Everything Girl

There really isn’t one word that adequately describes our Man of the Moment, Derek Powazek. Some would call him a web-guru, others would call him an expert on new media and modern publishing. He has been involved in everything from Blogger to Technorati and founded a couple of zines along the way, most recently the print-version of Fray, which collects personal stories and shares them with readers around the world. Other labels that apply are writer, consultant, husband, dog owner, and Californian. After a lengthy email conversation and the opportunity to pester him with questions, I learned that he’s also pretty funny. The word I’m choosing to describe him, however, is one I suspect he’d appreciate: storyteller. Here’s his story:

Derek and Bug (Photo by: Heather Powazek Champ)

First, tell our readers a bit about yourself in your own words.
Hi there. I’m Derek. As I write this, I’m on vacation by a lake in a tiny town in Ontario, Canada. Today I paddled a canoe. Now I can hear crickets. My life is not usually like this.

You’ve been involved in so many things; various bios credit you with the design of Blogger’s “B,” the branding of Technorati, co-founding JPG magazine, founding Fray, and consulting with HP on their new MagCloud products. Where do you find the inspiration for all these projects?
My career has taken a weird path, but it all seems logical in hindsight. I graduated from UC Santa Cruz in ’95 with a BA in Photojournalism. When there were no jobs at newspapers, I took a job doing website coding. When I didn’t like the designs I had to code, I became a designer. When the sites I designed crashed and burned, I became an entrepreneur. See? Logical.

I get my inspiration from anywhere I can, but mostly from people’s stories. Looking back over the projects I’ve started or worked on, they’re mostly about places that give everyday people a voice. Those voices inspire me (as well as infuriate, amuse, and astound me).

For that matter, when do you have the time to sleep, let alone balance all that you do with a marriage and caring for your dogs? Walk us through a typical day in your life?
I don’t really have a typical day. Some days I’m jumping between meetings in offices, others I’m working at home with a dog in my lap. Some days I’m rocking the white-collared shirt, others I’m pecking into my keyboard from a café. I’m extremely lucky that I’m able to support myself as a consultant right now, because it means I get to have a flexible schedule and a pile of interesting problems to think about. I love it.

As for sleep, insomnia has been a life-long companion.

“I’m extremely lucky that I’m able to support myself as a consultant right now, because it means I get to have a flexible schedule and a pile of interesting problems to think about.”

You keep a blog and you’re also active on Twitter. Do you think microblogging will eventually supplant conventional blogging?
The funny thing is, what’s happening on Twitter right now is a lot like what blogging was like in 1998: short posts, no headlines, no permalinks, lots of cross-discussion without context. As blogging went mainstream, it changed into something more like newspaper columns. 800 words on my relationship with cabbage. So Twittering is really just the rediscovering of blogging 10 years later.

For years now, “Web 2.0″ has been a common buzz-word. Bearing in mind that many of our readers are not particularly tech-savvy, can you give us your definition of this term?
Noun. Short for “please God don’t let this all blow up like last time.”

I’m a survivor of the first boom/bust cycle of the web, and I can tell you that the ideas we had then are the ones we still have now. All that changed was the business model. In the ’90s it was all about building audience and figuring out the money part later, which surprisingly rarely works. This time people are being smarter.

If “Web 2.0″ has any meaning at all, I think it’s something about giving tools to regular folks to make stuff. Flickr is nothing without your photos, for example. It’s about empowering people. But that’s always what the web’s been about.

Much of your work has been related to modern forms of publishing. Do you think printed books are a dead form? What’s your vision of the future of publishing?
Books are definitely not dead – they’ve been around for far too long. Think of them as an entrenched monopoly. They won’t go away, but they will be challenged. In the end, we’ll find a balance. Some kinds of experiences will happen best in books, some in more temporary printed matter (like magazines), some in a ebook reader (like that bastard child Kindle), and some will live happily and completely online. Which things live in which places is going to be what we figure out in the next decade or two.

In the not-too-distant future, the price of printing a book or magazine on demand will be as little as publishing a hundred thousand. When the major publishing companies can no longer rely on economies of scale (printing thousands of books at once for cheap) or their monopolistic distribution channels (because the web routes around them as damage), then publishing will be rediscovered by everyday people. I think that will cause a renaissance in publishing. Personally, I can’t wait.

