Tim Bauer’s Running Thoughts

Time to ponder the past …. what was covered in May … and in hindsight what was more timeles?

9-10 - Has become part of my lingo

o Paul Graham (YCombinator): Unleash the Cockroach In You I told a CFO friend of mine today I was modelling my business to be a cockroach. That image has stood the test of time for me. A contextual model of how investement decisions in startups should be made. What would a cockroach do?

o Equals.com (Scoble QIK Interview): Solve Solicitors Calling You I am waiting for this software to come into beta. The concept of having a free service that routes calls to voicemail depending on what your calendar says is too cool (not to mention solving solicitor calls).

o Mylyn (RedMonk): If You Optimize A Disconnect … Do You Connect? I use this product every day now. It has its gaps and bugs … but the vision for allowing you to open tasks and have relevant artifacts (documents, code, etc) open automatically … is a huge efficiency play … especially in technical teams.

7-8 - Powerful At First Blush, Weakening Over Time

o LaunchPad (WebExpo 2.0): Battle of the Bands (Startups) I almost moved this up a tick for the startup around Drupal (Oortel?) and the one offering to simplify moentizing your site (Triggit) but I haven’t been able to apply either. Perhaps in time it will become more mainstream relevant for me and my clients.

o Clay Shirky (Author): The World Is Drunk, On TV This is a very popular post … not suprising considering how referenced Clay’s work is in the blog space. I think he make excellent points on how our generation will have the opportunity to choose something besides TV for their free time.

o Jive Software (Collaboration): Ruth’s Chris vs. Raman Noodles? Good review of Jive’s new collaboration suite features but I can’t remember any of them now. Blurred in the field of competitors I suspect.

o Khris Loux (JS-Kit): Social Commerce … The Next Business Elixir This is a tool that has been around for some time but is notable in that they are trying to create atomic services that can be bought ala-carte and then rolled up to deliver a Web 2.0 site (comments, polls, reviews, etc). I would definitely ponder them if I were doing a new Web 2.0 site.

5 to 6 - I remember it … but only due to amusing events or shocks

o Zuckerberg/Lacy Interview: Why people are still referring to it. This is a great drama where the facilitator of a keynote (Zuckerberg) gets ambushed by the audience. The story will slowly fade in time but be mentioned occasionaly by people as the ‘example’ for what happens when conference speakers don’t track what is being said on twitter back channels.

o Eric Schmidt (IBM Partner Conf): IBM … I Love You Notable in that IBM and Google are partnering to the level they are. What they are partnering on (Cloud Computing) was not discussed in any detail (of note). Just a large swath of concepts.

3 to 4 - Seemed Good, But Now I Can’t Articulate Any Key Points

o Sapphire 2008 Keynote (Pat Lencioni): Five Dysfunctions of a Team I remember thinking this was good stuff at the time … seemed to be a great tool for assessing how to interact w/ people … but now I can’t recall any of the five dysfunctions. Must be a memory dysfunction (or I couldn’t apply it in the days that followed and so it left my head).

1 to 2 - Limited Relevance on 1st Viewing.

o Ron Conway (Full Circle Fund): If I Had a Million Dollars .. Doh .. I Do) All I can remember here is Ron recommending to assess donors for philanthropy the same way you do startups. This is blurry because I don’t have a million dollars to give away I suspect.

On to June.

If you believe in this adage:

It’s not what you do, it’s what you DON’T that matters.

