Paladin Advisors Group: My Own "Stealth" Startup

Over the last four years on this blog, you have seen me talk a lot about hundreds of different startups and dozens of large enterprise companies. I have tried to share with you how I consume information and disseminate it outward to the many social networks. I let you know my thoughts on gadgets and hardware, and we have had open conversations about the culture of Silicon Valley, the future of blogging and social media, and we have discussed best practices and trends. But what we haven't talked about much is my job - because for the most part, this blog is as much about you as it is me. But over the last five to six months, I have been working on my own "stealth" startup, gaining clients - and it is soon coming time to tell you all about it. (Especially as Marshall Kirkpatrick mentioned it last night)


Marshall's Tweet from Last Night Deserved Answers
Paladin Advisors Group is a strategic advisory firm for startups and enterprise companies who are looking for guidance in their marketing, public relations, sales processes, customer influence, Web and social media. For the firm, which is a handful of partners large, I am the Managing Director of New Media.


Follow Us On Twitter at @PaladinAG
Over the last few months, I have been working with enterprise companies including Emulex Corporation, and startups, including Kosmix.com and My6sense. For startups, as I have done informally for years, I have been working with them on product feedback and focus, quality assurance and visibility. For enterprise companies, my focus has been on integrating social media and blogging into their strategies, aligning on messaging with PR, marketing and customer service.

As with the advisory roles I have gained with SocialToo, BuzzGain, ReadBurner and others, I will always provide transparency to you and full disclosure on any relationships - and I hope that over the last few years with my activity here and on the downstream social networks, I have gained your trust to provide clarity.

Why do I call this new venture "stealth"? Because it is new, and I haven't made a lot of noise about it. In fact, our Web site is under development. But you can follow us on Twitter to be notified as soon as we have more announcements. (http://twitter.com/paladinag)

And... if you think our services might be a fit for your business, e-mail me at lgray@paladinag.com.

Slow Down My E-mail and Slow Me Down Too

Even if I may like to gain access to early versions of cutting-edge Web tools and communications apps, there is simply no replacement for e-mail. It remains my starting point to my information consumption each day, and the major thoroughfare for communication, even as I pile on all sorts of social networking activity on its head. Simple access to all my e-mail accounts from any location has become expected, and when anything happens to get in the way, the results are visible right away.

Over the last few weeks, I have been getting worse about responding to e-mail quickly, not due to any lack of interest on my part, or even the result of an increasing workload. Instead, a new working environment, and new rules from IT, are turning processes which should be a snap into an obstacle course - ostensibly keeping them safer, but at a clear cost to me, and I am sure many of you see similar issues.

The first impact comes from the office's hard and fast rule against supporting POP3 activity on the company network. No doubt a preventative move to reduce potential exposure to e-mail borne viruses and malware, or even a move to reduce the export of confidential data, this move means that instead of getting all my Mobile Me mail quickly into my Mail.app, and responding rapidly, I am forced to read messages through the Webmail equivalent or on the iPhone. As we all know, Apple's Webmail for Mobile Me is substandard - with failure being more frequent than success, and the latency has me seeing red, so I tend to view my accounts on the iPhone and delete junk, before responding to a select few and hoping the Mobile Me gods are happy that moment. Usually, they aren't.

So, while my in box was once somewhat clean, it's piling up, and I'm looking less responsive. It's already led to some missed stories, and people resending messages to be sure I got them the first time.

The second impact runs in the opposite direction. Office Exchange mail is not supported on the iPhone - only on company Blackberries (or through Webmail). Now, this means that if I am away from the office, or not at the laptop, I am literally away from company mail.

I haven't seen the official rule on this one, in terms of why iPhones are not supported. Suffice it to say that "it's just the way it is", and that's probably not changing soon. It could be an issue of not wanting to field more outside requests, or a training issue, but this too slows down my responding to messages, accepting calendar invites, or generally feeling connected.

The combination of these two issues finds me doing a lot of e-mail from home, after getting appropriate network access speeds secured, responding to fewer messages or in shorter length, or generally feeling like I am running an uphill battle. It's almost like I am being penalized for going into the office, when things actually go faster from the couch.

And yes, before I hear the cries for me to move to GMail, I am aware that solves issue #1 (I assume), but it won't fix issue #2, and I don't believe I should have to swap out the address I have used for nearly a decade due to this issue.

For those of you who are under similar limits, how do you handle finding roadblocks put in your way?

Skype Hates Me. Maybe That's Because I Treat It Like Net2Phone?

When I worked at 3Cube nearly ten years ago, we helped design one of the most feature-rich and well-designed online conference calling and Web meeting products out there, with a service we called PhoneCube. You could, from your Web browser, initiate a conference call to up to 32 participants, and manage the entire conference, including putting people on mute or hold, from your Web browser. You could also invite them, on the fly, to a Web meeting, and share a presentation or your desktop. But as a small startup, we ran into two major issues. The first was that WebEx had raised scads of money and was spending tens of millions on marketing, including a Super Bowl ad featuring RuPaul. The second was that pricing the product, no matter how we did it, seemed expensive, as users were not comparing our 15 or 25 cents per minute per line rates with that of traditional conference call services, but instead, with the pennies on the dollar VoIP alternative, Net2Phone.


The old PhoneCube.com Web site, Circa 2000 (via archive.org)
Rising in the era of Napster and Web browser bars, like AllAdvantage, that promised to pay you money just for surfing the Web, Net2Phone's dirt cheap, but awful quality, got significant use, especially for those folks making international calls - many of whom thought we should drop our rates to basement levels found only online or on gift cards picked up from 7-11. And thus were my feelings cemented about what this cheap PC to landline connection represented. So you can imagine my hesitancy when it comes to Skype.