Can you tell us a bit more about MagCloud?
MagCloud is a beta product from HP Labs, where I work as a consultant. The idea is: What would happen if people could make magazines without all the pain? So MagCloud takes care of all the printing, mailing, and subscription management, leaving you free to just do the fun part: making a magazine.

I can tell you that after about fifteen years of making zines, online and off, this is the tool I’ve been waiting for.

And also, please tell us more about Fray?
Fray’s been my labor of love for over 12 years. It started as a website where people told true, first-person stories. Then it became a performance series with storytelling open mics all over the world. Now it’s a printed quarterly of true stories and original art. Fray has been my teacher, my confessional, and sometimes even my lifeline.

One of the Fray-related projects of yours that really caught my attention was the 90-second story via Flickr. Are you a particular fan of oral history, storytelling, or the spoken word?
I believe that “I” is the most important word in the English language. Because when you say “I think” or “I believe” or “I know” you’re owning your story (instead of the story owning you). This can be a transformative experience for the storyteller as well as the listener.

when Flickr started hosting videos, and those videos had a 90-second limit, I thought it was the perfect way to open up Fray to some video storytelling. The group is small so far, but the videos are fantastic. It’s a web-based version of what happens at Fray events.

Writers and storytellers tend to also be readers. Were you a reader as a kid? Are you still? What books/stories have really made an impact on you, and what are you reading now?
Can you keep a secret? I was, and still am, a lousy reader. I like magazines, but I almost never am able to get to the end of a book. I just get bored. It’s horrible for a writer to say. I’ve written a book or two myself. But I’m a very visual person. An endless series of black text on white pages just makes my brain fuzz over. That’s why Fray is so intensely visual.

That’s fair. How about listening, as opposed to reading? Podcasts seem to be taking over the universe – or at least the ‘net. Do you like the medium? Do you have favorite podcasts?

I love my podcasts. Favorites: This American Life, Studio 360, and Radiolab.

And as long as we’re talking audio, what kind of music do you listen to when you’re working?
If I’m doing visual work like photography or design, I can listen to just about anything. If I’m writing, I’ve got a playlist called “Wordless” that I listen to, that’s all songs with no lyrics. Half of everything I’ve ever written was composed to DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing.”

“Fair’s fair when you’re both creative types.“

Your wife has been featured in our pages before, and is also involved in many creative pursuits. Is it a challenge when both members of a couple are creative personalities? Do you squabble over quiet time, or funky scheduling needs?
We’ve got certain rules. If she comes in the room and I say “I’m writing,” she leaves me alone. If we’re walking down the street together and she sees something that catches her photographic fancy, I’ll pull up a chair, because it can be a while. Fair’s fair when you’re both creative types.

In our wedding ceremony, we didn’t do the “in sickness and in health” routine. We vowed to be allies, partners in crime, characters in each others stories. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Many of our readers are also bloggers, and/or aspiring writers. What advice would you give to someone trying to gain exposure online?
Never look at your stats. Don’t ego search. Ignore your referrers. Mathematicians care about numbers, you care about words. Write what moves you. If your audience doesn’t like it, get a new audience. Remember that words are not precious – there are always more. Everything you write will suck at first. Keep working on it. The only thing that makes you a writer is that you write. Never stop.

Is there any question that no one ever thinks to ask in interviews, that you really wish someone would? (And what’s the answer?)
“What’s something you’ve learned recently that you wish you’d known a long time ago?”

That the two sides of your brain share a single line out, and one side is verbal and incremental, while the other is non-verbal and visual. It’s that non-verbal side that hits you with flashes of inspiration and wild connections between disparate ideas. That’s why there are countless stories of inspiration coming in dreams. So if you’re trying to solve a problem, get up from the computer, take a walk – do anything to stoke that non-verbal part of your brain.

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Derek Powazek keeps a blog at Powazek.com, or you can follow his Twitter feed. And don’t forget to check out Fray at http://fray.com.(Photo Credit:  Heather Powazek Champ)

Melissa A. Bartell earns her living by writing articles for an SEO marketing firm, and is working on her first novel. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Senior Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About page, or visit her website.

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