After participating in Gabriel’s School auction this weekend, I got to thinking about the purchases we made and how the money we spent will go to basic components of their school education (technology in the classroom, art, elementary school plays, supplemental math and reading curriculumn, etc, etc). Overall, our contributions (and the matches that we are getting from Microsoft) are in the thousands and so were many other families contributions. Amazing that it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to make a good public school work and even then they are still sub-par and prone to leave alumns of public education looking for a safety net.

While I was thinking about this I started to examine all this new safety net spending we are putting together and found a nice way to look at where we are at today (before the new spending). I found this federal spending calculator over at Know All Design and a calculator on the CEPR site to convert billions into per/capita spending per/year.

Unfortunately all of the traditional schools of thought overlook the importance of education and as such there are not pools of advocates inside of the think tanks and economic institutions where these policies are made. What I found though seems to lend itself to supporting the need for better thinking in this area, Educationalism?….

We spend 61.3B inside the Department of Agriculture on a group of spending called Food and Nutrition Service. This group of spending includes things like the Food Stamp Program, Child Nutrition Programs, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (WIC), etc. At first glance, this seems fair – there are people in the US that need assistance getting food of any sort and kids who should be able to eat healthy. The problem is that if we think about why these families are in a situation where they need this assistance, we find a lack of knowledge to be a major source of the problem. People don’t know how to get and keep jobs, they were never trained on how to become motivated, how to stay away from crime and drugs, etc, etc. Clearly if a lack of knowledge is the problem, there should be at least double the amount spent on feeding people spent on educating them to feed themselves. Looking at the entire Department of Education, there is 63.5B outlaid for education. This is only two billion more than we are paying to give free food to those in need. Perhaps the assumption that we as a nation actually pass knowledge on and attempt to raise the level is a misconception.

Examining this issue a little further and thinking about what else the uneducated, unmotivated class of people need, a look at  the Department of Health and Human Services (where the Food and Nutrition Service spending should occur vs. the Department of Agriculture), there is 919B spent on Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid is for pregnant women and children who can’t afford services, in other words if you were not trained at a young age to make a sum of money that could support your medical needs – this service does that for you. I will admit, the Medicaid portion is much less than the group overall, there are only 215B in grants to states for Medicaid. That is still 314% more in medical services for people who could be taught to be smart/motivated enough to pay for the services themselves than we are paying to actually train these people.

Unemployment? Well you guessed it, nearly as much as the Department of Education. 40B to give unemployed people money, yet only 20B more than that to train everyone (employed and unemployed).

Obviously there are some flaws here, all of the traditional safety net items combined (food, health, and basic needs) total 316B. Meanwhile the only spending to ensure the safety net is not needed is 63.5B. Examining this from a per/capita per/yr perspective, we are paying $202.04/yr on Education and $1,005.41 on the Safety Net. This is drastically less then what we spend on defense per/capita per/yr ($2,119.00), but is a major cause for concern. The more money we put into the safety net, the easier it is to obtain those easy to use funds, and the higher the escape velocity becomes for people who have felt the net. This is in steep contrast to the capabilities being built to reach that escape velocity.

It appears we are working to make this problem worse by expanding the safety net and at the same time shrink the education budget. This is the reverse of what is truly needed. This is like taking the gas out of your engine to trade it for booze and telling everyone that walks by, you are trying to stop being an alcoholic but you just can’t drive away from the liquor store and you don’t know why.

Wow, what a great event put on by Marcelo and team!! Truly a top class event.

For those of you who didn’t attend the event (in-person or live) – you should not make the same mistake next year! Marcelo and team put together a welcoming environment where the focus was on the event, the speakers, and the community. Definitely kudos to him and the team – pulling off this kind of an event is difficult and the team’s ability to execute well definitely shines through! John has a great write-up on the results.

The family and I had a great time. Quentin was embarrassed that people knew who he was. Gabriel was his usual self and was handing out Seattle Lunch 2.0 stickers to everyone. Robin was of course her usual proud supportive self. There were quite a few people there I didn’t know, so it was great to meet new people and chat about their startups. The boys were hilarious, after meeting Jonathan Sposato in the restroom, they were proud that they met the guy who kept winning awards. They kept saying, “oh – we met that guy!”

Luckily, their Dad finally won an award so he could compete with all these cool CEOs who were winning awards and giving talks to the audience. The boys wanted to brag to everyone so it was a great chance to teach some humility and let them know how important awards from the community are. It was also good because the kids got the explanation about how there are so many other great seattle tech groups and events that just being a part of the category is a great thing (all the event organizers deserve an award).

