New York City Stunned By Seth Godin’s “Blogging Iceberg”

Blogosphere news. Seth Godin, internet marketing mastermind, coordinates one of the biggest stunts the blogosphere has ever seen. In Seth’s words, it was remarkable. Motivated by Jeffrey Henning’s influential article, "The Blogging Iceberg", Seth Godin gathered loyal blog followers on a barge financed by buddies at the venture capital firm Flatiron Partners. SAP Ventures also participated in the deal/stunt as Jeff Nolan convinced German headquarters to "loosen up a bit". In any case, the barge appeared in New York City Harbour towing a giant
iceberg
. Corporate bloggers always in the know (like Om Malik, Steve Rubel, Dave Sifry, and Scott Raefer [the last two ’cause they’re watching all the blogs with their fancy proprietary databases – not because they’re smart or anything]) were expecting it, but most said Seth’s stunt was lame. Seth Godin, an adventurer
and millionaire businessman (that he obtained via click fraud schemes before it "became cool"), had been promoting his scheme to tow a blogging iceberg from Antarctica for quite
some time using subliminal blog messaging techniques conceived by Microsoft’s uber blogger Robert Scoble and encoded in the byzantine structures of del.icio.us page views. Who would have ever thought Robert would have a good idea? He just posts a lot of boring stuff. Anyway, Seth had apparently succeeded using Robert’s techniques. Seth said that he was going
to carve the berg into small ice cubes and attach leftover prophylactic noses from his latest book promotion deal, which he would sell to the
public for ten cents each. These well-traveled cubes, fresh from the
pure waters of Antarctica, were promised to improve the flavor of any "Purple Cow" milk they cooled. Slowly the iceberg made its way into the harbor. Bloggers provided exciting blow-by-blow coverage of the
scene with Flickr photos and MP3 podcasts of the cheering bloggers and waves smashing against the shore. Tom Peters was on the scene, but the only words he could get out of his mouth were the repeated words "wow … wow … wow … Seth, I’ve finally found it …". Only when the berg was well into the harbor was Seth’s secret
revealed. It started to rain, and the firefighting foam and shaving
cream that the berg was really made of washed away, uncovering the
white plastic sheets beneath and the #17 scam it really was.

Steve Shu

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This post has been cross-posted to The CIO Weblog

Del.icio.us vs. Del.irio.us … Are You Dizzy Yet?

An interesting business and technology case study live in the making. To bring people up to speed:

  • Del.icio.us (pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarks manager that just secured some seed funding (cryptic post)… I liken it to having a free intelligent, sortable, distributable database for managing one’s bookmarks. Proprietary software and free. Pretty easy to use. Quick to sign up and configure your browser (< 2 minutes). I started to use just yesterday although I have known about it for some time.
  • Rumors are that the funding involves a prominent venture capital blogger (not confirmed, so I won’t be specific here).
  • For those not as adventuresome but perhaps curious, a good del.icio.us screencast demo (with audio) is here. You can watch about 2 minutes of it and get the gist.
  • Now I catch wind of a free and open source clonedel.irio.us via this great post at Bubble Generation. Here’s a quick snip of the post:

… If you don’t know, del.irio.us is the perfect example of
hypercommoditization – it’s a total (open-source) clone of del.icio.us.
A shameless clone – it rips off del.icio.us down to the font sizes, and
adds a few bits of it’s own …

… there are no entry or imitation barriers until it’s too late – until your network is already
the biggest. This is happening all over again – dot com 2.0s are
failing to build entry or imitation barriers, and are getting
hyperimitated – in every space, we see one innovator, and a huuuge wave
of imitation (networking, tag servers…etc) …

  • Jeff Nolan (VC at SAP) now has an interesting $0.02 on the developments too. Basically, do we collectively allow copycat type of behavior? Will the market see this as fair? Fairness is something that should not be underestimated (think about the ultimatum game, "The Wisdom of Crowds," etc.). But is fairness the right frame? By the language some people are using, it seems that fairness may need to be a consideration. Dollars and subscribers talk in this sector.

It would be interesting to take a snapshot of the current subscriber base of each of these companies and how it develops over time. At any rate, if the VC I know (through reputation only) is involved, there will be barriers to entry built up for del.icio.us down the road. I cannot say about del.irio.us. I am only learning about them now.

