How the Tumblr party and Gary Vee got SXSW's its groove back

The other day, I wrote about how something seemed, well, gray at SXSW--like something was missing. It had been kind of--meh.

I felt like there were too many panels that just went through the motions, and the parties were just kind of crowed and rather uninspired.  Throw in some nippy, cloudy, rainy weather on top of that and what it all was amounting to wasn't a heck of a lot.

Then, something happened on Sunday. 

The sun broke out in the afternoon and it got warmer.  Almost like magic, the buzz started to return.  People got excited.  More people piled out into the surrounding streets, filling Austin with geek chatter.  I had a fantastic sushi dinner (yes, sushi...  we had all had more than enough ribs over the course of the weekend) with the Angelsoft folks--we could have featured our discussion as a panel in itself, talking about what makes content inspiring both online and in person.  Around nine last night, I wandered over to the Tumblr party at the Cedar St. Courtyard. 

The line was pretty long, but luckily, we spotted David Karp and he slipped us in the upper patio door.  Two minutes later, he was bringing food to his guests--quite a number of platefuls at a time.  Perhaps he's done the busboy thing before. 

Cedar St. Courtyard is a fantastic open venue with neighborhoody/block party feel.  The crowd was really fantastic.  Everyone was in a good mood because of the weather.  I met John Malone for the first time and we had a really great conversation.  Apparently, he's been lurking around my blog for a while!  I also caught up with Richard Johnson again after seeing him earlier in the day.  Peter Kafka was there, too, and we were joking around about how much easier it was to catch up with NYC people while we were in Austin--no calendars, no conflicts.

If you're ever in the middle of an otherwise dull conference, do yourself a favor--find the New Yorkers.

Around midnight, Gary Vee tweeted:

"Going to my hotel room to pick up 6 cases of wine and bring it to the Tumblr party let's make it a 1230am thing .. I'll tweet when Rdy"

I don't have to tell you how much of a party it became after that.

Between the venue, David and John's hospitality, and Gary Vee going the extra mile, this was the embodiment of what SXSW was supposed to be--inspiring people gathered together in an inspiring place for a blending of the professional and the social.  Even people who weren't at the conference were tweeting that it was obvious that the Tumblr party really rocked.  So thanks to all involved... Spending my night at Cedar St. really turned the whole event around for me.

Now if only everyone else had dance moves like Crystal Beasley, then we really would have had something. 

The Pastore-Suh Wedding at Ceiba Del Mar in Puerto Morelos, Mexico

Betting on Relationships

When I worked in institutional asset management, my managing director was very much an academic, and influenced the way I think about the world significantly--particularly around the nature of risk, uncertainty, and attribution of success. He always tried to look at things as a set of bets. You never knew exactly how your investments were going to turn out, but if you had a clear idea of what your bets were, you could at least manage where you were taking your risks.

In my life, I have a very clear bet on relationships. I know that I am relying on the strength of the bonds I have made with people to get me to the next level. Relationship bets often feel a little bit like insider trading--because its information you alone have about your experiences and information that give you any kind of certainty. Its certainly not public information, and it often appears sketchy or risky to depend on a relationship to come through.

On the contrary, that's something I feel comes through more often than not. Surrounding myself with good people through strong relationships has paid off for me time and time again, and I think its the one aspect of creating a business that entrepreneurs neglect most.

"Who's going to come through for you?" is something I want to ask most newbie entrepreneurs I meet. "Who is your friend in PR who will help pitch your story? Are your angels there for you when the money runs dry?" You can't necessarily put this into a business plan, but its as sure of an inside tip if there ever was one.

Defending Vices

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (a Mormon) about being chaste.  (About her being chaste, obviously...  bit late for me.)  Oh and PS, she doesn't agree with her church's stand on gay marriage and hey, neither do I, so lets cut that comment bait off right away.

I have to be honest, defending people's typical behaviors with regard to sex isn't the easiest thing in the world.  It's especially hard when you're like me and you don't drink.  I'm already in the mindset of not doing things that pretty much everyone does because it's just not something you want for your own life. 

