Banky For President

Once you’ve decided to enter the courageous and frightening world of the Start-up, and you’ve surrounded yourself with the right team, you need to know what technologies exist to streamline your collaboration. Working online with your team-members is crucial because today’s entrepreneur is typically balancing family, friends and a day job that’s paying the bills for tomorrow’s dreams. There isn’t a lot of time to meet face-to-face so having technologies that enable online ideation can make a huge difference in your start-up’s maturity. Special thanks to @peterthomas for helping with this post.

So, what technologies exist that can really help your start-up?

Free stuff

37 Signals — 37 signals is almost like Siebel for startups with applications like project management, CRM/Contact Management, chat and a document repository. It is rated highly and perfect for small businesses.

TracTickets — With Trac you can create tickets, assign tasks, and monitor accountability.

Wikis — There are plenty of free wiki services on the Web (Wetpaint and pbwiki to name a few). This should be one of the first pieces of software you start collaborating with. You can start building all the intellectual properties of your business from mission statements, ideas to methods and procedures.

Free Web Conferencing — Try googling “Free Web Conferencing” and you’ll see a plethora of options. Our team recently tried Vyew and, while not incredibly intuitive, we were able to figure out how to share desktops and the ability to do it while talking on our phones made for one of our best meetings to date. When you can’t meet face to face, conferencing over the Web really is the next best thing.

Blogs — having an internal blog that you can password protect is great for carrying the ideation and brainstorming online. Blogspot and Wordpress are easy references for you to set one up.

Prototyping– at creator.zoho.com you can prototype a database application. While you’re there, check out the rest of zoho.com offerings. For html forms, check out wufoo.com

Google Apps — having a gmail account allows for you to use blogger, calendar, google reader but also a place to collaborate with documents too. Don’t have Microsoft Office, Neo or Open office products? Use Google documents and collaborate to your hearts content.

Cheap stuff

Answering Service — services like OneBox allow a small business to set up a 1-800 number, a personalized answering service and to have voicemails translated to email. Services like this can be found for around fifty dollars a month.

Virtual Office — being able to provide a professional address and being able to invite clients to an office setting can set you apart and create an atmosphere of respectability. Leveraging existing office sharing services means having access to a conference room and office space. Depending on where you live, this service can range from 200 – 700 dollars a month.

Amazon Web Services — Amazon provides a scalable platform for building a new application. Pay for only the bandwidth and server capacity you’re using at the time. If you reach a point that dedicated hosting becomes more attractive or you want more control, consider rackspace.

Other reading:

• Homework for the perfect startup
• If I started a company today
• If I started today

What am I missing?

The midwest is a wonderful place to live.  We have a great quality of life, a lot of smart people, and a low cost of living.  As such, the midwest is a great place to create a startup.

In fact, it might be too good.

There are a lot of good startups in the midwest. Many entrepreneurs are ekeing out a nice living but don’t seem to have much of a desire to do a lot more.  I attended an “un-conference” in Kansas City last week that featured many new media industrialists from the region.  All were proud of their accomplishments, as they should be, but there was a common thread I found troubling.

So few sought to change the world . . . or create the next Google. So few hoped to garner ANY venture capital funding. When asked a panel of Start-up entrepreneurs, “What would you do with 100 million dollars?,” no one offered a response.

In fact, one respondent in the audience voiced an almost “anti-hero” sentiment that to achieve multi-million dollar status is to practically sell-out one’s ideals.  Astonishingly, altruism seems to be the primary motivator of todays technical founders, well ahead of money, which is probably near the bottom of the values held dear, along with voting republican or coding static HTML.

Are all the big dreamers on either coast?  Why is it that its typical for those in Silicon Valley to dream big and hope for owning Lamborghinis and dating supermodels, while those in the donut hole of the U.S. just hope to pay the rent?  Can’t we hope to add value to the lives of those traversing the Web AND walk around with pockets full of “phat lewt?”