Then this post is for you. Either learn from my side steps or chastise my lack of vision … its up to you. Here is what I looked at briefly and chose not to pursue:

1. Ross Mayfield. Leveraging Social Software. Looked like leftovers (old concepts) reheated.
2. Radian6. Influence and discussion tracking. I was tempted but couldn’t get a sense of how this player separated itself from the variety of options out in the space. In addition, I think this is a tool segment that will take standardization to succeed. Buyers want a single definition of influence before they standardize on a model. Bloggers (who need to typically implement XYZ to gather the data) want to know buyers are using it. Hello catch 22.
3. Semantic Web - 302 Videos/Podcasts. I want to get all up on Semantic web but my little voice keeps saying .. too soon … TOO SOON. This time I listened.
4. Tim O’Reilly on Web 2.0.  I cheated on this one.  I said it was out (due to rehash of the web 2.0 expo in SF), then I listened to it while i typed this.  He did intrigue me on one point.  He said “Companies need to define what data they are stewarding” … which is something I have pondered in the past but had lost top of mind on.   Now it is back in play.  His example was how the telephone companies had Facebook in their hands due to the call history of their customers (better social network).  They just never realized the value of the contextual data of their customers and their activity (call) stream.   They still don’t.
5. Disney’sVirtual Worlds- Raising Kids in Social Networks.   I live this everyday with my boys and their various online games (currently Roblox).   I keep it on my ‘watch next’ list for awhile but it never trumped other items that were on it.
6. Powered - Social Capabilities on the Web.  This one might be of interest if you aren’t familiar with Powered’s Social Commerce platform.  It is rather impressive … just not enough to watch twice (and I couldn’t see a unique angle in this discussion from the prior).

Hope it helps.

Ah the joy of the month end recap.

Let’s try this. I’ll group my posts with the wisdom of passed time. Which ones still seem important?

10 - Important for one and all

o Live Mesh: Goodbye Facebook & Friendfeed? This is one everyone needs to ponder and get setup if you have a ton of PC’s in your house. I am using it and LOVING it. LOVING it.

9 - A nugget for most

o RedFin: Making “More With Less” Possible? This is a 9 because of RedFin attempts to move an entire industry to a new model of compensation (instead of % of sale, flat fee). Listening to them talk about how that is working is very interesting.

o Social Networks: The New Age Drug Dealers? I still think this post is interesting because it points out a hidden truth around social network vendors. They are not motivated by what is best for you. They are motivated by what is best for you that allows them to make sustainable revenue from you. Don’t confuse the two.

8 or 7 - A subset of you will be amused

o Jeff Bezos (AMZN): Psst. Buddy. Want a Server? (AWS) If you aren’t either (1) a developer or (2) a head of an IT shop this won’t matter to you … but if one of those two do apply … AMZN’s vision could impact the way you do your ‘thing’ sooner versus later.

o David Heinemeier Hansson: Forget Free, Go Fee The marketing posse should like this one. A guy in the trenches talks how to go against the ad driven business models of today and actually charge for your products. Brilliant.

o Cal Henderson (Flickr): Automate, Automate, Automate For those out there pondering how to setup a framework of tools to develop applications … Cal is a excellent one to model.

4 to 6 - More of a drama post than substance

o Arrington (TechCrunch): ShockJock or Caring author? He (Mike) is interesting in the number of startups he touches / influences by covering them in TechCrunch.

o Twitter: Utility or Also Ran? Most (all) of the people I work with don’t use nor care about Twitter. Meanwhile, what it represents (basically your IM w/ a memory and ability to listen to others) seems to be seeping into products. Still for the rank and file this isn’t drastically changing the way they work any time soon.

1 to 3 - I ran, I watched … and 10 days later I was still blurry

o Wikipedia: Trusting Those You Don’t Know. I know that most understand Wikipedia is written by people you have no idea on … but reality is … most people don’t care that much … they just like that it (1) provides an answer (2) quickly and its (3) free. Plus its typically right on. Who can argue with that … no one … so pondering them isn’t lighting many peoples hair on fire.

o David Armano: Enabling Doctors to be Patients In hindsight, this was not (outside of his cowboy hat) memorable. Move along.

Hrm. I guess that was amusing … regardless … goodbye April … hello May.

FYI, feel free to send me comments on conference presentations you would like to listen to but haven’t had time. If you feel that way so do others.