Where there's passion, there are stories

Anyone who is passionate about golf knows the backstory about Tiger Woods. Those passionate about film can tell a story or two about Fellini, Eisenstein, and Kubric. Those passionate about open source know the story of Linus, Stallman, and the stories from Revolution OS. Most serious Mac lovers know a good bit of lore from the Revolution in the Valley. Heck, those who are really into Web 2.0, or FlickR, know the backstory of Caterina and Stewart's it-was-supposed-to-be-part-of-a-game creation.

From "creation mythology" to gossip to heroic against-all-odds tales, one of the ways we judge whether someone is truly passionate (as opposed to just enthusiastic) is if they know the key people and their stories. Do your users know your story? If not, you might consider writing it down and making it public.

But what if it's not interesting? Look again. Are you sure there isn't something worth telling (and more importantly, that others will enjoy re-telling)? No? If your founder story is just...too... dull... then find a compelling user story. After all, Tiger Woods didn't invent golf. Ask your users if they have an interesting, "hero's journey" story that somehow involved your product. It may not be dramatic enough to count as actual "lore", but it's a start.

Look at your website. Do you have a backstory there?

We don't, so we're writing one -- although many of the bits and pieces of the Head First story is somewhere in this blog. Short version -- Sun tells me that my ideas about learning are bad. I tell them that their ideas are bad. That didn't go over well. I'm kicked out and vow to put EVERYTHING I wasn't allowed to do there in a book series, to prove that the learning theory was sound, just for the satisfaciton of saying, "Told you so!" I get Bert to help me, and we create and submit an unsolicited proposal, cold, to O'Reilly, who had never heard of us (we had never written a book at the time we sent the Head First proposal). Tim O'Reilly loves it, most of O'Reilly hates it. Most other tech book authors hate it too. The only bright spot was shortly after it was released when author Dori Smith, of whom I was a fan, sent me an email saying, "I saw Head First Java in the store and told my husband that 'this is the book I wish I'd written'" She had no idea (until now) how much of a turning point that was, after we'd been taking such a beating from other authors. (Some day I'll say more about the details of that first year, and why so many people hated the book.)

Oh yeah, before O'Reilly, we submitted it to two other major publishers. They turned us down. One of the editors who turned it down got into trouble when the book-he-turned-down went to #1 on the Amazon computer bestseller list. Tim has been known to "congratulate them on their fine judgement" ; )
Today it's one of the most successful new computer book series (in unit sales and revenue) since the bubble, has been on the Amazon Top Ten Computer Books each year since we started (2003), won the Jolt Cola / Software Development Award for Best Computer Book, and has survived two slashdot reviews. The whole "creating passionate users" thing grew out of our desire to teach the brain-friendly principles we use to others, and discuss how they can be applied to other things. It started as a talk to other authors and editors, then became this blog, and a book is in progress. This time, we got lucky and we were right. I'll spare you all of the other things we did that weren't ; )

Your turn.