Let's suggest some people to speak at Office 2.0. I instantly thought of the following (but there are more here*):

Christine Herron - Christine.net (Omiydar Network)
Shelley Powers - burningbird.net
Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users
Mary Hodder - Dabble.com
Jeneane Sessum - Allied (marketing)
Elisa Camahort - Worker Bees Blog (events, citizen media, web 2.o)
Katie Fehrenbacher &/or Liz Gannes - GigaOm (formerly Red Herring)
Elaine &/or Sandy - Meebo.com
Emily Chang - IdeaCodes.com
Marnie Webb - Net Squared
Caterina Fake - Flickr.com & Caterina.net
danah boyd - Yahoo! & Youth Social Network expert
Charlene Li - technology & business research
Rashmi Sinha - User experience expert
Lisa Stone - Surfette
Ryanne Hodson - Rich Media/Video Blogging
Um...me?

There are so many more, too...that's just off of the top of my head really quickly. Please add more in the comments and we can send these on...from what I've been told, they are totally wanting to add more female speakers.

*i can't get in and edit it, it's the strangest wiki I've ever encountered...closed tight!

There are many examples, but this one has to be the most glaring:

Office 2.0

Glaring because there are, like, 3,000 speakers or something ridiculous and only one woman as far as I can tell. Man, talk to Women 2.0 or BlogHer or something. I'm sure they can help you out with 'finding' women in technology. Wow.

A sad one.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans 1 year ago yesterday (29th).

Brian has many good posts on this subject...+ Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog.

[caution: heavy reminiscing...some waxing poetic...and a bit of an emotional spill to follow]

I spent Friday night at FOO, half cork'd on Stormhoek (darn you Hugh!), reminiscing to people I originally thought I'd dazzle with 'interesting' conversation that it was about to become my one year anniversary of moving to California. Heh. Thankfully most everyone else was drinking as well.

Egad...I was so naive. I read through that article again today and cringed. I remember throwing away all of my winter clothes and dancing around, thinking there would be no more cold. Heh. I'm in San Francisco where I wear sweaters in July and August (it gave me an excuse to shop again). The photo above was taken of a 'hippie' at the Caltrain station. I was convinced that I would arrive at Haight and Ashbury and see people dancing with tambourines.

I had ideas...big ideas...but I was scared mindless. I was hired after a couple of intensive telephone and email interviews...sight unseen. My new employer had read my blog lightly (I suspected later on). When I arrived, I had been working around the clock to get ready and up to speed, so I became sicker than I had ever been in my life. I spent the first month and a half living in a hotel room in Redwood City, partially with my son, who was shipped back and forth to his Dad in Sacramento. My relationship (from Toronto) at the time was put to one of those tests that it would not survive.

A month later, I was still naive and scared, but no longer in shock. I was learning alot in a short amount of time. Trying to absorb everything. I went to any event that I could find. I quickly joined every social anything online and offline to get acquainted with the local community. I battled to get an apartment in the Haight (no small feat, really, the market was and still is booming and finding an apartment has everything to do with being there first).

I had wide-eyed ideas still...and my boss was more than a little disappointed. I haven't really published this before, but it was made abundantly clear that I didn't live up to expectations (luckily shortly thereafter, I proved myself...it's not always clear where an organic strategy is going to land...luckily enough people understood what I was building to keep me afloat for the 3 months it took*). That and my insecurity of moving countries into a seriously advanced technology space (No place in the world is this lightening speed ahead. No place. There are smart people everywhere, but the Valley is a totally concentrated mass of technology and development focused individuals...so much that people think that this is the way the world works...even though it doesn't) was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

It was lay down and cry and claim defeat or say 'EFF YOU' and preserver. I did the latter.

Okay...so fast forward to one year and five days later...

I have found an amazing relationship with my penguin (him), and co-founded a company with him that works with really frickin great clients, and met oodles of other amazing people (too many to link to), which landed us another partner in the firm, and I get to meet super interesting, smart, engaged and enlightened types all of the time, and get to speak at conferences, and travel around the world to BarCamps and other gatherings of people who sometimes even know who I am through online contact (so we don't need to give our entire life's history), and somehow came out with a crazy marketing term that people seem to rally around...and and and...alot can happen in a year.

From afraid and feeling like a big loser for not understanding anything around me, to feeling 'in the groove' and accomplishing my goals...that's alot.

But really, what I'm looking back at is that it took me 6 years to get to the point I was BEFORE I reached the Valley and 1 year to grow 10x beyond that (if not more). The accelerated pace of this area is slightly overwhelming when you first get here. You aren't supposed to admit it, because everyone around you seems so non-chalant about it.

I remember being at a geek event and handing someone my 'blog card' proudly and the guy looking at it, rolling his eyes and saying, "That is soooo 1997." I was used to handing someone my blog card and being asked what a blog was. Here I was nearly 10 years obsolete!

Reality check: in 1997 most people hadn't heard of the internet. Really. During the last bubble, most people predicted it was a fad. (it kind of was) Um. Today, senators still talk about it being a series of tubes.

We have a way to go. And the spammers and the people with money are going to get there first and kind of wreck it for us. But what one year has brought me is more than skepticism. What one year has brought me is actually more optimism than ever. An honest optimism and hope. One that doesn't give a flying snake about MySpace or Hollywood or even Google. One that isn't contingent on a self-fulfilling prophecy or an echo chamber or the death of old media.

I've met enough people that I know that life is terribly complicated because of them, but it is also complex because of them...and I maintain that, given the right incentives, we are actually good. The problem is that we only have one answer presented to us thusfar (or many do) and that 'answer' or 'success story' is changing.

So, a year ago, I would have thought I was nuts to think that I could build a business based on redefining success and telling clients to stop thinking about "getting rich quick" and start thinking about building long-term organic growth businesses that provide value...oh...and work with your competitors. Holy crap. You know...it still sounds a little far fetched. Heh.

But here I am. One year. Two visas. Three blogs. Eight clients. Twenty two podcasts and online interviews. Forty some odd BarCamps. 124 'geek' events attended. Ten thousand 'social network' signups. 883,000,000 mentions of Web 2.0. 883,000,001 complaints about the term Web 2.0.

I'd recommend it highly to anyone else...


*there is this strange notion in the valley that if you don't reach a gazillion users by the day after launch, somehow heads have to roll...it's a very different perspective...VC driven me thinks...but wait...we hadn't launched. That's even harder to explain.

One of my Canadian buddies, David Crow (that guy that holds a zillion BarCamps and has built a big, wonderful geek community in Tdot), pinged me about a really cool conference that he is involved with:

CanUX 2006, September 14-16
Banff, AB

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CanUX 2006, the Canadian User Experience workshop, is rapidly approaching. Held in Banff, we're bringing in a set of industry leading speakers. Because CanUX is a grassroots event, it's an amazing deal - only a $100 fee for a world-class user experience event. A single room at the Banff Centre is $176/night, a double is $91. With two nights accomodation, a meal plan at the phenomenal dining room, and the conference fee and taxes and we're able to offer an all inclusive package that's unmatched: $650 for a single, $450 for a double...that's less than the registration fee for many similar events, and includes your room and meals too. CanUX runs
Thursday Sept. 14-Saturday Sept. 16.

Space is limited, so check out the conference speakers, schedule, and registration at www.canux2006.com

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Now...if you haven't been to Banff, you really should go. It's pretty spectacular. And the Banff Centre is one of those buildings that was built to reflect the rugged luxury of the area. Spend a couple of days around the conference playing golf or hiking or in a natural hotspring or the like. Oh...and the lineup ain't bad either. ;)

You betcha I'm going to save the date. Yay to Bradley, Chad, Kiersten, Mike, Caterina, Leonard, et al for blowing open the doors on HackDay! This is awesome.

Details:

??? you'll have to sign up. ;)

[Well, for some reason, I couldn't embed the code they offered up - wouldn't matter because the player is a little too wide anyway...:(...note to tell Carlos]

But hey! I made a Scrapblog! And yes, it is a very sucky-lovey-type of Scrapblog, but I dare you to find or make something better. Heh.

