Monthly Archives: March 2008

Departing b5media

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About two and a half years ago, I embarked on a journey of a lifetime. It was a breakthrough journey that took me from working in a cubicle at Northrop Grumman to living my dream building an internet startup. At some point, we took funding. I recruited Brian Layman and Mark Jaquith and the rest of the tech team. We moved from hosting a blog network on someone’s shared hosting provider to developing hard plans to encompass hundreds of servers in grid format.

We went from WordPress 1.5 and basic installs to over 350 installs of WordPress working in tandem with robust data sharing via APIs. We developed techniques to deploy advertising campaigns quickly and efficiently. We worked hard to build reporting tools, financial tools, management tools, and more – all in an effort to make this company work.

And it has and continues to grow at an astounding rate.

It’s been a great ride, but now it’s time to look forward and explore new territory. Recently, through my interactions with so many wonderful people in the DC technology community, the PodCamp community, the larger social media, business and technology communities, my appetite for something new and challenging has been overwhelming. I’ve had several conversations with Jeremy Wright, our CEO, over the past months exploring this stuff and he has been amazingly supportive, as has the rest of the b5media team.

An exact date has not been set, as I want to make sure a replacement is found and brought up to speed, however it will probably be within the next couple of months.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the next steps. At this point, I’m not sure what those next steps are but I have options. I’d like to develop Mokonji a bit more. I also have a few other venturistic ideas floating around in my head and I want to spend some time focusing more on the DC community that has sprung up around here. Obviously, I’ll continue to be blogging here at Technosailor, though in the short term, I’ll be exploring effective ways to monetize it – gotta pay for the server costs now (whew, forgot how that worked! ;-) )

I don’t know. The eager anticipation of the “what’s next” is crazy for me right now. It’s sort of like going out on a date for the first time. You don’t know what to expect but you know you really, really like the girl a lot.

Thanks for all your support for these years that I’ve been blogging. Looking forward to see what comes next! And if you want to be me (erm, the b5media Director of Technology), the company is actively looking for my replacement.

Thought Leadership

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You, know, I’ve gotten far away from blogging about blogging. It’s an overdone topic that had its day in the sun, but we’ve moved on to, thankfully, other topics. However, the depth of content still discourages me. Yes, there are literally millions of blogs out there and the number of really quality blogs have increased dramatically. However, the signal to noise ratio is still very bad, in my opinion.

What am I referring to?

In political blogging, people are still quoting and linking to Daily Kos and Captain’s Quarters as sources of inspiration for posts.

In gadget blogging, people still read from the same page as Engadget or Gizmodo.

In business blogging, Seth Godin and Lawrence Lessig.

For SEO and marketing, Shoemoney and SEOMoz still rule the roost.

As they should. All of these blogs have been and continue to produce excellent original content, and most importantly, thought leadership. In whatever area they write, they are producing content that attracts readers to innovative ideas and concepts and helps those readers explore related concepts and thoughts. In the case of Engadget and Gizmodo, they are news breakers, but

The difference between the long tail and the head of tail sites like those mentioned above, and in my opinion, the wave of the future is in thought leadership. More and more bloggers thinking for themselves, maybe taking some inspiration from some of these blogs, but proactively creating original content.

I mentioned that I was interviewed the other day by Minic Rivera. In that interview, I talked about how at any given time, I’ve got numerous ideas running around in my head. In some cases, these ideas sit up there for months – as the Twitter Terminal Velocity post did. Other posts come out of conversations I have that coalesce into fully baked thoughts overnight. In all these cases, I spend time thinking through topics before writing and when the writing actually does occur, it is more like a braindump.

We need more thought leaders in blogging. People who will take the time to think fully about ideas and develop those thoughts. People that share these thoughts after much consideration and analysis.

That’s what my idea of an ideal blog world is. Am I smoking crack?

Blogging in Boxers Interview

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No, I’m not an exhibitionist. Well, I’m sort of not. Maybe I am a little bit.

Anyways. Minic Rivera contacted me a bit before SXSW to do this interview. As I love doing interviews, I accepted of course.

It’s a pretty lengthy interview where I talk about alot of the same things I talk about here: How to market yourself, what I do at b5media, common mistakes I see others make with their blogs, etc. Oh and I fill you in on stuff you didn’t know about me. Yeah.

Go read it and let me know what you think.

Coworking in Philadelphia

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After a great weekend in suburban New Jersey with family, I jaunted over to Philadelphia to work with Alex Hillman and others from the Philadelphia entrepreneur community at Indy Hall, the successful coworking community that I’ve talked about recently, and that we are modeling our own community after.

I shot some video while here to give everyone a glimpse.

Alex also shot this video tour a few months ago.

hopefully, we’ll have the same level of success in suburban Maryland as Indy Hall has had in Philadelphia.

Thoughts on PayPerPost – The Only Time I'll Talk About It

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A lot has been said about PayPerPost over the past few years and largely, I’ve stayed quiet on the matter. My silence should not be interpreted as acceptance of how the business is setup or “sold” to bloggers. Techcrunch and others have covered the company, the business practice and the impact on the blogosphere ad nauseum. I have no desire to cover the same ground, so this will be the one and only post on the matter. :-)

At SXSW, I spoke in some length with Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, the umbrella company that PayPerPost operates under. It was a really great conversation as we relaxed on the rooftop patio at the SXNW party. People watched jealously as we lounged comfortably while everyone stood around trying to talk to other people. :-)

At any rate, Ted expressed that the focus of his company is to provide bloggers with choice. Bloggers want to be able to make money, and we help them do that. For those not aware, PayPerPost pays bloggers to write reviews of companies and products. They no longer require “positive” reviews and now allow for disclosure of paid posts, however in my opinion, the damage is done and not everything is being disclosed from the PPP side.

