The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Join me at the Angel Capital Summit this Friday!

Rather amazingly, I'm actually going to attend an event where I'm not scheduled to speak, but I am still excited about the Second Annual Angel Capital Summit coming up this Friday, Nov 21st, at the Denver Marriott City Center in Denver, Colorado!

There are some very interesting speakers I'll be listening to, including restaurant entrepreneur and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Anita Burke of the Catalyst Institute and 42 presentations by Colorado startups and entrepreneurial companies throughout the state, all vetted by the Rockies Venture Club and other participating organizations. Finally, the Summit will end with a Town Hall Meeting entitled Disrupting the Recession: Colorado's entrepreneurial response to the financial crisis, election, energy and sustainability.

Note: On-line registration closes at midnight tonight, November 19. Walk-ins registrations will be available at the door. While we'll make every attempt to accommodate walk-ins quickly, please bear in mind that last year's Angel Capital Summit sold out, and some walk-ins were unable to register.

Entrepreneurial success is more important to our society now more than ever. Come to the Angel Capital Summit, and be one of those who "disrupt the recession" and build the future!

Cost: Town Hall Meeting only: $25.00. Angel Capital Summit (which includes the Town Hall Meeting); $129 RVC members, $159 non members.

For event info and registration, go to angelcapitalsummit.org.

I'll hope to see you there!

First things first: Sign up for the Blogsmart News so you can stay up to date on the latest insider tips and ideas for your Internet business and marketing efforts. Better yet, sign up right now and you'll get a free copy of my "Insider's Guide to Blogging" ebook too!

Does Social Media Really Connect You to Humanity?

I originally published this article in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum and am reprinting it here for my online friends and colleagues. I hope you enjoy it and find it thought-provoking. I realize that it's quite possible you won't agree with my viewpoint. That's good. Explain why you view it differently in the comments section please!

Let me start out with a confession. I'm about as plugged in to the computer networks as anyone you're likely to meet. I first connected to the Internet back in 1980, when it was the ARPAnet and commercial use was completely verboten. Yes, it's come a long way, and so has our society.

Nowadays professionals are just as likely to have their Facebook or LinkedIn URL on their business cards as a phone number, and entire conferences seem to be run simultaneously in the physical world and as a running, often snarky, flow of consciousness dialog on the Twitter microblogging service.

But all of this begs the question: are we really more connected? Do computer and social networks really make us more connected as human beings?

That's what I'd like to talk about in this article.

MYSPACE REDEFINED FRIENDSHIP

One of the first phenomena you notice when you start to connect with people through Web sites that are designed to memorialize connections is that the word "friend" takes on a different meaning. In the physical world -- what people in the virtual reality world of Second Life call "RL" or real life -- friends are generally defined as those people you have a personal relationship with, not anyone you happen to encounter, anyone at your college, company, or other organizations. The latter are colleagues or acquaintances or just people with whom you have something in common.

The first popular sites to delve into the world of friendship, of letting you quantify and identify your circle of friends, were Friendster (which is now essentially defunct, having long-since fallen out of the zeitgeist) and MySpace. On these sites every connection you made had a similar strength, so your best friend Mike is considered just as important in your life as Aunt Flo, to whom you've connected to stop her complaining at family gatherings.

In real life, of course, everyone has close, important friends, intimates who are privy to the highs and lows of your life, a larger circle of what we can call pretty good friends who can help out in a crunch but with whom you don't interact with regularly, and finally "almost friends" who are people with whom you feel an affinity, but geography, time or other logistical issues prevent from becoming closer. And then there are the decaying circles of acquaintances, colleagues, and so on.

ENTER THE KEVIN BACON EFFECT

Very little research in sociology has caught the public fancy as much as the early work by Harvard social psychologist Stanley Milgram, in which he hypothesized that we are all far more connected than we realize. His famous experiment of randomly choosing Midwesterners to hand-deliver letters to Bostonians they didn't know through a chain of friends produced the conclusion that people in the United States are separated by about six people on average.

There are a variety of flaws with this research, but whether we're connected through six hops, eight hops or seventeen, the basic idea that social chains are sufficiently all-encompassing that you and I can find a sequence of friends or acquaintances that connect us is fascinating. Make the end point well-known actor Kevin Bacon and you have "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" or "the Kevin Bacon effect".

It was this question of how to gain access to your friends' friends, or, more accurately, the connections of your connections, that has become the basis of LinkedIn, a social network that lets you answer the question "I wonder if any of my friends know someone who..."

The numbers quickly grow at an extraordinary rate. I have 705 connections on LinkedIn. Take one step out onto that social network and that gives me over 330,000 people in my immediate network. One further step out (we'd call this friends of friends of friends, I suppose) and the number is a staggering 8,392,600 connections.

What does that mean? Am I obligated to send holiday cards to them all or keep track of their birthdays? I sure hope not!

In fact, they're not friends. While they offer up a tremendous professional resource, they don't in any fundamental way expand your social or personal network. They don't connect you with the greater humanity.

Since I know you might be wondering, Facebook isn't any better in this regard. You can certainly join many, many different circles of common interests through mailing lists, applications, etc., but it's still a very abstract, intellectual world. I have 358 Facebook friends and at least 25% of those I wouldn't recognize if we bumped into each other at the local Starbucks.

DO ANY SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

If we're trying to ascertain what helps you become less isolated rather than gaining the appearance of more friends while still leaving you just as disconnected, perhaps the answer lies in dating sites? After all, those are sites where you connect with others because of either an existing or desired personal connection. No, still, that's not right because, with the exception of novel sites like Ignighter.com, they are focused on who you want to know, not who you know.

Another possibility are lightweight social networks like Twitter, to which I admit a personal addiction (you can follow me at @DaveTaylor). The idea behind sites like Twitter are that it'd be useful and interesting to be able to keep tabs on your friends as you all go through your day. Spontaneous meetups, collaboration, and mutual support all easily flow from this sort of connectivity.

Twitter indeed fulfills some of these daily needs for people to be connected, especially with its great strength as a mobile application. It's interesting to see how this evolves too, however, particularly in light of our quest for online tools that help you truly connect with humanity: I keep track of just over 100 friends, all of whom I would recognize at a party, but over 3000 people keep track of what I am saying and doing. It's kind of weird, actually!

IS IT ABOUT MEASURING FRIENDSHIPS?

As we've traveled through the landscape of social media and social networks, whether it's the immediacy of Twitter or the business-like utility of LinkedIn, what has become clear is that these tools need to let us differentiate between close friends and acquaintances, to rate the strength of our connection. Without that capability, everyone's in the same proverbial pool and my connection with my close friend Richard is identical to my new connection with PKP magazine editor Margaret Lisi.

That being the case, you need to make a decision, preferably before you proceed to enmesh yourself in a social network, regarding whether it will capture everyone you know and have more than a passing acquaintance with or whether you will reserve it to your closest friends.

In the social network world we refer to this as quality versus quantity, and there are strong arguments for each approach. But what I want, predictably, is both. The quality gets me the connection with humanity, the ability to stay in closer touch with my intimate friends, and the quantity offers me all the benefits of our modern, highly-connected world. How to attain both? Well, we're still at the veritable infancy of social networks so I'm pushing their edges and watching it all evolve on a weekly basis.

How about you? How will you choose to utilize these many online tools to expand your own social and professional circles?

PR Tip: Exciting products should have exciting press releases too

Last week I survived my visit to the lion's den with my talk on "PR is Dead" to the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado chapter retreat. No brickbats (what the heck is a brickbat anyway?), no scars, and rather a surprising number of PR professionals from major agencies coming up to me afterward saying "you were spot on, Dave!"

