Startup Weekend

Interesting attempt to create a start-up over the course of a weekend. They failed to get it done in time and they make it sound like they are surprised that it might take longer than a day of programming to build something. It's funny how this expectation around start-ups persists that things can magically be built much, much faster. They also ignored that a large group of developers can't necessarily build something much faster than a small group. It's the old adage that 9 women can't make a baby in one month.

Still there's something to be said for the push, drive to even create a unified product vision in that short of a time.

Really Valuable Start-up Compensation Numbers

From Ask the VC - What are typical compensation numbers?

Google Hell

I've worked with several businesses that were essentially based on driving traffic via search engine optimization (SEO). There are a wide variety of techniques that can be used, but getting high rankings is not easy and highly volatile. I just saw a Forbes article talking about Google Hell - getting placed in the secondary index.

Bottom line - if you are basing your business on high rankings via organic search, there's pretty incredible risk. And the risk is compounded if you are using techniques that are somewhat gray. The best approaches rely on accumulating quality content and quality links and doing minor optimization on top of that solid foundation. It doesn't prevent Google Hell, but it certainly reduces the chances.

My HBS Presentation - Web 2.0 Implications on Learning

I've somewhat fallen off the map on this blog. Been traveling and consulting with a bunch of early-stage and growth companies. Really fun stuff these days.

One of my recent fun experiences was doing a presentation at Harvard Business School (HBS) on the implications of Web 2.0 type tools (Blogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, RSS, RSS Readers) on corporate learning and someone like HBS.

In the corporate space, these tools have quite an implication in that most training organizations get displaced for knowledge transfer as content gets created by end-users/learners instead of by the training organization. My expectation is that the classic corporate training organization is going to be a slow downward path retaining compliance training and developmental activities - but these will become smaller and smaller part of how employees learn (as compared to informal learning).

For HBS, the issues really are quite different as they want to continue to be a "transformative experience" ... a truly developmental kind of experience. At the same time, graduates from HBS need to be armed with how to operate in a virtual work-team world who use the tools as a means of sharing knowledge and collaborating. Further, as HBS looks towards providing on-going value to students, these kinds of tools become significantly more important. It's not that we'll see radical changes from HBS, but certainly adoption within the core and as part of add-on services is highly likely.

Discussion Creation Among Bloggers - LinkedIn, Blogging and Discussion Groups

I've been participating in a Yahoo Group that are users of LinkedIn and who are Bloggers: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LinkedinBloggers/

It's an interesting group of folks from diverse backgrounds. It's also been interesting to see the interaction of tools involved - Social Networking, Blogging and a Discussion Group.

It seems that four different models of "discussion creation" have occurred:

• Organice Discussion - someone posts something interesting, lots of bloggers post on the topic, distributed discussion ensues.
• Tag Memes - Someone posts a question and "Tags" five people to give their response. See Five Things Meme as an example.
• Blog Hub - A central blog provides a place where the topic is raised and comments are collected and bloggers post. See Supporting New Managers and What Would You Do to Support New Managers? as an example.
• Discussion Group Hub - questions/topics are raised via the discussion group and can go out into the blog world to get a more diverse audience - which is now happening with this group.

I'm not sure which of these make sense in what case. Certainly it suggests that there's need for something more than MyBlogLog, Explode, CoComment, etc. to help bloggers and blog readers with comments.

But this still leaves me with lots of questions about the interplay between these tools, so I'd ask people who author a blog, use LinkedIn (or other social networking), and participate in discussion groups, how do you use these tools.

How do you use LinkedIn?

How do you use Discussion Groups?

What's the interaction between them?

I'll be curious to see the response from the group. Actually, what I'd love to see are some responses via blog posts from different folks in the group:

Bill Austin -Famous Quotes 2007 Weblog Awards
Alister Cameron - www.alistercameron.com
Dennis McDonald - www.ddmcd.com
Jason Alba - http://www.JibberJobber.com/blog
Ben Yoskovitz - http://www.instigatorblog.com
Ben - http://blog.targetz.net/

My answers...

Where I use LinkedIn:

* I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex. Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 event I did last fall.

* LinkedIn has been great to keep track of people I know and their current contact information. I regularly do wine tastings here in Los Angeles with some interesting folks I know. LinkedIn has been my primary tool for keeping track of who to invite.

* I definitely check people out using LinkedIn. It's a great way to get a background on folks.

* I've not found that much use for LinkedIn to help my blogging, but I'm starting to think about this. Maybe this meme will help.

Where I use the Discussion Group:

* I've not been very active in the discussion group on particular topics. However, it definitely has served as a hub. This suggests that something more than MyBlogLog is needed to create hubs from groups of bloggers. That's probably the value of this group.

Interaction:

* Not much right now between LinkedIn and my blog. Certainly my LinkedIn profile provides a better public profile for me. Otherwise, I've not seen much.

* I'm constantly frustrated by conversations that take place in discussion groups that can't cross the border into the blog world. And, I don't like to copy and paste.

Kevin Federline Search Engine

Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. - talking about Prodege's Search with Kevin Site - http://searchwithkevin.prodege.com/. I actually think this is a pretty innovative model. Take a look at other sites: http://searchwinmerch.prodege.com/?cmd=ct-allsites

But the overall idea is to provide branded search in order to get merchandise from your artist, star, etc. It also works well for non-profit groups:

http://www.prodege.com/organization/partners.html

It's a relatively new concept, but it likely has legs.

(Disclosure: we helped build the system that is behind these.)

Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital

Seth's guide is worth reading - The realistic entrepreneur's guide to venture capital