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Making it Into the Big Leagues
This morning, I had the distinct pleasure of giving a talk at WordCamp NYC (that I’ve done before) about Making it Into the Big Leagues. The occasion was my third WordCamp presentation this year! We had some technical difficulties that prevented me from using the slide deck I had prepared, but I had promised to…
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Sucks to be a Blog Network These Days
Having come from the blog network space, I have a mostly unique understanding of the difficulties encountered when running a content business. There is always a war between traffic and community, profitability and loss, long term projections and short term realities. It’s not an easy business. It’s even more challenging when you’re a blog network.…
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Chapter 11, Pt. 2: Hard Lessons from the Chapter
This is a continuation of the series that began with Chapter 11: To File or Not to File Convinced that we could get all our creditors’ cooperation without formally filing for protection under Chapter 11, we proceeded nonetheless to get experienced professionals on board. The workout team was assembled — insiders including myself and my…
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East India Wall Street
The company was booming. It was harvesting tea from Asia and selling throughout the empire. Times were good and tycoons were fat and wealthy. Times couldn’t be better as the government subsidized East India Company collected record profits from the subjects throughout the British Empire. In Parliament, and with an economic need for further subsidization…
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Chapter 11, Pt. 1: To File, or Not to File?
It’s a timely topic, but when asked to detail my experience with Chapter 11, the line that came to mind was from the end of ‘Misery’, when James Caan is lunching with his agent: “Gee, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were asking me to dredge up the worst horror of my life,…
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House relents on New Media, adopts updated rules for Web video
Congressional use of online video, (an issue that this site has covered since the beginning) finally got over its last hurdle today as the Committee on House Administration adopted new rules allowing use of outside websites by Members. The Committee approved a proposal based on reccomendations made in July by Rep. Vern Ehlers, R-Mich., in…
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$56B is a Much More Reasonable Number
The way I figure it, a body with an 8% approval rating should get about 8% of what they are asking for. That would be $56B. These guys cannot be trusted to make a $700B decision with no hearings and no explorations when they created the problem through a complicit wink-wink-nudge-nudge economic policy over the…
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What Ted Leonsis didn't say at Interact
I thought yesterday would be a great opportunity to ask one of the pioneers of the information age what he thought would be sound technology policies for the next administration to pursue. Instead, I got a generic paen to deregulation and letting the market work. Ironic, considering the failure of the bailout bill Monday afternoon.…
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Pony in the Pile
This week’s Interact 2008 conference — all things interactive media — began upbeat enough, with Ted Leonsis‘s inspirational keynote signaling an ‘anything’s possible, mix-and-mashup’ world of opportunity where entrepreneurs can offer (and perhaps find) fulfillment by providing one of the five keys to self-actualization: relationships, community, self-expression, giving back, or pursuing a higher calling. But…