The reality is that most single people's personal lives are either a trainwreck or one in the making, and sex is often a complicating or distracting factor.  It emotionally binds you into situations you'd probably be better off without and it's often misinterpreted.  In fact, I'd venture to say its misinterpreted more often than its presence is interpreted correctly. 

I asked my friend a whole bunch of questions about her feelings and philosophy.  I made the argument about it's ability to bring two people who are in love closer together, and she asked me if you were in love why wouldn't you get married?

And therein lies my achillies heel in this conversation.  I've never had a particularly good answer to that question, because I feel like most people overcomplicate relationships.  I've been in a couple of situations where if the girl would have been up for it, I would have absolutely been married now.  I just feel like nothing could possibly prepare you for a lifetime committment so the best you can do is find someone you care about that you think you can handle the unknown with and make that relationship into what you both want it to be.  The idea that any of that is predictable when the divorce rate is 50% just seems like a lot of insecure indecisiveness to me.  I honestly think that my chances of a happy life with the next person I fall for are just as good as they are with any other person I might fall for... or, moreover, that I have no way of predicting otherwise.

So when I see young Mormon couples get married after just a short period of time, I totally get it.  In fact, I can't help but feeling a bit envious of people who so actively make their lives what they want them to be and work hard at overcoming the difficulties.  It's a lot more admirable than us New Yorkers hemming and hawing about not being able to meet anyone well into our 30's.  Our situation is kind of sad in comparison actually.

It's an interesting thing to be introspective about--and I realized something she described the pain of seperation when relationships don't work out--and how that can be exaserbated by intimacy.  Physical intimacy doesn't create emotion--it reflects it.  On one hand, you could use that as an arugment to support chastity.  On the other hand, since it's not creating any, then it's not really making it more difficult when a relationship doesn't work out either.  And that's, when it comes down to it, what I realize that I fear and what most people want to avoid in the first place--being hurt.  Choosing to be intimate or not with your partner at any given point, in my mind, doesn't increase or decrease the chances of being hurt.  Lack of communication, lack of honesty--these are all things that cause pain--not intimacy.  I don't want to get hurt anymore than the next person, and I don't take on a relationship assuming it will fail.

So, I think, when it comes down to it, focusing on the act is really focusing on the wrong issue.  I found myself feeling like I was making the conversation all about sex, and it's easy to oversimplify it that way.  That's a lesson I had to learn about alcohol early on--that you could very easily throw the baby out with the bathwater (bathtub gin?) and make the whole issue about drinking or not drinking, versus the kind of relationship you want to have with others and yourself.  By choosing to be chaste to the degree that practicing Mormons do, you're really choosing a certain way of relating to other people--one without a certain level of risk, vulnerability...  and it's not necessarily how I want to encounter people--with preconditions, limits, boundries. 

Will I find a relationship that naturally developes its own unique path around intimacy?  Perhaps.  Do I want to be thinking about those limitations on the first date?  That presents a lot of difficulty that can suffocate a relationship from the start. 

Why a Man Shaves His Head

more music charts

People Markets

Why are markets for people horrifically bad?

Finding the right hire? Extremely difficult.

Finding someone reasonable to date? Darn near impossible.

The market makers--job sites, dating sites, extract a lot of value in the middle and never really seem to come through.

I think part of the reason is the lack of data and how to understand it. I want to throw my blog at a dating site and have it understand the semantics: The food I eat, the sports teams I follow, the career I'm in, and the places I frequent. But why stop at my blog? Throw in Twitter, last.fm, del.icio.us, and Flickr, too.

Sites like Spoke, Naymz, and Rapleaf will just point to people and their digital footprints, but no one really takes the time to understand them across various services.

It's pretty obvious that I'm a Met fan, regardless of what I list in any prepopulated field on a social networking site. I've talked about the Mets on my blog and I have Flickr pics of Shea Stadium.

Careerwise, it's also pretty obvious that I know something about social media from my digital presence...but the search that people really want is who in NYC has 4-8 years experience and just talks about "users" the most.

Its not just more data, but also understanding the data in its context.

The Speed and Slowness of Life

Sometimes life moves faster than you can possibly imagine--like when a relationship suddenly sours. One day things seem fine and the next, every exchange is toxic and things are snowballiing out of control.

