Gaia Community: Aeon's Blog

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

http://aaron.gaia.com — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:22:44 GMT

I found something interesting on the web the other day. The Knight Foundation is sponsoring a contest to fund the development of online projects that would improve local online news and deepen community engagement. When I first saw the site and read the goals of the project, I immediately thought… ‘Where is the online resource where I can get comprehensive and unbiased political information about what’s going on in my local district?’

Well, there is none… so I put in a proposal.

The more people that I can get to view, rate and comment positively on the proposal, the better chance I have of getting it funded. I think it’s an idea whose time has come and I would appreciate your assistance in getting it considered as a viable plan by the guys at Knight.

So if you can, please take a look at my proposal (link below) and rate or comment on it:

My Proposal: The Open Government Project

Thanks!

-Aaron

Tags: government, change, community, open source

Join Me this Saturday

http://aaron.gaia.com — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:25:53 GMT

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know that I'll be teaching one of my Energy Awareness classes at a dance/performance/sound meditation event at Bala Yoga this Saturday. The event is sponsored by zaadz. Come out and suport local talent and say hi!

http://events.zaadz.com/1785/barefoot_dance_perfromance_and_sound_meditation/1850

Hope to see you there...

-A

Tags: dance, energy awareness, events

Weird Names

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:24:07 GMT

Well, we made #10 ;)

http://ypulse.com/archives/2006/12/weirdest_social.php

Tags: weird, social networking

From Transformation to Manifestation

http://aaron.gaia.com — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 17:55:31 GMT

Well, I knew it would all make sense by the time I was thirty... so here I am and I was right.

Yes, I admit it, I haven't been blogging a lot here at Zaadz. I think I had this notion that I wasn't supposed to be mixing my personal life with the 'techie' stuff until I at least had that categorization thing worked out, but hey, the split between our business and spiritual identities is something we're trying to heal here anyway right? So here we go.

It's been quite an eventful year for me. Probably one of my best. And when I say that, I don't mean that everything was happy and good, rather, it was replete with challenges and opportunities for transformation.

Unlike most people (as far as I can tell) I'm a bit of a change addict. If things aren't changing quickly enough in my life, I tend to get bored. So for me, dramatic life-altering circumstances are welcomed with open arms, and luckily for me, with this year heraling the fabled 'Saturn Return' period I've been hearing so much about for the past several years, I've had no lack of them.

So, a little background... From Wikipedia:

The Saturn Return is an astrological phenomenon that occurs in a person's natal chart at approximately 28–30 years old and again around the age of 58–60. The planet Saturn takes approximately 29.5 years to orbit the Sun; when it returns to the exact degree along the ecliptic it occupied at the time of a person's birth this is referred to as their "Saturn Return".

Saturn is symbolically/astrologically associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness, heaviness, and hard lessons, among other more positive things such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, and order – this is why astrologers believe that the thirtieth birthday is such a major rite of passage and is considered by many astrologers to mark the "true beginning" of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, responsibility, ambition, and full maturation.

Typically, Saturn return can be a challenging time for people when circumstances come about that force large changes and challenge them in a manner that might catch them off guard. Luckily for me, I have this knack for 'surfing the currents' (see The Tao) and I was well aware of the flavor of what was coming for me several years in advance.

And therein lies the beauty of this transition for me. Even though the past year may look tumultuous from an outsiders perspective, the experiences and challenges that this year have brought for me have firmly rooted me in my truth and the path before me is clearer than it ever has been.

Last weekend was a sort of 'rite of passage' for me. I attended a rather exclusive party in San Francisco (I could tell you about it but then I'd have to kill you) and used the whole night as a journey to discover what this new phase of my life is bringing. It was an absolutely wonderful experience. I'd love to share more about my insights and dicoveries but that would probably be better saved for a future blog entry. I can tell you though that it has evrything to do with: community, relationships, sensuality, energy, intentionality, consciousness, and... well, love. (I threw that one in for you Scott)

Incidentally, I got a vedic astrology reading and it only confirmed this whole transit for me. I just got through a 7 year period of transformation and expansion am now entering into a twenty year period of manifestation into the material world.

