DISQUS

This is an awesome find, right up my alley. I have them flagged to follow and buy their music.

Firms like FirstRound pay attention to DC and the region, but the quality of start-ups are not up to the level of other areas. VCs like Valhalla Partners does investment in local start-ups and they really understand the type of expertise and knowledge that the DC area has.

I have tried to help VCs find talent to fill out teams that are local in the DC area and surrounding areas, but they often find the talent in RTP, NYC or Boston. The technical depth is not a strength here. There is a lot of copying in the DC area, but very little innovation. There are a few exceptions to this, but they are funded or are moving closer to talent. Part of the DC area problem is cost, lack of talent draw (AOL is no longer a talent draw and Fed Govt is not a solid draw for the top people outside of the intelligence community). The past 15 years I have watched top DC area talent move out to Bay Area or elsewhere to get closer to larger talent pools that understand start-ups. All but 2 of the start-ups I advise are outside the DC area.

Robin Houghton, I found the source of Chris' e-mail ironic. Many mainstream media and marketing firms have gone to extensive efforts to get this social script for e-mail interaction right (it is one that is really tough). I am NOT saying all of them do this well.

The irony is people leading social media charge often (NOT saying Chris does this) blast mainstream marketing for similar things. Chris Heuer long ago paid very careful attention to just this matter in his e-mails, as have many others.

All of this is far from the e-mail interaction and stating how an address will be used for communicating and allowing for changes to the address to best fit those we communicate with. The tools for this are often poor and take a lot of digging and research to find tools and services that do this well.

I am glad Chris has opened this up for comments. There is a much better way. Others have embraced it and made it part of their regular way of interacting.

Wow, this thread hit silly fast.

Chris has many channels of communicating info, this is not emergency information. Much of this is old information that has been around the block many times. Chris is a great messenger for this information for many who are new to this.

Chris has an e-mail address I give to people I trust and respect the use of it. That address was used to connect on LinkedIn, not by my initiation. When I know there is going to be pushed e-mail, not personal communication ("I have a project you may be interested in", "I would like to invite you to present at a conference/workshop", or meeting for coffee or meal) I give other e-mail addresses that I ignore. It is a common social interaction these days for managing the types of messages, information streams, and flows.

Most people and organizations will state upfront what they are going to do with an e-mail and allow the individual the option (if they want that type of interaction) which channel/mode of interaction they would like (e-mail address, RSS, listserve, etc). It is building respect and trust with the people you want to engage. This is normally lesson number one with social media, respect for attention and flows and allow those we are connecting with to state their wishes.

The same e-mail to one of my other e-mail addresses would be fine. To the one that was used was not something I would have asked and would have offered another option. This is something of basics these days.

Chris, most e-mails I get along these lines in the past year start with a short explanation, and the opt out.

Your news letter is opt in, which is good. The blast message is not. It is a tough line and many services cross it. I have found very few services that get this right, but the role you have put yourself in should have a much better grasp of this.

You completely got this backwards! The handshake should be opt in to spam not opt out.

People give out business cards, connect on LinkedIn for a variety of reasons. Rarely is this reason to be pulled in to an opt out e-mail push. That is completely backwards and not really grasping social interaction. It is old school marketing at its worst.

Taking the opposite approach, which most old school marketers learned in the past few years, is to say, "Hey, we have something that may be of interest to you. If you like it subscribe in a method of delivery that makes sense to you."

The e-mail address you have is one I protect and give out to people I trust and know will not abuse it. You have broken that trust. All of the things you say you ascribe to this goes against nearly all of that.

I agree with the inexperience as they are in waters that have needed more experience for a while (this is not their first privacy or questionable step that missed understanding of the consequences). Another issue seems to be pushing very hard to make big money fast to legitimize some percentage of the bizarre valuation they are tied to in the public eye (that has been the down fall of many start-ups and founders). Smart stable growth with a solid focus on the people who use the service is good advice, but keeping to that takes discipline and experience.

"you just pasted a cop with radar"
"I said don't mention the..."
"she is a he" (and the converse)
"I did not mean to blog your password"
"I swear I did not know about your peanut allergy"
"oh, you were interested?"
"you said fill it with diesel, right?"
"no, today is the big meeting"
"that is not my hand in your pocket"

This is the original social network. Playing games pulls in a variety of players from different settings and backgrounds. We play with family and friends on trips. The set game is a common interaction and minor rule modifications (house rules) add fun. As we interact with various different sets of players we pick-up on different rules that add to the fun.

There was a great book on Monopoly in the early 80s or late 70s that included a list of common house rules. Nearly everybody that was a semi-serious Monopoly player I knew had it (often a gift from "loved ones". But even those who did not have the book knew the various house rules as I moved from Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Central California, Bay Area, and England.

