a stepping stone for things to come. Here are some points of interest that I discovered during this time that you may be interested in:

·         Supporting a site you’ve developed is time consuming – but extremely exciting, even when some of the queries involve criticism (and they will). I was surprised how time consuming it was for such a simple site but I have relished the opportunity.

·         A site doesn’t have to be visually pretty or technically perfect to get used. You don’t have to be awesome at programming or designing either to get something started. Just give it a go and learn along the way! I did.

·         Some people will want to reach out and talk to you on a personal level. It was very unexpected but much appreciated and I took the opportunity seriously – you never know where it could lead you! Hi Marc! ;)

·         Treating people promptly and respectfully earns you supporters / advocates of your site. Many people have returned to update me on certain issues or ideas because of this.

·         I was able to use the site as part of a market research assignment for my university course through a survey I conducted on the site. The survey collected information relating to user demographics, game and purchasing behaviours, general ideas for improvement and potential new game ideas. It ended up getting about 72 responses over a 72 hour period which was really exciting. I only needed 15 for the assignment :). 43 of the respondents even left me with their email address to receive future updates. Many passed on their appreciation for the site – which is really quite a humbling experience to sit down and read. Oh, and I got 28/30 on the assignment ;)

·         WWAC currently receives about 26,000 page views and 6000 visitors per month – if you don’t believe me contact me and I’ll happily send you the Google Analytics Dashboard report for the past month. The site also hovers around 3^rd or 4^th in Google rankings for the term ‘world war alliance code’ which is the largest searched for term driving traffic to my site. While these aren’t mind boggling levels of traffic – I was still able to learn the above discussed (and, at a very low cost).

·         Given that about a fifth of WWAC traffic stems from the iPhone, a simple iPhone enabled webpage was developed which heavily leveraged existing code. I have never developed an iPhone enabled webpage before but I took it as an opportunity to both learn how to AND reward the 20% of visitors ‘putting up with’ the full version of my site on their tiny iPhone screens. It was surprisingly fast task to complete (one afternoon).

 

Thank-you for reading this (if you made it this far) – I am very appreciative of your time and interest. Id love to hear from you if you’ve had a similar experience or have any questions!

You can contact me via email michael – at – mwills.com.au or twitter @Michael_Wills. Contact me especially if this seemed cool but confusing or you want to ask something – I'd feel bad about passing up on opportunity to kill shit and win! Just ask me, it’s simple. 

 

Is just enough really enough?

Image Source: Opticks, Sir Isaac Newton, 1704.

Learning something is a wonderful thing. Sometimes we go out of our way to learn while other times it is unplanned or thrusted upon us without say. Either scenario offers a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant feelings however, ultimately pleasant in the long run. What we learn and the degree to which it is learnt is largely attributed to how much attention is paid to it, affording the information an opportunity to make a detailed transition from working memory into longer term stores. If attention acts as a derivative of interest, then what drives interest?

There’s something to be said of a great novel, textbook, movie, lecture, class or presentation. When done well they’re engaging, informative, detailed, yet down to earth and create a sense of relationship or ownership. There is a strange aura about them that makes us want to be a part of it and want more when it is done. Without actually seeing it you have the sense that there is more to what you’re consuming, that the characters have a life of their own, that the equations have a history and personality of their own, that the deal being proposed is coming from a well versed individual. This is what it takes to be great. Knowing just enough gets you the pay check, but when you combine that with a little history, relate it to the real world, relate it to the current day, relate it to the audience, present it in a different light and do it with a little humour, you’re creating something new and makes you stand out.

In high school this was my physics teacher, Bruce Saunders, who effortlessly and creatively explained the basics of Newtonian physics. For the past decade it has been a physics lecturer at MIT, Walter Lewin. His ability to encapsulate the essence of what I have already discussed is evident whether or not you appreciate or understand Newtonian physics. Some things appear to be key to their success as I am sure they are in the other mediums I mentioned. Each situation I can think of involved;

-          Stage the release of concepts to build your argument. This affords a structured and gradual interpretation of the information.

-          Surround concepts with related information to stimulate association. This can make the information delivered a little more personal.

