Words

Words I made up along the way. Some stuck. Each one links to the piece it first appeared in, so you can see what it was for.

• 2015commute-buster

  The phone, when it is used to make the journey bearable rather than productive.

  It’s still the phone, that awesome commute-buster, but maybe in another mode. in Hacking happiness into the daily commute

• 2014hackquaduct

  A thing that has grown too big to be a hack and is not quite a product.

  The trouble is, you can end up with something that’s too big to be a hack and not quite a product. It’s a hackquaduct. in Are you building a hack, a product, or a hackquaduct?

• 2014attendingers

  People who use Attending, the event tool. A company name conjugated.

  Happy Twitter list-making you lovely attendingers! in Announcing: Twitter lists of your event attendees

• 2014startupper

  Someone doing a startup, with the cockiness of being sure the first idea is right.

  The cockiness of the startupper thinking they are completely right about their idea could be a risk. in Introducing “Founder Stories”

• 2014process-provoking

  Writing that exists to change how you and your readers work, not to be read once.

  It’s about being process-provoking for myself and others. in One hundred pieces

• 2014the away desk

  A place to work that is neither the studio nor home: at work, yet slightly removed.

  I call it an away desk—you’re at work yet you’re slightly removed. in Leading at the code-face

• 2014the code-face

  Where the programming actually happens, as the coal-face is where the coal is. Where a maker-founder goes back to.

  I threw myself back to the code-face and away from dealing with clients, back to the minutiae of bugs. in Leading at the code-face

• 2013meta-startup

  A startup whose product is startups. Makeshift, from the inside.

  When life is busy with a family and a crazy meta-startup in progress. in Higher resolutions

• 2013shedscraper

  A two-storey shed at the back of a studio in the middle of London. The podcasts recorded in it were shedcasts.

  We’re starting a new series of podcasts, recorded in the “Shedscraper” at Makeshift. in Shedcast #1: Stef on the early days of Makeshift

• 2013techsplaining

  Explaining technology at people rather than making things with them.

  My answer to the conundrum isn’t techsplaining. in This is from everyone

• 2013uninvestable

  How doing many small things looks to an outsider before you have found your main thing.

  That you’re unfocused (and therefore uninvestable). It’s the opposite. in Don’t just do one thing

• 2013idea-openness

  How freely you talk about what you are working on. Something to alternate, not fix.

  Alternate your idea-openness. in Will I really steal your idea?

• 2013bump-into-able

  Findable by chance. What sharing your thinking online makes you.

  By sharing your thoughts online you become more bump-into-able. in Accelerating serendipity

• 2013makefulness

  A sustained state of flow that lasts days, not hours: a consistent drive to make, to finish, to complete by the end of the period. Being makeful.

  I’ve never found a satisfactory word for these longer periods of sustained flow, so I gave it my own name—Makefulness. in Makefulness

• 2013leaving by example

  The founder out of the door at 5.30, because the boss’s actions define the culture.

  Simple. I call it leaving by example. Through your actions as CEO/founder/boss you define the culture of your organisation. in What gets done is what gets done

• 2013work-heroism

  Getting things done by late nights and lost weekends, and the precedent that sets for everyone who cannot.

  It’s about personal work-heroism, and the precedent you just set is going to bite you down the line. in What gets done is what gets done

• 2013zombie-fails

  The projects that are not quite working but always show a bit of potential, so you never let them die. Worse than the mega-fails.

  It’s not the mega-fails that you need to watch out for. It’s the zombie-fails. in When to give up

• 2013sketching with code

  Making tiny prototypes quickly and showing them to people, one a month on average for five years. The name of the practice, and of the blog it ran on.

  I do hacks. Tiny prototypes for digital things that I show to people quickly. And for five years I’ve been doing, on average, one a month. I call it sketching with code. in 30 days of Medium

• 2013idea-flood

  The rush of adjacent ideas that arrives with a big one and drowns the simple core of it.

  Set aside the business planning and the idea-flood for a moment, and get back to the simple, basic, core idea of what your idea is about and go and test that out. in The Little, Big Idea

• 2013done-ness

  How finished a demo looks to the person watching it. The last 90% of the time adds 10% of it.

  The remaining 90% of the time will be refinement, but it will still only add 10% of the perceived “done-ness” of the idea you’re demonstrating. in The Little, Big Idea

• 2013the feature knife

  Saying no to every feature that does not help test the idea. This, not that.

