Let me start off by saying this:  Gary Sharma's Alley Reporter site is great, in terms of the service that it offers, the layout, the content, etc.

But, as we all know, the name "Silicon Alley Reporter" originally referred to a trade pub that Jason Calacanis started in 1996.  Jason was a major pillar of the NYC web community in the 90's and did almost as much as anyone to actually make it a community and put it on the map.  He grew a 16 page photocopy magazine into a 256 page glossy through pure hustle, and somehow, even in the worst of times, turn it into something saleable.

I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of people who were around the NYC tech scene back then, and so when I started nextNY and heard people talk about "building the community", it bothered me.  There's been a tech community in NYC dating back years and years--or did everyone think that Mayor Mike had the only startup on the block with Bloomberg, LLC so many years ago? 

In the late 90's, DoubleClick was an alley mainstea, but even before there was DoubleClick, there was Bell Labs.  New York metro area tech has been around for some time.  Fred Wilson's been in New York VC for more than 20 years, for example. 

While I'd say the entrepreneurs of my generation have done a great job in connecting the disparate parts of the tech community, it's important for me to recognize that we are building on the work of lots of hardworking people who came before us.

So when this tech events site called Alley Reporter popped up, it really bothered me.  The only reason anyone would use that name would be to benefit from it's existing cache--built up by someone else's work. 

According to Alley Insider, I'm not the only one it's bothering.  Dow Jones, who acquired the original entity that held that name is looking into asking him to stop using it. 

Apparently, though, the trademark has gone stale.  There may not be a technical reason why it can't be reused, but I don't think this is just a technical issue.  It's an issue of respect.  Jason built up the value of the name, and I think it's just the right thing to do to acknowledge that and get his ok on it.

And frankly, it's also a better business decision.  If Gary went to Jason out of respect and Jason loved the idea of reviving the name, there's no better person in the world who could promote it. 

Similarly, when I started nextNY, I went to Scott Heiferman to get his feedback, because he had been running the NY Tech Meetup.  I didn't need to go to him--I just felt like it was the right thing to do.  By asking Scott if it would be ok to talk about nextNY at a NY Tech Meetup, we were able to get a big boost from his thumbs up and that's where we got a lot of our initial members from. 

The other thing about this project is that there were other people working on putting together event lists that could have been worked with as well.  As a little side project, Lee Semel and I put some resources into NYCTechEvents.com a while ago so that the tech community could have a place to post and share events without signing up for anything.  That site now powers the Silicon Alley Insider's events calendar.  We don't make any money from it--we just wanted the community to have it. 

Somebody once accused me of being down on Alley Reporter because I was jealous his site was "better".  That's just ridiculous. Seriously, I've got better things to do than compete on free events sites that I'm not even running as a business.  If you haven't noticed, I'm trying to run a company. 

Is NYCTechEvents better than Alley Insider?  No, it's not.  It's fine, but like I said, the look and feel of Alley Reporter is really great--top notch even!  Had Gary approached us and said that he had some ideas for an events site, I'm pretty sure we would have just let him update the template or figure out SOME way to work together, because all we want is for people to know what's going on in the community. 

Instead, we have two calendars now...  this is just silly.  I've suggested to Gary that we share events back and forth, but it's been a month since he said he was "giving some thought" to that.  Of course, he can do anything he wants, but since when is playing nice in the sandbox not also a generally good business strategy for startups? 

Similarly, about two weeks after Allen from Center Networks launched a tech directory of local companies, Alley Reporter came out with the same thing.  Again, it was definitely an improvement, but I was actually sort of annoyed for Allen's sake.  He had been promoting Alley Reporter since it came out, and to just copy a feature without even so much as trying to collaborate with Allen?   Seems like it would be better to be friendly with others trying to do similar things and offer to power everyone else's sites rather than just ignore (or copy) the work of others and move forward alone.

My suggestion to Gary is that he take the great site he's built, come up with an original name and domain for it, and open up some conversations about how to work with people already doing things to organize community info.  Play nice in the sandbox and everyone wins.

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Paul asked me to come on and talk about Path 101, but I thought it was too early for that.  I didn't want to cross that hype line since we don't have our product out yet.

So instead, I suggested that I might come on to talk about the community behind the name of the show, so last week I recorded a spot about nextNY.

And to answer Jen's question, yes, about half my waredrobe is black t-shirts.