So, what is Scrapblog? Um...exactly how it sounds. Online scrapbooking - you can bring in your Flickr photos and pick a theme or just add various stickers and backgrounds et al to personalize it. I've never really had the patience for such things, but it was actually kind of fun and quite simple.

BTW...if you didn't figure it out already...Carlos and gang just became clients of Citizen Agency. I just spent half of the day pouring over the rave reviews that they've been getting in the blogosphere and had banged around with it before, but hadn't quite 'commited' my Scrapblog yet. So here it is.

Please don't tell me it's hideous...I spent quite a bit of time getting the stickers and bubbles just right. ;)

From what we're discussing, all sorts of cool stuff is coming down the pipe for Scrapblog and we'd really like to see the ability to personalize it a little more. If you give it a try, drop us a line to give your feedback. I want to make certain we gather as much input as possible going forward.

It looks as if Shel and Jeremiah also checked out Scrapblog recently...Shel is right...the team is full of heart and soul...

...and it is worth the read:

part I
part II
part III
part IV

His premise questions are:

• If what I am marketing is in a niche in the tail, how do prospective customers find me?
• Being in a niche is great and all, but it would be nice to be closer to the head of the curve...how do I move my niche to the left?

Good stuff.

I rushed back from FOO on Sunday afternoon (it was hard to leave!) to catch the tail end of Bar, where I found another camp full of amazing people, learning from one another and having uber interesting conversations. Afterwards, we all headed down to Zeitgeist, where the FOOBar Crawl was supposed to take place...but it was mostly Bar (me, being the sole FOO who showed up).

Nevertheless, the BarCampers didn't mind or seem to notice. They were excitedly chatting about the weekend that had just past and wanted to hear about what went down at FOO as well. It was a great exchange of information. I understand that the weekend was exhausting, though. It took all I could muster to go out and not crash. What a weekend!

I met so many great people, had so many amazing conversations, participated in a fabulous singalong, got my laptop etched, got a chumby, hung out with Kathy, learnt all about werewolf, went to oodles of great sessions, held one of my own, camped on the lawn, had about a million magic moments, and enjoyed myself immensely. What I didn't have was sleep...who could sleep when so much is going on!

When I returned from FOO, I heard about all of the negativity surrounding it, which was strange to me, because there was an alternative: BarCamp.

And the fact that many of the biggest detractors to FOO didn't show up at Bar sent a clear message: Their argument has nothing to do with 'open source' or openness. It has everything to do with not being invited to the party.

Yes, having been invited brings a whole new bias. However, I went in a skeptic and emerged understanding that everything isn't black and white. An event that is invite-only just tends to be an event that is more desirable (especially when you aren't invited). That is human nature, not anything to do with how the world should be more open.

If it were...nobody would give a damn about FOOCamp and just go to BarCamp and enjoy themselves immensely.

Tim and his team are smart. They are creating demand for FOOCamp. So much of a demand that the community open sourced it. So much of a demand that others hold unFOO events and talk about it ad nauseum each year on their blogs. This is brilliant. From 'inside the garden walls', I heard no negativity. It was all excitement and positivity. Smart people (many of them who I've never heard of before) having an amazing time.

Is Tim taking advantage of those poor souls? Nope. As Hugh said, "People don't do anything unless there is something in it for them." Even the altruists have to get something out of it.

Cliques happen everywhere. Everywhere. You probably are part of a clique and you don't even know it. Once again, it is human nature.

Personally, I feel good about having experienced it.

Oh...and there were rumblings that next year, you have to extend your invitation to someone else...who hasn't been to FOO. I think that will be very interesting, indeed.

Thanks to the team at O'Reilly for having me! And thanks to the BarCampEarth people for spreading the love worldwide! This is a good model for how positive relationships can form between 'cliques' going forward...

One of the many ways I've been delighted at FOO.

Some little known facts:

- danah boyd is a kickass werewolf moderator (although I'm only observing, not playing)

- Caterina Fake and Philip Linden can really belt out a folk song.

- Simon Phipps is a closet professional photographer

- Cal Henderson camps in high style (check out the pillowcases that match the tent)

A really awesome group of people here. As I said on Sean Coon's blog - FOO and Bar are just different and beautiful in their own ways. Think about it this way:

You want to throw a dinner party with lively, interesting conversation. You have a couple of options: a. handpick people who you think are really interesting, b. post it on upcoming and see who shows up. Both will result in an interesting evening.

I'm exhausted and going to crawl intomy tent now so I can enjoy tomorrow morning's sessions...

It really just hit me. I'm leaving for FOO Camp tomorrow morning. I've been so busy with client work, travel and other such things that I've barely thought about it. But now time is winding down and I realize: um. Yeah. I'm going to FOO.

It feels like summer camp again.

You know that scene: Mom and Dad pack your stuff and drive you off into the middle of nowhere where they dump you off, running and giggling back to the car, and yell as they pull away in a cloud of dust, "Have fun! See you in three weeks!" as you stand there, clinging to your bedroll, looking around at what looks like a campground full of kids who ostensibly know one another already. Knees knocking, you make your way to your cabin...not knowing whether your bunkmates will like you or put snakes in your bed.

And there are many people on the list who I know, but they are all pretty much my heroes, so that scares the beejeebees out of me. Kathy was nice enough to drop me a line a few weeks back, telling me her 'First FOO' experience - how she was afraid she would have nothing to offer because she thought everyone present was just so much smarter than her. Heh. It was nice to know one of my heroes and mentors felt the same way years ago...but I still have the butterflies.

Funny thing, that. As a kid, I think I was much cockier then than I am now. I ran directly into the biggest group of girls and joined in on the activity, asserting myself confidently. I didn't concern myself with impressions or the like. I was happily unaware when I was the irritating one, or the show off, or the know it all. Over the years, I've become so extremely self-aware, it's almost a neurosis. It makes me a wonderful empath and 'team player', but not much of a self-promoter.

But maybe I'm nervous for nothing. Perhaps everyone there feels the same. Maybe they aren't as non-plussed as I imagine them to be - an 'in crowd' of brilliant academic types, skillfully debating the validity of the Long Tail (the topic du jour) and the advantages of Rails over PHP-based design, my eyes glazing over, hoping to find a place in the conversation where I recognize a topic I can contribute to.

Chris has this thing about the Gym (and I may get in trouble here, but...). When he doesn't feel he is in ship-shop-shape, he doesn't like to go because he's concerned about what those who are in shape around him will think (which defeats the purpose, really). I told him, "C'mon hun. Everyone at the gym is too busy worrying about their own faults to worry about yours."

I should listen to my own advice.

Bah. I've functioned in the world of academe previously, having dated a professor of English many years back. As an undergrad, it just pushed me to work harder so I could not only contribute to the conversation at the cocktail parties, I actually had papers accepted into academic journals and conferences. As the engineer at the radio station said to me this morning, "No need to be nervous. They invited you because they look at you as an 'expert' in your area." Just the thought of that distinction loosened me up (mostly because of the irony).

Now I have to stop blogging about my anxiety and actually get ready - both my presentation and my packing.

Chris as well as hundreds of others from 20 other locations worldwide will be participating in BarCampEarth this weekend (the local to SF one is at Stanford). You'd think after going to a gazillion BarCamps around the world, I would have gotten used to this (believe me, I'm nervous before I present at BarCamp, too).

Have fun at BarCamp, FOOCamp...whateverCamp you are attending this weekend and thanks for...um...listening.

Steffen created this amazing SoaP Mashup for me and posted it to Flickr. I love it.

I'm hoping to meet Steffen and gang in person when we attend BarCampBerlin in the end of September!

...so...

I think the discussion on CBC went well...or as well as could be expected. It was pretty economics focused, which is not really my ball of wax. I represented the 'grassroots' of the Long Tail - the part of that tail that Chris Anderson is discussing more and more on his blog. I interupted a couple of times with those, "think of it from this odd angle" interjections.

I know I sounded very different than Michael or Stewart, although we were, as Michael said, "Violently in agreement." (nice)

One of Jian's first questions to me was to give a well-known/documented example of a Long Tail success. My mind went down the list...37 Signals, Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us...and hundreds of thousands of successful small businesses who either harness the power of the Long Tail or are representative of the niches of the Long Tail or whatever.

