Brandon Franklin was great in summing up his thoughts from the Gangplank Futurespective. First, let me say that we are thankful to have people that care enough about Gangplank to think about it’s future and actively engage in dialogue on where it is going.
Response/Solutions to “Why I Don’t Work at Gangplank”
1. We are completely willing to offer more permanent desk space for those that want to work out of Gangplank HQ on a regular basis but have equipment that is not portable. We don’t advertise it, because we don’t have unlimited space. If you have a need always ask. Worse we can say is no. The idea of a few floating monitors isn’t bad. If anyone wants to donate a few we will gladly put them to use.
2. Like #1 we don’t advertise because of logistics, but we have a plethora of hubs/routers and gladly can accommodate wired connections. Just ask.
3. Im willing to create a Twilio/Ruby script to call and wake you up every morning. We are working on a shuttle bus (seriously) and when it is available we can transport you in. We do however have strict “pants” policy between the hours of 8am and 5pm. 
If there is some technical/logistical issue keeping you from working out of Gangplank HQ, please feel free to ask if we can fix it for you. We can come up with creative solutions most of the time.
We are working on a 24/7 model for Gangplank. More often than not we are there the better part of 12 hours a day. Weekends are where we need the most help. If you are interested in helping keep us open on the weekends let me know.
Response to “Gangplank the Brand”
Let me put it most simply by stating “YES WE HAVE A BRANDING PROBLEM”. Everyone does. Branding is the most difficult thing for any business, person, organization to do. There is a reason that even the best known brands (say Coca Cola) spend hundreds of millions of dollars re-enforcing their brand.
Gangplank *is* a place, BUT it is also *MORE* than a place. I think its short sighted to believe that the two must be mutually exclusive. The core concept of a community involves a place. I think “movement” might be a bad word and part of what is hurting the branding efforts. It is more a collection of people driving towards a goal, community with a purpose perhaps.
I think the name is actually decent and has lots of intent and purpose. It’s definition…
Gangplank – a flat plank or small, movable, bridgelike structure for use by persons boarding or leaving a ship at a pier.
We are a small and flexible community trying to act as a bridge into a new economy and way of thinking in Arizona. In the same way that a gangplank loads people onto boat to take them to a new location.
I think that saying I support Gangplank is viable, you even did it as part of your criticism. It might be the BEST way to express it, because it usually invokes dialog about what that really means. It gets people participating in the discussion.
I think a movement without leadership would be a bad thing. People certainly could get behind the thought of Barrack Obama as president. Im pretty sure he belonged to a fairly large organization (Democractic Party) and that there was a central head quarters with a definitive centralized leadership. That said, Im not sure Gangplank could be any flatter when it comes to leadership. Much of it’s success has been defined by the people involved making things happen much more so than any leadership could dictate.
To be perfectly clear, Integrum did not start Gangplank. They share some of the same owners but one is not a direct relationship to the other. In fact, when Gangplank was first started the people that hated it the most were many of the employees of Integrum. If you don’t believe me, ask them for yourself. Most of them quit working for Integrum because they were unable to reconcile the fact that some of the partners in Integrum would invest time/money into something like Gangplank instead of putting those resources into making Integrum a products company.
We definitely support things that are not Gangplank. Don’t believe me ask Dave Bjorn. I was more than willing to give him feedback on doing something very similar to Gangplank in Downtown Phoenix. Never once did I say that it should be called Gangplank. Contrary to popular belief Gangplank is not interested in owning anything. This is NOT a zero sum game. We want to see the Sun Cooridor (Phoenix to Tucson) be a mega region for the creative class in the next 20 years. Anything we can do to help that we are interested in.
It is clear we need to make significant changes to our branding. We are lucky to have some great marketing/PR companies within Gangplank that are already starting to review, simplify and emphasize things in a better way.
Lastly, I want to say the criticism is GREAT. No offense was taken. We know people say horrible things about us all the time. I wish they would do the fantastic job you have and articulate them in writing and engage in dialog with us. It is the only way we can improve. While we don’t agree we need to change our name or start an alternative movement. We absolutely agree we are doing a poor branding job on a lot of fronts and we are working to fix that.
More from Derek Neighbors
- Gangplank in Downtown Phoenix
- Dysfunctions of (Agile) Teams
- What Do You Spend Your Time On?
- Clean Up Your Own Yard, Before Cleaning Up The Neighborhood
- Maybe Teacher Unions Are Part of the Problem
You Might Also Be Interested In
- The FruitGuys – Changing the World One Apple at a Time (Tomas Carrillo)
- My Predictions on the Future of SEO (Chad Nicely)
- April Entrepreneur of the Month! (Tomas Carrillo)
Boing! Th’ Gangplank galleon shuttle will be th’ hippest thing since Frankie Smith’s Double Dutch Bus, bet.
That would be amazing to have a pirate ship shuttle…
Let me begin by saying thank you for this detailed response. I know it has been a crazy week.
I also very much appreciate you addressing my technical needs.
I think our sticking point here is the word “movement”, which you pointed out might not be the best choice of words here. The Democratic Party is not a movement, it’s an organization. And Gangplank is perhaps more like that than a movement. Which really strengthens your points, I think, because organizations DO need (and have) leaders.
I also want to be clear that I knew what Gangplank referred to. My grandparents had a houseboat when I was a kid so that’s what my original thought about the word was
but my ONLY criticism of the use of the word would be as a “movement” name. As an ORGANIZATION name, I think it rocks.
Even as a “community”, I think it makes more sense. Gangplank the Community, Gangplank the Organization, Gangplank the Place…those all make sense to me. And it makes the idea of being a “Gangplank(e)r” also make sense to me.
So I think we actually agree. And I guess it really is just a branding issue, like you said.
Anyway, regardless of the details, I sure am glad Gangplank is around.