After finally giving in and getting a Skype account last year, to participate in the occasional podcasts, I have dealt with frequent bugs that have me wondering if the Skype application has a personal grudge against me thanks to our history. Whether I have participated on the ReadBurner Weekly podcast, the FFundercats podcast, or yesterday, when I was a guest on This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte, I always get dropped, without warning, around 20 minutes into the call, like clockwork.

And I hate looking like a tech fool. My Mac is up to date in just about every respect. I have the latest version of Skype downloaded. I have a headset which works. But regardless of what time of day or who I'm talking to, I know that I should keep my calls to 15 minutes, or you can expect me to have to dial in about 3 to 4 times an hour. (See yesterday's TWIT, episode 194 for a great example)

So, community of Skypers... you tell me. Should I relegate Skype into the same bucket of ugly 1999 quality Net2Phone, or should I give it another try? Is it my fault? Is it Comcast (my ISP)? Or is it Skype? Reasonable responses and suggestions will be tried.

Good People, Bad Companies: The Intersection of Skill and Luck

If you have worked at a company that went public or changed the world, you might be given an unfair share of accolades for your part in its success, even if you were actually a pedestrian employee. Similarly, if you happen to have put blood, sweat and tears into an unsuccessful venture, you might be seen as having contributed to that's company's lack of success, or worse, its downfall, giving your resume a black mark. Despite one's best intentions, there is always a strong element of luck in terms of what companies succeed, what products gain share in the market, and, often, if you were hired at the right place at the right time.

In Silicon Valley, the measurement of success and failure can be extremely visible. "Oh. He worked at Google..." says one person in hushed tones to a friend. "And that guy? Let's just say he's on his fourth startup in six years."

But the company name, and the headlines that covered that company's activity over the years, never tell the full story. You don't always know if the person was liked and trusted by their employees. You don't know if they put in 14 hour days or 6 hour days. And you don't know if there was anything they could have done in their role that could have changed the outcome. It's no secret that companies big and small have elite employees, pedestrian employees, and laggards, be they those on the Fortune 500 or ones you've never even heard of.

In a time when the economy is in decline and unemployment is rampant, here and elsewhere, these rapid judgment calls are no doubt having profound effects. How do you explain your way around product failures, hostile takeovers and missed sales quarters? Should the guy whose company chose to go public three months before the market crashed, when yours didn't, giving them $100 million in the bank, and him a nice Mercedes, be considered a better talent than you? Should every former Google employee have a leg up on every former Yahoo! or Ask Jeeves employee, for example?

Watching some industries very closely, it can become clear that people, no matter their role in the organization, will claim the success of their company as their own handiwork. Paraphrasing from a recent release, many of which you've likely seen, a company crowed last month upon getting a new Sales VP, "Prior to joining, (this individual) previously served as a Senior Vice President at (company), where he was responsible for growing sales revenue from $hundreds of millions to $billions." But in the last twelve months, I had actually seen others of this company's alumni report that it was they who had been the driver for the same growth - generating the same similar press release.

Should they all take credit for the same thing, even if one person led worldwide sales, another was a regional area manager, and another oversaw channel efforts in a single territory?

There is something to be said about having been part of a shared experience of success or failure, and learning what to do next, should the opportunity present itself again. In Silicon Valley, where it's well known the vast majority of startups will eventually fail, most of us have two or three companies under our belt that didn't make it. An elite few managed to jump from success to success and not miss a beat. Still others have alternated success with failure, with a healthy mix of effort sprinkled with luck through the process.

It's this knowledge that doesn't get me starry-eyed when I bump into people who played central roles at companies that are household names today - not any more than I look askance at those whose history may be more checkered. All we can do as individuals is deliver our best effort and work to help the company we are at succeed to the level of our abilities. And should that not work, we should take a deep breath, look around, and do it again. Risk is not something to be feared, and with risk always comes the chance that you won't succeed - and it might not always be because of you.

IT Trade Show Attendance Down Sharply. Is Quality Improved?

During the last recession, especially in 2002 and 2003, our experience showed that attendance at technology trade shows was very poor, to say the least. If vendors weren't canceling their sponsorships outright, or dramatically reducing booth space, the scarcity of end-users saw marketers desperate to hit target lead counts, even if it meant randomly scanning those who just wanted the give-away of the day. But in this go around, having attended a fair number of events so far this year, while I see attendance is once again down significantly, the quality of those end users who remain might actually be better overall.

As mentioned yesterday, I am spending the week at the NAB conference here in Las Vegas. This show, expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees, if not a hundred thousand, as once estimated, clearly doesn't have as many exhibitors as in previous years. The hallways are less jam-packed, and wait times for services like taxis, shuttles and the monorail are greatly lessened, compared to other times I've attended.

Any trade show veteran knows that the first and second days of a show typically drive the lion's share of activity. Often, a 3-5 day show can be like molasses as all the exhibitors pace upon their well-carpeted square booths, and watch the clock by the end of the week. So getting a big number on day one can be critical. While today's activity was very busy through the first portion of the day, by the second half of the eight-plus hour shift, I could have sworn it was Wednesday already - and I know we were not the only ones with serious gaps in visitors.

But interestingly, despite the relative quiet, as I also experienced at Storage Networking World in Orlando at the beginning of the month during parts of that show, those attendees who are making the visit and the inquiries are those who we should be talking to. It could be that companies who lived through the last recession have learned to save money by not sending more than the critically necessary attendees to said events, effectively aiding them and the vendors who see them by improving the signal while lessening the noise.