But all I kept thinking is, "You are asking the wrong question."

So I gave him the wrong answer: Snakes on a Plane. I wanted to show how a small group of people could hijack old media. But it's really too soon to claim it as a cult classic. And Jian was right when he said, "But wasn't it a Hollywood, big-budget produced film?"

Yeah. It was. Gah. So, I should have answered, "You are asking the wrong question." instead. The better answer to that question was, "Don't you mean: What are some examples of successes in the Long Tail and how are they redefining success?" instead of attempting to stuff a bad example into a question that has no real answer.

Because then I would have given him 37 Signals, Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Amazon's Mechanical Turk, Pandora (who I did mention, along with Magnatune, when I got the chance to defend my answer down the road), and explained right then and there that the Long Tail isn't only about how businesses like iTunes and Amazon can offer wide selection (of which the total of obscure sales outweighs the total of top 100,000 sales) because they beat the issues of scale and geography, thus rocking the world of traditional bricks and mortar...and promoting the Long Tail producers.

The Long Tail is about the celebration of getting small. The redistribution of wealth and power and taste and whatever. There will always be mass and mainstream. It's just too tempting of a business. That's okay. It makes goods accessible to a wide range of people. Hell, I'm a victim of Ikea and Target, too. But what the promise of the Long Tail is to me is that we stop thinking in big hits and zero sum thinking and start thinking collaboration and solid, small to mid-size businesses that serve niche communities...where everybody wins (non-zero sum).

And I guess I've been too close to this issue to see 'the forest for the trees' and, if I had ever been media trained (which I haven't and I think it's come time to start - I am much more succinct in casual conversation and choke in interviews and on stage, yikes), I may have answered, "Take a look at Amazon, Netflix and iTunes - all of them report that their Long Tail media account for over 50% of their revenues," 'cause that is what the person unfamiliar with Chris Anderson's book would understand as a real coup for the Long Tail.

But I can't. I don't think that IS a huge coup for the Long Tail. I think it could help get exposure for producers, but, like I said in the interview, "Here is the new guard! They are just like the old guard!", which is Mr. Carr's way of thinking (and I tend to agree). A HUGE success that proves the theory that there is money to be made off of the variety of odd interests (whether it be gardening petunias in cold climates or Canadian poetry or knot tying or the like) is not a huge success for the Long Tail at all. It's just a success in the traditional sense of success: you innovate, get in early, do it well and perservere...then you own the marketplace.

So yeah, my participation in the CBC discussion was a great success...in the way that SoaP was a great success. Months from now, people will look back and say, "Oh...that's what she meant when she gave those whacked out answers." Brilliant.

FYI: It isn't airing live, like I thought.

I am going in to record it this morning, but they edit it and all that stuff first (I guess to make sure Rogues like me don't say ass or the like on live radio...as in kickass...). I'll post the time when I know.

So, after asking Yahoo! Answers, I found out the following about the word Mainstream:

Mainstream is the prevailing current of thought, influence, or activity. Think about the word a moment.

If you have a main steam or main river of water, like the Mississippi river or the Mekong in Asia there are other smaller creeks, streams, arteries, and canals that contibute to it and run along side of it. Most people would travel or build on the main stream (they may even be considered the "mainstream" society). A few might travel or live on the banks of a smaller streams (and are not so mainstream).

From Tao Barbie^TM...

I wonder at what point did it evolve into describing a mass of people? If I am to understand Tao Barbie...the mainstream relies on all of the arteries and streams and creeks to keep it fed...it's 'made up' of a variety of different water sources. This makes the mainstream not so generic after all...just consolidated...

Just a question I am pondering as I am preparing for an appearance on CBC Radio tomorrow morning:

Sounds Like Canada, CBC Radio network program weekdays 10:00 a.m.
Host: Jian Ghomeshi
Interview topic: The Longtail (discussion on book by Chris Anderson)
Other guests: Stuart MacDonald in Toronto, Michael Geist in Ottawa

I believe that, really...everything is the "Long Tail" (or is it everything is miscellaneous?). Like those creeks, the mainstream is nothing without the variety of people that contribute to it.

I'm confused, though. We've now used the 'Long Tail' to explain everything from citizen media to Amazon's endless list of offerings to the luxury economy to nichification to the decline of the blockbuster.

Yes...it seems as if people are individuals with individual needs and wants and all of that and, yes, it seems that the limitless possibilities of the web is cracking open this desire and making it more than possible to scale to these needs.

Still...I don't see either the idea of the mainstream or the blockbuster going away anytime soon. Before you ask WTF?! hear me out. We are paralyzed with choice and it is only getting worse. At the same time, Dave Rogers is right, people are not changing as fast as the technology is. We still measure/judge/etc. in shear numbers. That is what people understand.

Unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately.

What this does is two things for the future:

1. It forces companies who want to reach their audience to be smarter about it. To really work hard at pleasing the customers they have. To build communities. To concentrate on serving well. If they don't they are screwed.

2. It's forcing everyone to re-evaluate success. Most likely the dominant view of success as gianormous multi-national gazillion dollars a year company will remain pretty intact for years to come, but I look around and see it becoming more and more respectable to run a perfectly successful small or mid-sized operation that is well-loved and respected and serves your community well. Gee, we actually have heroes now who don the covers of magazines.

And, yes...the 'mainstream' will continue along the way the 'mainstream' always has (which is no particular monolithic way, but, hey, it's simpler to understand it that way...it IS the mainstream after all), but we will all get to grow our own little piece of the garden in our own little piece of the world.

Screw the mainstream, I'm happy in my fringe...and doing just fine.

+ 10 reasons to go see it while it's in the theatres...;)

[thanks Bob!]

Seriously...check it out:

gnificent

For the ladies, in a baby-T style.

And for the lads, in manly earthtones.

Ma.gnolia Branch

There’s a lot going on in this beauty, which will be printed with a distressed effect that you can see better in the closeup.

Daddy Lurvs Ma.gnolia

This one speaks for itself.

LOL....this last one was meant as a joke, but I think they'd go like hotcakes.

Put in your requests on their blog!

I heart these guys (Larry, Todd & Bill) and their fabulous designs. As you already know, I'm a sucker for pretty things (btw...thanks for the book tip, Baldur) and their t-shirts are the manifestation of their very lovely bookmarking site. Ma.gnolia is, of course, a client, but we'd been using them for quite a while before they hired us.

Oh...and they are working with Innertee, who is not a client, but an amazing open source type of t-shirt site who actually does SCREEN PRINTING, not that ugho digital printing, and who is launching anyday now (c'mon Miles! I need to make my store!). I'd keep my eye on what's cooking over there, too. [Innertee did an awesome job on the BarCampSF shirts and is doing the upcoming BarCampEarth shirts...which is this weekend!]

...speaking of t-shirts, I have to thank Chris at Damnation-Inc. for sending me an awesome Snakes on Plane t-shirt to don on Friday. You rock! I hope the parties in NYC were way fun! I will get those photos into the Flickr group asap.

...and on an entirely negative note: don't use 4by6 printing. Their interface sux. They are way expensive. And they screwed up our brand new business cards. We've been advised since that better choice is: Overnight Prints.

In the near future, I will be posting my review of various schwag/business stuff printing sites out there. Feel free to send me your reviews and recommendations ahead of time so that I can include them.

There have been a few reports that SoaP's release was disappointing...that the opening weekend fell $10M behind expectations, bringing the total (including Thursday's premiere night) in at $15.8M.

Let's take a look at some of the opening weekends over this summer:

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - $135.6M
Cars - $60.1M
Superman Returns - $52.5M
Talladega Nights - $47M
Step Up - $20.7M
World Trade Center - $18.7M

Ouch. True. That SoaP can be beaten out by any of these stinkers (admittedly, I only saw a few of them) makes you wonder whether the 'blogosphere' really has any power at all.

My review of the movie?

Awesome. It didn't disappoint. In fact, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. It was extremely entertaining, but moreso because of the audience participation.

