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Go to San Francisco #867

Closed chadwhitacre closed 7 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I spent 12 days in San Francisco in early November, 2016. I met a lot of people in a lot of different contexts, and started to rebuild some awareness of Gratipay as a going concern. I came up hard against the difficulty in what we're trying to accomplish with funding open source: companies have precious little incentive to pay for value they already possess.

Map

Expense Report

Story

Week 1

Date Day Write-up
11-07 Monday Y Combinator
11-08 Tuesday Sudo Room
11-09 Wednesday Amazon Loft w/ @shurcooL
11-10 Thursday Lunch at HackerOne
11-11 Friday Lunch at the Internet Archive
11-12 Saturday Meeting with @nobodxbodon

Week 2

Date Day Write-up
11-13 Sunday Hike!
11-14 Monday LAUNCH Scale
11-15 Tuesday LAUNCH Scale p. 2, Jareau, Sheel
11-16 Wednesday Shareable, Nadia
11-17 Thursday Mazarine, J.C. & Aza, SELC, Cameron
11-18 Friday Loft, then Chris Messina, but not Pia—nor Cavalier :)

Original

I had a really good time during All Things Open (#757) getting to hack a lot and then going out to interact with people relevant to Gratipay. Under #836 we've been talking about stopping by YC even if we don't get an invite. Of course there's plenty of other networking to do out there as well even if we never make it to YC.

I'm looking at a trip November 7—19. Right now flights are running just under $600, and I'm finding Airbnbs in the $500 to $1,200 range (depending on how many roommates).

My experience in Raleigh this past week indicates to me that two weeks in San Francisco could be amazingly productive. My tendency is to think that a private room actually in SF would provide the most valuable combination of space to hack and proximity for networking. I've reached out to see about finding a place to stay apart from Airbnb. Assuming that doesn't come through, I think a budget of $2,400 would cover a 12 day trip.

We have about $7,000 in the bank right now and are accumulating about $182/mo (780 - 562 - 36).

We'll need to act pretty quick to lock in the flight and room. Prices could go up drastically tomorrow, for all I know.

Anyone have a strong sense one way or another on this? I just really want to get this candle lit again! :candle:

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

E.g.: https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/836#issuecomment-258597950.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I guess I was thinking that we'd tag all of the open source projects on Gratipay, and just split the money equally between all of them. Does that sound right?

dmitshur commented 7 years ago

Sounds as right as I can imagine it working. It's easy to abuse or run into "unfair" situations, e.g., a large valuable open source project getting the same as a 3-line open source library (they do exist). But I assume you're aware of that and can deal with it in other ways.

kaguillera commented 7 years ago

@whit537 this would be our first "bundle"!? And the I think that we could fine tune it to allow companies to pick there own "bundle" (eventually not anytime soon) as we were talking about. I like it. What do we need to get this going?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@kaguillera Yes! I don't know, I'm trying to think of what we can reasonably do without code changes before Monday ...

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I started a spreadsheet to track expenses.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I think I am going to bail on the penny puncher. It's one thing to bring it to a conference where I can leave it for a few days. I really don't think I want to have to haul it all over Silicon Valley. I'm going somewhere different every day.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I AM IN SAN FRANCISCO. 💃

kaguillera commented 7 years ago

YEH!!!

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okaaaaaay! Well, our splurge on the brochures (which I didn't even hand out; it just wasn't appropriate when they turned me away), and on a half-tray of baklava (which they did accept, though I don't know that they trusted it enough to eat) means that I am down to $40 a day remaining. :)

clone1018 commented 7 years ago

That was ycombinator?

On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 10:57 PM Chad Whitacre notifications@github.com wrote:

Okaaaaaay! Well, our splurge on the brochures (which I didn't even hand out; it just wasn't appropriate when they turned me away), and on a half-tray of baklava (which they did accept, though I don't know that they trusted it enough to eat) means that I am down to $40 a day remaining. :)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/867#issuecomment-259045918, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAN1TpyE24u_4BG6KSwOAxWC6qZ2jTmZks5q8AFCgaJpZM4KkRsS .