If you haven’t attended a Lunch or Happy Hour – get registered for an upcoming event before the seats are filled!! If you’re unsure of what to expect, check out The Experience of Attending or Hosting a Seattle Lunch 2.0.

There will be a Seattle Lunch 2.0 @ Pelago on May 15^th.

There will also be a Seattle Lunch 2.0 Happy Hour @ Sortuv on May 29^th.

If you can’t attend either of those, Seattle 2.0 Live will be streaming the events (so you can at least attend remotely). There are plenty more in the works – contact me if you want to host/sponsor. If you don’t have the resources to host/sponsor and still want to contribute – make a donation – I am currently sending Seattle Lunch 2.0 stickers to all those that donate.

For those of you who voted for Seattle Lunch 2.0 – Thank you (I literally could not have done it without you)! It truly takes a community and if Seattle Lunch 2.0 wins an award like this, it means that all of you in the community contributed to the events enough to make it happen!

A few thoughts to keep in mind regarding today’s big awards ceremony…

First,  I want to say thanks to Marcelo and the team for putting on the Seattle 2.0 Awards, Seattle definitely needs this kind of event!

Second, I want to thank the community for nominating Seattle Lunch 2.0in the Best Social Event for Startups category. It’s a real honor to be a nominee in this category and I’m glad to share the nomination spot with so many other great events and organizers.

Third, I want to let all of my readers, twitter followers, facebook friends, etc that the family and I will be attending the awards ceremony tonight. I will be tweeting a lot throughout the day regarding the event and especially during the event (this means twitter and facebook status updates). I will be using the hashtag #seattleawardsfor those of you that want to filter out those due to the amount of traffic to your facebook status (fine – I should have less seattleawards updates tomorrow). Although I would assume you all have either a vested interest in the health and vitality of the young Seattle companies being celebrated tonight as our economy truly does depend in large part to the innovative companies, investors, thinkers, service providers, and event holders that make up this community or you are seriously curious to learn if Seattle Lunch 2.0 wins…

Fourth, It is Quentin’s birthday today (11yrs old ), and we are going to spend his birthday as a family cheering on the Seattle Startup community. If you are a founder, CEO, investor, or entrepreneur - please stop by and encourage both of my young sons (Quentin – 11 and Gabriel – 7). They both look up to people who start stuff and well, I know a lot of you don’t think of yourselves as role models. It will be a great way to get an ego booster and help encourage my sons to pursue their dreams.

Fifth, Did I mention how important this kind of event is for Seattle and the economy as a whole? It is kind of our duty to pass along the details of this event to anyone and everyone we know. The goal is to ensure the live streaming attendance is higher than the in-person attendance and the press coverage at a national level is just as high as it is at local level.

On another note – if you didn’t vote for Seattle Lunch 2.0, it is too late to vote but it’s not too late to donate to the running of these events or to attend the Lunch @ Pelago or the Happy Hour @ Sortuv.

I have been slowly following a series of cost reductions that seem to touch a lot of people I know (yes myself included). We have all heard the stories on the news about automotive workers, home builders, and financial industry types losing jobs and not having anywhere to go. These seem so distant though (despite my brother-in-law being laid off from GM and my sister-in-law, his wife, being laid off from Expedia). Yeah there are some home builders here putting people out of work, there was WaMu, there is Russell. We don’t have much in the way of auto workers around here though. We’ve got a fair amount of airplane and boat makers instead that seem to be less impacted. We clearly aren’t as bad off as other areas hit harder by the declines in these sectors.  Michigan has the highest unemployment rate at 12.6%, which is drastically different than Seattle’s unemployment rate of 8.7% (ranking it 191st on the list of major metropolitan areas). So what are the entities around here doing to reduce their costs if they aren’t closing up shop or laying off people? Surely the value of goods here in Seattle can’t be higher than the value of the goods elsewhere.

Organizations around here do seem to be reducing their costs. My friend Nathan has some great advice on reducing costs of running your business and the importance of cash flow. Other organizations out there (companies, nonprofits, government agencies) are all showing an interest in preserving cash too. Besides the great ideas for reducing operating costs that Nathan has, there are the payroll costs that usually take up a bulk of the costs. Obviously the fastest method to reduce the cost on people was to get rid of the dead weight these organizations were  carrying around for unnessessary projects or simply in an inneffective workforce. These are the numbers that we track on a grand scale. This is also what we hear the most of… “My friend lost their job”. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the agency that tracks these numbers. Their report for Washington State has things like, construction jobs being down 12.4%, Education and Health Services, Other Services, and Government as having an increase in jobs (1.3%, .3%, & 1.2% respectively), and a total of only a 4% drop in the last twelve months…

What do all these rises and drops in wages mean to the value of the goods we are buying and selling? Looking further at the data, the rise in the average hourly wage at a national level is roughly $5 over the last 10 years, that’s $.50/year. With an average hourly wage of $13.27 in January of 1999 and $18.43 in January of 2009. This doesn’t even include the rest of the real cost of hiring employees. Clearly we as employees cost more money these days (even if the output we are making is worth less due to decreased demand). The result? A paycut…. Of course!

