Author Archive for John Erik

Couple tips for Twitter newbs

Published
by
John Erik
on June 25, 2008
in Friends and Mobile Communication
. 4 Comments

My friend and former Creativity professor (yes, that was a class for my advertising degree) Assaf Avni just joined Twitter [@assafavni]. I’m excited to be able to keep up with what he’s up to. So he will get the best out of Twitter, I wrote a him a list of things to do/watchout for. … here’s the list perhaps it will be helpful to yall too.

  • twit messes up quite a bit. doesnt post, late post, no sms, no tracking, etc
  • when you setup your mobile device, whether you follow anyone to your phone or not, you want to send “track assafavni” to twitter (40404). doing this will send you SMS notifications anytime someone says your name who you are not following, very handy, must do this (but beware sometimes when twitter is overloard it doesnt work and you will still miss messages)
  • Summize is a great twitter search tool and you can use it to search for your username to see if anyone was talking to you that you missed
  • setup Twitterfeed to autopost to twitter anytime you post to your blog
  • install the facebook twitter app and allow it to sync your status
  • search for people you think are cool and follow them :) then talk to them, really
  • import your gmail contact list (click Find and Follow)
  • get an unlimited text messaging plan
  • update frequently, people really do care, even about minutia
  • download Twhirl for desktop Twitter client
  • if you post often to flicker from your mobile, setup Snaptweet
  • now, go read Melissa Sconyers’ post on twitter to get the real details

Am I forgetting anything???

Porter Novelli Austin, rocks

Published
by
John Erik
on June 24, 2008
in Austin
. 2 Comments

Laura Beck and her team at Porter Novelli Austin have been helping launch some of the coolest startups on the plant for years; and they’re right here in Austin. Who knew! I didn’t until I met Brittany, Lauren, and Josh at the DEMOparty last month.

OneSpot, Radar Networks/Twine, PeoplePad, Friendfeed, those are some of their clients I can think off the top of my head. I know there are several in town.

After talking with Josh Dilworth a bit about the Startup District and Conjunctured he invited me to come chat with the whole office. It was great, they had ordered a ton of tacos that morning, everyone was giving me hi-fives and hugs and talking about startups, I was like what is this place!?! … the meeting went great, they are very very supportive - Josh especially has been helping me out a ton and I’m very grateful (thanks for sure dood).

Later that day I ran into two people who were talking about Porter Novelli and that’s when I decided, “geez, I’m gonna do a quick post on them.” :)

Update PN is hiring, here’s the skinny:

* 2-4 years work experience – marketing or PR
* Agency experience, at least 1 year
* Tech preferred, but could be consumer tech/Internet tech
* Web 2.0/social media awareness critical, experience a huge plus (blogger, etc.)
* Strong writing
* Strong press relations/ability to pitch
* Multi tasker, well organized
* Highly responsible
* Team player
* Quick to adjust, ramp up, learn, and very flexible in an always changing environment
* MUST be live in Austin, already here, or willing to get her FAST
* Need to start ASAP.

I can tell you, because they let me sit in on their Thursday Staff Meeting an hear the nuts and bolts, this is a talented, fun, excited, and clever team. I actually found myself thinking “wow, it would be fun to work here” and I never ever think that. Let me know if you fit the above and I’ll intro ya. cheers!

Semantic Web Austin

Published
by
John Erik
on June 20, 2008
in General
. 2 Comments

I had no idea there were so many people in Austin who know so much about the Semantic Web. Even more, I had no idea we had several stealth companies working on a semantic offering.

Here are some pic Michelle Greer took of the Semantic Web Austin Launch Party last week. Lynn Bender and Geek Austin kick ass for helping put this on. The SWA (is that the official acronym?) is lead by Texas Ph D student and Semantic Web Evanglist, Juan Sequeda, and John De Olivera, Executive Director of the Cyc Foundation.

Quick note about the Cyc Foundation. From their website, this what what they do:

The Cyc Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the enrichment and utilization of the open source portions of the Cyc knowledge base—the world’s largest repository of machine-readable, common-sense knowledge. In this role, we will work with others to expand these resources, educate developers and increase general awareness of the potential applications of the technology.

