I’ve been invited by Steli Efti (here’s his blog) to speak in Startup School’s Founder Interview Series. Startup School was recently launched, and here’s how Steli describes it:

The goal of this Supercool School is to empower entrepreneurs globally to connect and educate each other about starting and running a successful startup business. Teachers and students are all entrepreneurs and the curriculum and classes are being organized by the community from the bottom up!

The sessions are live and interactive, but they’re also recorded for future use as well.

I’ll be speaking on Wednesday, November 25th at 1pm EST — click here for more details

It doesn’t give that much time to prepare (for me or you!) but hopefully it’s a worthwhile segue into the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday…

You do need to sign-up to access Startup School (but it can be done via Facebook Connect, so it’s easy). I’ll most likely cover a variety of topics, and it should be a fun / interesting experience.

Half-life is the period of time, for a substance undergoing decay, to decrease by half. Trust, reputation and social capital also decay, but at varying degrees. First, let’s look at how they’re built up:

Please excuse the rudimentary attempt at a diagram, but the visual does help. And if it makes sense, I may create a more comprehensive diagram…

The idea is that you need trust in order to solidify and build your reputation, and you need reputation to generate social capital. Your social capital can then be leveraged for your own purposes (business for example). They’re clearly building blocks, one on top of the other. If after gaining trust (within a community, for example) you attempt to leverage that trust for your own purposes, you might find it’s too early. Same holds true if you make attempts to use reputation and trust. But once you’ve gotten to the stage where you’re generating social capital, you can find ways of “cashing in on it.” And that’s OK. It’s expected, and done correctly can generate huge dividends.

Each of these elements decay, but at varying degrees. The top building block decays the fastest. If you pull out of the social sphere that you’ve engaged (for whatever reason) you’ll find that your ability to go back to that sphere or group and use your social capital diminishes fairly quickly. It’s not that those people don’t recognize your reputation or trust you, but social capital is built in large part on your frequent activity. You give, you get.

Reputation decays quite slowly, but it does diminish over time. And it’s not necessarily as transferable as social capital. For example, you’re working in one industry for quite some time and you’ve built a reputation there. You then move to another industry. You can transfer social capital fairly easily, especially if there are people who straddle both industries in your network, or people from one industry that can connect you to the other. Reputation is a bit tougher, because what you’ve done in one space may not translate as well in another. And once you’ve made a move, your reputation in the original industry deteriorates.

Trust decays the slowest. You can disappear out of a social sphere for years but still have the trust of those people. They may no longer be as eager to help you, and truthfully they may no longer be as able to help you, but they’ll still trust you … and consider you a friend. And not surprisingly, if you find yourself with a huge need, those that trust you will come to your aid. Trust still does deteriorate, just like everything does with the passage of time. But it’s the fundamental foundation piece needed in the equation.

If you look at how people build personal brands, develop careers, start companies, raise capital, close deals — essentially, how people create and seize opportunity for themselves — it’s through building trust, reputation and social capital.

You need to be aware of how these things deteriorate and diminish over time, and find ways to maintain the right levels of social capital, reputation and trust to ensure that you can keep moving in the right direction.

The more I read this, the more half-baked I think my half-life really is, but what the heck. If I only ever posted complete ideas, I wouldn’t have much to post… — What do you think?

Successful recruiting is more complicated than most people realize (except for those who are actively recruiting on a daily basis).

• Getting a ton of applicants is easy.
• Hiring people is easy.

But successful recruiting isn’t.

Successful recruiting means a few things:

1. Maximizing tight budgets to use money wisely in attracting people.
2. Attracting the highest quality candidate possible, not the most candidates possible. This means shrinking the size of the top of your funnel so that conversion rates at each stage increase (job seeker / person -> applicant -> hire -> successful hire). If the top of the funnel is absolutely huge, chances are you’re bringing in too many unqualified candidates and wasting time.
3. Understanding the changing needs of your employer in terms of who to hire, skill sets that are relevant, etc. And understanding the changing needs of employees as well. There has to be a match there.
4. Maximizing busy schedules and time. This is going to be critical as we slowly plod our way out of the recession and recruiting picks up. Companies are less likely to bring on board more recruiters (since recruiters were some of the first people to go when things fell apart), but they will increase hiring. That means the recruiters that are still around will be busier than ever.
5. Hiring higher quality people who stick around longer and contribute more. This is the real ROI measurement for recruitment. Cost per hire isn’t really a necessary focus; if you’re hiring kick ass talent they will ALWAYS return a million times more value than what it cost to acquire them.

Like I said, successful recruiting is hard. The companies that do it well win. It’s as simple as that. The companies that don’t do it well still have a chance of winning but the odds are stacked against them.

One of the key ways companies should be actively (as in right now!) looking to recruit is via a concept I blogged about recently called Inbound Marketing. The book referenced in that blog post is an excellent introduction to the concept of inbound marketing. And for recruiters, all you need to do is take out the word “Marketing” and replace it everywhere with “Recruiting”. Voila – Inbound Recruiting.

Inbound Recruiting is about being findable in as many useful places as possible – search engines, social networks, social media sites, etc. – for those times that people go looking for you. It’s not overly complicated, but it takes work and commitment. Blogging is a great way of building an Inbound Recruiting foundation. Susan Burns and I wrote a very detailed How-To guide for corporate HR blogging. Click here to download it.

Here’s what you need to remember about Inbound Recruiting as a primer:

1. Inbound Recruiting is not just about “active candidates.” Some people might argue that people are only looking for you when they’re looking for a job (i.e. they’re “active candidates”) But that’s nonsense. People are on Google all the time doing searches for a bunch of things that are job-related — it might be out of curiosity, competitive analysis, knowledge gathering, research, they’re having a bad day at work, or some other reason. You need to be findable to everyone when they’re looking for you; even if they don’t quite realize they’re looking for you … yet.
2. Inbound Recruiting is about building trust and relationships. The best candidates take a good hard look at the people working within an organization before accepting a job. The job itself is important, of course, but the people are equally (if not more) important. And the best candidates are looking for things like thought leadership, brand, market awareness and social reach. Those things are built through trust and relationships.
3. Inbound Recruiting is about using Web technology intelligently. Technology is so easily misused and abused. You need to really understand how to use technology to your advantage – to automate things (where appropriate), track things, distribute content and more. It’s quite easy these days to very quickly tap into all the conversations going on about your brand, track sentiment, and respond quickly. This is a great customer service tactic. But it’s also perfect for recruitment. Chances are there are some great candidates talking about your brand right this second (either positively or negatively). Career sites need to be optimized to truly represent your employer brand and make you accessible. Landing pages need to be targeted with laser-focused advertising. And remember – all of this doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. If you’re not comfortable with Web technology then hire someone to help you — but only if a key part of their goal is to train you how to do things for yourself. Don’t rely on others to run your Inbound Recruiting for you.
4. Inbound Recruiting is about metrics. In the HR / Recruitment world there’s a constant debate and struggle around metrics. Too few companies track things accurately. Too few technology providers offer good, simple metrics measurements. And often, the entire recruitment (and hiring) funnel is serviced by multiple technology vendors that don’t talk to each other. So it’s hard to track metrics. At the end of the day you need a measurement for “quality of hire”. It’s as simple as that. Figure that out and then understand the source of each hire (and each non-hire too). The metrics fall into place from there.
5. Inbound Recruiting is about commitment. You cannot build a strong Inbound Marketing system without commitment. You need people, training and money to make it work. But the investment in Inbound Recruiting in terms of dollars spent is well worth it, and it can be less than big budget recruitment advertising costs as well. Plus, there are ancillary benefits to Inbound Recruiting beyond just applicant flow, including increased brand awareness, positive brand association, and more business. It might be hard to measure those ancillary benefits, but they’re there (and it’s not impossible to measure them either!)
6. Inbound Recruiting is about creativity. Out of the millions of job postings on the Web at this very moment, possibly 0.001% of them are interesting. Inbound Recruiting is about thinking and acting creatively. And that gives you, your recruiters, marketers and employees a chance to do something memorable and meaningful. It also means breaking out of “what everyone else is doing” — and that doesn’t necessarily have to be earth shattering. Something as simple as sponsoring local events can have an impact.
7. Inbound Recruiting is not just about online. There are lots of offline strategies for Inbound Recruiting. It’s easy to get caught in the online world and all the whizbang technology and gadgetry, but being findable offline is critical too. After all, hiring people usually involves meeting people face-to-face, right? So why not get to that stage a bit earlier than the interview?
8. Inbound Recruiting is about everyone. Everyone in your company is a recruiter. This is one of the most important things you need to understand about inbound recruiting. Everyone is a recruiter. They’re participation on the Web (social media, social networking, blogging, etc.) can be a positive representation of your organization, even if they’re not out there pimping your company. And they can also actively pimp your company without being “blatant, lying advertisers.” All of your company’s power is in its people. Use them. Empower them all to be honest, transparent recruiters. And if your employees don’t want to be advocates for your business, then you need to find out why as soon as possible. It might be you. It might be them. It might be both of you. But figure it out ASAP.
9. Inbound Recruiting is about taking ownership. Employers should own their brands. Employers should own their communications with people (whether they’re job seekers, passersby, candidates, employees, customers, prospects, etc.) Inbound Recruiting is about taking ownership over your efforts, which may seem scary but is freeing and rewarding.
10. Inbound Recruiting is about increasing the quality of hire. Again, that’s the key metric. And I can guarantee that Inbound Recruiting will increase the quality of hire. You’ll be more findable by the right type of person when that person is out looking for you (even if they don’t know it yet.) You’ll be able to point to your inbound recruiting efforts and match people culturally against them. You’ll be able to turn your organization into a recruiting magnet.