Have we relegated our dreams to sitting at the kids table of the biggest venture capital opportunity of our lives? Or worse yet, are we the lap dogs of the Internet, seeking to live off the table scraps of what life seeks to offer us?

If we REALLY seek to create a silicon prairie in the middle of this country, we need to be more than we are.  We need to demand more . . . of ourselves and each other.

Wake up.

In San Francisco? At the largest tech conference in the world?

Come watch me talk about

Rapid Telco Services Innovation in a Web 2.0 World, Palace Hotel, Ralston Room at 5:00 pm.

I’ll be the guy up at the front yapping away.

Come say hi and introduce yourself

We are all connected.  This may not be much of a revelation to most of you but a handful of you might not be convinced.

Social Media sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc) are merely an expression of what comes natural to us:  Connecting to people in real time.  Recently there have been a couple of interesting articles on the phenomenon.

Courtesy of @jonnomh Internet Evolution recaps an event in which the main summation was that Social Media is a feature of the Internet but not the Internet itself.  The argument seems obvious at first glance but I have a few subtle disagreements:

The beauty of the Internet isn’t our ability to share porn with one another or that it allows us to read the paper without a subscription.  The beauty is in the ability to harness the collective mind to solve problems. My mother used to tell me that life is too short to make all the mistakes yourself, go learn from the mistakes others have made.  We learn from each other . . . good things . . . bad things  . . . and if we’re smart we apply those learnings to our life.  It may be just a function, but, in my way of thinking, social media is the primary benefit of the Internet.

@zenaweist  turned me onto an article rattling a few cages on the Interweb.  It seems someone has made some sense out of the “incessant ramblings” of the crowd and determined that there really is a benefit to reading and posting the daily or minutely mundane.  This “Ambient Awareness” is described thusly:

It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Whenever I meet someone for the first time to date someone, I always meet them at a bar.  And more specifically I always tell them to meet me AT the bar.  This is good for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s less adversarial.  If I’m standing next to you, we’re just a couple of people talking instead of two people looking across the table at each other wondering what’s going to be said or done next.

2. I can better gauge your reactions and if you’re interested.  If I ask you a question or touch your arm and then turn away and turn back to find that you are leaning into me or on the edge of your seat, I have a good idea you’re interested.  This coupled with the idea of how good the conversation might be is a good indicator that we are hitting it off.

Taken together they tell a story as to whether or not this person is deserving of a first date.  (I’ll save how long you should wait to call for another post) Taken in the context of social media, It turns out that reading and posting about the ordinary day in/day out makes us feel closer . . . more intimate.

Could it be that the more we are engaged in what others are doing, the more we become engaged in our own? I know first hand that doesn’t always translate positively.  Losing myself in another was a common practice for me  until about 3 years ago. It’s common, through social media, to become influenced by those we keep track of but barely know.  If Tantek hadn’t twittered about the workout he’s doing on hundredpushups.com I wouldn’t have learned about it.

But it turns out there are some other real world benefits to social media.  There are monthly blogger meet-ups and “tweet”-ups that allow you to connect, share a beer, and talk about whatever’s on your mind.  Kind of like a cyclical penguin migration during the winter months to keep warm.

Of course, I don’t have to convince a penguin we are all connected.

Thanks to our on the spot reporter, @duckman1221 (think Christiane Amanpour but only hawter), he was up at the buttcrack of dawn and at the Apple Store in Kansas City, getting reaction from all the beautiful people, including @NewMonarch.

Remember to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

The most confusing role within an IT organization is the Architect. Most people aren’t really sure what they do. And there is a really good reason for that.

There are lots of really bad architects.

A good architect is part guardian, part ninja, part wizard, part consigliere and usually very very charming (okay maybe only in my case). They act on behalf of IT and the company to keep costs low but capability high. They are the strategy arm of IT and as such, they make recommendations that steer the company’s technical capabilities for the future and beyond.

