We met the CEO of Gist, a social management system that gives users a synchronous view of all their contacts and their contacts involvement with others – news articles, tweets, blog posts, etc. These guys are for real. The company is funded by Vulcan Captital, and Foundry Group both high profile venture capital groups.

We were fortunate to encounter the CEO of Tungle.me a number of times. He began his first business while still at University and has successfully navigated the dangerous waters of starting-up. His latest creation, Tungle.me is a scheduling software that integrates with any email or calendar client to give a scheduler a clean, collected view of invitees’ available times. The company is based in Montreal, Canada.

We also bumped into Monkey Wrench Design. Put simply, “we just build cool stuff.” Check ‘em out. They’re just two, 20-something engineers.

Check back for parts 2 and 3 of this post.

I learned from Jason Fried of 37signals and Gutsche that big companies build things for big markets. Masses of consumers, hordes of customers. At some growth point, when that company has amassed a large enough audience, it is forced to homogenize its product in one way or another. A serious sacrifice, I think.

The takeaway: The greater the distance between customer and company the less intimate a company’s relationship with its product.

This was ME

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 the madness.

The three of us have been going non stop, except for the few hours we sleep at our hotel, since before the conference even started. Designing business cards, launching web sites, meeting with administrators etc. on top of our normal schedules.

Then you get into SXSW and there are interesting people everywhere, new gadgets to play with, great minds projecting wisdom and I took it all in and it buzzed all around to the point where I said ‘AHHHHHH.’ After the first panel this morning, which I gathered a few unintentional affirmations from a successful marketing guru (basically, listen to your users and talk to them and don’t get complacent even if you’re making $5oo mil a year), I stepped outside to sit in the sun and process what I’d seen the past few days.

It was beautiful, looking over Austin with some white street noise in the background, but at SXSW the noise doesn’t stay in the background. I was soon interrupted by a woman on her cell phone so I looked for somewhere else and popped into a panel on Writing Web Content. It interested me for five minutes, because I discovered that content management firms exist and would make a great career, but the room was dark and the panelists were soft-spoken.

Shay and I went to the trade show to pop around, watch some cool, yet imperfect 3D screenings, sign up for a few drawings, and talk to some presenters, but I was so tired I couldn’t muster up enough energy to be fully interested. I was also starting to get snappy, joyless and all-around cynical. I was Twitter at full capacity. I knew I’d reached THAT point.

For the first time in about 3 years, I had to take a nap.

This is where the advice comes in: book your hotel early and close to the convention center so that when you reach your breaking point, which is pretty much inevitable, you can escape the noise, re-energize your body and come back for more. Once I’d rested for about 2 hours, I got up bright eyed and caught a cab back to downtown Austin.

In my absence, they’d made some great contacts and I was jealous, but also aware of the fact that I would have been a huge Debbie Downer if I didn’t take my break, probably leaving everyone for a negative impression.

So tomorrow, I’ll be ready and rested to take on some panels, meet some people and end my stay at SXSW on a high note (I hope).

If I hadn’t taken that nap, I would have left downtown immediately after dinner for the rest of the night and been completely unproductive. Instead, I took a break, met up with Andrew and Shay a bit later to see some new Intel pad/netbook devices and meet even more interesting people. Just had to reset my servers first.

–Kate

Blame can also be transformative, so says Brian Reich from ThinkingAboutMedia.com.  Brian hosted a 15 minute “blamestorm” today in an early session at South by Southwest.  What’s a blamestorm?  You can watch it yourself, through the magic of Twitter Search.

Blamestorms, or the collective act of getting all of the blame out of the way in one single burst before focusing on solutions can be both an empowering and enabling activity.  Like everything else at this conference, however, it can be a double-edged sword.

Blame is very powerful, and when it’s not delivered with it’s antidote (suggestions, solutions, progress), it simply cannot transcend the negative weight that is inherent in blame itself.  Users of blame must be extra careful to apply it properly.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the same as “constructive criticism.”  Blame carries real weight and real consequences.

Today’s blamestorm was about using technology in government to incite real change and solve real problems.  So – who got blamed today? Host Brian Reich let the following blamestorm fly:

- I blame the media for telling the wrong story — promoting what drives attention and delivers ratings, instead of helping people to understand and take action.

- I blame politicians for making promises — but not living up to them, and sending a message that politics is more important than public service.