My main point in the talk was that modern public relations is about getting journalists and the media (which of course includes us bloggers too) excited about products, services and companies, but while also recognizing that we need our autonomy. It's not about control, it's not about being the gatekeeper for corporate info and communications. I can't really summarize a 50 minute presentation in two sentences, but that's the gist of my main idea, at least.

In this modern world where there are thousands more "journalists" than ever before, there are nonetheless similar challenges that have faced PR since the profession was created: standing out from the crowd.

That's why I'm so amazed by the release I got this afternoon entitled "***Worlds Collide as Midway Unleashes Eagerly-Awaited Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe***".

So, with that title, you expect something at least mildly visually interesting, don't you? And yet, here's what I got:

This is so boring it's painful to even get in my inbox. We're coming into the second decade of the 21st century, guys, isn't it time to start creating communiques that are visually engaging already??

Mostly I'm just so struck that this major media news for the gaming world that's built upon dozens of very well known comic book figures has been boiled down to the most boring, uninteresting, unengaging press release possible.

Do they really expect any pickup at all??

Is PR dead? You tell me....

Hi y'all. I'm giving a talk to the Public Relations Society of America later this week, with a working title of "PR: 0, Bloggers: 1", and rather than retread the same tired examples, I'd like to ask if any of you have interesting examples of either expensive PR campaigns that were a fail or very inexpensive grassroots blog/social media-based campaigns that were a huge success.

I'll share my notes post-event.

Oh, and if you think PR is just completely dead because "we are the conversation" or whatever, or think that PR's just as essential as it has been for the last 100 years, I'd like to hear from you too!

Thanks.

What was SanDisk thinking when it introduced the SlotMusic format?

This might seem confusing, but in a world where more and more people are obtaining music through digital means, notably the iTunes Music store, a consortium of music companies have introduced a new physical music distribution format called SlotMusic. The idea is simple: a read-only MicroSD card that has an album's worth of music on it, along with - hopefully - additional digital information.

But is it the right product at the right time? I don't think so. Let me explain why...

As we have seen again and again with the introduction of new media formats in the consumer electronics industry, there's a classic chicken and egg problem when it's released. That is, the industry won't release lots of music on this new format until there are lots of players, but people won't buy players until there's lots of music available. The slow adoption of Blu-Ray and demise of HD-DVD are both examples of how this expensive problem plays out in the marketplace.

Clearly there needs to be a compelling reason for anyone to adopt a new music format like SlotMusic and while the vendors talk about simplicity and ease of use, the true key feature is that the music is available in the common MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

Market penetration of MP3 players demonstrates that people really like digital music, but having a collection of tiny, fragile chips as your music library? Doesn't seem like it's going to work.

Further, there's a classic pricing error in the positioning of SlotMusic too: at $14.99 suggested retail, it's compared to the suggested retail of CD music, but a quick glance at someone like Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) shows that in fact almost all of the most popular CDs are $9.99. Why that price point? Because that's exactly how much an album's worth of music costs on the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes Store too.

SanDisk's SlotMusic player. Notice the tiny card: that's the MicroSD device.

The only place I can find online that's selling SlotMusic music is consumer electronics powerhouse Best Buy.com (NYSE: BBY), for, yes, $14.99/gizmo. (Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is supposed to come online with SlotMusic material within a week or two).

To be fair, while it appears that you need to buy a new SlotMusic player to enjoy this new medium, each actually includes a USB adapter, making it easy to read them on your computer or laptop device (and then, presumably, copy it to your Mp3 player). There are cheesy low-end SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) players that are cheap at $19.99, but do you really want to buy another player?

Nonetheless, even with the included USB adapter, it's hard to imagine why anyone who is sufficiently plugged in to care about copying the material to their computer wouldn't just use one of the many online music stores, skipping the MicroSD device entirely. (and note that while many users are unhappy about the DRM limitations of music downloaded from the iTunes Store, there are plenty of alternatives)

I'm not alone in being down on the future chances of SlotMusic either. A quick spin through the blogosphere will reveal that GigaOM, The NY Times, NewsOK and Technologizer and Engadget all agree that SlotMusic is destined to fail, not succeed.

I can only wonder why savvy tech company SanDisk even bothered with this half-baked technological effort that doesn't address the cost of music, the percentage of the sale that goes to the artist, or the extraordinarily inefficient distribution channels and costs imposed therein. A way to distribute and sell CDs for $4.99, where $1 would go to the artist would be revolutionary.

A SlotMusic MicroSD physical distribution device for music in the age of digital downloads that retains the $14.99 collection of songs from popular artists is dead on arrival.

How do you use social media to promote your business online?

A friend of mine sent me the following question:

"What sites do you use / recommend using to promote content (i.e. blogs, articles, etc.)? I'm re-tooling our business website and blog, and want to make sure I get the most effective (popular?) ones, along the lines of Technorati, Digg, etc. Your answers will help me pick the buttons I'll use..."

I have heard this same basic question again and again as I have gone to different conferences and it's one I think about too: how do you use all this stuff in a coherent fashion?

There are definitely some people who say "you should just do it all" and some of them even have a presence on dozens of social media sites. To me, that's not a viable answer because most people -- myself included -- want to focus on their core business, not the promotional tools. It's like someone who forgets that in addition to nice print ads, their restaurant still needs to serve a good meal. Not a good long term strategy, needless to say!

My view of things is that you need to have both a "destination" and pointers to that destination in the online world. Further, I believe that each of the major social networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) is its own little universe and that you need to have some sort of presence on each of these where your potential customers participate. (let me explain that a bit further: if you have a restaurant, yes, you should have a presence on MySpace. If you're a lawyer, however, LinkedIn is more likely to be your core constituency).

Your destination is where you tell the story, where you sell your product or service (gently, please), where you actually try to close the sale. My recommendation for this is a weblog (not surprisingly) where you can create search-engine friendly content and retain control of its design and presentation. I also recommend that you have a standalone blog, rather than using, say, the "notes" section on Facebook or the crude blogging tools available in MySpace.

Once you've created the destination content, it's time to think about what additional sites can help you promote and gain traffic. There are two categories of these: bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and separate universes like Facebook and MySpace.

For the former, there's a never-ending wrestling match between having them be valuable and having them be polluted by people trying to game the system. In particular, Digg has had a lot of growing pains in this regard and I've spoken with "top diggers" who candidly say that they sell their popularity: you want visibility on Digg? Pay them.

Nonetheless, if your audience is sufficiently tech savvy to know what these sites actually are, then there's no reason not to include a few of those bookmarking buttons. I suggest you include Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon, or use a consolidation bookmark tool or widget like Socialtwist, which I'm using on my busy Ask Dave Taylor site.

Don't go crazy and list ten or more of these. There are sooooo many me-too bookmark sites but listing too many causes confusion for readers, the old "embarrassment of riches" problem. It's not going to gain you additional visibility.

In terms of separate universes, of the social networking sites (as opposed, as I said earlier, to bookmarking sites), I think almost everyone should have a meaningful presence on Facebook and if it's a professional product or service, LinkedIn. If your target demographic includes the under-18 crowd then you also need to be on MySpace.

On many of these sites you can automate things so that when you post a new blog entry it shows up on these sites too (for example, see my article about How to hook your blog RSS feed to your Facebook profile) which certainly makes life easy. Automation is good.

The problem is that I don't think that every single blog entry I write is appropriate for every social community within which I'm a participant, so my suggestion is that if you write something really good, manually promote it on the other sites too.

That's a perfect use of Twitter, for example: not to think of Twitter as a purely promotional channel (which will fail) but rather to intersperse an occasional pointer back to your core content with your other Twitter comments. This is exactly applicable to, for example, your Facebook status updates (ditto MySpace, LinkedIn, etc).

If your material includes video, YouTube can drive traffic, and if you've photographs or still images, putting them up on Flickr can produce yet another traffic stream.