The average paycut seems to be 5-10% (reflecting that on the hourly wages, 5% of $18.43, puts us back at the hourly wages of August 2007 – 10% puts back to the hourly wages of March 2006). With these kinds of cuts should we be looking to value our assets at these levels? The stock Market is much lower than the ‘06 levels, the current value of the Dow is at 1998 levels. Should we be looking at wages from these levels? I sure hope not, that’s more of a 25% paycut…

So if we aren’t going to lay off a bunch of people, but we need to make our companies operate at the levels of 2006 and 2007, and perhaps even 1998. There needs to be methods for doing so, paycuts, benefit reductions, and furloughs seem to be popular choices. A few that I have heard about recently are summarized below. What about you? Are you an employee or a business owner? Are you part of a cost reduction? If you are an entrepreneur – are you paying yourself less?

Some non-layoff measures I’ve heard of lately (local and not so local):

Paycuts:

EMC Corporation – 5% accross the board for 2009, perhaps re-instated in 2010, then again maybe not. Executive staff took a previous paycut.

Siemens Business Services – Managers & directors took a paycut

Denali Advanced Integration – 5-20% paycut depending on level and margin contribution. Raises and bonuses frozen.

Microsoft – lowering the amount they are paying vendors by 10%, removing cost of living adjustments this year.

401(k) reductions:

EMC Corporation – no 401k matching

Chase (wamu) – no 401k matching

Furloughs:

Siemens Business Services – 5 days mandatory

USBank – US Bank’s furloughs were voluntary.

King County – 10 mandatory days (everyone takes them at the same time), Cost of Living Adjustments still happening (so more base pay, plus a few days off w/o pay)

Planned Parenthood - 5  mandatory days (take them at your convenience)

Add more in the comments or email and I’ll add them to the list…

I am not going to pretend to have more answers then everyone else on the internet. There are some smart folks asking/answering questions on the internet and in the forums about Exchange Server 2010 and there is lots of information on Microsoft’s site. I’d like to provide some summary information here for you…

If you don’t know anything about the feature sets or the products have a look at Eileen’s intervew with Ian Hameroff first.

Now into the reviews and explanations of the features…

• Martin has a list of features
• Oz has the pre-reqs to install Exchange
• Exchange Genie steps through the GUI install screens & the Command line install
• Scott Schnoll has some interesting posts as well, including:

full steps for an install

Video review of DAG

• More Install steps
• Amit reviews

Switches available for setup

Resource Mailbox Properties in EMC

Audit Logging

• Gold Systems takes on the UM Install
• The Three UC Amigos review What is new with Exchange 2010 UM
• Mark has a review of the client access features
• Oliver covers OWA and ECP
• E.J. Dyksen covers Mail Tips
• Adam Glick Demos Exchange 2010 Mobility
• Nathan has details on Configuring Certificates
• Steve Clagg has an Introduction to Attachment Inspection in Transport Rules
• Paul Robichaux has a few interesting posts

Admin features in OWA

Listing of PowerShell Cmdlets for Ex10 beta1

Information Protection and Control

Database Naming

OWA 2010 vs. GMAIL

Exchange 2010 UM supports MP3

• Osterman Research covers Voice as Text
• Alexander discusses the Should you upgrade?
• Anderson covers:

 PowerShell Command Log

Installing Exchange Server 2010 (beta) – Part1

• David reviews the Exchange Management Shell in Exchange 2010
• Chris discusses the Web Services Managed API
• Henrick covers…

Exchange 2010 Management Architecture

Exchange Certificate Wizard

Diagnostic Logging 

Revocable E-mail Addresses

Exchange Management Shell button

Multi-Organization access from one EMC

Cross-Forest Mailbox Moves

Online Mailbox Moves

Using Remote PowerShell for Exchange

Exchange 2007 & 2010 admin tools on one computer

• Ewan has a brief overview of HA in 2010. Henrick goes into the basics of Database Availability Groups . Tim goes deeper into the concepts and architecture behind Database Availability Group along with
• Brett points out a few locations in the MS documentation that are useful
• Oz has details on what is stored where when it comes to Exchange Server 2010 data being stored in AD
• Ilse Van Creikinge covers registering Exchange security extensions

