It's Pronounced Chookshaw

The semi-professional blog of Albert Ciuksza Jr.

My favorite family photo taken in some random photo booth.

A Blink

January 6, 2021 / / 3 Comments

In January of 2011, I was at an exhilarating point in my life. I was in the first three months of a new relationship with my now wife, halfway to an MBA, and getting a new company off the ground. Given all of the time-related 2020 jokes, the experience feels like a hundred years ago. It also feels like yesterday.

A blink.

Staring at the calendar, this January 6th, the year of our Lord 2021, I’m blinking.

Ten years ago, today, around noon, I received a call from my mom. She had been crying. She told me that my father had died that morning as they were having their coffee. He asked her what time it was. She turned to look at the clock. As she turned back, he fell out of his chair, lifelessly.

A blink.

There was a flight home to El Paso. A funeral and wake orchestrated and paid for by our Church. Reconnecting with friends who came out of the woodwork to be supportive. Funeral homes and obituaries and lingering family grievance. Taking down the Christmas tree as my mom and aunt watched, none of us quite knowing what to say, but knowing that the experience was profoundly affecting. Leaving my mother behind to fend for herself as I continued my life in Pittsburgh, not knowing how the future would play out.

A blink.

It was a year of blinks. My car was t-boned while parked in front of my grandmother’s house in February. My mom had a heart attack in March, passing days before her 60th birthday in April. I returned to the place where I grew up in May to deal with the estate issues and informally say goodbye to my childhood. My grandmother fell in June, resulting in a fractured hip that contributed to her death in September. My attempts to blow off steam through pick-up flag football in October ended in a shredded knee, followed by surgery on 11/11/11 and a blood clot that had me thinking that 2011 might take me with it, too. After six weeks of crutches, I was allowed to walk again on December 23rd.

So many blinks.

That year astounds me. I struggle to fathom how something that feels so far away can feel like yesterday. It’s hard for me to understand that I had professional advancement, academic success, and continued on the path to a happy marriage while marinating in sadness and grief. And it is so surreal to remember snippets of that year, both high and low, as if they’re random scenes of film on the cutting room floor.

A series of loosely-connected blinks.

I know it’s easy to thumb our noses at the year we just lived. The experience is the embodiment of why “may you live in interesting times” is a curse. And yet, like so many other parts of our past, we’ll one day look back on it with fondness. We’ll marvel at how it “feels like yesterday.”

More blinks.

My mom had two lines she said often.

“These are the good-old-days” and “don’t wish your life away.”

She was right. It’s all just a blink.

My thoughts on El Paso

August 6, 2019 / / 11 Comments

Like many, I watched in horror as another mass shooting impacted the lives of random innocents. To see it happen minutes from my childhood home in El Paso, the city that raised me, has left me feeling sad, angry, and hopeless. I haven’t yet found the right way to help. Perhaps telling my story about my hometown will show others a place that seems almost destined to be misunderstood.

In 2011, my father and mother passed away in the house where I was raised, in January and April respectively, both less than a week before their 60th birthdays. Both deaths were a surprise and came at a time when money was tight. My father had been unemployed for the prior year-plus, and my mom struggled with enough ailments, known and unknown, to prevent her from working.

As an only child, packing up the home in which I grew up was daunting, even more so while grieving the loss of my parents. Having returned to the city only for Christmases over the years, and no family within 1,000 miles, you might assume that there would be limited support. You would be wrong. You don’t know El Paso.

The back story

Six years before their passing, my parents had been estranged from the Catholic parish they helped to build in both physical structure and community. The classically El Paso conflict began when my gringo-as-they-come father wrote an email to the parish priest complaining of Spanish music at English masses. Strongly-worded, tone-deaf, and racist, the email sparked a message back from the pastor not an hour later: you’re not welcome in the community any longer. My mom, who was a candidate for a paid position at the church, removed herself from consideration and stood by my father. He never set foot in the church again.

When my father died, the community came together. My mom and I planned a funeral, but we could not afford “extras” as we were unsure of what resources we would need to keep her afloat. It was no matter. The Knights of Columbus, where my dad was a charter member and former Grand Knight, held a wake. Many volunteered in time, talent, and treasure. Even the parish priest, the one who had kicked my dad out in the first place, hired my dad’s favorite musician to play at the funeral. In total, it was an incredible act of love that continued as other members of the community helped my mom to grieve, to reconnect, and to live once I had to resume my life in Pittsburgh.

The most incredible week

About three months later, I arrived in El Paso on a flight I had previously booked to celebrate my mother’s 60th birthday. Instead of bringing Pittsburgh food favorites, I brought with me my now-wife to mourn my mom’s death. Countless acts of kindness began from the moment we landed: a pickup from the airport, a loaner car for our stay, and some food and beer in the fridge. Once we got to my house, we were given one assignment: to bring two 8×10 pictures of my parents to the funeral the next day.

We arrived at the parish and were overwhelmed. The community, in a few short days, had planned a funeral without my involvement. So many friends were there in support and to express their condolences. Flowers, prayer cards, and a celebration of her life and love followed. I don’t remember all of the details — grief and time will take some of that away. I do remember how completely loved I felt at a time where much of what I knew of my life had fallen apart.

The compassion and support didn’t stop there. A couple of dozen folks showed up to help pack up the house and load it into the moving truck I rented. Others held a yard sale to clear out what I wasn’t able to bring back to Pittsburgh. From helping to navigate the business issues of the estate, to assisting in selling the house, to taking care of my dad’s beloved backyard fish pond, there was a constant message: I am family.

What I know about El Paso

My parents, decidedly of European descent in a city that is more than 80% Latinx, were embraced by a community who could have allowed racial divisions, assumptions, and injuries to separate. It is counterintuitive to our current moment, just like the city itself. El Paso is amongst the safest in the world despite being bordered by one of the deadliest. It is a place of beauty and bounty in spite, and because, of its arid landscape. The city is one of many languages, not just English and Spanish, but its melding of the two and others as those of diverse backgrounds consider El Paso home.

Every place that has experienced the senseless violence of domestic terrorism has come together in crisis. The hashtags, like #ElPasoStrong, don’t tell the full story. El Paso is not strong because of its reaction in crisis. It is strong because of the people of El Paso, who will do the hard work to support those who have been impacted, not just in the short-term, but for years to come. El Paso knows, more than most cities, hardship, suffering, and tragedy. More importantly, it knows how to find joy in those times, prioritizing love and support over sadness and wallowing. In a time that is socially and politically fraught with “us and them,” El Paso can and will light the way to show us all how quickly “them” can become “us.”

I am extremely fortunate to have been raised by the city that is El Paso. It taught me what community should look like, how to live out my faith, and what it means to understand people and a culture that is so different from my background. It taught me how to work hard and find happiness in challenging times. Thank you, once again, for what you have taught me and how you have supported me, even from thousands of miles away.

I love you all, and am mourning for those hurt in a city I love. I am here for you. God bless you all.

Postscript: I hope, if you made it this far, that you might be willing to take the #elpasoCHALLENGE by doing 22 good deeds. The idea, conceived by an 11-year-old El Pasoan who wants to honor those killed in the terrorist shootings by spreading the love for which the city is known, couldn’t be more appropriate for our time. For those who have the means, please consider one of your first acts to be a contribution to the El Paso Victims Relief Fund at the Paso del Norte Foundation.

Only 6% of People Can Pass This Test

November 11, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Welcome to the test that only 6% of people can pass. Only the most focused people are capable.

Ready?

You failed. You clicked on the link. You’ve interrupted your focus and set yourself up for another 30 minutes of aimless online wondering. If you want to make $100k/year, that will cost you about $24 (you’ll see what I mean below).

