In the introduction, you discuss how many have a love and hate relationship with Google – at the same time. What it is about Google that allows these emotions to exist mutually at the same time?

Aaron Goldman: Well, I wouldn’t call it a love/hate so much as a love/fear.

I love using Google as a searcher and as marketer. As a searcher, Google helps me find what I’m looking for. And, as a marketer, Google helps me get new customers.

But I’m definitely afraid of Google too. As a searcher, I’m afraid it of what it could do with my data. And as a marketer, I’m also afraid of what it could do with my data but even more afraid that it may one day change its algorithm and leave me out in the cold.

I think it’s general human nature to fear the things we love the most. Once we become reliant on something or someone, we fear that it one day may be taken away.

You discussed relevancy and intent in the book at a few junctures. How do you like to explain these issues to people and why are these concepts challenging for people to understand?

Aaron Goldman: It’s difficult because, by its very definition, relevancy is relative. What’s relevant to you may not be to me. Too many marketers make the mistake of thinking that what matters to them also matters to their target customers.

From a Google perspective, relevancy is the key to search. If Google’s search results aren’t relevant to each individual searcher, he or she will stop using it. That’s why Google looks to collect and keep so much data. It needs to personalize the results to make them more relevant.

For marketers, it’s critical to give off signals of relevancy if you want high rankings on Google. This includes content geared towards specific search queries as well as links from relevant websites.

As for intent. I really think it’s the reason search marketing works so well. People come to Google with the intent of finding something. And, often, that’s something to buy. It’s one of the few places in media where people raise their hands and specifically ask for products, services, etc. It’s the whole pull vs. push thing.

You mentioned how AOL values content differently than most organizations and how Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, owner of The Wall Street Journal or Fox News accuses Google of stealing content. As content channels become infinite, isn’t media monopoly power also changing and/or even declining?

Aaron Goldman: The point I was making with content is that there are certain topics that are highly commercial and others that are not. What I mean by commercial is that the people consuming the content are in a commercial mindset — they’re thinking about buying something.

For publishers, commercial content is the easiest to monetize. Advertisers want to be wherever there are people thinking about buying stuff. AOL has done a good job of creating content on highly commercial topics — think travel or financial services — that it can sell ads against.

The Wall Street Journal and Fox News are too busy covering the “news.” And news is tough to monetize. People consuming news are not in a commercial mindset and are not open to advertising messages.

All that said, you make a good point that it’s tougher to wield monopoly power as channels become infinite and distribution is spread across the long tail. These days anybody can start a blog or Twitter account and “report” news. And people tend to trust their friends more than the media.

You interlaced a bunch of URLs in the book. This is an interesting experiment. What is your hope for it?

Aaron Goldman: I wanted to make the experience of reading the book more dynamic. Rather than just read cover to cover, my hope is that people will read a chapter and then go to the web to learn more about specific topics covered and interact with other people reading that same part of the book.

With static print, it’s tough to keep content fresh — especially in the world of marketing and Google when changes are happening every day. By including the URLs, I have a way to share new developments.

The URLs also helped keep me from going off on tangents or going too deep on topics that many readers may not care about. For example, rather than recap an entire thesis that David Berkowitz wrote about “Jewhavioral Targeting” in my chapter about “Letting the Data Decide,” I just cover it in a sentence or two and include a link.

There’s a few people in the book that were mentioned considerably more than others, how did you pick the contributors, quotes and subtopics?

Aaron Goldman: Along the same lines as the URLs, I knew it was important to include a wide variety of perspectives on the lessons learned from Google. No-one wants to read 300+ pages of what Aaron Goldman thinks about marketing. But people do (I hope) want to read 300+ pages of what some of the brightest minds in the industry learned from Google as curated by Aaron Goldman.

I interviewed over 100 marketing big wigs in the course of preparing my manuscript ranging from agency types to Google employees to researchers to university professors. The ones who are mentioned more frequently are the ones that gave me insights that were the most compelling, controversial, quotable or all of the above.

The book is part history, part teacher and part tour guide…who is the intended audience?

Aaron Goldman: This book was written for anyone who has a stake in marketing. It covers all areas of marketing — advertising, PR, promotions, media, product development, etc.

And it’s written for people like me who have very short attention spans. The copy is quick and punchy. And there’s lots of fun wordplay. I put the “pun” in punchy.

It doesn’t matter if you work for a small business or Fortune 500 company, the lessons in my book are applicable to your business. In each of my 20 chapters, I share a lesson, discuss how Google puts it into play, cover mini-case studies of marketers that exemplify it, and then walk through an exercise for the reader to relate the lesson to his or her business.

This book will also make great fodder for search engine marketing pros looking to broaden their horizons or understand how their skills can be leveraged across other channels.

What knowledge do you want people to take away from the book?

Aaron Goldman: First and foremost, I want people to take away specific tactics that they can apply to their business immediately. If you read the entire book and don’t find a single thing you can do to grow your business right away, then I will personally refund your money.

That said, I also want to give people a framework for thinking about the future of marketing. I spend quite a bit of time throughout the book — and especially in the last chapter on “future-proofing” — discussing what the marketing world will look like 10 years from now and what Google’s role might be within it.

If nothing else, I hope people will find my book entertaining and enjoy getting a peek under the hood of one of the most fascinating (and profitable) companies in the modern era.
————————————————————————————————–
I wish Aaron the best of luck with his book and look forward to learning from his experiences as I continue to explore my book author aspirations in the future. The constant mutual learning from all of the wonderful people I meet in the digital marketing space as I speak and consult around the world is special and hard to fully describe! Looking forward to seeing the other scheduled stops on the GoogleyLessons blog tour!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Google – Behind the Screen
• Career Distinction : Stand Out by Building Your Brand
• Jason Alba Author – I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???

They say that when one door closes another one opens and apparently Barney Harford is the gentleman that was actually meant to darken the doorway. He’s had extensive experiences in Asia and elsewhere for Expedia and more recently as an advisor to Kayak.com and eLong. As mentioned in the article linked to above, I strongly believe that geographical diversity is important to high performing corporate cultures and I praise the Board of Directors for this choice. It is my hope that this will effect Chicago’s landscape in a positive way far beyond Orbitz. Time will tell.

I know what it’s like to arrive in a strange new place from my experiences living in New York and Cleveland. I’ve always appreciated people orienting me to the cities I’ve moved to so I thought I’d return the favor before giving you a few thoughts on Orbitz. Here we go:

- Odd objects in parking spots that have been shoveled clear of snow: You managed to move to Chicago in the dead of Winter. It’s not exactly the most friendly welcome the city can give you. In fact when I moved back here in 1999 – we received 22 inches of snow on during the day I was supposed to move in – it took me a week to recover. Anyway, if you see a chair on a side street claiming a spot, my advice is to pass it by and go elsewhere as you never know what that person that put the object there might do. Of course this practice is chronicled in detail on a blog from Montreal.

- Orginal’s Hair Designers – Good haircut for $16 with the bonus of then giving you a touch up between hair cuts at no charge. You want John to cut your hair there. He arrives at 6AM sharp Monday through Saturday going there between 6-7AM is the best time to go. No appointment is needed. They are located at 134 North Wells.

- Shoe Repair – Beehive Shoeworks gives great on the stand shines and they do an excellent job with any shoe repair you’ll need. Ask for Sam.

- Lower Wacker Drive – A cab can usually make it to the Lakefront or Michigan Avenue faster this way, but they’ll never do it unless you ask as Chicago pays cabs partially based on waiting time. Yes, this is the same Lower Wacker Drive as in the movie the Blues Brothers!

- Free Valet Parking at Most Restuarants in Greektown – Take advantage of this, my favorite place is The Parthenon on Halstead.

- Pizza – As you likely know Chicago is home of the deep dish pizza. My favorite is Giordano’s, the one where the primary office of the chain at 310 West Randolph tastes the best in my opinion and I usually order it withcanadian bacon and mushrooms. If you want something a bit lighter near your office (my answer would be different in the suburbs) , I recommend Tomato Head Pizza at 945 West Randolph. They make their pizzas with a somewhat rare Faulds pizza oven.  You may have experienced this special oven at Delfino’s Chicago Style Pizzeria in Seattle previously. I researched this as I’ve often considered moving to Seattle.

- Italian Beef – This is a rare sandwich that you’ll have to work hard to find anywhere outside of the Chicago area. It’s roast beef immersed in flavorful gravy that is properly presented on freshly baked French bread. If consumed at the right places, this can be heavenly. In the loop you will find this at a place called Luke’s (walking distance from the currentOrbitz office location) or Portillo’s. Like the pizza above, many will passionately advocate their favorite place over another. It’s kind of like a sport.

- Origin of the term Windy City – This is highly disputed. But I mention it because you can judge how much a person studies history by asking if they have any opinion on this subject. Statistically speaking, there are many places in the Midwest that are technically windier, so I personally do not favor this explanation. The most likely in my opinion is the explanation of the politicians being full of hot air. There are others that abound on the net.

- If Your Furniture is Damaged by Movers – Weber Furniture has been in business since 1950 repairing, refinishing and reupholstering fine office and antique furniture. I recently did some work on the site and it already ranks #1 for the term – Chicago furniture restoration. It still needs a bit more authority from off site factors but the link above should likely fix that. Thanks for the opportunity but I hope your furniture travels safely.

OK, now that you are oriented a bit, let’s talk business a little bit.

In terms of my thoughts and philosophy on Internet companies:

- The world is enduring rapid business transformation which historians will may one day judge revival the Industrial Revolution. Corporations need to constantly test and learn to create and maximize the optimal business model mix. Those who create rapid testing and learning cultures will outperform.

- Search engines are changing the foundation of branding from brand name to one of a brand’s attributes to be found by the searcher and user experiences when interacting with the brand. This is a fundamental shift from push to pull where the consumer controls the conversation and it’s about meeting those expressed needs.

- Quotes of business leaders I highly admire are on this page, they are my guide posts.

- I believe that corporations need to restore balance to focus on both revenue and expenses equally, recent focus has been on expense reduction and risk aversion is preventing focus on new revenue potential. This blog post sums up my thoughts.

Thoughts on Internet travel vertical in general:

- Too highly dependent on paid search, need to lower traffic acquisition costs (TAC).

- Desperate need to create long term relationships with customers outside of purchase transaction.