Finally, after this crazy long entry, I will say that my plan for promoting this particular blog entry is to mention it on Twitter with a clickable URL link included, to post the same status message on Facebook and to write a brief summary - with "read more" link - and post it to my MySpace blog area. And, hopefully, a few of you will bookmark it too, but I don't pre-bookmark my own entries.

...and the fact that you're reading this shows that the strategy works, at least at some level. :-)

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Btw, if we haven't yet hooked up in these online worlds, you can find me online quickly and easily through Dave Taylor Online.

My busy, busy next seven days

It's good that I like being busy, because I sure am right now! Tomorrow morning I'm opening up the Thin Air Summit with the keynote address on "Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history", then Monday afternoon I'm a judge for the Colorado Inventor's Showcase in Denver. A few days to recharge my batteries and Friday I'm back on the podium, offering up the keynote address for the Public Relations Society of America's Colorado Chapter meeting in Denver. My topic is "Social Media 1: Public Relations 0 - Understanding, tracking and managing the message in a highly connected world".

I'm also going to be moderating a (recorded) panel discussion for Blogger & Podcaster early next week, with author Michael Webb, ClickBank Director of Marketing Bob Dunlap, and blogging affiliate marketer Miles Baker, which I'm looking forward to quite a bit: they're just the right people to discuss the challenges of commodity marketing. (the discussion will be made available through Blogger & Podcaster magazine a few weeks later)

In the midst of all of this I'll have a complete change of pace by accompanying my delightful 4yo daughter on her class Martinmas lantern walk. If you don't know what that is, the holiday is based on the legend of St. Martin of Tours, who was born in 316. He's honored for having apocryphally sharing his cloak with a beggar and represents brotherliness. According to custom, as the days become shorter and the stars appear earlier, children would walk with lanterns through the streets singing. As the world grows darker, the inner light of man wants to shine forth. That's what I'll be doing mid-week.

Then it'll be right back to business and social media and the online world, 2008AD. Kinda Jekyll/Hyde, actually. Everyone who is a parent and businessperson, however, knows what that's like!

Sheesh. I think today I should just stay in bed and sleep, so I can be caught up for what's going to be a fun and exciting, but tiring, next seven days! I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

Malaria kills a child every thirty seconds...

A bit off my usual beaten track, but I'm a big proponent of much of the work that the United Nations does, especially through UNESCO and UNICEF. If you've read my writings for a while, you've probably seen me talk about this before, and if you've ever gotten an Intuitive Systems holiday card, you won't be surprised that they're all from UNICEF too.

Generally I feel that the United Nations is misunderstood and greatly maligned in the United States and that most people have no clue about the tremendous work that the organization does above and beyond the often empty pontification of the General Assembly. Fact is, though, the UN is trying to make the world a better place through so many different avenues it can make your head swim. From sexual abuse to childhood illnesses, poverty to giving downtrodden a political voice and control over their future, there's quite a bit going on every week at UN offices throughout the world.

This week marks a very interesting conference that's the subject of this blog post: The Safer Alternatives to DDT meeting in Geneva.

The UN release describes it thusly: "Some 80 delegates from governments, industry, research institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) today kicked off a three-day United Nations-backed meeting in Geneva focusing on cost effective and environmentally-friendly alternatives to DDT, a controversial chemical used to control malaria."

What you might not realize about malaria is just what a major problem it is around the world. According to the US Center for Disease Control and World Health Organization, 300-500 million cases of malaria are reported annually and over one million people each year die of malaria.

Far more shocking is that in Africa, where it's rife and mostly affects younger children (as it does throughout the globe) a child dies from malaria every thirty seconds.

It's safe to say that, yes, malaria is a major health problem, and it's really amazing that in the 21st century when we have cellphones with more technological capabilities than the original Apollo lander and a global Internet that makes sharing information unbelievably simple and efficient that a disease transmitted by mosquitoes remains such a plague around the planet.

If you're a cool-hearted businessperson and can read these statistics without any sort of emotional reaction, think about this: "Because malaria causes so much illness and death, the disease is a great drain on many national economies. Since many countries with malaria are already among the poorer nations, the disease maintains a vicious cycle of disease and poverty."

Break these cycles of poverty and the world will unquestionably be a safer and better place.

This is the perfect example of a diseases where a vaccine would be a good solution (certainly better than DDT) but, as the CDC explains: "There is currently no malaria vaccine approved for human use. The malaria parasite is a complex organism with a complicated life cycle. Its antigens are constantly changing and developing a vaccine against these varying antigens is very difficult. In addition, scientists do not yet totally understand the complex immune responses that protect humans against malaria. However, many scientists all over the world are working on developing an effective vaccine. Because other methods of fighting malaria, including drugs, insecticides, and bed nets, have not succeeded in eliminating the disease, the search for a vaccine is considered to be one of the most important research projects in public health."

I urge you to take a few minutes off today to think about the plague of malaria and what you can do to help out. Perhaps it's a donation (there are a number of charities focused on breaking the malaria cycle), perhaps its just praying for a cure and for the souls of the twenty or thirty African children that died while you were reading this blog.

In this day and age when we seem to focus most of our attention on a small number of big issues, I find it helpful to expand my mind and my attention by remembering the less glamorous problems we all face too.

Subway seized for want of a $2919 tax payment

I don't know if this is a harbinger of things to come, or whether it's just someone whose franchise dreams died, but yesterday at the Flatiron Crossing Mall in Broomfield, Colorado, I was struck by the rather alarming sign on the door of the local Subway franchise, as shown to the right.

As it happens, I had been in that particular Subway franchise and had a conversation with the owner about his experience as a franchise business owner. He was, like so many people are, retired from another profession and had invested in the Subway franchise because he thought it would be a sure fire way to make money and have a half-time job as he went into his retirement. As I recall he wasn't that old (late 40s?) but it's a very common story in the industry.

Problem was, as he explained, he didn't quite make enough to be able to hire other people to work: by doing the work himself, he avoided taxes, health care and wages, so it was a cross he was bearing, working 60+ hours/week trying to keep the business afloat.

As the sign attests, he didn't succeed and the business is not afloat, it's down in Davey Jones locker with all the other failed businesses and franchise opportunities.

What most struck me was how little he owed: $2919.00:

That was enough, however, that when he missed six weeks of tax payments to the City, Broomfield seized the business and shut him down.

Peeking inside, it's clear everything's been moved around and inventoried, and indeed, the auction house that's going to sell off hardware and equipment to try and recoup the lost tax payments has a business card on the window:

Certainly, one company's failure is another company's opportunity.

I see this as a cautionary tale and can't but feel for the owner of this particular Subway sandwich shop. He went into it with his dreams and hopes for a brighter tomorrow and somehow, year after year, the dream slipped away, it became harder and harder to make ends meet, and finally, one day, he just didn't open up shop again. He walked away. And then The Man came and for want of less than $3000 in taxes, took away any chance for him to resurrect it and come out ahead.

With that in mind, how's your business doing? Are you realistically, pragmatically assessing its state, or are you living in dreamland as your dreams slip through your fingers too?

Join us at the Thin Air Summit, get my book for free!

I'm very excited to not only have been involved in the planning process for the upcoming Thin Air Summit, coming next month in Denver at the beautiful downtown Sheraton, but to also be invited to give the opening keynote talk for the event too.

My talk is titled Finding a Voice: The evolution of personal media through history and my (working) description is:

New media isn't new at all. Whether it's a hand-cranked printer hidden in the basement, a bootleg radio station or a can of spray paint, people's need to express themselves and make an impact on their community has been a pervasive part of history. What is new is that we, the public, ARE the media too now, and that your blog might well have a greater readership than a traditional media outlet controlled by a homogenizing corporation like Clear Channel. We'll look at these topics and explore the key questions of What's going on?  How did we get here?  And how can you gain more influence in this ever-changing marketplace?