It’s not entirely your fault. Countless resources have been spent studying you, the internet user, to understand what it takes to get you to stop what you were doing and click on a link. Your limited defenses are being challenged by an army of hundreds of thousands of well-educated marketing experts and computer scientists, all of whom are highly-motivated to translate your clicks into revenue. You’re bringing a cup of water to a forest fire; it’s not even close to a fair fight.

But fight you must.

One of my favorite quotes is from Tony Robbins, who said that the defining factor of success is not resources it’s resourcefulness. He’s right. The corollary is that it’s your job to be focused enough to be resourceful.

I have found three ways beyond exercise (that one is well-known) that have helped me to focus.

My “Hourly Rate”

I have a financial goal for myself for what I want to make annually. Dividing that number by 2,080 (the approximate number of hours a full-time employee works), I know the amount of money I need to make in that hour in order to reach that goal. That’s my hourly rate. From there, I’m either doing something to earn that number, or I’m “spending” that money by doing something else. Would I pay that to watch an hour of cat videos? Probably not.

Meditation

After being diagnosed with some weird skin thing that flares up when I’m particularly stressed, I realized that I had to get things under control. So, I started meditating. Here’s the bottom line: it changes your brain for the better (read this and this). If you have never tried it before, check out Calm.com or one of their mobile apps. Start it today and never stop.

Learning a Foreign Language

I’ve started to re-learn Spanish, which is part unlearning some of the Spanglish that was part of my El Paso upbringing, and part simply learning the basics that I either never understood or completely forgot since middle school. In addition to a few great free learning resources (Duolingo and the Notes in Spanish podcast), I’m reading news at BBC Mundo and CNN en Español as well as watching football games in Spanish (¡Vamos a acereros de Pittsburgh!). It forces me to think about what I’m reading or hearing/seeing, rather than just passively consume. The unexpected consequence is that it has made me more focused in everything I do.

One last thing…

We’re in the early stages of what is about to be a brutal electoral season (at least in the U.S.), and it’s starting already. The only thing worse than allowing your prime attention resources to be hijacked by random quizzes and cute animals is actively sabotaging those limited resources by getting dragged into a political fight online. I call it Attention Sabotage Syndrome (ASS). Don’t be one. Quit Facebook or Twitter if you have to, but it’s just not worth it.

Snooze Button

October 12, 2015 / / 1 Comment

As a kid, I sprung to my feet the minute my alarm went off. While most parents complained of having to drag their kids out of bed, mine complained about me waking them up in the morning. I was always bright and chipper, well-rested and ready to go to school or wherever I needed to be.

Then, in college, I discovered the snooze button.

The snooze button is the physical manifestation of our worst instincts. We hit it for temporary comfort, but end up with poor sleep health and the domino effect of starting our day playing catch-up. Think about that — our mornings begin with a decision that is high-cost / low-benefit, then wonder why we’re always feeling behind.

What’s worse is that it’s not the only snooze button I’ve got.

I hit the workout snooze button a lot. The let’s-go-out-instead-of-cooking snooze button gets its fair share of taps. The five-more-minutes-of-Twitter-before-I-get-moving is another favorite. Laundry, meditation, yard work, they all have snooze buttons. Every time I hit a “life” snooze button, I get the same result as I do the one by my bed: a few more minutes of inertial comfort at the expense of future pain, frustration, and anxiety.

Few of us can afford to invest our limited time and energy so wastefully. As a result, I’ve decided to quit the snooze button. Who’s with me?

(P.S. – I apologize for the shorter post, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.)

In a Jam

September 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

As I sit here typing this, a pot of ghost pepper jelly is getting to temperature on the stove, getting ready to be canned, labeled, and eventually handed out to family and friends over the holidays. My wife and I grew many of the ingredients in our backyard garden (supplemented with some not-worth-the-space green bell peppers), and I’ve developed reasonable canning instincts, if that’s even a thing.

My 24-year-old self would be embarrassed.

My 34-year-old self is quite content.