Things slow to a crawl at the worst moments sometimes. People in hospitals seem to experience time with unprecidented drag. My one hospital experience--sitting in a Bronx emergency room with 104.4 fever and Lyme Disease, seemed to take forever--even though it lasted only 36 hours so I could get my fever down. What went in the blink of an eye was the softball game I pitched directly after I got home. I'm not sure I remember any of that.

When I was little, little league at bats were so quick. II walked up and in the blink of an eye I turned around and walked back. I couldn't tell you anything about the short sequence of pitches I had just faced.

One day, I made contact finally, and everything started to slow down. I felt like you couldn't put one by me and I had enough control to place the ball into right field. I could see what used to be a blur.

Ever just lay around with someone special late on a Saturday afternoon? You move slow, but time moves fast. Doing absolutely nothing passes four hours in the blink of an eye. All of the sudden, you're amazed at what the clock is telling you. You and your significant other seem to have slipped through cracks in the space-time continuum.

If only all the rifts could be so stragtegically placed.

Surrounding yourself with inspiring people

I was talking to my entreprenuership class the other day and made an important discovery--a lot of them lacked for inspiration from the people around them.  A lot of us have great friends--mostly people that life just put in our laps by geography or by shared interest--and they wind up being people you share a lot of history with.

However, those aren't always the people that get your brain stirring the most.  You know what I'm talking about--when you can actually feel, even hear, that little hamster spinning away on the wheel.  Your mind races faster than you can speak, and you trip over your words as you try and get them out into a verbal blueprint of some big mental breakthrough.

Marc Andreessen once quoted Dr. James Austin on the topic of luck, and how just getting your mind going increases the chances that you stumble upon something big:

"A certain [basic] level of action "stirs up the pot", brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate.

Motion yields a network of new experiences which, like a sieve, filter best when in constant up-and-down, side-to-side movement..."

I have a friend that is always coming up with big and sometimes ridiculous new ideas.  Once, he was going to get an aquarium for his apartment and populate it with agressive fish--"fish that eat other fish".  He was so psyched about it.  I couldn't help but be equally excited, but also somewhat suspect about the feasability of this endeavor.  Either way, it got my mind going.

Nate has a similar effect on me, too.  He has an idea a minute.  Perhaps one day he'll settle on something, but for the moment, he remains the Wile E. Coyote of Silicon Alley--always working up blueprints for something big.  You can't help but get the wheels turning when you talk to Nate, even if you totally disagree with him, because you're going to wind up exploring the idea and learn something along the way--or take something away from it that could help you with something completely different. 

These are the kinds of people I go out of my way to spend time with.  I probably take about three meetings a week with people who have inspiring ideas completely unrelated to what I'm up to, because it's a mental workout for me.  It helps me think better and gain perspective about my own ideas--a rigorous cerebral exercise.  What I was trying to explain to my students is that, if you're going to make a living off of your creativity and innovation, you need to set your life up in such a way that you spend more time with people who inspire you to think, as opposed to just spending your time with whoever lives on your floor, or the people next to you in class.

Along the way, we've all met pretty interesting people in passing, but we don't always stop them and demand more of their time.  That's active management--making a point to be more deliberate in our scheduling, and its something we all should do more of.  When's the last time you had a really inspiring conversation with someone?  Who was it?  What did they make you think about?  How likely is it that you'll talk to them again soon?   Perhaps you should ensure that happens sooner rather than later by asking them to grab coffee or something.  My life is filled with what I call "onesies"--people not really connected to the rest of my world but that I've pulled in because my interaction with them really lights a fire for me.

Who does it for you?  Why don't you drop them a line...

Hell hath no fury like a mom whose son got his second bike stolen in two months...

"charlie, can't believe someone took your bike.   Hopefully they'll crash into a wall."  -- Plugoo message left by my mom.

Sah-wamped

Perfect storm: I just started teaching my entrepreneurship class again at Fordham this semester, @shakeshack is tomorrow, I'm raising capital for Path 101, dodgeball and softball are starting up for the fall again...    but no worries.  No blogging hiatuses.

I had a VC ask me today how I have the time to blog.

It's 11:41PM right now.  I'm in the office, and I'm blogging.  I make the time.

Can't wait to bike home tonight... it's such a nice night out.