While I’ve been a guest speaker at a few university courses, this is the first time I’m developing a full curriculum on my own. It’s intimidating.

These are the steps I took:

1) I looked back at my favorite courses I’ve taken and reflected on what I liked/disliked about them most.

2) I looked through similar curriculums that I was able to find online.

3) I read up on instructional design theories.

4) I found this article on what you need to do the first day of class. Then realized Carnegie-Melon had all these great resources to help guide curriculum design. It was nice to have this list of instructional strategies, and these things to think about when planning course content & schedule.

But mostly, it was a lot of throwing ideas on post-its, organizing it, realizing things I was missing, re-doing the process, etc.

The course starts next week, and I have my first week of classes all planned out! While I have a basic outline of what I’m teaching, the later classes will have to adjust based on the progress level of the students.

The five major topics I’m covering are:

1. Startup Fundamentals – Personal goals, Business Model Canvas, Validation Board, User Personas, Keyword Research
2. Design – Branding, Photoshop, Illustrator, Wireframing
3. Development – HTML/CSS, WordPress, eCommerce Tools
4. Digital Marketing – Analytics, SEO, Social Media, Paid Advertising
5. Fundraising – Relationship Building, Pitch Deck, Pitch Practice

The post Developing a Curriculum for Entrepreneurship appeared first on Places to Play.

I was introduced to this idea at Burning Man last year when I saw five story structures being burned to the ground. People spend months creating art, only to destroy it. Sharing the moment of destruction with tens of thousands of people is a moving experience that can’t be described in words.

Then I realized, while on a smaller scale, SnapChat celebrates the same thing. My favorite snaps that I receive from friends are well-conceived and sometime staged. The fact that they captured this moment in this temporary format, makes it more beautiful. They could have taken a photo/video they could rewatch later.

Cooking, Burning, and SnapChat all celebrate the temporary nature of art. What else does?

Update: My friend Mariana pointed out that fireworks and orgasms should also join this list. Agreed.

The post What Cooking, Burning Man, and SnapChat Have In Common appeared first on Places to Play.

If you’re looking for a job in LA days, check out these openings:

Nasty Gal Jobs

Science Inc Jobs

Full Screen Jobs

There are of course more places hiring. I just happened to think of these three just now.

The post LA Tech Jobs That I Would Consider appeared first on Places to Play.

Get Inspired

• Startup Digest – Articles and local events in your inbox.
• TED.com
• Mixergy - Interviews with and courses for entrepreneurs.

Learn to Code Online

• Team Treehouse
• Codecademy
• Codeschool
• Stack Overflow - Get stuck learning to code? You’ll probably end up on Stack Overflow if you do a Google Search of your problem.
• W3Schools – A great resource to access all the functions and features of basic languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, etc. Also a good learning source for people not interested in the courses listed above.

Learn to Build a Startup

• How to Build A Startup w Steve Blank on Udacity
• Start a Business Learning Adventure on Team Treehouse
• How to Make Your First Dollar w Noah Kagan on AppSumo

Learn Creative & Technical Skills

• Lynda.com
• Tuts+

Take University Classes Online for Free

• Coursera - Stanford, Duke, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, John Hopkins, etc.
• Edx - Harvard, MIT, Cornell, UC Berkley, etc.

Brainstorming/Understanding Your Business

• Business Model Canvas – Fill this out to get a good sense of your business. Better with the book, but not completely necessary. Watch the 2 min video.
• Validation Board – Use this to continuously test your riskiest assumptions and to update your business model canvas as you learn more about your business. Developed by the authors of The Lean Startup & The Lean Entrepreneur.
• Mindmeister – An online mind-mapping tool, great for collaborating.

Naming

• Lean Domain Search - Enter a word you want in your domain and it will give you a list of available domain names that includes your word.
• Gum.bo – Enter a word or words you want in your domain and it will give you a list of available domain names and if the username is available on major social networks.
• Namechk – Enter a username and it will let you know if it’s available across a large number of social networks.
• Igor Naming Guide – A systematic process for picking the right name for your business.