I work in a fairly evolved IT organization. Part of being enlightened is knowing that you aren’t and, as an organization, we know enough to know our strengths and weaknesses. I recently visited with another IT organization that is a bit farther down the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. They aren’t sure what their architects do. They invite the architects to meetings but they never show up. They visit the architects, ask them to make recommendations on moving forward and never hear back from them. As such, software gets built and there is no governance available to ensure code is re-used, or can be re-used in the future. And there is NO process for the architects to act as a checkpoint as software moves throughout its lifecycle.

So the architects sit around and wonder why won’t anyone listen to them. . .

The best architects don’t sit around and wait for people to come to them. They insert themselves into the process. They are in people’s faces wondering why they coded something one way when they were EXPLICITLY told to code it another. They remind the business to go focus on functionality and to let the architect worry about solutions. They act as counsel to the Account Managers of IT to educate them on what the horizontal solutions for the company are so that they can explain them to the business. The architects also recommend to the CIO where money can be saved and create plans for how that savings can occur for the next 2-5 years.

Remember, respect isn’t given, it’s earned. Just because you have the cool title, doesn’t mean people are going to fall down at your feet and ask for your opinion. If you want someone to hear your opinion, you might try giving it.

In short, Architects need to be the smartest people in the room. And good architects know they are.

Here is what I took away from this year’s South by Southwest festival(s)

1. You really can push the point of fun overload. Either that or I’m getting old.

2. Meeting loads of new people + loads of adult beverages = forgetting lots of names. I really did love you all. It’s not you, it’s me. Honest.

3. When you throw a bunch of geeks in a room talking about all the cool new products we’re all building, the future looks completely rosy. Reality (and my SxSW hangover) tells me the future is really much bleaker than it appears.

4. The real value of social networking takes place offline. The value we bring to each other is best measured offline actually. Case in point . . . South by Southwest!

5. Speaking of offline, life is actually lived there. It’s not about taking the virtual world to its real-life counterpart, it’s the other way around. The digital world is actually more compelling when it’s expressed with real world physics. Get out and do things like this or this.

6. Contribute something. Don’t sit back and be a pundit. Build something and contribute to the conversation that way as opposed to just commenting on what other people are doing.

7. My yearly take-away: Austin is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Great movie venues, great music, great culture. It’s also a community that supports technology.

8. Twitter is really cool. Yeah, I caught a glimpse of that last year. But connecting in real time is really special.

9. Everyone! Listen to the community! It’s smarter than you can ever hope to be!

10. If you’re going to fail, fail so big that everyone wants to twitter about it.

Eisner and Cuban

Originally uploaded by bankythehack3000

The ubiquity of the Web grew tremendously within the last few years due to bandwidth, low cost of hardware, democratization, and the emergence of standards. All of this converged in 2005 with the launch of YouTube and the Web was never the same. Video, finally, became a compelling channel on the Web and today a search for video returns 77 Million generated by about 2.8 Million users.

Enter stage left, one Michael Eisner. The once proud king of the Mouse descended on Austin Texas to talk about the idea that now is the right time for compelling “story driven monetized content” on the Internet. His company Vuguru has produced a modest success in Prom Queen via a key partnership with Myspace and this Spring will produce a prequel to Robin Cook’s upcoming book Foreign Body which will consist of 50 episodes of 90 seconds each. On the 51st day the new book will appear in stores.

Eisner acknowledges that no one really has it right, just yet, and interviewer Mark Cuban acknowledges, and rightly so, integrating digital content on the PC with your Hi-Definition television really hard to do. Lost in the discussion though is that IP based television is mainstream. AppleTV 2.0 and XBOX Live currently allow users to download hi-def content from the Internet to be played right on the television. In the future, and even today, our televisions will be just another screen in which we interact. It will be devices like our phone, both wireless and wireline, computer, and set-top boxes that will be the conduit for video on-demand.

