Major announcement about TopFloorStudio

Dear friends,

After 10 years of working with some of the most creative and talented folks I’m happy to say that we are continuing that tradition into the future.  Greenstone Media, an Asheville company, has acquired TopFloorStudio and has my full confidence in disrupting the regional tech scene.  They will work with the utmost of integrity and innovation.  I met Greenstone Media when I asked a friend for the name of the person who did his beautiful App and Website and he told me about Nathan Silsbee, CEO of Greenstone; and he couldn’t say enough good things about Nathan.   Since then I’ve been solidly behind this firm.  Greenstone has treated many of my past clients well with nothing but good feedback. 

5 Posts that you may enjoy from Ty's 2014 writings

Trusted Sharing was very honored to sponsor a series of events that happened in Asheville in October around Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils. We had many great people including the founders of these modalities, several authors and some renowned filmmakers. Here are 2 articles that I organized and edited that you can read.


Asheville Wisdom Councils Declare our Social Contract is Broken (on System of Abundance Blog) Wisdom Council Intends to Bring Participation to Asheville’s Government ( on Asheville Grit blog)

In March we partnered with the fine folks at Peppermint, an open source operating system built using the Ubuntu (Linux) codebase. In the process of writing the story we reached out to Peppermint's partner in Africa, Marc Stephan Nkouly, and heard some wild stories. The article was picked up by OpenSource.com, they are an online publication focused on how open source is applied to different areas including business, education, government, health, law and other disciplines of life. Read the article here: Peppermint introduces cloud-based open source desktop to Africa (on OpenSource.com)

One of the realizations I had after our podcast, Spark Tech Talk, interviewed Steve Wozniak, was that connecting with your heroes in meaningful ways was possible. Most folks who have "made it" and are thought leaders want to give back and help spread there ideas even further. So one day I reached out to Harrison Owen, a personal hero of mine and the founder of Open Space (tech folks may know unconferences or barcamps) and asked him if we could do an interview. To make it a truly collaborative experience I partnered with my friends over at Mycelium project, Matt and Ashley, and they ran with the interview. Here is the article: Harrison Owen Interview: Inviting Flow and Self Organization

An on-going theme for me and my life is to work in the social enterprise space. Someone I've worked with and connected with over the last couple of years is Paul Polack. An amazing mind, a leading social entrepreneur and to say just an author would be an understatement. He is like Bill Clinton in my book. One thing that stood out to me was Paul Polack's amazing energy. At 80 years old his mind is more active than most 30 years olds I know. Read the article from January here:  Paul Polak interview about his new book The Business Solution to Poverty

Startup Product Asheville - May 21st (this Wednesday) 5pm to 8pm

I am organizing this event on Wednesday.  I hope to see and engage with you further at this event.  If you are reading this and do end up coming, please stop by and say hi and say that you read the blog.  I would love to see how many people engage through this channel with me.  :)

Here is the RSVP Link: http://www.trustedsharing.com/startupproduct

Special thanks to +Cindy Solomon +Glenn Geffcken who have helped make this a reality (and who I know are on Google +).

Also special invite to +Zacchaeus Nifong, +Ed Brenegar, +Robin Cape, +kevin jones, +Hunter Goosmann, +Sean Lally, +Matt Raker, +Sam Harrelson, +Sam Wyman, +Jennifer Saylor, +jennifer sema bruno, +Allen Gray, +Martin Carstens, +Mark File, +Wade Aaron Inganamort, +Adam J. Cohen, +Gary Charles, +Gary James, +Evans Prater, +Tyler McCall, +Shane Remington, +J Smilanic, +Jim Barton, +Maureen Scullin, +David Bourne, +Matt Raker, +Katie Kasben, +Katie Hicks, +Autumn Woodward, +Tom Heck

Here is the RSVP Link: http://www.trustedsharing.com/startupproduct

Big news! Ty has a new job.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

Nelson Mandela

I've been slowly letting it out to my confidants, friends, family and trusted network that I've moved on from TopFloorStudio. I am now the Chief Technology Officer (full-time) at a local Asheville company, Trusted Sharing. More on this later in the post. Now, it's important to note here that I've carefully worked out the plan to allow for my clients and folks that relied on TopFloorStudio's service to ease into this transition. In fact if you need services that TopFloorStudio was providing I'm sure I can refer you to someone good. Now that we have that over with; lets get into the good stuff.