-          Explain concepts using as many different materials as you can in one sitting. Again this induces engagement and allows the experience to be a little more personal to the recipient.

-          Respect your audience. This will convey the message that not only do you care about the content, but also the individual. For without your audience you are wasting your time.

To see all this in action, watch this: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/33. Even if you do not understand everything, give it a chance and just try to observe some of the things I mentioned.

As Lewin suggests, “your knowledge adds. It never, ever, subtracts”. My question for you then is, “What are you learning and how is it adding”?

 

What's the point?

Time spent doing one thing is time removed from doing another. Why then do we choose one thing over another? If the task were preparing for a future job interview over playing a computer game, then one may deduce the former task taking precedence as a result of a commitment made toward the longevity of your lifestyle, which demands a certain level of financial upkeep. While such a case illustrates ‘purpose’, it is simply a smaller piece of a much larger purpose, comprised of many such tasks.

Therefore, the question of “what’s the point” should not simply be a derivative of the immediate task but rather the immediate task & the larger purpose. Business will often refer to this much larger purpose as mission or vision. Its contents form the very backbone of an organisation, shaping decision and giving purpose to direction taken. When you think about it, the mission and vision statements are actually very personal statements of what we intend/hope to achieve. If you are working for someone else, are you aware of these ‘statements’? Do they agree with your way of thinking? Are they alive in the work you do each day or are they merely an abstract collection of words you see on important organisational brochure ware or meetings? Most importantly however is how well this stacks up against your own mission. Do you have one? Have you ever asked yourself, “what is the point”? A common response to such a question exists along the lines of “I enjoy doing task x, is makes me happy” or “I’m good at it, and it’s what I like to do”. These responses are likely to address the immediate set of concerns/tasks however they do not address a larger purpose.

People spend a lot of time working to address immediate tasks with immediate purpose, and in all fairness, for most of us, working to pay the rent/mortgage, cooking to feed the family, playing some kind of game for entertainment, are all time consuming and often necessary tasks. It may therefore be of little wonder that some people have or feel as though they have little time left over to consider how well each of these items are aligned with your larger purpose, if you even know what that is or have given it at least some thought.

On the contrary to the dynamics discussed it is my view that purpose is important. Without it, any such tasks is redundant. Tasks may have purpose yet no value or a value set misaligned from your own, in which case the task is yet again redundant. It amazes me completely that people do not take a step back to look at things and question them. Why is it this way? Why is it like that? Perhaps they do question in this way and perhaps the only factor missing from the apparent lack of action is just that, action. How can someone settle for circumstances that they are not happy with? I completely respect that some circumstances are more difficult platforms to create change on than others, and that decision making is often affected by some level of conditioned hope, ultimately affecting ambition, yet there are so many people in good positions to strike and are seemingly too intoxicated to enact. If the mind creates such a vice over enacting purpose, perhaps the first question to be asked of ourselves before we take another step is “what is the point”?

Know your world?

(source: http://www.istc.ru/istc/istc.nsf/va_WebPages/AviationEng)

For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in how things work, often wondering why things are they way they are. To this day this has been core to my way of thought. I’m not just talking about how a computer works, why a light bulb lights up, or why my parents pester me about the amount of time I spend on a computer. I do more than that... so much so that it could even be considered embarrassing, nerdy or even slightly eccentric. I mean why would anyone want to work out the most efficient way to move your hand through the air while you walk to create the smallest of drag co-efficient? Why would anyone want to know why a plane leaves a small, and soon to disappear, cloud trailing its path on some days and not on others? Why would anyone spend time working out the true location of an object when looking through a glass bottle, factoring in the laws of photons and their refractive indexes through disparate mediums?

Why?

Knowing as much as you can about as many differing disciplines as you can, simply offers you perspective you otherwise would not have had. There are so many consistencies to be drawn among disciplines such as electronics, chemistry, physics, neuroscience, psychology, and actually, any you can think of... I simply listed a few I am familiar with. I enjoy drawing an analogy. When learning a new concept in a discipline I am not entirely strong in, I attempt to draw some form of analogous picture or story of how it works with another discipline. This naturally deepens my thought and enhances my prospect of recall on either subject. It also provides for ideas... an entrepreneurs’ friend. In appreciating that multiple disciplines share a common interest or similarity, it has allowed me to draw parallels into psychology and fully respect the individualistic nature of everyone. I have been in conversation with people that are drunk, want to shoot themselves, want to stab themselves, want to overdose on pills to end their life, or can’t deal with a relationship.