Like most, I had a 10-year plan early in my career. It’s cool to see how many of those things that I had hoped for my future self are now reality (marriage, getting my MBA, co-founding a successful start-up). I’m also humored (and humbled) by how much I didn’t achieve (amongst the incredibly long list are: running a marathon; getting my pilot’s license; and buying a private island [no, really, it’s on the list]).

Most striking have been the imperceptible-at-the-time ways that I’ve grown beyond the limits of what my 24-year-old self put on me. I’m less of a hot-head. I’m more patient and detail-oriented. I’m more open to negative feedback. I’m less worried about keeping score. I swear less. Ultimately, I’m someone I wouldn’t have entirely recognized (and not just because i’m going prematurely gray).

For those who are wringing their hands over Millennials, please stop. We’re capable of developing and testing plans, encountering challenges, and seeing the world a little differently on the other side. Some of that growth will be supported by people who are actively willing to guide us (that could be you!). More of that growth will come from people who serve as the anti-example. We’ll eventually figure out what works and adapt what we’ve learned to new situations. We’ll pick up skills that we didn’t even recognize existed. And in your honor, baby boomers, we’ll complain about how the generation behind us is lazy,  doesn’t know how to communicate, and is unprofessional; nothing like how we were when we started our careers.

Alright, now who wants some pepper jelly?

Let Me Google That For You

September 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Has someone ever asked you a question that could have been easily answered with a quick Google search?

Let me introduce you to LMGTFY.com, short for “let me Google that for you.” The site’s existence is a snarky response to one of the diseases of the 21st-century workplace: people asking questions that could be easily answered themselves, usually by doing a quick Google search. If you’re the victim of a LMGTFY question — and have no concern for your relationship with the offending questioner — send them a LMGTFY link. They’ll think twice, and search at least once, before asking again.

(I really hate LMGTFY questions.)

My friends at Solutions 21 talk a lot about the gap between knowing and doing. That gap is growing ever wider, not because people know less (though research shows that access to the web makes you think you’re smarter than you are), but because answers to many questions are readily available. If you’re asking LMGTFY questions, or only providing operational-level answers, you’re allowing your work product to be a low-value commodity (and you’ll likely be rewarded in kind).

It’s fairly simple to deliver high-value answers. When I was a market research analyst, my boss would say, “I made the job title ‘analyst’ because I wanted you to interpret the data, otherwise I’d have called you a ‘market research reporter.’ ” Reporting the data is a commodity. Interpreting it, and providing reasoned, recommended solutions is what’s valuable.

Not sure exactly where to start? Here … let me Google that for you.

Validation

September 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Startup confession: I hate validation with a passion. Not the process of it (whatever that process is, anyway), but the expectations that have been placed on it.

Validation is supposed to determine whether an idea is worth commercializing. The theory is that the innovator goes through a series of processes that lead to a black-and-white answer: either yes, this opportunity will obviously make me a zillionaire; or no, this opportunity should die on the vine. Validation becomes the insurance policy against failure and, with failure being a fate worse than death in many innovation circles, it’s be-all, end-all.

Let me be clear: no one ever, ever, ever does this.* Why else do you think that 90% of startups fail?

The problem is that we’re mostly wired to pursue the new and shiny, to say yes rather than no. Consciously or unconsciously, instead of validating the idea (i.e. empirically determining whether to move to the next step using a rigorous, data-oriented methodology), we try to rationalize all of the reasons to move forward. While we usually need about six positive messages to make up for one negative one, in our “validation” process, we tend to focus on all the data that we’ve got that says that we should keep pushing forward with commercialization.

There are plenty of articles about how best to validate (caution: whatever validation is, it is not a five-minute process), so I won’t duplicate the efforts of the many who are trying to sell you some sort of secret sauce. However, there are four big things that tend to be make-or-break when deciding to pursue a new idea. They are:

  • Degree of Differentiation – Your idea needs to be different enough to compete against other solutions while being tough to duplicate (technically or legally).
  • Market Size – The business needs to pursue a market big enough to meet your goals, whether that’s just to put food on your table or to make enough return to attract investment
  • Resources – You need the time to pursue it, a team that can compliment your strengths, and the financial resources to fill in the gaps, all from the first flick of the light bulb to the moment you put out the “for sale” sign.
  • Marketing 4Ps – Product, place, price, and promotion; they all need to work together to make the awareness-interest-decision-action cycle as short as humanly possible.