From Wikipedia, about Cyc:

Cyc is an artificial intelligence project that attempts to assemble a comprehensive ontology and database of everyday common sense knowledge, with the goal of enabling AI applications to perform human-like reasoning.

As we move completely away from web2-0. We’re really lucky to have the Cyc Foundation and Cycorp with their 20+ years of gov funded research here in Austin.

Firefox set a world record that day with 8 million downloads.

How much do you know about the Semantic Web : How much do you contribute to the web.

Full house. Looks like Troy is doing a double take of something.

Juan and JohnDeo open up the event.

Troy Williams, founder of PeoplePad and formerly Questia talked about what the semantic web is to him, how he sees it, how it will be useful, etc. Was a great opener as the night slowly got more technical.

Cesar Torres and Dusty Reagan of Conjunctured on the outside.

Dewey Gaedcke of Founder of Minggl in skyblue

Lot of Proffs and researchers who asked high level questions.

Facebook owns /me online and I hate it. What can we do?

Published
by
John Erik
on June 19, 2008
in *projects and Identity
. 6 Comments

FACEBOOK, I’m sick of the singles ads and I’m sick of you owning my timeline.  I love and appreciate everything that facebook let’s us do. I love being able to stay connected to my friends. I love being able to push content I think is important. I just hate that I’ll prob never be able to get any of this out.

Why would I create a photo album (an album of my life) if you’re never gonna let me hold it.

I want to see my domain, not yours. http://think27.com << that’s me.

NOT:

… why do you force me to stare at this. YUCK

In case you’re not instantly grokking what I’m talking about. Let’s think about this. (and this is nothing new that people havn’t been saying for a lone time now) … all the actions you take on facebook - changes to your profile, friends you connect with, messages you send, people you break up with, all those little “stories,” as FB calls them, etc. those are reflections of your life. Shouldn’t YOU own the album?

When facebook first started, you know back years ago when I was in college, I would always think: you know, facebook should record all these changes we are making to our profiles and all the friends we are making and all the pictures we are uploading and let us print it all out in a book. back then FB was only for college students, and I was expecting to drop it when I graduated, I thought, “this would be killer as a yearbook because gawd knows I’m not gonna by a real year book that includes 20,000 people I dont know.” i even sent zuck a message about this. (if facebook had a way to search my sent messages I’d go find it, but I dont feel like pressing the next button that many times.) i still think this would be a cool idea. print it out. but no worries, i have more.

ok, here’s another reason why we should stop letting facebook own all our action, specifically our social ones:

sooner or later we are going to have, as Jonas Lamis of Scivestor has talked about, something like Google Agent. It’s going to better understand what we want done because it will know a ton about us. For instance, and this only scratches the surface (and I’m totally stealing this example), if my anniversary was coming the Agent would know and it would know who my girlfriend was and where I like to take her and what my schedule was like, etc, etc. I would just click and it would take care of all that for me - and perhaps offer a couple choices. The point is. This crazy Agent bot thing has to get to know me and that takes time and data. Right now the place that knows the most about me and has the most data is most definitely facebook and google and I would bet it’s the same for you. I dont want the Agent/bot thing to have to get the data from fb/google, I want it to get it from me.

Now, I’m not worried about facebook having all this information. kdfakhfph./ well, shit. i kind of am… … it’s just that there is no where else to go with it. i’m not going to be one of those people who doesn’t use facebook because all this, i dont want to miss out on all the fun and all the great things facebook lets me do, i just want an alternative or i want facebook to openup all this data. AND I WANT IT NOW.

I’m not sure if the standards are in place yet to handle all this kind of openness… but. …That’s a good question. Does anyone know? Could they just use Google’s Opensocial or Friend Connect stuff? Is the DataPortability workgroup there yet?

How would I propose we move forward with all this? we could start with:

1.) Opensource or openup Friendfeed

Friendfeed is great, People like Robert Scoble (Loving my Friendfeed) and Mike Arrington (damnit Friendfeed gets even more useful) talk on and on about it and says we won’t feel how great it is until we join the community, but whatever, it’s just yet anther site that wants me to tell it where I am online and wants to know all about me. And until they open it up, all I really get in return is the ability to participate in threads where Loic or Robert are also chatting. At least there is RSS, but still. I should own all that data. If I want to share it and chat around it, then we can use Disqus. … I think

(NOTE: USE YAHOO PIPES!! like Zach Klein does for his Universal Feed)

2.) Make it easier for people to buy vanity domains.