Startup Research

• Google Keyword Tool - Look up search volume for your product, service, or keywords.
• Google Trends – Look up search trends for your product, service, or keyword.
• Quora – Great Q&A site. Lots of great answers for technology entrepreneurs.
• Crunchbase – A database of technology companies. Get to know your competitors, how much they’ve raised, and from who.
• Angellist – A database of startups and angels. Find local startups and angel investors in your industry.
• Seed-DB – A database of accelerators and incubators.

Automated Research Tools

• Google Alerts – Set up alerts for keywords relevant to your business, get recent news directly in your email inbox.
• Paper.li – Automatically generates an online newspaper from articles shared by Twitter accounts you follow. You can customize this even more by setting it to follow specific lists or hashtags.

Early Customer Validation

• SurveyMonkey – Create surveys and send them to your friends.
• Amazon Mechanical Turks – A little complex to use, but you can pay a little bit of money to survey lots of random people.
• Pickfu – Let random people vote between two options. A simpler version of Amazon Mechanical Turks. 50 answers for $20.

Collaborating With Your Team

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Trello – Super simple task management tool.
• Asana – Task management for teams.
• Skype – Chat with people remotely.

Buy a domain name + hosting

• GoDaddy
• Name.com
• Bluehost

Get a Splash Page Up

• LaunchRock - Pretty easy to use, but not much customization.
• KickOffLabs - A little more customization.
• Unbounce – A drag & drop interface for creating your splash page. Super easy to set up A/B testing. Great for price elasticity testing, etc.

Set Up Your Social Media Profiles

• Twitter
• Facebook Pages
• Pinterest for Business - Great for visual brands that target females.
• Instagram - Great for lifestyle brands.

Design Tools

• Adobe Creative Cloud - Subscription based access to Photoshop, Illustrator, and more!
• Pixlr – A free online tool, similar to Photoshop (less robust).
• Flickr – Use advanced search tools to search for Creative Commons licensed images you can use for free (as long as you credit the photographer somewhere on your site!)
• iStockPhoto – Purchase professional stock photos for use on website/marketing material.
• VectorStock – Purchase cheap vector designs to use on your website/marketing material.
• The Noun Project – Great place to find cheap and free (public domain) icons.
• Google Fonts

Hire a Designer

• 99 Designs – Crowdsourced design work. Get multiple people to submit ideas and only pay for the one you like.
• Sortfolio – Sort through web designers by city & budget and look through their portfolio.
• oDesk – Hire freelancers.
• Elance – Hire freelancers.

Wireframing Tools

• Balsamiq – Drag & drop interface for wireframing websites. You can build in multiple pages and interactive buttons.
• POP – Convert your sketches into an interactive prototype of your mobile app.

DIY Web Building Tools

• WordPress.org – This content management system powers 1 in 6 active websites online. It’s worth learning to use. Most hosting services provide a one-click install of WordPress, which will allow you to host it on your own domain name. It’s worth learning how to use, and a great way to build your Minimum Viable Product.
• ThemeForest – A place to buy premium WordPress themes.
• Woothemes – Another place to buy great WordPress themes.
• Shopify - Set up an e-commerce enabled store with no coding experience.
• Magento Go – Set up an e-commerce enabled store with no coding experience.
• Sublime Text – Learning to code yourself? Sublime Text is just one of many text editors great for coding.
• Heroku – Learn to code on rails? Heroku will handle your web hosting.
• Github – Version tracking is something you really oughta do if you’re coding, and Github is how you’ll do it.

 Find a development agency

• GroupTalent - You send them basic information about what you need, and they’ll help you with the details of the spec, budgeting, timeline, and match you with the a qualified development team for your needs. Accepts job listings from $5k to $150k.
  
• Guru – Freelancing website with a focus on development talent.
• oDesk – Freelancing website.
• Elance – Freelancing website.
• TheyMakeApps - Search for mobile app developers by location and budget, then check out their portfolios.