Sound interesting? I hope so!

In addition to my keynote, we also have my friend and colleague Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research giving the second day keynote too, entitled "The Future of Media in the Social/Digital Age", which I'm eager to hear: he's very plugged in to trends and forecasting with his position at Forrester.

Additional speakers and sessions are shown on the Thin Air Summit site, so you can read 'em yourself.

What I want to announce here is that I'm offering a special promotion: the first twenty people who sign up for the Thin Air Summit using the special registration code "dave" will get a free signed copy of my book Growing Your Business With Google. That's a good deal, and doubly so if you're joining us!

I hope this serves as a good additional incentive to join us Nov 8-9 2008 at the Sheraton Denver for the Thin Air Summit!

Microsoft Zune versus Apple iPod: Components don't make a gadget valuable!

I'm a bit baffled by this query I got from a PR agent who is working on the Microsoft Zune account:

"Between November 2006 and May 2008 Apple iPods have outsold Microsoft Zunes 38: 1. Has America chosen the best device? As the economy takes a turn for the worse, it is important for consumers to truly understand the value of a purchase. What are you getting for your money?

I have an electronics expert who can comment on the quality of each device (iPod and Zune). Aaron Vronko has recently disassembled the 4th generation iPod Nano, the 2nd generation iPod touch, the iPod Classic 120 GB, the Zune 120GB, and the Zune Flash to determine which device is in fact a better value."

I'm really trying to figure out the logic behind this query. I mean, the value of a consumer electronics product is not the sum value of its components, so what's the point of offering up an "expert" who has torn all of these gizmos apart?

Zune Internals (Image credit: zunerama.com)

It's like saying that the value of one book is greater than another because it has more pages and more words. Last I checked, however, people don't buy books because of their word count.

In terms of the Zune versus the iPod, the components are almost completely irrelevant. People don't say "I was going to buy an iPod but when I found out that the audio plug isn't robust, I bought a Zune instead".

Am I wrong? Do you care about value of the components inside your electronic gizmo or gadget? More to the point, perhaps, would you be more likely to buy a Microsoft Zune player if you knew it had better quality components inside than a comparable Apple iPod?

Public Relations in the Age of Blogging: Good Pitch, Bad Pitch

Just so happens that in my mailbox I have two lovely examples of how public relations professionals in different agencies are trying to work with bloggers, one that I believe is a poor example of how to pitch, and one that's spot-on good. I have scrubbed the names clean because it's not about the specific agency as much as the concepts here. As usual, I also have my editorial commentary like this as we go along.

Ready? Here we gooooooo....

First off, here's the initial pitch I, a daddy blogger based in Colorado, received, about a children's book signing event:

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I am following up on a previous email and my voicemail today regarding the below (and attached) event at Bloomingdales which will be taking place tomorrow.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in covering for your blog?

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Huh? Why would I care about something going on 1700 miles away, something with a 24 hour deadline? She didn't have information "below" within the text of the email she sent me either, making me have to open an attachment to even remember what we're talking about. I asked just that question...

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Nice contact, but what makes you think I’d be interested? Did you go and read my parenting blog, or am I in a contact database you have?

With regards,

Dave Taylor

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to which she responded

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Hi Dave,

Thank you for getting back to me.

We read your parenting blog and thought you may be interested in covering as it is an event geared towards children.

Do you think this is something you would be interested in?

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I will give her points for consistency, but if she read my parenting blog she'd know that I wouldn't give a hoot about a promotional event in Manhattan on my weblog. In fact, I almost never write about anything that I'd get from a publicist or PR person. I do, however, occasionally review things, which could have been her angle (e.g. mailing me a copy of the book in question), but wasn't.

Now, contrast that with this other pitch, made to someone else, not me, by Lisa at Metzger Associates:

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Subject: CSG Systems CEO would like to talk to you

Dear Jeff,

I'm the Lisa Everitt perhaps best known in the Rocky business department as the person for whom Joe Nacchio autographed a can of paint in 1999. That was a bizarre era. Now I work for Metzger Associates. Did the paint make its way to the new building?

Peter Kalan, the new CEO of CSG Systems, would like to sit down with you, on the phone or in person at their office, to talk about CSG's broader outlook beyond billing, statements and customer service support for cable and DBS companies. He's available the week of Oct. 13, specifically Tuesday 10/14 and Friday 10/17. If those days don't
work for you, we will wrangle calendars until something does.

As you know, CSG has been an influential company in the national and local cable scene, with customers that include Comcast, Time-Warner, Charter Communications and a raft of smaller players.

What's new with CSG Systems...

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[Dave again] What Lisa's done here is explain who she is, remind Jeff of a previous interact they've had, then succinctly detail exactly what the pitch is and why it should be of interest. It takes a total of, what, 15 seconds to skim this and identify the who, what, where, when and why. That's respectful and always appreciated.

Contrast that with the email I received from the other PR person, who had none of that useful information readily accessible in her email. The only thing she included was a rather naggy reminder that she'd already emailed me and left me voicemail (which I don't actually appreciate, as it happens). How much better for her to have said "To remind you, I'm talking about person X from company Y doing event Z and inviting you to ..."

But even there, the pitch never included "would you like to interview my client?" or "would you like a copy of the book for review?" or anything that suggested that I, as a blogger presumably sufficiently interesting to be on her short list, was anyone more than an additional one-way publicity channel.

This is, as I said in the beginning, a bad way to pitch bloggers or anyone else. A journalist wouldn't be impressed either.

Meanwhile, you'll note that even with this posting I still haven't offered up much information about the event at Bloomingdale's. Because... I just don't have a clue about what's going on. Still.

So you tell me. Good pitch? Bad pitch?

Disney, Sloppy PR and "do you have a degree?"

A while back I wrote a piece about sloppy PR from Disney Corporation and it's sat there for a while, garnering comment and thoughts.

Today I got one that I thought was particularly interesting, from Kate Runyan:

"I am curious about your comments about Disney's sloppy PR. I am interning there and trying to learn as much about it as I can... from every point of view. Do you hold any degrees and if so, what field? I hope to hear from you via e-mail as soon as you get a chance out of your busy day. Thank you so much! Cheers!"

Let me tell you a bit about the original article, then answer Kate's question and make some observations about how she's structured her query...

Basically, I got a clumsy pitch from Disney's Family.com travel team that started out "Dear Apparanting, I'm contacting you to let you know about a new travel site Disney Family.com needs your help promoting!"

Even pasting it here, you can see how clumsy and lame this is. 30 seconds of work (scroll to bottom, see © notice) would have revealed my name as the author of the parenting blog, but they didn't do that. That's a cardinal sin in blogger/PR relations.

The pitch was also ridiculously long and clueless about what motivates people to want to help you join a publicity effort without pay. For example, how different it would have been if they said "We know you travel with kids: can we send you a book that highlights how to travel more easily next time?" or "We'd like to invite you to be a Disney.com VIP by helping us spread the word" or "we're focused on making travel more green. If you help us, we'll donate $20 to Plant A Tree" or, well, you get the idea.

However loved the brand, people don't generally help a commercial business out of a sense of philanthropy or noblesse oblige. Like anything else, you need to give them an incentive and of all professionals, Public Relations pros should know this. And a big corporation like Disney can afford to hire the best. That's why I wrote about that in the first place.

So, Kate, I'm glad you asked me how and why I thought the pitch was clumsy. I hope I've addressed that here. What I also want to ask you is why do you care if I have any degrees?

