With all of the iPhone apps out there that allegedly “help you with your business” or “revolutionize the health care industry” or “entertain you” it’s nice to finally find an App that can:

“Save Lives!”

Enter I am Choking, the only free app, that I know of, allowing users to let anybody and everybody clearly know that they are choking.

Has it really taken us until 2010 to build such functionality? As a child, I remember fearing that I would one day come across somebody who was choking only to A. not understand that they were choking and B. not know what to do about it.

Sound familiar?

The I am Choking app solves both of those problems and because I work with him at my day job, I was able to catch up with the force behind this application, Mathias Kolehmainen. Below is a behind the scenes look into the mind of somebody who is clearly scary awesome:

Exclusive Interview Alert

@hallicious – I love the I am Choking App and can’t wait to use it in a real world scenario. I see it as the first transcendental application on the iPhone. Why did you build it?
@mathiask – Not to get too philosophical, but before I am Choking, there was no use for your hand held device should you ever find yourself choking on a piece of steak or a noodle. I wanted to make the hand held device relevant in such a situation… Much like if you have no clue where you are, you can pull out your phone and find a way home. I am Choking has integrated the iPhone into the choking experience, making it relevant in a dire circumstance.

@hallicious – That’s amazing. What motivates you, as a world class innovator?
@mathiask – I would say that technology motivates me as a world class innovator. Technology has given me and my family so much, over the years. I feel compelled to give back until it hurts.

@hallicious – Phenomenal. Last question… Now that I am Choking has debuted on the iPhone, to rave reviews, are there any plans to port it over to Android?
@mathiask – I’ve thought about porting it to Android and if anybody at Google wants to provide me with a Nexus One, I’d be happy to make that happen.

@hallicious – Tremendous. Mathias, on behalf of myself and all three of my regular readers I’d like to thank you for your work as a humanitarian and for your time with me today. I know I’m really looking forward to finding out what’s next from Thought Shaping.

There you have it, folks. Click here to learn more about the free app that is changing the world or find it from your iPhone by searching “I am Choking.”

Show a ten year old kid using the product like a pro with limited effort on YouTube.

This idea hit me when my Xbox 360’s DVD-ROM drive crapped out, and I turned to YouTube out of desperation. At that time, I had to decide to either open up the box to fix it or not for fear of damaging it irreparably. I had just received Rock Band II for Christmas, so you can imagine how big of a decision this was for me. Then I stumbled upon a video of a ten year old kid opening his Xbox 360 with very little difficulty, and I had an epiphany:

If this 10 year old kid can do something that I thought may be hard, then there is absolutely no reason why I could not do it…

Call it a sense of pride, but I refused to be one-upped by some kid out there in YouTube land. So I manned up, spent an entire Saturday afternoon tinkering, and in the end fixed my Xbox 360. After that experience, I have been thinking about this phenomenon for some time, and have come to the conclusion that it might be the way to go for companies trying to hawk their wares in an on-line environment.

How a 10 Year Old Got Me to Spend Money

Case in point, I have owned turntables since 1996. I made the switch from analog decks: Technics 1200 mkIIs to digital turntables: Technics sldz 1200s in 2004 and recently started looking at solutions that would allow me to play songs directly from my computer. Enter the Numark NS7 and the Vestax VCI 300. After researching on-line and refining my personal requirements for my inevitable purchase, I stumbled upon this video on YouTube:

And that’s when I knew that I absolutely had to have a VCI 300. Not only is Dj Stereo Kid rocking the funky beat, but he’s mixing songs without headphones on, while doing, what used to be, complex tasks with the tracks he is playing. And he’s making it look ridiculously easy. So, by my newfound mantra: if he can do it, then I can do it because he’s just a kid and I’m some bigshot 32 year old white dude with an overactive sense of myself.

Contest Idea

The next time I’m in charge of launching a consumer product, I plan to have a contest where the age limit to enter is ten years old. I’ll give away free product to a bunch of ten and under kids so they can demonstrate how easy it is to use… especially the advanced features. Then those videos will live on YouTube forever, as well as my company’s blog, because my real demographic will consist of individuals who are much older than ten, who have expendable income and look for product demonstrations by ten year old kids on YouTube to make purchasing decisions.

Don’t everybody run out to try this before I get a chance to, either. It’s my idea…

The Edelman Trust Barometer came out this year and although the market may be up from this time last year, trust is down. Especially in social media, as Tom Foremski points out on his blog Silicon Valley Watcher. The stat in question:

Trust in information from friends and peers, “people like me,” dropped by 20 points, from 47 to 27 percent.