Charging Money

• Paypal - Probably the easiest way to start collecting money.
• Dwolla – The new kid on the block, $0.25 fee max on any transaction. To find out how they do it, read this article.
• Shopify – DIY eCommerce platform. Super easy to set up shop and start selling.
• Magento – eCommerce platform. More complex, more customizable.
• Authorize.net – Payment Gateway
• Freshbooks – Service business? Accounting, time tracking, and billing.
• Square – Charging money in person? Use Square.

Collect Recurring Payments

• Chargify
• Recurly

 Web Analytics

• Google Analytics – Free and popular analytics tool.
• MixPanel - Starts free, paid as you increase traffic.

User Testing

• UserTesting.com - Get videos of visitors speaking their thoughts as they visit your site and a written summary of their experience with your site.
• CrazyEgg – Get a heat map of where people are clicking on your site and how far down they scroll on any page.

Optimize Your Website

• Optimizely – Great tool for A/B testing on a website that you already have up and running. Super easy to use, definitely worth messing around with their free demo.
• Kissmetrics – A serious analytics tool that helps you optimize your website.
• Qualaroo – Collect insights by asking your customers questions unintrusively.
• Olark – Live chat with your customers.
• Get Satisfaction – Customer engagement tool.

Social Media Tools

• Hootsuite – Manage a number of social media profiles, schedule posts, and set up streams based on Twitter lists or hashtags.
• Wildfire App - Social media campaign tool.

Press Release Distribution

• 24-7PressRelease – Free press release distribution.
• 20+ Free Press Distribution Site (Mashable)
• PRweb – Paid press release distribution.
• PRNewsWire – Paid press release distribution.

Identify Influencers

• Google Blog Search – Search for blogs about your topic.
• Technorati – Blog search engine.
• Klout – Find top social media influencers.
• BlogDash – A blogger outreach network. Identify and reach out to bloggers.
• GroupHigh – Identify and reach out to influencers. Paid solution.
• Traackr – The most expensive, but supposedly the most advanced platform for identifying influencers.

Online Advertising Platforms

• Google Adwords
  
• Google Adwords Display Network – Banner and image ads (display ads).
• Facebook Ads
• Twitter Ads
• Protein Ad Buyer - A simple tool for buying display ads on specific websites.
• 30+ Ways to Advertise Yourself (Mashable)

Finance Tools

• Mint.com – Personal finance manager
• inDinero – Basically a Mint.com for businesses.
• Quickbooks – Small Business Accounting Software.
• Freshbooks - Service business? Accounting, time tracking, and billing.
• Expensify – Track your expenses.

Legal Stuff/ Document Samples

• LegalZoom
• DocStoc

The post Best Online Resources for Entrepreneurs, Organized. appeared first on Places to Play.

GifBoom: Animated GIF Camera

iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gifboom-animated-gif-camera/id457502693?mt=8

The post Make Your Own GIF w GifBoom! appeared first on Places to Play.

That’s why you might want to check out Bad Potato’s minimalist posters featuring phrases liks “I Don’t Give a Fuck”, “Like a Boss”, and “Sorry I’m Not Sorry”.

The posters are printed on thick, durable paper, with a matte finish, which is really what makes them look good on your wall. Designed by young entrepreneurs in Venice, California, the purpose of these posters is to add some originality and aesthetic appeal to the average guy’s college dorm room.

Check out the posters at http://badpotato.com.

The post 10 Minimalist Posters For College Students appeared first on Places to Play.

The post Amazing Video That Will Make You Want to Live and Experience Life. appeared first on Places to Play.

First figure out what you’re trying to sell. Use Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool to identify the keywords that someone would use to find your product. This should give you a vague idea of the market, if it’s growing or shrinking, and the set of keywords you’ll start with for your SEO and marketing copy.

Search the keywords from above on Google to see what kind of competitors exist. Take note of their branding, domain name, products/features available, and pricing. It’s good to know these things when figuring out what you need to do.

If it looks like they’re well-funded, take a peek on Crunchbase or Angellist to see if they have any notable investors and how much they’ve raised. It’s never a bad idea to do a quick Google New Search to see if they’ve been mentioned in any major publications.