Inbound Recruiting isn’t going to replace all other recruiting efforts. There’s no silver bullet in recruiting. There can’t be. Employer’s requirements are too diverse, there are too many types of jobs, too many types of employees. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for recruitment. That’s what makes it hard but interesting at the same time! Companies will still need to source directly (sourcing + inbound recruiting may be the Holy Grail combination!), look at advertising, use 3rd party recruiters and always try new ways of attracting people.

But if you’re not pursuing an Inbound Recruiting strategy you will get left behind and lose out on great people you could have hired.

I’m a big believer in inbound marketing. I’ve seen it work, and I’ve leveraged many of its tactics for myself, my business, and for others. I believe it will (and has already started to) fundamentally change how companies market to consumers.

Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan are smart guys. They’re the founders of Hubspot, and masters of inbound marketing. And they’re the authors of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media). I read the book in an afternoon (it’s an easy read with great cartoons) and wanted to share 10 key insights gained from it.

1. The book is a worthwhile read for anyone in marketing and social media. Even if you consider yourself experienced with social media, you’ll get something from the book. The first section is largely about how to use inbound marketing tactics to generate traffic and leads (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, SEO, etc.) For many of you this won’t be new, but there are nuggets in there just the same. The second half of the book is largely about how to measure your success, build a marketing funnel and drive your organization to shifting its mentality. This is where the book stands out against other “how to generate traffic” books, e-books and blogs.
2. Search engines are important because of the people who use them, not the algorithms behind them. One of the quotes I saved from the book is this, “Other than the sheer volume of potential visitors you can draw through Google, there’s another important consideration for ensuring your site ranks well: People searching on Google are actually looking for something.” Just remember that, ok?
3. A blog is a long-term asset. And even more importantly it can appreciate in value over time. You’d think most marketers would get this by now, but if they honestly did, a lot more companies would be blogging (and blogging well!) A blog (along with other social media / inbound marketing strategies) is designed to return value over a long period of time, unlike an advertising spot that is unlikely to give you any long-term value whatsoever. And to all the lawyers, administrators, managers and others that want to bury corporate blogging and social networking in a pile of guidelines, policies and other nonsense, I say “Nay!” I love what Mike McDerment from FreshBooks says about his corporate Twitter policy, “We have some style guidelines like each post must be fun, playful, professional, and should not include swearing.” Truth is, if you have a meaningful corporate brand that people are committed to, you shouldn’t need overwhelming policy; the brand already defines what and how things should be said.
4. Use PPC (Google AdWords), Facebook Ads and StumbleUpon advertising as test cases for determining the efficacy of each channel. Most companies get the idea of having as many marketing channels as possible, but this is a smart, simple and relatively inexpensive tactic – leverage paid advertising for quick tests – and then work to maximize the non-paid advertising (Google organic search for example) with the knowledge gained.
5. Landing pages should have a 15%+ conversion rate.
6. Everyone in your organization has the potential to be a marketer.
7. Being remarkable matters, now more than ever. You won’t be able to hide crappy products and crappy companies behind huge marketing budgets.
8. Companies need to change how they hire marketers. This stood out as one of the best (if not the best) parts of the book. I can’t quote the whole section, but suffice it to say you better start thinking about what types of people you hire in your marketing department. And it’s going to be changing faster than ever over the next few years. And the companies that get it right are going to win big time.
9. If everyone in your company can be a marketer, now is the perfect time to expose that within the organization. This is another section I really liked in the book. Dharmesh and Brian talk about exposing people’s inbound marketing efforts publicly within the organization (I believe it was called a “Reach Grader”). Make it something that everyone can see and understand. This is going to create competition internally, and also enhance the company’s culture and brand around inbound marketing (which I think is going to be increasingly more important in the years to come.)
10. You can measure the ROI of inbound marketing. A lot of people struggle with the concept of ROI and social media (and inbound marketing). But there are clearly ways that you can measure ROI, and the book helps a great deal with walking through some of those basics. One of the simple tactics they suggest is to rank all of your marketing (both inbound and outbound) tactics and simply remove the bottom two worst performers and add two new ones to the top of the list. Simple in mechanical terms, but maybe not simple in cultural terms; your marketers have to buy in!

The book has plenty more than what I’ve described above. For example, there are some good primers on search engine optimization, landing pages and hiring help (such as PR agencies).

The only section that I didn’t like was the one about Digg. A few years ago Digg was a great source of huge traffic spikes, but that’s really not the case anymore (at least not for 99.9% of blogs out there.) Given that the primary target for this book is more on the newbie-side, I think the section on Digg creates a bit of false hope. They do say (a few times) that it’s very hard to hit the front page of Digg and get tons of traffic, but I wouldn’t even bother thinking about it. I would much rather see Dharmesh and Brian give people more help on how to write a great blog and find traffic from other niche sources.

Plus, I would have loved more examples.

I’m certain there’s a second book in the making after this one. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) is a great introduction to inbound marketing, but so much more needs to be beaten into the heads of old school marketers. For starters, a lot of companies need more guidance on how to shift their marketing departments and their entire organizations to a new way of thinking. More needs to be explained about landing page optimization and A/B testing (although there are other resources for that.) Companies need to use this book for inspiration, and then get into the trenches, get their hands dirty and make things happen.

Thank you Dharmesh and Brian for an enjoyable read. Thank you for reminding me of things I hadn’t paid enough attention to recently. And thank you for teaching me new stuff as well.

As most of you know by now, I’m a big fan of Steve Blank and his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

One of the biggest points in his book (and hardest to digest) is about the existence of 4 Market Types, and the importance of understanding which market your startup is in. According to Steve, everything you do as a startup, including product development, sales, marketing, budgeting, hiring, etc. is based largely on which Market Type you put yourself into. Here are the four types of startup markets:

1. Startups that are entering an existing market
2. Startups that are creating an entirely new market
3. Startups that want to resegment an existing market as a low cost entrant
4. Startups that want to resegment an existing market as a niche player

You really do need to read the book to grasp the importance of these four markets. It’s something I’m thinking about constantly, based on all the work I’m doing with my startup and with others. But here’s something that’s interesting…(or at least I found it interesting!)

