Thirty ideas down, thirty days to go.

Andrew Dubber came out with the last idea in his 30 day series of ideas today, all of which he's given away on his blog for anyone to do with what they want. Fittingly, today's idea was a website where people could give their ideas away for anyone to use. It's another one of my favorites.

What's great about Andrew's ideas isn't just that he did what he said he was going to do, but the way that he wrote about them. He made a real commitment to writing thought out posts about his ideas each and every day. Hopefully you've been keeping up, but if not, you should really check all of them out.

And now, because he executed on his project, there's all this other stuff going on that I wanted to share. As you may know, I am executing on his 5th idea, the 30 day numberless calendar. It's going to be a website where people can put their calendars, and if they want, also share what they're doing.

Originally, there were twelve people that joined my project space when I opened it. The only commit people had to make was that they'd write one blog post a week about it. Other than that, they could do as much or as little as they wanted with the project. Exactly half have opted to say in, and half have opted to bow out.

To understand why I asked for that commitment, you need look no further than Joan Lee's blog post titled Diligence. Joan is one of the people that decided to stay in the project.

There are no hard feelings at all by the way with people that chose not to keep going. We all have things we need to do, priorities change, and sometimes we just lose interest. It happens.

But, I knew it was going to be important for me to know who really was in to the project and who wasn't.

Deb Walsh started a facebook page for the project for anyone that wants to join, and has put up a new website at OneBeforeMidnight.com (it's still being built) where she's publishing sound tracks with her on the piano for a 30 day project. If the first one is any indication of what's to come, we're in for a treat.

Cheryl Sterling has been writing about a 30 day project of portraits, and in our project space she mentioned she has paints ready to go. The anticipation is killing me.

Simon Fowler came up with the great little visual to explain the whole first follower thing, and has been thinking about what he's going to do. It sounds like he's decided though that any project is going to make him better at something he's doing already.

Aaron Brown has decided to do 30 days of gardening. He blogs at Moot Pt. where you can also check out some of his music.

And DJ Phillips, another musician, one of the funnier people I've met lately, is going to be doing something with his music.

I'm really happy that I'm working on this project, and having these people along side working on their own projects is really awesome. So thanks to Derek and Andrew for getting this thing started, and you should have some cool stuff to look at come May first.

We're always the hardest on ourselves

One of the many things I like about writing regularly on my blog is the feedback that I'll at times get from some people. It can really help me see how other people are interpreting what I'm writing and how I can communicate better.

Last week I wrote about my new pricing model and some of the challenges that come with it, and a few people sent me some emails and IM's. A couple folks just asked what happened, others told me they thought it was great that I was sticking to my new approach and trying to be innovative, and still others told me that basically they thought I was nuts and making a mistake.

The feedback has had me thinking a lot about how we can be really hard on ourselves, and maybe sometimes unnecessarily so.

When I first started my business I had a two month project that started and ended in about the expected timeframe. When it was over I started another, and that continued for a while. Then I worked on another, and so on.

In the three and a half years since starting Ideal Project Group I've formed great relationships with a number of companies, built a mobile application, created a new service to build websites for small businesses, started a community to test applications for the Android operating system, and began producing a monthly podcast.

My point is, my company is probably in better shape than it ever was the first year or two I was in business. And after all, part of the goal of my new approach is to get paid a smaller amount of money by a larger number of clients. So then why do I feel compelled to write something like "hanging by a thread" when I'm encountering a challenge that in many ways I expected to face at some point?

I think it's because we're always the hardest on ourselves. At least this can be true for me, and it hits me in two ways. First, I tend not to look at where my business is and where it came from, but where it is and where I'd like it to be. These are two entirely different perspectives of course and certainly impact my view of things.

Couple this with the fact that if all I'm doing is talking about the positive things happening with my business, but none of the challenges, I feel like I'm lying by omission. That would only be sharing one part of the story, and I think it would be a disservice to anyone reading this blog. So I'm regularly asking myself whether I'm sharing enough - am I being as open as I should be? Of course that's usually followed by the question - Am I being too open?

What I've realized though is that I'm probably just being hard on myself. I could just have easily changed the title of my post to "Laying the new foundation" and that would have changed the tone entirely. And maybe that would have been a better way to talk about it. I don't really know, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

The other thing that's become clear though is that I do need to do a much better job of explaining why I have moved to my new pricing model, and why I think it's better for everyone. I haven't done that quite as well as I should so I'll be making a point of talking a bit more about how it benefits my customers as well as my overall business strategy, and give more reasons as to why I think it's where the future lies for service companies.

In the meantime, I'll try not to be too hard on myself for not having done so already.

Podcast Episode Six - What can a project manager learn from programming?

In my latest podcast I opted not to interview anyone, but instead talk about what I've learned so far from trying to learn Ruby on Rails. I talk a bit about feeling like I'm learning how to use a computer all over again, feeling somewhat more empowered, and how different people have been willing to help me with the project. As always you can listen right on the blog, or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I hope you enjoy the episode.