I'll be joining Bonnie as one of several blogging I'm sure who are doing swim support for the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim.

Take us once around!

I can't really guess where I'll be when, but the race starts at 6:30AM...  and ends around 2:30ish.  I'll try and snap a few photos to give updates.

My avatar has a good luck message for the swimmers...

I'm a big fan of Equity Private, a blog about the bottom rung of the investment banking ladder...  and yesterday, Yong the Analyst (my replacement at GM), suggested that perhaps the writer is female.

It reminds me of the time that I was looking at an unbelievably slick financial model one time--one that had some very powerful, but very simple..even elegant... VB code built into it.  We were so impressed, that we looked up the author.

P. Chung

Well, from that moment forward, anytime we were stuck on something in Excel, we thought to ourselves...  "P. Chung...  he'd be able to figure this one out."  "P.Chung" became a mythical figure between us.  Master of the Spreadsheet.  A man for all formulas.

Only later we found out that P. Chung was really Patricia Chung, Queen of the Spreadsheet.

Serves us cavemen right for assuming it was a guy. 

The Felds celebrated an anniversary (congrats) and Brad writes...

"We spent a lot of time talking about how satisfied we are with our respective existences on this planet"

How many people can honestly say they feel that way?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the purpose of a company blog, the style, etc.

Is it supposed to inform customers?  Is it a marketing document?  Is it PR with comments?  Who blogs?  Why?  How does it relate to the company's existing PR and marketing efforts?   

Every company does this differently, but I think that Feedburner has really set the bar for creating a dialogue with the technology community and a site that reflects who they are as a collection of people, not just a company.  They don't even post that much, but they still have 11,000+ subs. 

Why?

I think, most basically, they've created something that people actually want to read, with a style that makes outsiders think of Feedburner as the kind of people they'd like to work with... and probably even work for, too.  Props to Rachelle who has done a great job with their online image, and really for the whole team for giving us some insight into their corporate culture.

On their recent hackathon...

"The developers at FeedBurner have been acting like a bunch of kids in the back of a station wagon lately ... "When's our next Hackathon?! Tell Chris to stop touching me!"

On their new music fan feeds...

The office stereo is cranked up to eleven this morning to welcome our latest customer, Geffen Records. With a date like 06/06/06 upon us, the office flashpot could finally see some use should Rob Zombie drop in on us.

I don't know whether or not the folks at Feedburner decided ahead of time, "Let's just be ourselves..." or whether they just realized this was the accepted norm in the blogosphere, but they could have very easily went out and written the definitive RSS blog as leaders in the space.  However, they'd have to get past the first Google page of all of the other RSS blogs already out there.  So, instead, they went out and created the definitive blog about Feedburner... because, really, who else could do that any better?

And they didn't just stop at blogs.  They have a company Flickr account as well. 

Is there a business benefit to this?  Maybe...   maybe its just fun.  But, as a blogger using their product, it makes me feel like they're "one of us" more so than they're trying to sell me something or make money off me.

Feedburner... made out of people.

So, first I started with Feed Demon... but now I think I want to go web.  I want to be able to check my feeds from any computer, to not have to worry about syncing.  I want to tag feeds, too...  to create easily manageable catagories.

I tried Rojo, and there are things I liked about it and things I didn't.  It was great to be able to tag, and I liked the simplicity of the interface, and I even liked the recommendations...  but it was slow.  REALLY slow.  I'd often have to wait hours before feeds updated.  Maybe I'm an idiot and I don't know where the settings are for it.

So, if you have a web-based reader that you really love, let me know.  It needs to be fast... fast to read, fast to delete and mark as unread, fast to update, catagorize... etc.  I read a lot of feeds and need to be able to go through them quickly. 

I have a dream.  One day, the Mets will have a lights out closer that will make us all forget about Franco, Benitez, Looper...

Doesn't seem like Billy Wagner wants to be that guy in the early going.

Man, if only we hadn't traded Izzy.

In any case, if you're into locker room humor, you have to read the comments to this post about David Wright hanging out with some St. John's girls...  HILARIOUS.