There’s other stuff, of course, but these are the big four. If you can rationalize this publicly with your right hand on a stack of enter-your-sacred-text-here, then you’ve done great work. This is what most people want when they want validation. They want some data, some third-party information that shows that you’re not a mad scientist.

For extra credit, I recommend one more step — the project premortem. The idea is simple; instead of waiting for things to get to their logical conclusion before doing an analysis of what went wrong, have a session with you/your team to talk about all of the reasons the project will fail miserably. When this is the goal of the discussion, everyone is open to talking through the potential pitfalls that they might otherwise be uncomfortable expressing in the face of the blinding optimism that comes with launching a new venture. It’s a fantastic exercise.

*This isn’t technically true, of course. Like how some people rotate their tires after every 3,000 miles or balance their checkbook every month instead of checking the balance online, it happens, but not often enough to discuss.

The Lesson of Second Place

August 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

When I was in kindergarten, I was fascinated by outer space. While other kids were into pro wrestling, cartoons, or dinosaurs, I was dragging my parents on near-weekly treks* to the local planetarium. I had a personally-autographed picture of Clyde W. Tombaugh (discoverer of Pluto) on the wall in my room. I was a weird kid.

Like every other elementary school student in America, I was required to participate in the science fair. Given my obsession with the planets, I wanted nothing more than to show off all of the things I knew about the solar system. I won’t get into embarrassing details about the process of constructing my display, but let’s just say that I was unusually proud of my cotton-foamcore-glue-glitter masterpiece.

The memory of the day is a little blurry, but I’ll never forget the feeling of running up to my project and seeing the second place ribbon on it. As a kindergarten kid competing against everyone up to the third grade, I was so proud to have won second place. What an accomplishment against the bigger kids! My first award! I could hardly contain my excitement.

My next memory is of finding the first-place winner, a third grader’s project that was also about the solar system. But, wait… Her colors weren’t right (Saturn isn’t blue-green!). Her Pluto was beyond Neptune (nope). She didn’t have an asteroid belt. I went from being very proud to being very confused – if she got these things wrong, and I got them right, then why did she win first place?

When my parents came to pick me up, I told them about how I won second (yay!) and how the girl who won first  got a lot of things wrong (boo!). In good Millennial-parent fashion,  they approached those in charge about the decision to ask about the disparity. The judges immediately dressed my parents down for doing the work for me. “What kind of lessons are you trying to teach your son?” they asked. “Is it so important for him to win a science fair that you have to do the work for him?” Despite my parents’ best attempts, the judges refused to believe that I did the work. Worse, they saw me as a cheater instead of a kindergarten kid who really, really, really loved the stars. I was devastated.

This James Harrison Facebook post, and the ensuing debate over participation trophies, sparked the memory.

Every time the “kids these days” subject comes up, a.k.a. Millennials in the workforce, the debate over trophies renews. Largely, there are two camps: the EARN IT crowd, that believes that participation trophies make kids soft and entitled to something that they didn’t necessarily deserve; and the ENJOY IT crowd, that believes that building confidence in kids is important to their ability to try new things and forge their own path, recognizing participation being part of that process. As with most public debates, there is no middle ground.

I recently went through the trophies and awards that my parents had packed away for me. Some of them were for participation (so much for the adage “80 percent of success is showing up”), others were well-earned first-place awards. It was great to go through them, of course, but I ultimately threw every one of them away. Well, except for that framed ribbon from the science fair. I kept it because it represented one of the most  challenging life lessons that I’ve learned; that sometimes, even if you do your best, and even if you get the results, you might not win. Further, in the vast majority of life, winning (whatever that means, anyway)  is based upon factors that are out of your control. Yes, work hard. Yes, do your best. And yes, if you’re failing, you either need to get better or do something else. Finally, it also taught me that losing is okay, too.