If you are a technology marketer deciding whether or not to spend your money on trade shows this year, I wouldn't recommend outright pulling the plug. If you reduce your presence, end users will understand your desire to save money. But if your competitors go and you don't, they've got a beeline to deals that should be yours. And if you're a technology purchaser wondering if you should go to a show, ask around the office, and see if somebody with better focus can go on your behalf. It will make sense for your budget and for the vendor ecosystem as well. I hope that what I'm seeing so far this year displays this is already happening.

This Week's Destination: Las Vegas, Nevada

Another week, another trip. The Spring event season has us racking up frequent flier miles again, as following recent trips to Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona and Orlando, Florida, we're away from home once more - this time for a full five days in Las Vegas, Nevada. As I told folks following the Orlando trip, "it sounds more fun than it really is". We're going to be attending and participating in the National Association of Broadcasters' Conference for the full week, with my work hat on.

The trip marks my third jaunt to Vegas in the last 7 months, following BlogWorld Expo last Fall, and company sales kickoff in February.

If you're a Las Vegas native, or your schedule and location just so happen to match mine, you know how to reach me. I'm powering up the iPhone now.

How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities

As social networking and social media sites increasingly become as much about companies and brands as they are about people, you are seeing names like Zappos and JetBlue tweeting alongside you, and Comcast answering complaints. Companies might be making comments on FriendFeed and asking you to join their fan page on Facebook. Many of you, possibly tasked with maintaining the social media presence for your company, might be maintaining multiple accounts on practically every network, and trying to keep your personalities in check, lest you make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. For the last four months, I've been doing the same thing. Here's how.

Put Your Work Life In One Browser, and You In Another

Everybody has multiple browsers these days. Whether you prefer Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or something else, you probably have a second one which you use less. Rather than ask you to login and log out over and over, set up one of your browsers with bookmarks to all your work activity and the social media sites with that account, and keep your preferred browser all yours.

For my work account, I use Firefox, and for me, I use Safari.

When I open Firefox, the browser opens five distinct tabs:

• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Twitter Search
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

The GMail account tracks new subscribers and DMs. Google Reader populates the link blog. Twitter search watches what is being said online, and Twitter and FriendFeed let the company participate.

Running the browsers in parallel lets me do the work I need to in both, without suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Make A Second Login, Preferences for TweetDeck

TweetDeck, in my opinion, is still the best way to track groups and saved searches in Twitter. I set up TweetDeck so if I am logged in as me, the application has the standard black look and feel. But when I am logged in with the company ID, TweetDeck is in the company colors of blue and orange. Yes, the combination is somewhat garish, but it serves as a reminder to me that I'm logged in for work, so I won't screw up.


Logged Into TweetDeck as the Company

Logged Into TweetDeck as Me
Beyond the colors, you should leverage TweetDeck's saved search functionality to track your company and product mentions, as well as that of competitors.

Create a Second Disqus Account for Commenting

When commenting on blogs around the Web, as yourself, or for the company, it makes sense to use best practices and identify who you are. But you don't necessarily want to track your work comments to your personal ID. I recommend getting a second Disqus account that ties back to your work e-mail address, and have that registered in the "work" browser. When I make comments on sites as work, it says my first and last name, and then, in parentheses, the company name.

Always Work Methodically When Acting on Behalf of the Company

Tweeting or commenting or blogging or bookmarking as a brand is more risky than when you do it on your own. As with all things on the Web, you should consider how they could be interpreted downstream. But when you are doing something on behalf of a corporate entity that represents products, people, history and finance, you should take an extra breath before acting, and pay extra attention to every word, character or nuance.

Be Replaceable

If you do your job well, it should be easy for you to pass off the reins of the social media strategy at your company to somebody else with very little impact. If you make the company's social media presence all about you, it will follow you where you go next, and could negatively damage the company you are leaving, and distract from the company where you are going. See that you can work on behalf of the company without it being all about you. Try to offer personality without it necessarily being your distinct personality.

You'll note I don't often talk about work here on the blog. It was a conscious decision I made when starting the site at the beginning of 2006. It's not a secret where I work (check my LinkedIn profile) but it's not about where I work. It's all part of keeping things separate. Are you running the social media activity for your company, or looking to get started? I would be interested in the tips you may have as well.

Today Marks Ten Years Working In Silicon Valley

On October 25th, 1998, during my senior year at UC Berkeley, I started my first job in Silicon Valley, as an eCommerce Analyst for Internet Valley, a small startup focused on search engine optimization, technology trends and eCommerce. Today marks the tenth anniversary of that first day, making me one of those people who can sit around the table and claim a decade's worth of experience. Though my role has changed quite a bit from the first time I sat down for work in Burlingame, California, growing to take on traditional outbound marketing roles, including public relations and demand generation, the initial journey is worth commemorating.

As my senior year at Berkeley commenced, I knew I would need an off-campus job to help pay for rent and books, having left my position with the school newspaper, where I was Online Editor and a news reporter.

Not entirely sure what I wanted to do, I drafted two versions of my resume - one to be a journalist, and the other, to be a Webmaster. The journalist piece I sent to places like the Mercury News and MacWeek, and the one for being a Webmaster went just about anywhere I thought made sense, provided it was close enough to Berkeley, and offered flexibility that let me finish out my coursework and get the dual degree in Mass Communications and Political Science.