My fav quote:  "Wright probably took his shot with two strikes."

Back in August, I wrote about what it takes to be successful in "Web 2.0"...  but now I'm not so sure that's an admirable goal.   Yes, there are lots of really great things about the "second coming", but I think there's a whole lot that makes the pedestal a little bit undeserving.  Obviously, this piece is meant to generate a lot of conversation and feedback through a challenge...    it doesn't mean that I'm no longer interested in slick, user friendly "web 2.0" apps that make my life easier and have gained great market traction. 

So here's my Top 10 Reasons Why Web 2.0 Sucks...    Feel free to blog, remix, mash, tag, aggregate, syndicate, disaggregate, digg, sploof, snorg, coagulate, microchunk, gloog, discombobulate, and comment...

1.   This is going to be small.  Small might be the new big, and that's great when it means lower barriers to adoption, tools which are more lightweight and easier to use... but it also seems like no one is interested in the next "big thing" anymore.  The overbuild of calendar and video clip apps is the equivilent of Seinfeld's take how our greatest scientific minds are working on creating seedless watermelons instead of curing cancer.  That's why, as flakey as it may be, I admire people like Second Life for trying to create fundamental change in how we interact online, or Meetup for trying to actually effect the way we connect and combine in the real world.

2.  The death of teamwork.   The fact that it only takes a handful of people, sometimes even just one, to build services, means that there's actually less community creation going on than there was before in the tech world.  You're not going to have "del.icio.us alumni" the way you have Microsoft alumni...  or you will, but they could all meet by pulling two tables together in a local pizzeria.  Plus, so many of these startups are working in virtual teams and never meeting...   you're really losing all the teamwork that goes on in larger organizations when people work together in person.  That's going to create less loyalty, more turnover, and make it hard for companies to really take on bigger projects that require more employee continuity.

3.  I spell poorly enuff.    Dots.  Dropped concone

There's a PhD student here that modeled out communication in networks. 

Like Mayfield... 

Others don't.  I won't say anything more about this so as not to interfere with the sanctity of Wikipedia.

Secrecy creates more things to steal.

When all information is public, is it made completely harmless?

Line of thought from Esther .... Are  we looking for privacy or attention?

Do we want to solve the identity problem because we want to broadcast ourselves with clarity or to lock our identities up?

I'll be blogging intermittently from the conference. Jon Palfrey hit the nail right on the head right away.

How do you make all this stuff real?

Second life. ID meta systems.

Social network identity.

Avatars.

How do you make digital identity something important, useful, empowering?

Ranger Mo, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

My college roommate's sister on the job...

So, they're going to change up some of the wording of the English Mass, according to the NY Times, so that its closer to the original Latin.

Because...   to be honest, that's been a real issue effecting me.  When I say to the priest (the few times I ever go) "And also with you," I'm thinking that's just not right.  "And with your spirit" just has so a so much better ring to it.   Because, God forbid we should relate to the priest as another person instead of focusing in on his spirit.

Its good to know that when 75% of American Catholics believe the Church should ordain married men, the Church is focused on translating English so that its closer to Latin.

So here's a question...     Which happens first?  Married men in the church, a female president, or the first Met pitching a no-hitter?

I was talking to someone in the elevator yesterday and someone else chimed in with a "That happened to me, too... that's so funny."

I turned to her and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't allow comments."

Web 2.0 is fueled by data.  Mashups don't mashup technologies, they mash together information.  The more data you have, the more interesting the applications can be.

Unfortunately, we are suffering a data crisis.  To be honest, there really isn't much data out there that is open that is useful to the average person, and I think that's why some Web 2.0 applications are having trouble getting traction in the mainstream.

There are still too many closed pools of data out there, and opening them up would make for some interesting new services. 

Here's my The Top 10 Data Pools That Need to Be Open

1) Medical records - There's really just no excuse for this.  Its my body.  Any information that any doctor gets off of it should be owned by me and accessable online.  I should be able to chart my cholestorol levels, weight, etc, going back to when I was born. 