My verdict on trophies is this: they’re only as good as the meaning you give them. Teach kids to value the award over the effort, and they’ll grow into adults who value the appearance of success rather than the work it takes to get there. Ultimately, that meaning is a an infinitely-better reflection of your values than any piece of hardware you could ever earn, or get for just showing up.

* Pun alert – Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek) was born in my home town of El Paso, Texas.

Macro Beer Champions the Silent Majority

February 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Proudly a Macro Beer

Don’t Fuss Over This

Budweiser threw the first big punch with what The Atlantic called “The Super Bowl’s Riskiest Ad.” You probably saw it, but here’s the copy (and the video):

Proudly a macro beer. It’s not brewed to be fussed over. It’s brewed for a crisp, smooth finish. This is the only beer Beechwood aged since 1876. There’s only one Budweiser. It’s brewed for drinking. Not dissecting. The people who drink our beer are people who like drinking beer. To drink beer brewed the hard way. Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale. We’ll be brewing us some golden suds. This is the famous Budweiser beer. This bud’s for you.

Reaction was swift. Craft beer drinkers blew up in anger and snark on Twitter. Media cherry-picked tweets to maintain the narrative. Jim Vorel wrote thoughtful analysis about AB’s hypocrisy. Carla Jean Lauter (The Beer Babe) wrote an excellent point-by-point analysis of the spot. Dick Cantwell, co-founder of Elysian (recently acquired by AB InBev), was annoyed. It was spoofed almost immediately in a counter-ad. And even Bud’s marketing VP, Brian Perkins, said that he “meant no offense”.

From a Promotion-P marketing perspective, I think the ad was hugely effective. Instead of taking heed of MillerCoors CEO Tom Long‘s  2012 call-to-action for the industry to build “Brand Beer”, Budweiser took a shot at the very thing that is keeping brand beer in the running against wine and spirits, i.e. the taste- and brand-conscious attitude that, at times, puts off the silent majority of beer drinkers who like macro beers. The result was a celebration of a populist appeal that got exactly the reaction from craft beer lovers that the ad was mocking. Strategically, that’s one hell of a rope-a-dope.

The only shock is that it has taken this long for macros publicly challenge craft beer. Budweiser’s declining market share is well-documented, and Perkins has been on record saying that they want to go after 21-27 year old consumers with a new strategy. That demographic is rejecting macro beers at a rate much higher than other generations of consumers, and Bud is going for the long game that comes with early exposure. It’s giving up on the consumers who have driven craft beer demand in the hopes that younger drinkers will become brand loyal.

Maybe this ad will get craft breweries to realize what the macros have known all along — that building brand relationships with a wide range of consumers creates a hell of a lot of goodwill that can be leveraged into messages just like this one. Even if the Brewers Association hits its stated goal of craft beer making up 20% of market share by 2020, that means that the macros are still controlling 80% of the market. Combine this with macros’ craft beer brand acquisitions and you have a recipe for dominance in the channels craft breweries need to survive and grow. Unless craft breweries want to be left fighting over local bar tap handles and growler sales, they must figure out a way to pitch a bigger tent and welcome the folks who just want to enjoy a beer with their friends. If not, there’s a serious risk of losing the culture and variety that has driven nearly a decade of double-digit craft growth, effectively teeing up the macros to swoop in and win the war.

UPDATE: 1:47PM on 2/3/2014

Really solid analysis from Beervana that hits similar notes. With a read here.

Three Ways to Be a Better User: RaceJoy and the Pittsburgh Marathon

May 5, 2014 / / 3 Comments

It will be a joy to use next year.

It will be a joy to use next year.