Then you can use a site like LeanDomainSearch to see if there are any great domain names that contain any of your keywords. Perhaps you’ll go with a made up name, but this will get you thinking about a good name for your company. If you find a good one, you can use NameChk to see if it’s available on social networks.

The post Tech Tools for People with a Startup Idea appeared first on Places to Play.

Cozy – A more serious rent management tool. Has raised $1.5m.

RentPost – Another rent management tool that also includes work order management.

Splitwise – Great tool for splitting bills.

The post Online Tools for Landlords appeared first on Places to Play.

1. WordPress
2. Mailchimp
3. Eventbrite
4. Twitter
5. Facebook
6. Google Drive
7. Pinterest
8. Instagram
9. 1Password
10. Hootsuite
11. Buffer App
12. PRweb
13. Crunchbase
14. Angellist
15. Github
16. Heroku
17. Treehouse
18. Codeschool
19. Codecademy
20. General Assembly
21. Lynda
22. Tuts+
23. Quora
24. Google Analytics
25. Google Keyword Tool
26. Google Trends
27. Google Apps
28. Godaddy
29. Bluehost
30. Tumblr
31. Flickr
32. iStockPhoto
33. Elance
34. Odesk
35. 99designs
36. Craigslist
37. Taskrabbit
38. Recurly
39. Chargify
40. Shopify
41. IFTTT
42. Zapier
43. Adobe Creative Cloud
44. Mint.com
45. inDinero
46. Quickbooks
47. Adroll
48. Google Adwords
49. Facebook Ads
50. Twitter Ads
51. Mixergy
52. The Noun Project
53. VectorStock
54. PRNewsWire
55. Freshbooks
56. Asana
57. Boomerang (Gmail)
58. Speedtest
59. Foursquare
60. TED
61. Klout
62. AppSumo
63. Paypal
64. Square
65. Kissmetrics
66. Crazy Egg
67. Udacity
68. Udemy
69. Wolfram Alpha
70. Google Calendar
71. Authorize.net
72. Skype
73. Wikipedia
74. Paper.li
75. Newsle
76. News.me
77. Legalzoom
78. Seed-DB
79. Magento
80. StackOverflow
81. Zazzle
82. Dropbox
83. Google Fonts
84. Olark
85. Wildfire
86. Salesforce
87. Basecamp
88. Highrise
89. Justunfollow
90. Gotomeeting
91. Woothemes
92. Themeforest
93. Moo Cards
94. Tungle
95. Meetup
96. Rapportive
97. Youtube
98. Vimeo
99. Get Satisfaction
100. Amazon.com
101. Qualaroo
102. Survey Monkey
103. Proprofs
104. Wufoo
105. Bit.ly
106. Zendesk
107. Mechanical Turk
108. Namechk
109. Wix
110. Launchrock
111. Expensify
112. Docstoc
113. Pocket
114. Startup Digest
115. Second Market
116. Balsamiq
117. Prezi
118. Usertesting.com
119. Grouptalent
120. Theymakeapps
121. Desktime
122. SEOmoz
123. Optimizely
124. Unbounce
125. Kickstarter
126. Crowdfunder
127. Invested.in
128. Glassdoor
129. Founderdating
130. Pickfu
131. Slideshare
132. Designcrowd
133. Leandomainsearch
134. Piktochart
135. Mindmeister
136. Name.com
137. Sharethis
138. Addthis
139. Constant Contact
140. Vertical Response
141. Amazon Web Services
142. Jing
143. CallFire
144. Coursera
145. Edx
146. Grubhub
147. Pixlr

The post 147 Online Services for Entrepreneurs: Ver 1 appeared first on Places to Play.

Check out the video below titled “Everything is a Remix: Part 1″. The other parts are also awesome.

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

The post Everything is a Remix appeared first on Places to Play.

The government, while it has many flaws, is set up so that problems can be fixed. But many of the problems we see today aren’t simply a problem with the government, but rooted in problems with our society. In a democracy, people run the government.

What we need to do is to trust the government and believe that we can work with today’s systems to solve today’s problems. Like with any conflict (in this case between citizens and the government), the best way to solve problems is to develop trust, open communication, and work on a solution together.