So, it didn't become a blockbuster overnight. The big bucks advertising and sequel boosting and 'perfectly normal titling' of the 'actual blockbusters' perservered. Big whoop.

Tell me that 25 years from now, people will be going to art house theatres and participating with Superman Returns. I doubt it.

And I maintain my #1 statement that this was never really about the movie anyway. And believe me, I didn't want this to be a proof of concept for Hollywood to see that involving the audience is the wave of the future. In fact, I'm glad that this wasn't as financially lucrative as they would have hoped because they can continue to dismiss the online banter.

Frankly...I'd like the Longtail to remain the Longtail and for small businesses and niche products to continue to be able to thrive just fine. The world, IMHO, has enough bloated giant corporations. I 'consume' some of their wares occasionally, but I would say a pie graph of my overall spending on general items goes to the smaller, more niche companies: corner stores, boutiques, various smaller online retailers who I know I can email personally. I'll bet if anyone took a look at their bank records at the end of the month, they would find a large portion of their spending going to non-blockbuster type products that serve their unique personalities.

So, SoaP isn't a mainstream movie. Duh. We knew that. And perhaps it would have done a little better if it changed it's name to Flight 121 or whatever and threw another couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising. But, dammit, with 85% of the audience giving SoaP a fresh rating, compared to the 66% of critics -- this is a movie about the audience...the comraderie, etc.

And there aren't many movies that can claim that.

Peter Dawson whipped up pointed me to a visualization so I could (nervously) watch the Valleywag voting. LOL. You know that your friends are geeks, when... this is awesome!

Cocaman!

He's right...

...Technology changes how we do things. It doesn't change what we do. Ain't no technology that's gonna do that for us. Wanna better world? Be better people.

Exactly. But the real poetry comes later on in the post:

You're a pimple on the ass-end of progress! So just shut up already!

I just had to add that one. Perhaps Hugh could make a cartoon? ;)

[Dave Rogers]

Web 2.0 hottie list - "The ladies round"

Two things wrong with this:

1. I'm going to get totally creamed. The competition is effing gorgeous. But maybe it isn't about looks? Maybe it's about substance...which doesn't necesarily mean I'm ahead, either. But now I get to sound like the ugly whiny sister and get the sympathy vote.
   
   
2. In the guy contest, Nick picked some obvious "we love them for their minds" guys (won't say who, but I find the snake more of a competitor than a couple of them). Not a single unhottie in the girls...or wait...maybe that's me. Ack.

Hey...and what happened to my girls? (the lovely Alicia Preston & Jennifer Myronuk of LaGeek)






(besides Amber Mac is a WAY hotter vlogger than Amanda anyday and Amanda shouldn't qualify since she left Rocketboom, should she?)

update: the vote is up. Damn. I'm supposed to not care. Darned Valleywag. Um...please, for the love of [insert religious figure here], vote for me so that my fragile ego will go on another day... I'm 33 dontcha know? With a teenage son. Do any of these other supposed 'hotties' have that? Hmmmm?

[photo credit: Oh Sephora! How I Love Thee! by xtinemarie]

I was so inspired by Evelyn's Anthropologie experience post, it brought me back to a not so distant past obsession of mine: Sephora.

Before Sephora existed, I didn't care too much about high end makeup. I wore Clinique because it was supposedly dermatologist approved, but even then, I often waited for the bonuses and substituted alot of drugstore cheap stuff. I was a practical make-up buyer. (is that an oxymoron?)

Then I started hearing the buzz from other women about Sephora. OMG...Sephora is coming to Toronto...rumours...speculation...excited titters. What was Sephora?! I had to know. I convinced a fancy PR friend of mine to wrangle me onto the guestlist of the grand opening.

The first time I entered Sephora, it felt like entering a magical dream land. Rows and rows of makeup with gorgeous packaging. Eyeshadow pallets that looked like trashy old pulp novels. Amazingly illustrated tin packaging that contained a body balm that made your skin 'glow'. Strange and wonderful shampoos and soaps in 'flavours' with 'recipes'. Teeth whitening in elegant compacts I could imagine whipping out after a fancy dinner.

This wasn't makeup. This was a store filled with gorgeous novelties that could strike up conversations between women. Where did you get that? I stood in line for a makeover, then purchased over $200 worth of makeup. I was so excited. I went home and lined up my new pulp novel eyeshadow on my counter proudly. I slipped the GoSmile compact into my evening bag. I strategically placed the Bathina on the ledge of the tub so it would appear that I balm my body after each shower.

God, it felt good. I was so excited. And you know what? It worked. Girlfriends came by and, post washroom visit, we talked about the products...exchanged stories ("I found the lipstick a bit too matte, I would try Chanel instead.") When I went to that dinner, I would pull out my compact and check the teeth and hear, "I loooove GoSmile! Can I have one?" The experience from the store translated beyond and I didn't regret spending that grotesque amount of money on makeup at all.

So, the other day when I complained to Chris that the Sephora website sucks (it does - three clicks? Have to use back buttons? Cookies disappear overnight?), he replied, "Why not just go to drugstore.com."

I stared at him blankly. Um. Because it isn't Sephora. Sephora started a store that is filled with delightful things just for me that connects me with other girly type women and indulges my guilty (but delicious) pleasures. Sephora made me love this stuff. Not drugstore.com. It discounts generic items and looks for volume discounts. Yech. Sephora gives me an experience...even if it's crappy (and online and offline, shopping at Sephora isn't always an 'experience' - it's the delightful things that make Sephora ... um... Sephora).

He thought I was nuts. And I am. Nonetheless, I went back online and ordered my $109 worth of makeup (not the full deal, just some upgrades) and resolved that he just couldn't understand...

...that was...

...until he ordered the monitors...;)

Took the night off last night from all things tech-geekery to geek out in a whole other way: being uber girly. My uber girly co-horts: Molly Bloom (formerly known as Golightly), Miss Alicia Preston and a group of amazing women chowing down on Mexican food and tequila.

Somewhere between the nuclear margeritas and the Sephora "experience" ('cause its not about the makeup, is it?) tales, Molly told the kind of story that deserves it's own meme: The Donut Cheeseburger Moment

Actually having recorded this story last year in Smith Magazine, Molly tells it much better than I could:

There is a moment in all failing relationships when you know things won’t last. For me, that moment was the donut-cheeseburger.

...
It was a frigid spring day and everyone was crowded into the kitchen. We’d been drinking beer and snacking on the ubiqutous brie and hummus. A good time, but nothing spectacular. I was making more salad when I heard frantic shouts of “Molly!” Sensing emergency, a burn victim or other certain disaster, I moved toward the cachophony that was heading up the back steps.

It’s Richard*, they shouted. “Richard’s eating a cheeseburger between two Krispy Kremes!” Men were high-fiving, everyone was laughing. Except for me. My first thought was, “Now I know how Marge Simpson feels.” Then I felt my heart sink. I knew. I knew this was an omen, a sweet and greasy sign that things were over. There was no turning back to the time before the donut cheeseburger.

Man. I've had some major donut-cheeseburger moments in my life. Thank goodness Chris is a vegetarian! ;)

And thanks, Molly, for making me laugh so hard, I choked on my 5 layer bean dip.

Not like we have any shortage of them here. Whew! But here are some of note:

Snakes on a Plane ! The event of the millenium... [August 18]
Get your tickets ahead of time
Join the FlashGroup
I hear there are parties...

TechCrunch Party [August 18]
The guest list is all filled up, but you can always bid on eBay to get in...

BarCampEarth [Aug 25-27]
Simultaneous BarCamping around the world...cool.

BayCHI Speaker Series [September 12]
Marc and I are both speaking at this one - and the organizers didn't know ahead of time he is a client. Pretty funny, but it should be a good session. (no bias here)

The Future of Web Apps [Sep 13-14]
Two of my heroes, Ted Rheingold and Tantek Celik are speaking
Put on by Carson Workshops...who also does Vitamin, which is awesome

One Web Day [Sep 22]
How could I forget? Susan Crawford has put together yet another worldwide celebration of all things that fit in the Berners-Lee philosophy! Save the Web! Thanks for the reminder, Susan.