Wow... 30-50, a whole twenty years' time to implement my vision... I just hope I don't get too bored ;)

Tags: community, relationships, sensuality, energy, intentionality, consciousness, love

True Beauty

http://aaron.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 05:44:45 GMT

ok, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen...
(and speaking of, we're gonna have the ability to easily add videos to the site soon!)

Tags: beauty, perception, distorted

Hope for Myspace?

http://aaron.gaia.com — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:19:26 GMT

I've never been a big fan of the whole myspace thing. In fact, just yesterday I cracked up reading this hilarious post on vox about myspace that was favorited nine times and thankfully hasn't yet been removed for it's use of explicit language.

But after getting forwarded this link today, I wonder... is there hope for the myspace generation after all?

Tags: myspace, zaadz

Pincus don't know Zaadz

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 23:48:54 GMT

In the wake of the recent buzz about Mark Pincus' re-takeover of tribe, I sent him a message on tribe letting him know I was happy that he was back and that zaadz was open to collaboration with the new tribe.

Mark's response?

"hey aaron, thanks. what does your company do?"

ok...

I pointed him in the direction of some info about zaadz and how we played into that whole tribe exodus thing, but haven't heard anything back yet. I was actually surprised that he hadn't heard about us but my guess is that Mark has been out of the scene for a while and that was why he decided to leave the company in the first place.

I've always been a fan of tribe but with the direction that it's taken, it really alienated its core demographic by hiring a corporate exec and trying to go 'mainstream' without considering the impact those decisions would have on tribe's biggest advocates.

Pincus' return to the company has prompted comparisons to Jobs taking back Apple, but I'm not sure if Mark is that visionary. I get the sense that Mark thinks if tribe can become 'cool' again, that's all they'll need to survive, and I'm not sure that is the case in this market.

I'm eager to see what comes of the takeover though. I have some ideas for how they could take what they have and leverage it but I'm going to save those ideas for zaadz ;)

Tags: tribe, mark pincus

Bad queries will getcha

http://aaron.gaia.com — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:10:25 GMT

Well,

In the past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of slowing down a bit. Since we launched biz and events, we decided to take a little time to go back over the code and clean things up.

I just updated the mail system today. Not too much in the way of new functionality. The really groovy stuff in under the hood.

Now, I know the majority of you out there aren't tech geeks... but Josh introduced me to this cool little utility 'mytop' today that lets you see all of the active queries going to the database. Well, I tell ya, I was surprised to see certain 'devil spawn' queries running upwards of 20 seconds before they completed.

I spend most of this morning tweaking queries and indexes and now the site is much faster... especially the mail system.

I'm happy. Lots more to come. Pretty soon I get to work on tweaking the site design ;)

-A

Tags: zaadz, tech

Feng Shui Goodness

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:00:53 GMT

So, this post is a little late. My Feng Shui experience went very well. We started out with an analysis of my Chinese Horoscope. Master Yau started out by telling me everything I needed to know about my life including an analysis of my personality, relationships, business, children and more. Apparently I'm not supposed to get married until I'm about 36. I'm also supposed to date women who are much older than more much younger than me. Sounds good to me.

The most important part of the reading was my elemental balance. In Chinese Medical theory, we look at the 5 elements and their properties and balance in the human energy system. According to my profile, I'm high in water, relatively balanced in fire and earth, and low on wood and metal. In terms of Feng Shui, this means that I need to fill my space with more wood and metal items and less water items to create a balance that works with my energy.

The beautiful piece of artwork pictured above is what happened when Master Yau started to do his work on the space. Each space has 8 areas on the compass that are set when the structure is built. These have varying degrees of luck from luckiest to unluckiest. My most lucky places seemed to be kitchens and bathrooms (red) and my unlucky areas were right smak in the office, bedroom and gathering areas (purple). No problem though. That's what Feng Shui is all about.