It being 1998, it was no surprise the Webmaster position found the most traction. That Internet Valley took a chance on me, an unproven kid at the age of 21, without a formal degree, helped lay the groundwork for my making a home in Silicon Valley and starting on a track toward a career that later encompassed Marketing. To give you an idea of how things have changed just in the last ten years, here's an excerpt from a note home to my dad, titled, "First day of work":

The company has ordered a Micron PC for me at work, and while it is a Windows 98/NT machine, it has some strong specs, such as: PentiumII 400 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 6.4GB of hard disk space, a 32x CD-ROM, and built-in Zip Drive.

That's right. In 1998, 6.4 GB of space and 64 MB of RAM was considered "strong specs".

I had interviewed at Internet Valley on October 13th of 1998, somehow getting from Berkeley to Burlingame without a car, using a combination of public transportation and my own two feet. And interestingly, my initial impressions of the Internet Valley site, and its methodology, provided some interesting hints for the way the future Web would be consumed.

From a previous e-mail, after 2 a.m. on October 14th of 1998:

(My boss) said that when he organized the site, he had done it with the intent of separating from print media, instead focusing on users who do not "read" documents, but "scroll" them. The typical Web site containing basic text was not to be found. The site instead contains words in a variety of colors, font sizes and heavy use of the bold tag. Some might call it ugly. ... He laughed about how he had dropped half of his age in a week if the letters were to be believed. But when scrolling down the site, a user can have their attention caught by the unorthodox methods, and will stop to read. Otherwise the words highlighted will give an idea of what the topic was being covered.

While the site itself was tough to digest, it brings to mind the way many of us consume news now, through a "river of noise", or scanning RSS rather than reading in full.

The stay at Internet Valley was not all that long, as the seed investor would have preferred revenue more quickly, but I managed to stay on with their sister company, 3Cube, reporting to the team's new vice president of Marketing.

Working at 3Cube during the dotcom boom, and eventually, through the bust, set the stage for how I approached business. Whether in operations, engineering or marketing, the team worked late, and was focused on doing what at times seemed to be super-human work, as we could ask a pair of coders to do what had taken a team of dozens at a competitor more time. And at age 22, I was responsible for running the Web site, and much of the copy, including FAQ's for these new products, even as I found myself sitting at the table with people who had been in the software industry since the time I was born.

As a young employee at both companies, and where I work now, I often found myself intimidated by my colleagues' experience and history. When they could talk in decades, I could merely talk in months, or maybe a year or two. With time, this has changed, of course, as I took on more responsibilities, including direct reports, gained experience, and have found myself at a place where many employees are younger than myself.

After the dotcom bust, I worked through the 2001-03 recession, and came out the other end with more knowledge on how to operate when times were lean. It looks like we may have that opportunity again, with the global markets being tossed to and fro. But even as we see our day to day challenges, or try and hit milestones that lie directly ahead, I can do so knowing that, after ten years of trying to make a difference, it's me who has a decade's experience in the Valley, the first of what should be a handful. I can't even imagine trying to work outside of the Valley. It's all I know, and all I want to know. Here's to thirty more years.

A Recession's Impact: Lower Expectations Across the Board

The stock market is a disaster.

Banks are going under, and massive financial institutions are being bailed out. Companies are announcing hiring freezes and layoffs. And just about everybody has less money now than they did last month, or the one before that. While many of these perceived losses are quantifiable (on paper), more widespread are the losses that cannot be quantified, as people and companies cast off their optimism, and exchange it with a dark reality.

Those of us who made it through the last recession have seen this play out before, and others, a few times as bust follows boom, and back again. This time, the bust just might be deeper, and its impact further felt. I made a handy chart to see how people here in the Silicon Valley might be adjusting their expectations - from personal goals to family, possessions and career. In every aspect, I think it's safe to say that many are choosing door number three.


How a market changes one's goals - in chart form...
(Feel free to reuse the image on your blog)
With all the bad news out there, have you already made some of these choices? I'll likely be keeping my 1998 Mercury Tracer going just a bit longer, and despite the twins, I don't see us moving out any time soon, as demand for housing has cratered. Stocks I held just last week are worth 80 cents on the dollar today, and it could be time to buckle down unless things turn around soon.

I've Taken a New Advisory Role With ReadBurner

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that one of the most frequent topics I've discussed is that of RSS readers, and innovative tools to determine "hot" or most popular items - either on a broad measure, or by specific topic or vertical. One of the most fun stories to follow, for me, this year, was the stealth debut of ReadBurner, followed by its rapid ascension into visibility, its later changing hands and continued efforts to add new features and make it a standard for determining the best content across the Web.

As of today, I'll be taking a more direct role in helping the team at ReadBurner succeed, working with them in an advisory role, where I can spend a few hours each week talking strategy.

So what does this mean for the other companies in this space, who have played a crucial role in our coverage this year, such as RSSmeme, Feedheads, and LinkRiver? To me, it doesn't change a whole lot. I've made it clear that I really like this arena, and see that it has great potential, and I've maintained a good relationship with the developers at each site.

In fact, I reached out to both Mario Romero and Ben Golub in advance of this post to let them know of our making the ReadBurner affiliation more official, in case they felt I had a new conflict of interest, or would be treating them differently going forward. As I told both of them, I would absolutely love to keep being updated and spreading the word, but understand if they felt more competitive, and if any future coverage of either will need a formal disclosure of sorts.

So why ReadBurner? Because the team of Drew Olanoff, Adam Ostrow, Thomas Connors and Alexander Marktl has recognized the potential in a democratically-oriented site that can bring the day's top news to people, regardless of its source, or its topic. They are looking to springboard ReadBurner out of the hobby phase and help it grow. I'm hoping I can help, and I'm honored they extended the opportunity.

