What I've Learned So Far

I’m sure I’m not the only person whose eyelids did that cash-register ch-ching thing in class last week when David Pollock told us that companies will pay big money for people like us. People who know how to drive eyeballs to a website, that is.

I was mentally depositing my first obscenely large paycheck when I started to think about what our friend the venture capitalist assumed we knew or would know by program’s end. Has anything I’ve learned so far made me more of an expert on eyeball attracting? Maybe.

What you see below is a partial list of what one APOC student, me, has learned at roughly the midway point of his first semester. For the handful of you who are taking all three courses this semester along with me, almost all of these should sound familiar. The rest of you will be baffled occasionally or continually.

Add items to the list by posting them as comments.

What I’ve Learned So Far

If a tree falls in a forest and the tree isn’t in the top three search results, it didn’t fall.

A book with an ape’s head and the word “nutshell” on the cover can be surprisingly devoid of mirth.

You are not likely to create the next Yahoo or eBay, but there are a number of three-legged voles out there who are dying to network. If you don’t monetize them someone else will.

So what if there are already five social networking sites devoted to crippled voles. None of them allows users to upload photos and none is in Hindi. Seize that niche!

You can maintain order in a community through Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft, but either way some people are going to feel they've been schafted.

People who lead Second Lives for 40-60 hours a week … must not be enrolled in a full-time graduate program. Paradoxically, they may be teaching in one.

If you plan to launch an SNS, an MMOG or even a simple MOO or MUD, you’re going to want a developer who can express it in UML first and who can compose a thorough PRD (XP is for hippies). That way when the OOP is done you can be reasonably sure that the XML will work with the MySQL and connect to any APIs. IMHO.

If you don’t like something you see on a website, send the site host or ISP a notice-and-takedown letter stating that the material is infringing on your copyright (even if it isn’t). You can be sure the material will be down in a jiffy.

Ruby on Rails is not slang for a drug addiction.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a social model, not that Carl’s Jr. in the back.

Before you ask a venture capitalist for a million dollars, shave. Especially if you plan on showing a little leg.

You can generate good “buzz” for your product if when combined with another product it makes a geyser.

If Britney Spears kills herself tomorrow, don’t get on an airplane for a few weeks.

If you can use the word “granular” in a sentence without mentioning sugar, people will think you are tech savvy.

If you are notified that five people have been searching for you online and you are willing to pay $60 to find out who they are, there may be hope for subscription-based Web services.

The more difficult it is to join an online community (entry costs) and the more ritual there is involved with being in the community, the tighter-knit that community is likely to be. Sort of like Judaism.

A programmer is likely to be pleasantly surprised to learn that you have an STD.

Television and air conditioning destroyed civic engagement in this country. The Internet is just here to dance on the grave and maybe set up a webcam.

The Cone of Uncertainty illustrates how it is difficult to make accurate estimates about software development when you first start out but that it gets easier after a couple of iterations. The Cohen of Uncertainty is me at the entrance to any virtual world.