Steve Shu

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Update (3/31/05):

Screenshot of del.icio.us (click to enlarge) versus screenshot of del.irio.us (click to enlarge)

Delicious_2

Delirious_2

Personal Experience: How MBAs and Non-Profits Can “Profit” From One Another

Prior to my move to Dallas last year, I spent three years (voluntary work) in the capacity of the finance officer on the board of a non-profit organization (that provided child care). My experience at the non-profit was post-MBA and post management consulting with PRTM. I got a lot out of the experience, and I was honored to be able to contribute to the organization.

What I got out of it:

  • I found that non-profit boards tend to be more diverse than corporate boards – the experience forced me to learn how to minimize MBA jargon talk and the like.
  • The board size was much larger and decoupled than one might find with boards of many corporate organizations (twelve people versus three to five) – the experience forced me to continue to refine facilitation skills because large boards can be cumbersome.
  • It was often easier to connect finance with both the human policy and vision of the organization – governance at the board-level directly affected children and families (some of which are very disadvantaged [e.g., single moms, low income]), and it was gratifying to get the organization to points of commitment and resolve.
  • I learned to appreciate the need for a separate operating board versus a fund raising board (something more typical of non-profit organizations).

There many things that one can bring to table for non-profits. As examples of some MBA concepts that I applied:

  • Operations background – Assume that many manufacturing facilities operate at a normal load of 70% utilization. Now consider an organization like a child care organization that is make or break based on child enrollment numbers and where the budgeted numbers for the organization require breakeven to be 95% of capacity. Does this raise a warning flag that a correction is needed somewhere?
  • Operations and competitive strategy – Suppose there are long waiting lists (queues) for the two-year old rooms in the facility and that capacity in the surrounding, competitive facilities is scarce. What does this like say about the price sensitivity of the market (i.e., how much the organization can raise enrollment prices)? Probably one can raise prices more than one thinks.
  • Marketing – Other organizations are marketing lower prices yet they hide the fact that their coverage hours are shorter. How does your organization want to position itself in the market from a competitive viewpoint, and what concrete tactical things could be improved to make sure that people are educated about comparing apples to apples? Perhaps the organization should market itself as value-based, full-service and draw out the differences in a nice chart.
  • Finance and Controller – When the financial situation gets tough, it becomes easy to want to take out small things (like water coolers), but where the dollar impact is small. Attack the problem from a different angle – first attack the problem from a "required hurdle perspective" as opposed to "a triage perspective". Use MBA spreadsheet, multimedia projector, and meeting facilitation skills to get the group on the same page as to how many dollars actually need to be cut out of the budget to affect the monthly enrollment fee for each family. Then come back and triage the budget at the line-level.
  • Board governance – Non-profit boards can frequently benefit from practices used at the board-level in for-profit companies. Things like knowing about by-laws, employment laws, handling conflict of interest, etc. in the commercial sector can be adapted to the non-profit world.

For what it’s worth, I would highly recommend that MBAs look for ways to apply their skills to non-profit organizations to whatever extent they can. Some business schools like Yale have reputations for being strong in the non-profit sector, but straight-up MBAs are also good. The relationship with non-profit boards can be as little or as much as you want in many cases. The upside is good for all parties involved. You can’t always find that in the commercial sector.

Steve Shu

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BlogKits – Advertising Matchmaking for Blogs

Found BlogKits via Anita Campbell at her Small Business Trends blog. According to the BlogKits site:

The BlogKits BlogMatchTM Network is an opportunity for anyone who owns a blog to be matched with businesses, marketers and/or advertisers looking to partner with niche-filled, content specific, quality blogs.

Have little clue what the deal structure with BlogKits is like. Perhaps I will explore.

Regarding advertising, I’ve personally stayed away from Google AdSense on my personal blog because I imagined it would be hard for me to control what would pop up in front of users (note BlogKits would provide an alternative option). When I first started blogging, my initial objections were that I might have competitive management consulting firms popping up on my site. That concern has since diffused because as an independent consultant, I find I rarely cross paths with the larger firms except when dealing with the $200 million+ revenue firms. I also look to establish longer-term trust relationships that would tend to steer me clear of competitive kinds of situations. Even then, I have held the belief that my flavor of consulting is unique – I appeal to types looking for a versatile right-hand man and trusted mercenary (for lack of better words).

Anyhow, I ended up writing a bit of a long-winded post when I simply wanted to introduce a new option for folks that are trying to monetize their readership. If people have thoughts, I’d be happy to hear them.