And in case you're curious, this doesn't impact my day job, which remains the same, as outlined on LinkedIn. But even if I can help the ReadBurner team in a small way, I'm excited to try. It's already been fun watching the site grow from its infancy earlier this year.

You can follow our efforts at http://www.readburner.com/. Looking forward to updating you with more, including on the ReadBurner podcast, tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific. (Watch the official blog.)

Meeting Virtual Friends In Real Life at Web 2.0 Expo

This week is one of the few opportunities where my work life and my blog life are intersecting. I have the chance to participate at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, and while the show exhibition doesn't start in earnest until tomorrow, I've already had the opportunity to make face to face connections with people who I respect, but until today, had only met online, through Twitter, through blogs, e-mail or FriendFeed. And I continue to be amazed how easy it is to meet somebody for the first time, and feel like we're close friends, solely due to our online connections.

One highlight of the day was meeting Caleb Elston, the creator of Toluu. Caleb, based in Miami, Florida, is far from home, but was nice enough to step out of a session he was attending so we could catch up. In the thirty minutes or so that we talked, he expressed excitement over how rapidly Web users have taken to his RSS feed matching and recommendation service, saying thousands had signed up, with the only limitation being how many beta invites he has offered.

In fact, the early buzz over Toluu, both here and elsewhere, led to some curiosity from colleagues at his day job, where he said he was getting more and better PR than his company. Some friends at the office even thought he might jump ship, to focus solely on Toluu. Yet, he reassured me, that wasn't in the plans. For him, developing and enhancing Toluu is done when he otherwise would be less productive, watching TV or movies, and has helped to keep him sharp and focused.

Eager to keep the Toluu buzz going, I even lobbed a call to Robert Scoble, hoping I could connect the two, but his dance card is full. He said he'd love to meet up, but it's no surprise he has interviews lined up every hour on the hour throughout the show from entrepreneurs trying to gain his attention. I don't exactly envy his schedule.

Wandering up to the press room, as my exhibitor pass wouldn't let me crash any of the sessions, I found Marshall Kirkpatrick and Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb, as well as Brian Solis of Bub.blicio.us and PR 2.0. As Marshall has been one of my more vocal advocates since the turn of the calendar year, and as I respect RWW's efforts, it seemed natural to pull alongside and start trading stories. We talked about what was making news today at the show (not too much), and looked at the latest FriendFeed apps, MySocial 24x7 and FriendFeedMachine, which I covered yesterday. Marshall really likes MySocial 24x7 a lot, and showed me how he had it sitting in his FireFox browser sidebar, but I haven't yet installed it. That led to him teasing me about getting to a FriendFeed app before I did, which I can live with. In turn, I gave him grief for Sarah Perez' continued success at RWW, which I suggested was putting a little more pressure on him to produce. We both agreed she was doing a great job, but I don't know that she's at the show. I certainly didn't see her today.

Richard MacManus joined us at the table just as I had to leave, but I was able to introduce myself and shake hands.

On tap for tomorrow? The exhibition gets started. So, after putting in labor today, we'll be looking forward to meeting more people, both in my virtual address book, and my real world directory. We'll be at booth #115 all day, and can be reached by the contact information on the right hand side of the blog. I'm already looking forward to meeting Susan Mernit, hope to track down the Mashable team, and maybe you too! Send me a note, or drop by booth #115, and we can get connected.

LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel

How Select Tech Titans Stack Up (Click for larger image)

Last night, LinkedIn rolled out a major upgrade to the professionally-oriented social network and career/recruiting database, adding new company profiles, giving corporations the same kind of dedicated page to their background as their individual employees have had for roughly five years. (Here's mine.) While corporate profiles have been around forever, LinkedIn adds "special sauce" through its large user database, determining where employees come from and leave to, what other companies they are connected to, and who may recently have changed positions or joined the company. Good stuff.

The new company profiles on LinkedIn are a gold mine for reporters who want to get data beyond what the PR guys may want to dish out. (See: LinkedIn Is a Paradise for Smart Reporters)

Want the average age of an employee? A good estimate is on LinkedIn. Want to know if there is a high level of turnover, and people don't stay long? LinkedIn has that too. It also can provide hints as to whether a company is so strong that folks aren't leaving at all, or if they are leaving in exodus. And if you peer closely enough, you can see the Silicon Valley carousel, as employees move from company to company in search for the next big thing.

You can see employees move from PayPal to Google, Yahoo! or LinkedIn. You can see Friendster employees went to Yahoo! and Zazzle, or from Napster to Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. And if you think Google is getting all the good employees out there, there's no question they get their share, but so far, it looks like Facebook is getting a lot of new hires, and nobody's leaving - a boomtime for the social networking giant.

Interestingly, due to Apple's tenure, and the company's rising from the ashes with the return of Steve Jobs, you can see employees that once left the company have returned, having never lost the Mac religion. You can also see longer median tenures at the more established companies, like Microsoft and Intel, who also feature an older employee base.

Gender-wise, men dominate LinkedIn data for the tech industry, with between 60% and 70% of all employees at the companies I selected. Could that be the case, or is there an overweighting of men who use LinkedIn, compared to the true employee base? Maybe it's both?

LinkedIn opening up this data will keep company marketeers and PR on the alert to see how their data is being portrayed, just as they should be watching their coverage on Wikipedia, for in this case, it's their employees' collective data that is pushing the details, without a filter, and just maybe, the truth will reveal more than they had ever imagined. I know I'll be spending a lot more time poking around LinkedIn now myself.

