Wither New York City's Silicon Alley? from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.

My first experience with the web was on Prodigy, on a Hayes 2400 modem. Prodigy offered 2 hours of WWW access for something like an additional 8 bucks. We turned it down at first. Why on earth would anyone need the web if already had all that good Prodigy content?

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nextNY is doing three awesome talks in February.

On Thursday, February 5th, Jason Schwartz is running an event for community managers.  Just what is community management?  Who should be doing it?  What are best practices?  Find out from the folks who do it for startups like Etsy,

Then, on Thursday, February 19th, Jeff Stewart and Mark LaRosa are going to help startups figure out their sales strategies, sales hiring, and incentive programs.

Got an idea for a web startup, but have no idea about the technical implementation?  Some CTO's and technically inclined founders from local startups are making themselves available on February 23rd for an event on technology for business people--helping you cut through the buzzwords and rumors to help you focus and get your idea built.

Here's the key:

All of these events are free.

All of them cost us nothing to provide.  The venues and the time of the participants were donated.

So what does this mean if you're a professional society?  If you're in the business of essentially charging for live content, business connections, and professional development?  How do you compete with a self organized group of professionals who are providing, for free, similar resources that you do using the resources they already have--each other?

We have a free job board and a blog, too.  A paid professional society of young entrepreneurs would really find it hard pressed to compete against free.

So how did it happen and what does it mean for the professional society model?  Sure, we're all tech geeks and it's going to be easier for us to self-organize, but when you can find people on Meetup, LinkedIn, and Twitter, how long before other industries catch up?

About three years ago, I wanted to meet more members of my professional community--that being the emerging members of the NYC technology and innovation scene.  I was working for Union Square Ventures, a local venture capital firm, which enabled me to meet a lot of smart entrepreneurs, developers, and industry folks in my peer group, but nothing really brought us together as a community.  At the time, in February of 2006, we had a growing Meetup, but was basically about showcasing companies.  There was NYSIA, but that was an industry group with an expensive fee that most entrepreneurs and startups couldn't afford.

I decided it would be cool to invite some of the peers I had met out for a drink.  I thought it would be cool if 20 people got together once a month at a bar.

As it turned out, 75 people showed up that first night.  Since I didn't have time to manage these people (not being in the business of community myself), I threw everyone on a Google Groups listserv.  For our website, rather than use a centrally managed platform that I would have the burden of populating, we used an open wiki.

Eventually, the growing group clamored for more than just social events.  They wanted their professional questions answered.  How do I raise money for my startup?  Do I need a patent? 

Out necessity, not having a budget and knowing my hungry entrepreneur audience, I tried to put events together for free.  It was surprisingly easy.  Law firms and real estate firms were more than willing to lend us conference rooms for space, since they wanted to get in front of our community, and experienced entrepreneurs and businesspeople were more than happy to share their knowledge. 

It's really an interesting group.  We have no legal entity.  There are no titles and there is no hierarchy.  A few of us have various passwords to the web stuff, but that's about it.  Our blog has an editorial policy and it aggregates the NYC tech related posts of the members--no central voice.  There is a pretty strict no self-marketing rule on the listserv to prevent spam and to encourage selfless participation.

What's key to the group now is that we've really turned a corner in terms of leadership.  The fact that we're doing three events this month, and that I came up with the idea and am the lead person behind exactly zero of them is an accomplishment--one that groups and organizations should really aim for.  If your platform can't inspire those participating in it to want to take a leadership role, what are the chances anyone's going to want to pay for it?

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I've been thinking a little bit lately about the NYT and the Kindle, and wondering why you can't just get the newspaper on this increasingly popular device.  Nicholas Carson wrote yesterday about how just giving everyone Kindles would be cheaper than printing and delivering the paper.  Then he wrote:

"Are we trying to say the the New York Times should force all its print subscribers onto the Kindle or else? No. That would kill ad revenues..."

That's when it hit me.  Why on earth doesn't the Kindle have an ad platform?

It's funny because an auther recently asked me about how she could make a little money from distribution of her e-book about careers online, and she said that she had seen some professional development books for students that had been sponsored by companies looking to recruit.   I told her about all the problems with print advertising--the fact that it wasn't measureable at all.

So, if print is going to die because you can't measure the ads and they're not compelling, then why is aren't electronic readers like the Kindle opening up ad platforms?

Imagine that every other NYT article on the Kindle comes with a targeted ad that you have to skip past to read.  That's not so bad... and if you really don't want to see the ads, you can become a subscriber.  The ads would be pretty targeted, because Kindle knows you who are, and knows what else you're reading.  In fact, Amazon knows quite a lot about you and an Amazon ad platform should have a lot of data about you to work with.  They could add the data from their payments system as well. 

This could make Amazon a serious player in the advertising market--a viable threat to Google's market share of ad spend.   Am I missing something here?

"If the intent is to help homeowners, then foreclosure is undoubtedly the best solution. Household balance sheets have been destroyed by taking on too much debt via the purchase of inflated assets. With so little savings, a household with negative equity almost implies negative net worth. Walking away from the mortgage immediately repairs the balance sheet. Credit may be damaged, but homeowners can rebuild it. And by renting something they can afford, instead of the McMansion they cannot, homeowners are most likely to have some money left over each month that they can save toward a down payment on a house they can eventually afford."