As it happens, I do. A BA in Computer Science, Masters in Education and an MBA. But I think it's dangerous to suggest that one person's feedback is more or less important than another's simply on the basis of how much they've spent for their education. Uh, how much they studied. Um, well, you know what I mean. :-)

Then again, PR is a profession where I think you have to create heirarchies to survive. If there's no "A List" and no "key media outlets" then it's all a quantitative game and sending out a $200 prweb release might just be more valuable with its 300 links from press release archive sites than $10,000 on pro PR to get a small mention in the Washington Post. Hmmmm.....

Anyway, dear reader, what do you think? Was Disney sloppy in its original email to me and was Kate demonstrating a perhaps dangerously hierarchical mind in her query?

YOU can help out with the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge

First things first: I ask that you forego your next latté or bagel and instead donate a few dollars to this very worthy cause, helping out teachers and kids throughout the United States. Easily done, just click on the "Colorado Bloggers Challenge" text in the ad graphic below:

Now, let me tell you how this ended up here and in my sidebar too: My good friend Micah Baldwin of Lijit asked me to add it. Well, he asked a couple of us Colorado bloggers and we've all added the widget with the hopes we can raise some serious cash for a worthy cause.

I asked Micah for the back story on his relationship with DonorsChoose, and here's what he explained...

About a year ago, I was beginning to read VC and tech blogs. During that time, I came across Fred Wilson's blog. I had no idea who Fred Wilson was, other than a lot of people seem to read his blog. He was linked to Brad Feld, and Brad was someone I trusted, so I assumed Fred's content was equally trustworthy.

For a period of time, as I read Fred's blog, I began to find most of the content pretty interesting and on topics that I found interesting.

Then one day he had a post about joining a "blogger's challenge" by DonorsChoose. I was a new blogger, and was just learning what a widget was, etc., plus the power of blogging.

Having been an educational fundraiser for years early in my career (mostly colleges and universities), I always have held any philanthropic effort to help education in high regard, so I took a closer look at DonorsChoose.

It's a really interesting charity. It allows teachers to self-identify things that are important to them. So music teachers will choose things like new guitar stands, a history teacher might select a trip to a local museum, an English teacher might select a series of books. Then individuals can contribute to whichever cause they find particularly interesting. The amount doesn't matter, and the contributor can designate the entire donation to go directly to the cause (with DonorsChoose getting zero).

I decided to participate and help Fred out. It didn't hurt that the winning blogger would get a lunch date with Jerry Yang, which Fred had decided to give to the participant who provided the best reason for giving. My dad, having recently retired from Stanford University, would love to have lunch with Jerry, so I jumped in.

DonorsChoose allows you to pick a school by geography, and I was very excited to see that my middle school, Morrill Middle School in San Jose, CA had a fundable project. So I sent in a small amount ($500 I think), to fund that project.

Fred did win the lunch with Jerry, and selected someone extremely worthy to get the lunch, but I had found a site that I felt had all the pieces of a biz that could make a real difference. And over the next year, I made several donations, usually in the name of a family member. (In fact, for Christmas, I gave everyone a donation in their name rather than gifts.)

A couple of weeks back, I got an email from Kris Murray, DonorsChoose's Deputy Director, Northwest Region. She happened to be from Colorado and was out visiting family. She asked if we could connect, and, like a good Boulderite, we met over coffee.

She told me that DonorsChoose was going to have another Bloggers Challenge this year. She asked me to join Fred, Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Kara Swisher and others in the challenge. I knew that I would never be very effective on my own, so I offered to help in any way I can, which I knew was getting more people involved than just me.

In truth, its one of the best parts of the technology scene in Colorado. We are all more than happy to help one another. Unlike the coasts, where often the individual is the center, in Colorado its is usually a collective effort. TechStars is a great example of that. Lijit is a great example of that.

So, I asked the premier bloggers in the state: you, Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntire, Jason Mendelson, Andrew Hyde, Alex King and David Cohen; created a giving page called the Colorado Bloggers Challenge, and asked everyone to join in.

I am glad to see that everyone has decided to be part of the effort.

Thanks for the kind words, Micah, and thank you, dear reader, for your efforts to help us raise some serious money for DonorsChoose. Spread the word!

The latest tech companies emerging from CU Boulder

I just returned from the Fall ESPRIT Innovation Alliance Breakfast, hosted by the non-profit Boulder Innovation Center and it was, as usual, a fascinating morning.

In cooperation with the University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office, the Boulder Innovation Center helps take great ideas and inventions out of the university and into the business world. They wrestle with a fundamental challenge for any university that has a strong research base: how do you spin out companies while still retaining at least some of the IP for the benefit of the University and its students, faculty and staff?

This isn't much different from the tensions, challenges, and harsh reality I encountered at HP Labs when I worked there. Like many other corporate R&D facilities (Xerox PARC, DEC's Western Research Labs, Interval Research), it's hard to take blue sky and turn it into pragmatic for-profit businesses for both the benefit of the inventors and institution.

In a format similar to DEMO and other startup events, the BIC breakfast format gave each company approximately 8 minutes to present and 2-3 minutes for questions. Fast and furious.

Here are my notes, with my commentary and thoughts in [italics]...

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Intro: The CU Innovation Alliance

David Allen: You're going to see some wicked cool technology. This is the stuff that's right on the edge. We get about 100 invention disclosures from the Boulder campus each year, so we have 100 opportunities to figure out what it's all about. Our faculty are some of the very best people in the world in what they do, and here we are trying to figure out what they're doing.

We (The CU Tech Transfer Office) pay $50k year for the Boulder Innovation Center, which lets our investigators -- the inventors of these technologies -- have access to the BIC and its expert management and professional services teams.

Our first goal is to get a grip on the technology so we can protect it (patents), then we have a definable asset and then look to the tech platform to find business drivers.

[ I read this somewhat as "we get solutions, then have to identify a problem" which is accurate, and classic research. "Here's something cool. Now what?" ]

[The CU Tech Transfer Office also offers these Proof Of Concept Grants (they refer to these as "POCg" internally), so inventors have two shots at proving their ideas to the marketplace before seeking funding]

Allen posited that CU is the most active university in the US with its self-funded Tech Transfer Office, a university that's putting 3.5 million into proof of concept programs. [it's very interesting, this concept of University as angel capital investor and incubator!]

Tim Bour: Often the advisors that we (BIC) find become the principles of the newly formed company. We wrap a community around this young company with the goal of making it successful.

[In that sense, then, it's not like a traditional incubator, but it's one heck of a way for smart execs to get plugged in to hot new companies just coming out of a strong research institution]

Suvica

[Presented by Tin Tin Su, Association Prof Molecular, Cellular, and developmental biology, Suvica uses drosophila to create a tissue micro-environment that significantly improves the discovery of new anti-cancer compounds]

We're working on discovering novel combination therapeutics against cancer [Amusing to see that the title slide had "confidential" written on it] We're trying to find combination therapies, because combining radiation with chemo works better than either does individually. Their success is based on synergy between agents: result exceeds sum of individual therapies, but the challenge is: how do you find combinations that work?

They're trying to avoid clinical trials because they're costly and time-consuming. Suvica offers screening technologies for drugs that work well with radiation.

We're accomplishing this by radiating common fruit fly (drosophila) larvae to see what happens: the fruit fly is similar to cancer tumors. Through extensive research, we've identified that you can use drosophila to find agents that are effective against human cancer. Dros is 100x better predictive model than any screening system in existence, and there's potential to find drugs that act on mutants but not normal tissue

The presentation addressed scalability, competition and barriers to entry. They've filed patents, done a pilot screen, secured $381K grant to test on mouse model, screening commercial library (20k compounds), seek: equity finance, management, commence screening service, partner with biotech/pharma to screen their libraries.