2) Credit card purchase history - Three months?  This is silly.  Not only should credit cards have my total history available to me online, but there should be APIs on it, too, so that financial data services can help me analyze my spending.  I wouldn't mind if they did item level breakdowns or started pumping in SKUs, too, so I can reorder things, but that's probably just a pipe dream.  Still, I think retailers would benefit a lot from giving the CC companies more data on each purchase.  This also solves the Amazon purchase history problem as well.

3) Elias Sports Bureau - Why is there no consumer version of this?  If I want to look up Frank Tanana's home record on Wednesdays, I should be able to do that in an ad supported site.

4) Public transportation - If I leave now, am I going to catch the R train or just miss it?

5) Friend behavior - First off, who are my friends, really.  I hope whoever succeeds at doing MyWare can help me figure out who I actually talk to the most across the phone, IM, email, MySpace comments, etc.  Then, I'd like to be able to see at least the aggregate of what they're up to.  Are they all swarming around the same local news article?  This is not a database that needs to be opened... its one that needs to be created and then opened, with permissions of course.

6) Local item availability - Does the local hardware store carry sun protectant stuff for vinyl convertible tops?  No?  Who has this item within a 5 block radius?  Searching Best Buy's inventory is cool, but knowing where I can cheap dental floss would be even better.

7) Web traffic - Most of the tools for measuring other people's web traffic are pretty crappy and never work.  Why don't we call just join a collective and share that data amongst ourselves?  Maybe SiteMeter needs to have a site where you can search by website like Alexa to get the traffic and do comparative analytics.

8)

9)

10)

Tuesday night, 50 young entreprenuers and potential entreprenuers gathered at Manatt Phelps and Phillips to hear about what it takes to start a business from people who have either done it before or supported those who had.

We had a great lineup of experienced NYC tech leaders taking part in the roundtable discussion:

Jason McCabe Calacanis, CEO, Weblogs, Inc., An AOL Company

Ian Landsman, Userscape Software

Jay Rand, Partner, Manatt

Jackie Reed, Business Consultant, Administaff

David S. Rose, Angel Investor

Peter Semmelhack, Founder, Antennae Software, BugLabs

Michael Volpatt, Partner, Larkin/Volpatt Communications

Albert Wenger, President of del.icio.us through Yahoo! acquisition

It was really a strong turnout by the up and coming NYC tech crowd and I think we all walked away with a lot of food for thought from the speakers.   Seems like nextNY is turning a momentum corner here as we start to contribute more back to our participants and trying to identify what people feel like they need to be successful.

You'll see us do more of these Community Conversation events in the future and if you're a young member of the NYC tech community, please join us.  Help us run future events or just generate ideas.

I'll also echo our desire to have a more balanced representation in our community...  so all if you NYC geek girls, join us!

Thanks to all who participated!

Reactions to the event:

From Ian...

From Sean...

From Umair...   We should really all chip in and get him this for his neverending crusade on behalf of us edgedwellers.

"Let me make that more concrete: Media is deeply personal, social, cultural, human, creative - "

Ok.. just stop right there and think about that for a second.  Sink in?  Good.

"...and so it's economics aren't those of simple technological scale, because, more often than not, technological scale kills those things (think Clear Channel roboDJs). The real opportunity is in leveraging the new forms at the edges of the firms - markets, networks, communities - to explode just how personal, social, cultural, human and creative media can be...

 ...If there's a single lesson those industries yield today, it's that that entire way of thinking about business is deeply out of touch with the new world of consumption. And ultimately, that's the flaw at the heart of the Googleverse - consumers play almost exactly the same role in it that they did, suprisingly, in the industrial economy.

        NB: No, I'm not saying that "empowered" consumers will begin composing sonatas and producing movies to rival         Kiarostami's . Rather, I'm pointing out that the economics of cultural industries change when consumers connect, and we should see greater (returns to) creativity; not necessarily because consumers make them, but maybe only because consumers are better at helping choose them."

Read the whole thing here...

It really deserves this quote:

"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. I'm going to show them a world without rules or controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."