- Customer data models need to evolve to create niche experiences to create best in space customer experience to meet the evolution in branding mentioned above and to increase CPM advertising rates.

- Considerable business travel is booked manually via phone from legacy providers. This presents a potential opportunity.

In terms of Orbitz from a consumers point of view:

- Orbitz does yet not consistently win the price competition in the hotel + airfare category – for my three day trip to SJC to speak at UGCX at the same hotel – Priceline was $411, Expedia was $428 this morning while the Orbitz quote was $476.

- The current Orbitz Terms of Service appear to be in need of revision in regards to link policy in terms of winning the search engine optimization battle.

- I use a pop-up blocker, but I’m sure you’d win alot of points with people if you removed those completely.

There is other advice I have but will keep that private at this time. So again, welcome to Chicago! Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with as you settle in. Good luck with your role at Orbitz!

OK folks, sorry this post was a bit long.  What suggestions do you have for Barney to improve the customer experience, customer acquisition and conversion rates at Orbitz while still reducing costs and improving profitability? I’d love to see your comments on this.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TiE Chicago Chapter Start Up Stories
• Chicago GSB – Nobel Prizes
• The Chicago Business School Speech to Air on Cspan2

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Dusty Baker No Longer Cubs Manager
• Cubs Rainout Pleasure
• Chicago Cubs Win National League Central Division 2007

Wow! That was tiring, I stepped on the L at 7:30AM and didn’t get home until 1:30AM the next morning! 18 hours of pure madness! Most people noticed the great speeches by Gary Vee from Wine Library TV and Dick Costolo (aka ask the wizard) and others. But what I really appreciated was the other things that the day brought to me. When Frank Gruber and Eric started TECH cocktail, one of the goals was to enable the interaction of people and removing barriers between entrepreneurs, funding sources and removing the boundaries between Chicago and the rest of the world.

When I sit at the first TECH cocktail CONFERENCE Chicago watching great speeches and meeting people from startups from both the east and west coasts while talking, playfully joking about Internet concepts and trading ideas with a local Chicago angel investor in the back of the room for hours on end – it’s at that moment one can clearly perceive a vision is starting to become reality…

For a first conference, it was very well run. There were those little things with a venue that didn’t go quite right with the elevators and not having enough power outlets (but you could say that about any conference) but those were out of their direct control. You could see that Eric and Frank went out of their way to challenge the audience about topics that too often go ignored at startups, like how to set up a corporate entity properly, partnerships and most of these challenges and experiments went well.

So what’s next? I’d like to challenge each and every person in TECH cocktail community to take things to the next level by taking the following actions:

1. Follow Up – People need to work to get to know each other better and learn to leverage each person’s special gifts and talents and realize that 1 + 1 > 2 when we behave in this manner. For me, I know that creating new business partners while listening to help iterate the product, data model or service is my area of strength.

2. Change TECH cocktail from an event to an everyday process on your own – a three month cycle time is not sufficient to build relationships to the next level – it’s everyone’s responsibility to make an hour here and there to sit down with someone, learn about what they are doing, give them a fresh perspective and potential assistance. Don’t wait for the next TECH cocktail event. If this means you need to organize your contact info, make that important time investment.

3. Listen to what Dick Costolo had to say about Internet company NDAs and then change your behavior accordingly (where is the video of that speech anyway?) – Stop sending people NDAs that serve no purpose other than to destroy your access to people who are the most qualified to help you. Ideas are a dime a dozen, assembling the right people with the current knowledge and future potential to create that reality is what matters.

4. Go beyond lurking, participate!!! During the conference, I had at least 10 people talk to me about a blog post of mine in detail, yet they’ve never left a comment on my blog. That’s sad. Leaving a comment leaves you a hyperlink back to your business or blog and allows distribution of one’s business network organically removing them as the bottleneck, please use this viral tool.

5. Learn to hire people for their current knowledge, network, blogs and future potential - not legacy job titles and brands – this takes work, research and being involved in the community, but it is how you’ll find the breakthrough thought leaders and future superstars.

6. Become an ambassador to expanding the understanding of the tools we all use and expand our base of understanding to new people outside our core – If you have a client or operate a service do they understand what Internet advertising, blogs, rss, social media, twitter, etc do? If they do is their organizational culture and structure set up to handle it to serve a customer’s needs? Many people know there is a problem but do not know where to start to fix it – I want to help those people as it will ease the adoption and enhance demand for disruptive new Internet services. I’m planning a series of future posts on this important, yet highly untouched topic. If you have examples of success stories or learnings in this area, I’d love to hear from you.

What else would you add to this list? I look forward to your contributions.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TECH cocktail Chicago 7
• TC08 Chicago – Designing With Users In Mind
• TECH Cocktail This Thursday – Bring Your Business Cards!

4 startups including Feedburner

Feedburner all founders had same equity percentage – very important to teamwork dynamic and success

Entrepreneurs worry too much about valuation

Market Opportunity – sizing, does the market need it, team, product, market

Location – No Black Swans

Funding
Cash – Don’t kid yourself

CCs, your misunderstood friends – finding the right one

Options/Equity – options, pool, common stock, dilution

Board Meetings – Should be strategic discussions, not operations, board package, timing and who should attend…

Hiring – Best Available Athlete, Roles and Flat Organizations, Hierarchy begets bureaucracy, replace with tools (eg SFA)…Don’t hire for position…hire people that can do almost anything…a jack of all trades…this reminds me of a lot of what BlackRock was like…I sat at 23 desks in 4 years, I don’t know how many projects I worked on during my time there, I understood every process in the company.

No offices. Open culture and communication are critical…

Experience or Enthusiasm?

Performance – performance reviews and subjectivity

KPIs

Growing the team
- Sales and Marketing – don’t hire until you are ready to sell
- Interview process – long

Product Development and Business Strategy
Serendipity and Adjustment – visit to the eye doctor

Launch Late to Launch Often – data models and programs architected for extensibility can beat point solutions every time (I agree this is critical)

Focus and Speed of Execution are a competitive advantage
- Internationalization
- Early biz dev can hurt you, so can any biz dev

Competitive advantage
- Be first to market, not most sophisticated, not the best product, be itirative and fast

Let people you don’t know help you win (open/api) and provide your products/service with the best opportunity to evolve in the market

Startups who ask people to sign NDAs are stupid! Gave a great (and way too fast!) discussion on this…I wish he’d write a detailed blog post of his rant. ?

Quantum barriers to entry and market share – Get market share, market share is the only thing you should focus on.

Revenue plan: Don’t kid yourself. Revenue ALWAYS ramps slower than you think it will.

Don’t do unnecessary things because you think you’re supposed to

Try to let the business model come to you
- Easy to say, not easy to do
- It’s easier to lower the price than to raise the price?
- Look for always on opportunities

Don’t worry about an exit strategy, worry about everything else

Be a big small company
- Public face of the company
- Have a specific voice, have a culture

Be competitive on your merits

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TECH cocktail CONFERENCE Chicago – Creating Change For The Future
• Jason Jacobsohn of Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center Interviewed
• The Future Yahoo! CEO Nominee Discussion…

Without further delay, here’s their tips on designing with users in mind!

Be Yourself – informal, fun

Be Fast – the perceived time when people see speed, they perceive the experience and organization as reliable. Image sprites can help this. Steve Souders is a good source on this topic.

Be Willing to Give Up Control – Give yourself permission to outsource certain tasks.

Be Engaged – have a blog, more importantly, be engaged in other blogs. It’s important to get the early adopters and beta testers to help you. It allows you to iterate.

Be Polite – Try to be considerate…from the users perspective.

Be Surprising – Do things outside the norm. Hackathon. Had new feature coding retreat days. Engage random users.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TC08 Chicago – Looking at Technology For Your Business In New Ways
• Facebook Spamming Your Identity To Drive Their Traffic
• Mossberg: Ask.com Takes Lead In Designing Display Of Search Results

Problems

Scaling…printers, vendors, etc

Inventory is hard….

The Internet is Serious Business

Dealing with problems that we are not prepared to deal with… (can be an advantage too)

Advantages

Our Users – Do they care? Do they help?

Technology Agnosticism

Awesome Staff – “Innovation comes from the bottom up” – Golden advice on how to build a culture…

Harper then ended with an interesting comment about Bin Laden….implied that he saw some false flag elements…

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TC08 Chicago – Designing With Users In Mind
• The Chicago Business School Speech to Air on Cspan2
• Intellext – Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger

It gives me great pleasure to announce these items as best of show:

VinJus – A unique non-alcoholic grape juice drink! Not yet publicly launched, it is scheduled to be distributed shortly. It’s a unique drink. They describe it as:

NAPA VinJus™ – the perfect non-alcoholic aperitif! Refreshing virgin vineyard grape juice – created for your sophisticated palette as an alternative to soda, water or energy drinks. It’s unique balance of crisp, tart and sweet lingers with a hint of green apple, honeysuckle, wildflower and lavender.

Made in the beautiful Napa Valley from early picked varietals, such as Chardonnay and more, this delicious drink is but one single ingredient – mouth watering virgin vineyard grape juice and nothing more! Compared to wine it’s almost half the calories and compared to regular grape juice it’s about half the sugar! And it’s made by a GREEN company!!!

Lucy’s – Smart Cookies. Made with Love. Norfolk, Virginia based Dr. Lucy Gibney M.D. has a son with major food allergies. Lucy describes it best on their website.

Every crispy, crunchy, delicious Dr. Lucy’s cookie is baked without wheat, gluten, dairy milk, butter, eggs, casein, peanuts or tree nuts. But you’d never know it. They taste delicious! We use only high quality ingredients in our carefully controlled bakery to be sure our products meet our tight allergen testing criteria.

Lucy was amazed at the lack of food available to serve that market. Lucy turned to the kitchen in order to change that and once a few varieties were perfected she decided to solve the problem for others without her unique combination of talents. They weren’t even supposed to be at the show, they got added to new items section at the last minute. I’m glad they did, Lucy is a wonderful person and I know her niche product will succeed. Terry Starbucker is already a huge fan.

Blackwing Meats, Inc. – A variety of elk, buffalo, ostrich and other exotic organic meats as wide as I’ve ever seen! They get bonus point for having an highly functional e-commerce site to ship Roger Gerber’s creations directly to you. Even in the down economy Roger says 1st quarter sales were up 77% over the previous year. These items have momentum and the distribution to match it.

