Karelbaloun.com

4 million Leaves, The Game, and I Am X progress

me — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:29:29 +0000

Building the I Am X application platform is great fun. I Am Green just crossed 4 million leaves, which means that over a hundred thousand people are making millions of commitments to pro-environment actions. This was my initial dream, to get just strong action going. Now that dream has been extended to dozens of sites, with over 750K members. I’m aiming for hundreds of apps totalling millions of members over the next few months.
Now we need to bring this closer to life, by getting people to take their commitments most seriously, and measurably turn these aspirations into action. And we have a dozen ideas to push towards this goal.
We also just launched The Game on I Am Green and I Am Mom, and have already saved over 1600 sq feet of Costa Rica rainforest in just 2 days. Since that is close to the size of my house, I’m walking around imagining the trees and wildlife that could enjoy such space. Right behind me in my little office, I’ve planted a 400 year old trunk so large I can’t reach around it. To make my fantasy complete, I need to download some sounds of the jungle.
Interestingly, it seems that on facebook most people don’t delve deep into applications, or figure them out. I feel like we almost have too many features, or maybe a poor user interface, because it seems like simple, one-dimensional applications grow the fastest. But I Am X wants more, aims to really connect deeply to these areas of member identity, and offer many activities and tools. Do you feel it is true that if people need to think to use app, most of them will not?

Now if I could just find a business partner, and actually start getting some revenue to turn this into a real business.

John Edwards (and other famous people) on I Am Green

me — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:48:18 +0000

As my I Am Green facebook app approaches 50K installed members, thousand of unique actives a day, and records tens of thousands daily page views, we are blessed with visits from well known people, who are concerned and active on environmental issues.

Last week John Edwards installed I Am Green, and took time to add a few leaves. John Edwards is running a Carbon Neutral campaign, which demonstrates exactly the kind of “leading by example” that I Am Green encourages. Here are John’s “34 Leaves” (including sending 8000 seedlings and his 80% by 2050 pledge) and our information page for the “I support John Edwards” leaf. I Am Green will promote any presidential candidate who is truly Green and invests the effort to install our application.

Two prominent leaders in the environmental movement installed I Am Green this month. David Suzuki (his 60 Leaves) is the single most powerful and prominent environmental leader in Canada, with over 352,000 pledges for his Nature Challenge. David De Rothschild (his 39 Leaves) is the author of the official action book accompanying the Live Earth concert series (The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook), which I personally really enjoyed, and which we’ll be featuring in detail next week.

I Am Green crosses One Million Leaves

me — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:25:06 +0000

I Am Green members have made one million green commitments. One million green lingering thoughts, communications and actions. Facebook now ranks apps by activity, and I also suggest that they look at the depth of activity, where I Am Green shines.
Claiming a leaf is a permanent action: it stays on your list of leaves until you remove it, and 600,000 times we’ve done that. Endorsing a leaf remains as a permanent reminder on both sides that you are watching that leaf for each other. Each counted leaf shows at least that someone read a green action, and acted on it.

We claim a leaf to remind ourselves to do something, and to inspire our friends towards something they could try. I Am Green has only just begun deepening that interaction. We will empower each other to Lead our friends towards real green living.

Send a Green gift! Go edit the wiki and your wisdom about what is green. Whatever you write will be linked to leaves wherever it can guide people to the right actions.

next my name should be in Newsweek for something I do.

me — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 07:35:32 +0000

I’m delighted I can help tremendously accomplished writers like Steven Levy write important articles about Facebook, now gracing the cover of Newsweek.

Near the top of the article: Karel Baloun, an engineer who worked at Facebook until last year, recalls vividly the baldly stated prediction of one of the company’s cofounders: “In five years,” he said, “we’ll have everybody on the planet on Facebook.”

Unfortunately, this quotation attributed to me has a history. Likely it refers to a positive, supportive comment I made one of Dustin’s Facebook Notes, which only Dustin’s friends could read. It was on a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Note joking that at the then-tremendous growth rate, FB would register everyone on the planet by a certain date. I think he intended it as a dramatization of a fantastic growth rate, and the power of geometric growth, which FB epitomizes on so many levels.