Like with any change, this will be slow and difficult. But trust me when I say it’s easier to convince people (in this case the government) to make changes if they believe you have their best interest at heart. So don’t hate on the government.

Leave Britney alone!

The post Why You Should Trust the Government appeared first on Places to Play.

Practicing mindfulness is not necessarily about putting aside time to meditate. It’s about learning to switch on-and-off your ability to live in the moment.

Even if you have 1000 things to do at work, if you’ve set aside one hour to enjoy dinner with your friend, can you forget about work and engage fully with your present company?

That’s what mindfulness is all about.

Also, read this: Buddha had it right: relax your mind and productivity will follow.

The post What is mindfulness? appeared first on Places to Play.

A CTR is calculated by dividing the number of times your ad has been shown to people (impressions), by the number of times people clicked on the ad.

• Optimal CTR: 0.11%-0.16%
• Above Avg CTR: 0.07%-0.09%
• Average CTR: 0.04%-0.05%
• Below Avg CTR: 0.02%-0.03%
• Poor CTR: 0.01%

Ad placements in Newsfeed get 1-7% CTR.

Source: Andrew McDermott on Quora

What’s the average cost-per-click (CPC) for Facebook ads?

• Facebook advertisers see an average CPC of $0.80.
• Ads driving traffic to links outside Facebook saw an average CPC of $1.08.
• Ads driving traffic to links within Facebook saw an average CPC of $0.70.

Source: Social Fresh survey

Also, here‘s a good Quora article on how to drive down CPC rates on Facebook. It’s also good to know that your past performance (CTR) is the most important factor. Here’s the simple math:

See, every Pay Per Click campaign is a gamble for Facebook. Every time a PPC ad is shown and not clicked Facebook is losing money. This puts engaging advertisers in great demand.

For instance, a campaign with a click-bid of $1 from an advertiser who is averaging a .05% CTR is worth LESS to Facebook than an advertiser who averages .15% with a $0.34 bid.

Source: How are CPC and suggested bids calculated? on Quora

The post Stats About Facebook Ads: Click-Thru Rates (CTR) & Cost Per Click (CPC) appeared first on Places to Play.

1. Decide on a destination.

In my case, I want to first start running ads that get a decent CTR, so I’m sending them to the homepage URL. I’ll be using the Google URL builder to track the campaigns in Google Analytics, but that comes later.

2. Decide on a budget.

How much are you willing to spend total? What’s your daily limit? Plan on spending at least $250 if you want to see results (according to sources – sorry no link).

I’m testing with a daily ad budget of $50, which may be low. My hope is that I’m currently only testing and once we see better results, we’ll put more money in.

3. Decide what to test.

You can test too many things on Facebook ads. You can test the headline, copy, and image of the ad itself, and there are 10 targeting options you can test too. Testing everything at once doesn’t make sense, because you have no idea what’s working and what’s not.

Since I have a pretty good sense of who I’m targeting, I’ve decided to keep that locked in and test the ad headline and image only. Since I’m testing two of each, that results in 4 different variations of the campaign. Should be a good start.

4. Set a max CPC bid.

I’ve read in multiple places that it’s a good idea to set a higher max CPC on your ads so they get approved and shown faster and more often. Then, once you have a decent CTR (of over .15%), then you can drop the max CPC and let it ride. If you can’t get above .15% CTR, drop the ad.

5. Check daily, drop underperforming ads, add new tests.

This strategy from Quora. Makes sense, yeah? Wish me luck!

The post Testing Facebook Ads appeared first on Places to Play.

1. Help someone today – it will make you happier and more productive.
2. Develop a daily routine.
3. Deal with something only once.
4. Take a nap.
5. Keep a journal with you at all times.
6. Learn to use the word “no” more effectively.
7. Avoiding the snooze button once and for all.

In case you didn’t realize, my blog is my “journal”. It’s good for keeping track of things that inspire me or resources I want to go back to. Unfortunately, it’s not great for keeping track of all the things I’m doing or working on because I can’t share everything I do at work (I really wish I could, and some day will definitely be doing this).