Bionade is a unique German based, non-alcoholic refreshment drink that is scheduled to be introduced in the United States later this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, but it is truly outstanding. In Germany the Elderberry is most popular, however I like the Herbs flavor the best (see picture here). If they are able to get shelf space and have an affordable price point, it could easily be a hit in the USA.

Leggio’s herb infused olive oil - Chef Joseph Leggio creates an “amazing” herb infused olive oil product. While there were others at the show with offerings in this vertical, none match the taste of Leggio’s. Joseph started experimenting with the concept several years ago. Then one day asked his wife to ask her dad, a wine maker, to bring over some bottling equipment for him to test with. Though she thought he was crazy, she did it anyway and his hunch paid off, his business is growing quite briskly and he claims to have some other innovative ideas up his sleeve, I can’t wait to see what they are.

Sheila B’s Popcorn (web site under development) – awesome butter flavor, ultra high pop rate, doesn’t dry out upon popping, no aftertaste like most popcorn has and best of all, not really more expensive than other popcorn on the market! Really nice folks too that taught me about the current state of agriculture.

BigHorn Extreme Foods – Peter Andrews has unique sausage offerings as well as tasty buffalo and elk burgers for restaurants and retail outlets.

WowBacon – Amazing clean cooking micro-wave bacon preparer. 6 years to perfect as an invention. Works extremely well the first few times you try it. Durability is a question.

Tre Bella Foods Organic – Gail Tiburzi’s organic Italian foods were inspired by her grandmother’s original recipes. It’s not everyday you meet a former investment banker turned food distributor, my time with Gail was all too short as she had a meeting. I told her to call me if she had time during the rest of the show to compare projects, I guess she was too busy taking orders as I never heard from her!

For those needing last minute Mother’s Day gift ideas, there you go!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Pet Food Recall Causes Surge in Searches for Related Items
• TiE Global Chairman Apurv Bagri Interviewed on Podtech
• Upcoming Conferences!

Typical Fund Structure
- Management Fee 2.5% of committed capital
- Carried Interest – after losses offset by profits
- 80% Net Profit – Investors
- 20% Net Profit – General Partner
- 50-70% desired return…
- Vesting occurs over 5 years

- Experienced, successful entrepreneurs abound throughout the country
- Start-up companies have access to abundant early-stage venture capital
- Skilled attorneys, accountants, consultants are readily available
- The majority of start-ups can result in successful IPO’s within 2-3 years
- Increasingly hedge funds are an alternative financing source
- Angel capital is more available in Chicago than it used to be

- The space a VC plays in is extremely important – industry sector, growth

- Tom has changed management 3 times on average in the 60 companies he’s invested in

- Buckets of entrepreneurship seed entrepreneurs, beta stage, scaling skills

- Discipline = Success

Criteria:
- Proprietary product or service
- Sustainable competitive advantage
- Viable business model
- Large markets
- Experienced management team
- Appropriate use of funds
- Target 10-15x growth 5-7 years
- Objective: Sale of IPO in 5-7 years

Management:
- The most critical resource
- More important than all other elements
- Stage appropriate, later stages may require different management
- Must have a significant stake in success
- Tom says “Management experience is management experience, big company experience is just as good as small company experience in his view.” (Note: I actually find a *mixture* of both sizes in your experience to be of high value)
“We don’t make money on IPO’s, we make money selling to the Baxter’s, Motorola’s etc.”

“Nothing succeeds like revenue, it’s the cheapest form of capital.”

In 60+ company investments, I can only say that once it was the technology that made the company fail. It’s about getting the product in the marketplace.

What makes you say yes?
Passion. A product I have to get on the marketplace that solves a real problem. Management discipline which means they can step back and say realistically this is how long it will take, this is the team you will need, etc.

Revenue is an outcome, it’s not a driver. What is going to cause the business to scale? It’s business model testing. I don’t care about year 5, I care about what will get us more proof of concept and closer to a success.

The first screening process is where did this plan come from, if another VC sent it to us, we pay attention more. I ask, “Do I want to have a beer with this guy? You shouldn’t be there if you can’t say yes. ”

60% of the time we at least get our money back.

Scientific Board of Directors (compensated with a point of equity +/- a bit)
- Should be at least equivalent in stature to the scientific founders
- Like the Board of Directors, should have complementary skills
- Used properly, play a vital strategic role
- Typically meet semi-annually

Tom never signs an NDA.

The Business Plan
- Executive Summary is most important
- Shorter is better
- Assume the full appreciation of the technology will come in the due diligence
- Avoid jargon
- Avoid the hockey stick
- Focus on the revenue model
- Have a realistic exit strategy
- IPO’s are rare – most VCs are quite happy with a nice M&A exit
- Nobody reads the full business plan – I care about the executive summary
- Cashflow is more important than revenue during this phase

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• How the Credit Crunch Could be Good for Venture Capital and Other Sectors
• Guy Kawasaki Interview
• Venture Capital Speed Dating – Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University

What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago. CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next – while we still have an economy…

Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):

Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam

Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane

On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes

One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car

Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree

Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes

Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins

Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across

Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss

On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading

Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!

Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month

Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear

Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes

The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs – yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots

Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol

I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF

Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it

Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions

The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course

Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark

4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland

Bridgeport – 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.

Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• “CTA riders are in for a rail mess” per Chicago Tribune
• Remembering SOBcon08 – My House Guest Andrew Dubber…
• Chicago’s Michael Carruth Launches What If List Blog…

No other words are necessary, you should know the drill by now.

RSVP now.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TECH Cocktail This Thursday – Bring Your Business Cards!
• TC08 Chicago – Designing With Users In Mind
• TC08 Chicago – Looking at Technology For Your Business In New Ways

The Chicago Tribune has communicated that Terry Armour has passed away. This is both sad and shocking as Terry Armour was so relatively young and full of life in every thing that he did. You can see how much he was loved by his coworkers and the public so clearly in the stories readers have told.

Chicago Blackhawks beat writer Chris Kuc discusses Terry’s universal appeal:

People knew him by sight, and if they didn’t, they instantly recognized him as soon as they heard his distinctive voice. And Terry enjoyed that. He relished being recognized and loved talking with people, whether he knew them or was meeting them for the first time. Sitting with Terry in the Stadium Club during a Sox rain delay would bring a steady stream of admirers by the table, ranging from celebrities to fans to concession-stand workers. It prompted me to once ask him, “Is there anyone you don’t know?” He said, “I don’t think so.”

These tributes are emotional and show his personality. But they miss his most under appreciated quality – encouraging interaction with people, listening to their thoughts and creating stories from these interactions. He lived user generated content long before the term was fashionable. My favorite experience with Terry was in 2003. I had breakfast with a friend and his column that day asked for people to send in thoughts on their favorite horror flick of all time. I jokingly said to my friend “Cubs NLCS Series 2003″ (the year of Steve Bartman). My friend said, “You should email that answer in to Terry”. What you see below is the email thread (read it from the bottom up) where he eventually joked that I was trying to take his job!

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:54:21 -0500 [10/20/2003 05:54:21 PM EST]
From: “Armour, Terry” <TArmour@tribune.com>
To: Me
Subject: RE: Favorite horror flick
Headers: Show All Headers

jeez, what are you trying to do, take my job? funny stuff. i’ve got to get
the sequel stuff in there, too.

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:52 PM
To: Armour, Terry
Subject: RE: Favorite horror flick

Finally, you already know that there is a sequel in the making…FOR
SURE…you just have no idea when or where it will appear on your screen…

OK, that’s it, I’m done with that, it’s taken it’s full course.

Quoting “Armour, Terry”:

boom shakalaka, thanks d……..

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:42 PM
To: Armour, Terry
Subject: RE: Favorite horror flick

“Why create fiction when reality is far more frightening?”

(just so you have my reasoning down)

Quoting “Armour, Terry”:

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…..dude, this rocks. you
made it. you will be in on sunday. christ, that’s pretty effing funny.

—–Original Message—–
From: Me
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:36 PM
To: Armour, Terry
Subject: Favorite horror flick

Cubs NLCS Series 2003

The article which he eventually printed that I can’t seem to find online (maybe the Tribune can help out) but I remember it saying “Let it go, Dave. Let it go.” as a mocking reference to the Cubs and Steve Bartman. That friend who asked me to email Terry still says “Let it go, Dave. Let it go.” to me about things all the time! It’s my most personal interaction with Terry, but it’s where I noticed how he turned to others to create user generated content. I noticed this pattern of user contributions in so many of his future articles. So my friend, I thank you for your contributions and let you go onto that great newspaper in the sky…

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• New Chicago Tribune Story Writer For Chicago Blackhawks This Season
• Chicago Tribune Lauches Embedded Video Ads and Stories
• Chicago Tribune Redesign

Due to insufficient state funding, the CTA will be forced to raise fares and eliminate service on January 20, 2008.

The CTA will eliminate 81 of its 154 bus routes; lay off more than 2,400 employees; and raise fares to record levels. In addition, with more than 700 fewer buses operating due to the bus route eliminations, the CTA will close three of its eight garages. Service on the remaining routes will be provided by other locations.

The CTA is fighting for funding to avoid these cuts. Contact your state legislators and tell them how important mass transit is to you. Go to SaveChicagolandTransit.com (UPDATE -site is  offline 7/2009) for more information.

Meanwhile, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission (BART) is scheduling a 33% increase in service while increasing fares a nominal amount (about 5%):

“Just as everyone is winding down with their holiday gift giving, we’re going to deliver our customers a goody bag of great service,” BART Board President Lynette Sweet said. “We hope our plans for richer service will put a big smile on the faces of all our 360,000 weekday riders.”

Starting January 1, 2008, BART riders will see enhanced service including:

• More trains, more often after 7 p.m. Monday-Saturday & all the time Sunday
• Double the trains to most stations on the San Francisco International Airport (SFO)/Millbrae extension
• Faster commutes times and direct service from Millbrae to downtown San Francisco
• Earlier start time for train service to SFO

33% SERVICE INCREASE MEANS MORE TRAINS, MORE OFTEN
The new schedule change will mean more frequent service after 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and all the time on Sunday. During this time period trains will run every 15 minutes instead of every 20 minutes.

“That’s a 33% increase in service,” BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said. “We’re extremely excited to be able to offer the same frequency of service at night that our customers currently enjoy during the day. This will be a boon for drivers who are becoming increasingly frustrated with nighttime and weekend traffic jams. We have plenty of parking during this time, giving people a greater incentive to avoid the traffic tie ups, save the environment, jump on BART and enjoy a hassle-free ride.”