Last year I spent more time than I ever have soul-searching and discovering who I am and what I am passionate about. This work is some of the most important I've ever done. After a trip to Bhutan and after a year, some answers really started to culminate. My inner-work paid off and I started to recognize patterns about my past that helped me plan a course moving forward. Here are some of the insights that came to me:

Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto reads, in its entirety, as follows:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it
and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
Working software over Comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the 
items on the left more. 

Picture found (like most of the pictures I use) from using http://search.creativecommons.org/

Ty's High Trust Connections of April

I've been spending some time thinking about the relationships I have with mentors, those wiser than myself and the ones that I really listen to and rely on regularly.  I would like to give a regular shout-out to these folks so that you can learn from them.  My intent is to tighten up my network so that there are more interconnection.

Duncan Work / 100 Trillion Connections

http://100trillion.wordpress.com/

Ed Brenegar / Leading Questions

http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/

Glenn Geffcken / New book out called SHIFT

http://www.amazon.com/Shift-Glenn-Geffcken/dp/149172661X

Mycelium Project

http://mycelium.is/

Startup Product Asheville - Wednesday, Feb 26th 5p at Asheville Music Hall

What is Startup Product Asheville?  Startup Product Talks Asheville welcomes everyone passionate about product excellence, regardless of title, industry, or stage of growth, to come together to share, learn and talk about what it really takes to produce products that people love and how to build sustainable businesses and revenue streams based on product excellence.

Register here

Register here

Announcing 4 Speakers for Startup Product Asheville Feb 26th + Help us collaborate please

February 26th 5 to 7pm, what are you doing? In honor of collaboration we've started a new event, Startup Product Asheville. This hopes to bring together different organizations and networks in the name of building out our support for entrepreneurs, cultural creatives, geeks and the creative class in general. Thank you to Asheville Music Hall for hosting us!

We have 4 wonderful speakers lined up and I'm happy to share them here as many of them have just been confirming today. We will have 1 hour of networking and 1 hour or a little more of program.

Robin Cape - will present the Collider, a collaborative space that will change the entrepreneurial landscape (like an RTP in the making move)

Bradley Waldrop - will talk about what an Lean Startup Circle is about

Craig McAnsh - signed on today and hopefully will in part give an update about Mojo, 3d printing and whats next for Asheville 

David Miller - will give us an update on the Story Worlding revolution and hopefully we will have some immersive technology at the event.

Read more about our partnership with Cindy Solomon on the West Coast here: http://tyhallock.blogspot.com/2014/01/startup-product-talks-asheville.html
and more about the spirit of collaboration that we are hoping to strike here: http://tyhallock.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-challenge-you-to-do-organizational.html

I am currently trying to partner with groups that would sponsor and help collaborate, invite your membership and generally help out. Asheville Makers and Lean Startups are the first organizations to come on board, but with your help and with my drive to make it happen we will have a truly collaborative shindig.

Also forgot to mention that Ken Hurley and Nicholas Rake will be making the music for the night.

RSVP for the event here:  http://www.meetup.com/StartupProductAsheville/

Special thanks to KP of Asheville Music Hall for sponsoring this event.  Hopefully Mojo Kitchen will be serving some food upstairs for those who would like to eat.

Launching Startup Product Asheville

Today we announce the launch of Startup Product Asheville.  San Francisco meets Asheville to help build a strong network of Startup Product People.

Startup Product Asheville welcomes everyone passionate about product excellence, regardless of title, industry, or stage of growth, to come together to share, learn and talk about what it really takes to produce products that people love and how to build sustainable businesses and revenue streams based on product excellence. 

Let's build a vibrant Silicon Mountain startup community!

Why I didn't do my New Year's resolutions: my manifesto on being different

A Manifesto by Ty Hallock

I pride myself on being different.  Here is what my Christmas looks like:  I don't think we should buy a bunch of worthless stuff for one another and so I've often been the one without gifts.  I gave myself the gift of not stressing out, which means not always going all out or doing what is expected.  But when I do give gifts (which I do frequently just not consistently) they are hand-made and from the heart.  But boy am I ever pleased to receive gifts and I try to write all my thank-you's and I've never once done this without love in my heart.

Beta testers needed - in the Asheville area

To help us private message us on our Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/topfloorstudio