impassebreaker

With a little help from, umm, Dr. Google, seems that a song called "Been Here Before" by Jeremy Engik was included as an MP3 in winamp. Random coincidence? Evil plot? Artful noodling? You decide. Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQQydvAjVYI.

There are more than you might expect. (It also depends on what you mean by "hack.")

Take a look at http://lawyersongithub.com. This is a list of lawyers with github accounts. Now, having a GH account doesn't make you "hacker" or professional programmer, but a couple of people on it have left law to focus on programming. I know several other lawyers not listed there who left firms to focus on software development.

You'll find a range of experience. There are lawyers who were programmers first, went to law school, and then went back to programming. Others had skills before law school or learned while practicing law and have incorporated into their practices, to varying degrees.

Agree. It's a fantastic book. The "Electronic Bard" (one of the stories in the Cyberiad) is one of my all time favorites. It features a computer that learns to write poetry. (The translation is masterful, too). Don't read it while drinking coffee as you will snort it out your nose. It's brilliant and wise and you're right -- few writers match Lem.

There's an interesting back story to this team that you won't find on their website. One of the founders spent 5 years in the Marines in Somalia after receiving an engineering degree, then went to law school, and returned to Somalia to start a law practice. And he writes software on the side.

Who cares, you ask? This is someone who understands the importance of the rule of law -- having seen life without it as a soldier and as a lawyer -- and what it means to live in a country where promises can't be enforced. The rest of the team is just as impressive (and modest). That experience appears to inform the philosophy behind the project:

"Given that the aim of Project Ðouglas is to demonstrate the utility of ÐAOs in everyday applications and to advance the state of the art, it is our view that compliance functionality is not only an added feature - it is a prerequisite. Public, corporate, institutional and government buy-in will require it."

It'll be exciting to see what's next.

Congratulations Dennis, Casey & Preston.

p.s. -- and when you feel better, if you're interested in (paying) freelance work and have the right skills, send me an email at stephen dot impassebreaker dot com. I can't guarantee you that it will be a ton of work or a ton of money. I can guarantee you that depression will not be a strike against you, if you can do the work. But get help first and don't screw up deliberately and get yourself fired.

First -- you are by no means alone. It may not make you feel any better but you are in good company. Most people suffer depression at some point in their life, some worse than others. Lincoln, Churchill -- this famous VC, Brad Feld: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/12/dont-fight-depressio...

If your grief is preventing you from functioning, I agree with people below who suggest therapy and medication. Why not give that a try? There's no shame -- it shows courage, and will help you grieve. Meditation and exercise are great eveners too. And being unemployed and depressed could make things even worse.

Good luck and warm wishes. It will get better. You will find peace and you will recover.

Actually built something that sort of deals with this. it's at www.impassebreaker.com. IB compares bottom line financial positions and if there's a match, you're both told what the number is. A match is any case where what you are willing to accept is greater than or equal to what they are willing to pay. If no match, they don't learn your bottom line and you don't learn theirs. It was built initially for dispute resolution but salary negotiation works fine.

Thanks so much for your your recent feedback and comments about ImpasseBreaker. It was extremely useful. I've added a variety of new features to IB, along with two test accounts so people can check out the platform anonymously before creating an account. And a new term-sheet wizard allows users to create term-sheets with non-financial terms to accompany negotiation invites.

All feedback is welcome. I'm particularly interested in how non-lawyers view the platform. I've heard from plenty of my fellow lawyers. I'm curious to know what non-lawyers think. Is this something that you see being using person to person or b2b, without a lawyer? Or in its current version does IB feel like a lawyer's tool/platform? This is a very general, subjective inquiry, but the gut feedback is quite useful.

From a law firm economics standpoint, something like ImpasseBreaker may be perceived as a threat. If it works in the disputes context, a lawyer loses money. So although the dynamic is present in many, many negotiations -- negotiating over nickels and dimes, while everyone knows what the final number ought to be -- this is a problem that lawyers may not all want to see fixed. I'm curious if and how this will work for non-lawyers.