Steve Shu

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Preparing Children for the Offshoring Revolution

In the past month I’ve blogged twice about offshoring and outsourcing.

In the first post, I summarized some key points in a BusinessWeek article about the outsourcing of innovation. From a skills perspective, it may have had some interest from those involved with orchestrating supply chains. Perhaps a bit of a narrow focus.

In the second post, I tried to draw in some additional focus on how significant the offshoring force will be on the overall economy. That might have drawn some interest from professionals looking out for themselves as to how to keep their skills fresh. A bit broader of an audience.

Here’s something also close to home but not necessarily directly associated with the aspects of keeping skills fresh and worrying about where jobs will go. The topic is how to make sure your children are adequately prepared for the global future with language skills. May be more important now than ever given the offshoring revolution I described. May also be a good domestic business opportunity for those that can be more aggressive with providing language tutorial services, value-added services, or lower-cost services to the youth market.

A quote from the article that triggered this post ("Great Toddle Forward"):

JaNiece Rush of Lifestyle Resources, a placement agency, says 35
percent more families have requested Mandarin-speaking nannies this
year than last. At the Pavillion Agency, requests for Mandarin-speaking
sitters are up tenfold since 2000, says Clifford Greenhouse, mainly
from “extremely affluent” parents. Some of these parents are Chinese or
have adopted Chinese babies. But others want to give their toddlers a
leg up in globalized society.

Timing for children on the language front is more critical that other learning areas. For me, I can only speak English. I waited until graduate school to take Mandarin – it’s hard to learn that late in life – and it would not be possible for me to conduct business in China without being immersed much more. So keep language in the back of your mind as you think about your kids. Transferring preconceived ideas from one’s own past about language may less relevant given globalization.

Steve Shu

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EVDB – The Next Hot Talk in Event and Calendar Management

Ross Mayfield (CEO of Socialtext) has a good post on the new EVDB demo plus a little background on EVDB’s recent Series A venture financing of $2.1M. EVDB is a maker of an Events and Venues Database. I remember learning about event and calendaring stuff back in December of last year and thought that the area was pretty cool and had a potential value proposition of simplifying people’s lives. Scott McMullan (now with JotSpot) had a good post back then entitled "Google/Internet Archive, Meet Mr. Event," that summarized the emerging area and some of the pertinent technologies surrounding calendaring and event management. Back then, I also remember exchanging some email with Brian Dear (Founder of EVDB). Started to follow both Brian’s postings about raising capital for EVDB shortly after that time and his tribulations with installing QuickBooks. It’s great to see that Brian lined up the financing. As for the QuickBooks stuff, I don’t recall whether he is a fan, but I am.

Steve Shu

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Interesting Post on Stock Options and Milestone Vesting

Paul Allen has an interesting post on vesting stock options based on milestones as opposed to by date. In early-stage ventures, I have seen a few forms of this type of compensation applied. In some cases, it can be implemented via vesting schedules, via controlling the grant itself, or combinations thereof (depending on the style of the stock option plan and infrastructure in place). The mechanics can involve varying levels of modifications to stock option agreement forms, employment agreement forms, letter agreements, job descriptions, board documents, etc.

Hard for me to make any generalizations, but I would say while in concept it seems very desirable, that in practice I have found it to be administratively burdensome if you take it too far or try to tailor it too much. I would probably make the same comment about non-stock option based (i.e., cash-based) project-level incentive structures as well. These can be hard to administer, keep fair, keep expectations in alignment, etc. especially if situations change during the course of a project or doing business. Maybe I’ve had good luck in that I’ve tended to work with intrinsically-motivated people though.

I have mixed feelings on this subject because one clearly wants to motivate people using whatever means possible. That said, to me the marginal benefits of having very tailored bonus compensation seems … well at times marginal and not remarkable.

Steve Shu

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Cartoon Characters Blogging in the Corporate World

I’m always so serious about stuff, especially when it comes to business. I’ve made some comments about CEOs blogging, trench workers blogging, and hybrid models. Completely forgot the aspect of cartoon characters blogging for corporations. Steve Rubel and his readership points me to GEICO’s Gecko blog and Captain Morgan’s blog (Now there’s a way to circumvent all of the corporate policy legal stuff … blame things on a cartoon character when things don’t go well!).

So in the cartoon spirit, I just thought I’d share how I feel when I mess up a blog post or comment and can’t retract … (click here). (Source: Netdisaster). Hat tip: Suzanne.

Steve Shu

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