WineCampFrance [Sep 23-24]
Are you kidding? OF COURSE we will be there!

BarCampBerlin [Sep 30-Oct 1]
Just a hop, skip and a jump over from France!

I encourage that you check out the incredible array of BarCamps around the world. This community has grown far beyond the wildest dreams of the founders or Tim O'Reilly, who created FOO Camp, just begging to be open sourced by the community. ;)

...that most VCs are as brilliant as they were in 1999:

• one
• two
• three
• four

...and that there is one with a soul. Oh wait, he's an Angel.

But what is the major difference here? All of these VC's are backing (or dying to back) products that feed into MySpace...so what makes Jeff's product different? It's subtle, but it really is the winning ticket...

So, I've spent the majority of my weekend (apart from posting like a madwoman), trying out ... or trying to find screencasting tools for the Mac. Here is what I found:

A. The following windows only programs can kiss my PowerBooked bum:

Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Viewlet Builder (although they do have a Linux product so a half a point for them), BB Flashback, and about a dozen or so not-so-great alternatives. You can tell from their demos that they don't have Mac versions...because they are fugly. Seriously, wouldn't you want to develop for a Mac audience just to make your product demos look better?

B. The following programs were promising but turned out to be way problematic:

Snapz Pro...so much promise. But the editing tools are non-existent and when imported into iMovie, the quality goes bad. :( (Snapz meet AppZapper)

vnc2swf...um...even the name makes me want to cry with frustration. I have to download what? Python, PyMedia and what? There is no 'interface' to speak of. You lost me at vnc2swf.

And a bevvy of others that are either short on features (can't select a specific part of the screen or lack an interface or can't edit, etc.).

I actually went into this project with much hope and excitement. I was going to spend my $300+ to get the best product I could get that would record clicks with fancy flashes, allow me to draw 'description bubbles' and allow me to lay music and sound effects. I'm baffled that I can't even find a program!

Anyone know of any in development? I'll gladly be a guinea pig. I already sent letters of disgust to the Windows only people. Or...something that records inside of the browser...(heh. Okay, maybe I was being a little hasty.)?

Scott points us to Bacardi's ad agency ripping off a grassroots group without giving any credit. I betcha they call this one 'viral', too.

F&**kers.

::ps. I haven't changed my feed to partial (heaven forbid! So NOT my style)...Blogger is being stupid again. I can't wait to say goodbye...

Congrats to:

• Pandora (yay Tim & Tom!) - music
  
• Pixsy (yay Chase) - photosearch
  
• Blurb - photo/blog book making
  
• Tailrank (yay Kevin) - newsfeed site
  
• Dodgeball - text messaging
  
• Yelp - reviews
  
• Kayak - travel

and congrats to the rest... Time missed a few others, but I think they picked some amazing sites.

A couple of months back, someone asked me why I'm such an extremist. Surely, everything traditional marketing can't be bad. Why not be a big more moderate.

I replied, I'm an extremist because someone has to swing the pendulum over. Here is a diagram to illustrate what I mean:


You see, if I just sat on the fence, meeting halfway, wouldn't mean much. Because I'm extreme, meeting halfway means that there is a major shift on both sides. Of course, I wouldn't mind if the pendulum swung all of the way over...'cause it's the happy side for communities...but hey.

I am not really an unreasonable person. I'm actually very much a fan of finding the 'right' situation for clients. That is why the whole debate on viral is really quite silly in the end (including my involvement in it).

There are a couple of things that I have learnt in my career that are not absolutes - but are good ideas to absorb:

1. No amount of money, pressure, cleverness, 'viralness', advertising, MySpace pandering, p.r., community building, or 'story' telling, etc. can save a crappy product. People don't give a flying snake. (for JP)
   
   I have gone into many clients and employers to find them 'chomping at the bit' to grow the buzz and get adoption while their products are buggy, slow, crashy, broken, etc. Why would you want to spread something that is going to leave a bad impression? All of a sudden, word of mouth becomes extremely damaging. Why not gather a group of focused and understanding early adopters who are willing to work with you to improve what you are building, THEN when it is kickass, unleash it and put a bit of pressure on.
   
   
2. No matter how 'cool' you are, someone else is probably 'cooler'. And if you are the 'coolest', you probably won't be that for long.
   
   In other words, enjoy your 'clear blue ocean' because in a capitalist mindset, competition isn't far behind. And they are often younger, brighter, more agile and hungrier than you. Especially after you've been the reigning 'King of the Castle' for a while. So, how do you combat that? Well, you may have a better advantage when people love you (instead of just thinking you are 'cool'). That's where strong communities mean longevity comes into play.
   
   
3. Quite often, that thing that you thought was the 'killer app' turns out to be nothing and that side project that you dismissed because you didn't think it had a broad appeal takes off like wildfire.
   
   Maybe it isn't monetizable, or you don't think there is a 'market' for it - but you've been throwing all of this energy and money and time behind the promotion of something you just can't figure out why it doesn't take off and all of a sudden, you notice that this feature or this side project has become super popular. Don't fight it. I've seen so many companies kill it because they use that popularity to try and steer people back towards the 'main' project or, even worse, they integrate it into the main project. Watch, observe...water it, garden it...understand why is happening.
   
   
4. You don't find or create community. Community happens...well...sometimes.
   
   I've walked into countless projects where there was some sort of marketing plan laid out early in the game. 'The Target Market is A, B and C' - which usually means they've covered the entire gamut of possible people on the planet except for who is actually using their product. The issue is that these companies continue to go after these 'Target Markets' - trying to build community where nobody is interested, whilst alienating and/or ignoring the actual community that is building up...to a long term detriment.
   
   It's fine to guess at who may find your product useful, but don't throw your energy behind that group until you see it actually manifesting. I've always believed in a much more organic way of researching these things. Let's put it out there and be part of that community...watching who gathers, understanding the real appeal and building the future of the product in that direction. I don't mean to do this to everyone else's exclusion, but seeding and building in specific directions is crucial to community growth.
   
   
5. Being vulnerable is often your best defense/offense.
   
   Open source is the most vulnerable thing I know. Code that is open, free, available, transparent, etc. Anyone can and will come along and scoop it up and make it their own and make money off of it, etc. There are all sorts of jerks around the world who burn Firefox onto a CD, package it up and sell it for $29.95 to people who don't know that it is free for download online. They laugh all the way to the bank. But not as much as Firefox does. What was it? $72 million last year? I doubt that CD burner dude makes enough to replace a full time salary. S/he certainly couldn't get into major retailers - Firefox has built a strong reputation. A name. A community of people, gathered to protect it. That's not the only example.
   
   Making oneself publicly vulnerable is scary. Putting yourself 'out there', offering up source code, telling your 'secrets', involving your community (which could include...your enemies!) - yikes. There is something to be said for surprise and delight - which is a whole other story, but my point is that community is built on trust and someone who puts themselves out there honestly has a leg up when it comes to community.
   
   
6. If you aren't Hugh Macleod, Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin, you probably couldn't get away with Stormhoek, Film Loop or Squidoo.
   
   In fact, they have a tough time getting away with them. Their own 'brands' are worth way more and the minute they step back, they will still be Hugh, Guy and Seth (marketing superheroes), but Stormhoek will be just another bottle of wine, Film Loop will be...um?..., and Squidoo will be just another abandoned social network.
   
   Either way, I respect all three of them a great deal more than I've expressed here, but the point here is that none of them could get away with what they have if they were, say, me.
   
   
7. Any agency or person who says they are a viral marketing expert is full of it. And this is damaging to the entire industry.
   
   So many agencies win business because they go in and pitch bull about being able to create brilliant campaigns that will make the world fall in love with a company's brand. And so many companies end up disappointed in the results. Which results in a general distrust of marketing. Which nobody seems to learn from.
   
   We get oodles of phonecalls and emails from companies that ask whether we can build a viral campaign that will drive 100,000 people to their website. I always answer no. Even if we think we may be able to, based on them having an amazing product and our connection to strong communities that would like their product. They've completely missed the point. But the problem is...they just talked to 3 other agencies that said they could. Unironically. It makes me want to cry. I've watched perfectly great products tank because of this attitude.
   