Many thanks,

Stephen

https://www.impassebreaker.com. If you click on the "about us" button on the front page you'll find links to some reading (in the answers) that you may find interesting. Feel free to email me off-line with any other questions -- stephen at impassebreaker dot com.

Interesting. A couple of observations, from grappling with some of the same issues for our negotiation site.

Definitely agree that you wouldn't want to share the seller's bottom line in the event of a match. This would lead to built-in buyer's remorse. I gather this may have been for initial proof of concept, not long-term functionality. But you also need to think about the impact of masking the algorithm (see below) so it can't be reverse engineered (on the flip-side) and consider what information can and should be given about the process.

Agree with one of the comments below that slowing down the result may make for better user experience. This was (surprising) feedback we received for impassebreaker.com -- people felt "let down" when the match was revealed too fast. There's a game component here, and a big splash may be important. Then again, it does seem a bit deceptive to show a progress bar when the result is already calculated.

Subjective observation, but based on a decent amount of feedback. Users need to trust that the process is fair. Trust is hard. If you place the bottom line in context -- e.g., show your user what the comparative price is on other sites -- would that context make the bargaining process smoother and build more trust? Might it also make the site stickier? If your provide the comparison shopping data, then people won't need to leave the site to do comparison shopping. That may or may not make you more appealing to sellers, so perhaps it's not on point. As it stands, the process seems arbitrary -- I totally understand that this is an early sketch, but if/as you build it, I'd keep this in mind. I can't remember the cites, but I believe there's some research out there that suggests that people are more inclined to trust computers in a negotiation than other people. So you have a potential advantage if you make the playing field seem a bit more level. At the end of the day, what you may be building is a trust machine. Maybe it's different, but that's how I've thought of our platform.

Negotiation style is culture and language dependent. The verbal dynamic that works in the Suk won't necessarily work in Omaha. One isn't better than the other, of course. But if the goal is closing sales, you need to keep context and language in mind, and at a very granular level. Words and how they are presented are key. Maybe that's part of what the system learns.

Best of luck. There's some potential here, long term, for something very cool. I'll be interested to see where you take this.

. . . and have added a green login/register button that clicks open a modal window with login options to address your first comment. Thanks for this! After you stare at something long enough (as I have) a fresh set of eyes really awesome.

This is pretty awesome. Just created an account and it looks really useful. I'll spend a little bit of time playing with it today and see if I can integrate. Nice work! Thanks a ton for the suggestion (and good luck with this)! Stephen

Thanks -- I'm going to work on the the presentation style and put together some use cases. You're right -- the blue is hard. I need to move the description above the carousel and outside of the slides. There are also some decent cartoon tools I've found that may help for the examples. So will definitely refine this. Greatly appreciate your input--very helpful, on the mark, and much appreciated!

OK -- I've pushed a slide-show of screenshots showing IB in action. It's accessible via the "IB in action" link on the homepage. I'll add a bit more (and I like the animation idea) but hopefully this will give you a better idea of what IB does. Thanks again for the feedback. Very helpful!

I am going to work on that. Made some minor style changes that I just pushed to try to clarify that the buttons allow for login and added a "tell me more link" under the login buttons that leads to an "about us" page. The platform is actually fully functional -- the founding team has pretty solid technical and subject matter expertise -- a software engineer/lawyer and a couple of practicing lawyers who negotiate for a living -- but your comments point to a weakness in design, and that is critical.

Many thanks! Screenshots and more explanation to follow.

Stephen

Thank you -- that's very helpful. The FB and LI login links are fully functional but you're right it's not clear. We've also thought about animation or a video. Maybe screenshots will help -- I like the idea, and we can do that ourselves; we're completely bootstrapped have to be careful about cost. Many thanks for the feedback! Stephen