Eisner predicts that within five years, IP based content will be just as compelling as what we’ll find on television. YouTube is already experimenting with various advertising models.

Another paradigm shift is coming. The infrastructure has capacity and when the number of eyeballs can support the revenue the content creation will generate, we’ll just need to be able to relax comfortably in our living rooms with devices that enable all the magic to happen.

Convergence is coming. And that is what Eisner is betting on.

I had never heard Kathy Sierra talk before, so colour me suprised as hell when I got up from this conversation feeling as energized about what I could with do with my life as I had when my divorce had finally become reality.

So, welcome to my blog on the best conversation I’ve heard at SxSW (so far)

Consider the balance sheet, the number of users, the money raised, or the quality of your content or customer service . . . is that the true measure of your success? They are all indicators, certainly. But Sierra may have hit on something that may be a better metric . . . how kick ass do you make your users feel about themselves?

She outlined about 20 things to consider and at the end introduced Gary Vaynerchuk as a person who is doing all the right things.

Of the top 20, here are my top five (in no particular order):

1. Inspire first person language. Your product should allow the user to talk about themselves instead of the product. Other users will be motivated by hearing from people just like them who are talking how the product allows them to kick ass. . .

2. Give your users a way to reduce stress. Solve a problem for them that when they use it, their stress level goes down.

3. When users become experts, they become mentors. Speed the process by creating mentors earlier. Encourage your users to ask and answer questions. There are no bad answers!

4. Make your product feel more alive. real world physics matters . . . really. From the way cars get dented when you crash them in Grand Theft Auto or when you see the little “throw bounce” when you scroll an iPhone. Acknowledging the real world compels the virtual.

5. Create Joy. Think about the last time you felt like you kicked ass. Give that to your customers.

For me, the best examples of who does this the best would be (in no particular order)

1. Apple
2. Wordpress
3. Men’s Wearhouse
4. Bluetooth
5. My Day Job

What are yours?

I wish i would have called it beforehand. The entire ballroom was already filled by 10 til 2 and given the subject, a man who dazzles with his software but not as a speaker, I nearly twittered . . .”There’s going to be lots of disappointed people in about one hour. “

And disappointed they were, but for a very different reason.

It begain okay enough. Zuckerberg talked about how Facebook was making an impression by allowing protest to occur in Columbia and how the world seems less isolated to those in Lebanon who are able to connect with their friends on different continents.

All the while though, Ms. Lacy twirled her hair, leaned back in her chair, and talked about how nervous Mark Zuckerberg can get when he gets interviewed. She called him a kid a few times and honestly didn’t seem to have much respect for him as either a subject she was interviewing or as a man who has built a company that can be valued at over 15 billion dollars.

And as I was sitting there watching all this, after having seen all the anticipation first hand just prior to the keynote, the tension in the air became so palpable, it became another energy entirely. My twitter feed read like this “She’s disgusting,” “She’s flirting with him,” “She ruined his keynote.” And when the energy was sensed by even Zuckerberg himself when he asked innocently enough 45 minutes into the interview, “Did you run out of questions?” the crowd . . . just . . . roared. It wasn’t so much what he asked, but the crowd saw a window of opportunity to react . . . and the crowd did. And the crowd just kept reacting for the rest of the interview.

It went downhill from there for Lacy but when the crowd saw the opportunity to vent, the crowd were immediately more engaged. She said later that she got Zuckerberg to announce the launching of Facebook in France, but actually, Lacy was the one to break the news. Lacy reacted poorly and defensively. “My job is hard!” she exclaimed. She snarked an apology at the end, “I’m sorry it was such torture.”

The criticism poured in on both Valleywag and Cnet. Still in denial hours later she twittered, “seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.”

And because most had hoped to understand more about Facebook’s roadmap and what was on the horizon for such a monumental company, that sums up exactly how many of us still feel . . . screwed.