Products that are in the same Wave 14 are being talked about too…

• The SharePoint team talks about SharePoint 2010
• Mitch Hall is talking about Forefront 2010 for Exchange 2010
• John Fontana is talking about OCS 2010
• The MS Presspass has the basic coverage on the wave
• The Outlook team have details on Outlook 2010

Some issue resolution for those of you testing already (check the support forums first)… then have a look at these…

• Aaron Tiensivu covers the error that includes “The WS-Management service cannot process the request”
• Amit Tank covers Exchange Server 2010 Hub Transport Role Installation Failure
• Amit also reviews a long series of known issues and FAQ items
• Oz Casey Dedeal discusses the error “530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated” in Exchange Server 2010

For those of you looking to learn the features and don’t have access to a lab or spare computers. I suggest you take a look at the Exchange Server 2010 training on the MS Learning site - there is clinic 6900 also. John pointed out some downloadable training from Microsoft.

Of course the most relevant – why upgrade? well because Exchange Server 2003 is on extended support now

In response to a discussion about events and what value they have for people, I wanted to post my thoughts on the experience of attending and hosting a Seattle Lunch 2.0 event….

I can’t speak for the “Think Tanks” or WTIA events, but the Seattle Lunch 2.0 events are Mingling events and they contain great startup-relevant information.
 
Over the few years that I have been leading/attending these Mingling events I have participated in numerous group discussions about how companies grew their startups. When I say discussion, I mean an active audience participation in discussions about what is most interesting to the group at large. The CEO/Founder contributions to the conversations have ranged from “started in college”, to “spun out of Microsoft or other BigCo”, to “had a bright idea coding one day”, to… well, you tell me what situation a company might be spawned in and we’ve pretty much had those kind of founders talking about it – if not let’s have one.
 
The great thing is that the intention of these events includes mingling and participating in discussions (a little presentation, demo, or Q&A to get things going) and then discussion and a lot of time to Mingle.
 
What do I mean by Mingle you might ask… well at a recent one of these events the Founder gave a demo and talked a little about the company (10min), followed by another 10-20min discussion/Q&A, then there was the hour of talking to the Developers, Marketers, Founders, and everyone else on the team that is actually required to make a startup function. So I guess it’s a little more then Mingling :)  
 
Come by the next Seattle Lunch 2.0 to see what I’m talking about…
 
These are not – here a couple people reflecting on the different about the tipping point for their company. These are – meet the team, founders, business model and ask any question you want.
 
Admittedly, the events are usually a little less formal. Presentation Zen is not required – Demos are fun, panel discussions are fun, heck just having the whole team around to hang out with for an hour or two is fun!! I will also admit that these are not held in nice conference halls or venues – they are usually in trendy facilities – like the offices where these companies spend their time (yes that means co-working spaces, shared offices, lofts in pioneer square – all w/o AC).
 
In addition to CEOs/Founders we’ve had speakers at these Mingling events that include authors, investors, lawyers, developers, architects, and well… we are open to just about anyone who has something relevant and is interesting to talk about. Keep in mind - the hoster of the event has their whole team there so you are never stuck talking to the CEO, when you really want to talk to the guy/gal that wrote the feature!!
 
These events also have the free food/beer model – if the speaker sucks (at least the food & drink were worth the time). I didn’t say corporate catered – I said YUMM!
 
A good analogy is a written letter in comparison with… Twitter. The letter is great, has it’s place, it’s norms, it’s value. Twitter – well it’s great too, but in a different way, for different reasons, and it has a different value. Both can get your point across, both can be valuable, but sometimes you need to choose between writing a letter or tweeting and sometimes you need to choose between reading a letter or reading twitter. The value in your message when you write and the value in your information acquisition when you read will vary. Plus we all know which one is more fun…
 
Of course if you are interested in hosting, sponsoring, donating or want to chat – don’t hesitate to reach out!!

See you at the next event…

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now Microsoft is putting the word out on Exchange Server 2010 today. This is exciting as usual and there are some great features that Microsoft and others will be talking about, among other features (that Martin Tuip has posted) there are:

• Built-in Archiving
• JBOD support (yes – JBOD)
• The updated OWA interface (details from Paul Robichaux)
• Mail Tips
• Updated Conversation View
• Some UM improvements (details from Technet Edge)
• Remote upgrade of Windows Mobile Clients
• Outlook connections moving from the Mailbox Server to the CAS
• Updated transport rules
• Updated Admin tools (including remote powershell support)

Of course the features that got me the most interested were all around HA, storage, and the database again – I guess it can be hard teaching an old dog new tricks… The database story is continuing down the path that was started with Exchange Server 2007 and now there are no more storage groups, clustered mailbox servers, or support for replicating Public Folders with the improved database replication technology. Yes that means Public Folders still exist (I’ll talk more about that later though)…

There are lots of things to talk about and I will post some additional information about the features soon as well as a better analysis about what it means to you. In the meantime feel free to go download the Exchange Server 2010 beta, read through Scott’s installation instructions, check out Joel’s features posts and forums, read through the press releases including Mary Jo’s announcement. Of course Microsoft is announcing details on their Exchange Team Blog as well…

Looks like Elizabeth Montalbano over at PCWorld and everyone else has gotten early approval to talk about Microsoft’s HUGE announcement tomorrow!!