We need to get people to understand how important it is that they own their identity online. Right now most people (ahem, besides leet ones who use nearlyfreespeach) goto Godaddy because they saw a lame super bowl ad. Have you seen Godaddy.com? Have you registered a domain from there? The site and domain control interfaces suck. For regular people to start doing anything with domains, which is what they need to start owning their identity, there has to be a better registar. One that is simple and doesn’t talk about DNS and or blah or blah. Just make it simple.

3.) Help people track their actions even better online.

4.) I love how Tumblr shows you how use a custom domain name. We need more of this.

I think together these pack a nice 1-2-punch and have been working on rough plans on the side for how all this should/could be implemented.

When I’m not plugging away and connecting people to the Startup District, what I need to do is get more involved in the DataPortability group (props to Chris Saad) and the DiSo Project (props to Chris Messina). …If you think any of this is cool, you should too.

What johnerik is passionate about :) - thanks @imdane

Published
by
John Erik
on June 8, 2008
in *owning life and Happiness
. 0 Comments

After seeing Gary Vaynerchuck last week Dane and I decided we were going to started video blogging… I haven’t started yet, but I have been watching Dane’s. His first post asks people what they are passionate about. I started writing a long comment and decided I’d just post it here and link to Dane. Here goes.

Passion

I love the language of enthusiasm. I live for it. For excitement. That’s really what attracts me to technology startups and the people involved in them.

Mission #1: Mercilessly beating and outsmarting life; forcing it to bend into the reality I choose.

How I’m doing this:

  • I’m constantly on the hunt for people with gusto. When I find them, we stick together.
  • I compete with these people each day to see who’s created the most value or done something ridiculous.
  • Follow me on twitter or via my blog to keep up. :)


Mission #2: Making damn sure Austin is technologically progressive and competitive.

How I’m doing this:

50,000ft Mission: Eliminate inequality with empathy and technology.

General Passions: increasing people’s self-confidence …promoting empathy (talking about why it’s important), critical thinking and awareness, spearheading conceptual ideas, building relationships

–

I encourage you to go check out Dane’s posts (videos and others) - they make me crack up. Also, you might look into buying The Alchemist.

(BTW, @girk took the picture above when we were in Australia in 2006 :))

@Garyvee, ruler of his context, live in Austin

Published
by
John Erik
on June 5, 2008
in General
. 6 Comments

Tuesday I was part of the crowd that met Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV at the beautiful and always local, Grapevine Market. People in attendance that I can recall includ Cesar Torres (he has a great write up btw), Damon Clinkscales, imDane, Kristine Gloria (the one with teh smile above) Tim Walker (also with a great LONG writeup), Robert E Taylor, RichardatDELL, Michelle Greer, Kevin Koym…

I absolutly love seeing Gary and listening to him talk. Wine is slightly interesting to me because it is a big part of the Sicilian side of my family, specifically with my grandpa :). Gary is uber connected with the tech scene so he always has good insight and predictions there, which is interesting. But what I love the most about this guy is his excitement for life. He’s an inspiration to anyone who wants to be themselves and make it. He was talking about how much he loves being able to be behind the table and chat with everyone. How that makes him feel like a cat. A cat being pet and raising his butt. hhah It was like we were all just petting him.

It’s all about breaking down the situation. Eliminating the barriers between the guy behind the table and your audience. Gary did this by talking about the situation. Discussing what was going on. How it felt to him and how it must feel to us. To me, you know someone understands and can control their context when they are able to make jokes about it. Jokes that everyone gets because they have all bought in to the environment. I think everybody loves when people can do that - same feeling I get when people make puns. Very clever, very aware. end rant(rave).

I took some video with my phone from the event, but once I got it on my computer and looked at it in comparison to Dane’s I scraped it. SO, here is

“Gary Vaynerchuk’s Austin Lightning Hour”

Startup cities/Austin chat with @garyvee and @kevinrose

Published
by
John Erik
on June 1, 2008
in Austin and Videos
. 6 Comments

Some of the hippest peeps on the net have been playing with Seesmic recently. Yesterday Gary Vaynerchuck tweeted that him and kevinrose where on there chatting it up. So, I hopped over and asked a couple questions.