Yesterday I wrote about the generic, buzzword-laden copy I’ve found on many companies’ websites (specifically digital agencies, social media agencies, website development firms, etc.) And I pointed out that one of the exercises I used in evaluating that copy was to take it out of context – grab text from their websites and put it all in a single Word file. The result is interesting, because you really do get to focus exclusively on the copy. You also start to see patterns that weren’t as obvious before.

And one of those patterns and observations was how companies attempt to define their market (and go-to-market strategy) through copy. The copy we use tells customers what we’re trying to do. When looking at it competitively, it tells me what market my competition thinks they’re in and how they’re positioning themselves in that market. Here are some examples:

(Note: In some cases I’ve used real company names, mostly because I’m highlighting a specific tagline)

The original. The pioneers. The Acme Group is a digital services and creation company…

Clearly they’re entrenched in an existing market (digital services / marketing) and using longevity in the industry as their differentiator.

Interestingly, Ignite Social Media does something similar with their tagline, “The original social media agency.” I’m not sure in the world of “social media” longevity really matters that much, but it might.

Ignite goes on to say:

Unlike public relations firms that look at social media as another way to distribute press releases, or search engine optimization firms that look at social media as a way to boost page rank, Ignite Social Media is one of the first agencies in the world to take a holistic approach to using social media tactics, techniques, networks, and tools for corporate marketing.

This is an attempt (as far as I can see) to clearly define their new market (since they were “one of the first agencies”) by aligning themselves against other adjacent markets.

And another company that does this (very well in my opinion) is ZURB. They’re defining themselves by what they’re not:

We’re not a graphic design firm. We’re not a web design agency. We’re not a bunch of namby-pamby artists. We’re a team of T-shaped interaction designers and design strategists who help grow businesses.

Here’s a company that positions themselves against the “same old” competition, and directly against the jargon that most companies seem so fond of:

Tired of the Twitter? Then experience the healing powers of a Digital Detox. Like you, we’re bored of hearing the same old meaningless bollocks. So we’ve taken a different approach. Our free Digital Detox is all about rejuvenating your mind and business. It’s simple. We listen to your digital woes and then do our thing. No gobbledygook. No egos. No sweat. You’ll feel human again in no time. And better than that, you’ll have a clear, jargon-free idea of what digital can do for you.

They go on to say:

We make our clients happy. We’re good at it – 92% of our business comes from repeats and referrals.

We have a transparent project process with clear deliverables. No waffle, no bullshit.

We’re financially independent. And independent in spirit. No, we’re (mostly) not hippies, but we also don’t follow the heard. We’re free to discover, innovate and have fun while we create the best digital communications there are.

Our process guarantees that as well as providing what we said we would, we make sure that something a bit special gets thrown in to the projects too. Find out more about our process to see how we inject some magic to transform a great proposal to a fantastic result.

They’re positioning some clear differentiators (at least in their minds) — happy customers, transparent project process, financial independence and a process that guarantees results. Plus – and I really like this – they use Surprise as a means of hooking the bait. The most interesting differentiator here is “financial independence” … I’m curious about how that’s relevant in this market?

Ant’s Eye View takes a re-segmentation approach by defining a niche, with their tagline, “We’re in the Brand Promise Delivery Business” I like that. Actually, they might be creating an entirely new market with this approach.

Price didn’t seem like a popular way for companies to define themselves. Of the 50+ companies I looked at, only one used price as a differentiator:

Every one of our clients shares the same objectives: to gain attention, be remembered, and drive results. They also prefer to do it cost effectively and with a true sense of confidence that all of their efforts – advertising, direct response, SEO, paid media, digital marketing, public relations and social influence – amplify each other.

This company aims to position themselves in a new market as a new kind of agency. They spell it out very clearly:

We are a conversation agency. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media. We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new.

Harmonypark looks like they’ve created a new market by defining themselves as the “cultural construction company”.

Firebelly Design also creates a new market for themselves with the tagline, “Good design for a good reason”. They go on to say:

We create positive world change connecting authentic companies with real people in socially responsible ways.

So now they’ve created a market for web design services tied to doing good. I like that a lot as a strong differentiator.

It’s fascinating to see how other companies define themselves and what they reveal through the copywriting on their websites.

One of the biggest challenges in terms of picking a Market Type is whether it’s a new market or a re-segmentation by defining a niche. It’s not always clear, especially in such a big, broad and messy market like the one I’m looking at here. But I do think it’s important and extremely relevant for these companies and any startup to focus on Market Type. And when you’re doing competitive analysis and research, look at what they’ve written for clues on what they’re trying to do.

Say that 5 times fast, will ya?

The truth is, I don’t have 650 reasons to do anything, but having spent the last few days doing some research into digital agencies, social media agencies, web companies, PR firms, etc. (all service companies) it’s somewhat shocking and hugely disappointing to see the amount of wasted bits and bytes used on superfluous nonsense.

I’m not going to name companies here, that’s not the point. It’s a general frustration with copywriting on the Web. Most of the companies I took a look at had very nice sites (some were very sparse/simple, some more complex), and most of them had very rich portfolios of fancy design, development and marketing work (although they were almost universally lacking any real case studies with metrics and ROI). But it’s as if they forgot about copywriting. And frankly, copy sells. After looking at 50 or so competitive sites, designs start to fade away and all you really see is the copy.

Something I like to do when looking at text is to take it out of context. Copy and paste a bunch of text into a file and read it there; not alongside other copy on the website, and not combined with the site design. That really helps focus on the copy and make it stand out (for better or worse). You also start to see interesting patterns and similarities in the copy.

What’s really surprising about the copywriting that I found is that it’s written by companies that are supposed to be experts in digital marketing. And the last time I checked that means they’re in the business of effective communication — selling their ability to effectively communicate to their clients’ target markets. But if these companies can’t put out a decent effort for themselves, what does that say about their ability to give customers what they need?

Here are some examples:

At Acme Corp, we are passionate about exceptional website design and application development. We research it and practice it. We live and breathe it. Let us run with your project and see just how great web development is done these days.

We’re a full-service, interactive marketing agency focused on measurable, results-driven engagement.

The Acme Group is a digital services and creation company that delivers the best possible experience for the consumer through the integrated and disciplined use of the best possible practices, good ideas, people and technology.

We offer unparalleled design and creative direction, along with a rock-solid group of technologically innovative minds.

The 3 Most Common Copywriting Problems

1. We, We, We Syndrome: I realize that at some point a company needs to explain to prospects and customers what it does. But too often this focuses on the service provider and not on customers. There’s not enough writing in the second person. When I read the first quote above my first reaction was, “Let YOU run with MY project? It’s MY project, not YOURS, I’m not letting you run anywhere with it.” That’s an adverse reaction to the “We, We, We Syndrome”.
2. Punch Drunk Word Addiction: It’s easy to throw in extra words that you feel are powerful – words that punch the reader right in the face and say, “POW! Check this out!” But the truth is these words very quickly become meaningless. In the 3rd quote above, they’ve used “best possible” twice. In the last quote, the latter part of the sentence doesn’t inspire anything in me except for a yawn, “…ROCK-SOLID group of TECHNOLOGICALLY INNOVATIVE minds.” Say what?
3. And You Are Who Exactly? Affliction: After looking at 50+ websites (all in the same general area) you quickly realize how few of them are presenting a strong brand and genuine personality. Everything starts to blend together, and the only ones that truly do stand out are those that used text effectively.