While Dustin certainly wasn’t claiming that everyone on the planet would register, I think the quote does register accurately the huge, uncomparable ambition of the company. *Someday* everyone with computer access will either be on Facebook or willfully avoiding it, and that date may very well be within 5 years. I predicted in June that FB would be larger than MySpace in one year, and it looks well on track. Google is only 9 years old, reached its peak 30% share in it’s 6th year, so FB is growing share much more quickly. So the quotation, in my mind, is both reasonable and representative.

Overall the story is both a great read and accurate. The ConnectU lawsuit is already old and irrelevant, and according to techcrunch yahoo dangled 1.6B right after youtube sold for a touch more than that, and various blogs suggest that facebook was actually quite interested it in, until the deal broke apart, perhaps because the techcrunch leaked docs showed that yahoo was bending over backwards to justify the price, and in the end couldn’t stomach it due to a weakened share price, as I predicted in mashable in Oct ‘06. Shows you can never know what’s good for you. “News Feed ads are “well targeted—people like the content,” Zuckerberg says, unconvincingly.” - a great quote, and I’m certain FB is working extremely hard on this.

FB’s other key challenge is enabling grouping and selective access to friends, as in “The social graph will get incredibly meaningless,” says Berkeley’s Danah Boyd. “Do you really want to be speaking with everyone you ever met?” This will be a much harder challenge, and I spend several pages of my book on it. This is a huge opportunity, and I hope FB opens up the F8 API enough for an Application to solve it.

Now I hope that my next appearance in Newsweek is for “I Am Green“!

Emma’s life and brain tumor

me — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:33:35 +0000

Our good friend’s 5 year old daughter Emma, we are told, has about 6 months to live. Makes every painful experience I’ve ever had - including my house fire, Mimoli’s hair loss, and Elin’s long hospitalization - seem small. A long painful illness with little hope, it’s the worst outcome i can imagine. And her parents are the most kind and giving people you can imagine: Dad chose to teach at a special school for troubled highschool dropouts. Why them? And WHY this sweet five year old?

And what can I do for them? I’ll try to learn. The event is so close to me, yet so far away. I eat and sleep and work in peace, and from experience I know this will consume that family completely for months or years. I look outside and fall is turning to winter, like every other Fall I’ve loved. For one nearby family, and millions of other I don’t know in the world, this season, this day, is unlike anything ever known before.
If it was Mimoli, I’d tell her vivid, colorful stories about the immortality of the soul - I’d ask her to be my mommy next time. I’d tell her we each come to life for some lessons, and that she’s graduated. How could I hold back my tears, so she wouldn’t be afraid? I’d lean on Dr. Brian Weiss‘ past+future life research, and on the spiritual teachings of Seicho-No-Ie, many of which I’ve come to respect deeply. I’d try the dailystrength.org community.

I am grateful on most moments of my life, but right now my gratitude is more visceral. We are so lucky and blessed to spend every minute we have with the people we love. And life is love.

how i became a cto

me — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 22:40:18 +0000

The universe is amazing. This story is better than fiction.
As you know, I wrote a book. I blogged about that book, trying to get people to read it. Ariel, CEO of mEgo, a small startup you’ll hear much more about in a few months, read just about my first comment post and followed it.

She become the Second buyer of the book, and emailed me saying she really liked it. We talked and collaborated, and we totally gel. One key thing I did right, during my initial consulting, was that I suggested I could also do other things than what they specifically asked, because it turned out they really needed those things at least as much, forming the groundwork for deciding what I should contribute.
One never knows where some postive action will lead. Just do, and the universe takes us where we want to go. From several months ago, I’ve been meditating on the intention “when the time is right, I will be CTO at a social startup”, and lo and behold, delivered from nowhere. And amazingly, she tells me she feels like I was a gift to mego that came from nowhere. I sometimes put quotes around this “CTO” position, because what does CTO really mean in a group of a dozen people. But I put no quotes around my delight for the opportunity.