He suggested plants, guardians and other tips to offset the negative effects of the unlucky spaces. I know you can get the little Feng Shui creatures really cheap in Chinatown but I've decided that I only want to get things that I really love, so I've been gathering these items slowly.

Last week, my beautiful Jade Pixiu came in the mail and today I received two metal Kylin protectors for my office. They really hold the space together. I also just got a new desk for my office, an amazing organic shaped couch, and a low natural wood table. The space is really starting to come together!

My ultimate vision (I had this inspiration while sitting on the couch which has now been dupped the 'epiphany couch') is to create a collective of like minded people here in LA to host gatherings and events for the purpose of teaching and sharing knowledge in wisdom and community.

If you happen to be in LA, please join me at my first event this Friday, Tantric Beat. I'll be teaching an Energy Awareness/Qigong class there.

More to come...

Tags: energy, pixiu, kylin, feng shui

Health & Fortune Here I Come!

http://aaron.gaia.com — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 04:28:58 GMT

Well... I was going to wait until I added categories before I started posting about random, non-zaadz stuff, but hey, I'm too excited.

I'm going to get my brand new apartment feng shui'd by a real live asian person! I have this great yoga-inspired place in Santa Monica. One of my favorite thing about it is that it has these beautiful high ceilings with exposed wood and wood beams. I'd like to post some pictures but I am currently without a camera.

Anyway, I'm choosing a different theme of my life to focus on each month and this month is about 'environment'. I'm brining the elements into my space now: hooking up the water filter, air filter, getting natural spectrum bulbs, bringing in plants, looking at fountains, etc.

So today, as I was hanging upside-down in sirsha-asana I remembered that I wanted to get a crystal to put on the beam to disperse the energy that focuses along those lines in the living room and bed room. So, of course, I immediately jumped online and looked up feng-shui crystals. Man, the Internet hasn't evolved quite enough for me yet. The sites selling feng-shui crystals were kind of scary. Certainly no amazon.

But I did find this guy advertising on google and he happens to be in the Los Angeles area. (nice site, I know). So I contacted him by email and he called me like an hour later as I was hacking into a Japanese Pumpkin. Now if that's not auspicious, I don't know what is!

He's coming over on Saturday to do a consultation. A real live master in my place! ;) I even get to pay him in one of those cool red envelopes. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Tags: feng-shui

Neither Rain nor Snow Nor...

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 05:02:06 GMT

Well,

Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a couple of hours off of the work I was doing on the new zaadz directory to enable editing of comments. About 17 hours later ( yes, I stayed up until 3:30AM last nite =/ ), we have the ability to edit comments for 15 minutes after you post them.

It would have been a simple project but I wanted to get the text editor to load inside of the page. Man, debugging javascript sucks. But it's super cool when it all comes together.

Enjoy!

Tags: zaadz, comments

Images in Blogs

http://aaron.gaia.com — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:53:04 GMT

Well, it's finally here. You can now easily add images to your blog. This was done mainly as an incentive to get more people to upload stuff to zaadz so we can get that cool new file server. Also so I can upload weird pics that have nothing to do with what I'm actually posting!

Much thanks to Rob for putting this one together. And no, we're not done yet. We'll be integrating multiple images into the editor next.

Also notice the neato widget for editing your blog entry properties. Next up... categories!

Tags: zaadz, images, uploads, meow

Spellchecking is HERE!

http://aaron.gaia.com — Sat, 13 May 2006 17:04:07 GMT

As you may have noticed, there's a new AJAX spellchecker inside of those text boxes we use to write mail, posts blogs, send messages and other stuff. I've been waiting for this one for a while ;)

Many thanks to my brothers at TinyMCE who put together this cool editor and the peeps at Digital Ventures who sponsored the development of the spellchecking plugin.