Writing great copy is very hard. Especially when you realize that it also involves deeper internal and brand analysis – What is your company’s personality? What is your company’s brand? What do you stand for?” And then you have to really hone in on your value proposition to customers – What value do you bring? How? What results have you generated?

These are the types of questions you need to answer before you can write really effective copy. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, how can you write copy that explains this stuff to prospects and customers on your site? You can’t.

One of the best things about being involved in startups is the global community of entrepreneurs that exists. Many startup founders and employees blog and participate actively via social networking and social media sites. They do so to share lessons learned (often hard ones!), network, promote themselves (personal branding is good!), and pimp their companies (inbound marketing ftw!)

I try and link to as many startup blogs as I can when I’m writing about startups and startup-issues, including financing, marketing, operations, hiring and more. But I don’t get to all of them. Oftentimes I tweet out great startup-related posts I find, but I thought it would be a good time to share a bunch of great startup blogs, so you can dig into them and enjoy. (Note: These aren’t ranked in any order – they’re all worth checking out! First link for each one is their blog, second link is their Twitter account…)

• Black & White by Thomas Petersen – Recently I read: Beyond aesthetics – Design tips for startups
• ashmaurya.com by Ash Maurya – Recently I read: From Minimum Viable Product to Landing Pages
• thomas knoll by Thomas Knoll – Recently I read: Are you making things better, or just making more things?
• Flowtown’s Blog by Ethan Bloch – Recently I read Why we scrapped 3.5 months of development
• Rules for Startups by David Binetti – Recently I read The Hiring Approach Depends on the Position – Unfortunately David is taking a hiatus from blogging, but go read his stuff anyway!
• The Mark Bao Weblog by Mark Bao – Recently I read Giving It All Up – Mark hasn’t written in awhile but he’s a teenager with a handful of active startups under his belt already; he’s worth following!
• The Experience is the Product by Cindy Alvarez – Recently I read Is Your Pricing a Dot or Triangle?
• JeffWidman.com by Jeff Widman – Recently I read Questions for which I’ve heard neither concise nor comprehensive answers
• SKMurphy Blog by Sean Murphy – Recently I read George Grellas on Insightful vs. “Window Dressing” Advisory Boards

I hope you enjoy (and gain from) these people as much as I do. Read their blogs and follow them on Twitter. Check out the startups they’re involved in to see how they’re doing things. There’s a lot to be learned there.

And if you have other startup blogs that deserve a shout out — include them in the comments below!

Everyone says that startups are fast-paced, innovative and able to take bigger risks more quickly than large companies. But the reality is that too many startups are not prepared for the risk-taking and innovation that has to take place.

Just because a startup is small doesn’t guarantee that it’s agile or decisive.

The agility and decisiveness in a startup comes from its founders. The founders have to be ballsy, risk-taking, innovative and aggressive. If they’re not, they can very quickly find themselves running a “small company.” Small companies are fine, but they’re not startups.

A lot of people want to work at startups because they’re small. They believe that a startup has more camaraderie and less politics than a bigger company. They expect more innovation in a startup, and they expect their work to have more impact and meaning. And all of those things could be true but they’re not automatically true.

The truth is you can get a lot of the benefits described above in a small company that’s not a startup. The difference is that a startup is at a stage where it has to be more innovative, aggressive, soul-searching and decisive. If it’s not, then it’s not a real startup.

Founders: If you’re not decisive, aggressive, soul-searching and capable of pivoting and adjusting (sometimes drastically) then you’re not running a startup. You’re running a small company. That’s OK. Just don’t get the two confused.

Employees: If you’re not genuinely interested in pivoting, adjusting, taking risk, and sometimes flipping on your head with huge change, then you’re not really a startup employee. You’re a small business employee. That’s OK. Just don’t get the two confused.

Startups aren’t small companies. They have a lot of similarities, but they’re not the same. Understanding and executing on the differences is critical for startup success.

Join me for my latest obsession: Surprise.

In thinking about Surprise and how it relates to my business and the Web in general, I realize that there’s absolutely not enough surprise on the Web.

How often do you visit a website and get surprised?

Sure there are crazy, silly, surprising videos on YouTube. And those often spread like wildfire. But what about corporate sites? Startup sites? Business sites? News sites? Personal blogs? Is there ever any Surprise there?

Whether it’s with the copywriting, design or something else, where’s the Surprise on the Web?

Turns out, people like surprises. Who’d a thunk it?

Actually, some surprises may anger, disgust, scare or shock people — but that’s a good thing!

And most important for businesses out there: People will pay for surprise.

Andy Nulman is Mr. Surprise. Go read his blog on surprise. But come back, ok? Better yet, stick around here for awhile, but bookmark his blog link in a separate browser window or tab for later enjoyment.

Beyond being a flamboyant, extravagant genius, Mr. Nulman is also an author. His book is Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise. Go buy it. You won’t regret it. In fact, John Cleese (who wrote one of the book’s forewords) spells it out for you, “But this book. Or you will die.”

People buy a lot of stuff. But what’s really interesting is the motivation behind their purchases. Why are people willing to put out their hard-earned cash for something? There are a few reasons, but one of the most important and lesser-appreciated reasons is Surprise. It’s clear that surprise in business is misunderstood, misused and under-utilized.

People will give you their money if you surprise them. And I don’t think enough people realize the value, importance and power of surprise.

Andy Nulman easygoing writing style makes this a fast read. He has some great, hilarious and poignant examples of how companies have successfully used surprise to make money. And in some cases, lots and lots of money. In some cases, companies have built nearly their entire business existence on surprise. Implementing surprise strategies isn’t easy. It’s both a science and an art, and Andy gives you the guidebook on how to do it properly. Think of the book as one giant motivational kick in the pants.

I want to leave you with Andy’s four surprise theories. He writes, …”all you have to keep in mind are the four key theories that permeate just about every action that causes a delight-filled reaction:

1. Everyone’s a Kid in Disneyland: Andy reminds us that surprise brings out the inner-child in all of us. It doesn’t matter who you are, surprise levels the playing field, opens people up and makes everyone (and everything) more accessible.
2. Balls Beat Brains; Balls Beat Budgets: Big marketing dollars and huge budgets don’t guarantee success in the world of surprise. The truth is you need more guts than brains and more guts than money to pull off huge surprise wins. And action beats inaction any day. Action beats endless planning too; sometimes you have to just “go for it”.
3. Little Things Mean a Lot: And while you’re at it, remember that big wins come in small packages. Success surprise marketing campaigns don’t have to be massive projects. People will notice and hugely appreciate small surprises.
4. Sometimes, There is No Reason: It turns out not everyone does need a reason. In business that may be challenging to accept as we always look for practical step-by-step understanding of what we’re doing and why. But surprise doesn’t have to work that way. Sometimes you have to do something, “just because” and it works like a charm.

After reading Andy’s book I want to find ways to create surprise in everything I do. Not just because it’s fun, frivolous and more interesting to think about than most other business endeavors, but because people pay for surprise. And as a businessperson I like people paying me for stuff.

image courtesy of shuttershock.com

(found via the great folks at BootupLabs)

Students today are graduating into an environment where jobs are scarce. This advice delivered yesterday by President Obama in his commencement speech at Arizona State University was worthwhile advice for any student of life.

I particularly enjoyed his focus on service to society and the role of entrepreneurs to improve the lives of those around them through innovation.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The full text of his speech can be found here.

The most recent Startup2Startup held last evening featured Steve Blank & Eric Reis.

Steve is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of dot.com success story E.piphany. His book, 4 Steps to Epiphany - Successfull Strategies for Products that Win on Customer Development & Product Strategies is a great resource for anyone thinking about building successful products.

Eric Reis is also a serial entrepreneur and the advocate of the lean startup model. Eric’s blog Startup Lessons Learned should be required reading for any entrepreneur (and frankly at all Engineering & computer science Universities who in Canada do a piss poor job of teaching our graduates anything about building successful products).