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@clone1018 The brochures and baklava were for Y Combinator, yes. Here's my full write-up on the adventure. (Am I answering your question?)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Just picked up some peanut butter and jelly and bread at Whole Foods. Breakfast for the trip, at least. :)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I'm tentatively visiting Jareau Wade at Pinterest next Tuesday.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Sudo Room was a bit of a dud. Big rambling space, almost nobody there. Substack never showed (in fairness, we never confirmed). The collective's coffee shop closed right as I got back from lunch. And the power strip wasn't working. Big contrast from yesterday! Now at a coffee shop down the street, gonna try and redeem the afternoon.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay! Back at the room, ready to hack on https://github.com/gratipay/gratipay.com/pull/4164.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The sum function appears to be broken on the expense report spreadsheet. Copying/pasting to a new sheet fixes it. Updating the link ...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F93Jyolcql896Oj6FkTP_m9fA6uFkg7VzZs65IJM_vE/edit?usp=sharing

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The SELC is having their fall celebration next Thursday!

http://www.theselc.org/2016_fall_celebration

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

It's $75, but one can also volunteer.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Gosh. I feel like this trip is making me aware of a choice between spending time in "the solidarity economy" and spending time in ... the non-solidarity economy, I guess. Namely, [YC-ville](). What a tension! "Tension doesn't mean no, it means not yet."

Like ... I can't quite bring myself to email Eunice about volunteering. I think I would rather hack that night! 😞

screen shot 2016-11-08 at 4 01 14 pm

http://themacro.com/articles/2016/06/how-not-to-fail/

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I watched The Maltese Falcon last night, to try to stay awake long enough to shift time zones (still woke up at 3:30). It is set just a couple blocks from where I'm staying!

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I'm at the Amazon Loft. It's great! It's the closest thing I've yet experienced to what I envision a Gratipay office would will be like. Open and hospitable. Full of collaboration time! 💃 🌻

photo on 11-9-16 at 10 21 am

photo on 11-9-16 at 10 27 am

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

https://twitter.com/whit537/status/796420288200077312

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Just had a great chat w/ @shurcooL. He caught me up on his experience as a long-time Gittip/Gratipay user. One big take-away is that pay-what-you-want carries mental overhead (psychological cost) that often just isn't worth it. It's easier to pay a fixed price than have to think about it. This is true for both companies and individuals. I'm actually much more interested in the twyw side. A company with a fixed-price revenue model but open hiring and twyw would be just about every bit as interesting to me as pwyw + twyw.

@shurcooL has just finished up a couple years of doing corporate work and saving up, and this is his first week of being able to work on open source full time! Go @shurcooL! 💃

We also connected on the idea of making products that are every bit as good as the products that closed companies are producing now: a MacBook, but open. Again this is more about the open hiring and twyw side than the payment side.

He also pushed back on the word "love" in our mission, because it's so abstract. What is one supposed to do with it?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@whit537 and @shurcooL!💃 🌻

photo on 11-9-16 at 4 59 pm

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Plutarch and Herodotus sharing a bookshelf with Feminist Ryan Gosling at the Amazon Loft:

photo on 11-9-16 at 3 14 pm

mattbk commented 7 years ago

I twitter-know someone at Strava, is that interesting to you at all?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@mattbk How high up are they? :)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Here are some things I want to talk to HackerOne about, depending on who I meet:

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Heading out to HackerOne, expecting to land at the A-Loft for the afternoon following.

mattbk commented 7 years ago

How high up are they? :)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattlaroche

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@mattbk Maybe reach out and ask if he thinks anyone there would be interested in talking about funding open source?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@mattbk My read is that he probably doesn't control any buying decisions related to us, but might know someone who does. :)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay! Reporting in from HackerOne. Just had lunch with Jo (our sales rep), [] (new VP of Hacker Happiness), Jobert (co-founder), and Mårten (CEO). Some of the things we talked about:

Following lunch I was able to present Gratipay to Jobert, Jo, Justin, and Alex Rice (co-founder). Alex and I talked briefly about potentially partnering to work on funding the Internet Bug Bounty program—I have followed up on that via Pipedrive (#855).