This includes the announcement of the next version of a number of products including:

• Exchange Server 2010 (previously e14)
• Office 2010 (previously office14)
• SharePoint 2010 (…14)
• Visio 2010 (…14)
• Project 2010 (…14)

Well you get the picture, the “Wave 14″ has been un-officially announced… I’ve heard rumors that tomorrow there will be details on Microsoft’s website and that the final pre-release announcements were happening today (press briefings, technical briefings, etc). There isn’t anything on the Press Release site yet…

…..so the rest of us bloggers, twitter’ers, analysts, and journalists will do our best to hold our breath until tomorrow when we can talk about the details.

After the sordid history between EMC and the blogosphere… Trying to join, not sure if they should join, banning blogging, accepting blogging…. I was so proud to see EMC using Social Media for a marketing blitz today!!

Looks like they are using facebook, youtube, linkedin, and a number of blogs to promote their virtual datacenter launch today. Best of luck!!

I was asked an interesting question today by a helpdesk technician….

I think I am a great helpdesk support tech, but I would really like to make a change and move up the ladder to become an entry level email admin, what should I do?

Wow!! The first step here is to recognize where you want to go – and this tech had it nailed!! If you are in this position – this first step is a biggie!

After further discussion I found that this person already had identified why they wanted to go into email administration, why they felt they were competent enough, and  what they wanted this to lead to.

The technician felt that email was looked at in the company as high priority application (despite it not being a core business application) and this person wanted the corporate visibility and close customer interaction that this would give them. Further, the technician realized that there is more training freely available for things like email administration then more highly customized applications so they felt they had a better shot at growing their skill sets.

The technician had been fielding outlook related tickets for some time and had begin to read more support articles on the web. Having already achieved a computer related associates degree and working on a MIS degree, the tech felt that they could comprehend things beyond the basic outlook issues.

The end goal for this tech was far beyond email administration though. The tech was looking to get into enterprise architecture (which is drastically different then basic email administration) – but the tech was thinking that with the support calls they were taking interacting with groups all over the company, it was easy to assume that an email admin would gain insight into these other areas.

Impressed as I was at the ambition, I was skeptical of the question…. I had never been approached in this way before for such candid advice. Happy to be in a position to give the advice though, I thought carefully and started with the basic response about how to learn the technology. I then setup some follow-up time to make sure that this person was going to be successful in their long term goals. I wanted to post the advice I gave here for others to use. First the basics of learning the technology, I’ll post on the other stuff after I actually deliver the advice!

The first bit of advice was simple – go get a book, a VM, and some time!!

Starting to read about and play with these things is always the first step. Understanding the tools and the concepts behind using them begins to even the playing field when approaching a new technology. Think about when you learned to drive – the first thing you did was to get a book and take a class about driving (or maybe your parent took you into the car and gave you some one on one instruction). The first step here was understanding what the tools were (guages, pedals, gear shifter, etc). The second step was to take a car for a spin!! Yeah it was thrilling to get behind the wheel – a danger to society - but it was in a safe environment with people watching over you or at least controls in place to prevent a disaster. Step three? Well you practiced!! You practiced driving, you re-read the manuals, and you asked questions of your parent or instructor about how to actually drive and what to do in different situations (4 way stop, 5 way stop, etc).

Learning a new server product is not a lot different – and should be approached in a similar fashion. If you jumped behind the wheel of a production email system today you would be a threat to society – if you jumped behind the wheel (or administration tools) of a virtual test environment – like a controlled driving practice – you would be less of a threat and more likely to learn something. Add to this some knowledge about what the tools are called (what are the guages to look at in the email system? What pedals make email go slower and faster? How do passengers get in and out and do they need to buckle up or can you buckle up for them?) There are loads of questions that the books will give you instant insight to. This is why starting with a book or a class from no knowledge is critical. This is also why starting in a test environment is critical. Applying that basic knowledge from the books is easy to do incorrectly (yes – push the gas pedal but not THAT hard). 