Here’s the deal:

(Juan Sequeda asked the city ranking question to PG at StartupSchool and was telling me about it over bagels last week.)

(oh yeah. facial hair. … like I said in my first video up there - boulder, techstars, gwen bell, andrew hyde… kickin some ass. I’ve been to Boulder once (in CO I always go to Telluride with fam) but I’m wanna come see yall soon. …totally agree on the valley talk. …I also know! Austin is a kick ass city and I’m trying to develop this sucker - that’s why we got Startup District rollin. Since southby I gave myself 1 year to see what we could turn this place into, and it’s coming along nicely.)

(sorry ’bout the sound on this one)

Gary In Austin! Tuesday, June 3rd - Austin, TX

  • 1:00 PM–Book Signing at Grape Vine Market, 7938 Great Northern Boulevard, Austin, TX 78757

These guys are a blast. Here’s a garyvee with a Radar sticker. heh

Gray is a mofo that knows how to love his fans and customers. I love how it just flows outta the guy — every time he’s talking it’s just like “Thank you sooo much for your question”, “Awesome t shirt”, “I love your burp”, whatever.. he makes ya feel good. Everyone can take a lesson. Kevin was kick ass at this too. Just more to the point - “what your question? BAM I’m gonna tell you the answer; and it’s a good one.”

Orlando Rincón Bonilla - ParqueSoft - hero?

Published
by
John Erik
on May 30, 2008
in General
. 2 Comments

the man

As much as I preach empathy and sharing of yourself - I believe the more you share, the more opportunuitys you provide others to see themselves in you and thus say, “hey, if s/he can do it, so can I.” - I’ve never been able to say “that person is my hero.” So, I’m not saying this guy is my hero just yet because I’ve never met him, but based on who ever wrote this wikipedia article, Orlando Rincón is a helluva guy. I love his commitment to country, the power entrepreneurship, youth, and technology.

Here are some excerpts that really motivated me.

Orlando Rincón Bonilla is a firm believer in the creative capacity and commitment of his compatriots.

In 1984, he founded Open Systems Ltd, which became one of the leading examples of Colombia’s emerging Software industry. As head of the company, he accumulated a wealth of experience and knowledge on running and managing a software company. But he was troubled by the tension between profit maximization and the importance of social development, which remained of paramount importance to him. He realized he had to foster entrepreneurs with a different mindset that would understand that markets could provide a way to achieve equity and justice, and decided to pursue that vision. Bonilla sold all of his stock in Open Systems and founded ParqueSoft in 1999 as a non-profit enterprise.

…he visited several Asian and European countries that were being touted as “economic miracles” thanks to their ability to create a niche in the Information Technology industry. He observed with disappointment that behind that miracle were managers—not self-starting entrepreneurs—who had been hired by global companies located in Los Angeles or London, justifying the low wages paid by reasoning that the workers were earning much more than they would if contracted by a local company. That was not good enough for Bonilla.

ParqueSoft is fundamentally focused on creating social value, not software companies. Its mission is to stimulate democracy and justice through the inclusion of previously marginalized young people living in low-income communities. ParqueSoft seeks to transform them into protagonists of their enterprises, not employees.

To foster an entrepreneurial culture, ParqueSoft has a programme whereby every two months it integrates 150 young people for 8 weeks into the different enterprises according to their interests. The youth participate in the activities of the enterprise and learn what it is like to be wrapped up in the world of technology and science from a venture perspective. The objective is to teach these young participants about technology and business, and help them to envisage themselves as agents of change rather than as future employees.

A while back I started putting together a list of billionaires that are worth something. I need to revisit that list.

Juan, thanks so much for your email about ParqueSoft. You rock dude; and you were right on that I would dig all this.

Ycom ad - per Colin A.

Published
by
John Erik
on May 29, 2008
in Happiness
. 0 Comments

read this, entrepreneur.

Meeting with great people in Austin

Published
by
John Erik
on May 29, 2008
in Austin, General and startup district
. 5 Comments

Almost everyone I met with today was somehow interested in the Semantic Web. What’s the deal? Is Austin really that much of a hot bed for this?