FASTER, MORE FREQUENT SERVICE ON SFO AND MILLBRAE LINES
Starting January 1, the popular Pittsburg/Bay Point (Yellow) line will begin serving SFO at all times while the Richmond (Red) line will go directly into Millbrae Station starting January 2 (January 1, BART will run on a Sunday schedule). This means that commuters going from Millbrae to downtown San Francisco will see a six-minute (16%) drop in their travel time.

Which region is truly more green? Which region is more focused on quality of life? It’s amazing how two similar web sites in terms of function can send such massively different messages, isn’t it?

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Chicago Transit Authority – CTA Bus Tracker
• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Files Lawsuit Against Google
• “CTA riders are in for a rail mess” per Chicago Tribune

Though I’ve exchanged many emails with Tara before, I had never met her in person. After the meal we chatted and did some shopping. It was really nice talk to Tara as our conversation was focused and introspective – the kind of conversation that makes both people better for it, it was fun. Great fun with everyone chatting about things they are working on and things they want to achieve in 2008 and beyond.

Thanks to everyone who came out on a snowy Chicago morning (and those who didn’t) for some blogger bonding! May many future trackbacks take place…

Tara and Joi are fans of the site Ma.gnolia, is anyone else out there a big fan? I might have to try it out.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Last Night’s Blogger Dinner…
• Blogger Hasn’t Removed Other Blogs Violating Copyright
• Google Needs to Take Action on Splogs/Adsense

Quick points:
– a Black Swan is 1) a rare event, 2) with high impact, 3) that is hard to predict (pattern attributed post event)* examples include 9/11, stock market crashes, discoveries like Penicillin, start-ups (eBay, etc)
– most of mankind’s development has been driven by black swans (unstructured randomness) — black swans key in driving big entrepreneurial successes (payoff inverse to predictability)

Speaking of Ray Kurzweil, a few months ago he was in Chicago for Transvision 07, I had a chance to sit down for a chat with Ray at that time (scroll to the bottom for the podcast), but I’ve had some problems with my WordPress audio software that I fixed over the weekend. My apologies to both Ray and his many fans for the delay.

Listen to the interview: daviddalka.com_Ray_Kurweil_2007

Ray Kurweil talks about some of the following:

hedge funds

reading device for the blind

dietary supplements

his newsletter and web site

by the late 2020′s artificial intelligence eventually matching the ability human brains

becoming non-biological

seeing the intersection of artificial intelligence and biology

the ability to track history and information to create predictive models and time device introductions properly

exponential growth

his passion for ideas

developing his own treatment solution for type II diabetes

health and biology has not become information technology

pocket computing technology to help the blind with OCR readers

Second Life’s potential and indication of things to come and his breakfast with Philip Rosedale

Second Life’s potential to be as real as real life

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures
• Looking Forward to Barcamp Chicago 2008
• Matt McCall Gives Venture Capital Investing Tips at Barcamp Chicago

What you’ll find on that site is a rather revolutionary tool that allows you to set a custom alert for the expressway of your choice based on traffic speed. If the data is accurate this could be highly useful. Let’s say you normally leave to go somewhere at 6:45AM based on normal traffic. This tool apparently allows you to set up a 6:15AM alert if the road was moving below 20MPH so you could start your trip earlier. Sure this tool could still be more granular in both speed and in picking the exact section of road you want on that expressway but this trend towards a self-service, but a micro-controlled alert is nothing short of revolutionary compared to the traffic radio mass distribution model.

Chicago area commuters can now set up their own alerts here. I’d be interested in hearing about people’s usage stories and potential suggestions in the comment section, perhaps IDOT is listening.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Yahoo! Launches New Applicant Tracking System
• Illinois Innovation Accelerator Fund (i²A) Launched
• Microsoft Launches Mobile Advertising on MSN Mobile

CHICAGO

I’ve learned that certain merchandise that was once carried by Kmart, yes Kmart, is now carried in the landmark Marshall Field’s store that is presently labeled Macy’s.

There will be a rally at noon Sunday to bring back the great name of Marshall Field’s, prior to the NY Gaints game against the Bears in downtown Chicago (60602).

Jim McKay had this to say about the Black Friday Marshall Field’s protest:

How successful was it? Over 8,000 leaflets and over 1,300 buttons were distributed on State Street over the two days. Friday’s distribution exceeded our previous busiest day (Saturday, December 23, 2006) by roughly two-and-a-half times! Part of this was due to an unprecedented number of shoppers on State Street. Another part of this was simply those former Field’s shoppers who came to check out what was happening in the building that used to house their favorite store and were unhappy. They came in droves to get leaflets in buttons. At more than a few times, people stood in line to get leaflets and buttons from us. A couple of times, the lines were 10-12 people wide, although 5-7 people wide was more typical. That’s right–people waiting in line for buttons that say, “Forever Marshall Field’s” and leaflets explaining why it is important to continue boycotting Macy’s until Marshall Field’s is restored in service and quality as well as name. It was quite unprecedented. What’s more, there were those who picked up a leaflet or button or both and then came back minutes for even hours later with other family and friends to get more.

Amazingly, it appears the movement to bring back Marshall Field’s seems to be growing stronger over time in Chicago!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Marshall Field’s – Always Alive in Our Hearts
• Vlogs Ain’t Blogs
• In Case You Missed It…

More details.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TECH Cocktail This Thursday – Bring Your Business Cards!
• Suburban Chicago Silicon Prairie Social Internet and Technology Mixer Thursday
• Techcocktail3 is Thursday in Chicago

At first I was thinking this would be a long speech, it was in actuality a short, crisp presentation followed by a spirited, fun and playful question an answer session. It far exceeded my expectations and Kevin Ryan should be commended for having this type of community event.

Now onto a discussion of his new book, Meatball Sundae. The foundation for a new economy is being built. The past several years have laid the foundation for a new industrial revolution.

Told the detailed story of Josiah Wedgewood and his high standards for pottery.

There are 14 main themes occurring right now in the world – though there are many smaller and industry specific trends playing out. These 14 trends are (I typed them fast in a live blog situation so I might not have them exactly right):

- Direct communication with customers is creating massive change

- Individuals can amplifying their voice and become a critic – these are not hassles to be dealt with. The answer is building an organization that thrives and survives on this…

- Having an authentic story is vital

- We don’t have attention spans anymore (why are you still reading this post? )

- The new marketplace long tail – very few organizations are embracing it

- Create innovation – If you can describe a job it can get done by somebody cheaper

- Google and the shredding of information and bundling

- Noise and infinite channels of communication

- Consumers can talk directly to consumers without the middleman or company

- The changing balance of scarcity and abundance – it’s hard to imagine people being bored

- Big ideas can reach many people quickly

- The shift from how many to who – the idea of being on the today show instead of a blog is higher value is over

- Democratization of the wealthy – the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider but the rich is going up

- Gatekeepers are more important as they distribute information yet less important as you can go around them easier than ever

After the short speech on the trends there was a free for question and answer session…

Is your marketing out of sync?

SG: They should say how change your marketing (what you do) so that it’s in sync with what the market demands.

Why don’t most companies get it yet?

SG: I spent many years selling advertising. People buy TV advertising, it’s fun and it’s not measurable. When the Internet came along and they went running to Yahoo! to buy ads that aren’t measuring. Google and Overture were used by small business people in the ad. The choice is Superbowl ads that don’t work and measurable ads that are harder to make work. It’s naïve to hope that they will shift in a month or a year. They will eventually have to shift. The prices will continue to go up. People still applaud the commercial not the SEM.

(At this point the Gmail javascript froze all of my browsers. I had to reboot and relaunch. OF COURSE THIS WAS THE MOMENT KEVIN RYAN CHOSE TO ASK THE QUESTION I SENT IN – SO I’LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE AUDIO THERE.)

Where do you find thoughtleaders to lead organizations and instead of hiring people with “experience”?

SG: I wrote a post on a similar topic about the loss of relevancy of credentials today. Basically, there are two types of leaders qualified to do this:
- People who have managed change before
- Idea people who don’t necessarily know better

How do make a corporate blog work?

SG: Blogs don’t reach people, people reach blogs… You need to be quick and candid. It’s all about change and being iterative in nature.

Everyone attending SES Chicago will receive a copy of Seth’s book. I look forward to continuing our conversation and maybe even hearing his answers because Gmail’s javascritpt won’t be interfering with his in person appearance!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• SES Chicago 2007: Seth Godin Talks about Meatball Sundae
• Ask Launches AskEraser
• At SES San Jose / Silicon Valley 2008 Day 1

Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point.

Then you find out who your friends in the blogosphere are, Jeremiah Owyang mentioned it on his blog and verbally to several conference luminaries.

The rest of Friday I heard nothing and considered the jacket lost. Then on Saturday 44 hours after the time I lost it, an anonymous person turned the jacket in at the front desk and declined to be named when asked! When the Hilton called me I couldn’t believe it at first! While the blog posts and Jeremiah’s efforts were likely directly responsible, I must say that I’m pleased that whomever had it decided that turning it in was the right thing to do whether it was out of good intentions, guilt or fear being exposed by the videotape. It’s one of those events that strengthens my faith in the goodness of people and that things can turn out for the best – so in the end that is the positive message – be transparent, communicate and good things will happen!

I’d also like to sincerely thank Ray Stokes at the Hilton for his amazing helpfulness during this event, it will long be remembered.

Thank you everybody!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• FCF07 – My Leather Jacket is Missing
• The Growing Conversation Debunking the “Social Media Is Dead” Post by Steve Rubel
• Sexy Social Media Revolutions Emerging – Forrester Consumer Internet Conference 2007

John asserts that two major things are changing at present in the advertising marketplace:

1) The destruction of integrated marketing and direct control of brands is no longer possible.

2) The nature of storytelling is changing. People can understand multiple branding messages and themes, especially in Generation Y.