The code was originally made in php and I converted it to ruby with the help of a very old ruby gem called raspell that interfaces with my old friend Aspell for the checking and word suggestions.

Yes... I realize there are a few oddities with certain words being marked when it might be appropriate for them not to be, but this plug goes a long way in helping those of us who are spelling challenged ;)

I would promise the improvements to the interface and the personal user dictionaries (which I have planned) but I have to remember to focus on some of the bigger initiatives that I have on my plate right now for zaadz.

Enjoy!

Tags: ajax, spellcheck, aspell

Zaadz and the Conscious Playground

http://aaron.gaia.com — Sat, 13 May 2006 16:54:20 GMT

Well... By some odd coincidence, two of my worlds collided last night.

I just moved back to LA and have been trying to get my feet down on the ground here. A friend told me about an event called the conscious playground (happening on a wesak full moon) that was going down in Venice. So she pulls up the flyer online and I hear, "hey, zaadz is on here".

What?!?!

Lo and behold, our icon was on the bottom of the online flyer (albeit not linked well)

I called Brian up and asked him when we had decided to sponsor this event... "Oh, yesterday" was his reply. Apparently with our recent blast of magazine ads, we are now well known in the area, especially in LA, and these people contacted us about sponsoring the event, along with a bunch of other local, conscious businesses.

I went out to enjoy the music and the vibe at the conscious playground last night and found more than beautiful people that were there. As a result of my recent life transitions, I was feeling like my work at zaadz and the work I was doing on my spiritual path were beginning to separate from each other. The universe has been pointing me in the direction of people, events and music as of late and it's taken a toll on my ability to sit focused in front of my computer to get my work done.

My experience at the conscious playground was amazing because I felt a bridge being created between these two worlds. I got a chance to represent zaadz (in my old skool zaadz t-shirt) while being introduced to some amazing musicians and lightworkers. I have more confidence now than ever that I'm going to be able to weather this transformation with grace and bring zaadz along for the ride.

A couple of neat things to note about my experience as it relates to zaadz.

The post on zaadz about the event was done from a blog. That's cool but we're cooking up our own events area where you can post and search for local events in your area by date and by region and we'll be launching that by as soon as next week. I'm REALLY excited about that. I used to use tribe to find local events but with their recent shift, the volume and quality of events posted there seems to have attrophied. I can't wait to see that energy applied to zaadz!
When I needed to get directions for the event, I typed in 'conscious playground' in google. You won't believe what came up as the first result.

Life is good.

Tags: los angeles, events, conscious playground

Welcome Back

http://aaron.gaia.com — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 09:19:07 GMT

Yes... I know I haven't said much in a while.

I've been working 'behind the scenes' with a bunch of cool people from top secret organizations we are partnering with. Don't want to spill the beans yet, but you could probably guess at least one of them. ;)

The big news for the day is pods. See that new tab up at the top there? Pods are our new group site technology. Right now most of what you can do on the pod sites is engage in discussions with other users around topics of interest. But we've got a lot more planned.

The pod sites and related technologies are going to be our main focus for the next couple of months. Of course, you'll see improvements to the rest of the site as well, but a lot of the focus will be around what we can do to make the pod sites more functional for groups, organizations, individuals and ... businesses.

So, if you're not part of a pod yet, go find one you like and jump on the bandwagon!

Tags: pods

It's the little things that count

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:34:27 GMT

I just got my Burning Man tickets delivered. The envelope was a little fatter than I would have expected. When I opened it, there were some extra goodies in there: an atomic fireball and a lemonhead... whee!

Although I don't really eat candy anymore, it just goes to show that someone put in a little extra effort to make sure I had a good experience, and that they actually care.

One of the things I love most about development is the ability to respond to user feedack within a matter of hours. For example, on our zaadz tribe, someone mentioned that they didn't want to have the flag on their profile and I was able to create an option for that and turn it around within an hour.