My first meeting was with Juan Sequeda. Juan is a Semantic Web Evangelist, Entrepreneur and Web Developer - he’s also working on his Ph.D at UT. He gave me the run down on how Parquesoft operates in Columbia. In Juan’s words here’s a run down of what they do, you’ll see how it’s applicable to Conjunctured/Startup District (I hope you don’t mind me posting this :):

The creator of parquesoft was a millionare software developer who decided to buy a huge warehouse and convert it into tons of small offices. Any student/ developer who had an idea, could apply for a space, and if the idea was unique enough, you would get a space, free internet and everything for just 25 dolars a month. The company was on its own, but if they needed help because of a huge contract and they needed lawyers or something, Parquesoft would help them [for a percentage of the take]. The deal is that this place has extended to several other cities in Colombia and is doing the same. Any entrepreneur who has an idea, can get a space and work. The idea of Parquesoft is also to do a social impact (Colombia is a developing country).

It just so happened that Cesar was meeting with Clay Spinuzzi in the same coffee shop - I love when that happens.

Next, thanks to Melissa’s introduction, I met Timothy Maxwell. Tim is a Developer/Consultant at Optaros. He was especially interested in the kind of business model ideas we talked about originally for Conjunctured (ie the “Co-company” model) and what kind of software could be developed to facilitate such a structure. I’m going to connect Tim with John De Oliveira and ActionItem.com.

After this I had a great lunch at Chez Nous with Jonas Lamis (the food was good, but the conversation was better - I need to revisit Chez Nous and think about what I’m eating, not just talk). Jonas is into stuff I think is so cool. He’s the founder of SciVestor, a “research and advisory firm focused on coming waves of disruptive technologies. [They do] Research and events for business and investment communities covering Life Extension, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Nanotechnology marketplaces.”

It was great getting to know Jonas (it always weird writing about someone when you know they will probably read it soon). I’m looking forward to continuing our conversations. I want to ask more about AI, Singularity, etc. But I think there are a couple videos and blog posts I need to watch/read beforehand. We talked mostly about the Startup District and after lunch went and drove around the East Side to scope out warehouses.

Finally went to the Long Center and volunteered with the American Cancer Society - @daveiam, Tom, and I were there talking to people about SharingHope.tv - it’s a great social site for cancer survivors and others to share their stories. ACS and the HBMG Foundation are sponsoring the showing of The Love Sonatas there.

At the Long Center I ran into David Smith, CEO of HBMG and formally of Technology Futures Inc, and Lyn Graft who Founded the Club E Network - both guys I enjoy talking to.

Back at home I jogged to Marcus Ceniceros‘ place and had a long conversation about the University of Texas and it’s place in the State of Texas, how Austin politics work (i learned a ton), the Startup District, how to effectively rally people, and about managing relationships for the long term. Marcus will be teaching in Houston for 2years via Teach for America. Soon we will all be voting this guy into office. And even sooner he’ll be improving our educational policy.

More fun in Austin

Published
by
John Erik
on May 28, 2008
in Austin and General
. 0 Comments

Recap of a great Memorial Day weekend

  • Went on a 2 hour bike ride with Jon and Will - rode our bikes from the UT campus to the greenbelt at 360
  • Danced up a storm, jumped in Barton Springs at 4am-ish with @cesart, @jon100, @rockgirl, @gloriakt, @imdane SEE DANE’S FLICKR
  • Startup Drinks at Cork and Co was great - excellent conversation all around, most notably with @jdhouse4, Rajat, and @damon
  • Rode down 2222 from Mount Bonnell on bikes+flaming torches with Will Roman (the photos below i stole from Will’s flickr stream - thanks man)
  • Went cliff diving with a ton of Twitters SEE KRISTINE’S POST
  • Cliff Jumping, Austin from Kristine Gloria on Vimeo.

What if Austin had a Startup _District_? the story thus far

Published
by
John Erik
on May 21, 2008
in Austin and startup district
. 9 Comments

I’ve been trying to write different things to explain what this startup district idea is… Sooo im gonna tell the story of how this came about and let you decide what to make of it.

