Sweet... Front row and lots of leg room, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

But where's my tray table??

Off to Tampa, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Niece's first communion...

So NewsCorp invested in SimplyHired...  and the talk is that MySpace will now get jobs content.

Obviously, since USV is invested in Indeed, it was important news.

At first, I thought it was a big win for them, but as I think about it, it may very well be the moment that MySpace jumped the shark.

MySpace is comprised of two things...    user generated content and entertainment.  That's it.  That's been the secret to its success.

But jobs?  How are MySpacers going to react when jobs start showing up?  I mean, I have a feeling that they'll probably just ignore it, because for most people, MySpace is self expression and a way to meet new people or discover new music.  It will be fascinating to see how job content gets integrated here.

I think MySpace could be a huge moneymaker for NewsCorp... the habits of this audience should be valuable enough to mine by "facilitation" alone, without "addition."  In other words, give the crowd enough ways to express themselves and that becomes a lot of valuable metadata.

Frankly, I think the Facebook would have made so much more sense.  College students use the Facebook as their personal PIM... the online connection to their college life that colleges themselves could never create.  Job content, particularly internships, would fit very seemlessly here and probably get a lot more traffic than the average career planning office's website.  (A vertical job search would probably be a lot more useful, too.)  The web offerings of most career planning office's websites are so poor and so behind the times, that by adding a vertical job search to the Facebook, particularly one neatly tied in with cool social features (tagging jobs for friends, broadcasting them to the Finance club, etc...), they'd be doing a huge service to the students.

Plus, regardless of which site gets more traffic, the Facebook is a better target audience for job seekers, because MySpace has a lot of high school students.

The other interesting thing about the Facebook is how it eventually deals with alumni.  At some point, Facebookees are going to leave school and the Facebook is going to be their connection to other alumni.  That means that, if I were InCircle, I'd be looking over my shoulder.  It wouldn't take much, if anything, for Facebook to be the first stop for alumni in terms of social networking, and that's InCircle's business model.  Jobs makes a lot of sense for alumni...  and integrating social features means Facebook moves close to LinkedIn's model as well.  Imagine going on the Facebook to checkout a job, then being able to see how many of your school's alumni work at that company and how you're connect to them.  I think that would be useful for students as well, once a critical mass of alumni are on board.  Sure, it doesn't seem like "fun" content...   but there are thinks really useful to students that aren't always fun. 

Besides... getting paid to work at a great job is fun...trust me.

But back to MySpace, either way, its a facinating deal and it will be an even more interesting integration.

Indeed found this job for me...      Do the best CEOs really job search on Monster?  I always figured CEOs should be passionate people already working in or around the space of your company, or with an obvious public track record of success.  Seems to me paying $300 to post a job on Monster for an early stage tech CEO is a good experiment in adverse selection.

Chief Executive Officer - New York City, NY

Ohio based early stage technology based company with... services in a startup/entrepreneurial venture, the confidence to lead in a high-tech company, and the... (From Monster)

So I wound up getting a Media Center PC (HP) and my next project is to be able to start feeding videos that I either record from the TV, burn from my DVDs, or get off of del.icio.us or ThePAN onto a portable player. 

I've been leaning towards getting a PSP, but storage is limited there.  However, I do like the idea of getting back into gaming a little bit.

So, basically, what I want is a video iPod that plays games. 

Or a PSP with 40 GB of storage.

With PCs, you can add whatever items you need...  there's a 3rd party development market for software and lots of freeware to get your stuff to do what you want it to do.

For PSP and the iPod...  closed=sucky.

Very frustrating.

Welcome Equity Private of SubRosa Capital to the blogosphere.

...but this time, its doormen.

I wouldn't have even known, except that Fresh Direct sent around a notice.

"As you may know, if an employment contract agreement is not reached, 28,000 doormen, elevator operators, porters, and other residential building employees have indicated that they will strike on Thursday, April 20, at 11:59 p.m.

We anticipate a strike could bring delivery complications for your FreshDirect order. As a result, we encourage customers in affected buildings to schedule deliveries for early in the week. In the event of a strike, we plan to reduce time-slot availability on Friday, April 21."

Wow... this could be almost as tragic as the taxi strike.   Remember that?  The streets were mostly clear of traffic.  Everyone took public transportation.  Oh... wait...   that wasn't so bad.

With this doorman strike, people might need to...um...  open their own doors!  Lord, they might even have to get packages sent to work!

Cry me a river.

Maybe we'll start opening doors for each other!  How nice would that be?

BTW...  Some woman kept the door at the gym open for me yesterday even though I was like a good 20 feet from the door.  Maybe she's practicing for when her doorman is gone.

nextNY is having a dodgeball tourney next Monday night from 6PM-8PM.  We have 5 teams and 3 individuals left over for a 6th.   Leave a comment if you would like to fill up one of the last 3 or 4 slots on that team, which will be the last one.