Have you ever tried to learn a language from a native speaker? How about being taught a sport by someone with incredible natural talent? I had a college roommate who was nearly a savant when it came to math, but he couldn't explain to anyone how he did it.

In the same vein, most of the great baseball managers were rather mediocre players. The reason was because they had to learn the sport, make mistakes, and work really hard to even be half as good as the next person. That meant spending twice as much effort to figure out how to gain any advantages they could...all through learned and practiced behaviors--behaviors they can actually teach.

It's hard to teach someone when it comes naturally to you.
For college students, much of their online behavior just seems natural--having grown up around computers and the internet. They don't think about how they participate in social media... they just do. Ask them to participate in social meda on behalf or because of a brand, and you'll get a blank stare--despite the fact that they've got glittery corporate logos plastered all over their MySpace profile.

"You want me to ask people to use this?" That's what you'll get when you put a service or product in their hands. They don't understand that the subtleties of what they d on walls, in chat, over sms is what marketers wish they could capture in a bottle and activate with a single click.

So if you think you're going to go hire a bunch of college or high school kids to push your brand around social media, think again. You'll probably find them to be a lot less adept at it than you'd expect, even though its something they do everyday.

Gizmoz is a favorite of Mike Arrington's, because he likes tech for tech's sake.  Being 3D is all you need to be his favorite avatar service.

So when the news came out that Gizmoz raised $6.5 million, he failed to note that they're getting clobbered in web traffic by Voki--the avatar site that I helped launch as its first product manager.  It was also Voki, not Gizmoz, that got nominated for a SXSW web award.

Still, Voki hasn't fulfilled its potential and that's been really disappointing.  Gizmoz just integrated with AIM and that's a heartbreaker for me because I met with AOL about this exact same integration last June. 

AIM has the ability to trigger sounds from flash through the text you type in your chats.  So, you could record custom messages for your character, and, for example, have it laugh your laugh when you type "lol".   How cool would that be?

In fact, I made a mockup of the user interface for this back in June...

AOL loved the idea.... so why didn't it happen?

AOL's biz dev team was undergoing some reorganization, but, to be honest, it was our side that dropped the ball.   We should have just built the integration and showed them a completed product.  That would have easily gotten a deal signed with them.

Unfortunately, we were always short on development resources, because, instead of being dedicated to a product, they were shared across the whole organization.  Oddcast has two other revenue generating product lines--Sitepal for small businesses and its custom business for agencies (Think Monk-e-mail). 

I was a product manager without a dedicated development team competing against companies like Meez and Gizmoz who only did one thing. 

When I left, I left basic plans for AIM integration, and also integration into blog comments as well.  Imagine being able to leave a talking avatar with your own voice as a comment in a blog post.  Why type "first!" when you can scream it at the top of your lungs!?  It wouldn't be that hard to do either...  Our partner API was designed for that kind of remote creation and comments could be threaded with a piece of javascript at the end of your post, just like Disqus works.

That didn't happen either though...   so while I applaud the marketing work Oddcast has done since I left, I sure wish we'd see some more feature development and interesting integrations.   They're a great bunch of people and I wish them the best in the road ahead.

JP Morgan is buying Bear Sterns for just about the same price as Meebo got valued at, right?

Buzz!!   Wrong.

JP Morgan is buying the EQUITY of Bear Sterns for just about the same price as Meebo's equity.

There's a big difference...  one that at least a few tech writers don't get.  While it makes a good headline to compare the two, it doesn't make the least bit of sense.

In the startup world, we mostly deal with companies that have no debt, so equity value and company (asset) value are usually pretty much the same. But when you're talking Bear Sterns, there are hundreds of millions of dollars sitting on top of your equity, and that debt comes first in line when it comes to liquidation of the company.

So if you're sitting there going, "Jeez... Bear has a billion dollar building... that's a steal!" than think again.  If it actually came down to liquidating buildings, all those debt holders would get paid back before the equity holders saw dime one.

So, if you really wanted to buy the company outright for the assets, you'd have to buy out not just the equity, but the debt as well, and those two combined equal the company's market cap.  As of yesterday, Bear's cap was sitting at around $580 million.  Add to that the value of all it's debt (which gives you the "Enterprise Value", which was at $300+ million as of some recent filings, you've got a company whose assets are worth a lot more than $250 million--but still a far cry from where it was.

But wait, so what does that mean if you own all the equity, but not the debt?  That means you get voting control of the company, but if there aren't enough assets on the books to cover the debt holders, you'll lose it and your equity can be worth squat.