  No, no, no. I call it the feature knife. This. Not that. This. Not that. in The Little, Big Idea

• 2013bumping-into-ness

  How often you happen to run into the right people. Publishing every day raises it.

  The approach improves my “bumping-into-ness” factor, because I feel like I can co-create more readily with others. in Create something every day

• 2013tentoring

  Ten-minute mentoring. A hack built at the Do Lectures.

  Tentoring is ten minute mentoring. in Hacking at Do Startup

• 2013hackcellerator

  An accelerator for hacks rather than companies: make lots of things fast, follow through only on the ones that could be a business. The idea Makeshift started from.

  Shouldn’t I be looking for a model that was a bit more “hackcellerator”? in Back to #startuplife with Makeshift

• 2012failability

  The built-in permission a hack has to fail: small enough to throw away without losing face.

  The built-in “failability” of the “hack” can be useful. in Concluding thoughts on my research

• 2009mismash

  A mashup that is plain wrong. A proposed site that would teach web privacy through funny examples of them.

  Mismash: mashups that are plain wrong. in 4IP Idea: Mismash

• 2009coincidentality

  Coincidence as a quality, set against serendipity: random events happening, versus what you make of them.

  There is a blurred line between serendipity and coincidentality that needs to be sharpened. in Charles on Serendipity

• 2009structury

  Of the structural, legal, stop-the-creativity kind of task. Best left to someone else.

  Let other people that you are working with deal with whatever structury, legally, stop-the-creativity things they need to. in 5 Counter-intuitive rules for creative people

• 2009idea-having

  Coming up with ideas, named so it can be set against the hard part, following through. Reused across five posts over five years.

  It is action rather than idea-having that is the hard part. in 5 Counter-intuitive rules for creative people

• 2009tweejay

  The DJ of Twadio, the silent radio station that plays in your head: a Twitter account that posts a track title every few minutes.

  You follow a user on Twitter (the tweejay) and every few minutes you get a music track title and artist name in your twitter stream. in Twadio - “The Sound of Silence”

• 2008hypercontext

  The multitude of contexts a recorded moment gains once it is online: the room you said it in, plus every deep link, remix and comment thread it lands in afterwards.

  Whatever people say in a video-recorded public moment means that they are now part of a hypercontext. in Hypercontext

• 2008tweetlet

  A tiny daily message about how a child-to-be is progressing. Twitter for pregnancy.

  It’s called Tweetlet. in Introducing Tweetlet - twitter for pregnancy

• 2008gobbledigeek

  Gobbledegook, geek edition. XHTML, CSS and AJAX, said to a creative business owner.

  It’s gobbledigeek. in Web 2.0 or Blah 2.0?

• 2008webtwoize

  To sell someone an upgrade on the grounds that everyone needs a Web 2.0 site now.

  Everyone needs to ‘webtwoize’ their sites. in Web 2.0 or Blah 2.0?

• 2008blah 2.0

  Web 2.0, as sold to business owners in language nobody has updated.

  I’m calling it ‘blah 2.0’ because the language that is used to describe this thing hasn’t been updated for a while. in Web 2.0 or Blah 2.0?

• 2008jargonistas

  The only audience it is safe to use a lot of jargon on.

  Don’t use too much jargon unless jargonistas are the target market. in 10 things to ask yourself about your new web site home page layout

• 2008backburnering

  What a side project gets instead of bootstrapping when the client work keeps arriving.

  Less ‘bootstrapping’ and more ‘backburnering’. in The pre-startup preparation

• 2008backblog

  The pile of posts you owe after going quiet for a while.

  A way to deal with the backblog that I’ve generated by being quiet for a while. in SXSW Backlog

• 2008the Good Rush

  What follows the social media gold rush: the year it gets ethical.

  So instead of the ‘Gold Rush’, I’m calling it the ‘Good Rush’. in From “Gold Rush” to “Good Rush” - Social Media gets ethical in 2008

• 2008de-ramble

  To edit the wandering out of a post.

  Although I think I need to de-ramble my posts sometimes. in Top 10 Usability Mistakes for Blogs - How Does Yours Rate?

Found by reading every post for words the dictionary did not know. If I coined one you remember and it is missing, tell me.