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Now I'm gonna try to close one of our HackerOne tickets from the HackerOne office! :-)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Just met Michiel, another co-founder (there are four). Chatted with him about sales. He said "You're in good hands with Pipedrive. They're from Estonia." 💃 Caught him up on how our program is going. Like the others, he was surprised to hear about the incentive in our $1 bounty that researchers get double the reputation even for a small bounty (cc: @TheHmadQureshi ;). "Ah! I hadn't considered it that way." I also learned that HackerOne was rejected by Y Combinator back in the day—so we have at least one example of a company that went (is going) on to succeed. 👍 📈

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

In other news, my power supply/battery quit working at HackerOne, so I am now posted up at the Union Square Apple Store with a Genius Bar appointment in two hours. Of course it's working now in their fancy magic pop-up power outlets. O.o

Here's a picture of Jo, Jobert, and I in HackerOne hoodies! They loaded me up with swag to give to @dmk246. :)

photo on 11-10-16 at 2 39 pm 2

dmitshur commented 7 years ago

Oh no! I hope your MBP will be okay. Good luck!

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Thanks, @shurcooL! They are diagnosing it as a bad battery. 1,000+ cycles is too many, it seems. :-) They have a replacement at the store in the Marina and are holding it for me, so I am going to hop a bus over there! The adventure continues! 💃

dmk246 commented 7 years ago

Oh wow! This is so awesome! I gotta admit I am a bit (okay a lot ..hahaha) jealous!! What an adventure you are having ....I think that we should have recorded this...it would have been a hit!!
Thanks for sending over a "hack3rone" pic! :) :)

JessaWitzel commented 7 years ago

Late to the game but I agree that the lower mental cost of contributing at a suggested rate makes it more fun to contribute to things. We support wikipedia because they suggested the amount.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay! Back from the Apple adventure. I bought a Clipper Card and hopped the 30 at Stockton and Sutter (one block below Stockton and Bush, where Miles Avery was murdered ;-), which is right below the Stockton Tunnel, which is pretty wild (Bush is the cross street atop the tunnel).

Stockton Tunnel

I actually hopped the 30S, where the S stands for "short," meaning it dumped me a mile from the Marina. On the remaining walk, I found myself waiting at an intersection with a fellow on a laden bike, blaring some sweet tunes. I thanked him with a gratipenny. :)

As with the Union Square store, the Marina Apple store was bustling. Long story short, the manager did me a huge favor by bumping me to the front of the queue. At first they told me three to five days. I explained how I was here on business and couldn't wait that long. I guess they have a $499/yr business plan that provides loaners. We were also looking at buying a temporary laptop (easy returns w/in 14 days). The manager made it happen. Totally sweet. I walked the Marina shopping district, ate a burger, and my 'top was ready! 💃 🌻 I left a small cache of heartcoins in token of gratitude—with a guy who has family near Kennywood in Pittsburgh! :-)

In the bus shelter, I met Leo. I ended up giving him the peanut butter sandwich I had been carrying (having upgraded myself to the burger), and buying him a movie ticket. After the transaction and a hasty farewell, I was running to catch the bus when he chased me down the street—"Chad! Chad! You have the ticket!" We both barely made it. :-) Good luck, Leo!

I put the battery replacement and the movie ticket on the Gratipay slideroo, since I don't have any other slideroos with me. I plan to repay those, so they're marked separately on my expense report.

I dropped off a couple gratipennies at the Union Square store for good measure. :)

Oh! And I gave a gratipenny to a girl on the bus. It was almost her birthday and her friends were teasing her. "Guess whose birthday is coming up? Mine!" "Guess who cares? No-one!" "I care! Happy birthday!" 💃 🎂 It felt kinda awkward tbh but then she thanked me on the way off the bus and then it felt okay. :)

Gratipennies for San Francisco! I wish I'd also given one to the guy sweeping up litter outside his shop. Thanks for keeping your corner clean, guy!

Anyway, I have a new battery now. It is charging just fine as I write. I should've grabbed a "before" pic when it had 1,179 cycles on it ... here is the new one at zero. Six more years? 🔋 🍎 👏

battery-information

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Mårten's first question to me was, "What is the most successful open source project on your platform?" and I was like "hem haw we're total failures like pretty much we're in zombie mode right now but I guess SQLAlchemy?" 🐭

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I feel bad about https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/867#issuecomment-259298578.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Working at the Apple Store for the morning. Happened to sit across from the store leader! Gave him a gratipenny. :-)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay! Back from the Internet Archive. Whew! Lots to tell ...

photo on 11-11-16 at 2 59 pm

Lunch & Tour

The Archive hosts lunch every Friday as a networking event. Usually Brewster Kahle, the founder, emcees and guides the subsequent tour, but this week he was called away at the last minute. There were maybe 50 or 60 people eating lunch. We took two passes around the room, guests introducing themselves first, and then staff. Just about the whole room was reeling from Trump's election. The best word to describe the mood was, "grieving." Mostly at the depression stage, I'd say.