Here is the talk from last evening.

Dave continues to be a mitzva machine (Mr. Karma generator) by sharing all the Startup2Startup videos online & broadcasting the event publicly. (Not the first from Dave, which also includes Startonomics, Pirate Metrics for Startups).

I’ve learned a lot from watching Dave. In speaking with him recently, I’m going to be copying some of his examples for events & initiatives we do to support the Canadian entrepreneurial technology scene.

One of the reasons I am a firm believer that it is one of the best times to be an entrepreneur is the incredible amount of freely accessible learning tools at our disposal. When I started my career as an entrepeneur (very early in life) I had to go to the public library to find articles in Byte Magazine that gave me any insight into the early stories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor and how they started their companies.

There was no attention by the regular business press, no Internet to search, no podcasts, online video or Slideshare to get good information.

It wasn’t until after my first few failures and one success in 1996 that I began to see books written about the experiences of technology entrepreneurs with stories about raising venture capital and the way different companies organized things like product marketing, product management. (Jerry Kaplan’s Startup a Silicon Valley Story was one of the first books of this type).

Any aspiring entrepreneur now has the world of rescources, learning, advisors, blogs and rich information on every aspect of building a company waiting on the other side of the browser. If you have a computer, broadband and an iPod you can literally earn an MBA in startup history, theory & take advantage of more then a billion dollars of mistakes & lessons paid for by other entrepreneurs who are now willing to share what they learned. There is no replacement for hands on experience but most of the entrepreneurs I coach run into the same problems and the answers to how to avoid them are often already out there.

For those interested, Eric Reis is doing an O’Reilly Webcast on How to Build a Lean Startup - A Step by Step Guide Philosophy at 1pm EST today (May 1, 2009). It’s a free webcast, but requires pre-registration.

Here are some interesting facts from the press release,

• With the acquisition of Casero Radialpoint’s customer base includes 20 leading ISPs worldwide with direct access to more than 50 million subscribers. Radialpoint’s addressable subscriber base now includes one in every three broadband connected homes in North America and Western Europe.
• Radialpoint has grown rapidly over the past five years, from 75 to 250 employees, while experiencing an average annual revenue growth rate of 40 percent.
• This year the company is estimating 50 percent annual revenue growth over the previous fiscal year and expects to exceed the $100 million mark in annual revenue within the next two years.
• Radialpoint has been profitable and cash flow positive since 2004, and projects an estimated EBITDA growth rate of 40 percent this year.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the incredible continued growth at Radialpoint, but if you haven’t been tracking the company here are some other recent events that have occurred,

• In September 2008 (actually a week or so before the economic crash) the company raised $98 million from the private equity firm TA Associates (our friend & Akoha investor John Meeks joined the Radialpoint board)
• In January 2009 Radialpoint acquired Boston based HiWired an award winning PC Support solution.

This is the latest in a series of transactions that Radialpoint has completed becoming one of the fastest growing & largest software companies in Canada.

This latest transaction is also interesting for the following reasons,

• Casero was founded, financed & run by Canadian serial entrepreneurs Kevin Kimsa & Paul Atkinson. This is a great deal for them (congratulations to the entire Casero team). I’m pleased to see Paul joining the board of Radialpoint and the company staying in the hands of a Canadian technology company instead of being sold to a foreign company.
• Kevin & Paul have had a number of startups in Canada and have also been angel investors & coaches for entrepreneurs at Universities such as Waterloo.
• Casero was funded in part by Canadian VCs including ArgoGlobal Capital a fund that Canadian serial entrepreneur, angel investor & venture fund operator Charles Sirois helped establish.

This is one of the best examples of our serial entrepreneurs (from multiple generations of tech & Internet successess in Canada), VCs and fast growing Canadian companies working together to create large Canadian based market leaders.

There have been a lot of discussions on the Canadian startup blogs recently about promoting Canadian success stories & the role of our serial entrepreneurs, angel invesetors and VCs working together to create an ecosystem of success. (See Rick Segals recent run of great Canadian tech posts (1, 2, 3, 4); Chris Arsenault’s CVCA post on our industry being alive & kicking, Startup North’s great coverage of Incubators & Ignition and the debates about the problems with our VC industry and MontrealTechWatch’s recent coverage of the increases in Quebec provincial support of the VC industry and local startup incubators)

I continue to see incredible signs of success at every level of Canada’s technology ecosystem. There are many problems with the global economy, the Canadian innovation sector - but as Radialpoint continues to show, there is a lot of exciting success stories occuring in our own backyard as well.

Radialpoint is just one example - but it happens to be one I’m very familiar with and couldn’t be prouder to be associated with.

I love Twitter and am fascinated by the ecosystem that Evan, Biz and the team at Twitter have created around the popular microblogging service. While many people on the sidelines are obsessed with when Twitter will make money, I see nothing but great opportunities ahead for the Twitter team. (Disclosure: I’m an investor in Identi.ca - an open source microblogging service.)

Twitter is also undeniably the hottest startup out there today. It’s got plenty of money, and more mainstream press than any startup has received in a very, very long time. The times I’ve met Evan I’ve been impressed with his ability to stay out of the echo chamber that surrounds the popular service (As an entrepreneur Evan’s got class).

My affection for Twitter is also the source of my concerns for the Twitter team as I saw the signs of fail whales to come on their recruiting page.

Let me explain. During the last Internet boom & crash I was the CEO of Zero-Knowledge Systems, a company that was also a media darling with tons of money and attention to go with it. Like Twitter we defied the trends in the industry when we raised $22 million at record valuations nine months after the dot com crash had begun to sweep through the tech industry. (This was after having just raised $25 million the year before. Unlike Twitter we did not have a successful product and it took us a number of years to turn the company into the success it is today.)

Throughout 1998-2002 we had employees from around the world desperately trying to join the company to be part of our dot.com dream. One of the many mistakes we made was hiring too quickly as our staff rolls grew to over 200 people.

The Problems with Twitter’s Recruiting Drive

Twitter no doubt needs to hire. Here’s Twitter’s career site: http://twitter.com/jobs

Twitter has almost 15 open positions listed which according to reported numbers would be a 35% increase in their current headcount.

Despite their ability to recruit people like high profile people from the Google campus Twitter falls far behind its Mountain View rival for talent in a critical aspect of HR: employment branding.

Google has a long history of strong employment branding. They’ve won awards for being a top employer, and received plenty of press – not just for the lavish perks, but also for the way they recruit. Google may have many problems inside the Googleplex (crazy cash flow hides many problems), but their attention to advertising what it takes to be hired by them has served them well as they grew.

Google’s attention to its employer brand started very early on, and has been pervasive throughout its growth. Even as the most popular darling of the Internet world, it remained focused on its brand – a rigorous recruiting process, lots of perks, unique value proposition and only hiring the absolute best.

So what about Twitter?

As one of the hottest startups in the Valley hiring while unemployment rates continue to rise Twitter needs to be vigilant about guarding their culture. To do this they need a concerted effort to ensure only the best candidates enter their hiring funnel.

Despite this attention in the middle of an economic downturn Twitter appears to have a lack of any focus on employment branding.

Some might argue that given Twitter’s popularity they don’t need to focus on their employment brand; they don’t need to promote their internal culture more effectively and focus on publicly attracting the best. I’m sure Twitter wants to hire the best (and has the dollars and buzz to help them do so), but it takes a more concerted, ongoing effort. Just look at Google…

Much of a company’s public-facing employer brand starts with its career site. (Disclaimer: I’m an investor and co-Founder of Standout Jobs - http://standoutjobs.com - which helps companies with their career sites and recruitment. But this post isn’t about vendor selection or products as much as it’s about the importance of strong employer branding and developing a rigorous culture of recruiting.)

