I’m really not a big fan of conferences. I go to a small number every year and like most people I find that for the most part, the best part of most conferences happens in the hallways and lobby where there’s a chance to connect with other attendees. The conference itself simply becomes the framework to support making those connections. Defrag, however, is a rare exception to this widely held view in the conference world – it’s a conference worth attending not only for the connections you’ll make in the hallway but also in the insight you’ll gain inside the presentation rooms. Organized as an interactive conversation, Defrag challenges attendees to become a part of the conversation through thought-provoking topics,…
Archives / September, 2009
ESPRIT 2009
I’ve been involved with the Boulder ESPRIT Awards for the the last 8 years. ESPRIT is put on by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce to “celebrate entrepreneurship” in Boulder county. Each year ESPRIT honors a handful of entrepreneurs who embody the best attributes of the Boulder business community. This year is the 25th anniversary of the awards and the program will celebrate the last 25 years of innovation in Boulder valley and look forward to some of the people and programs that are serving as catalysts for innovation for the next 25 years. I’m the event chair this year, which means for the first time since I’ve been involved, I actually don’t have that much to do although I will…
Welcoming the new Lijit Welcome Wijit
Lijit quietly released a very cool new widget for users of their service (that’s you, right?). The new Lijit Welcome Wijit greets site visitors who come to your site via a search term and gives them a relevant roadmap of your site as it relates to the search query that brought them there. It’s great for your site visitors who now have additional context for their interest in your content. It’s also great for publishers who can now create a more sticky experience for their users and expand the cross pollination of their content. From Greg Keller’s post on the Lijit blog, the Welcom Wijit is about: Welcoming new readers to your site when they’ve linked in from somewhere else…e.g….
AT&T wants to sell you better coverage
As you know, I’m no fan of AT&T. With that in mind I couldn’t help sharing this piece of news: AT&T is now offering customers the ability to pay up and purchase a 3G Microcell to use in their homes (since no-one it seems actually gets descent service at home). The device supports both voice and data usage (presumably the latter is only marginally useful since most consumers with data devices connect to their home wifi networks in house). For the privilege of better coverage at home (and the added benefit to AT&T of presumably offloading traffic from their cellular network to customer’s internet providers) you’ll get charged $150 for the device (ok – that seems fair) and $20 additional…
Your first 30 seconds
I receive a large number of “check out my new cool bright shiny web thing” emails. I’m amazed at how crappy the user experience is on many of these new tools. Sure – if I spent 20 minutes setting it up and clicking through a bunch of different layers of the application I might find out how great it is, but honestly, if the site doesn’t grab me in the first 30 to 60 seconds I typically close the browser tab and move on. I understand that it’s a challenge for application designers to figure out how to move a user through their system and many designers have a big vision about what their app can do. But often what’s…
Don’t Panic!
I was recently talking to someone about an issue in one of their portfolio companies (this was not a Foundry or Mobius company). The issue was pretty serious (it related to safety standards at the company that were being ignored and a resulting accident at the business) and the person relating this story was (understandably) pretty worked up and asking me what I thought they should do. My advice? I can’t say that I come by this naturally (I can be pretty excitable) or that I was a particularly good practitioner of my own advice earlier in my venture career, but I’ve managed to reign myself in and strongly believe that the priority in any interaction is simply to not…
Please sir….may I have more targeted advertising
A few days ago I received a note from Plaxo in my inbox that said in part: As you probably know, Plaxo was acquired last year by Comcast and is now a business unit of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM). Not surprisingly, given the above focus, we’ve been working on enabling interoperability between Plaxo and other CIM Websites. In advance of rolling out this common identity system, we’ve developed a unified Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that will apply to Plaxo and the other participating Comcast Websites, providing consistent protection and eliminating the complexity and potential confusion of having different terms and policies for each Website. Among the things that were updated in the policy was the section pertaining to…
VCs and social media
I recently participated in a Thomson Reuters webinar entitled "Boosting Returns with Web 2.0 Technology". The seminar was targeted to VC and Private Equity professionals and focused on how investment firms can use social media in managing their investment business. I was reminded of the mew media technology bubble that I live in a few months ago when I spoke on a similar topic at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum. When I asked the crowd of about 150 people how many were on Twitter and a single hand went up I realized that I had my work cut out for me (I might have guessed that that when I walked into the room and was the only person…
AT&T reminds you not to use your phone
My wife received an email this morning from AT&T that said in part: Our systems have detected that you are transmitting a substantial amount of data while roaming in areas not directly served by AT&T. The Terms and Conditions of our data plans (including unlimited plans) provide an "off-net usage" allowance that is equal to the lesser of 24 megabytes or 20% of the megabytes included in your plan. I was surprised by this, not only because I hadn’t completely read the terms and conditions (I subsequently did and it’s in there – they can go so far as to cancel my account if they don’t like my network usage – on net or off, voice or data) but mostly…