If you sign up, you have to show.

Details here.

Brad was telling us yesterday of a management training exercise he attended while at AT&T.  They took a bunch of suits rock climbing, and Brad being somewhat atheletic was doing pretty well getting up and down the rock face.

So the instructor told him to try doing it blindfolded.

You would think that would have made it a lot harder, but the reality was, climbing blindfolded made it even easier--because you didn't waste time trying to "overnavigate" your path by sight.  You just reached out for sure footing and pulled yourself up.  You didn't pick out a rock or a line up the face that "looked ok" which was probably misleading anyway. 

Making decisions about your next step is always going to involve some risk.  If you think you've calculated all the variables, you've probably overthought it and maybe to your own detriment.  Sometimes you just need to take the plunge sometimes, whether its getting creative (and a bit risky) with a marketing strategy, feature development, or your own career.   

In the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of working with a lot of college students in various career mentoring programs, and one thing has always stood out at me.

Probably about two thirds or more of the applications for NYSSA's SEMI Program come from either immigrants to this country or children of immigrants.  Now, I know that's generally not reflective of the general NYC college student population, so, a disproportionately large percentage of the foreign students are taking advantage of this great opportunity. 

I asked one student about this and he told me that education and opportunity is the only reason that he was here--it was the only reason his whole family came here in the first place. 

What's really obvious to me is that a lot of the native born students here are simply going to get steamrolled by competition like that... and as well they should be. 

So maybe instead of closing the borders, we should be trying to figure out how we can get the people that are here as motivated as the people trying to come here.

This kid was at the Hammerstein Ballroom last night...  talk about quality time with Dad!  More videos here, especially now that Phanfare has MP4 support!

Is MySpace and the Facebook just a better way to meet people?  Are people tired of YAFP?  Check out the traffic on some of the big dating sites and the smaller upstart ones...

My little sidebar guy is quickly becoming a MetPal...   I've posted a new message about Met's bizzare fashion sense.

Jeremy Zawodny wrote about Yahoo! Groups recently and group management in general has been something on my mind.

My life is full of groups...lots of groups, maybe too many, that I participate in the management of in some way.  Let's see, I'm sort of the information and process coordinator here at USV, for starters.  I run a 25 pair mentoring program for NYSSA with over 100 alumni.  nexyNY is over 100 people.  I help Sandy with the Hoboken Cove Boathouse.  I'm the co-Chair of the Fordham Young Alumni Committee.  I run two softball teams and a dodgeball team.  That's not to mention I'm also on a football team and a softball team that I don't run, volunteer at the Downtown Boathouse, and actively take part in my high school's alumni listserv for people in business.

Obviously, being able to leverage technology to manage this monstrosity of a life I've created for myself is crucial.

And thus far, doing so has been a miserable failure.

Is it me?  I don't think so.  I think the current offering of group management tools come so far short of their potential.

The problem is that none of them is wide enough in scope to prevent the need for most groups to use two, three, four, or a dozen tools at once...making management of the tools almost as difficult as management of the group. 

It shouldn't have to be this way either, as most groups basically want to accomplish the same things.  They want to communicate and organize , and they want to do so in a way that is self-sustaining.

Now, how they specifically execute those goals differ from group to group, but someone should be able to build a service that is flexible enough to give people choice and tailor the service to their own needs.  Not every group needs a web page at their own domain to post pictures on and not every group needs a listserv, but the fact that there are exactly zero web services that offer both is just ridiculous.  There's a huge hole in the market and its being filled by Yahoo! Groups, Evite, Typepad, snot, and duct tape, among countless other web services that accomplish one narrow task.

Meetup probably comes the closest to being an all-in-one, but it doesn't allow much branded customization.  It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to use Meetup to manage my alumni committee...its more for the organizing and discovery of groups where you don't walk in already having the people for the group (like finding German speaking stay at home mom knitters in Saskachawan).  It doesn't sit seemlessly in the background either.  If you want to use their tools, which is probably the most complete set around, you're on Meetup...and for some groups trying to create their own brand, like nextNY, this isn't  a good fit, not to mention that it doesn't plug in with Flickr, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, etc.

Anyway, here's what I think an all-in-one service needs.  Jeremy, are you listening?

Prerequisits
Signup has to be really easy and managers need better tools to track activity post signup.  Who is signed up, who is getting emails, what they've signed up for, etc...that should be the first thing managers see on their group homepage.  Sometimes I feel like the same 20 people contribute to my listserv and I never know if the other 80 are even getting my mail or opening it.