Startup Disrict is just an idea that started in a conversation between Dane Hurtubise and myself several weeks ago. We were basically saying how much we love austin and talking about startups / entrepreneurs here. The topic came to the fact we didn’t think all the startups really knew each other. From there Dane said it would be awesome if Austin just had a startup district. …I don’t know about you, but when I heard that idea I was like “holy shit. you’re right on…” As pure concept I’m sure you can agree its a really cool idea. Basically it’s: have a bunch of startups and entrepreneurs in one place… Just calling it a district sounds cool - I mean, we have the Warehouse District. What’s that good for? I don’t know but calling it a District makes it an attraction.

After talking to Dane about this forever, I went home and told cesar about it via chat and he immediately pinged the domain name. By some off chance or act of god, the domain was available and he grabbed it faster than you can say wiimote.

That week I talked about it with the other guys at Conjunctured and we quickly saw that this idea really fell in line with what we want for Conjunctured. And that is, a place where entrepreneurs / one-two man startups / indepentends can work together - you know, coworking. The other side to conjunctured is having a brand and bringing in work as that brand - the reason to do this is to provide well paying hourly work to people who are working on their own startup or project but still need to be making some cash (like JobStrap). The idea there is that Conj would handle client serivces, and makes sure there is work avaliable (need to blog more on this).

So yeah, we felt like getting Conjunctured Coworking set up was 1.0 of the startup district idea - ultimately all Startup District really means is bringing people closer together in the hopes that everyone involved (including those looking to get involved) will benefit. Whether it’s Conjunctured or not, it seems like there would need to be some sort of central hub or commons at the center of all this - a place for people to start.

Soon after this we all met Thomas Marriott from GameWager. He had just moved their company from Houston to Austin and was looking for something exactly like this. At Startup Drinks (btw there is one this Sun. 4/24) I told Thomas about the idea of having a Startup District flag and all the startups involved also flying flags into the streets… Thomas being a competitive gamer and an all around boisterous kinda guy loved the idea. He came up with some pretty fun plans to incorporate the flags concept, assuming all this works out.

A couple days later I was riding my bike home from Whole Foods and Mayor Will Wynn was walking home also… so I had a walk and talk conversation with him about the idea. Basically he said talk to Lee Leffingwell or someone with the Emereging Technology Fund and to the east side neighborhood planning committee.

The next step was putting something up on the domain. I found out about the DEMOcocktail party dayof. So before Colin Anawaty and I rolled out to the party, I put up a barebones black text site and fed in a startupdistrict twitter feed. Im glad I had something up because there ended up being a ton of people great people who were willing to listen to me talk about this Startup District idea im all jazzed up about. People I talked to there were Chris Shipley (thanks Carla), Co-Founder of Guidewire Group, the people who put on DEMO (she tweeted about it), John Hime (thanks Christine)(he said he really likes the idea), Andrew Busey (it was really brief, but I told him :), Gerald Zhou formerly of Austin Ventures now at Rackspace (should be talking more with Gerald soonish), Daniel Hope of TrackSuitCEO (he blogged about it here), Jonas Lamis of Scivestor, Aruni of BabbleSoft, Josh Dillworth of Porter Novelii (he blogged about it), and some others.

After the party Colin, who just moved back to town from LA and is the Creative Director for GaimTheory, said he would help out creating a real site for startupdistrict.com and built a sweet little one on drupal.

Colin had the good idea that all the people who really want this to happen should start meeting twice a month. So without much planning we sent an email to all the guys mentioned thus far. Cesart, Dane, Thomas, Dave, and I all ended up making it - Colin hosted, and even provided beer and cheese and fruit trays. The meetup was awesome and I hope Dane feels like a king every time someone says “Startup District,” because he’s the one who said it in the first place. w00t!

…and that’s all I got so far. I need to write another post that talks more about the website and talking to different audiences. .. off to wordpress fest..

How much has money contributed to your happiness? - Dusty Reagan

Published
by
John Erik
on April 29, 2008
in General
. 3 Comments

The man.

In December I asked my Linkedin friends a question. It was a time when I really needed to hear inspiring words. I needed to feel comfortable with my decisions. I received so many great responses (35 total), I want to share them with you. I’m going to start throwing them out here - assuming I get permission from the respondents.

One of the first to reply was my good buddy (and perhaps yours too) Dusty Reagan. …Let’s begin:

My question

How much has money contributed to your happiness?