February 29th's Leap Day Robs Us All

The idea of February 29th is a cute concept in some ways. It's quadrennial appearance has notoriety, and is a date often targeted by expectant mothers and fathers who think they can keep their children artificially young, by limiting the number of birthdays over their lifetime. But if you think about it, if you're a salaried employee, the very fact we have a February 29th this year means your employer gets this day for free. In fact, every single paycheck you get this year is less because of February 29th, and they never even asked your permission to dock your pay!

What do I mean by this? Well, in 2007, we had 365 days, in 2008, we have 366, and next year, we will have 365. Yet you're paid the same this year, if you're on salary, even though you put in the extra effort!

To make the math easy, let's pretend your salary is such that you take home exactly $73,000 a year. Under this scenario, in 2007, you would take home $200.00 even per day, but in 2008, for the same amount of work, you'd only be taking home $199.45. And those 55 cents can add up. Over the 366-day calendar, your employer has taken away a full day's pay from you. If instead you take home $109,500, that number jumps to $300 in lost pay for similar productivity! (See below chart)


Over time, a few cents a day starts to add up...
And you can see this in every single one of your paychecks. If you get paid over a 14-day pay period, at the $73,000 rate noted above, you would see only $2,792.30 coming home every two weeks, instead of the $2,800.00 you would have received in either 2007 or 2009. That's messed up, right? You think we want to be reminded 26 times this year that employers worldwide have asked us to come into the office and work for free?

I propose that from now on, all salaried employees should have the option of taking February 29th off. After all, if we aren't getting paid, why show up?

NotchUp Sells You Out, but Nobody's Buying

I can see how a few overzealous marketeers dreamed up the concept of NotchUp, a new career site for casual job seekers who believe themselves to be so good that prospective employers would bid simply for the right to interview them. The thought... "What if we combine the utility of LinkedIn with viral marketing, using spam and a half-baked pyramid scheme? All we have to do is create a site and force companies to pay for interviews! We'll be rich!"

But the idea is ridiculous. After receiving way too many invites to NotchUp in my e-mail box, primarily from casual business acquaintances who I haven't worked with in years, I thought I'd sign in to see what the noise was about, while also pre-emptively blocking future invites. And what I found was absolutely silly.


Some of the NotchUp e-mail invites I hadn't deleted yet...
NotchUp essentially wants you to recreate your LinkedIn profile, even offering to import your LinkedIn contacts, and then set a price for how much you believe a company should pay for the privilege of meeting with your egotistical self. And, if you act fast, you can spam all of your buddies, thereby gaining 10% of their earnings from interviewing companies as a referral bonus for a full year.

But there are some major glaring holes here.

#1: No company that takes itself seriously will pay for your interview

If a company needs to pay you to interview, they probably aren't one you want to join, and if you're willing to interview for the sole purpose of being paid, with no intention of taking the job, they shouldn't want you.

#2: In order to make any money off the process, you'd have to interview a ton, and never take a job. And all that interviewing might cost you the job you already have.

Notchup encourages you to set a price for interviewing between $75 and $5,000. Assuming you set your price at $250, you would have to conduct 200 separate interviews to rake in a $50k salary. And if you interviewed twice a week at that rate, you would be making $2k a month. But.... you wouldn't ever see that kind of money anyway.

I'm special. Pay me big bucks to chat.

#3: The very best way for people to find new jobs these days is through networking.

LinkedIn is a success because of who you know, not how well you write your resume or how well you interview. LinkedIn shows the quickest route between individuals, and NotchUp doesn't even talk about that. Their entire selling point is about you getting rich, not off working, but pretending to be interested in work.

#4: Friends who spam me shouldn't make a red cent.

You think I'm really going to export my 360+ LinkedIn contacts, invite them all to NotchUp, and then sit back as the profits roll in? Hardly. I don't have stars in my eyes thinking all 360 of my contacts will interview once a month at $200 each, and make me a cool $7,200 a month. If you sent me a spam e-mail asking me to join this quasi-pyramid scheme of a program, I'd have to reconsider whether I'd ever hire you on my team in a future capacity.

#5: The economy isn't so red hot that companies are panicking in need for good employees.

With all the talk about market fluctuations and even a recession, it's not as if companies are dying to meet you. I don't know if they want to meet you for free. The best ones, like Google and Facebook, aren't hurting for talent. They get thousands of resumes a day, most of which won't even get a courtesy callback. Maybe this process would have some chance of success in a go-go time of market inefficiency where job applicants were in control, but not now, and not any time soon.

I'm all for checking out the latest and greatest Web services, but NotchUp is a joke looking for a punch line.

See Also:
Center Networks: There Are Great Ideas, There Are Poor Ideas, Then There's NotchUp
Danny Man: NotchUp? Not so much . . .
eWeek: What if Companies Paid to Interview You?

My Laptop And Me: A Committed Relationship

A typical Silicon Valley day (mine)
For many, including myself, my laptop goes with me to the office and comes back home. While the equipment stays the same, only my usage patterns change. In fact, I likely spend a similar percentage of time online while at home as I do at the office. Using a quick "back of the hand" measurement, I figure in a 24-hour period, assuming 6 hours of sleep, and 1 hour commute time, of the 17 remaining hours in a day (approx. 10 at the office), it's likely I'm on the laptop a good 14 to 15 hours. That's huge.

As we get more wired, and Web-enabled computers are pervasive, the amount of time we spend away from computers is decreasing, as is the total amount each of us spends outside, period, as the Web eliminates the need for many to go out and socialize, preferring social networks, to go shopping, to see movies, or do many of those things that used to require gassing up and heading out.