With a healthy dose of book/class knowledge and some real time investigating the different components of the email application, such as:

• How does email come in and out of the system
• How do users access the email from their desktops, laptops, and mobile devices
• How are spam and virus messages captured
• How are mailboxes added/removed from the system
• How are resource/shared mailboxes and distribution groups handled
• How are size limits, email addresses, etc configured

A savvy technician would be ready to spend some time with a production system working on basic tasks with confidence. This confidence is the key, a team of email administrators and architects would rightly be weary of letting just anyone touch the system, but being able to demonstrate an understanding of these basic components – a tech could easily convince a more senior administrator that they are worthy of an opportunity to learn more.

Obviously there are more things this tech is interested in learning from me, and we are planning to chat again late next week – I’ll post again after we chat….

This is absolutely hilarious!! I am doing some work through Microsoft’s EDPS program and part of the requirement is to use some software assurance vouchers. The concept is Microsoft pays their partners to deliver services for their customers.

Well, luckily I have some great customers who want Microsoft to pay us to do work for them and they assigned some of these vouchers to me. This is wonderful and I was excited to go claim my vouchers. The problem is that when I logged into the website to claim my vouchers, I found a slight problem with my Windows 7 operating system….

Apparently, Microsoft is willing to pay us to deploy their server software for them… but they don’t want you to be using any of their more modern desktop operating systems to do it!! No Vista or Windows 7!!

The Pacific Northwest UC Doers group is still going strong!! Fourth Quarter in a row and we are going to move to the Microsoft Campus for a little while. We have had the last few over at the gracious McKinstry offices (Thanks you so much, we hope to return to your offices soon!!).

This meeting will be held on the heals of the INTERACT 2009 conference so there will be loads of great people to meet and things to talk about. More info to come soon!

If you have something to discuss, have a presentation you’d like to give, or have things you’d like to see on this quarter or a future quarter’s agenda – drop me a note and let me know! I could talk all day, but I’m sure the rest of you have more interesting things to talk about!

Please rsvp via email to info@ucdoers.org or on Upcoming

ok, now time to grab the kids and head to Oahu – see you all in a week :)

Yeah, yeah, I know everyone is talking about how sexy twitter is getting. It’s the place to be right now. If you aren’t on twitter – then you need to get with the program….

blah, blah, blah

My mom is on twitter, my wife is on twitter, my company is on twitter, mostly everyone I know is on twitter. This is all good for twitter, it makes twitter useful. In fact, it has inspired twitter to go look at selling, make some improvements, and look at making money again. Have a look at Read Write Web’s latest post regarding the proliferation of twitter. This thing is definitely going mainstream (hint: if you are mainstream – go create an account)!!

A couple years ago, we were at the same cross roads with blogs and blogging. We may be a little earlier in the cycle with twitter, but I would also pose that our culture is more accepting of these tools, so it’s still the right time to make the prediction. When we were at this cross roads last time, I wrote a nice little prediction blog post. Dated December 18th, 2006 – My 2007 Prediction: Blogs Will Be Replaced garnered a bunch of people telling me I was wrong, telling me that blogs were growing in proliferation and would be the ultimate supremacy for brand management, community interaction, etc. Yes – blogs didn’t disapear. Yes – blogs are great community interaction tools. Yes – Dave Winer is still blogging (despite his promise). Yes – the concept of blogging is great for news reporting, signaling, and information disimenation….

But Blogs were replaced – they were replaced by twitter and to some degree facebook. As marketing departments took over blogs and corporate employees (such as Microsoft PMs) began getting blog posts added to their annual and quarterly goals, the early adopters, the people who made blogging popular, the crowd that tested, evangelized, and vetted the technology moved on. Sure the bloggers still blog a bit (I still blog at this blog) – but along with everyone else (including Dave Winer), I spend a lot more time on twitter – twitter has replaced my excitement for blogging the same as it has for most bloggers who started earlier in this decade with the new cool thing called blogging.

So the question is – what will replacae twitter? Like my earlier blog post about blogging being replaced, I don’t know the answer. I do know that an opportunity exists for a few entrepreneurs. There is the space of helping people get onto twitter (some entrepreneurial consultants have started this already – but there is room for more). There is also the space of creating the next thing for all of us early adopters of social/community interactive/writing/commenting tools to use.

We need to go somewhere – our current tool has been taken over by the mainstream and thus will be replaced.

Finally got our season tickets split up, well at least a start to getting the season tickets split up. With the three mystery tickets (no mention of which tickets go to which game we are not entirely certain which ones to use for which friendly games), we still have some splitting to do. At this point it looks like we’re set to go to the following games…..

Of course the MLS Cup and the other mystery ticket are ones we’re looking to go to, but we’ll see what works out. We’re down in Section 113 towards the front, if you’re coming to a game, come by and say hi!!