This is the kind of thing that fires us up and it's why we were so successful at our last venture, eteamz. (notice the z!)

Every suggestion is important to us, no matter how small. So, let us know what you wanna see.

Tags:

CSS Anyone?

http://aaron.gaia.com — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:32:25 GMT

With the recent tribe exodus, things have suddenly gotten a lot more exciting here at zaadz.

My personal challenge right now is figuring out how to split my time between the UI improvements I've been wanting to do to make content more globally accessible and the basic code churning that needs to be done to release our "pods" functionality.

That leaves me very little time for actual design work (which I love, BTW). So I'm getting the sense that it's time to spread the zaadz and get some help in this department.

Zaadz is looking for a part time designer with a high level of CSS experience to do some immediate design work on certain areas of the site. One of my main priorites right now is to figure out how to address the "stark white" issue, which I personally find to be rather hilarious. (more on that here)

My initial thought is to create both white and slate grey versions of the site in css and then put a dynamic css selector on the page so users can switch between the "light side" and the "dark side" of the force. (so to speak)

So, you wanna work for zaadz? Message me.
http://jobs.rubynow.com/jobs/show/171

Tags:

Exodus of the Tribes?

http://aaron.gaia.com — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 01:39:55 GMT

Hey all,

This is my post on the recent goings on at tribe. I am a tribe member and have been for a long time. In fact, tribe was one of my main inspirations in designing the community we're bulding at zaadz.

The thing I love most about tribe is the people. It seems/seemed to attract the edgy, alternative Burning Man type crowd. These are the people that I owe my own personal evolution to as I spent much of the past 5 years 'finding myself' while dancing to techno music under the full moon in the middle of some desert in southern california.

When Brian and I came together to create zaadz, we had the intention of creating a community for people who were seeking... spirituality, self-expression, fulfillment, success in life... or whatever you want to call it. I came at it from the alternative, fluffy, spiritual side; Brian came at it from the more grounded, practical, business side.

Turns out, that makes a pretty powerful combination.

You might notice some references to capitalism or, in particular, the merging of spirituality and capitalism on the site. Some people are put off by that, but guess what? it's very intentional.

If there's anything we should know about living in this world in the 21st century, it's that if something is going to be successful in the long term, it must be sustainable. Tribe is an example of a great idea that just wasn't sustainable. I'm not saying that it couldn't have been or that it won't be in the future, but the vision with which it was created has fundamentally changed because making the money the site needed to stay in business was a hindsight.

I won't get into the details. You can read a little about my thoughts in my last blog post.

I just want to say that the recent changes over at tribe are a dissapointment to me as well. Fortunately, I'm not as impacted by them as some because I'm building my own social networking site ;)

While I mourn the loss of the alternative 'edge' at tribe in their decision to go mainstream, I'm elated to be the foster parent of thousands of tribe users who 'get it'. This site is built for you and we're here to honor your feedback and comments... not ignore them.

Just so you know, we're doing everything we can to serve the users who are coming over from tribe. We have a limited set of tools right now, but we're pushing to get certain pieces of functionality launched that will pave the way for more interactivity on the site. In fact, this morning we decided to alter our current development plan so we can launch our tribe/group functionality by Mid-February, much sooner than we originally anticipated.

I'd love to tell you more about our plans and what's coming but I don't think I can cover it all here. Please leave your comments or message me persoanlly and I'll get back to you with any details you'd like to know.

We'll be in touch.

Peace,

-A

Tags: zaadz, tribe, tribes, exodus, development

Towards an Integral Zaadz

http://aaron.gaia.com — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:13:08 GMT

Brian was on this rant the other day about zaadz and silos. At first I thought he had just drank too many of those superfood shakes he's been into recently but then he showed me Nick's very interesting blog about going beyond the silo with social networking.

Basically, what Nick is talking about is the difference between a site that has a very specific focus and therefore limits itself to a niche audience (silo) and those with a broader focus and therefore, a more diverse user-base (perch).