- I blame government for passing laws and promoting policies that don’t do enough to help people, instead of connecting and serving the needs and interests of the community.

- I blame corporations for saying they care, but not changing (enough about) how they act — when they could serve their customers, contribute to the world, and make money.

- I blame nonprofits for not doing enough to advance their causes – for mistaking awareness for action, and tools for answers, for being afraid to try new things, when they have the greatest potential to educate, engage, and mobilize people to action of anyone.

- I blame the people who fund projects, invest in ideas and promote new ventures for maintaining the status quo and sticking to old ways of doing things, instead of making it possible for new things to happen.

- I blame our elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and graduate schools for not teaching people differently — for not adapting fast enough to changing times, and preparing the next generation of leaders, innovators and activists.

- I blame you for not using your creativity, your passion, your technology prowess, your business acumen, your experience, your insights, your vast networks, your significant influence and your bold ideas to do more, to fix the problems that exist in the world, and address the challenges that continue to challenge our society.

- I blame myself for not thinking differently and using the channels and platforms that are available to me — and emerging every day — to promote new ideas, ask tough questions, challenge assumptions, ask for help, work differently, change my behavior… and more.

And what do we have to show for it?  Not much.  Did we solve any problems?  No.  Did we contribute any solutions or alternative courses of action?  No.  Were any of the people getting the blame even present to hear it?  Not really – unless we include the proverbial “ourselves.”  Does this mean the blamestorm is without value?  No.

Blamestorms create value by getting the hard part out of the way first.  Organizations like Fox News (amongst others) have built an entire network on blame, but remain light on solutions or alternatives.  They spend so much time on blame, that it appears they simply forget about those things that would help us avoid blame in the future.  A blamestorm allows you to clear that out in a relatively short amount of time, get over any hard feelings, and move on towards getting actual, meaningful, powerful work and change done.

Are blamestorms right for everyone?  No – of course not.  But in situations where blame is a major impediment, a mental or cultural roadblock, a blamestorm can be a very effective way to dispatch that obstacle and begin to do something that matters.

We didn’t solve the problems with government and technology this morning, but we’ve got a bunch of great places to start – and all thanks to the blamestorm.  Putting those 15 minutes of energy into that allows everyone in that room (a large collective pool of time and talent) to now move on to the solutions portion of our equation.

Blamestorms are only part of the equation, but they can be an integral part when used appropriately.

Find the right size. I don’t want to be a 1000 person company. In fact, I don’t even want to be a 50 person company. No one needs that.

I’ve never finished a business book. They’re 400 pages! Our book Rework is short for a reason. You’re not supposed to be reading about business, you’re supposed to be doing it. So finish this one on your flight home.

Fail early. Fail often. This is bullshit.

Don’t write a business plan. Write a business guess. Get over it, its not stone, its a guess on the right direction.

Stay small.

A hot dog stand cannot succeed if it has bad hotdogs. Customers don’t give you money for top of the line mustard. They pay for the hot dog. Determine your core. Deconstruct your company. What’s your line in the sand?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Ok that’s the first page of my notes. Headed to our next event, so I’ll post a continuation soon.

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 for years.” Unfortunately, this isn’t just limited to the journalism panels.

We even met this guy: Mark Cuban

Sometimes, we’ll get into a panel and realize that nothing new is being said. This happened when Shay and I went to the panel on Higher Ed in the Free Era. Good news, iSchool, you’re doing a good job. We just have to talk about your tenure policy. I kid. Sort of.

When this happens, we can either move along and find backup or stay and wait it out, maybe get a little discrete shut-eye.

Or we can take advantage of the audience.

I’ve been finding that the most beneficial conversations have been with members of the audience. I met a journalism professor from University of Missouri with some great insight in both the problems with Higher Ed and Journalism, thereby combining both talks I went to in the morning.

I just went to a workshop on HTML5 and CSS3. Although I probably won’t remember every line of code they displayed, it was really informative to see what is going on with the languages and get a good piece of professional advice: charge more to make your sites appear exactly correct in IE6. I left the talk early, but it freed up some time to write a blog and interact with others of the same interests.

The three of us also bumped into the founders of Front Rush, an ICS/Sidearm partner at a social event. We’ll be meeting up with them more as the conference goes on.

My point is this, even though a talk ends up disappointing, the person sitting next to you might be a gem of a contact. Just watch out for the lurkers and those looking to push a lacking product on you.