I was recently contacted by Seattle 2.0 to be a judge for a new award activity. I was intruiged by the idea and quickly signed up. Of course I was asked to post about the event and help spread the word (the word is below)…

Before I get there, I wanted to comment on the interesting observation about all of these tech awards and demo events that are getting more and more popular in the tech community. It is obvious that they all are introspective and exclusive to the tech community. It is less obvious that this lack of publicity is a contributing factor to a decline in enginuity from US born/raised citizens.

Everywhere we look these days we see studies of US engineering capabilities declining, US business enginuity declining, modern innovation from the US declining, and all of the people with extra money dumping some of that money into the school system to prevent these declines. In fact a story today about the gates foundation putting in another $7.2M into the Seattle School system. Amazing that we can continue to dump money into our school systems as well as start trying things like standardized testing and charter schools etc – yet we still turn around and spend the real money the billions per year congratulating actors, singers, etc on their acheivements for capturing the largest audience with their art. This with no thought in mind that the amount of money spent and the audience captured for these ceremonies is what inspires teenagers to drop out of school to join a band, throw up a YouTube video and strike it rich. The message is that we value entertainers and artists far more than ethical business people and truly innovative creations (no wonder when we grow up and try business after a failed garage band we resort to creative accounting & lending - creativity makes money).

I am not saying that art and entertainment is not valuable. I certainly appreciate art, listen to music, and watch movies!! I am saying that national and global awards seem to be missing the attention to things like the Nobel Prize – um where is the red carpet, prime time show for those awards – the Pulitzer Prize – do your kids even know what this prize is for – or even more local events that pay tribute to the amazing startup technologists or product designer. Ok, maybe the Seattle 2.0 awards aren’t a replacement for the Nobel Prize or the Emmy’s – but it’s recognition like this – recognition of true acheivement that our younger generation is lacking. There is no reason to pursue great acheivement from a young age, no public role models, no cultural norm of appreciation for acheivers. Yet our schools continue to try and give our kids the tools for great acheivement. These kids aren’t in acting classes, they aren’t in batting practice, they aren’t in singing class – they are in classes to learn math, science, etc – so why don’t we at least give them a few roads to use these tools.

Yes, it is hard to force someone down a road with those tools, but showing them where the roads are is THE biggest step in the right direction. So why don’t you show your kids the roads they could travel with the tools they are learning in school, why don’t you let them make heros out of smart people with ambition, why not take the time to bring your kids to an award ceremony where hard work is recognized. Show them that acheivement at innovation and passionate pursuit is valuable….

Why not take them to the Seattle 2.0 award ceremony this year?

Re-posted from the Seattle 2.0 blog:

Startup life is hard. Startup life during a down economy is harder.  Entrepreneurs don’t found, join, invest in, or work with a startup to make their lives easier. They do it to make meaning. They do it to change the world. They do it to fulfill an inexplicable desire to make things better, faster, smarter and easier.

    Today, I am proud to announce the first annual Seattle 2.0 Awards – a series of awards to recognize the people and companies who make the Seattle startup community happen.
 
    We have a great website to the awards, and you can start nominating your favorite individuals and companies as of today for the next 2 weeks. After that, a panel of 30 of the most influential CEOs, founders, investors, service providers, journalists and bloggers in Seattle will select the top 3 on each category. Then we’ll open for public voting until late April.

 

    Join us as Seattle 2.0 hosts the awards ceremony at Pacific Science Center on the evening of May 7 with food, drinks, and a chance to spend time with the people you care about in the startup community.  There will be a startup showcase and master of ceremonies, Renay San Miguel (King 5/NWCN), will be announcing the winners in each category.

 

    As always, we are very open to ideas and feedback on how to make this award prestigious, the event pleasurable and the overall idea a success so that we can keep honoring the best of the best every year.  Registration for the event will open shortly.

 

    A special thanks to our early sponsors: Kismet Communications, Fenwick & West and Sampa, and our media partner Mashable.

Time: 4:30pm – 6pm

Where: Axios Law & TalentSpring’s shared offices
1525 Fourth Ave
Suite 800
Seattle, WA 98101

Well it’s been a week and Obey The Decider has received a fair amount of traffic, a fair amount of merchandise purchases, and some interest from sponsors….

