This is great. I came across a post on Venture Hacks called “Free ideas. Just add execution.“ It reminds me of a conversation Nick and I have every so often about how everyone has ideas…but it takes some real talent to actually do something with one.
There are a tons of places on the web which harvest ideas (Starbucks, IdeaBlob, Dell Idea Storm) but there are very few places that say come on over and do something. (Brickhouse)
So what do you do? Well, you still have to come up with ideas…but then execute too. When I figure that out - I’ll call ya!
Image from WikipediaThis Wally dude is awesome, I’d love to have a few guys like him around me. He’s figured out the mysteries of Stonehenge - and figured out how to rasie a seriously heavy stone by himself. Plans on recreating the entire thing in his backyard!
He says that he feels the whole thing could have been built by a handful of people, working a fairly short time.
He’s using concrete, but the same thing could be done with big ‘ol rocks.
This reminds me of this place down in Florida called Coral Castle. This dude named Edward Leedskalnin had some of the same principals figured out.
Now find me some innovative people like this and we can get some of this wedia stuff figured out!
I’m not sure who’s article kicked it all off - but I recently found a few all buzzing around the same topic. It is very interesting to me - because I am involved in a new star-up called “e-Me Ventures” and we discuss some of these things weekly, if not daily!
Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k
Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.
Tip 4: Ask tough questions during the interview
here is nothing worse than being soft during an interview with a prospective employee and hiring the wrong person into the company as a result. This is bad for you, but more importantly bad for the person. In the end you will end up parting ways, but it would be best to just not make this mistake to begin with. So be tough and ask a lot of technical questions during the interview.
Tip 2: Sponsor/attend a few high impact conferences
Tech, SWSX and Defrag are our top picks so far. Make sure there is a fit between the conference and your product. Check out who else is sponsoring, and get feedback and blog posts from last year’s attendees before signing up.
1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.
2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.
11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.
These are all really good articles. Really gives you a sense of what people are thinking an how they choose to begin their company.
Patrick Ruffini blogged on Dec. 19th that he was shaking things up a bit - “Twittering Iowa“
I would like to launch an experiment with Twitter on Iowa Caucus night. If you’re caucusing in Iowa on January 3rd, sign up for Twitter, make sure you have the mobile feature turned on for the night, and send a Twitter a text message with your caucus location and the results in 140 characters or less. If possible, please send your message from inside the caucus location as the vote totals are being announced. Make sure your tweet contains the word “caucus” or is prefixed “@IowaCaucus” so we’ll pick it up at the account we have designated for this purpose. We’ll be tabulating the results and providing a real-time tally of our totals in the Republican and Democratic Caucuses.
Wow - I have emailed this to my com padres at gazetteonline.com - I think they are going to pull the twitter feed into their caucus site.
Nat Kausik, CEO of Asterpix, shows me more of the ways that video creators can use Asterpix to add links to certain parts of the video, to interact with the surrounding area, to add clickable areas to the video, and much much more. This is some of the coolest video technology I’ve seen lately and will let us create new kinds of interactive video experiences.
Sure seems like the “thing to do” as more TV goes to the internet and internet to the TV. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to click on something “on screen” and see more information about it. Or maybe have multiple plots or storylines and you could follow which one you were interested in.
Over decades we’ve used to adapt our habits, behavior and mindset to technology. We’ve improved our productivity by using tools and devices designed especially for the tasks we have to deal with regularly. But we’ve also constrained our abilities to the features of the very tools and devices we’ve become dependent on.
When it comes to blogging, faster is often perceived to be better. GigaOm and TechCrunch are all over the trends, covering the same announcements, often within minutes of each other. I’ve become even more aware of this as I’ve spent some time with Jeremiah Owyang, our new analyst, who produces posts at a prodigious rate, not just on events, but on whatever’s happening with him, complete with photos and videos. And this stuff is interesting.
I’m not sure I agree with the author’s final message:
You may think corporations don’t get it, but they do, eventually — they just move more slowly and carefully. I’ve now spoken with dozens — they’re spending real money, moving forward with projects, making mistakes, learning, and mobilizing. They have lots of money and big brands. As the mass of regular people absorbs these social phenomenon, many of those companies will be there to meet them, and laugh if you want, but they are not all clueless — not any more.
I do think bigger companies seem to move slow - but they have to be moving very quickly behind the scenes - if not they will not have time to turn that big ship in the ocean of the internet.
This whole WGA strike is interesting. I honestly don’t have a real opinion either way - I do think it is important to make sure everyone is getting paid fairly - and I think that comes down to the type of contract you have with your business partners and it appears that is what they are fighting about.
That said…what I have to say is not about the strike. It is very interesting to listen and hear what these writers say about new media and internet content. You can tell some of them clearly get it - and some do not. But one this is very clear - it is definitely all about the money at this point.
Near the end of this video - the guy says we’ve had trouble getting our message out and we’re glad to see You-Tube is covering us! Dude, You-Tube isn’t “covering” anyone…they are a platform, a method in which videos can be released to the world - not an organization.
It appears “The Office” people are more in tune (maybe why they are leveraging YouTube), more pissed off and cynical at this point.
Not surprising - the Daily Show writers seem to get new media too. But do all of these writers have pent up anger - WOW?
It just really makes you wonder if it is time for the writers to take matters into their own hands. This is a great post called “Screenwriters, DIY!” which hints as this strike as an opportunity.
In the mid 90s, during a strike against The San Francisco Examiner, a bunch of staff writers and editors abandoned the newspaper to start up their own “web magazine.”
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As the WGA strike moves into its second week, it’s hard not to see a similar opportunity: What’s to stop WGA writers…from doing a similar thing with YouTube?…Or perhaps even better, come up with a Net-driven revenue model and leave the dinosaur conglomerates of Hollywood behind?
It just would be nice to see the strike promote the innovation of new media - instead of the continuing to buy into the “dinosaur conglomerates” methods of exploiting the”intranets”.
I’ve been in awe of the up cropping of web sites promoting “Education 2.0″. On Tuesday I posted an article about Professor Martha Groom of the University of Washington-Bothell. Because of the rise in Wikipedia sourced term papers - Professor Groom ditch the term papers and just assigned the students to write wiki articles. Brilliant.
So in steps MTV and Cisco. Offering up 5 grants worth $30,000 each to innovative ideas. Is this freakin’ brilliant or what. Now, how much time and energy do you think it would be take and cost to get 100’s or possible 1000’s of ideas from the key group of innovators? Now, you can take the best 5 and give them $30K and get a practical product.
You tell me where you can fund 5 innovative digital products for $150,000 and have the opportunity to turn that into who knows what.
I found an interesting blog post by Jeff Jarvis from Aug. of 2005 this morning called “Who wants to own content?” (If you’re not familiar with Jeff, he writes a blog called Buzz Machine which focuses on media and news)
In this model, newspapers have a problem: They want to control information and the means of sharing rather than enabling that sharing.
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It’s hard for someone raised on the value of owning content and owning distribution to let go of exclusivity and instead value openness and participation.
EDITED: I found a great comment at the end of the article by “DAR” that said:
You make it sound as if all they (old media) need to do is adapt to change and they will survive, and that they’re fools not to see that. But I think that’s not true at all - adapting won’t solve their problem. Their existing business model is ending and even the new business models won’t replace it. And THAT is what they’re scared of.
I work for a newspaper organization now - and this is very hard to grasp, because the model has been so much like this for so long. We’re working on innovating our business model and it is hard enough getting people to grasp the fact of separating content and production - I wonder what they will think of this? I wonder what they will say when I tell them it came out two years ago? :0