The bottom line here is having an open mind. An open mind affords you the ‘parallels’ and gets you a little closer to the truth. If you’re scared of something, know that that ‘something’ has a lot to offer you personally. Be forever inquisitive, and if you can’t, find someone else that can help you with it.

De Lune

There were clear skies tonight so I decided to take advantage of it by carrying my 12” Dobsonian reflector outside. For those that aren’t into astronomy it’s a telescope about 1.5m long, 12” in diameter with a big mirror at the base of a hollow tube. The image is reflected up to a second (and much smaller) mirror at the entrance of the hollow tube and reflected once more 90° through the side of the tube and into an eye piece, brought into focus, giving me a fantastic view of the moon. The shot of the moon above is a photo I took through the scope giving you a good idea of the detail that can be witnessed through the scope.

I am a great admirer of the space race era – the Soviet Union and United States of America going hard to be ‘the first’ to the moon. What an entrepreneurial ambition of grandeur! It is a clear example that great things are possible by dreaming beyond the limits and executing a lot of hard work, together with a stack of luck. Getting to the moon required absolute belief... absolute passion... absolute work... years of trial and error, lots of patience and above all a willingness to dare to dream. In 1962, US President John F. Kennedy officially declared the pursuit for the moon in a very moving speech – watch a portion of it here.

We are all capable of dreaming and being a part of great things, yet not all of us seem to have the courage to. I want to go to the moon. Want to come?

A chicken salad like you've never had before (perhaps?)

I am in love with good food and enjoy cooking – this dish offers much happiness in both realms.

You will need the following:

Part 1)

150g Chicken Mince
1 teaspoon of vegetable oil

Cook chicken mince in oil – be sure to break apart mince as much as you can while it cooks until all is just white. Set aside and allow to cool in another bowl.

Part 2)

4 thin slices from a medium sized red onion (then in halves so they look like this ---- > ( (( ))
3 spring onion stems (chop two very finely and the third into 2-3cm bits)
2 tablespoons of fresh mint leaves
1 tablespoon of parched rice (chuck some rice in a coffee/herb grinder – I used basmati)
1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes
2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
1.5 tablespoons of fish sauce
½  tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sugar

Mix all of the above together and when chicken has had 5 minutes to cool (air it with a spoon to allow the heat to escape if you want it to be quicker)... mix together with mince.

Serve over a leaf of cos or iceberg lettuce. I forgot to put this in the photo i took above, don't leave it out!

Enjoy!!!!!

If you make this, please tell me what you thought!

New Direction

It has been almost one whole month since I left a job in an IT/Web related field. Time goes so quickly but boy do i feel like i'm in another world now... and yes, i'm currently unemployed. So many hours of each day since the departure have been put into the areas of entrepreneurship and mental health. In case you aren't already aware - i'm extremely passionate about creating a difference in the mental health industry. I care about people's wellbeing in general however i've a particular interest in mental health because, well, it's just so damn interesting (that and I have a psychology degree).

Over the past year i've invested a lot of time into the field of entrepreneurship. I wish to credit Andrew Warner of Mixergy for sparking an ever present, yet kind of dormant, interest in this field. Since June 2009 i have been devouring his interviews with successful entrepreneurs which has opened my eyes to the point where I feel like I can do/acheive anything I desire. Motivation has been a massive derivative of watching/reading Andrew's work which has lead me to develop and launch Hug My Mind - an online discussion forum based environment for people living with a mental illness.

I'm very proud of this first step however it has not been as easy as I would have hoped for - which is fine, because it's going to take whatever it's going to take and i'm up for the challenge. Releasing a discussion forum into the wild without an audience is a tough ask. Andrew Warner summed it up nicely on his new website FoundersMix - A place for entrepreneurs to ask and answer questions (click here to read his response), so instead I will focus more on content delivery and remain patient.

That's where it's at for now. I will keep you all posted.

Cheers,

Michael