On the site itself we have added a more comprehensive list of neighborhoods (Ballard, Belltown, Capitol Hill, Downtown, Freemont, Greenwood, Pioneer Square, Queen Anne, University District, Wallingford, & West Seattle). There are a few more options for visitors in Seattle. We are currently experimenting with how to make the front end a little more usable for a wider variety of cities. The backend has already been built to support a wide variety of cities/neighborhoods – so yes, we will be nationwide in due time. If you have any thoughts on how you would like to use Obey The Decider – send me an email!! I can also give you a link to use for your city if your interested in the meantime :)

The Backend development does continue, despite the immediate hit of our proprietary decision engine, we are working to improve decisions. Andrew Woods pointed out a cultural opportunity that we missed – Weekend Brunch!!! As you use Obey The Decider over the next couple of weeks for making your lunch, dinner, coffee, & drink plans – please send me feedback on your impressions of the decisions (remember, when the decider decides it is final and you must OBEY).

 Of course on the sponsorship side of things – we’re looking for sponsors now, so if you or someone you know owns an establishment where nurishment is served – please contact me – Josh@ObeyTheDecider.com!!

Seattle Startup Weekend was a great experience, I came into the weekend not sure what to expect. I didn’t understand the potential from the weekend, nor did I realize the number of passionate peers in the industry who were ready and able to make significant contributions over a weekend to produce some great things.

Nonetheless I was excited and tweeted a fair amount about the weekend. As the weekend got started I was still a bit unsure, 48 ideas being pitched, the group running out of time and being kicked out of the Google offices before any teams could be formed. This appeared like a train wreck waiting to happen. Then again, that may have just been me actively lowering my expectations. After the opening evening on Friday, we all hit Brouwers for drinks and I had an opportunity to meet with more of the people attending.

By Saturday I was still unsure, are any of these teams really going to form and create something? As I walked around the room, looking for teams that could work I saw groups who had spent the night before organizing instead of drinking (and I wasn’t even sure about their idea). I saw other ideas that were selected, but were not in the process of any team formation. The two ideas that I liked were starting to fall into this category (they were selected but, no one was following through with them). This is a problem in life – people have great ideas and never follow through with them. Lucky for me, this problem resolved itself over time for both of the ideas I liked.

I saw some rogue folks grabbing whiteboards and chairs and moving them to a convenient location and I wondered if this was yet another new idea that was not pitched or selected the night prior? On inquiry, I found that the team was going to work on The Decider. Hey, that is one of the ideas I liked, but where was the man behind the idea? I didn’t see Tom in the group. Had he ditched like so many other idea pitchers? This group didn’t seem to care. They wanted to make the product anyway. Sofi invited me to join the team and I found they were all developers and lawyers so my skills would be a welcomed addition. I’ll save the rest of the Obey The Decider story for another post. 

As the weekend progressed I did see small teams producing quickly and large teams producing slowly. The larger the team or the larger the goal, the longer it was taking. The teams with small goals and/or small goals (we are going to build this small part of the product – not the whole thing) were making progess very quickly and with the diverse groups (no group with more then three people had only developers), progress was being made on all fronts.

It was interesting to see teams worried about traditional problems such as sprint planning and organizing large teams to develop something in relation to teams who were simply sharing a common goal and a shared understanding of that goal was all that mattered. These teams (mine included) were able to execute tremendously well. There was no overhead of “planning” simply discussions about our goal/vision and then a lot of independant work that moved us all in the same direction. Quite harmonious I must say and from experience – nearly impossible on a larger team or on team working to meet customer demands etc.

The only unfortunate part about the whole weekend? Well I enjoyed this approach to working much more than I have enjoyed other approaches….

The good thing? Obey The Decider still lives and is progressing!

Over here on the Obey The Decider team, we have gotten a bit of an uptake on our branding. Robert Eickman thought our brand was so great he even suggested a revenue model we hadn’t thought of….

A Web Store!! Come get your threads from our new web store and tell your friends to OBEY!!

We’ve got stickers, shirts, trucker hats, and much much more….

Obey The Decider

Thanks to the valiant efforts of Russ McIntosh from the Favor Wish team, Obey The Decider is making huge leaps on our front end. Russ cleaned up our homepage, designed us a second page and now Tom Music is taking those designs and making them work!!

Now that this Homepage is complete, Tom is taking Russ’s design for the second page and making it work.

Meanwhile Neeraj and Zach are putting our engine to work – the brains behind getting from the Homepage to the second page. Zach has been diligently leveraging the Yelp API to grab the places, categorize them, make the returns random, and ensure the places are returned randomly within the correct timeframes. Of course there is a lot of secret sauce in the mix to make it work – but that is what makes The Decider authoritive. Neeraj has been taking these places that Zach’s Decider engine is deciding on and turning them into a place on a map that a decidee can use to actually go to the place.

Chad has been prepping a huge amount of critical pieces, from formation to licensing agreements, to Terms of use, to FAQs… the list goes on to ensure the team doesn’t end up liable and The Decisions are sound.

Time is running down, but we are confident for a 6pm Launch!!