How many of my total hours awake are spent online? More than 80%?
When I do close the laptop lid to head out, I'll be supplementing my fix by making sure I have my Web-enabled BlackBerry on my hip, just in case I need to check a sports score while at the gas station or barber shop, or I'll click through to Google Reader Mobile to see if TechMeme is blowing up over the latest topic du jour.

Often, at home, my wife and I will be in separate rooms, on our separate laptops. Other times, we'll be watching TV together in the same room, and both our laptops will be open. I'll be reading RSS feeds, and checking Ballhype or Friendfeed. She'll be catching up on blogs, the news and discussion boards. Does this show a lack of communication or marital strife? I doubt it. It's just the way it's become. We both know catching up on work e-mail from home means a fast start to the next day. We both see the Web as a source of news and a place to unwind and communicate. And just because we're taking in one form of media doesn't mean we can't take in another part-time.


A conservative estimate on my part of hours spent during a day (exceeds 24)
As our Web intake has increased, consumption of written media has been decimated. I don't read as many books as I used to. I still buy them, but they pile up. I haven't gotten a newspaper in years, and I think I'm going to let my subscriptions to Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and ESPN Magazine lapse when they come due. Sitting to read them often feels like a chore, and it's not uncommon to be seen reading a magazine at the foot of my laptop on Saturday, with the TV muted in the background.

But while we're working to extend our social networks through LinkedIn and Facebook, or making comments throughout the blogosphere, the total hours spent with real-life humans is probably going down too. What does it say that I spend more time with my laptop than my wife? I guess it makes it just that much more important that I get the right computer, huh? Why is it that I can read 200+ feeds a day, but not call my mom? Why is it that I make sure all my e-mail items are read almost immediately, but I'd rather wait until my bills come in for a second notice before I shake the dust off my checkbook? Why is it that I probably would spend more time making sure the RAM and hard drive size on my laptop is just perfect, but I can't take the time to fix the broken bedroom dresser hinges?

It could be that I recognize my laptop is a perpetual giver. Empowered by the Web, it gives and gives and gives without question and is one of the last things I see before I go to bed and the first when I wake up. Maybe that's why, as I've embraced this digital lifestyle, that I recognize I quietly, secretly, signed on with my laptop to become my life partner. Just don't tell my wife.

Silicon Valley Media Notables Divide "Hot" from "Not"

This evening, I had the opportunity to attend a fun panel put on by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, featuring some of the Valley's top reporters, from the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNBC, Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, and uber-blogger Robert Scoble. The panelists, all "Hot" in their own right, shared with the PR-heavy audience what they thought were the biggest hits of 2007, and what's next in the coming year.

Virtually all panelists said 2007 could be summarized through the success of a few companies: Apple, Google and Facebook, to name a few, the rise of the iPhone, user generated content, social networks, Twitter, and advertising-driven firms. But some said a tide was going to turn with the change in the calendar year, away from consumer-driven technology, and toward enterprise. Also, many expected a combination of bad news to hit the Valley and the economy at large - a market downturn, a recession, and bursting of what could be seen as the advertising bubble, with many companies riding the second wave to Web upstarts to disappear altogether.

Kara Swisher, author of AOL.com (a must read, featured in my bookshelf), was one of the stars of the evening, proving herself intelligent, quick, witty, sarcastic and perfectly willing to mock Second Life, Facebook widgets or the other panelists at any opportunity.

At the other end of the table was Robert Scoble, with Amazon Kindle alongside, playing the part of the only true digerati on the panel. His brazen openness and willingness to engage with his readers through his blog, through Twitter and Facebook, and request to be contacted by cell phone, was in stark contrast to others all too tired of PR pitches - most who said they preferred e-mail. He was one of the few to bring up private startup companies he likes, including Kyte.TV, and vehemently disagreed with CNBC's Jim Goldman on whether Microsoft was seeing a string of success with Vista, Zune and the XBox. And when he stated he read 800 RSS feeds a day, the response was one of shock from his fellow panelists, who jokingly compared him to the notoriously always-on Marissa Mayer of Google.

The far-ranging discussion chided the US government for being too focused on "the friggin' flag", as Swisher mentioned, instead of working to get the country in a leadership position on broadband and wireless, while nations like Vietnam, South Korea and Europe were able to get their act together. She postulated that had the development of the United States' interstate highways been managed in the same way, we'd be on cobblestones.

Other comments were that ad-driven media companies will see a spike in spending to the tune of $100 million around the 2008 presidential election, a one-time jump that will go away, painfully, in 2009, that Yahoo! better get off its kiester and figure out what it's going to do with all its users and products, and that Google just might continue disrupting every new market it enters, including wireless.

While I'd met some of the panelists and others in the room before, it was my first time meeting Scoble personally, but given our online discussions, talking with him had an immediate air of familiarity and friendship, one forged through shared experiences and points of view. (He was no idiot...)I'd be eager to sit in on more discussions like this, and to see if these notables were right with what they expect for 2008.

Geeking Out With a New MacBook Pro

Today, I unpacked one of the most-anticipated items to reach our shipping facility in the last few years - my new Apple MacBook Pro. Aimed to replace a 7-year-old Power Mac G4 desktop and a frustrating Dell laptop at the same time, I'm ready to migrate all my major applications over, and start using this magnificent machine for both Mac and Windows work - as soon as I can get hold of VMWare Fusion or another OS emulator, which would let me run Microsoft Outlook, Project, Visio or any other Windows-only apps alongside my Mac environment without hassle.