“How great would it be if we could track you using your phone GPS for the race tomorrow?” I asked my wife in anticipation of her 13.1 mile run at the Pittsburgh Marathon. She thought it would be a cool way for family and friends to keep up with her, so we began searching — and quickly found — the solution. RaceJoy is an app designed to help get information on race day, with an $0.99 upgrade that would let you use GPS to track runners (as well as send cheers and other cool little features). We both ponied up the fee in our respective app stores (we’re a mixed iPhone/Android family) and moved on with our day.

The next morning I was standing at around the sixth mile and assumed that my wife wouldn’t get past the starting gate until at least 7:30 (she was in the fourth “corral” behind the starting line leaders going at 7am sharp), so I began checking my phone around then to see what her progress might be. After a few refreshes, it was obvious that RaceJoy was down. A few check-ins over the next 45 minutes or so and I realized that it was likely down for the count. Disappointing, obviously, but not the end of the world. I got to see my wife, she finished the race injury-free, we got to grill burgers and sausages with friends, and the world continued to turn.

Or, at least I thought. I decided to check in with Twitter to see if I was the only one who had issues with the app. I found a couple of tweets like this:

Then I began to read the tweets from RaceJoy. They’re a two-person team and look to be from Pittsburgh (or at least CMU), and seemed to have developed this system with the Pittsburgh Marathon in mind, though it had been used at other events. You can tell that they were looking forward to this being their big coming out party, and the scale of the failure just made it all that much worse. Piling on was unnecessary, though there was no shortage of it.

To their credit, RaceJoy let everyone know that they would be refunding anyone who paid the upgrade fee through Google Play, and would be mailing checks to anyone who bought it in the Apple App Store. They owned up to the issues, apologized to everyone they could, and were trying to solve enough technical issues to salvage the day. Then there was this tweet:

That one hit hard.

I’m writing this as an innovator apologist and realize the importance of feedback — no matter how severe — in the real world. To some extent, there’s nothing better that could have happened to RaceJoy long-term than to have an expensive catastrophic failure (assuming they’re not financially devastated by the refunds). But the level to which people were comfortable being mean was disappointing and decidedly un-Pittsburgh-like.

For those who’ve never invented anything, let me say this — making stuff is hard. It’s very hard. It’s excruciatingly hard. It’s nearly impossible. And, making something that works every time is even more difficult. It takes days/months/years of meticulously working through every imaginable (and unimaginable) scenario to make sure that the customer experiences something effortless. Think about that — years of work so that your experience is effortless. And we expect this effortless experience for 99 cents (a good portion of which goes to Apple and Google).

We should be better users.

This isn’t a complete list, but if you want to be a constructive user who encourages people to take the risk of making something to improve your life, I ask you to keep a few things in mind:

  1. Be Kind: Inventors have thick skin, but please do not treat every malfunction as if it was akin to the brutal murder of a household pet. Innovators understand that you’re disappointed and expect a better experience. Most innovations you use aren’t made by large corporate monoliths, but by individuals or small teams (in this case, Shelly and James) who are trying to make the world incrementally better. Vitriolic anger and condescension are not kind responses.
  2. Be Specific: Please provide specific, constructive feedback. Things don’t always work and it’s not always obvious as to why. Sometimes it really is user error, but sometimes it might be a situation that the innovator hadn’t previously considered.  Knowing what happened from beginning to end can help an innovator take one step closer to making the experience effortless for everyone.
  3. Be Forgiving: Life is hard. We all fail. Being open to trying something again (or trying until it works). Nailing an app with a flood of one-star reviews might feel good, but it might also ensure that the innovation made to make your life easier that didn’t quite work as expected won’t be available the next time you need it. It helps to have perspective, realize that most of these failures are not life-threatening, and be open to trying again when you have a chance.

In closing…

Please, please be better to each other. Innovation is hard. And, to Shelly and James, who were working tirelessly to make things work in the middle of a whirlwind of crappy feedback — well done. You two did an exceptional job of handling the issues fairly, kindly, and publicly. It’s easy to get defensive in these situations and you handled yourselves perfectly. If I wrote a post about how to be a better innovator, your response would be a case study.

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