Although Twitter’s made some effort to include cultural content on the site, it’s lacking. As much as I think I know what it’s like to work at Twitter, or I can imagine it, I don’t really get the picture I want from their site. They don’t even provide a roll up of recent tweets from their employees like Zappos & employee culture genius Tony Hsieh does.

Worst still, are the job descriptions they use. They’re about as generic as job descriptions come looking like they were haphazardly copied from some other boring job advertisement on some average job board.

If you look at the job posting for Product Manager or Software Engineer (arguably two of the most important roles in a software company) there is nothing there that discourages anyone with the minimum requirements from throwing their hat in the ring. The amount of investment that goes into a unique & specific job description tells candidates how important you take finding the best fit. When you copy a weak job description you send the signal that you are too busy to take hiring seriously.

As important as the cultural information and the job descriptions is the need for more information on the recruitment process and what Twitter wants to see from applicants. One of the goals with this kind of information is to help job seekers self-select. I’m sure Twitter doesn’t have a problem getting a large volume of applications, but quality is another story. Allowing applicants to self-select by making sure they understand more about the recruitment process and expectations can help weed people out before they even apply.

Compare the Twitter job descriptions with the job descriptions I recently posted for a UX Designer for my company Akoha. Another great exampleis the job description that my friend Alistair Croll listed for a Program Manager. In both cases candidates have a clear picture of what will be expected of them, hopefully a sense of the companies mission and most importantly a number of explicit requirements that allow candidates to self-select whether they believe they are qualified for the role.

Twitter has changed the way many of us communicate on a daily basis. You can pack so much into 140 characters. And yet, the Twitter application process is multiple steps and driven almost exclusively by a person’s resume. Boring. Twitter can’t be hiring based off resumes, I’m sure they’re looking for so much more, and yet that’s not reflected in the application process. There’s so much opportunity for creativity when it comes to recruiting, but too few companies – Twitter included – take advantage. And it’s not enough to rely on their own popularity to attract the best, they need to publicly cultivate and promote a strong employer brand that’s pervasive through everything they do.

Hiring your next fail whale.

I’m sure that Twitter can’t keep up with the volume of applicants attempting to get in on the ground floor of the company. With the only requirement to apply being a resume and basic qualifications there may be a few incredible candidates in their funnel, but I’m sure for the hiring team it is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Having set the bar so low publicly puts all the burden on Twitter to screen and find the best candidates. Many candidates will probably never get a call back or hear from the company (In my test attempt to apply I didn’t even get an automated thank you email, one of the most frustrating experiences for candidates applying into a black hole)

This overflow of candidates means that Twitter will,

• Spend too much time reviewing mountains of candidate applications using resumes as the way to screen candidates.
• Miss potentially great candidates who get lost in the noise and are not elevated to the top of the hiring pool by the hiring process.
• Invest too much of their teams time on 2nd tier candidates who can write fancy resumes and may have been in the vicinity of success instead of the creators of it.
• Stretch out hiring time frames which makes topgrading a difficult exercise since candidates cannot be ranked during a constrained timeframe allowing you to pick the best.
• Reduce the amount of time you can spend assessing cultural fit in your interview process.
• Start to make compromises on hiring candidates as the time to fill critical positions continues to increase.
• Increase the chance that a few bad apples will enter the company at a critical time.

While the momentum of Twitter may seem unstoppable, I know first hand how quick a few bad hires can contribute to a company losing its way. Many of the worst mistakes I’ve made in my career can be traced to making compromises in my hiring practices.

At a time when Twitter needs to be accelerating to fulfill their potential their public hiring practices seem to be indications of future fail whales to come.

A great example of hiring practices is how my friend Andy Nulman screens candidates read this interview or this great story of his hiring practices.

Our community has a number of speakers, attendees & company presentations occurring at:

• SXSW Interactive in Austin (March 13-17)
• Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (March 23-27)
• Web 2.0 Expo (March 31-April 3)

Conferences give us a great chance to network with many of our industry counterparts from around the world. They also provide us a chance to meet members of our local community that we may not have connected with while in Montreal. Meeting your local counterparts at these events allow us to help support each other in many ways while we are stateside. Whether you are looking for a job, trying to recruit for a position, inviting people to listen to your session talk or need help trying to meet that critical investor/partner/speaker or guru your local community might be able to help you get more out of your conference experience.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences this year please send a tweet using the conference hash tag & #MTL to introduce yourselves including who you are, which company you are with (if any) and any information about meetups, promotions, presentations or help you need to get the most out of your trips.

• #SXSW #MTL Example: @georgefavvas CEO of @smarthippo is at #SXSW #MTL this week where SmartHippo is going to be doing a fun promotion.
• #GDC #MTL Example: @austinhill from @akoha #MTL is doing a keynote at #GDC Serious Game Summit
• #Web2Expo #MTL Example: @acroll @seanpower Authors of new O’Reilly book on Watching Websites are speaking at #Web2Expo #mtl

This will allow other Canadian & Montreal tech community members to reach out, introduce themselves and hopefully lend a helping hand to each other for any specific things you are trying to get done. It also allows those of us not attending events to keep an eye on your tweets from Montreal.

If this picks with with other cities such as #Tdot (Toronto), #Van (Vancouver), #Cal (Calgary), #Ott (Ottawa) or #CAN (Canada) you can use these links to track the Canadian tech community at these conferences. Expat Canadians are also welcome to grab the #CAN tag to join in on the fun.

Update: As Boris Mann suggests in the comment below, there are more often used Twitter hash tags for other cities. The tags he suggests are YVR (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto). The round up links haven’t been updated for this, but if you are using Tweetdeck you should find it easy to create a search that includes a number of the variants on city hash tags.

• #SXSW - Full Canadian City round up
• #GDC - Full Canadian City round up
• #Web2Expo - Full Canadian City round up

At the very least we can co-ordinate meeting up for drinks to showcase our drinking prowess to our industry counterparts around the world

A great example of how technology is allowing our storytellers the ability to create our own view of reality.

Suggestions for Google,

• I’m sure this is being considered, but vanity URLs optimized for SEO would be great. Instead of http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/100761717775559459217 I’d like to see the profile url be customized like LinkedIn allows (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/austinhill)
• Consider auto-suggesting discoverable links to other profiles. I’ve already linked my FriendFeed account, blog & twitter to various other parts of my online public profiles. If Google wants to be the ‘One profile to rule them all’ it should consider using it’s indexing power to take some of the custom links I’ve added and detect links to my other profiles and suggest them to me as profiles to link to this one. (For instance, I still haven’t added my Friendfeed, Flickr or Last.Fm accounts. There are many others….)

Update: I added my Friendfeed account and discovered that Google does detect & suggest other links to add to my profile. Since Google has a much larger audience then Friendfeed, they might consider extending this functionality for users without Friendfeed.

• Provide the user with a clearer explanation of the benefits of setting up a Google Profile. I know that Google likes to sneak features & products into their mix of offerings early, but there isn’t a clear user value proposition associated with Google Profile. I happened upon it while doing something else in my Google account and because I’m promiscuous with use of online profiles I decided to give it a try. Users should understand what they gain, exchange & how the profiles might be used in conjunction with other Google products.
• Allow me to enter Tags associated with my profile. This could be a powerful way of creating, discovering other Google Profile.

I hadn’t planned on posting an updated guide of TEDsters & Twitter this year since I assumed that most people would be using http://search.twitter.com to track #TED, TED or TED2009 keywords to track the conversation.

After seeing the recent spike in search traffic to last years Twitter TED guide, I’ve decided to update the list of people I know are Twittering the TED conference this year. Some of these people are posting more often then others and many are not including the #TED hashtag.

I hope this will also allow TEDsters to connect with each other, since many of us may not have had the chance to exchange Twitter names. It might help us know who are the Tweeters in our neighborhood.