It’s totally awesome to be at a traditional marketing conference and hearing some of these themes being not only talked about, but actually practiced. There is still a long, long way to go. This conference with 13,000 delegates traveling from all corners of the earth dwarfs the size of the search marketing and social media conferences that I frequently attend. It quantifies the immense magnitude of the amount of change that is potentially still ahead. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about actually and I don’t overwhelm easily!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Management Consulting
• Bonnaroo – Lost Opportunity for Top Acts
• SES Day 2- New Yahoo Search Marketing PPC Platform…

Rob’s Run To Remember stated it very clearly:

Mist stations? Stations? There was ONE…at about 25.5. Anything else was an opened hydrant or a caring spectator who had a hose spraying out onto the runners. Mist stations, my ass. I mentioned mist stations to one of the organizers at the Expo on Friday and he kinda looked at me as if to say “I wish…”

Based on this, I can’t see how Chicago can host the 2016 Olympics. If marathon organizers can’t supply enough water and gatorade, or at least try to ensure that there is some backup plan…

This message board contains alot of horror stories about the debacle.

Many, many blog entries of others more closely involved than myself:

Second City Cop

Paul R Smith Dot Com

The Dogwood Report

Canada, Eh?

Kate’s English 304 blog

NPA Think Tank

Karen Got Wheels

Running Jayhawk

Montgomery’s in Manhattan

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Maybe Cartoonists Should Develop Next London Olympics 2012 Logo
• Chicago’s Michael Carruth Launches What If List Blog…
• Wanted Movie Filming Over In Chicago’s Wrigleyville

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Upcoming October Conferences
• My Speech at eComXpo Now Has a Contest
• Upcoming Conferences!

Anyone else have some travel/security tips?

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Today’s Events in the News – Al-Qaida
• Potential Chicago Cab Strike July 31 – How to Get to adtech(ad:tech) via CTA
• TSA, Customer Service and Sippy Cups

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Chicago Cubs Pitcher Carlos Zambrano Throws Cubs First No Hitter Since 1972!!!
• Cubs Rainout Pleasure
• Hugh Griffiths Joins Microsoft as Director of Mobile

I am pleased to announce that we have officially launched Viewpoints. To celebrate we are holding a launch party on September 28th, at 6pm at (edit – location will be mailed to you upon RSVP). I hope you (and a few friends) can attend. We will have a T-Shirt for everyone who has written a review and special prize drawings (iPhone anyone?) for those that attend. Be sure to bring a print out of your review to claim your T-Shirt!

Through the beta period we have built an audience of more than 100,000 monthly users. Be sure to explore the site to see some of the great reviews that users just like you have written. We encourage reviewers to write about products and services that they are passionate about.

Check out some of these great reviews. Electronics, Travel, Home & Garden or on the lighter side see what TV Shows, Movies, Music or Books you could discover. Of course we also have a great section for Local Places that features local Restaurants, Shopping, and even local Doctors & Hospitals. Our mission is to bring the reviewers profile, passions and personalities to life. We believe that user written reviews are more powerful when the reader knows more about the reviewer.

To RSVP please email jolie AT viewpoints DOT com prior to 2PM Central time Friday – send this post link as a reference to how you heard about the Viewpoints launch party. See you there.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Why Earth Hour Was Lame
• I Joined the Internet Explorer IE7 Beta 3 Party
• Catch-up: Through the Voice of Peter Harkins

TiECon Midwest is the premier event organized by TiE-Midwest held every two years. Join us in Chicago this October 5th for TiECon ’07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders, a half-day event for leading Midwest entrepreneurs to share thoughts and ideas on business and innovation.

Over 400 attendees will hear a keynote address by local, successful, serial entrepreneurs Glen Tullman and Howard Tullman. Following the keynote, distinguished panelists will present topics aimed to increase Entrepreneurial IQ through a series of sessions. Panels topics are: Right Dollars at the Right Time, Business Model Refinement, Attracting and Retaining Talent and Executive Coach for the Entrepreneur. The event will conclude with a cocktail reception designed to foster networking.

TiE stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise and is a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1992, TiE is an open and inclusive organization that has rapidly grown to more than forty chapters in nine countries. TIE Global is the world leader in cultivating and nurturing entrepreneurship.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Flickr to Live on, Yahoo! Photos to be Shut Down
• Land of Link’in Association (LOLA) – Chicago Internet Leaders to Gather
• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1

I had a few brief moments to download it and bang on them a bit. So without further delay here is a quick and dirty rundown of the four new Enso beta products, you can download them here in a nice little bundle, I’ve ranked them in the order that they interest me and my typical readership:

Enso Web Search Anywhere v0.1 – Simply select your document text, hold the caps lock, type goo and presto a new browser with that query executed in Google appears! After doing that only three times, I kind of find manual entry or cutting and pasting to be kind of ancient and stone tablet like. A distant memory. Maybe even downright lame!

Enso Translate Anywhere v0.1 – Translate languages on the fly in Enso. With a little refinement, I think the last reason I ever visit Alta Vista will meet it’s ultimate demise!

Enso Media Controller v0.1 - Now you are getting it. It controls your media with ease.

Enso TeX Anywhere v0.1 - Nothing to do with the lone star state, I think they state the value proposition quite well, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way of creating stunning equations quickly and simply?”

Again, this is just a brief overview, be sure to visit the Enso micro pages above for vivid detail and screen prints.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• GMail in Beta with Downtime – How Much Longer?
• My Hotmail is Now Windows Live Mail Beta
• Commentful Beta

When: Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 6:30-10:00pm
Where: Mullen’s Bar & Grill 3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532

An opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; whether you’re an upwardly mobile professional, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, or a VC. We welcome everyone, including IT workers, e-commerce companies, Internet and Web 2.0 startups, mobile and mobile marketing, and B2B services.

The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial.eventbrite.com.

For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or call Tim Courtney at 630.983.6064 or tcourtney at xnet.com.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Venture Capital Speed Dating – Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University
• MashMeet Chicago: This Thursday
• Upcoming Chicago Internet Web 2.0, Social Media and IPTV Events

I actually think I might be more excited that there is a new full time writer for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Kuc, assigned to the Chicago Blackhawks this season!  Someone needs to keep Tim Sassone at the Daily Herald honest. Chris seems to have a passion for the role that has been lacking for many years and in addition to his normal writing, he’s the author of the first Chicago Tribune Blog on the Chicago Blackhawks.

To both Patrick Kane and Chris Kuc, I wish you both a long and prosperous journey! I hope the Stanley Cup drought comes to an end sometime during your tenure!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Chicago Tribune Lauches Embedded Video Ads and Stories
• Chicago Tribune User Generated Content Pioneer Terrence Elijah Armour Passes Away
• Chicago Tribune Redesign

There are good summaries of his speech on blogs and feeds lurking about. Important stuff! Especially now in the universal search era. Speaking of blog and feeds, I recently changed over to the Feedburner Mybrand product and my new feed is http://feeds.daviddalka.com/DavidDalka , please update your feed readers! Thanks.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Online Passive Resume
• SES San Jose Technology Disconnections
• 6 Reasons Google Did Not Need To Acquire Feedburner

- I love scientific wonders! In Arizona there are many that are well known, like the Grand Canyon or Sedona. But I prefer the unlimited prickly pear lemonade, cactus and scenic beauty of Tuscon, Arizona Highways or my personal overlooked favorite Sunset Crater National Monument! Whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine is awesome. In Alberta, Drumheller and Lake Louise/Banff are just gorgeous to experience. The west coast surrounding Seattle, northern California and elsewhere is also great, I hope to experience Alaska someday, it’s one of the 14 states I’ve not yet visited.

- I love art, most often that is Impressionist art! When I was younger this meant Claude Monet exclusively. Then I saw Camille Pissaro’s exhibition of “The Impressionist in the City”, a tight cluster of paintings all about the city all from the 1890′s. I was blown away by it! Since then I’ve learned about how he was a collaborator among his peers and frequently experimented and innovated a bit from the efforts of each style. He was poor almost all his life, but always pursued what he loved to do! Pissarro is highly inspirational to me and I try to draw from his philosophies in my start up activities. You should check out some of his print galleries here and here. Also, there is currently an exhibition in Milwaukee “Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape” until September 9th, 2007. The exhibition then moves onto to the Brooks Museum in Memphis.

- I’m a fan of the Chicago Bears, Chicago BlackHawks and Chicago Cubs. Yes, two out of three of those is kinda depressing sometimes. Well OK it’s downright sad! Bright spots in there include many memories of Walter Payton, Steve Larmer (you belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame!) and Ryne Sandberg. I miss Chicago Stadium (should have been an untouchable landmark)) but still have Wrigley Field.

- I’ve presently lived in three different North American metropolitan areas: Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. I love traveling and living in different cities as it opens your mind to different ways of thinking about life and approaching the world. I hope to one day live in other cities to gain even more perspectives perhaps even internationally!

- When I lived in New York City, I worked for BlackRock during it’s 80 to 800 person growth phase, this is why I covet being part of highly entrepreneurial environment, whether that is a start up or a highly innovative division of larger company. On BlackRock, I think most people still don’t fully understand how revolutionary this company was from a technical architecture, data redesign, customer service innovation and revenue diversification standpoint. I’ve often said I’d trade my MBA before I’d trade that amazing work experience and I truly mean it. I look forward to being a critical piece of a company like BlackRock again someday!

- I’m fascinated with history, both from a business, innovation and society perspective. There are many great lessons of the past that can be utilized in new situations to make wiser decisions. Peter Drucker is an idol of mine from an innovation and customer listening standpoint. The Chief Marketing Officer of the future will combine many new elements with traditional elements to create first in class experiences.

- I love meteorology! I almost studied full-time when I was in college. I think that weather events will play a critical role in some of the trigger point variables in the coming era of mobile search marketing and mobile advertising and it is one of the many key relevancy factors I’ve identified that can make a big difference. I’m quite excited by this convergence.

- I love to find the best grub around. Whether it’s fine dining like New York’s Union Square Cafe, pizza, ribs, a kick ass burger or things unique to a place like Italian Beef in Chicago or corned beef in Cleveland. You can be sure that if the food is top notch you can likely attract me there to chat!

