Where We Are: And A Bit More About Where We've Been

Since September of 2009, I've been working with a group of people, and one organization to develop the ideas in Urbanistica into a real business. This isn't my natural home: I'm an experimenter, a designer, a programmer, a researcher before I'm a business man.

But at some point, ideas need the push that takes them out of the dream world of people like me, and into the place where the fulfil needs and desires of other people; where they start to listen, and not just talk.

When you put your dreams and passions in front of other people, you have to be ready to bridge the gap that can quickly open up between dreams and reality. People can be harsh, while being supportive: they can interpret your ideas in terms of what they already know, and expect you to shape your ideas accordingly. They can say lovely things, while not moving you forward an inch from where you are.

One place the gap opens up is when you realize that potential investors are looking for very simple stories to evaluate. Dreams are complex, and you can seriously alienate people by assuming that a dream is what they want to hear. It's not that different from the dreams people dream at night, and want to tell you about: you quickly realize that all these things mean a lot to them, but that they aren't really able to bring that across to you. You turn off, you start thinking about lunch, or what you'll do tomorrow. So, I put a high value on the input that people have given me, based in large part on the scenario that is shown in the youTube video in the previous post. It's important to focus on things that people can share a belief or an interest in.

BUT.

This process also has a tendency to make you devalue your own core ideas. Sometimes, people who give you feedback and who don't see the end goal you're aiming at will make you doubt your own ideas. They don't have a stake in it, they're not really telling you to change anything, they're just saying that what you want to do isn't what they want to do. But you can start to revise your thinking, start to tailor what your goals are to what you think they'd go for.

The problem with this is that you do have to hang on to your goals, your ideals, the vision you have. And so I want to take some time, in the next post, to outline what I see Urbanistica doing for people, how I hope it can transform people's lives.

Thanks for reading.

Customary First Post

First Post! Always a decision how to begin. Well... to begin, begin.

I'm Dan Donaldson. I live in Toronto. I've been in and out of the web development world for a long time -- more than fifteen years. Everyone in this game thinks about building something of their own, even if it's only for a brief moment, before the lure of decent money and a corporate gig convinces them otherwise. I'm no different.

About 3 years ago, I became interested in the potential for maps on the web, and started dreaming my own dreams. I wasn't very focussed on working on the web at that time: in fact, I was working in real estate. But that's a business that really needs a dose of Web 2.0, and the shift into real estate from web development was a shock.

Over posts to come, I'll talk more about this: about real estate and the web, and about some of the things that motivated me to do what I did back then, which brings us to the point of this blog.

Real Estate, for all its many and terrible failings is still a business that makes you think a lot about communities. There's something about sinking half a million dollars into a particular address that makes you start to think more about where you are, what people do, think, build and value around you. People you don't know, and would never know in a Facebook world end up being the guy across the fence, and you have to deal with it. Out of this, a long-standing passion for communities arose in me, a passion and interest that existed in a space different from the disembodied world of the web.

I started thinking about this, and ideas that at first related to real estate, but soon expanded to encompass the dynamics of communities started to develop. And now, I've become passionate about an idea for changing the way communication works in communities. The success of Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, Flickr, YouTube, FourSquare, RedBeacon, Yelp, and all the others social and Web 2 sites that have changed the way a generation interacts is a total inspiration to me. But I think that they still leave a huge space that needs to be filled.

Every one of these tools has created a new way for all of us to interact with others who share interests with us. But I think there's another part of life that these systems not only bypass, but make more difficult. And that's the idea of physical community, space shared with others who probably don't share many of our interests, but that share a common interest in what can be done in the area they live in.

Out of this came my project, called Urbanistica. It's a way to bring people who don't have a reason to be Facebook friends, or whom you don't follow on Twitter, to join with you in a conversation. The kinds of conversations this produces will be different from the ones that other services facilitate. But these conversations are happening – or trying to happen – all the time, and so far I haven't found the web-based system that makes them possible.

If you're interested in this – in the idea of bringing a new way for people to interact as a community, and the possibilities, ideas and tools that might be needed to make this happen, then maybe you'll want to read more.

This is the first post. In the interests of brevity, I'll end it here. Tune in next to learn about what I propose to create, what's already done, and what I hope people will do to help.

And comment! The comments will be open and unmoderated, until such time as a need arises to moderate them. So please: ideas, reactions, discoveries. Your thoughts are valued.

Last thing: Urbanistica is not just an idea, but something that I've been building, working on, implementing. Here's a video that I've shown to people over the last few months that shows a live demo of one incarnation of Urbanistica: