OK, let's experiment

When I wrote software for a living (back in the 1980's - yes, there was computing - and even some computer networking - before the Web ;-) I spent a lot of time trying different paths to get to a desired result. Programming required experimentation. Things I thought would work sometimes did not work. Sometimes I could figure out why, but it was also not unusual to simply try something else to achieve result X instead of trying to understand precisely why an earlier attempt to achieve X didn't work.

I am discovering that crowdfunding -- and in particular trying to spread the word about our crowdfunding project http://www.indiegogo.com/notes-from-when -- is much the same. It requires experimentation. Sometimes things just don't work as expected.

It's not always a bug - sometimes it's simply a different choice by the programmers who wrote the tools. I've just discovered, for example, that when I add an image in an update to indiegogo, that image is automatically added to the project's gallery, so I didn't need to add it separately after all.

Sometimes, though, it is a bug. YouTube offers an annotation editor that is supposed to let me add a link to my fundraising project within a video. The link shows up OK, but it's not clickable. I'm not the only one who's experienced this problem, according to forum entries http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/XzrDZb-jdGo.

I'm also discovering the value of images and experimentation with images. Programmers write programs largely in text - most if not all source code is text. But there's as much complexity - as many options and opportunities to benefit from judgment and experience - in the choice and manipulation of images as there is in the choice and manipulation of data structures and algorithms. Luckily, I'm married to a professional graphic designer (http://krisimagery.com/) who is also really good with computers :-)  For instance, on my own I would have simply posted a simple text example of the kind of automatically generated note my project software will produce once the project is funded and the software is implemented. Instead, on her advice and with her expert help, I was able to upload a very nice image of the note instead, both to the project and to the project's facebook page https://www.facebook.com/NotesFromWhen. Turns out I was effectively experimenting with the project's visual marketing options when I asked her about the text, even though I didn't know it at the time! That's OK with me. Just like programming, marketing this crowdfunding project requires experimentation.

I'm taking tomorrow off for the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!