For the last hour or so, I've had my two laptops sitting side by side, the first in FireWire Target Disk Mode, as I migrate files, applicatins and preferences from my PowerBook G4 (1.25 GHz/80 GB) to the new MBPro (2.2 GHz/200 GB). Yes, that's right. A whopping 200 gigabytes - enough room for all my applications, and all my files, including the more than 30 Gigs of music I've ripped from my CDs and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.

We're just getting started, but there is no question the new machine is faster, the keyboard is more responsive, and even the speakers sound much better than my 2-year-old laptop. I can't wait to run speed comparisons between it and the year 2000 model I've got at the office...

A Saturday Silicon Valley Experience

Earlier this week, I got a call from a pair of former colleagues with whom I had worked at a small Internet startup right out of college, who I hadn't heard from for the better part of five years.

At the beginning of the decade, we had worked on some great Web-based tools that were seemingly years ahead of their time - online meetings, unified messaging and communication, Web OS's and the like, but as the market fell, so did our chances. Now, as the market for Web tools has heated back up, and the stock markets occasional hiccups haven't stopped innovation, they're actively thinking aloud - should we get back into the game?

So, in typical Silicon Valley fashion, we met at a cafe in Palo Alto this morning, and amidst the bustle of college students and working staffs grabbing lattés on a slow Saturday, we caught up, as friends, on where mutual acquaintances had landed, how they were doing in their new careers and catching them up on how my own life has changed, from when I was a green 22 year old out of Cal to my more seasoned 30 now - how my roles have changed in the office, as well as how I've handled life's constant change. We also traded ideas on where technologies were headed, where I thought there were holes, and how in a crowded market, one could differentiate through quality, ease of use, price or marketing.

Even if they don't start something new, and even if I'm just watching, I greatly enjoyed the discussion. I like the culture of pursuing new ideas in the name of bringing new products to market, and seeking solutions to every day problems, using advanced technology.

Many startups owe themselves to the bantering of ideas in restaurants and business models drawn up on the backs of napkins as waiters bustle to and fro. I just like being part of it and knowing I belong.

New Reality: Your Blog Is Your Brand

While many are debating whether bloggers should be considered on par with journalists, if microblogging through Twitter and others should replace standard blogs, or even if Facebook or LinkedIn are the new business cards in a technology oriented age, it seems to me the clearest, newest definition of a blog is that it is your personal brand. Whether you have tens of visitors or tens of thousands, whether you have dozens of comments or none at all, the content on your blog, in total, represents you, and if done well, can define you, to those who know you well, or those who do not.

By blogging about your interests, by sharing news, links and photos, you are helping explain to the world who you are, what you like and don't like, what you represent, and what you do. If you choose to break news or comment on the day's news, you are doing so through a personal filter which covers everything. If you choose to talk about sports and technology, your choices as to what you want to discuss help define your brand. And, more importantly, the quality of your posts, the frequency of your posts, the length of your posts, all those elements help to illustrate your writing abilities, your attention to detail, your ability to stick to a project, and comprehension or adoption of new technology.

A personal blog will always be much better as a brand than your Facebook profile or LinkedIn profile.

A Facebook profile, even with the newest enhancements to the service, shows photos, groups and networks you consider yourself part of, the friends you have, updates you provide, applications you have installed, and a short message board, or "wall". But the Facebook profile does not allow for much personalization of look, feel or content. The Facebook profile doesn't allow for post after post of prose. The Facebook profile allows you to show how you're connected to a friend, but doesn't give you a platform to talk about the relationship. The Facebook profile is not your brand, but instead the Facebook brand with a small helping of your content.

Your LinkedIn profile is an excellent business card and resume, with job history, relationships, and recommendations. But it is not your brand. Instead, it is one, strong, contributing element to your brand.

As important as it is for me to look to LinkedIn and Facebook to know about a new hire candidate, or to research acquaintances, a blog will go far beyond in explaining to me how this person wants to be portrayed. I now expect job candidates to have blogs, and make that part of the interview process, whether it's related to their position or not. Even if the big shots like Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion and Robert Scoble are successful in moving microupdates away from their blog and to other services, their blog will be the best measure of their personal brand to me, and should not be abandoned, because no other single service can best be owned by and represent the individual.

E-mail Faux Pas Showcases Old Message

When it comes to e-mail etiquette, I'm quite particular. I tend to roll my eyes and think less of people who don't know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All", I'm not all that forgiving with typos, and think that the way e-mails are written should be in line with your own capability for writing or communicating. So when I goof up, I'm particularly annoyed. Today, I most certainly goofed.

Late last September, I had tried to send a message at the office via the Microsoft Entourage desktop client, as Webmail was having issues. For some reason, that didn't go through either. After a few hours of struggles, I ended up sending the note from my personal e-mail account, using Apple Mail, and hadn't opened up Entourage since. Until today.

Prompted to revisit Microsoft's sorry excuse cousin to Outlook for the Mac, I fired up Entourage and set it up to synchronize, so each folder would be updated. As the app sluggishly whirred to life, filling my inbox with the latest, a familiar "Sending Mail" sound echoed. Oops. Seconds later, my message from September hit an internal distribution list and I was made to look like a fool, as the note gave a snapshot in time from 10 months prior. In the age of instant receipt and Blackberries, there was no good reason to recall. Instead, I just sighed and apologized to all for the error.

I hate that. The next step is to just make sure I never open Entourage again.

Update: Ars Technica in parallel has posted a note on curing "sender's remorse"...