Why Be a Nation of Mortgage Slaves? - WSJ.com

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Link:  Can Music Sales Get Any Worse? Just Watch | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

Let's see...

The music industry was 5 years late in giving consumers the ability to download music legally.

They spend more time suing people who want music than innovating around better delivery.

They shut down anyone who tries to innovate. 

I don't think it's really the economic slowdown that's the real issue here.

Besides, given that they're selling a digital asset, and that word of mouth has never ever been as fast and as cheap, shouldn't they still be making record profits despite 20% off the top?

I was at the GM pension plan when we took a piece of the Time Warner Music buyout.  In the first year, Thomas H. Lee Partners was able to take gobs and gobs of cash out of the business in pure overhead--consolidation of labels, cutting bloated marketing spend.

The music industry, like the auto industry, is going to have to learn to do more with less. 

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Let me make one thing clear.  No one, save for maybe violent criminals or fraudulent corporate CEOs, should ever be stalked or spit on.  That's wrong.

That being said, Mike Arrington's crybaby act is a joke.  

He said his job "isn't much fun anymore" so he's taking time off. 

Mike, I don't know if you realize, but a lot of people's jobs aren't fun at all.  (We're trying to change that with Path 101--sneak preview of new features here!) They work and keep their mouth shut because they feel lucky to have a job in the first place--because over 350,000 people have lost their jobs at Fortune 500 companies alone since November, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more at smaller companies.

Your job is hard because someone spit on you and now you need to take a month off?

Try teaching.  Between 1996 and 2000, 599,000 violent crimes against teachers at school were reported. On average, in each year from 1996 to 2000, about 28 out of every 1,000 teachers were the victims of violent crime at school, and 3 out of every 1,000 were victims of serious violent crime (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault).

Violent crime, not spit.

And most teachers don't drive Porsches either...

... or you could be a cop.  In 2008, 140 police officers were killed in the line of duty in the US... and that was way down from normal.

Hell, I mean... who cleans the bathroom at the Techcrunch office?  Whoever it is would no doubt trade their job and salary for yours, spit, death threats, and all--seeing as they probably live in a neighborhood where too many people own guns and carry them--and don't just call around and send letters, nor do their register their guns.

As for the stalking incident that affected your family--that's really frightening, and awful. 

However, it has little to do with your job or the fact that you're a public persona.  According to the National Center For The Victims Of Crime, 1 out of every 12 women will be stalked during her lifetime.  1 out of 45 men will be stalked during his lifetime.  Over one million women, and nearly 380,000 men are stalked annually.   

I'm pretty sure most of these people aren't on the Technorati top bloggers list.  The fact of the matter is, stalkers typically don't go after public figures.  You just happen to be unfortunate enough to have won (or lost) the stalker lottery--but be thankful you have the clout and financial means to protect yourself.  Not everyone can afford $2000/day security.  This woman sure couldn't.

So, while the circumstances of his sabbatical are unfortunate, I'm glad to see him go, and so are a lot of other people. 

Why? 

Because he's an asshole--and everyone knows it.

You see, while the stalking incident is random and unfortunate, the fact that people don't like him--that's pretty much his own fault, not Kara's or Nick's. 

The guy is completely obnoxious and turns legitimate business stories into personal vendettas--whether it's against the tech team at Twitter (hmm...  business model questions aside, Twitter doesn't seem so "amateur" anymore now that they've turned the uptime corner, huh?), overzealous PR professionals, or competing tech conferences.   His professional behavior is that of a schoolyard bully, and funny enough, like most schoolyard bullies, his leave of absence proves one thing:

He can dish it, but he can't take it.

You can't have it both ways, Mike.  Your business *thrives* on controversy.  You've profited from the fame, and like a celebrity who pushes the camera paparazzi away, even though they always *amazingly* seem to know exactly where those celebrities will be, you want the upside but you don't want the risk.

But taking responsibility for downside risk has never been your forte, has it?  Anyone remember Edge.io?   In one year, the company he founded blew through $5 million "according to plan" without any significant traction whatsoever.  His Deadpool post almost made it seem like he was just an angel investor and not the key guy.  That's very different from how it seemed when I was on the receiving end of his pitch and demo back when I was at USV. 

Not surprisingly, it was one of the most kid gloved deadpool posts ever--almost as kidgloved as he treats Seesmic, one of his investments.  When a company with no business model and very little traction raises $12 million, this should be grade A Haterington fodder, but he totally let's them off easy.  "Le Meur says the company isn’t in dire financial trouble yet".  What?  No response to that, Mike?  I'm sorry, but just because you have two years of runway doesn't mean you're not in trouble if that runway ends off a cliff--it's just delaying the inevitable. 

Controversy, conflict, and a generally unprofessional attitude follows Arrington wherever he goes--as does an army of fanboys whose numbers are nothing more than a useless distraction to PR and startup folks alike.  I'm glad to see the distraction gone, hope he doesn't return, and that we can all get back to the business of trying to survive in these difficult times--trying to figure out how to build great things that paying customers, not fanboys, see value in.