   
8. Companies with pure hearts will trump companies with money in the end.
   
   I'm a hippie 2.0. I have eternal faith in karma. You will never convince me otherwise.
   
   
9. When it comes to forumulas and absolutes and buzzwords and case studies and lists of 10 things to do (heh), marketers are missing the point.
   
   Relationships take time. They take trust. They take real connection. Sometimes you can mass produce some sort of connection, like JetBlue does with the 'experience' it creates for passengers - from the language on the screens to the blue chips it serves to the way it has removed class distinctions from the seating - and in the end, they have a business and want my money and if I asked them to help me move, they would laugh at me. I think. But then again, a PlanePurple may come along tomorrow that gives me the same level of service and I'll probably switch without thought (or I may just pick the cheapest flight - commoditizing the whole damned process).
   
   And community building on a truly personal level is not scalable, so all of you traditional marketers and advertisers can continue to buy up your billboards and tv ads, etc., because in your world, numbers matter...no...big numbers matter. I've done the numbers game. There is nothing satisfying in it for me. I like looking at the world in a non-zero-sum way (thanks Kevin!) and hope for a time when the world flattens (not in a Thomas Friedman sense, but in a 'we all get a nice piece of the pie we worked for', which is, I suppose, the Chris Anderson sense).
   
   
10. The bar is set excrutiatingly low.
    
    A little kindness goes a long way in a world filled with unfriendly and disempowering consumer experiences. I spend so much energy feeling ripped off that when a company does the smallest thing to show me they give a shit about me, I throw my whole being into their promotion. I'm not the only one.
    
    Egad, we need something to give. And I know my ideas are extreme, but they come from a real place of wanting to continue to hold onto my world filled with good, real people who give a snake about others. And, no, I won't just get real. If it doesn't exist right now, I want to dedicate my life to making it exist. I don't care what you call it or how it happens.

Damn. Another list of 10. See, I'm not altogether unreasonable. ;)

So the recent Feedburner issue has brought up a rather heavy issue. I have littered pieces of myself all over the web, in varying identities, avatars, pseudonyms, passwords and logins. I don't want to start getting into the identity stuff, 'cause I could give a damn about single sign on. Seriously, sometimes I just want to dabble. I also have various degrees of interest where I have littered my being. And I most certainly don't want to commit to one place for all of my 'stuff' - I like variety. So, let's not go there.

What I wouldn't mind, though, is the ability to watch all of it. Watch who watches me. Watch someone else and who watches them. I want to subscribe to a person, as much or as little as interests me.

Liz commented that she didn't want to see photos or bookmarks...she just wants posts. That's cool. Liz should have that choice. Chris may want to see more...he may want to follow my photos, bookmarks, blogposts, who is talking about me, what I'm wanting to do, who I want to meet, my career updates, etc. etc. The next person may want more or less or nothing at all.

So, as Chris has discussed before, we need to be able to subscribe to a person. But I don't want to depend on a browser to do this. I would love webpages to just inherently have this function. Oh, wait...Microformats. Heh. But will they allow me to show a little or alot while others subscribe to a little or alot?

I really like what ClaimID has done. It made compiling this blog post way easy. I only claim what is important to me there (although I haven't updated it because I've been busy....gah!). Perhaps that is a start? Maybe not.

So, everyone claims to be working towards solving this and no one is working together, really. It seems like little-old-end-user-me gets lost in the kerfuffle of who is going to go down in Wikipedian history as having solved identity or loss of it or subscription to it...and they all certainly want their name on it or to gain wealth from the adoption of it.

Sigh. I mean, really, it's a very 'high end' problem anyway. I was chatting with a brilliant Celebrity blogger a couple of months back who has been blogging for 3 years and has over 50,000 daily readers who told me:

"I haven't the slightest clue what you mean by a 'feed of my blog'. You want me to write a restaurant guide?"

Heh. Her and her 50,000 readers didn't give a flying snake whether she was RSS or Atom compatible. She hadn't even turned on the ability for her readers to subscribe to her. She still sends out email newsletters and that works just fine, thank you. In fact, one of my favourite feeds in my feedreader, Photojojo, has over 10,000 email subscribers compared to their 4,000 RSS readers.

And I wonder, sometimes, whether we get a little too ahead of ourselves. And maybe we think it is progress, but it really is just a different approach. Feeds vs email vs whatever. And what I need to know about Chris is just turning around and asking him, "How are things?" But then again, that is sacreligous speak from a geek girl whose life has been transformed by Bloglines, because, previously, the information I read was from a few 'expert' sources and now I get to absorb a gaggle of voices and delve into the lives that inform them.

I don't know. What do you think? Would you like to be able to subscribe to a person? Do we really need the 'whole story'?

:: Nicole has an amazing follow up post to this...way more thought out than I could ever.

Okay...so I usually don't try to manipulate anyone's behaviour...but in this case, I am preparing for a really big move (over to Wordpress in the next month or so...yay!) and I don't want to lose too many readers in the process.

I noticed that there are about 4x as many people (!) pulling from various atom and rss feeds than from my Feedburner feed. So, in order to make it really simple to switch to Feedburner for my upcoming transition, I want to highlight to you that the following feeds suck:

http://www.horsepigcow.com/roguereport/atom.xml
http://www.horsepigcow.com/roguereport/rss.xml
https://www.blogger.com/atom/11380990
http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11380990/posts/full

(I think that is it...if you have something else, please alert me)

And the following feed rocks:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/horsepigcowLifeUncommon

With my Feedburner feed, you will get newly pimped goodness like:

• Screenshots and reviews of new apps I try when I post them on Flickr (as well as the occasional 'cool website' I point to that way). These come in a couple of times per week...and believe me, some of them are superfly.
  
  
• A daily link round-up (from Ma.gnolia) of relevant bookmarks I've found that range from interesting new apps to marketing tips to intriguing articles.

See? All sorts of reasons to move over. :) Thanks in advance! I know what a pain switching can be.

From John Dvorak's recent article on YouTube:

Two things seem to be at work. The first is the incredible desire people have to share video clips with each other. That's now apparent.

What's not so apparent, unless you actually have tried to use the various video sharing sites, is that nobody -- and I mean nobody -- made it easy until YouTube.

By merely combining a pent-up demand with ease-of-use you get the YouTube phenomenon. It's brain dead simple, but I'm telling you that is all there is to it.

Now, Chad and Steven (YouTube founders), most likely totally understood the importance of simplicity and usability, but I highly doubt they understood the depth of the impact they would have. You could have asked 10 people on the street a year ago, "Do you think that a site that allows people to post their personal videos will become one of the most visited sites on the net in the next year?" Then describe some of their 5 top rated videos of all time: Evolution of Dance (amateur), Pokemon Theme Music Video (amateur), The Simpsons Real Life Intro (from tv), D1大整古-流動廁所 (from tv), and Hey clip (amateur); you would surely be met with a WTF? kind of stare.

So, simplicity alone, as Dvorak stated, wouldn't cut it. It's the combination of the two: desire + simplicity. And that is why YouTube has been so disruptive.

From The Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton Christianson:

Disruptive technologies...are distinctly different from sustaining technologies. Disruptive technologies change the value proposition in a market. When they first appear, they almost always offer lower performance in terms of the attributes that mainstream customers care about. In computer disk drives, for example, disruptive technologies have always had less capacity than the old technologies. But disruptive technologies have other attributes that a few fringe (generally new) customers value. They are typically cheaper, smaller, simpler and frequently more convenient to use. Therefore, they open new markets.

Basically, YouTube blew open a new market. All of a sudden, we looked around the Valley and saw oodles of startups as well as large technology firms getting interested in the space. TechCrunch posts a new company nearly every day that is coming into this space. And everyone is simple. Dead simple. And useful. And usable. And we all know that there will only be a few survivors remaining after the VC money runs out, so then the DESIRE + SIMPLICITY thing won't cut it any more....well, unless the desire to switch becomes apparent and you are the next simple thing that comes to mind.