I’m all about blogger’s choice, and providing opportunities for bloggers to make money. However, these choices and decisions must be made as educated decisions. If bloggers make the decision to use PayPerPost based on an understanding of the ramifications of paid content, then the decision and the consequences are completely on them. However, an offer to make money without ensuring that the blogger knows the consequences of these actions is shady.

Bloggers largely can face three major consequences of using Paid Review services such as PayPerPost: Loss of search indexing, loss of credibility and loss of readers. Not all bloggers will suffer consequences, and not all bloggers will face immediate ramifications. But the potential is there, and this is the context that these decisions should be made in.

Loss of Search Indexing

Some bloggers don’t care, or they simply don’t try to ensure that their blog is listed high in search engines like Google and Yahoo. To many more, ensuring PageRank (whatever it is?), good search engine result positioning (SERPs) is critical for the growth of there blogs. Because PayPerPost largely targets new and longterm bloggers, this search aspect might be foreign or even completely unknown to the blogger. Matt Cutts, the Google Spammer (not spammer as in he spams, but spammer as in he ensures the Google index is free of spam) has already talked quite a bit about Google’s position regarding paid content and links that pass “bought” influence. Whether you agree with him or not, he is the authority on this stuff and bloggers should understand the ramifications of paid content.

Loss of Credibility

Bloggers watch what other bloggers do and they take their cues from them. As you post paid content, the reputation loss that can be had from other bloggers or potential jobs, etc is vast. Anyone who is willing to “sell” their objective judgement for a few bucks is seen as the lowest form of life on the planet.

Loss of Readers

Potentially the biggest immediate impact that bloggers would face is the loss of reputation among readers. They expect you to be something and when you’re not, they’ll head for the hills. Contrary to popular belief, readers are not as loyal as you might think. If they see you using them for monetary gain, they are exponentially more likely to walk away and never come back.

While I have a lot of respect for Ted, my only remaining beef with PPP is that they are not proactively doing what they can to make sure bloggers understand the consequences. Give bloggers a choice, but make sure they understand the consequences. If they decide to press forward with the service, that decision is on them.

Organizaciones que Aprenden

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En una era de constante innovación es importante poder identificar las características que ayudan al éxito y crecimiento de una empresa.

¿Perteneces a una organización que aprende? ¿Alguien está encargado de mantenerse al día con las innovaciones? ¿Cuando un empleado tiene un idea innovadora, existen los mecanismos para que la empresa evalue y adapte dicha idea?

David Garmin y Amy Edmonson, investigadores sobre las Organizaciones que Aprenden, definen estas como “empresas preparadas para crear, adquirir, interpretar, transferir y retener conocimientos” y capaces de “modificar su comportamiento para responder a esos nuevos conocimientos.”

Entonces, ¿cómo enfrenta tu empresa a la innovación? Este gráfico nos muestra cuatro tipos de empresas, de acuerdo a como responden a las nuevas ideas:

Tipos de Organizaciones que Aprenden

Los 4 Tipos de Organizaciones que Aprenden

Las organizaciones que Aprenden Rápido tienden a ser innovadoras, se mantienen al día con las nuevas ideas y tecnologías que puedan afectar sus operaciones y han implementado una cultura empresarial que premia la innovación, experimentación e implementación de nuevas ideas a través de la empresa.

Las organizaciones de Aprendizaje Cíclico tratan de mantenerse al día con la innovación cada cierto tiempo. Experimentan con nuevas ideas cuando estas ya han sido probadas por otros. Este no es un comportamiento necesariamente dañino para la empresa, ya que a veces una empresa puede perder la concentración al sobre-innovar o intentar probar cada nueva idea sin llegar a implementarlas dentro de la organización.

Las organizaciones de Aprendizaje Tardío incorporan nuevas ideas sólo cuando es estrictamente necesario para la supervivencia de la empresa. Aún cuando este comportamiento puede funcionar para empresas en nichos con altísimas barreras de entrada, la competencia eventualmente las alcanza y rebasa ya que no están preparadas para evolucionar.

Las organizaciones Aplazadas simplemente no ven la innovación hasta que es demasiado tarde. Sin mecanismos para evaluar nuevas ideas, o convencidas de su superioridad, un día despiertan para encontrar que son obsoletas o que un competidor se adueñó de su mercado.

Ray Stata, fundador de Analog Devices, dijo que:

“El paso al que las organizaciones y los individuos aprenden llegará a convertirse en la única ventaja competitiva.”

Para lograr el éxito, los individuos y las organizaciones deben aprender más rápidamente que su competencia. Si la innovación en tu área profesional avanza más rápido que tu capacidad de aprendizaje, más temprano que tarde te quedarás atrás.

¿Están tu y tu compañía preparadas para aprender? ¿Hay alguien en tu compañía encargado de informarte de nuevos avances que puedan afectarte? ¿Sabrás qué pasó?

Deja tus comentarios… me encantaría desarrollar este tema más a fondo. ¿Tienes alguna historia que compartir sobre la innovación y tu compañía?

Información adicional:

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