I’ll tag:

Cshel

Jason Bartholme

Barry Schwartz – Cartoon Barry

Mike Maddaloni

Kristy Sammis

Not tagged? Feel free to join in anyway!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• The Meaning of is is
• Why Executives Are Like Blog Readers
• TC08 Chicago – Designing With Users In Mind

They did shoot a scene with simulated gunfire and they did a car scene as the guy from the Ultimate Arm was here filming with them. Below are two pictures, one of the sets and the Ultimate Arm filming vehicle, the owner says the fastest he’s ever gone in reverse is 40MPH – quite an achievement when you consider the odd weight on his vehicle!!! Thanks for all the people who commented, emailed and stopped by, it was fun meeting all of you! As you can see I need a new camera, donations and review units highly encouraged!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Wanted Movie – Mobile Chicago Local Neighborhood Filming
• Chicago’s Michael Carruth Launches What If List Blog…
• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

- The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

- The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

- The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

- The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

- The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
- Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
- To increase brand awareness
- To Sell Products
- To Generate Leads
- To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Impressions
- ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
- A Business
- An Industry

Beyond Search
- Media Buying
- Budget Allocation
- PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• ad:tech Chicago 2006- Warm and Cozy SEO
• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1
• ad:tech Chicago

Shashi Seth, Head of Monetization, YouTube.com

Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo!

Patrick Moorhead, National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Avenue A | Razorfish

Chris D’Alessandro, Group Director, Customer Insight, Organic, Inc.

Moderator: Curt Hecht, Executive VP, Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group

Rebecca: Video search is not as important to core clients as media that is relevant to the brand. The off network piece is important as well. Reaching your users wherever they are, walking down the street, whatever…

Patrick: It’s almost the Holy Grail. We need to redefine contextual to mean what the user means at that moment.

Chris: If you are looking at an awareness company, it’s not the Holy Grail.

Curt: How does this scale? How are the agencies? Pre-rolls?

Rebecca: The trend to distribute us towards pre-roll. We are far away from dynamic video smart ads. What they search for. Dynamically delivered video is hard to deliver. Dynamic video is a long ways away.

Patrick: I disagree that we are far away from dynamically generated video.

Curt: Who is digging in on this?

Chris: Emerging and bleeding technology is getting there.

Curt: Are you talking about testing and learning?

Chris: Search is always part of everyone’s repertoire.

Rebecca: Shopping and merchandising makes a lot of sense. We have huge testing and learning going on right now.

Curt: Marketers will have to deal with versioning of creative.

Chris: we’ve had to segment sites. What kind of content do we deliver?

Patrick: We have to measure this stuff from an optimization of media dollars. The same investment can service a much broader audience. Campaign management tools will catch up at some point. Look at things holistically; it’s half about people management.

Shashi: Traditional click through and engagement numbers are not sufficient. We need to come up with standard metrics across the board.

Audience question on pre-rolls and potential attrition to smaller sites.

Shashi: When we announce our ad unit, we will take all those things into account.

Rebecca: We only use it for premium inventory. We balance the pre-roll with the length of the content. We’ve done a lot of testing in this area and found it had no adverse impact.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1
• ad:tech Chicago 2006- Warm and Cozy SEO
• Contact #2300 – Contextweb CEO Anand Subramanian

MODERATOR:
Chris Bowler, VP, Media Director, Agency.com

PANELISTS:
Warren Kay, Director of Emerging Products, Yahoo! Search Marketing (not present)

Dominic Preuss, Product Manager, Local Advertising, Google

Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com

John du Pre Gauntt, Senior Analyst, eMarketer

The most important thing about this session is that half of the people from the previous session left – it shows that people don’t understand search and understand its’ importance in the eventual mobile domination. This session was presentations and much less dynamic.

Dominic –
Local and mobile are very much the same. Google Maps changes the way that people uses maps. Google Earth has some great partnerships. Google search on the wap browser. Gmail is an important part of our strategy. It is in a single repository. Discussed local business center. Make sure your information is up to date. Coupons for Maps. Regional targeting, country, state, city and radius. Google Local Business Ads. Google Mobile Ads – shorter messaging, link to mobile website, click to call enabled, carrier targeting, markup language targeting.

Janice Rohn – unfortunately had to leave the room for almost all of her talk…

John – Technical scale is not an issue. It’s about answers not links. It’s about all the collateral as well. The pain is very high. The carriers are not supporting a cookie like feature. Cross-carrier targeting it hard. Talked about a number of challenges facing the space and the fragmentation issues. For every $1 you spend on mobile spend $2 on training your staff. If you have the most wonderful mobile experience and a lousy customer experience, it does not matter! I couldn’t agree more.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• ad:tech Chicago 2006- Warm and Cozy SEO
• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1
• ad:tech Chicago

The focus area of the local shoot appears to be two blocks south of Wrigley Field in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood. An antique shop seems to be one of the areas of focus. As of this writing, they are still setting up tons of mobile equipment here locally. The note says traffic will be diverted from 11Pm-5AM tonight, when combined with all the lighting equipment being brought in and it appears that some of the scenes will be shot at night August 12-13th. A local neighborhood map of this Chicago area can be found here.

I’ve never seen so many cops around (also pictured below). I mean the Chicago Cubs could actually win the World Series and there would be less cops! It’s too bad the Chicago Police aren’t out in force like this on game days or on Friday or Saturday nights on Clark Street in Chicago.

If you have any notes on what they are filming or you are going to be in the area, please drop me a note or write your own blog post about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Take care.

UPDATE 8/13 7:30AM: The filming did not take place last night. There is only a few people out there right now.

UPDATE #2 8/13 3:45PM A truck just unloaded 3 older cars in front of my place at 1006 West Roscoe. No plates on the cars.

UPDATE #3 8/13 5:15PM – Just received this email from Alderman Tunney’s office:

To the residents and businesses in Wrigleyville

The cast and crew of “Wanted” would like to thank you for your cooperation and patience during the filming in your neighborhood. (Commentary – does this mean a free screening?)

While the Studio is Universal Pictures, the crew is made up to a large extent of residents from the Chicago area who are highly professional and respectful of the areas where we film.

Tonight is our last night of main unit filming in your neighborhood. The locations will be mainly in the alley between Sheffield and Clark from Roscoe to School St and in the alley east of Clark between Roscoe and Newport and there will be some simulated gunfire in these areas. As always, Chicago Police will be with us to help with any traffic problems.

We greatly appreciate your patience and look forward to seeing Wrigleyville in the movies.

Thank you.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Wanted Movie Filming Over In Chicago’s Wrigleyville
• SMXLOMO 2007 Day 1 – SMX Local and Mobile Denver Keynote
• Microsoft Launches Mobile Advertising on MSN Mobile

Alan Warms, former CEO of Participate and now Publisher of Real Politics (Buzztracker)

Matt Moog, CEO of Viewpoints

James Malackowski, CEO of Ocean Tomo

First up is Alan, founder of Buzztracker. Was part of Freeloader, eShare, Participate Systems, Realclearpolitics.com and now Buzztracker. The opportunity is to build the custom content feeds that can be delivered and used by the entire ecosystem of the Internet domain owners and management companies. I kept waiting for an explanation of how his site(s) added value to the Internet ecosystem from the user’s perspective – I’m still waiting for him to distinguish it significantly from a MFA Splog network.

Matt Moog, CEO and Founder of Viewpoints. Used to work at Q Interactive and Microsoft. We raised $50 Million and then $25 Million in the market and blew through that in 6 months. Recovered to be cashflow positive (2003) and net income (2004). Viewpoints has raised $4.7 Million in series A, currently 7 employees. The business is about reviews in different verticals.

James says that 79.2% of the economy is driven by intangible assets in 2005 and up from 16.2% in 1975. We created Ocean Tomo after we sold our first business. We are the Sotheby’s of intellectual property. People recognize it. Ocean Tomo 300 is now published. Innovation actually outperforms commodities. Ocean Tomo has not taken outside capital at this time.

Throughout the evening one could not help but be impressed by the uniqueness of James Malackowski’s ideas and execution and Matt Moog’s perseverance, transparency and desire to build anew.

What is the best way to become an entrepreneur?

Alan: Live for some period of time without a W-2. Test out a new hypothesis. Go to conferences seeing what people are doing. Start building some things, hire a developer, and try to get a customer or two. How do you decide whether the idea is big enough? Is the market ready for it?

Matt: I was working at Microsoft and was 25 years old. On the side, I took some money and built an application. It was on CD, pre-Internet. Speed up ten years, I wrote the initial plan in 2005 for Viewpoints. Then I left to found it 2006.

James: Unique combination of greed and panic!

Is it about the money?

James: Yes. It’s about sacrificing family and other things.

Alan: You care about the money.

Matt: You have an informal formula. I have not paid myself anything for the past year. I’d be currently willing to do this for up to 3 years.

James: People don’t hedge their bet. There is market space and risk. You can recover your investment.

Matt: With Coolsavings we raised angel money, then got on the hyper growth track of raising more money. A well known investment banker was telling us to raise more money. Then I had $15 Million in debt and $100,000 in cash. I needed to raise some money to hire a staff to do the stuff I couldn’t do. The later you spend the money, the smarter you’ll spend it.

How do you raise too much money?

Matt: I didn’t set out to raise as much as I did at Viewpoints. It’s possible to lose control. Each dollar raised the higher the investor expectation. This is kind of a funny dynamic.

Alan: You’re at point A and you want to get to point F. We try to raise $3 Million and got $13 Million. You get scar tissue.

James, you did it the smart way?

James: Over three years, I was burning up that non-compete, I went to institutional side looking for loans, Harris Bank told us no. Then we asked if they’d lend us $15,000 for a car and there were five of us so we raised $75,000. It’s all about the capital structure and how you communicate a request.

Matt: Always be transparent in everything you do.

Ron May brought up that Moog’s dad had invented the Moog synthesizer. (Matt seems to have a strong desire to stand on his own accomplishments). There was then a question on hiring.

James: The smartest person we hire at Ocean Tomo is the person we hire today.

How do you keep the group in tact?

James: We try to take people outside our industry. That is a huge attraction. You will be richer for the experience even if it doesn’t work. They not only have to believe in the vision, they have to believe in you.

Matt: Lon offered an office out of the blue. Most of the people come from Orbitz. People have to be jazzed about working at our company. I like the people who like to ask questions.

Matt: Lon Chow gave me a book. It’s a “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executives”. Are people aligned and communicating? In terms of the revenue model figure out how much do ads sell for, what do they look like? On the west coast, build an audience then figure it rules the day. Businesses never grow at the rate that they say they do. Sometimes you’ll grow three times as fast other times not as fast.