Well, then what? I would never ever say, "Throw in the towel" because, as you know if you've been reading me, I'm all about entrepreneurialship. Competition is good. It pushes innovation. It gets us engaged. It's good for the customer.

But what I am saying is that unless the stars align just right as they did with YouTube (they knew about simplicity, but they sure as heck didn't estimate the demand) and you are truly offering something innovative, you probably won't seen the success of YouTube.

More in follow-up to my post on all of it being a damned lie:

1. Silicon Beat discusses how broken webstats are;
2. Which led me to this article by WebAnalyticsBook that explains why the discrepancy (that none of them use 'actual' traffic numbers);
3. Which led me to a little $34.95 program that can boost your Alexa ratings

I'm not shocked, but I am disappointed. I'm hoping that this discussion spreads past our echo chamber so we can start getting real.

I made it onto Snakes on a Blog! Rock on.

Oh yeah...and if you haven't done so already, join the flash group...I sent out the tip that these tickets were available as soon as they hit Fandango (thanks Alicia!). And, most definitely, check out both Snakes on a Blog and the SoaPwiki. Freakin' cool stuff.

[Flash group easy instructions:

send via SMS: SOAP

to the number: 66937

you are in!]

This is a hoot.

It reminds me of this article I saw about a publicist in Toronto where the journalist was impressed by the amount of telephone calls she took while on the interview. Months later, out with her and some others she confessed after too many martinis she had all of her friends call during the interview pretending to be clients, thus making her look uber busy.

[photo by ScoobyMoo ...looove the name]

So...I was out last night with a group of Mac developers and started talking to a bright young guy who had started a blog just over a month ago. No big deal. Looks like lots of people are doing it.

The difference here was that this new blogger was already at the rank of around 4,000 on Technorati. Wow, I asked, what did happened there? It takes most unknowns at least a couple of months to get there...and that's with some major name behind them (like Guy Kawasaki). I had never heard of this bright young guy and he is, really, just starting to build a name for himself in the Mac developer world.

Well, he replied, I've had a couple of my posts dugg on DIGG quite a few times. It's easy to game the system, he told me smugly, I just ask all of my friends to digg me and once you get past a certain number of diggs, people just hit digg if they are remotely interested in the topic.

Do they even read the article? I ask, stupidly.

Almost everyone in the room looked at me as if to ask where have you been and answered, No. Not usually, they agreed.

Wow.

It may seem terribly off-putting at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what they are doing is amazingly subversive.

They are exposing how farcical numbers are online.

And here is the thing. I remember years ago, pitching to clients why it is so important to do their marketing online:

Everything is measurable! I exclaimed, It's the end of the marketing era without accountability!

I would quote, for effect, that famous Ogilvy quote, "50% of advertising works, we just don't know what 50" and poke fun and say, But numbers online don't lie, so go online.

Heh.

Well, here we are, Google facing all sorts of click fraud lawsuits, bright young punks gaming ranking systems, books being written on formulas to get better search ranking and promote your sales-driven website. People claiming to know the answers, and others hiring people to deliver the answers. A-list bloggers who link to other a-list bloggers who talk about how they read everyone but a-list bloggers. Ooooo, aaaaah...Subservient Chicken was viewed a gabillion times...there is an example of one helluva viral campaign.

And we are left with...um...what?

In the brilliant words of my esteemed colleague: Bullshit.

So, what do we know? What have we learnt? We just keep feeding the same damned system over and over. Numbers. Those numbers, they never lie, do they? They are scientific and logical and will tell us how successful or unsuccessful we are. Someone led us astray. Numbers do lie.

While typing this, Chris stood in front of me and bastardized a quote he couldn't quite recall by someone he couldn't quite remember that went something like:

Money is the root of all evil, because it inherently replaces value and there hasn't been a value assigned to human life. So money's very existence is in opposition to human worth

And numbers work the same. People's eyes grow wide when I tell them that when at Riya, we had over 1 million photos uploaded on the first day. Wow...but as Munjal wrote, those numbers dropped drastically over the following weeks. Why? Numbers couldn't replace human worth. Connections. Community. Contact. There was no real reason for people to fall in love, spread it, tell their friends, etc. Today, Munjal is working hard to build those relationships by opening the lines of communication between Riya and the blogosphere. It will definitely pay off for them. These relationships will probably have to be built one at a time.

What is the value difference between 100,000 users and 1,000 active community members? What do the numbers really tell us? We can sit and watch rank and traffic and click-throughs and whatever other number, but it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between a web spider and a human being unless s/he speaks with you. And as we treat more and more people like numbers, we'll have less and less of that contact. We could luck out and watch our numbers steadily rise or watch them fall and wonder on both sides of the equation:

What do people really think of what we are doing?

Okay. So I've waxed poetic into a corner now and I'd like to hear more from you...my readers, which could be anywhere between 2 and 20,000/day - depending on the 'measurement' one uses ('cause they all seem to say something radically different).

Article in Wired. I can't believe she's 15 already...egad, they grow so fast, don't they?

via: laughing squid

How much fun is this?



Yep. I'm a slob and proud of it.

Thanks John!

Everyone with an idea should read Assaf's post. My favourite point:

Search is not broken. Search works great for most people most of the time. There’s a few places where search can improve, and you can round up the corners. But if you understand that it’s not broken, just has some untapped niche markets, you’ll be able to cost it better.

Yes...I did say search is broken...but it's broken for me and for my needs. 99% of the people I know outside of the Valley are still in love with Google and Yahoo!. Oh...and email isn't broken either. Hotmail is still popular...really. I know people who still use Excite. All of his points are fantastic, though.

Of course, some ideas aren't supposed to be businesses and I'm all for experimentation and executing on ideas that are not profitable, but are useful and interesting.

Sony Bravia is producing another orgy of color ad (see previous one here). Only this time, it sounds more like an environmental disaster:

70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire

Way cool or gross environmental negligence (remember that paint is considered toxic waste)? And...what the hell does Sony Bravia do anyway other than produce these public installations advert installations?

[Boston Ivy on Flickr]

At Harvard, staying at the dorm (I'm going to tell everyone, "Sure, I went to Harvard and I lived in the dorms..." ;)) for Wikimania... some quick links before I retire:

• Josh Wolf, videoblogger and all-around good guy, is now in jail for not turning footage he shot during the G8 summit over to the feds. Josh explains his story here. If I could ever get stupid PayPal to work for me, I would have already donated towards his growing legal bill (opening new account...again). You may want to do the same after looking into it. I had the pleasure of meeting Josh at Vloggercon and I think he's incredibly brave. [His mom is currently blogging for him...which is amazing and wonderful and dedicated of her as she, admittedly, is new to the medium].
  
• Congrats to Mike for launching the CrunchBoard ... I'm loving the extensions of the 'Crunch' brand. What's next? CrunchUps? CrunchCamp? CrunchCon? Oooooo...that would be coooool.
  
• It looks as if YouTube and MySpace are monopolizing the video space. I was impressed to see Yahoo!Video in third place, though. ;)
• Erica posts awesome 'starting a business' advice, which follows Ted's awesome advice...both stemming from conversations where we solicited both of their opinions. Oh..btw...both said right off the bat, "Get a good lawyer." We got one! Check!
• So much for the recent gender disputes, apparently women want cool technology more than diamonds. So there. I'm not alone. ;)
• Scott pointed me to a hilarious interview with the letter 'e', who is in retirement.
  

I have tonnes more, but I'm weary from travel.

Sitting here in my home working away, I just felt my first earth tremor. Uh. oh.

:: It was tiny btw...just enough to know what it was...must get that 3 day supply of water, etc. soon.