[I found this exciting research, the idea that specifically trying to screen combination therapies for efficacy can produce better cancer treatments that have less side effects and work faster and more effectively. It also seems like a solid business idea, mostly likely a small biz that'll find revenue through licensing and testing with big pharma]

Ion Engineering: Colorado Carbon Capture

[Presented by Jason Bara, Colorado Carbon Capture develops technology that improves the efficiency of carbon capture from power plants and natural gas wells through the use of "green" solvents. CCC promises to bring dramatic improvements to the energy efficiency of current processes, as well as provide innovative, new and cost-efficient approaches to carbon capture.]

The market for CO₂ capture already exists:
- natural gas "sweetening" (removal of H₂S and CO₂). billion dollar market in US alone
- carbon capture from point sources: billions of tons of CO₂ emitted from burning coal, potential multi-billion market

We replace the water in the process with an ionic solvent
- improves energy requirements - reduces energy to process CO₂ 1/3 to 1/2
- faster reaction rates
- cleaner process (less corrosive, reduced loss and waste
- can open previously unviable gas fields

initial focus on natural gas application: $5 *billion* spent on new natgas equip each year, with an immediate market in Colo and Wyoming

24 month scale up: lab -> pilot -> wellhead

income sources: royalties on gas volumes, direct solvent sales, equip design

Have management and engineering team in place: CEO, scientific staff [Tip: a CEO is not a management team]

Q: What is your ionic solvent and what does it cost? It costs anywhere from $100-$500 gallon to create ionic liquids. room temperature ionic liquid - a family of organic solvents

Q: Is the solvent consumed or recycled? It is not consumed. The chemical process occurs to consume the co2, and since its not volatile, it doesn't evaporate.

Q: How is the carbon captured? When it''s captured from nat gas you vent it back out into the atmosphere. The h2s you have to turn it back into sulfur or some other product because it's toxic.

[I admit that I didn't fully understand this solution, but it's clearly a very big market and though we like to sweep industrial waste and pollution under the proverbial rug, it's a growing problem and there's a lot of money therein]

TissueFusion LLC

[Presented by Michael Larson, Tissue Fusion develops laser devices to "weld" biological tissues together for wound closures. This device is an improvement on existing technologies using sutures in an array of standard surgical procedures]

Laser tissue fusion is an alternative to sutures -- it's a medical device that's based on using laser energies to fuse tissues together and close wounds. Their product is called LaSept, and it's a device for helping with septoplasty and rhinoplasty surgeries: over 500,000 of these procedures are done annually in US. $100mil worldwide market

They also have a vision about follow on products: minimally invasive surgeries (laparoscopic procedures), their product will also prove a boon for procedures needing immediate, water-tight closure.

"The first FDA approved laser device for wound closure will create excitement and will transform the market"

[This company is definitely savvy: they picked septoplasty & rhinoplasty surgery because it's a fast FDA approval since the inside of the nose is considered the outside of the body. Yeah, that's a weird idea, but that's the FDA for you]

They have successfully fused horse mucosal tissue in a manner similar to the human nose. Have completed pre-clinical phases. As he explained, the science is proven, engineering is done, FDA approval process is straightforward.

Company has Larson as founder, two product designers, two academic otolaryngologists, but no management, no marketing, etc, The identified need for growing to the next step: a CEO to do fund raising.

[Again, my expertise is not in medical products, but this seemed like a neat, handheld product with a specific use and defined market. Not exciting, but a solid business opportunity.]

LineRate Systems

[This was the token geeky software presentation, made by John Giacomoni. LineRate Systems has a software network appliance platform that delivers 10 gb/s application layer processing capabilities on commodity servers and blades]

"Rethinking Network Appliances" - the plumbing that connects your machine to the Internet. When the equipment that they have to put in front of the machine costs more than the machine itself, that's a serious problem. Our focus is on low-cost no hassle sales model.

In 2009 we are going to bring our products to market. The idea came up in 2003, 2006 initial proof of concept, 2006-2008 they filed patents, 2007 got first gigabit appliance functioning, 2008 got 4gb/s.

These speeds mean each frame has to be processed in a few hundred nanoseconds max. In 2009 we've been talking with Intel and we should be able to hit 10gb/s system and enter the market

process: built upon open source building blocks: xorp, nginx, snort, RIsense (?), leveraging hw Intel, amd, dell, sun, hp. Missing piece: the glue: Line Rate acceleration software

There are 40 appliance manufacturers in the marketplace already. Total market $30 bil by 2013, $16bil today.

[This is where it got a bit confusing because John's answer to how they compete is "there's a great apathy in the market for new competitor entries because of the high cost of goods", yet his slide showed that the cost of goods was about 23% of total sales, nothing out of line for a hardware-based product line.]

They believe they can deliver the end product for the basic cost of goods of competitors, forcing the competitors to license their system.

Need: rest of business team and funds.

[I was intrigued by LineRate Systems and its idea of rethinking network backend appliances but I get a sense that the company needs to rethink its business vision. The cliché error of "we have no competition" wasn't quite visible, but having identified 40 big competitors (including Cisco and Juniper Systems) then claiming none of them can innovate at the software level, well, that's hubris at best and naive at worst.]

3QMatrix

[Presented by Johan Baeck, 3QMatrix focuses on the development and commercialization of novel wound healing and drug delivery products using a proprietary product platform. This was the most interesting company I saw this morning and I believe there's a tremendous opportunity here]

"A novel wound healing company: advanced biomaterials for enhanced quality of life"

Their market: 5-7 million US patients with chronic wounds -- wound care is $1 billion market.

Today's solutions don't meet clinical need, which is for a solution that:
- provides high performance at a lower cost
- minimizes the pain
- reduces hospital stay

Traditional solutions are low cost, but low performance (think special ointments or salves applied to wounds). Interactive solutions are high performance but have a high cost ($2000-4000 per application). 3QMatrix offers a low cost, high performance solution.

Their solution is an advanced synthetic biomaterial which creates a 3-dimensional mesh that lets the neighboring cells begin to rebuild the skin and tissue. It biodegrades and is bio-absorbable. They can also "functionalize" it by adding antibacterial, growth hormones and other medications to the material itself.

3QMatrix has a management team, scientific advisory board, and has received proof of concept grant from the CU Boulder Tech Transfer Office to solidify patents. Submitted two grants to NIH and one to DoD.

Seeking $2mil in seed money to further product development and clinical studies.

[To me, 3QMatrix is a perfect example of how ingenious technologies can be invented in a university research setting with high applicability to the real world and then can evolve into a commercial business. I have high expectations for this company]

XenoPur Systems

[Presented by Mark Hernandez, XenoPur Systems provides metals decontamination in water treatment processes. The combination of low-cost ingredients, low energy requirements and lower waste disposal costs will allow XenoPur to lower total process costs to industry]

Radionuclide and metal removal technologies - removal of heavy, precious and radioactive metals. Water and nuclear pollution is increasing worldwide. Over $1bil spent on treating industrial wastewater in US alone.

Their product is called the XenoPur "Liquid Magnet" and it's essentially impregnating carbon with corrosion inhibitors. Mark liken its primary industrial use to an "industrial wastewater Britta filter", and noted that the other primary configuration is as a "tea bag", cleaning passive water (from, for example, the contamination of acid rain).

It's a cost effective way to purify acidic metal-laden waters, including high efficiency removal of all EPA priority pollutants: copper, lead, silver, uranium and other semi-precious (silver) and toxics.

Displaces conventional sludge generating technology through solidification of dissolved metals [In other words, the end product pollutants are far easier to deal with and process]

The solution has to be cheap: water purification applications must deal with billions of gallons of water effectively. One patent has been issued, one tech continuation patent submitted.

