Paul and Joel and I have been working on redoing the web site to make it more collaborative. Picture this…Anyone can post their own regimen on Acne.org, complete with videos and product suggestions. Then the rest of us can try their regimen and rate it. The best regimens will naturally float to the top. We can then program the Acne.org homepage to automatically update to show the community’s favorite regimens right there when people log in.

Is your mind blown? Mine is I am so excited about the opportunity the Internet affords us to share our experience with each other and really boil down what works and what doesn’t.

We’re also working on a product suggestion page where you guys can suggest products to be made, at what percentages, and including what ingredients. Again, the rest of us can get in there and suggest changes to the product until we come to a consensus, or something approaching that. Then I can either make the products for us, or we can ask other manufacturers to get on it!

We also have a doctor-listing page on the back burner where everyone can recommend their dermatologist or plastic surgeon (scars). We’ll probably wiki this page only in a positive direction. For instance, you can send a doctor a thumbs up, but probably not a thumbs down. It feels better to stay positive with the doctors ratings.

I just wanted to muse for a moment on my next intention insofar as acne is concerned. Yes, the Regimen works well at clearing and preventing acne, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could come up with a natural, holistic way to clear the skin? There is something deeply satisfying about getting to the root of an issue and addressing it from there.

To this end I am simply pledging to do my very best to explore options to get us to a place of understanding the root of acne. Scientists and researchers know quite a bit about how acne is formed and how medications can combat the process. Now it’s time to take it to the next level and develop a clear understanding of why this process begins and is perpetuated. I can’t wait to figure it out. I am also going to be opening up Acne.org pretty soon so that we can all collaborate on this issue much more efficiently. Acne better watch out

When I came out with the benzoyl peroxide pretty much everyone loved it. Then you guys gave me the feedback that you wanted non-paraben preservatives. I changed to non-paraben preservatives and pretty much all of us have been happy clams ever since.

Then I came out with the cleanser and pretty much everyone loved it. But then a few people gave feedback that they wanted it more moisturizing, so I added 10% more moisturization and pretty much all of us have been happy clams ever since.

Recently I released a moisturizer as well. Again, at first most people loved it. But now a few people have been letting me know that the current moisturizer is giving them some flakiness after a few weeks of use. I’ve also gotten other complaints about the moisturizer. So I had a talk with our manufacturer today and we are going to do two things to the moisturizer. (1) We’re going to swap out stearic acid for another ingredient. Stearic acid is most likely the culprit as far as the delayed flakes go. (2) We’re going to sap out bisabolol for licochalcone, an even better anti-inflammatory which is beneficial in the lipase process and thus beneficial for acne.

What’s my point? Just that I appreciate your feedback. We’re in this together and together we are going to keep making the best acne treatment products on the planet. To this end, Joel and I are making a form that we’ll put on the web site soon so that more and more of you can let me know exactly what you like and what you want changed. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Thanks everybody!!

I had a total brainstorm moment at the gym today with a friend. I’ve been redesigning the products and they are a little blah–see the attached pic for a rough mock-up of how they’ll look. I like them because it’s handwritten now, but it is bordering on generic. So I was thinking, “how can we get people involved and how can we incorporate a little color?”

And then it came to me. What if I asked you guys to submit “what do Acne.org products mean to you?” artwork. I want to leave the parameters pretty wide. It’s not so much, “make an icon for a cleanser” or “make an icon for a moisturizer”, but rather, “what do the regimen and acne.org products mean to you?” Any kind of artwork is welcomed, but here is what we need so we can print it:

max size: 1.5″ X 1.5″
300dpi or greater
any amount of color is fine
hand drawn/painted and scanned is absolutely acceptable

I’ll be choosing 3 designs for now. One for each product. I can offer the makers of the winning designs a year of free product (12 cleansers, 12 BPs, and 12 moisturizers, and a body buddy if you want one). Sound fair? If you’d like to submit artwork, I need it fast–like in the next two days would be preferable because these are going to print soon. You can email them to dan@acne.org. Looking forward to it!

After being off of BP for a few weeks and starting to see imperfections arising, last night I put on a very generous amount of BP and applied it gently. I woke up this morning and looked almost completely clear. BP is truly amazing. I’m sitting here wondering if I should put BP on again during the day today and I think I probably will. By tomorrow I should be back to completely spotless at which time I’ll go back to my Sal Acid samples in the morning and BP at night. That combo kept me incredibly clear for many weeks and I think it’s how I’d like to proceed into the future. That is, until I can figure out a holistic way to clear acne from the inside. That might be the next project!

Still trying my SA product in the mornings: I hardly even want to say it just in case I jinx it, but after an initial 3 non-inflamed comedones my skin has gone back to clear and quite frankly is looking really good. It feels healthy and I’m perfectly clear of anything active whatsoever. (Fingers crossed that I don’t wake up tomorrow with a zit! lol)

Another thing that’s interesting is my skin is quite flaky, but in a different way from benzoyl peroxide. Salicylic acid is keratolytic–meaning it removes the top layers of skin cells. At first I thought the medication itself was balling up, and I still think it is to some degree, but I now think much of the continued flaking I’m experiencing is simply my top layer of skin goin’ bye-bye. It is a distinctly different feeling from the flakiness I get with benzoyl peroxide. It makes sense that if this peeling is also occuring on follicle walls that the walls of the follicle will have a tougher time becoming stuck together and leading to a microcomedone in the first place.

Wikinomics: I am still reading this incredible book. I am bursting with excitement with how we can bring collaborative Web technology to Acne.org and allow all of us to pool our intelligence. Wow. Great stuff.

I’m getting a little worried. I have a few tiny zits, one close to my nose, and two under my lips. They are not inflamed, so that’s good, but they shouldn’t be there at all. I have been using only my new salicylic acid in the morning, and still using the BP at night. I’ll keep you guys posted, but I want to use only a Regimen that keeps me completely clear, so the bar is set very high.

In a bigger picture framework, nothing ever seems to work as well as the Regimen. I have tried countless things over the years and every single time I go back to the Regimen. At some point you would think I’d give up and just do the Regimen, but for some reason I can’t stop experimenting. This is probably because I don’t want to use the Regimen forever! My dad still breaks out and is 60 years old, so the prospect of using the Regimen for another 30 years is tiring

So, I get my hopes up each time I try something new and they are consistently dashed. But I remain positive and forward thinking. Perhaps the SA product will work. I’ll keep trying for a while. Even if it doesn’t work, if we can get some collaborative technology implemented on Acne.org, we’ll be able to pool the collected learning of all of us, alongside the best minds in medicine, and perhaps come up with alternatives to the Regimen that also work 100% or close to it. Alternately, we may simply discover that the Regimen is the best we’ve got right now. In a worst case scenario, hopefully we can at least come up with alternate Regimens that work well enough so that people who are allergic to BP can use something that approximates the success of a precisely performed benzoyl peroxide Regimen.

Oh yeah, and my brain is exploding in oh so good of a way. I have been reading Wikinomics, which is a book on how collaboration on the Internet is changing everything. It’s putting into words a lot of what I’ve always wanted to do and given me mass ideas. A quick run-down of Wikinomics’ main tenets:

Openness: Companies are becoming more and more open and working with their customers and with each other to produce products and intellectual property that is much better than what they can produce themselves. I think we can definitely do this. Imagine an open letter to large skin care companies on Acne.org where we can ask for them to make us specific products. Then as the products come out we can rate them, and due to increased openness, we can rate the companies as well since we will insist on knowing their environmental and social policies.

Peering: History is replete with heirarchies. I don’t know about you, but I have never been big on authority figures. There’s something inherently weird about it for me. In my eyes we are all peers, and none of us is better than anyone else. What peering refers to is the end of heirarchical structures where companies are structured top down and simply present the public with a finished product or intellectual property. With the advent of the Internet, however, we can now all work together to create content and share it with each other. An example we could use on Acne.org would be personal blogs where people can post their acne treatment story along with pics and links. Perhaps Joel and I could organize these blogs in such a way that everyone knows which blogs are most widely read, and thus informative. We are already doing a lot of peering on Acne.org with the messageboards and gallery, but we can take it a lot further I think.

Sharing: Acne.org grew out of this concept 10 years ago. I never charged for the Regimen or the videos of me doing the Regimen or for any other info on the site. I decided from day one to share the knowledge and let go of the outcome. I’m tempted to say this is the wave of the future, but I think the wave is already upon us. The most successful Internet sites are largely free and involve a huge amount of sharing. Think flikr, myspace, technorati, etc.

Acting globally: The world is unifying like never before, and in large part due to the Internet. Just look at all the countries represented on the Acne.org messageboards. This is simply a fact of the future and a very cool one. Making sure to think outside of the boundaries of our own country helps us bring in the peering and sharing of the world community. So yeah, that’s pretty much where my mind explodes Now I just need more people to help implement this stuff! But I am hopefully hiring someone today.