::update: everyone dodgeballed and twttr'd in:

Glenda at 8:09 - "Holy crap, was that just an earthquake? Uh."
Chris at 8:10 - "Anyone feel quake tremors?"
Nick at 8:10 - "Quakesville" "felt in lower and upper Haight"
Scott at 8:10 - "at House of Shields" (heh)
Ev at 8: 11 - "did anyone just feel that earthquake?"
Tantek at 8:11 - "Earthquake felt here in the Haight est 3.5 lasted about 10 sec"
Eris at 8:12 - "always wondered how dbers would handle an eq. on caltrain, going through tunnels."
Ryan at 8:12 - "Didn't feel anything here."
Tantek at 8:14 - "Usgs reports 4.5 near Santa Rosa"
Matt at 8:17 - "didn't feel any quake in soma"
Scott at 8:19 - "Irina wants papa beard creame puffs, so if anyone is going near there..." (heh)

[our real-time news network...pretty sweet]

Tags: earthquake, sanfrancisco

Citizen Agency has been working with mobile SMS startup, Mozes.com, and I convinced them the other day to get involved with a Snakes on a Plane! It was easy. I just showed them the many links, including Snakes on a Blog (awesome), and they were hooked. So, they let me have the 'SoaP' keyword.

So...what am I going to do with that?

What it's about.

Well, if you subscribe to the SoaP broadcast, you will receive SoaP tips, secrets and contest notifications (that I dig up). You will also receive instructions on how to join the flashgroup we'll be setting up on August 18th (release date). I'm hoping that people across North America (sorry...your carriers overseas won't play along) will participate in this and be able to connect via SMS chatter as they excitedly get ready for the movie, stand in line for the movie and watch the movie.

I also want to see what kind of cool stuff emerges from these interactions. There have been pretty awesome things emerging from connections we're making through SoaP already. Kathy Sierra talked about the nod a while back...and I believe SoaP is one of those 'in group' things.

Either way, SMS helps us keep connected through the movie.

How to join up.

[there is no charge, but if you don't have unlimited SMS, you may want to get it] It's pretty simple:

1. Just SMS 'SOAP' to MOZES (66937)
2. You'll get a confirmation message and instructions on how to join the broadcast
3. Done.

Then:

1. I'll send out a couple of messages a week with fun stuff [the first one was how to get Samuel L. Jackson to call your friends]
   
2. Then late on the 17th, I'll send out instructions on how to join the flash group as well as how to post messages to it

From there...who knows?

There are already 1020 people subscribed. You don't need to sign up at Mozes (although, if you do, you can see the conversation afterwards as Mozes saves it for you in your profile).

I wrote a funny little story over on the CA Blog about someone asking us what our business model is. It's pretty straight forward. We consult. We charge. We get paid. Most people get that (although we've had moments...).

But then I was chatting with a friend of mine up in Toronto who is looking around at the Toronto Web 2.0 world of online apps and watching them drop like flies. When asked, "What is your business model?" many of them pointed to adwords. They wanted their products to be free. Most of them even disagreed to charge for a premium account, thinking that offering a free service that when competitors charged would attract more users up front.

And I'm sure they attracted some. But is it enough to stay in business?

Personally, I've always been against offering web apps for absolutely free. Why?

1. Because it doesn't give a company a very long lifespan (reality)
   
   
2. You have to get loads of funding, then answer to investors on that business model line....OR
   
   
3. Get acquired, which is a 1 in a 1000 chance, which is, in reality, you getting a real job, which is probably the opposite of what you wanted to do and why you started the company in the first place.
   
   
4. You are under oodles of pressure all of the time without an income.
   
   
5. Your fans are disappointed when you have to shut down 'cause you are broke, which makes people hesitant about using another totally free service because they fear the same thing will happen.
   
   
6. You devalue your own work and effort you have put into this. If someone came up to you and said, "Hey, build this site for my company for free," you would tell them to screw off. Yet, you are doing it right now.
   
   
7. Most of the world still believes the adage, "You get what you pay for." Yes, MySpace is changing this, but in the business world (who have the $$ for your wikis and your blogging tools), 'free' is still met with aprehension.
   
   
8. Adwords is NOT a business model. You'd have to grow hella big traffic to support yourself and the space is hella crowded. Even MySpace, with it's mega-traffic can't pull in the advertising $$.
   

The reality is that there are tonnes of fabulous little apps and programs that offer shareware or trialware, but when that trial is up, they charge. And people buy. And that is their business model. So, they may not get 56 million sign-ups a month, but they get enough that they can keep plugging at improving their tool and the next thing you know, you've created the next Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Word. That is, if they have something great (which is always the bottom line).

[And yes, Google offers everything for free, but even they have a tough time getting adoption on their free products - even with their mega-mindshare...and believe, me, down the road when these products aren't making them money, they will abandon them. It's a business first and foremost.]

I'm really saddened by the recent news of a whole bunch of brilliant entrepreneurs throwing in the towel (I'll let them make their announcements) because they are out of money. And...this is only the beginning. Money runs out quickly.

This being said, there is nothing wrong with building something while working or consulting, then going out on your own when it is ready to launch, then throwing yourself into it. Think small. Get real. Charge for premium accounts. Give people trial periods. Create kick ass products that people can't live without. Or do the open source thing - the technology is free, but the support and customization is paid for.

Whipping out the credit card is easy when you find something really valuable. Other than Blogger, I pay the premium for every other service I used regularly (or expect to down the line).

I don't think totally free is good for anyone. It devalues technology. It creates an insane pile of entrepreneurial corpses. It becomes the sole value proposition for too many companies (but, we're free!). It doesn't actually help the customer in the long run.

But that's just another one of my crazy ideas.

Great related post by Brian O.
and
An awesome diagram from Peter Rip.

a la Hughster

When my son was little (look at me being a mommy blogger ;)), he would do really cute stuff and all of us fawning over him would laugh and giggle with delight. Of course, being a bright boy, he would observe our delight and repeat the cute stuff. He was becoming aware of what got him attention.

When I started out blogging, nobody, not even my mom, read me. I just blogged my little heart out. I posted ridiculous rants, went on about my cat and, ocassionally, wrote a nice little piece about my thoughts on how marketing had to change. As my audience grew (due to the marketing posts, mostly) I became aware of stigmas around cat blogging and ranting without some sort of research. So, I stuck with my marketing posts...kinda.

Somehow, I was introduced to Technorati and became addicted to my 'rank'. It was a thin slice of the pie, but, dammit, I could drop numbers at cocktail parties, "Out of 24 million blogs, I'm at 65,000 - not so bad for a Canadian nobody...har har har," and it seemed, the more one grew in ranking, the more readers one obtained. The self-importance bubbled.

But something happened along the way that I didn't like so much. I started to become fearful of blogging. I would sit down and write something, delete it, re-write it, cross-check it, then carefully analyze whether this post was going to 'hold their attention' (whoever 'they' were). I had oodles of perfectly great rants and fun posts sitting, unpublished, because they didn't fit the formula of my previously popular posts. And, yes, there is a formula.

And I was afraid. I was always afraid. At the rank of 16,500 (I think it was), I was deadly afraid that people would stop reading me, I would slip down in the rankings and nobody would link to me ever again. I call that time my 'dark ages'.

After about a month of that, though, I made a discovery. Formulaic and all, I wasn't gaining any ground. I was feeling stale. I wasn't enjoying blogging. Then someone told me a secret: blog like you have 2 readers...and the fear melted away for me.

It was so freeing. It was so inspirational. And some of my crazy assbest ideas have sprung from that well of knowledge. The rants came back. The cat-blogging came back (although I don't have a cat now, my 'life online' stories are my equivalent). The 'I'm a big goof' posts started to make their appearance. And I love blogging again. I'm afraid no more. I could give a damn if my numbers slip.

Now, everytime I feel the fear of 'losing that fame for 15 people', I remind myself that there is only two...and those two love me for crazy me. (okay, so one IS my mom and the other is Chris who has to read my blog or else I get really grumpy. Tad? Forget it. Don't you know 'It's lame'?)

[Superiority from Lukasd2009 on Flickr]

In relation to this post. Funny.

I'm beta testing Sutori, which Chris and I have lovingly re-named 'MyShitList.com'. I'll talk a little more about it soon, but first impressions:

1. Yay! I finally have a place to list all of those rss-wipe companies who disempower me and tell me to go screw myself after taking my money. BBB has always sucked for reporting this.
   
   
2. It's done in rails...of course. So intuitive. So lovely. So damned simple to use. I can post my ire in about 2 seconds.
   
   
3. Nice looking site. Easy to navigate. Can't wait for more.

My first entry: u-Haul u-Suck