If you’ve been left of the list and are Twittering at the TED conference, leave a comment with your Twitter username or just @austinhill me on Twitter.

TED Twitter Accounts & TED Staff

• Official TED 2009 Converage

• Chris Anderson, TED Curator

• TED Palm Springs

• Tom Rielly, TED Comedian, TED Fellows Organizer

• TED Talks Updates

• June Cohen TED Conference

Great live TED Twitter Coverage

• Loic LeMeur (Seesmic, LeWeb)

• Maria Popova (Digital Anthropologist)

• Tara Hunt (Author, Community & Whuffie junkie, Akoha power player

• Helen Walters (Editor Innovation & Design, NewBusinessweek)

• Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media founder, blogger, Web rationalist & futurists)

• Leigh Ferreira (Change maker)

• Sören Stamer (CEO CoreMedia)

• Laurel Touby (MediaBistro Founder/Entrepreneur)

• Jennifer 8. Lee (Author, Blogger)

• Roseann Higgins (Founder Entrepreneurs Forum, Writer)

• Remo Giuffre (Merchant/Thinker, Founder Remo Store)

• Rod Beckstrom (Author, CEO, Starfish & Spider, Director of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Center)

• Evan Williams (Mr. Twitter)

• Garr Reynolds (Author, PresentationZen guru)

• Erik Hersman (Dir. of Ops Ushahidi, TED U speaker)

• Juliana Rotich (Kenyan blogger, Renewable Energy)

• Mark Gibson (Optimist Gibson Consulting)

• Hamid Shojaee (CEO Axosoft)

• Eric Grant (blogger, futurist)

• Jason Sack (User Experience Designer)

• Ben Thoma (Art Director)

• Michael Silverton (TED associate, watching remote but great tweet coverage)

• Patrick Kearney (VP Tech & Ops at Participant Media)

• George Brett (Techno Artiste)

• Nilofer Merchant (CEO Rubicon)

• Amy Leaman(Designer; The Movement; Toronto)

• Ash Donaldson (Humane Experience Designer)

• Sandro Farina (Tech Director Tunde SRL)

TED attendees twittering about the conference
In no particular order

• Alex Eberts (Akoha co-founder, my Partner)

• Harlene Weijs (Akoha Taskrobat, Artist)

• Anand Agarawala (Former TED speaker, Founder of Bumptop)

• Maria Giudice (Founder HotStudio Design Humanist)

• Pierre Omidyar (Ebay & Omidyar Foundation)

• Tony, CEO Zappos

• Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC, Angel Investor)

• Paul Kedrosky (Investor, Finance & Charts guru)

• David Hornik (VC,Lobby Organizer)

• Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital)

• Rob Hayes (First Round Capital)

• Robert Goldberg (Investor/VC)

• Michael Parekh (Tech Investor, Blogger)

• Steven Levy (Author, Reporter, Person who found Einstein’s brain)

• Lars Hinrichs (Entrepreneur, Founder XING)

• Sarah Jones (TED 2009 Speaker, Tony winning performer)

• Steve Rosenbaum (Magnify CEO)

• Christopher Herot (Entrepreneur)

• Bill Holsinger-Robinson (COO Spout)

• Tara (OnePinkTee)

• Josh Spear (Digital Marketing, Blogger, New Media)

• Jim Stolze (Happiness guru)

• John Hodgman (Mr. PC guy in Apple ads)

• Susan Bratton (Podcast Published - Personal Life Media)

• PeterMe

• Sean Gourley (TEDfellow, Analysis of the Mathematics of Wars)

• KoKoe2 Great coverage of TED

• Patricia Amaya (Director, Writer, Producer)

• Daniel Kraft (Inventor, Doctor, Scientist, TED2009 speaker)

• Danny Sullivan (Search guru, Blogger)

• Padmasree

• Mark Yturralde (ComicCon Board member, Amazing Race contestant)

• MadLOLScientist MadLOL informed me he isn’t here, just retweeting

• Kluster (Crowdsourcing team, TED contributors)

• Tony Robbins (Inspiration Guru, Past TED Speaker)

• Jimmy Guterman (MIT Sloan Author, Writer) - Lots of TED2009 Blog Coverage

• Cameron Sinclair (Founder Architecture for Humanity, TED Prize Winner)

• Hugo Schotman (User Experience Architect)

• David Hoffman (Storyteller, Videographer, Communicator)

• David Geller (Founder EyeJot)

• Kyra Guant (Speaker, Songwriter, Merriam Prize Winner)

• Yuri van Geest (Blogging, Media, Mobile)

• Kevin Rose (Digg Founder)

• Al Gore (Former VP, Current.TV, former TED Speaker, Nobel Prize Winner)

• Chris Sacca (Angel Investor, Startup Coach, ex.Google)

• DK Matai (Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Engineer)

• Wil Shipley (Delicious Library CEO/Programmer)

• Zem Joaquin (Eco Fabulous Writer)

• Minky Worden (Human Rights Watch)

New Additions Feb 6th 1:52pm PST

• Amir Bahadori (Microsoft)

• Peter Diamandis (X-Prize founder, ZeroGravity Flights, Singularity University, former TED speaker)

TED PalmSpings Attendees & Coverage

• Andre Lee (Corporate Coach, Blogger)

• Stephen Collins (Blogger, also seeding Akoha in Australia for us)

• Aaron Tang (Designer)

• Diego Leal (Blogger, Geek, World Changing)

• Mattias Ask (Open Causes)

• Steve Hanson (Hanson Backstage Digital Agency)

• Traci Fenton (CEO WorldBlu)

• Jane Samson (Sewing & So)

• Robert Agouri

• Dominique Jaurola

Great Blog Coverage

• EthanZ on Twitter - Ethan Zuckerman Global Voices, more blogging then twitter. Great constant blog coverage.

This is some video that my friend Loic LeMeur and I happened to grab from two different perspectives.

This is the video that Loic was filming at the time. It includes an interview with the team from Mission Motors. Very cool motorcyle I want one.

I moved my blog to: http://macournoyer.com/blog.

New feed is at http://macournoyer.com/blog.atom

I know, I’m asking a lot… But I guarantee you’ll have a lot more fun if you update your feed to point to my new blog.

kthxbai

Thin 1.0, codename That’s What She Said, is out!

gem install thin

1.0, OMGWTFBBQ!

Yes 1.0! That doesn’t mean it’s bug free or anything. But, it does mean that it’s been running on a number of servers and no show stopper bugs have been found since a while.

Special thanks to…

A lot of people have helped me achieve this milestone. I’m very proud to say that Thin is no longer my project, but the collaborative work of many bright people.

Here they are. If you like Thin or if it helped you in any way, please take a couple minutes and recommend them.
(If you contributed to Thin in any way and are not on the list, that’s an error so please let me know!)

• Aman Gupta
• Francis Cianfrocca
• thronedrk
• Kent Sibilev
• Ezra Zygmuntowicz
• Matt Todd
• Evan Weaver
• Wayne Seguin
• Kevin Williams
• James Gollick
• Gary Haran
• Gump
• Chad Nantais
• Wincent Colaiuta
• Chu Yeow
• Blake Mizerany
• Pedro Belo
• Dan Kubb
• Michael S. Klishin
• Ricardo Chimal
• Mark Bates
• Hellekin Wolf
• Jason May

Also thanks to everyone who’ve taken the risk to run Thin on their website.

I’ll be presenting Rack this Tuesday at the first Montreal Against Rails (the non-Rails meeting).

I’ll show how to use Rack and then I’d like to try something new (and probably crazy-stupid). Building a web framework with Rack is so easy, I’ll be doing pair programming with anyone from the audience to create our own custom framework live during the presentation (in 30 min). We’ll start with the code posted on RefactorMyCode as the application code, we’ll implement the framework code during the presentation. So submit your ideas there before the event.