I’m curious because, as a soon-to-be college graduate turning full time entrepreneur, I feel like I have several options. Do I go for the money now so I can follow my passions later. Do I follow passion now and hope that money follows. Is money even going to make me happy…

I’ve heard two things: “Money does not make happiness” and “Money is not happiness, but money is freedom and freedom is happiness.” ??

Dusty

Personally, I consider capitalism like a video game. There are a set of rules you must play the game by, there are weaknesses in the system you can exploit, and you generally have to practice to beat the difficult parts.

For me money doesn’t necessarily equate to happiness, but (like collecting wood, gold, and ore in an RTS) it’s a resources I must have to sustain and grow my venture. If I have an abundance of resources to grow my venture, I coincidentally, find myself happy. :)

You should always follow your dreams. That will make you happy. It won’t necessarily make you money though. And you usually need money to follow your dreams. This conundrum is the game we’re all playing. But, as long as you have enough money to feed yourself, your family, and your business, you can keep playing the game. If you run out of cash you’ll be forced to find a new racket.

The long and short of my advice is you *must* have cash flow. How you obtain it is part of the game. One other piece of advice, there’s never a “good-time” to set out on your own venture. It will always be risky, it will always be hard, and there will always be nay-sayers in your life. You just have to do it.

//

I encourage you to ask questions on Linkedin. I promise you will get some great answerers. Ones that resonate with you, like Dusty’s did for me. Thanks dooder!

Walkandtalk meeting with Austin Mayor Will Wynn

Published
by
John Erik
on April 23, 2008
in Austin and Goals
. 6 Comments

Today I ran into Mayor Will Wynn on 5th street. I asked if I could walk and talk with him. Per my tweets afterwards, here’s what happened:

  • Me w/ 1 minute version of our plans for a Startup District: startups in close proximity = innovation, attraction for Austin, reclaim our diminishing spot as the number 2 location for startups, proposed east side location because of price, light rail.
  • Mayor: the city has been talking about something like that for 10 years now. No one has taken the lead.
  • Mayor: you better get to know the neighborhood planning committee (for the east side)
  • Maor: what kind of startups are you talking about.
  • Me: internet, digital media, gaming, etc. - not silicon, not enterprise software
  • Mayor: talk to the emerging technology fund at their next open meeting and propose the idea. It’s in line with what they want. and there are funds there (Kristine Gloria thanks for finding the link).
  • Me: staring at Will Wynn as he walks off  ::Our mayor is a sharp dresser. I gotta remember to take pictures with people::

Austin Startup Community Vision - true alpha

Published
by
John Erik
on April 21, 2008
in Austin and Coworking
. 6 Comments

google image

…for Austin

  • Austin has a Startup District. Blocks of startups flying their flags to the world - I want this to be an attraction when people come to Austin. Highest props to Dane Hurtubise for originally coming up with this one.
  • The startup community in Austin knows each other. (Yeah.)
  • When tech people come to Austin we twitter ‘em up and we welcome them as family. When they get they know wher to go and where they can stay. We love our community.
  • AustinStartup.com has stuff to talk about non stop. Like the valley, people who run blogs about austin startups can live off just blogging. There is that much traffic; because people really care. right?! …this is how the community stays up-to-date with the people around them - people report on it.
  • One of us hits a home run. I’m talkin Google. :)
  • We have several kick ass coworking spaces - including one that is straight up free.
  • (1 Year) We have a micro fund - 10-15 teams per year - 25K max. similar to ycom / techstars <— <3
  • Oh, and we have people running the fund who know what they are doing — who are these people in Austin? Answer me that. …I know one I want on the team: Jared Slosberg. Sosa bothers would be nice. I could go on.
  • there is a bar downtown that you can walk into at anytime and see some great startup people.

…for The University of Texas

  • Coworking space for students, near campus -call it an incubator, call it a hatchery, i’ll call it coworking
  • Official concentration in entrepreneurship available to all majors - similar to “business foundations”
  • Grads and Undergrads know where to go if they have an idea or are interested in entrepreneurship -single place that embraces them, fosters them, understands them. COMEON!

conjunctured guys, john sibley butler, marc nathen, whurley, andrew hyde, Thomas Marriott … just so you know, i thought of all of you while writing this.