First of all, I just want to make a distinction about who zaadz is serving. When we first came up with the idea for zaadz, we talked about creating a community for 'spiritual' people. Unfortunately, the word 'spiritual' normally conjures up a vision of groups of monks sitting in silent meditation or perhaps, like Nick mentions, a bunch of idealistic vegans.

Our big realization is that 'spiritual' doesn't have to be put into a box (or a silo). We believe that spirituality is about following your soul's purpose, whether that's about doing yoga, spinning poi or creating the next big thing on the web.

And speaking of the next big thing, yes, it's true that social networking is going to blow up over the course of the next year or two. I would expect there to be hundreds of social networking sites popping up in the near future. Of course, it would be nice if there was some kind of standard for managing my global profile across multiple sites, but then who's going to come up with that standard and how is it going to be adopted?

In my personal opinion, that's not going to happen. What will happen is that 100s of social networking sites will appear across the web landscape and the ones that will survive will be the ones that are providing real value for their customers.

I've seen it all play out before. Do you know how many free web based email services there used to be? Now there's maybe 3 main ones because they are the ones that survived the market. Yep, the internet is still a market. I won't go off on a Brian tangent but it does take money to support these free services and that money is coming from somewhere.

So how will Zaadz survive the social networking boom and come out standing on the other side?

We have a solid business model. Free services are nice but at a certain point, all businesses have to consider their bottom line. We figured that out a few years ago. It was called the .com bust.

I mean, I love tribe.net too but look what happened. Mark Pincus, the founder had a pure vision to create online community. The idea was great, it got really big, and now you've got some ex pepsi / procter & gamble exec trying to figure out how to make money off of the thing.

Better or worse than starting with a both a financial plan and the passion to create community?
We're creating an ethos. Far from a box, an ethos simply conveys the values of the community we're trying to build. Much like Burning Man sets up a container within which people can freely express themselves.

So what's the ethos of zaadz? Basically we're trying to raise the center of gravity and encourage people to be passionate about the lives they're living and inspire and empower others to live fully and make a difference in the world.

Far from the traditional, 'meat market' approach that most social networking sites have adopted, we stand for change in the world, and you end up getting conversations like this on the site. (check out the comments... neat, huh?)
We're going to be inclusive.

We keep getting requests for tools that will allow people to import their existing blogs and content from other sites into their zaadz profile. Believe me, I'm working on it right now.

By integrating tools that other sites have provided to share content, (other blogs, flickr feeds, 43things goals, etc) we open up the silo even more. It's my belief that in doing this, we'll create a standard where it's imperative that you open your software up to the public or you risk losing your audience to 'yet another login' syndrome.

So, in conclusion... zaadz: silo vs perch? - I dunno. I like to think of zaadz as a city - An exercise in building intentional community online.

-A

Tags:

Mysterious Me

http://aaron.gaia.com — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 03:49:40 GMT

Hey all,

I just had an amazing weekend. This amazingness was brought about by my friends at the Landmark Forum. My burning Man buddies have been trying to get me to go for the longest time and I finally bit the bullet and did the beginning weekend.

What an awesome ride! It's like they bring you through a transforative experience of... well... something akin to enlightenment just with the power of words. An amazing seminar that must be experienced to be appreciated.

Anyway, it's given me a huge boost of inspiration in my life as to what is possible for me.

Then, out of the blue, someone called me who I've been meaning to get a tarot reading from. The pivotal card in the reading was the AEON card. It's all aout stepping forward into owning the responsibility for the direction of our lives. That's the boost I got from the forum this weekend and I'm bursting forth with some power! ;)

I feel very grateful to be supported in this effort by a bunch of beautiful poeple. We've just hired 3 new programmers. Please say hi to Francois, Jake and Rob. They are REALLY excited to bring the zaadz to life and they're doing it for all of you beautiful people.

I love you all,

-Aeon

Tags: