Things about management and business on a smaller scale, and economics on a larger one.
Reminder, I’ll be at BarCamp Sacramento tomorrow.
BarCamp is an unconference (it is free to attend, users can give talks at will). I’ll do my Underpants Gnomes talk. And I can do an impromptu Rails on Ruby talk. 🙂
Unconferences are great. We should support more. It’s sort of like Lunch 2.0 only not with breakfast and dinner also.
Hope to see you there.
I’m just an engineer and I don’t know jack about PR and I mentioned this site before, but Brian Solis has a real gem of a post on updating PR for the Web 2.0 world. It also has a nice summary of the conversation/flame war so far as well as a link to a primer for morons like me.
Good stuff.
(I’m starting to recognize some of the names being mentioned from Lunch 2.0: Dave McClure, Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Israel, Gabe Rivera/Techmeme, Guy Kawasaki, etc.
Scary!)
True. 😀
There was a write-up about Tagged yesterday on TechCrunch.
We’re profitable! *Pats self on back*
The most interesting part is the comments. My reply hasn’t changed in the last six days:
You cannot single out one Web 2.0 company for doing viral marketing and not be a complete hypocrite. Either bash them all or none.
[More musings after the jump]Continue reading
Disclaimer: I worked as an engineer at Plaxo a long time ago (in internet years… in human years it was five months ago).
In October of last year, an engineering colleague asked me about this whole “Plaxo is evil. Plaxo is spam” thing. At the time I went in to a long boring lecture about Plaxo and privacy/security. (I don’t need to go into it here, you can read this to get a taste.)
After sitting through it, he asked me this simple question: “If you didn’t work for Plaxo, would you use it?”
I answered, “I’ll do you one better. I’m not going to be working for Plaxo much longer, and I’ll continue to use it after I leave.”
“Good enough for me.”
[The power of connections. The power of search. After the jump]Continue reading
Adam Kalsey and Scott Hildebrand of SacStarts are holding a BarCamp in Sacramento on June 2nd and 3rd.
BarCamp is a conference where the participants are the speakers. Show up, sign up to give a session, and get going. There’s lots of networking in the halls, food, great conversations, and you’ll even learn a thing or two.
I love the price (free) 🙂 I’ll be there, maybe you should also. Maybe I’ll dig up an old talk or or test drive a new one (no doubt there will be some PHP involved in mine).
Show your support for the Web people a little further inland and signup!
Ahh, an interesting matchup going on with a famous community-driven website:
site: Digg front page
winner: Digg users (at least for now)
I feel sorry for digg, but you know what they say:
Live by the geek, die by the geek.
I suspect, the more digg fights it, the worse they’ll lose.
(my favorite on the page: Though a lot of the others are/were quite creative. I had to laugh.)
Nikon D70, Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G
f/4 at 1/25 second, iso 500, 12mm (18mm)
Summer is here and Lunch 2.0 is starting up again. There are two events scheduled already, and from two of my favorite Web 2.0 startups to boot!
The first one will be at LinkedIn. Which is important because their founder is on the board of the company that pays my salary. We’re the second entry in their newly-born corporate blog! Next step: get Mario to blog about my LinkedIn Haikus (they really work, honest!).
The other one will Ning on June 14. Little known factoid: Ning was our very first Lunch 2.0, even if they didn’t know it. (Ahh, back in the good old days when Lunch 2.0 meant sneaking into a company’s cafeteria and sticking our Lunch 2.0 flag in the ground… or fork in their cake.)
Gina Bianchini of Ning and Reid Hoffmann of LinkedIn at Web 2.0 Expo. Two people dear to my heart. And it’s not because they’re hosting Lunch 2.0.
Oh, who am I kidding. It is. We love you guys! 😀
Lunch 2.0 is about participating in an interesting conversation over a free lunch.
If you are interested in being a diner, going to a Lunch 2.0 is really easy. Just say you’re going to attend and our hosts will deal with the fallout. 😀 Afterwards, write about it in your blog, post some photos, or produce a video. (Send us an e-mail so we can link it.) While that’s not a requirement, it’s that sort of buzz is what pays the bills when our hosts have to justify this craziness to their corporate overlords. Or, if you are a corporate overlord, host one yourself…
If you want to host a Lunch 2.0, it’s really easy to become an “eatery.” Just send Mark or me an e-mail. We really want to eat your lunch. Honest! Mark explained our philosophy best:
Lunch 2.0, much like Web 2.0, is all about being open. We welcome any companies that are interested in hosting Lunch 2.0 events 🙂
C’mon Lunch 2.0 has got to be hipper than that moleskine that you carry around to keep your lo-tech creds up.
Lunch 2.0: Taste the buzz.
Speaking of waxing nostalgic, I think it’s about time I finally post this article about the Lunch 2.0 story. The first time I tried to write this was in response to a query by FutureWorks back in October of last year. The second was in February to celebrate the first anniversary of Lunch 2.0. This will be the third attempt, so it’ll be a long one…
It’s about time I got my story straight about this Lunch 2.0 thing (or at least, my lies consistent). What follows is the honest-to-God truth (uh, sort of).
[How we created Lunch 2.0: The True Hollywood Story after the jump]Continue reading
Holly wrote recently that your most passionate users don’t necessarily build the best products. It’s really worth a read.
I think the problem comes from the fact that there is often a large difference between what people say they want, and what people really want.
Forgetting that this difference exists and being insensitive to a customer’s true desires is the source of many mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned.
What follows is an example of each of those things two things: a mistake and a lesson.
[Michael and me after the jump.]Continue reading
