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I will not names in this post for two reasons. Its primarily due to the fact that I initiated an Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) on this particular project and secondarily, because I only mention products, brands and services I would actually use. This was back in the days when Robot in the Woods had a real mission: To publish robot art and fiction in a book form. I had hired 5 science fiction authors to write their interpretations of a robot in the woods (and why it is there in the first place). I sought to be a publisher, not a writer. I still have some faith in my build-a-book project, but incorporatization is required to legally sort out any royalties owed to the crowd of participant.

Anyway, while I was in this silly mode of hiring people off a trusted and popular freelance aggregation site, I decided to comission a market study. The actual name, as recorded in the employer message boards, was: “An Independent Assessment of the Y-YYYY Industry.” I wanted a 20-30 page pamphlet-like, science-y economic analysis as written by an expert.

So, Mexico-Man convinces me to take this project in another direction, rather than keeping the results to myself while making money on the project. This required significantly more work, time and money for marketing. I can comment on his marketing strategy without revealing details from the stupid NDA I signed. He basically told me he was going to collect lots of random emails and send out a bulk e-mail. Spam makes me queasy and paying for spam makes me queasier. This feels like a spam operation. Even if it does make me money; it seems illicit and wrong. However, it is money to support my Geography PhD school dreams, but the money is greasy with SPAM juice.

Here’s the thing. The product itself is not that bad. The artwork looks professional. And since this project as an authentic assessment of the industry, some of that information did make it into the product. The guy seems real and has me convinced that we can make a great deal of money off this project.

While all this is going on, he lured me out of the system and then costs keep piling up. And then makes me feel like crap when I try to clarify. Kind of like a used car salesman. Huffy and insulted, requiring appeasement from the customer. Finally, he gave me a cost estimate for the entire project, something I have been asking for since April. Yet, it seems strange that he has completed so many projects and doing this repeatedly, he would have a better sense for the costs of these projects.

Given our current contractual obligations, beyond the NDA, at a popular and trusted freelance site, three options are present:

1. Amend Project Plan to submit a counter on from Gmail, based on the actual contractual specifications in the project plan, xx% of the gross revenue for the actual amount specified, minus contribution for what has been paid $xxx. (I wrote the agreement and he did not contradict me at any point.)

2. See it through, keep track of it, research the guy, and toy with him if he shows signs of a crooked spammer.

3. Approach the popular and trusted freelance site for conflict resolution.

4. Trust the guy as he has a vested interest in maintaining his good standing with the popular and trusted freelance site.

Anyway, I hope to use the freelance site more. I had some hopes of making lots of money on the Internet, but I want to do it more like Seth Godin. Authentic. Real. Quality. These are not the qualities of this product and his only leverage at this point is to release it to embarrass me.

How do I free myself from this contract with the devil 1.0?

I was just checking out Animoto, a new web-service that edits your pictures into a video and synchs them to music. Fantastic service! Check out these two videos about robots.

Occasionally, a science fiction artist comes along who creates work that is both iconic and distinctive. For example, consider the work of Stanislaw Fernandes. Mr. Fernadandes use of color and chrome is simple, elegant and expertly crafted. Perhaps his most recognizable work is the cover art for Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End.” Please take a look at his site for some fantastic pieces including: Read more

I have been listening to This Week In Tech Episode (133) with an interview with Jonathan Coulton, from Feb 24, 2008. It is a very interesting interview with a musician who has developed a scalable and sustainable business model to support artistic endeavors in the Web 3.0 era. He caters to a niche market and gives them high quality content. This is the Robot in the Woods Publishing Model. That is, producing high quality science fiction stories and robot art.

I like that they refer to him as patient zero, because they are accepting that it is not only a viable model, but it is possible for others to do the same. Please take a listen, but in the meantime, here are a few thing I took away from the interview.

• A niche finds you, but community building is key to success. You don’t need to be famous with a 100 million people, but with 10,000 people, and if its the right 10,000, you can make a living out of it.

• Engagement is critical. You should serve exactly the people you want to serve.  That is people that like the same things that you like.    A high quality audience.

