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| Feb 29, 2008 in Quotes |  3 |
"Personal use is the first step to comprehension."
Don Tapscott
In reference to how people gain an understanding of new technologies during a speech at the Georgia Technology Summit. Wise words. It is a big part of the reason why I started blogging and using other social web applications. If you don't comprehend you become ignorant, scared, or both.
| Feb 27, 2008 in Entrepreneurship | 3 |
Just back from the 2008 Georgia Technology Summit. I am going to stick with my theme from last year in honor of it being Oscar week. On the whole I think it was a great show.
The Good
1. Don Tapscott's presentation. I hope to get a copy of it so that I can post more later.
2. The 40 innovators. I posted about some of them over on PeachSeedz. Great group of companies, great presentations by most.
3. Sig Mosely being introduced into The Technology Hall of Fame of Georgia. This deserves an article of its own that I need to get to.
4. The people's choice awards, nice semi-interactive element. The winners that I captured were:
5. Scott Burkett championing entrepreneurs from the stage.
6. And it seems from the TAG's State of the Industry study that there is a strong Internet cluster emerging in Atlanta.
7. Free Wi-Fi! Which might not seem like a lot but it is a big improvement from last year. More importantly it shows that TAG listens to its customers.
The Bad
1. Using videos to make presentations when the person in the video was in the room remains a silly concept.
2. This is just one guy's opinion but I wish that Sig would have had a chance to tell a few war stories. The guy is a hall of famer and deserves more then a 60 second Oscar acceptance speech. I would rather have that than an after lunch keynote.
3. The program was a bit long.
The Ugly
All of the following is based on information collected in the hallways and via the back channel.
1. The participation fee is steep. My suggestion is remove the 2nd keynote to reduce this cost and pass this cost reduction through to enable unfunded companies to apply and get some exposure. This would also shorten the program.
2. Need to expand the demographic of the event beyond old pasty white males in dark suits. What do I have against old pasty white males in dark suits? Not much in general, I am one, but it seems that the concept of wikinomics and mass collaboration that Don preached was not something that the group in that room are going to openly accept. The audience needs to be expanded to move the Atlanta technology community forward.
And that is what I am all about. Moving the ball forward. Kudos to TAG, Tino, and everyone involved in doing their part to make it happen.
| Feb 22, 2008 in Quotes | 0 |
"Running a business is not necessarily a rational process."
| Feb 16, 2008 in | 2 |
FoG turns two today. Like a child a great deal of growth has taken place in the past year. Accelerating growth from the age of one. Some stats at the end of year one and year two.
One Two
Visitors 2,525 15,317
Comments 52 305
Ranking* 788,400 189,138
*technorati
So the increases that I expected when FoG hit one pretty much happened. My feedburner subscriber chart pretty much shows how dramatic the rise in readers has been over the past year.
They are modest but nice stats. Getting big was never the goal.
Happy birthday FoG.
| Feb 15, 2008 in Quotes | 0 |
"Knight back in Indiana? It's crazy. It's unthinkable. Just like Rick Pitino ever coaching at Louisville..."
Both my father and mother graduated from UofL so I was weened a Cardinal. Attending IU put them #2 in my college basketball fandom. I don't want and don't see Bobby heading back to IU.
| Feb 13, 2008 in Marketing | 6 |
This (with my modifications) just showed up in my mailbox.
It was good meeting with you at the SoCon08 Conference. XXX is a sales performance agency – focusing on sales recruiting and sales training for businesses. We are sending you separately our latest newsletter, “Driving Profit,” which we hope you will find beneficial. We would like to speak with you if you feel your company would like to increase its sales productivity.
P.S. Please visit our website at www.clueless.com
This crap went to about 260 people. Taking a social media nonconference attendee list and turning into a spam mailing shows an unbelievable disregard for not only everything that SoCon represented but the norms of Internet etiquette.
Don't do this. Never ever.
| Feb 12, 2008 in Personal, Web/Tech | 0 |
Lent is here again. It started on February 6th and lasts until March 23rd. A bit early this year.
Last year I gave up Google and Yahoo! for Lent. It was an interesting experiment. This year I am abstaining from social networks.
No LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace for 40 days.
Still doing TypePad, WordPress, and Twitter. Well half of Twitter. Twitter describes itself as a social networking and microblogging service. I am going to use the microblogging part. But be forewarned, no ampersand or DM responses from me.
Not really sure if doing so qualifies as a reminder of Christ's sufferings, but this is what I am giving up this year. It will be interesting to see what networks I return to come March.
| Feb 11, 2008 in Entrepreneurship, Internet, Marketing, Unconference, Web/Tech | 4 |
I got a request to write up a article on SoCon via the Skribit app in my sidebar. It was quickly voted up so you folks must want to know what went on.
Truth be told, I did not spend a lot of time at SoCon. I went to the networking dinner on Friday night and made it a point to network. Met some folks I did not meet before. Saw a lot of old friends. Then left at about 9:30 to go to my first ever tweetup that Tessa put together at Octane. I used to hang out at Octane as an office when I was working on a startup awhile back. Never had been there at night. Somewhat bizarre bar scene with everyone in the place playing with their mobile device be it a laptop, MID, or smartphone. I found the real life conversation somewhat like twitter itself. Interesting, with spurts of chatter and spurts of silence. Hung for about two hours drinking a beer that had been aged in bourbon casks. Tasty!
I only was able to make it to the opening general session on Saturday morning this year. Unlike last year, I actually said something. Something about how one of the big changes that I have seen in the last year is traditional media's rush to embrace the social aspects of the web and predicting what the next big thing is extremely hard to do, and that is part of the wonder of the Internet. The joy of discovery and the unknown.
Afterward I found out there was a live blogging back channel going with all the kewl kids that I wish I could have been a part of. I do think that as Simon would say, things got a little pitchy at times. Amani Channel has a nice video that captures the essence of the event. Checking out these links will tell more of the story than I am capturing.
The SoCon gang once again pulled off a great unconference and I will be there in 09. Once again I ripped the picture on this post from Josh.
| Feb 08, 2008 in Internet, Quotes, Web/Tech | 0 |
"Web services don't get better under the ownership of big companies. They get worse."
Fred Wilson
| Feb 07, 2008 in Web/Tech | 0 |
The Internet is an odd place sometimes.
I was googling {update: term removed by request} for reasons that I will keep to myself. Not a lot of results there, but one led to tasty little tidbit that Apple's second logo was a tribute to Alan Turing. Seems that the father of modern computer preferred men and he committed suicide by partially eating a poisoned Apple. Hence the rainbow apple with a bite.
If any of this is true only Mr. Jobs can tell. But I find it rather strange that less then 30 minutes about stumbling across this that an article on the evolution of tech company logos appears on Techmeme and then gets picked up by TechCrunch.
The Internet is an odd place sometimes.
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