The post 7 Simple Productivity Tips Backed By Science appeared first on Places to Play.

You have to take into account that perhaps as you grow older, you feel less of a need to answer questions unless you’re really good and know that people need you. Regardless, I think it’s amazing that in the developer community, people who are older not only find the need to help and teach the younger generation, but they’re actually outperforming them.

I feel like this isn’t the case with all industries. I would love to understand how you can make all industries work that way, where the older generations are not only engaged in the trade, but continue to learn and teach younger generations. I feel like the general workforce would be happier if that were the case.

The post Older Workers Should Continue to Learn and Teach More appeared first on Places to Play.

It was at night, and there was one inflatable pirate ship. About a third of the people were dressed as pirates and the everyone else was wearing all black. I liked somethings about the party, like dressing up as a pirate. I didn’t like other parts of the party, like the cop out ninja costumes (few were really cool).

That was the moment I decided to kill off the ninjas, and go all in on pirate. The pirate party would be a celebration of free will, nature, and camaraderie. It would start during the day. We would have not one, but two pirate ships (otherwise, how could we battle?). We would pre-fill 200 water balloons and hide them in trash cans until the battle mid-way through. We would have plenty of eye patches, bandanas, and temporary tattoos for the people who won’t put effort into dressing up.

That spring, all of this happened and more. 7 years later, it continues to be an annual party. The Pirate Party is my legacy.

You have no idea how happy that makes me, I put so much love, effort and thought into this party for three years. A big thank you to this year’s students who captured the party’s essence:

Here’s a time lapse from 2012.

Other random facts:

• For the last two years, invitations to this party were extended to all alumni through the school’s alumni association.
  
• The first two years, it was in the middle of North Quad. The slip and slide was added the third year when it moved to Green Beach.
• The first few years, too many guys enjoyed wearing eye liner (including myself).
• Not ready to grow up, I continue to host Pirate Parties in LA (haven’t in a while…).
• One of those was on a boat out of Marina Del Rey called the Tiki Mermaid.

The post This is my legacy. appeared first on Places to Play.

Brilliantly Breathtaking

Contagiously Cheerful

Daringly Delightful

Explosively Extraordinary

Fiercely Fabulous

Gallantly Groovy

Hauntingly Happy

Immeasurably Impressive

Joyfully Jubilant

Kindheartedly Kinky

Lovingly Luxurious

Marvelously Mind-blowing

Nonchalantly Nerdy

Outrageously Optimistic

Perfectly Pleasant

Quaintly Qulaified

Religiously Righteous

Simply Splendid

Tremblingly Terrific

Unbelievably Uplifting

Vividly Vivacious

Whimsically Wonderful

X…

Youthfully Yummy

Z…

The post Alliterations ABC appeared first on Places to Play.

Seemingly, most of our crew made it to our meeting spot by 5am where the party bus picked us up. I’m not sure exactly how long it was for, but most of got some solid shut-eye for the first few hours of the ride. About 2 or 3 hours before arriving in Tempe, AZ, people started pouring drinks, which is when my Saturday started.

We arrive at the hotel around noon, check-in, and head straight to Wet Electric. An epic 8 hours later, we go to an after party, and end up capping our night off at the strip club across the street from our hotel. I didn’t take a single picture this trip, but good thing my awesome friends made sure to capture a few of the moments!

If you want to see more photos from the party, search #wetelectric on Instagram.

Wet Electric was one of my favorite events for these reasons:

• Small size – short lines to get in, get drinks, go on rides, and never too packed on the dance floor.
• Day time – partying in the sun is the best.
• Water everywhere – with the dance floor being in the wave pool you could never overheat from dancing. When the beat dropped, people would start splashing each other, all while dancing. Epic.
• Swanky Tunes – As much I respect Eric Prydz, I felt like Swanky Tunes had the best set at the event.

What was my favorite part of the event? The part that went WOMP WOMP. Ya know?

The post Wet Electric appeared first on Places to Play.