Walkthrough...I'm amazed at how many people still can't get the whole reply all nature of listservs. Add on top of that general unfamiliarity of wikis, tagging, etc. And whatever you build, it needs good tutorial that gives real live examples of why and how someone would use any of these tools.

This app should be comprehensive, but feel lightweight.  So, while it might have a lot of tools, it shouldn't feel too heavy if you're only using one or two of them.

Organize
Groups need management...sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Excel has long outlived its usefulness as a way to keep your group info list. Jotspot has the Tracker, but it hasn't really been fully integrated into the rest of the service. Plus., its not outward facing.  I have to type someone in..there's no signup page that automatically populates the sheet.  Groups need a simple database with flexible fields that can be updated from anywhere by the members themselves. It should have fields that are only viewable to some people and it should also been integrated with the rest of the sites features, including profiles. 

Profiles should mostly be generated by the use of the site, with the ability for users to add more. This way, even if I don't add to my profile, you can see that CEONYC has attended 2 offline events of the group, took part in three listserv discussions, and is currently seeking developers for a new startup via a job post e-mail.

Maybe the most important aspect of a group is its own self-sufficiency.  That means the storage of a knowledgebase.  For more sophisticated groups, that means the retention of a charter, meeting minutes, etc.  For other groups, it could be just quick notes on who you call at the local American Legion to rent a space for a meeting.  Notes should be wiki-like and documents should be easily organized with access controls. 

Groups also need Evite functionality, but it should be made even simpler. A lot of people don't have the time to go to evite or they're emailing from mobile phones. Members should be able to respond just by writing back with a yes or a no and then their message. Autoexporting events to this group's blog, Outlook, other blogs, upcoming, etc would also be nice.  RSVPs should build the member attendence record.

Communicate

The idea of evites brings to light the fundamental problem with listservs. Not every listserv email is the same. This is why groups struggle with not knowing whether default replies should go to the group or to the person. That's because the answer really is, "It depends." A group discussion should have very different charactoristics than and invite. I may want replyalls on a debate, but not to hear, "Sorry, I can't make it." Someone else might never want replyalls. That's why groups should be given to the tools to easily create different types of messages that only go to certain subgroups--subgroups whose members can organize themselves into.  So the fringe members will only get events while the managers will get internal discussions.  E-mail types in groups generally include discussions, event notices, job postings, and idea proposals.  Each of these e-mails should be formatted differently, dictating different types of interaction around them.

Some groups want to also communicate with the outside world with a website. A great group tool would allow the creation of a domain mapped website. The site should enable easy publishing of blogs, events, photos, q and a, the listserv or member profiles....basicially anything going on on the inside should have the option of being flipped to the outside and placed wherever they want with little widgets.  So, one groups front page could be mostly discussion and photos, while another could be more event focused.  None of this should require anyone to see any HTML.

So that's what I've got so far anyway.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I used to love both Firefox and Gmail, but lately, they've really taken a turn for the worse.

Ever since I upgraded to Firefox 1.5, it keeps crashing on me... something it NEVER did.  It seriously crashes on me about twice a day now.  I almost want to uninstall and figure out if I can go backwards.  It always happens when I have more than one browser window up (I hate browser tabs... sorry... ALT+TAB is hardwired into my head.)  What gives?

And Gmail... well, its full of spam now.  I get TONS of messages from individuals in far off nations asking for my bank account number.  They're not even the least bit clever...  no idea why this problem isn't being nipped in the bud.  I keep clicking the "report spam" button, but apparently, that's secretly the "Send me more of this shit" button in disguise.

Whatever "improvements" have gone into Firefox and Gmail lately, they're not worth it, because now they're worse than before.  Like New Coke or Terminator 3, sometimes, you should just leave well enough alone. 

Our host for the Union Square Ventures blog was having some issues and we started the following thread:

Me:  What's going on?

 

Them: There were a few issues with your mt.cfg file which I was able to clear up for you.  It appears that it was edited improperly, but you should be able to log into the interface as of now.

 

Me: Why did that happen?  We didn't do any editing...  I wouldn't even know where to find that file.

 

Them: To be honest, it is hard to say.  There was a single character on one line that was causing the problem.  The evidence appears to add up to something we may have done.  Since I was the only staff member working on this last week, it was likely me who made the mistake.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Well, at least they're honest.

Adam Rubin has another great post at the NY Daily News Mets blog...    This one has the results of an interview he did with David Wright and what Wright's "All Youth" team looks like.  Here's a funny exchange about his choice at third:

Wright picked one player who could beat him out for the starting nod at third base in the All-Star Game.

As Wright began, he said: “Give me Miguel Cabrera.”

“To play outfield?” I asked.

“Is he playing third base?” Wright said.

“Yes.”

“I’ll play outfield,” Wright continued.