Great conversation and event by TiE!!!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• How Much Equity For Your Venture Capital Funding and Employees?
• Matt Cutts Feeling WordPress Pain – Chapter 2
• Illinois Traffic Alert System Launches

” The McCormick Convention Center is, unsurprisingly, operated by a series of labor groups who, working hand in hand, rip apart the building and put it back together to fit the needs of whichever group happens to be renting space here. So for YearlyKos, the teamsters, and the plumbers, and the electricians all come in to haul partitions, and divert piping, and… lay wiring. One catch is, of course, that the more wiring you need, the more you have to pay. The other, less obvious catch, is that any wiring you try to do yourself–running extension chords and power strips across the room–might well violate your contract and cost you a big fine. So the result is a lot of dead laptop batteries. At a frickin’ blogger convention.”

Matthew Yglesias points out similar sentiment.

Then last weekend Kristy Sammis, the wonderful hard-working conference organizer, pointed out the following issues on her blog in regards to Blogher07:

“The City of Chicago has a lot of rules. A LOT of them. And also taxes. And fines. Like, did you know that there’s a 3% soda tax? Or that our caterer could have lost his license for letting attendees leave with bottles of wine, even though the nice people at Hess were willing to give the extras out? Or that moving one single air wall would have cost FOUR HOURS of labor?”

“The shuttles cost approximately 18 billion dollars. (They would have only cost 17 billion, but we paid that extra billion to have a dedicated dispatcher ensuring that all five shuttles were running all day.)

I do not know why the drivers didn’t know where they were going. I don’t know why they just sometimes stopped showing up. I don’t know why they weren’t labeled, a la BLOGHER SHUTTLE. And I really don’t know HOW you can get into an accident when you’re driving at 3 miles an hour in Pier traffic.

But I, too, would sure like to find out.”

Kristy so would I. Why is Chicago turning off it’s last golden goose, the conference industry? If we can’t run shuttle buses less than a mile for 800 people how can this city possibly even dream of executing on hosting huge events with the current state?

As someone who spends alot of time at Chicago conferences, the time to improve these situations is now – before there are no more Chicago conferences.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• 2008 Mobile World Congress Barcelona (MWC08 – formerly 3GSM)
• Wanted Movie – Mobile Chicago Local Neighborhood Filming
• Turning Towards My Inflection Point

“These universities, through their provosts and other key leaders, have worked
together on some of higher education’s greatest challenges and opportunities.
This partnership with Google is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the
history of the CIC, and sets the stage for a remarkable transformation of library
services and information access. We’re opening up these resources as both a
common good shared among the universities, as well as a public good available
more broadly, ” said Barbara McFadden Allen, director of the CIC.”

This announcement followed 5 days after Barry Schwartz reporting about custom search engines. It appears things are heating up again in the Book Search arena.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• The Chicago Business School Speech to Air on Cspan2
• Blake Jorgensen, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Tim Cadogan of Yahoo! to Present at Thomas Weisel Partners Conference
• The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Formerly Chicago GSB

Here are some tips on how to navigate via CTA to Navy Pier. Cash fare on the CTA is currently $2. This is a pdf map of the areas described below.

From the Sheraton: the #29, #65 and #124 buses stop in front of the Sheraton on Illinois and terminate and 600 East Grand Avenue, this will save you three blocks of walking.

The number#124 bus starts in the West Loop at Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and terminates at 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from Midway Airport, take the Orange line to Roosevelt, walk down the stairs and travel one block west to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

If traveling from O’hare Airport, take the blue line to Monroe, walk up the stairs, then walk one block east to State Street. Take the#29 State bus northbound to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those staying at a hotel a bit further north, the #66 bus travels east on Chicago Avenue, then south on Fairbanks to Grand to 600 East Grand Avenue.

For those of you attending ad:tech, I have the following high level networking objectives and look forward to speaking with you (please drop me an email contained on my Bio page):

1) I’m seeking anyone with senior contacts at major search engines

2) Anyone with ideas or connections to publishers, advertisers or investors regarding mobile search and mobile advertising.

Have a great show!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Wordcamp in San Fran Today!
• Catch Up – Interesting Posts Recently
• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1

I’ve already met some fun and compassionate people! This conference is unique to me in that it’s not so much about me learning about new online marketing or blogging techniques. It’s about learning about different points of view of looking at the world. There are about 800 people here and it’s a bit overwhelming in terms of effective and targeted networking. But everyone is very open – I wish women everywhere communicated to me in the frank straightforward manner that I’m experiencing here.

I’m sitting in a session on branding. Many of the people I know in the room are IM’ing me. Here is a nice summary of the session from Felicia Sullivan.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Blogher 2007 is in Chicago July 27, 28 & 29
• CIMA Chicago March Dinner
• Email From Gmail Blocked As Spam on Many Networks

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Blogher 2007 is Happening Now!
• adtech Chicago 2007 is July 31-August 1
• CIMA Chicago March Dinner

But why pay people to frequently repurpose content as their own? Why not remove these middlemen entirely? If you really want to have a network of blogs, why not give local bloggers revenue to post their content directly as a blog hub?

Aaron Wall discusses the link and arbitrage issues in this unique post. Scott Karp also raises interesting questions.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• New Chicago Tribune Story Writer For Chicago Blackhawks This Season
• Chicago Tribune Lauches Embedded Video Ads and Stories
• Chicago Tribune User Generated Content Pioneer Terrence Elijah Armour Passes Away

See you around town sometime soon!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Wanted Movie – Mobile Chicago Local Neighborhood Filming
• TECH cocktail Chicago 7
• Wanted Movie Filming Over In Chicago’s Wrigleyville

Thanks for dropping by via your search engine of choice.

Comments on this post are now closed due to job spam. You may contact David with your MBA level jobs and he’s happy to talk to you about them.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• My Main Computer Died – RIP
• Career Distinction : Stand Out by Building Your Brand
• Management Consulting

Without further delay here are the comments that left URL addresses or made pingbacks – I think I removed the duplicates:
:: jozjozjoz ::
365questions.org
Aaron Brazell
Abe Olandres
Adam Hertz
Adam Lasnik
adrian
Agerhart
Alan Wilensky
Alexandre
An ongoing Press Release
anatol
Andrew
Andy Beal
Angela Vargo
annieo
Atari
Cartoon Barry Blog
Barry Schwartz – Search Engine Roundtable
Bill Hanekamp
Bill Slawski
Blogging Pro
BlogSchmog
Blueheart Blossip
blyberg
Brian
Brian Ray
Brian’s Business Blog
Bryan Eisenberg
BusinessBlogWire
byron
Carl Bromley
Carolyn Shelby
Charlotte Web Design
Chris Garrett
Chris Messina
chris williams
Craig Smith
Dakars
Dan
Dan Schawbel
Dana Todd
Daniel Sitter
Dave Pasternack
Dave Van de Walle
Me in Chicago
David Sifry
China Search Marketing Tour
David Temple
Dawn Douglass
Digged Stories
discreet_chaos
Don MacAskill
dwlt
Easton Ellsworth
Ed French
Ed Kohler
Ed Kohler
El Cable
Elaine Vigneault
Eli Sand
EveryDigg
Famous Quotes – Famous Sayings
Florchakh
For once and for all!
Forever Geek
Frank Gruber
Garrett French
Geeky Housewife
gl hoffman
Glenn Sheiner
Guy
Henri Duong
Hiten Shah
Ian Kennedy
Bill Slawski
Inside the Mind of an Internet Marketer
Internet Marketing Monitor
Internetno
Ivan Minic
Jakob
Jason Alba
Jason Bartholme
Jason Jacobsohn
Jeff Barson
jennifer jones
Jeremiah Owyang
Jeremy Zawodny
Jim Santo
Joe C
Joel Lemieux
John
John
John Carcutt
johno
Jonathan-C. Phillips
Joost
JR
K T Cat
Karl Long
Kathie Thomas
Kathy Sierra
Kevin Dugan
Kevin Lee
Kevin Makice
Kris Kolodziej
Kyle Korleski
Kyle Libra
Lake Neuron
Lawrence Lugar
Lee Odden
Life Rocks ! 2.0
Liz Strauss
Lorelle
Loren Baker
lucas josh
Manataseosolutions
Marketing Strategy Innovation Blog
Mathpoints
Matt Keegan
Mexico501
Michael Arrington
Michael’s Views
michaelzimmer.org
Mike Maddaloni
Mikerochip
ModernMagellans
Nancy
Nashville SEO
Nate Koechley
Neil Patel
Netpaths
News Doggy
Next Google CEO
Nice
Nick Chandler
Nicki Dugan
Not So Relevant
Nunsuni
Office-Ninja.net
OFlaherty
Ordinary Folk
paisley
Pamela
Pascal Van Hecke
Pat Phelan
Patrick Schaber
Perfect Blogger
Pete Cashmore
Pete Prestipino
Peter Harkins
pigduck.com
PR meets the WWW
Problogger
ProfitPapers
Project Syndicate
Ranking Konzept
Reality Me » Today’s Political Video
RichardatDELL
Robyn Tippins
rod/techfold.com
Ryan M
Robert Scoble
SEA Expert NL
Sean
Search Engine Land
Search Engine People
SELaplana
SensibleWords
shel israel
Shoemoney
Showeb2.0
SirNuke
SMSWorld.
spacecowboy ian
Steven
Sumit Chachra
Takuya
TechCrunch en francais
TechFold
Technology Evangelist
TechTxt.Org
The Article Writer
Chris Dinges
The Wannabe Venture Capitalist
TheBizofKnowledge
TheVanBlog
Tilak
Tom Shelley
tom sherman
Toma e Embrulha
University Update
Vidize.com
Weblog Tools Collection
WebProNews
Website Magazine
Wendy Piersall
Whoisandrewwee
Wiglaf
WildBlueSkies
William C. Spaulding
WindyBits
techtagg.com
Xbil
Year Zero at (((withoutsound)))
ymarketing
Zeppelin Media Blog

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• MSN eating into Google?
• MyBlogLog to Rebrand and Make Significant Changes
• Fixing Akismet Comment False Positives

It’s called the What If List and I must say I’m quite jealous of the broadness of the subject with the right amount of specificity to make a theme.

Good luck Michael!!!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Microsoft Launches Mobile Advertising on MSN Mobile
• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures
• Biggest Threats Google Faces – Adding to Rand Fishkin’s Post

I’m not buying an iPhone Saturday.