Tested / field optimization in SAE Circuits, Boulder (industrial wastewater), Rockford Mine, Idaho Springs (mining reclamation) Los Alamos National Lab (radionuclide sequestration)

Incorporated in 2006 has received the following funding: $400k from NSF and US Air Force, $100k from State of Colorado

[The technology here is very cool. Imagine a device that could be lowered into a polluted mountain lake and actually filter out all the contaminants. Then it's pulled out and those contaminants can be easily processed and broken down into non-toxic elements. A solid business, I'm thankful smart people are working on cleaning up our environment after 100+ years of the waste from the industrial revolution]

Kapteyn-Murnane Labs (aka KMLabs)

[Presented by Dirk Muller, KMLabs was founded by Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn. This presentation was more of a TTO success story as KMLabs has been around since 1994]

KMLabs is a manufacturer of femtosecond lasers. They've built a very successful business, founded in 1994 and profitable every year since. Now has 20 people and a 21,000sf research and manufacturing facility in Boulder, Colorado.

[Tip: a femtosecond is one millionth of a nanosecond. As Dirk said, a femtosecond is to a second as a minute is to the age of the universe. Amazing, really]

The great advantage of femtosecond lasers is that they generate zero heat which gives them many interesting capabilities.

The company vision: bringing highest performance ultrafast laser systems to the research community. KMLabs was the first company to develop a reliable 10 femtosecond laser, and are a cornerstone in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology.

Global customer base, applications: ultrafast spectroscopy, nonlinear coherent light sources, coherent x-ray generation, attosecond pulse generation, optical coherence tomography. future apps: micromachining, sensors, lithographic mask inspection, biomedical, soft x-ray microscopy and metrology

[Femtoseconds weren't fast enough for you? An attosecond is 1/1000th of a femtosecond]

KMLabs are global leaders in high average power ultrafast lasers, cryogenic cooling for 10-100W (military applications), carrier envelope offset phase stabilization of high average power ultrafast lasers and coherent short wavelength light.

[I don't much know about femtosecond laser system and what they're used for in the research setting (my own research has been with people and computers, not cool laser gizmos) but, damn, pretty cool stuff, and KMlabs is a splendid example of tech transfer done right]

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Those were the companies that presented. Fascinating stuff and it makes me glad to live in a college town with a thriving research community and the desire and passion for those research findings to make it out into the world and help make everything faster, safer, cleaner and healthier.

If you have questions about these companies or want to get in touch with either the Boulder Innovation Center or CU Technology Transfer Office, please visit their Web sites: BoulderInnovationCenter.com and CU.edu/techtransfer.

How I Created The Aloha Social Media Summit

If you follow me on Twitter (@DaveTaylor), have attended any of the conferences at which I've spoken in the last few months (most notably Blogworld Expo), or generally keep track of my activities and exploits, you'll know about the Aloha Social Media Summit. It's a unique event with top-notch experts and a limit of 25 attendees. Why? Because the emphasis isn't going to be on the experts -- though I have an amazing lineup of speakers -- but on the needs and interests of the participants.

I view it as an unconference, but it's really sort of the anti-conference more than anything. No Powerpoint, no podium, no "audience" and "speaker" but instead a mastermind event where we'll all be sharing as peers and talking about how to market and promote your business through modern social media.

To be fair, I am involved in planning many events, including having co-hosted Blogworld Expo and being on the program and planning committee for the upcoming Thin Air Summit, but the more I attend large events, the more I see the appeal and great value of smaller, intimate, private events like the Aloha Summit. It's like my preference for parties: I'd rather hang out with a half dozen good friends than 250 of my peers or colleagues. Just don't tell anyone I said that, okay? :-)

How I Came Up With the Aloha Summit

At the beginning of 2008 I was planning a three week holiday in Hawaii with my children and thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a small mastermind event on the Big Island of Hawaii while I'm there?" And so, the Aloha Summit was born.

I threw out a few queries and my friend, colleague and fellow industry and marketing expert Andy Beal popped up and said he'd like to get involved as he was already planning a trip to Hawaii. He did, we co-hosted the event and it was a small, but inspirational success. Our speakers were Roxanne Darling's partner Shane Robinson, Andy Beal, Debra Micek, and, via video conference, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and Roxanne Darling, who was in Florida at the time on a family emergency.

This time Andy and I decided to try holding it in my backyard, Boulder, Colorado, and seeing if we could up the ante even higher, having the very top people in the industry all in the room at the same time, not for their benefit (though I know they'll all have a great experience) but for the benefit of participants. As I said, it's the anti-conference.

Who'll be Joining Me in Colorado

Who did we get to join us in the room? Om Malik, one of my favorite experts in the entire blogosphere and social media spaces and founder of the powerhouse GigaOM, Biz Stone, super-smart serial entrepreneur and founder of a bunch of slick Web 2.0 startups notably including co-founding Twitter, Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media, where she's focused on building a network to target the "cultural creatives market segment" (I'm sure Susan and I will have a chance to talk about Richard Florida's Cultural Creatives book while she's in town!), Peter Shankman, PR guru and outspoken founder of the invaluable Help a Reporter Online service, and -- a special guest just added -- Shama Hyder of After The Launch, someone who knows more about how to market your business and service on Facebook than anyone I know.

Not enough? We also have two special guest stars via video lined up: Charlene Li, industry expert, former star analyst for Forrester Research and author of the terrific book Groundswell, and Roxanne Darling, who has done a masterful job of turning a hobby video blog into a thriving video production business and, this time at least, is in Hawaii.

That's who Andy and I have managed to line up to join us. Just as importantly, or perhaps even more so, are the participants, who will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend two days comparing notes, sharing their frustrations and challenges, and getting expert advice and tips from the best and the brightest.

Here's the best news of all: we still have a few seats available.

It's not too late to join us and attend, no, help shape the very best social media event in 2008 and learn how to take your own business to the next level with online social media visibility and marketing expertise.

I know I'm excited to have us get started already!

Interview with Tom Taulli, Founder of BizEquity.com

When Tom Taulli of BizEquity.com approached me to talk about his business, I was intrigued, but I also thought that it'd be fun to mix things up and ask my friend and colleague Klaus Holzapfel of Concept Bakery to conduct the interview. Klaus did, and here's the result. I hope you find it informative as we travel through these difficult financial times...

Klaus: We know that the Credit Rating agencies are in the line of fire right now for apparently not understanding what they were rating. Many of the underlying financial instruments take at least three highly trained scientists to decipher them.

You might ask: How about some common sense in evaluating risks and businesses?

BizEquity focuses on evaluating business on criteria that we can understand, and, as founder Tom Taulli explains, the focus is on smaller businesses. If you are a small business owner, investor or simply would like to learn about small business valuations, you might find BizEquity.com a valuable addition to your toolkit.

Here is our Q&A:

Q: Tom, what's your "elevator pitch"?

If you check out the web, many of the resources on valuation can be tough to understand (you almost need an MBA to understand the finance details). Yet, valuing a company is very important, such as for estate planning, raising capital, the death of an owner, partnership disputes, selling a business and so on.

So, with BizEquity, you can get a rough valuation of your business – with a few clicks. At the same time, you get some valuable trend information about the industry. And, if you want a more refined valuation, there is a form you can fill out.

Q: Why do you focus on small business?

There are anywhere from 25 million to 30 million small businesses in America. For the most part, this is the driving force of job growth and innovation (just look at Google, which started just ten years ago).

However, it can be tough to run a small business nowadays, in light of the regulations, slow growth and credit squeeze. In other words, we believe there's a big need for small business tools.

Q: How do you get the data for all your evaluations?


It comes from well-known sources like D&B, Experian and so on. Although, we are finding that this data can be spotty. So, we are going to add a feature that allows users to rate the data. Moreover, if your valuation is wrong, you might want to check with the credit bureaus. It might be a reason why you are not getting credit or having difficulties with vendors/suppliers.