–Kate

Hosted by TechCrunch‘s Paul Carr (who is British and hilarious – the two are closely related), the panel discussed the viability of being a business when you don’t make any money, don’t have any revenue of any sort, aren’t profitable, and don’t have a plan to become so.  Amazingly, there are several big-name companies who fall into this category, including both Twitter and (before they were bought by Google) YouTube.

The other end of the spectrum is represented by the companies who were on the panel, including lunch.com, uship.com, and campusbookrentals.com.  Both uShip and CampusBookRentals are profitable, but decidedly unsexy.  UShip works to coordinate transportation between people who ship things (generally trucking companies) and people who have shipping needs, and CampusBookRentals does just that – rents textbooks to college students at a rate cheaper than buying the book for the whole semester.

Where are they similar? They make money. They aren’t flashy, don’t spend money on PR firms or major advertising campaigns, but they do manage to serve customers’ needs on a continuing basis, and have a product that people are willing to pay for.  That last part, getting people to pay for your product, is especially hard in today’s world of “sexy” 2.0 dreams, where everything is free, easy, and immediate.

The statistics don’t lie – your startup is likely not going to get bought by Google.  Venture Capitalists don’t give money to companies without a solid plan for turning revenue (generally – Twitter seems to be the major exception to this rule), and if you can’t make any money, you’re not really a business – you’re just running a project without enough direction.

The debate about what makes a startup a startup can be saved for another post, but the bottom line of this panel is that it’s okay (even cool) to be unsexy as a business.  It’s far more important that you have revenue, a plan to maintain the revenue (or grow it), and have decided if you’re in that business for the long haul or if you need a viable exit strategy.

As an aside, if you’re looking to sell your business and get out, having a revenue generating product is a great start.

More lessons from SXSW are on the way in this space – stay tuned.

Plus of the Panel: met Jeff Jarvis

My first (and right now only) journalism focused panel concentrating on community funded stories. I think this would be a great idea, especially if the people running the site could tap into what people are really interested in reading. The two panelists, who are both very intelligent young men, have a major problem: they’re journalists. I don’t mean this in the sense that they are are reporters. I mean they are still focused on agenda-setting and needing an editorial hierarchy for everything.

Now, editors are great and I love editing, but I also understand that solely developing an online news source that still limits publishing decisions to a few high minded editors is partly what got journalism in trouble to begin with. The panelists are focusing on how to get journalists paid, not what the audience wants or needs from their site. I still can’t believe that people who are so good at listening to sources and conveying messages are so bad at listening to the needs of their audience.

The fundamental problem with journalists trying to fix “journalism” is that they have a vested interest in getting paid for what they love to do and that is what they are trying to fix. It was breaking before the Internet and now it’s just accelerated to the point of real crisis. They see user generated content as “not good enough” and decry the death of local newspapers without realizing that the valuable information once conveyed through local newspaper probably wasn’t the investigative reporting. It was birth announcements, obits, engagement and wedding photos, classifieds, etc. that made people pick up the local newspaper. Those connections are on Facebook, which they don’t even recognize as the real source of competition of local newspapers.

People talk to each other. Give them a medium and they’ll start doing it. Then monetize it if you really want to, but focus on creating that first.

–Kate

50 people interested in talking about their personal experiences is time consuming and unbridled. And frankly, runs a very high risk of being boring. South By Southwest attendees of 2011, avoid these unless absolutely necessary. A personal conversation with the guy next to you in a huge auditorium after/before a panel is much more useful than 35 different, “Hi, Jordan Technut from Inc Inc.. Just wanted to say..”

No. From here on out I’m voting with my feet. I’ve got 4 days, only 2/3 of which am I awake.

Once more into the breach dear friends, more later.

So what’s the silver lining for a person trying to be all that and realizing the road is a lot longer than he thought? There isn’t one, really. There’s just what is. To be successful, and I’m paraphrasing Sean Branagan, you have to drive as fast as you can until your progress exceeds your fear of dying. To Sean, this is how you build product. How you achieve product. “And if months later you look back and say, ‘You know, we could have made more money if we had done this or shifted that…’ you’re doing it right. Don’t get stuck in the pursuit of perfect or the mobius of the daily work that enables the super cool moonlighting you tack on to the end of the day.”

The long and short is, I’m not discouraged nor am I inspired. I’m ready to push until progress exceeds my fear of dying.