I’m not buying an iPhone anytime soon.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• iphone Mash Up
• iPhone
• Cisco’s iPhone Trademark Post

I’ve attached the picture of Jono with skewered Cicadas. We prepared them by marinating them in white wine before roasting them over smoldering coals. They tasted like freshly roasted peanuts, but with a slightly bitter aftertaste. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t know that you were eating a cicada except that the legs scratched a bit on the way down.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Cicada Emergence Map for Brood XIII Chicago and Lake County 2007
• Chicago’s Enso Introduces New Beta Products – Web Search Anywhere, Translate Anywhere and More
• Michael Arrington’s Entrepreneur Post

Here are some blog summaries of the event(you guys need to link to each other more!):

Vegigun

Nixternal

Ken Vandine

Joi Podgorny

Dave Bost

It would be impossible to summarize all the great people that were there, but here’s a few:

Michael Carruth, I got to see a different side of him with his talk about domains today, he’s more than a software trainer and startup enabler!

Matt McCall, a summary of his talk is here.

Aza and Jono from Humanized. I had a great sit down conversation with Aza regarding their product and their plans for it. Wonderfully positive and visionary guys see many things that fit into the elusive obvious.

Individuals like Scott Van Den Plas, Hencry Hwangbo, Victoria and David Naylor were there.

Andy Sernovitz, Aaron Williams and Mike Mangino also gave talks.

Thanks to everyone for the good times and personal growth! I appreciate it deeply.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures
• Search Engine Strategies San Jose – Silicon Valley August 19-23
• Barcamp Chicago is July 15-16, 2006 – 648 West Randolph

This past Sunday, Matt gave an informal speech during Barcamp Chicago. It was a great pleasure to see him talk in such unstructured detail. You may wish to see my past TiE entrepreneurs venture capital discussion panel writeup to learn more about Matt as he moderated an excellent panel back in 2006. Be sure to click through to the link of the full transcript in the Wiglaf Journal.

I was busy asking Matt questions during the talk. I noticed that John Mascarenhas was taking notes and invited John to be a guest blogger with his notes. John has been on the founding teams of three startups, including Fullaudio (Musicnow). John is looking for opportunities with early stage tech ventures including clean tech and has had experiences in strategy, business development, financial modeling, marketing and early sales roles – in operations and as consultant.

Here are John Mascarenhas’ guest blogging notes on Matt McCall’s talk on venture capital at Barcamp Chicago 2007:

Matt McCall, a partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson Portage, speaks about venture capital. In the spirit of BARcamp, keeps his presentation informal and open, answering questions with the perspective and insight of an experienced investor in early stage technology.

Following are my notes, based more on what is interesting to me than attempting to cover everything that is said. [My comments are in brackets]

VC is right for a minority of start-ups – self-funded or angel investments are right for most tech start-ups. Remember the 10x rule. VC’s need every investment to have a potential for a 10x return, because of the high-risk nature of early stage investments.

Entrepreneurs should ask themselves:
1. Is my idea/nascent business a ‘business’, a ‘product’ or a ‘feature set’
2. How big is the pain I’m solving? Has anyone ever paid for this? (Evangelizing is tough.) Generally, either behavior or infrastructure drives the inflection point. (e.g., widespread broadband made web-video business viable) Who is paying and how much

Size the market from the bottom up. Need to know – we have sold or can sell this widget for $X to Y number of customers. Then, there are x thousand other target customers with the same needs/pain.

Matt likes pay for performance lead generation. Everyone is already trained to give you a cut. It’s not just ad dollars.
Harder models to make work are a) productivity gains…hard to quantify and b) cost savings. Hard to set a test and say here are the cost savings. For cost savings the best route is often outsourcing, so customers do not have to pay a lot of $ to get started

In response to a question, Matt discusses why NDA’s aren’t appropriate for a VC to sign. For example FeedBurner has been successful not because of a proprietary technology, but more because of the excellent customer experience.
1. They cycled very fast, improvements, great customer service.
2. they focused. One thing: syndication services for publishers

FeedBurner would continually iterate to keep ahead of the competition, and not let them get a foothold. The point is you have to know what the comp is doing, [and looking ahead to what could become a competitive advantage for them if you don’t focus on getting there first] Jonathan Wolter of Feedburner was here confirming and adding to what Matt says.

We’re in an era when tech is a commodity. Need to out-execute, and become a standard. (e.g. ruby on rails) User experience is the key. Simpler, no change in customer behavior. Michael Moritz, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful VC’s is highly focused on the user interface.

More advice for entrepreneurs from Matt:

Find teams that are plugged into the network they are dealing with:
- Shows in good understanding of the revenue model
- Shows in knowing your competition doing it now. (if vc asks you about it, don’t say they are no good…shows lack of diligence)
- Don’t quote Gartner etc…it’s meaningless (or worse) to a VC

Response to a question. As VCs use their network to poke around the market place and know more than what the entrepreneur said, that’s not a good sign. With FeedBurner, Matt and his team did early due diligence, checking around the space before investing. What they found confirmed what they were being told by the Feedburner team.

Responds to question asking why he invested in Viewpoints. Matt loves the idea of consumer reviews and re-syndicating it back out. Matt believes that Matt Moog will be continuing star in our region. They are proactively engaging communities and iterating quickly.

Thinking of Viewpoints and other opportunities, Matt talks about the growing model of consolidating content (like reviews) from pools, building community interaction, and re-syndicating that back out. As the Internet evolves, some of the major ways to monetize traffic evolved from banner ads, then search, then/now social networks. Matt thinks the 4th wave is interactive cascading of markets in IPTV, web, mobile etc…two way communication.

Pitch – business plan should be as detailed as you need it to be to get your thinking straight. For VC, 5-7 page summary and 25 or less slide presentation. VC’s all have ADD. Going to win or lose in the first 2-3 slides.
Funding Process: couple weeks to get meeting, few weeks, then one more pitch, then term sheet – then massive due diligence. 4-6 weeks. Assume 6-7 months from start of looking to closing on money.

Market research: loves to see this – we sell x product for x money or something similar for something close to x money. Go deep in a given vertical…how you productize and sell. That is how it works. Prove P, then give visibility on Q, in that vertical. Think in terms of Account worth = y heads $x per month…pipeline of next 100. Matt wants some visibility of how the company will get to $50MM or $100MM revenue.

Responding to a question – says focus will be on one vertical, but also look at analogs to show how you can move into other verticals.

Thanks again to John Mascarenhas for sharing his notes as a guest blogger in the section above.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures
• Looking Forward to Barcamp Chicago 2008
• Chicago’s Enso Introduces New Beta Products – Web Search Anywhere, Translate Anywhere and More

It wouldn’t be possible without you…

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• FCF07 – Social Media Brought My Jacket Back!!!
• How Much Equity For Your Venture Capital Funding and Employees?
• Intellext – Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger

If you’d like to learn a little about me so you can talk more, please check out my Chicago marketing leader bio.

This picture might help enable you to do that!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Barcamp Chicago is July 15-16, 2006 – 648 West Randolph
• Looking Forward to Barcamp Chicago 2008
• Techcocktail 5 John Barleycorn Wrigleyville Pictures

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• ad:tech Chicago 2006- Warm and Cozy SEO
• ad:tech Chicago
• ad:tech Chicago 2006 – Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: Framing the Market and the Value Chain

Liz Strauss says that Jeff is looking for ways to describe “The Herding Cats”. I’d say an “exhilarating and uplifting rock power trio” from my days writing at Musicfrisk.com.

Jeff – Based on watching The Herding Cats, I think you’d really like this band Red Wanting Blue check them out the YouTube video below. They are at the Lion’s Den in New York City on August 3rd. I’d be only too happy to make the introduction to the lead singer so you could attend as a guest.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Upcoming Chicago Internet Web 2.0, Social Media and IPTV Events
• Viewpoints.com Launch Party Friday Night
• Happy Memorial Day 2007

There was a good size crowd and many faces I recognized along with a great food spread. I met some new ones as well. Fortunately the event was in an area not frequented by cicadas. Pictured below are Bob Geras with Ron May and then Ron “Watermelon” May with Al Wasserberger serving up the bowl.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• TiE Global Chairman Apurv Bagri Interviewed on Podtech
• Comcast Tech Tells Story
• Jason Jacobsohn of Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center Interviewed

1) Video game companies designing graphics

2) Non-profits needing to explain their value

3) Any company or person needing to tell a story

4) Cartoon transcripts of Scoble’s PodTech interviews

5) Or maybe designing a new Olympic logo for the 2012 London games!

Yikes the logo below cost 400,000 GBP ($797,000) to make according to the Guardian Limited and BBC News. The BBC stated that the video version caused reports of epileptic seizures. The numerous negative YouTube videos can be viewed here.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Indy 500 Television Coverage
• Happy Thanksgiving 2007
• Merry Christmas!!!

Jason Jacobsohn wrote a nice summary of the May awards event, so I won’t add other details other than to say that Rania El-Sorrogy is in amazing entrepreneur who will likely create many companies in her lifetime and that I hope to get to know her better over time. Keith Schacht was also in attendance at the event and said a little bit about it.

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• DEPAUL EARNS #2 GRADUATE AND #7 UNDERGRADUATE RANKING IN ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE’S ANNUAL “BEST SCHOOLS FOR ENTREPRENEURS”
• Jason Calacanis Accepts Neil Patel’s SEO Challenge
• How the Credit Crunch Could be Good for Venture Capital and Other Sectors

June 19th, Jeff Pulver is having a party at the House of Blues in Chicago on June 19th from 7:00pm-11:00pm. You must RSVP. It’s rumored non-RSVP’d intruders will be escorted out the back door on Lower Wacker Drive and trust me those rats down there are mighty big so don’t even think about it!

June 20th, Kirsten Nicole, one of my favorite chat buddies that brightens my days, of Mashable is holding a gathering, buy your tickets by June 6th and get a 2 for 1 deal! The event is described as follows:
The web 2.0 technology community is experiencing a lot of growth in Chicago, and we would like to not only recognize this community, but help bridge the gap between Chicago and Silicon Valley and other traditional tech dominated locales, where there is a wealth of knowledge and resources for all things technology-related. The media sponsor for the event is Mashable.com. We expect to have 5-8 start-ups from across the country demo at the event and there will be plenty of networking!

---
Related Articles at Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management:

• Upcoming Yahoo! Presentations
• Google to Present at Upcoming Investor Events
• Upcoming Search Engine Investor Conference Presentations