I had a friend at Berkeley who had regionalized rules to where he thought they came from, based on where he learned about them or where the people who used the certain house rules came from. This was pre-internet. He had it down fairly well, so when somebody laid out their house rules he would ask if they were from, say Seattle, and he was often right.

The house rules that travelled well were simple. Rules that did not travel well included landing on all of the community spots in one trip around the board required the player with the least property and cash the option to trade assets with you at no cost. That one was enjoyed, but was not simple enough (too much counting money and property values, that took away from playing the game).

I used to notice a few "un-matching" seasons. Summer, just before the Fall/Winter holidays, just before Valentines Day, and September. I have not been paying attention to that cycle, but it sounds like it still churning.

As far as finding "that one", it happens when you least expect it or want it. Does it last? Can't tell you on that one because I have no clue.

I really can relate to what you are going through with life changes and sorting out what is important. Being a good dad (in my silly perspective) is the best focal lens to view the rest of your life. It puts a light on what is right for work, what is the bond between you and Maryam.

When you are with you son, try to see the world through his eyes. Learn from his questions, desires, and quest. Help him build a passion or passions and that may help you see yours.

I had the opportunity to work in a fellowship with a U.S. Senator who looked at ever decision she made, every vote she made, every bill she worked on through the lens of how this would impact her child. What would help her child's future, ensure his future, and the children that would be grandchildren.

I take this to heart, or try to. Let your son grow through you and your quest to understand and sort it out, he will need that skill as he goes through life. We need the skills to make decisions in our lives and we need lenses to make sense of these decisions. For you it may be your son, Maryam, happiness through work, or a combination of all of them. How do you see the world? How do you want the world to be? How do you want the world to be for your son?

Our world goes to hell when we think of ourself, but our world becomes great when we think of our action as those that impact others whom we are connected to.

I absolutely love the focus you put on your aunt and her year at 65. There is great good in that.

Sorry to hear the news. Peace.

Robert, I deeply feel for you. Peace.

I use Upcoming to track people's conference interests. I have always felt like I am missing something, okay many things. Finding the good out of the many is the trick and I am relying on people and their comments to fill me in. Sort of the humans using technology to help humans approach to the world.

As a general presentation blog, Presentation Zen is a very good resource. Business Week also published a slideshow about giving good presentations, which is a good summary of the good things out on the web.

Excellent post! I have been speaking on and around this topic the past couple years as part of the Personal InfoCloud work I have been doing. I finally got to present outside of the U.S.A., in Europe. The privacy questions come flying very quickly (one of two reasons I really wanted to present and get feed back outside the States, the other was feedback on the designing and developing across devices and platforms piece as Europe is ahead with broadband and mobile use and their developers are see the problems and are looking for solutions).

There are two parts to the privacy of attention that come into play.

One (Nick in comment 10 hit it on the head) - Who owns an manages the information. Many people believe they should own their Amazon records and so to be able to shop that information around to others. Similar to airline reward programs (you build up *status* with one airline but their service turns horrible, you want to sample other airline offerings, you want to take your flight history with you and get similar service so you can truly compare and be a well informed consumer - it is in the company's interest to do this also as it will lead to a happy customer). In the business world this is called CMI (Consumer Managed Information).

Two - Privacy of the information. Who do we trust with access to the information. Some people trust Google (Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, etc.) with all their information, while others want to parse out who has access to what and how much information. You may not want everybody in your "trusted" network to know where you are (buying holiday presents, lets say).

You may want to add Python and PHP to your list, while Ruby on Rails is great for prototyping and small use solutions (great for small companies), the Python and PHP can scale to greater degrees. Python may be the best development language out there regardless of cost for tools that must scale, but that is my take.

Additionally, the tools you mention also tend to have more graceful upgrades than seem to take place with Microsoft products. There is testing and some tweaking that is needed, but I have yet to see a products upgrades wreak havoc like Microsoft products do.

The fear of competing with Microsoft. Choosing an open source solution will likely never mean you are competing with the creator of the product directly. I have seen Microsoft many times jump the market with a new product that directly competes with many of its "partners" and third-party developers (yes, Apple is notorious for this too). Many entrepreneurs make the explicit decision to use open source for their product for just this reason, they may not mind competing with Microsoft (not anybody's dream as a start-up), but they don't want to have their marketplace taken away apples-for-apples.

Lastly, I many entrepreneurs want to get the best developers and designers possible, which often means letting developers and designers work on their preferred platform. In the top-talent developer and design community Microsoft is not dominant as LINUX and Mac are many times the preferred OS. Like Ross stated with the VCs about taking shit from their friends this very much the case with the top developers and designers, credibility does not come from using Microsoft.

Dorian, this was fantastic. It filled in some whole that I had as a virtual camper. I also have a new band to trackdown and support.