I knew to be open to synchronicity. And I’ve prepared for this day. The rest came as a gift.

the new “do it first” job application system, a.k.a. how everything i need magically comes to me.

me — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:04:28 +0000

I know I’m doing the right thing, when I see the universe helping out. And the author Karel right now is oh so grateful for gifts from the universe.
Those gifts are more ready than ever to come to us, courtesy of technology and a changing culture.
I need a book cover, so a beautiful one comes back from a great creative talent our in Pennsylvania, courtesy of a Facebook introduction. The cover comes first, the gift-from-god creator gets “hired” to do that and so much more afterwords. Conventional interview and hiring completely sidestepped. I value his work very much, so I’d love to pay; he enjoys doing it. If everything continues well for us, we have a long term relationship based on respect and trust, and if either one of us wants to change, of course it can’t be good for either of us.
I need marketing help, so not one but two talent marketers approach me, one through an unrelated chat with a friend, another finds my profile on linkedin and contacts me about something completely different. The only action I took is making sure that I asked that question “would you or anyone you know market my book” in most of my conversations, and this was natural, because the question was focus burned in the front of my attention.
I need press, so friends hook me up with authors and reports. And everyone is so busy, so who can pay attention to a new author. One wonderful reporter has the misfortune to feel under the weather, giving her the chance look at my book. The universe is net-happier when everyone gains.
All I’m doing is asking everyone I meet whether they know something about what I need. And I must be blessed with the most wonderful and talented people around me. But you know, hundred of people must also be surrounded by those very same talented people. Lucky all of them!

Social technology has dramatically changed the degree to which other people can allign with our own intention. Without it, could I have written a book in a summer, and sold dozens of copies of it a few months later, most to people I don’t know? I’ve heard it said that God operates in our lives through other people. Well, if so, God just got some big help.

We are all now empowered to “do it first”. We DO, and the universe responds to some degree or other. In Zuck and Steve Chen’s case, it responds with hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds or millions of people helping out naturally in a multitude of ways. Or it doesn’t respond. My ptrades.com is hauntingly silent these days. So we DO again. Poke the universe and see, wait. Poke it again. Maybe in the same place. Repeatedly, with focus. Ask a friend to poke it from the other side. You have no control over what the universe does, so let go of the results. Just poke it again.

what a wonderful day!

me — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:32:25 +0000

Today I am

working on exactly what i want
in whatever order i decide
for people i like

The work is

fun: researching interesting questions
creative: making new data structures
in my control: making features and sites the way i want
full of non-stop learning and challenges, but all solvable
well paid
appreciated, and objectively helpful

I have next fun work waiting, some of which is actually for me, and some of which clearly could help other people.

And people have bought my book each of the last three days.

Whatever I need seems to be coming to me right when i need it. Naturally.

How lucky I am!

(Thanks for your concern. Yes, I just joined the bipolar support group at
http://www.dailystrength.org/support/Mental_Health_Addiction/Bipolar_Disorder/)

no treats for being self-employed

me — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 06:23:17 +0000

when employees do a good job, someone is responsible for that pat on the back, that small raise or bonus, the faux-gold trophy award.

when i do a good job for myself… gee it’s quiet here. (gee i’m already overcommitted and i also need to plan a celebration party for myself

and what if no one else, anywhere, at all, notices my good work? what if there is no customer, no client? was it really good? how would i know? is that praising voice inside, the one i trust implicitly, just trying to please me? is it’s goal only that i’m happy and placated?

i have time for reflection i rarely had. otherwise, how could i manage priorities? so i reflect on why my friends lack time to reflect, as i lacked.

i’d become addicted to the meaningless but genuinely delivered praises of my employers. shouldn’t my own praise to myself be more important? yes… so why not? is there not enough of it? am i not credible!?

fortunately, every morning i wake up enthusiastic to do the next thing, well planned towards more likely success. Luck does favor the prepared. Empiracally proven.

why don’t i blog?

me — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 05:56:24 +0000

I like to have an idea completed. My through thinking is half baked enough; posting it the moment I think of it exacerbates by sloppiness, for countless servers to preserve it indefintely.

I’m not organized enough to write a few hundred words about any one idea, to a point of closure.

I’m not organized enough to write a few hundred words about any one idea.

Practically speaking, do I benefit others? I feel like published material should have some purpose, to compensate people for the time that they invested in reading it. What do I have that some set of people would benefit from enough, to justify their time? Can I really teach happiness, success or technology? Or am I just babbling and wasting google’s index and other disk space?

Do I benefit myself or mine? Who is reading this and why?

To publish, or add to my pile of drafts?