//

Forms and verbiage, feel free to pass it on:
Conjunctured is opening a Coworking space in Austin. We’re following the lead of some of our friends in other cities: [http://www.indyhall.org/] [http://nwcny.com/]

We’re looking to plant this space in the heart of a “Startup District.” A place where all the startups in Austin live. Where we proudly fly our flags to world. The district is an attraction in Austin. If you think you might be interested in playing with us, let us know by filling out this fancy form, here:
http://tinyurl.com/68f89z

If you don’t need / want a space. But you’re interested in sponsoring this endeavor (great for social capital, exposure to potential recruits, and PR), you can let us know that, here:

http://tinyurl.com/5usods

Quick thought

Published
by
John Erik
on April 18, 2008
in Social Networks
. 2 Comments

Three most important (potentially game changing) social media concepts. IMO

Presence - the ability to immediately share my state of being, including my location, from anywhere.

Ownership - the ability to own all the data you are creating. Such as your social graph.

Moments - using the data you have been (or facebook as been) collecting to digitally travel back in time and get a keen sense for what was going on in that moment.

…ok, heading to the Funding Symposium.

Millennial job hunting - Q&A

Published
by
John Erik
on April 18, 2008
in Happiness, Personal and Transparency
. 2 Comments

Last weekend during the Startup Barhunt I made a new friend. Her name is Archana and she is thee most startup-savvy UT student I know. What does startup-savvy mean? She knew everything that was going on in the tech world, from gossip and people, to new technology and services.

Today she asked me to answer a survey for a project she’s working on. I had a great time answering the questions. If you want to take a stab at answering all or some of ‘em, DO IT. I’m sure it would help her out. Enjoy!

1. How did you find your current job? Online? Networking? Company website? Job fair?

Hmmmmm… I don’t have a job really – no one employees me. :-\
But! If that was the case, I would have got the job online – that’s how I found radar.net when I was in school. They had a facebook ad looking for a young, mobile savvy student. I clicked and it asked me to write them a letter about how savvy I was, how connected I was, and why I love tech…

2. Have you ever searched for jobs online? If so, how?

For sure. Don’t think I’ve looked any other way. I’ve looked at http://www.ventureloop.com and http://startupers.com/jobs/ to see what’s goin on. I’ve looked on craigslist in the past. Umm.. I looked at monster one or two times. People can find me now. Via linkedin or http://notchup.com

3. Do you have a LinkedIn account?

For sheezee.

4. What do you use in LinkedIn?

Um. Everything. Even though I’ve only asked one, I think the Q&A feature is killer. I asked a question about following money or passion over Christmas and got 30+ answers/messages. That kind of feedback was amazing.

5. How do you manage your impression online?

My outward appearance? I am who I am. I write casually like I am here. I try and post everything I do so people can get a good sense of who I am. I want people to be engaged in my life. I want to set the example for how I want others to document their life. I love knowing what’s going on with my friends and others. I have… oh, next question.

6. Have you ever altered your image online, like “untagging” photos?

Untagged, YES. But not often anymore. It was mostly pics of when I was in college and chugging tons of beers. I still have some of those, but because I don’t post that many pics on facebook anymore, it would seem I was still doing the same thing.

7. Have you ever asked or been asked by an employer about your online activity on sites such as Facebook or MySpace?

NOPE. But no one employees me. When I was working (interning) fb wasn’t that popular.

8. How do you network?

By writing people emails that make them think. And by going out to places where I can meet them. By always staying up-to-date with what’s going on in the bubble that I care about. And some other bubbles. Using Twitter.

9. Do you use business cards?

YES

10. Have you ever applied for a job that did not require any online activity? For example, you were asked to mail in your application.

NO

11. In your opinion, what is the best way to find your first job out of college?

Depends what kind of job you want. And if you want a job.
Read the book Never Send A Resume. It’s short, I read it in a Borders.
I’d say, make relationships. Go meet people, email them. Email the leaders, only start at the bottom and work your way up if you have to. Even if you do have to, keep emailing/starting conversations with people who you respect, who you can empathize with. Help them empathize with you and they will help you. Only take a job that you are going to love. You’re gonna have to look and look and look so you better start now. It will all be worth it though – think of it as your contribution to the world, this is you giving back. How does that work? If you are in a place where you are happy, the world overall will be that much happier. Your vote (happiness) counts!