Archive for February, 2009

I had the pleasure of attending the Cornell Architecture, Art and Planning San Francisco Reception.  AAP is near and dear to my heart, particularly the Art department.  Dean Kleinman gave some brief remarks, talking about the new building that has been discussed/in planning for over a decade.

The highlight was meeting a couple of fellow Oberlin Alums.  I wonder what’s going on in my old department.

It’s been a very busy time

Trying to get deal with all the “business” needs of a start-up: 1) scalable processes, 2) case studies, pricing, 3) go to market strategy, 5) managing cashflow,   and more.  Revenue is on the — because without revenue nothing happens. But giving lots of thought to building the team, which is an excellent transistion to Micah Baldwins post cauldron-of-friction

In his post Micah discusses two difference schools of thought in building a team,

School 1: Hire your friend, or

School 2: Cauldron of Friction

I’m probably more of a Cauldron of Friction type, with one caveat.  Is the potential member of team a start-up person.  Because not everybody else and they drag down the whole team

It’s been a very busy time

Trying to get deal with all the “business” needs of a start-up: 1) scalable processes, 2) case studies, pricing, 3) go to market strategy, 5) managing cashflow,   and more.  Revenue is on the — because without revenue nothing happens. But giving lots of thought to building the team, which is an excellent transistion to Micah Baldwins post cauldron-of-friction

Micah wrote a very interesting post about

Journalista!! continues its almost daily Newspaper Armageddon Death Watch.

There stories are essentially boil down to the fundamental question — are consumers of “”news” willing to pay for it.  Union pay cuts, the closing of bureaus and closing printing presses etc.  All these approaches are skipping around the elephant in the room, will people pay to support “traditional news gathering and dissemination models.

Been doing a lot of meetings, lunches and dinners over the past 8 days (golden rule, don’t waste your time on Mexican food outside of the mission) and the whole concept of “publishing” is in the midst of a massive upheaval.  Seems like an obvious observation, but this change will be irrevocable and sweeping.

The trick will be to offer a solution/software which will capture the zeitgeist and enable publishers to create compelling experiences and generate profits.