So, you could have a company whose assets are worth billions of dollars, but whose equity is worth zero because there's also billions of debt on the books.  That's what some distressed debt investors do... they buy debt with the hopes that the company will go bankrupt, and they'll essentially be left with the rights to the assets. 

It's important for parents to read with their kids., originally uploaded by ceonyc.

So nice to see this father/daughter pair reading together on the subway... :)

I'm a wannabe.

I wannabe a successful entrepreneur.  My definition of success is making a big positive impact on a lot of people's lives.  If I accomplish that, I'm sure the money will come, but in the words of Zuck, "I'm not really focused on that right now."

I wannabe a better person tomorrow than I was yesterday.

I wannabe someone that inspires others to go after what they really want.

Being called a wannabe isn't that bad.

However, I heard the term used to describe a local outspoken entrepreneur in a less than endearing way and I didn't quite see it as accurate.  The reason why this person rubbed others the wrong way wasn't because they were a wannabe--because that's not so bad.

It was because they were a "thinktheyare". 

There are definitely too many of those around for my taste.  The last thing in the world I think anyone could accuse me of is being a thinktheyare, because it's so incredibly important to give credit to the people around me and I feel like I'm incredibly fortunate to have such great people around me.  Anytime anyone tries to throw credit my way for something, I try hard to figure out who else helped get me somewhere, because I don't think I'm much more than someone who has a great circle around them.

When word of mouth is faster and cheaper than it ever has been before, the self-marketers really come out in full force.  Sometimes, it's tough to really figure out who's legit and who's just blowing smoke. 

But it's pretty clear to me who is a "thinktheyare" and I'll tell you that there's usually a strong correlation between being a thinktheyare and a smoke blower.  

Here are some easy ways to spoke a thinktheyare:

1. They like to tout the fact that they are the "only" or "first" person to do something.
2. It's never clear exactly what they did and where they did it.  You've often never heard of the companies they've worked with, or they namedrop with companies, but the exact role and what they accomplished is often unclear.
3. Thinktheyares are often attracted to or try to create artificial scarcity.  If they see something as being exclusive, even if it seems pointless as to the advantages of exclusivity in that situation, they're on it. 
4. They need to get their name attached to everything and they try to make everything "bigger". 
5. They speak at a lot of events, but when you ask startup pros who they'd want to do a particular job, the thinktheyare is never at the top of anyone's list for whatever their supposed expertise is.
6. They have a lot of "associations" with people... but as for strong two-way connections, the jury is out.
7. Thinktheyare's often feign help.  They tell you they'll hook you up with something, but it either never quite comes through or seems to come with some kind of unforseen string attached.

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"I had been living this life for 27 years, and bits and pieces of me were all over the place, in many different people. I was, and still am, a chameleon, a changer, a morpher. Always a work in progress, and drawn toward newness like a crow toward shiny objects.

In the words of someone else who said it best.. “I am a mover of in betweens. I slip among classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft… I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in the instant.” (Andrew Pham, Catfish and Mandala)"

My new favorite blogger.

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Clothing System Leakage, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Anyone who has ever worked with me will attest to the fact that I will inevitably bring clothing into the office. I guess because days get warmer and I'm always leaving with less than I came in with.

For the last few days, I've been thinking about a professional acquaintence turned new friend... They have a family member with a serious health issue, which happens to everyone at some point or another.

I was struck because, when I spoke to this person, she was more concerned with letting me get back to my business than what was going on in her life. I couldn't do it. I couldn't say, "Hey, um, yeah... sorry about your sick uncle...I gotta go return some important e-mail."

E-mail! "F" e-mail.

If it's important, they'll call. People don't call anymore. You know why? It's never important...not as important as a friend with a really serious problem.

I have another friend who recently busted a wheel on her car swirving out of the way of a pothole. It was raining and late at night. Rather than call anyone for help, she slept in the car in a parking lot until morning and then called a tow truck.

Have we gotten so low in our expectations of people? Have we gotten so self absorbed that we give off the impression that we can't be bothered with any kind of personal inconvenience?

At the end of the day, I want to deal with people who not only think I can make money for or with them but who care about me as a person. Our monthly board meetings include a few minutes for "How are you guys doing?" To me, that's almost the most important part of the meeting, because we're building applications for people, leveraging people, empowering people...if our own people aren't doing so well, it is highly unlikely our people centric application will amount to much.