We saw some impressive products while at South by. Most staggering was the diversity. Despite all the talk of “Location Location Location” not every new app focused on your mobile whereabouts. One was a nifty new open source Content Management System, Concrete5. The product differs from better known systems like Drupal and Joomla most notably [...]
The world is made of up of niche markets – people looking to consume unique things. According to Jeremy Gutsche, popular is not cool. Popular is what was once unique but went viral. I learned from Jason Fried of 37signals and Gutsche that big companies build things for big markets. Masses of consumers, hordes of [...]
I was overwhelmed today. I say this to somewhat admit my own failings (I was exhausted and therefore asocial) and to offer a metaphor/piece of advice. South by Southwest is much like the Internet itself in that there is so much content, you have to create your own filters and on occasion, step away from [...]
Blame gets a bad wrap. Blame can bring down an otherwise successful venture, or can derail a project if improperly placed or delivered.
I don’t know where to start. In fact, I can’t say, in any better way, what Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals, said about the realities of business. So I’m going to let him speak for himself (everything below is either paraphrase or quote): Find the right size. I don’t want to be a [...]
Ok so I’m going to be a downer for just a moment, but there’s a happier side to this note. I mentioned earlier that some of the journalism posts are blase, featuring journalists who don’t understand their users and are stuck in a place where you say “well, duh, you’ve been talking publicly about that [...]
A great, and very topical, discussion took place today at one of the most interestingly titled panels at SXSW: “Unsexy and Profitable. Making $$ Without the Hype.” What did they decide? As usual, it depends.
There are so many panels I want to attend here and I started narrowing them down by eliminating the ones Shay and Andrew were really interested and focusing on the ones that only I would be: Media and Journalism panels. Unfortunately, these are also the panels where I have yet to hear a lot of [...]
Note to self: #sxsw core conversations talks are dangerous. Their succes is determined by the random assortment of people who attend and not by the moderators, though they set the agenda. 50 people interested in talking about their personal experiences is time consuming and unbridled. And frankly, runs a very high risk of being boring. [...]
It’s easy to get discouraged when everyone you meet is a start-up with, “what was that? 5 million a year?” – Shay befriended the co-founders ofFront Rush. I’m in this awesome world where everyone is creative, enthused, informed, and profitable. Okay, not everyone, but enough to make an impression. So what’s the silver lining for [...]