Which leaves me wondering a couple things. A. Who are people like me? And B. Is Social Media really about trust or is it about connection?

Let’s explore.

People Like Me

I grew up in Southern California, have a metal plate in my face, graduated from the United States Air Force Academy, served in Iraq, am a project manager/intrapreneur, received an online MBA, prefer to drink malt liquor, work for a health insurance company, own turntables and am into turntablism, have a wife and two kids, love electronic dance music, enjoy carne asada burritos more than any one man should, play video games, exercise three times a week, follow the Minnesota Timberwolves, blog, tweet, and have driven the same car for the past nine years…

Who are all these people like me that I’m supposed to trust?

Because I haven’t found one person like me, despite my efforts, for the past 20 or so years. My wife is probably the most like me person I’ve found and even we have heated arguments over trivial things, meaning we don’t always see eye to eye. I have found people who I share interests with, but who I would not classify as like me. Which leads me to…

Connection

I don’t believe that we’re ever going to come across a bunch of people like ourselves. What we will find are people who share interests with us and the great part about the internet and social media is that we all seem to put those answers into tiny, searchable, little boxes in our profiles. That’s the key to me…

Am I trusting a “friend” because they ate at a restaurant that I have wanted to go to, and confirmed that it was good, if I then go to it? Do I have to trust that my “friends” only fan cool Facebook pages before I fan them myself?

Or do I do these things because I want to, and use social media to connect with people?

I’ve watched movies/TV shows, gone places, purchased expensive and non-expensive items and used social media to connect with people before, during and after each process. It’s all about the connection and the ensuing conversation, in my mind. We both did or are doing something and can talk about it together. That’s what social media allows us to do now.

So is there any trust in social media? Was there ever any? Does there need to be?

Does Software as a Service (SaaS) truly scale? Just a question I’ve been thinking about recently. Not to knock SaaS companies, because I think that the good ones are definitely needed. That being said, most large organizations have varying requirements for the same type of tool. I would argue that in a lot cases, an SaaS company simply won’t provide all of the features needed to satiate a large organization.

And if that large organization is smart, they understand that they don’t need to put up with that.

For example, with all of the Twitter applications that currently exist, there isn’t one application that does exactly what a few different departments need in my large organization. Which begs an important question:

“Should we create our own team to build tools that truly work for us?”

Obviously I’m biased, but I would argue that in this day and age, the answer is yes more often than not. I realize that the approved solution has been to outsource as much as possible for some time now, but I think that mantra needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis in lieu of being accepted as a default. Here are some reasons why:

scalability One time development costs that can be depreciated over time may be cheaper than recurring monthly fees for your user population

inspiration I’ve seen first hand how working on “cool” projects can serve as an intrinsic motivator and recruiting tool

corporate knowledge Creating marketable specialties outside core competencies could provide added value to your customers

agile project management Six month dev cycles begone. Loose ideas can be brought to market rapidly and iterated on once they are tangible

the open api It is easier than ever to tap into external data sources and use those sources to do interesting things

overhead My organization is paying for the inefficiencies of my vendor’s organization… At some point I need to ask why

Opportunity Cost

I realize that there are a lot of factors in a make or buy decision in any given situation. I’m just arguing that making things has become less onerous than valuable in certain situations. I opened this post with a question about scale, and I keep coming back to it in my head. If I have thousands of associates, it just doesn’t scale for me to pay a monthly seat charge per person, if I want everybody to have access to a specific tool.

I do love the idea behind SaaS for a lot of reasons. However, it may not always be the right option in the long run.

Over the last decade, I’ve noticed that there is one thing that separates the pros from the junior varsity squad at work. Pros take ownership of the things that they work on… It’s that simple.

Taking ownership means that you understand the buck stops with you. Taking ownership means that it’s not OK to not know what’s going on, or how everything fits together. Taking ownership means finding people who can help you when you need it and caring enough to do it until it’s right.

As a project manager, I’ve dealt with a lot of people who throw things over the fence. Like it’s somehow OK to expect somebody else to solve their problems for them. And when things inevitably fail, fingers get pointed, conversations get heated, and nobody wins.

It’s really nice to find other people who take ownership of things, because I would argue that it’s a rarity in the working world… There’s a lot of risk in taking ownership, because you could come up short when the chips are down, and that final hand is dealt.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.