• Meritocracy: You can’t fake goodness. Great things, great content, great people and great ideas will float to the top. “I don’t think everything good rises to the top, but it has to be good to rise”

• “I wanna as many people to hear my music, get famous now, figure out how to make money on it later!” Requires an openness thats about more than just making money or getting something for free. Its about giving your access to a set of things that might interest you. In return, for the artist, a transparency about wanting support is an honest approach is required.  I love a business model that thrives in honesty!

• People still like Tangibles!

• Live and die in the niche. You can’t fake quality. You approach it with passion, doing what you want to do, knowing there are others interested in your work. You enjoy it. You are of the niche.

Please see below for the Works of Arthur C. Clarke Read more

Arthur C. Clarke passed away Wednesday, March 18, 2008 in Sri Lanka. He is best known for the screenplay 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on his short story “The Sentinel,” in which the seeds of human evolution are planted with contact from an alien artifact known at the Monolith.
It is strange that I should write about his story, “The 9 Billion Names of God,” days before his passing. In this story, Mr. Clarke gave the world a supercomputer whose sole purpose is to calculate all possible iterations of alpanumeric characters from all human languages in which God is able to be named. In “Rendezvous with Rama,” he gave us an exploration tale of an asteriod carved and converted into a spacecraft by an advanced alien race and succeeds in showing us the psychological and emotional limits human comprehension. His quote below serves as a quick summary of all his stories: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clark.

When I taught my Culture Geography Courses at Piedmont Virginia Community College, this was the first quote I posed to my students simply because it highlights the cultural and evolutionary progress of humanity. This is a theme found throughout the body of his work. Another aspect that informed his writing was traditions of zen, hindu and other forms of Eastern Mysticism. He is also credited for advancing the idea of orbital platforms for mass communications in the 1940s.

Mr. Clarke, I thank you for the work and the world you gave me!

A partial bibliography of his work is below: Read more

Robot in the Woods is proud to debut its first short fiction piece by Science Fiction author Michael Ugulini. Mr. Ugulini is a freelance writer located in Toronto, Canada. Three of his short scripts have recently won awards, including First Place in the American Gem Short Screenplay Competition (2006) for his screenplay PARCHED. For more information about Mr. Ugulini, please visit his website.

DAYS ON THE WIND FARM, by Michael Ugulini

She watched me from the crest of the hill, which overlooked the water. I had beached my canoe to rest from a long morning’s paddling along the coast, and I was ready to eat some lunch. She was maybe forty-five, with shoulder length blond hair, and wore a blue summer dress, which caught the breeze like the giant wind turbines that towered over her fifteen yards behind.

These, in fact, had caught my eye as I traversed the coast. There were at least a dozen of them spread along a wide expanse of farmland, impressive to see as their white blades cut the air. Others had told me about them, how they had changed the landscape, and were providing electricity to a town down in the valley. Farms in other parts of the country were leasing out space for these as well, as sources of income. People said it was common now to see fields of robot-workers moving their metal arms along rows of crops in synchronicity with the spinning blades above them. Read more

• Welcome to the Robot Revolution
• An Animator’s Chronicle
• Bennet RobotWorks - Amazing Robot Sculpture
• Craig Berry’s Science Fiction Art
• Low Tech Times
• Proudly Destroying All Non-Robots Since 1974
• Radrobot
• Raygun Revival - Thrilling Tales from Beyond the Ether
  RRobots - R. Nick Kuszyk - Wow, great art it is very reminiscent of an R. Crumb piece
• Suicide Bots Hot Bot on Bot Action
• Elfwood - The World’s Largest Site for Science Fiction & Fantasy Art
• A Builder of Real Life Robots
• Mr. Future

As a former Geography professor, I still think of interesting projects to work on. I have one here that I think you could Wow a Geography professor with. That is, what is Science Fiction like in developing countries. Does it exist? And the same for Robotics. How do the following nations (the United Nation’s Group of 77 developing nation) participate in Robotics and/or science fiction. What are the economic and social factors that lead to this participation (or lack thereof).  What themes emerge in their writing.  If you take on this project, please send me your results. Also, please send me a note if you find any science fiction authors from these developing nations online to robotinthewoodsatgmail.com.

The list of Nation’, from Wikipedia, are below:

Read more