To take part in first and biggest Montreal Ruby pair programming session and watch the other cool presentations, make sure to RSVP.

Google Chrome looks cool, ok… But what is even cooler for me is V8, the super JavaScript VM.

JavaScript is a dynamic language, just like Ruby.
You can add stuff to objects at runtime, like Ruby.
It’s object oriented, like Ruby.
It has a GC, like Ruby.
…

What if we could run Ruby on V8?

Well, it’s a lot easier that you think. If you remember a while ago, someone released HotRuby. It runs YARV bytecode in the browser.

So I plugged the 2 together just to see what would happened => rbv8.

It’s fast (sometimes)

I used the script on HotRuby site to benchmark.

sum = ""
50000.times{ |e| sum += e.to_s }

And just for fun, I also wrote it in C:

int main (int argc, char const *argv[])
{ char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * 238890); char buf[5]; size_t i; for (i = 0; i < 50000; ++i) { sprintf(buf, "%d", i); strcat(str, buf); } return 0;
}

Update: seems like my C code was the suck, thx for some commenters for pointing it out. Here’s a better version which is way faster (thx to Hongli Lai):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h> int main (int argc, char const *argv[])
{ char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * 238890); char buf[5]; size_t i; unsigned long last = 0; for (i = 0; i < 50000; ++i) { int len = sprintf(buf, "%d", i); memcpy(str + last, buf, len); last += len; } return 0;
}

Also here’s a Javascript version:

var sum = "";
for (var i = 0; i < 50000; i++) { sum += i.toString();
};

C: 0.017 sec
Javascript: 0.063 sec
rbv8: 0.987 sec
Firefox 3: 3.636 sec
Safari 3: 4.368 sec
Opera 9.50: 4.679 sec
Ruby 1.8.6: 9.565 sec
Ruby 1.9.0: 9.669 sec
Rubinius 0.8.0: 15.576 sec
JRuby 1.1 b1: 42.691 sec

OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! 10 times faster then YARV and faster then C!

Update: Ok… if your replace += w/ <<, YARV beats the Javascript version running on V8, thx to Nobu Nakada for noting this

But wait, don’t go tell your friends yet! It seems, that all the other benchmarks I tried were slower (sometimes by a very wide margin).

But I think this means that the potential is there, it just need to be exploited properly.

Also another fun thing to note, is that if you change Fixnum#times to while i < 50000 in the Ruby code, it becomes a lot slower. No idea why.

Me wants to try

If you wanna try rbv8:
You need Ruby 1.9 installed as `ruby19` and make sure you meet V8 Pre-requisites: http://code.google.com/apis/v8/build.html#pre_reqs.

git clone git://github.com/macournoyer/rbv8.git
cd rbv8
rake
bin/rbv8 sample/concat.rb

Note that this is just a prototype. I just hacked this in an hour to benchmark it. See the README file for what needs to be done next.

>> Object.methods.size
=> 85
>> def i_is_in_ur_Object; "kthxbai" end
=> nil
>> Object.methods.size
=> 86
>> String.new.i_is_in_ur_Object
=> "kthxbai"

Careful what you put in there!

In Ruby, Class is a Module which, like any object, has a class.

>> Class.superclass
=> Module
>> Module.class
=> Class

But the crazy thing is, it’s the complete opposite in the implementation.
(Excerpt from ruby.h)

typedef struct { VALUE super; struct st_table *iv_tbl;
} rb_classext_t; struct RClass { struct RBasic basic; rb_classext_t *ptr; struct st_table *m_tbl; struct st_table *iv_index_tbl;
};
#define RCLASS_IV_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->ptr->iv_tbl)
#define RCLASS_M_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->m_tbl)
#define RCLASS_SUPER(c) (RCLASS(c)->ptr->super)
#define RCLASS_IV_INDEX_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->iv_index_tbl)
#define RMODULE_IV_TBL(m) RCLASS_IV_TBL(m)
#define RMODULE_M_TBL(m) RCLASS_M_TBL(m)
#define RMODULE_SUPER(m) RCLASS_SUPER(m)

We see it gets the instance variable table (RMODULE_IV_TBL) just like it’s a class. Modules are stored in RClass structs.

I know. I’m totally confused too.

You can now follow people on RefactorMyCode.com. Wow it’s like FaceBook + code snippets! Better get your mom an account!

You’ll then have a page with all stuff posted by your new friends and even an Atom feed.

To follow someone, simply go to their profile page and click on “Follow this user”.

Hope you like it!

require "rubygems";require "thin";require"markaby"; class Invisible
HTTP_METHODS =[:get,:post,:head,:put,:delete];attr_reader :request,
:response, :params; def initialize(&block); @actions =[]; @with=[];
@layouts={};@views={};@helpers=Module.new;@app=self; instance_eval(
&block) if block end; def action(method, route, &block); @actions<<
[method.to_s, build_route(@with*"/"+route),block] end;HTTP_METHODS.
each{|m|class_eval "def #{m}(r='/',&b); action('#{m}', r, &b) end"}
def with(route); @with.push(route);yield;@with.pop end; def render(
*args,&block);options=args.last.is_a?(Hash)?args.pop: {};@response.
status=options.delete(:status)||200;layout=@layouts[options.delete(
:layout)||:default];assigns={:request=>request,:response=>response,
:params=>params,:session=>session};content=args.last.is_a?(String)?
args.last : Markaby::Builder.new(assigns,@helpers, &(block||@views[
args.last] )).to_s ; content = Markaby::Builder.new( assigns.merge(
:content => content), @helpers, &layout).to_s if layout; @response.
headers.merge!(options);@response.body=content end;def layout(name=
:default, &block); @layouts[name]=block end; def view(name,&block);
@views[name]=block end; def helpers(&block);@helpers.instance_eval(
&block ) ; instance_eval(&block) end; def session; @request.env[
"rack.session"]end; def use(middleware, *args);@app=middleware.new(
@app,*args) end; def run(*args);Thin::Server.start(@app, *args) end
def call(env); @request = Rack::Request.new(env); @response =Rack::
Response.new; @params = @request.params; if action = recognize(env[
"PATH_INFO"], @params["_method"] ||env["REQUEST_METHOD"]); @params.
merge!(@path_params);action.last.call;@response.finish; else; [404,
{}, "Not found"]; end; end; def self.run(*args,&block);new(&block).
run(*args) end; def self.app;@app||=self.new end;def self.call(env)
@app.call(env) end; private; def build_route(route);pattern= route.
split("/").inject('\/*') { |r, s| r << (s[0] == ?: ? '(\w+)' : s) +
'\/*' } + '\/*';[/^#{pattern}$/i,route.scan(/\:(\w+)/).flatten] end
def recognize(url, method); method =method.to_s.downcase; @actions.
detect do |m,(pattern,keys),_| method==m&&@path_params=match_route(
pattern,keys,url)end;end;def match_route(pattern,keys,url);matches,
params=(url.match(pattern)||return)[1..-1],{};keys.each_with_index{
|key,i| params[key]=matches[i]};params;end;end; def method_missing(
method, *args, &block); ; if Invisible.app .respond_to?(method) ;
Invisible.app. send( method, *args, &block); else; super; end; end

No!

Nick Sieger though us about Jazz, Giles Bowkett got a standing ovation, Zed Shaw sang “Matz can’t patch” and “Don’t fuck Chad’s community”, Geoffrey Grosenbach was wearing a kilt, Hampton Catlin presented Haml for Javascript, Damien Katz made me cry and Tom Preston-Werner is my new hero.

Better reviews

• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-1/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-2/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/21/rubyfringe-day-2-notes-part-1/
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=27
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=30

Code is at http://github.com/macournoyer/meshu