On the tour I got to chat with the other visitor from Pittsburgh. I thought I recognized him, but couldn't be sure I wasn't fooling myself. Turns out he's one of the coorganizers of Art All Night, and he and I shared the stage at Catapult back in 2013! 💃 Now he's started doing some work on the Wayback Machine. 👍 The coolest part of the tour was seeing the statues.

Meeting

After the tour I sat down with Katie Barrett; she and Wendy Hanamura form the Archive's development team (P.S. I just signed into LinkedIn for the first time in a long time; might need to be more active there as we start to be more intentional about building business relationships). Katie and I talked for probably 20 or 30 minutes, and then Wendy joined us for another 20 minutes or so (in a room labeled "Brewster's Annex" 😮). I showed them around Gratipay and answered their questions. I was able to communicate to them that we are an open organization and are aligned with them in that regard. "I want to sell you on the mission." "What is your mission?" "Our mission is to cultivate an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love."

There was some concern that crowdfunding is a lot of work, but I think we got through that and were able to see that Gratipay has a fairly low barrier to entry, compared to something like a Kickstarter campaign, which is a lot of work to do right.

All in all, Wendy seemed very open to potentially signing the Archive up for a Gratipay account! 💃 The next step is for me to send them an email, and for them to vet us (I'm nervous about #319). Wendy's parting words to me were, "You will get your hockey stick." 😃 👍 🙇 💃 🌻 :ice_hockey:

In terms of the bigger picture, Katie said something that was very interesting (this was before Wendy joined us). We were talking about bundling together the Archive with Wikipedia, Mozilla, etc., and she said, "The issue right now is how to unite against this horrible front [namely, the Trump administration], and what's the right engine to use for that. That's what is on everyone's mind. That's what they're going to be thinking about at Mozilla and at Wikipedia." On the one hand that is powerful! Imagine if these groups converged on Gratipay as "the engine"! On the other hand, that scares the bejeebees out of me, because, as I told Wendy when she asked about my background ("Are you a programmer? Are you an activist?"), I do not identify as an activist. See https://github.com/gratipay/team-review/issues/108, and parts of #319.

So, while the energy in our meeting was good, I'm aware of a delicate balance here. I don't want to scare them away, but I want to be honest about who we are. There were one or two people during lunch who were like, "Trump supporters are people, too," so perhaps this can work.

Anyways, Wendy invited me to email her (since my business card is the worst business card in the world ;), so I will take this one to Pipedrive as well.

It would sure be swell if we could get #432 done first! Hmm ...

Respects

After our meeting, I stopped at a shrine on the opposite corner, to Gentle Thomas, a guy who lived in the park there and died recently. Wendy shared during lunch that six hundred people attended his mass. While I was at the shrine a woman walked by, paused, and softly exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't know he died." She teared up. "He was so gentle."

photo on 11-11-16 at 3 01 pm

I left a gratipenny at the shrine. Good work, Gentle Thomas! 🙇

There were also shrines inside the Archive, to Aaron Swartz, whose feast day was celebrated last weekend. You may recall that he created a Gittip account. We used to have an "RIP" message on there. Maybe I will try to bring that back before emailing Wendy. She asked about reference customers/users, and I came up with Font Awesome (she was duly impressed with their Kickstarter), and I also mentioned some of the companies we used to have ("Stripe, Heroku, Khan Academy"). Seems obvious now to mention Aaron as well. 🙇

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The battery may be new, but I'm still seeing the same symptom: it does not recharge when plugged in (no light on the cord, no indicator in the status bar). The fan is on; I am inclined to associate that as well.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The store is too busy tonight. I may try again in the morning, or I may just see if I can get away without fixing it. It's hard to imagine they'll be able to diagnose and fix something even more complicated without a long wait.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Not charging. Fan just kicked in.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Not charging again this morning. Gonna have to call off meeting with @nobodxbodon and focus on the hardware again today, I'm afraid. :(