In the meantime, if you'd like alternative reading to TechCrunch, I highly suggest checking out Mashable--if for no other reason than the way that Pete Cashmore runs his business.  I talked to Pete at SXSW last year about the culture of Mashable.  He makes sure his team tries to stay above the hate and the controversy, because that's just not the kind of business he wants to run.  Pete's a genuine guy, and while the camera follows him around because he's a helluva lot better looking than his TechCrunch counterpart, he also spends quite a fair bit of flying around making quiet visits to his real friends completely under the radar--something Arrington probably wouldn't understand.

And it's paying off.  You wouldn't know it by Mike's holier-than-thou attitude, but Mashable's traffic and growth is right up there with TechCrunch, despite the fact that it focuses on a narrower vertical.

So it's true...  You can actually be successful and not be an asshole.  How about that? 

So Bush is gone, Arrington is gone...   Maybe 2009 is going to be better than we think!

Incorrectly valuing assets--that's basically what this financial collapse comes down to. All the stuff we thought we had--our houses, mortgages, and all the wacky financial derivatives we layered on top of them--turned out to not be worth that much.

Now that prices have fallen off a cliff, investors are out searching for undervalued assets. There's one asset out there that few people are talking about that is severely undervalued in a bad economy--and its the one thing that has the most potential to get you through 2009 in one piece.

Your body.

It's actually the only asset we ever truly own. Our ownership of most of our other stuff is pretty tenuous--and often highly leveraged, making it a missed payment away from being taken away. Your body, on the other hand, is always yours. In fact, the government even prevents you from selling it.

It is the physical instrument by which we carry out everything that flows through our various digital lifestreams--it is the source of the lifestreams.

This really hit home for me when I found out that a friend of mine and fellow entrepreneur, Tim Marman, told me that he has cancer--fortunately a highly curable form, but still... It made me realize how much I have invested in and depend on my body to carry me through the day--and how much my employees and investors are riding on it, too.

That's why, if there's any one thing I think we need to focus more on over the next year--it's taking care of our physical selves. We're going to need those few extra minutes of lucid thinking a day and that extra spring in our step when we're trying to make a flight to a customer. We can't afford extra sick days, financially and just in terms of meeting ever increasing professional expectations.

Does that mean we all need to run a five minute mile? No, but how about trying to break a 10 minute mile...or just get out and walk a mile?  Unplug and treat your lungs to some fresh air--and maybe have a new idea or two while you're away from the screen.

Additionally, I'm stunned to see anyone--let alone relatively smart people who should know better--smoke nowadays.  To me, taking investor money from people who invested in you and smoking is like taking their money to buy a server and just kicking it once a day...maybe after lunch.  You are an asset just as much as the machines are--and there are much more effective ways of destressing that don't make you smell like you've been eating matches all day. 

For those of you who think that self abuse is part of the deal--no sleep and Ramen make startup happy--start reassessing not only whether or not this is truly sustainable--but how, in ways you might not realize, you're actually doing more harm to your startup than good.  Fuzzy thinking, bad first impressions, missed appointments--when you act like you are duct taped together, then your company appears duct taped together and, not surprisingly, duct tape will be the only think you can afford.

So before you get freaked out over competitor on TechCrunch or writing a marketing plan for the first time in your life, start with priority one--your physical self... and move outward from there.  Look at yourself in the mirror.  Forget about whether your nose is too big or you're losing your hair--just assess whether or not you look well taken care of.  Are you putting as much care into yourself as you are into server optimization?  Sleep well, eat right, exercise, and then try to change the world with AJAX and APIs--don't put the cart before the horse.  

What's one thing that you can do over the next year to optimize your own physical self?

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From the comments section:

middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins » Blog Archive » Snuggie - the blanket with sleeves!

One Response to Snuggie - the blanket with sleeves!

1. January 1st, 2009 at 2:33 am Jennifer Says: Both the SLANKET and the SNUGGIE are guilty of stealing this idea from the owners and original inventors of the FREEDOM BLANKET, Sean & Jennifer Iannuzzi. The FREEDOM BLANKET was out long before these two companies! The Slanket actually purchased a FREEDOM BLANKET months before they started up their business. AND the Snuggie is an EXACT copy of a FREEDOM BLANKET! Now, my question is&Is it fair these two companies are making millions off of someone elses idea that they STOLE?

2. January 27th, 2009 at 5:05 pm Charlie Says: @jennifer The answer is, if they didnt patent it, then yes. Even with a patent, w/o good marketing execution and branding, an idea is nothing. Do you think the Iannuzzis are the first one to sit under a blanket and wish they could stick there hands out? No way. Im sure there are lots of people who have cut holes in their blankets, too. The Snuggie wasnt the first one out, and I guess neither was the Slanket, but they deserve their millions for awesome marketing. I googled Freedom Blanket& first link was a complaint that the Freedom Blanket never arrived. IMO, Sean and Jennifer dont deserve a dime b/c they clearly have no idea how to run a business.

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Looks pretty sah-weet.  Seems like the soundtrack might be pretty good, too.