Q: Do you have any adjusting mechanisms? Evaluations in our volatile days could change rather quickly…

As mentioned above, we will have a rating system. We also plan to have a way for a small business owner to claim his or her business. We think these user interaction features will make the site much, much better.

Q: What is your revenue model?


At this stage, we have no revenue model. Our goal is to build a useful site. Then, as we learn along the way, we'll be adding services and relevant ads.

Q: Who benefits form your services besides investors and companies gearing up for an IPO?

Our focus is not on the large companies. They have CFOs and investment bankers to handle the complexities of valuations.
Instead, we are looking to the small business owner, who wants some knowledge and help. For example, on our blog, we have a feature where you can ask questions to a valuation pro.

Keep in mind that a professional valuation can cost $2,000 to $20,000 or more.

Q: Do you have any strategic alliances or partnerships?


We have recently launched, so we don't have any right now. But, now we are aggressively pursuing partnerships. We think we can be a big help to a variety of organizations, such as business brokers.

Q: What are your next steps?


We want to make the data better and valuations more accurate. This will be a short-term and long-term goal. If not, we will have failed.

We also want to provide more useful content for business owners. For example: what are the ways to improve the valuation of your business?

Q: What do you tell investors in a time when investment banking seems to drop off the planet?

Yea, amazing times, huh? Things have happened so quickly there really hasn't been enough time to let things sink in.

Unfortunately, the fall of the major investment banks and the credit squeeze are going to be big problems for the economy. I can see things protracting for a while.

Thus, for small business owners, it's more important than ever to focus on the key drivers of your business.

At the same time, when there is lots of upheaval, there is usually lots of opportunity.

Tom, thanks very much for taking the time to answer these questions, and Klaus, thanks for helping out with this interview!

iPhone App Developer Spotlight: Mark Moseley and Voyeur

Another entry in my series on iPhone app developer interviews. Haven't had a chance to read the others? You can do so through this link: The iPhone App Developer Interview Series. This time I'm talking with Mark Moseley about his slick new Voyeur application to let you watch the public Flickr photo stream...

Q: You wrote Voyeur. How long did it take you? How many lines of code is the program?

Voyeur was my first foray into anything Mac related for development. I've done .NET and Java in the past, but Objective-C was something new. It probably took me a week or so to get up to speed on the language and another week to get a rough version up and running. It took another week or so to really work out all the bugs in the app. It seems like a lot of apps in the store are "almost" bug-free, but I wanted to make sure that Voyeur was as stable as possible. The app itself is around 1500 lines of code.

Q: Tell us a bit about the application, including your target market and what problem or problems your application solves?

Voyeur is strictly for entertainment. It presents a slideshow of recently posted images from Flickr. The intent is for the user to simply start it up and let it go. I "use" it a lot at work - start some music, switch to Voyeur and start working. It's a nice distraction every now and then to look up and see something strange, funny or interesting. You can also save the image to the device, visit the image's page on Flickr or e-mail a link to anyone in your contact list.

Q: The iPhone Software Development Kit has been written about quite a bit, but I'd like to know your opinion: was it easy to get up to speed with this SDK? Is it sufficiently complete that you weren't stumped as you developed your application?

I'd say about 90% of the SDK is extremely intuitive, well documented and easy to understand. the other 10% of the SDK was a little mysterious to me, but I think that was more of a result of my newness to Mac programming in general. There were very few times during development that I was stuck for more than a few hours on something specific to the SDK. That said, Objective-C took me longer than I thought it would to get used to.

Q: Tell us about the experience of submitting your program to the iPhone Application Store and how long it took to gain approval. Did you have to demonstrate that you weren't accessing external data like the Address Book? What else was required for your app to show up in the public store?

The process of getting the application in the store was an exercise in patience for sure. I had previously registered with Apple as an individual developer into the program. When I signed up as an individual, I got accepted almost immediately. My business partner and I wanted to launch Voyeur under our LLC, so we had to apply with Apple again for the development program, this time as a company. That approval took around 2 weeks. After that, we had to submit a contract to be able to sell applications - that was another 2ish week wait. During that time we submitted Voyeur as an application. It was bounced back once for a bug (a newbie mistake for sure) after 7 days in review. I fixed the bug and resubmitted and was live about a week later. I really didn't have to demonstrate anything to Apple - I just submitted the binaries and they ran with it.

Q: Did you develop all the graphics in the app yourself or contract with a designer to create the look-and-feel of your application?

This app really relies on the images pulled from Flickr - there isn't much of a UI at all. All the menus are default iPhone SDK menus. The one image we have (the splash screen) and the icons were done by my wife, who's a graphic and web designer in her day job.

Q: How much is your application, and how did you decide on a price-point?

The app is $0.99. To some extent, I wanted to see what people felt was fair for a small app like this. $0.99 is the least you can charge for an application, so that's the price point I chose.

Q: Are you inspired to write more iPhone applications? What's in the pipeline?

My partner and I are absolutely interested in writing more iPhone applications. In fact, we have so many ideas for things to write that it's hard to concentrate on a single project. We're both gamers at heart, so we're probably going to concentrate on a game next. Now that I'm more comfortable with the SDK we hope to move it along quickly.

Q: If you're not a full-time iPhone application developer, what's your day job?

By day I'm an application architect/programmer for a large corporation. I work exclusively in Microsoft .NET there. It's a challenging job, but no where near as fun as iPhone development :)

Great stuff, Mark. Thanks for sharing this! Are you an iPhone app developer? Then I'd love to hear about your experiences with the development and publication of your application in the iPhone Application Store!

Should the Fed bailout failing corporations like AIG?

As an investor and citizen, I have been following with increasing concern the shenanigans in the financial market. First it was the huge problem with greedy banks and an overextended Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) that had underwritten loans to more and more risky borrowers, gambling that the upside of high-interest-rate loans would offset the tremendous risk of default.

In retrospect, that was a sucker's bet and no surprise that we're seeing financial institutions failing because of their inability to conservatively balance and manage their portfolio.

The demise of Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH), fire sale of Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and probable demise of American International Group (NYSE: AIG), sidestepped by a massive government bailout, show another facet of the same greed and poor business strategy.

There are a number of problems that got us here, but one big issue is the lack of regulation: strong Federal regulation would have tempered the unbounded greed of these institutions and helped avoid the troubles we now face. But a part of me says that the trouble is really because we're afraid to have a truly free-market economy based on pure capitalism.

I know, you're probably saying "we've never had pure, free-market capitalism in the United States" and I concur. Between tariffs, export controls, market regulation, business practice laws and the RICO laws, there have always been a lot of ropes fettering business practices in this country.

That's a good thing, even though I recall reading books in business school that argued quite vociferously that unfettered capitalism was the only path to world economic stability and, ultimately, world peace. I never bought it, however, because it's predicated on all countries allowing free access to their markets (though some economists have projections of how a free market trumps constrained markets in a global economy. It's just never been borne out).

We all do better and have a better standard of living and more "contentment points" in a strong, healthy, growing economy, so controls and regulations that help us move in that direction are obviously and de facto a good thing. Let's face it, as much as the late 90's might have been the "dot com bubble", it was also a very good time to be in business and I know I enjoyed the largess of the marketplace.

Which is why I find it so interesting that when I read the WSJ headline that Feds Plan $85 Billion Rescue Deal for AIG [sub required] or the Bloomberg report that the government is considering an AIG conservatorship plan, I dislike the notion and feel that if we really were a free market capitalist economy, we'd let the companies fail, knowing that new ones will spring up to replace them, stronger, smarter companies that will avoid these poor management decisions.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bailed out by the government. So was Chrysler, years ago, in a quite hotly debated rescue from mismanageme