The night before tomorrow’s big New New Internet conference, some of the speakers, sponsors, and attendees are gathering for an informal happy hour from 6-8 pm at M&S Grill in Reston Town Center.  I expect a lot of chatter about Web 2.0, but not many costumes.  Anyone is welcome to join.  Track me down for a drink ticket compliments of Viget Labs (while supplies last.)

I’m wrapping up a long weekend here at Viget, but before I sign-off for my pre-real-work-day nap, I wanted to get some more thoughts down on how it all went.  Hosting Startup Weekend was exhausting, in a good way.  As hyped, we started the weekend with 70+ people picking a business idea, and finished tonight last night by launching a site at midnight.  I can honestly say that it went better than I’d expected in almost every aspect.  Some examples:

• It launched.  I have to admit, I thought all along that we’d end up not launching, but to the credit of the dev team, at midnight tonight there was a somewhat functioning site live at holaneighbor.com.  It didn’t work well exactly, and it’s not really a compelling feature set yet, and the nicely designed screens aren’t in there yet, but technically we launched, and that alone is impressive.
• People stuck.  There were times Friday night, before there was any clarity in the concept, that I was sure we’d have no one back on Saturday.  The night ended on an upswing, though, and the vast majority of people decided to give it a shot on Saturday morning, which fed into the evening and beyond.
• I met a lot of good people.  I made new friends.  I got to know some folks I’d met before.  There’s nothing like collaborating in person with people on a project for stuff like that.
• Viget HQ held up.  Having recently moved in, I wasn’t sure how the space would hold up to all the people.  There are a few bumps here and there, but the space plan (big conference rooms, various huddle / collaboration spaces, the lounge, etc.) worked great for the distinct teams and break-out sessions. 
• It wasn’t about the company.  People were passionate and excited and wanted to get it done, but my perception was that it was more about having a chance to work with good people.
• Negative conflict was rare.  With so many talented, opinionated people crammed together forced to make group decisions quickly, I was prepared for some major blowups.  There were heated debates here and there, but things seemed to work themselves out with generally positive outcomes.
• The group had manners.  Pretty much everyone pitched in to help with the grunt work of keeping the office in shape (thanks, guys!). They appreciated Viget putting up the space, and they helped get it back to working order before leaving.  Even Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, was here cleaning white boards at 1 am (4 hours before his departing flight).

Not surprisingly, just like with the first weekend in Boulder, it all came down to the dev team.  There’s lots of valid hype about how you can quickly build web apps these days, but the fact remains that it just takes time to build a really good product, and a lot of that time goes to writing good code.  Having launched anything at all is an accomplishment, especially given the potential complexity for the concept we chose.

What now?  Good question.  The group decided to decompress for a few days before figuring out a core team to take HolaNeighbor on to the next level.  There’s still a lot to do to make it a viable business, and I hope it has a life beyond today.  Can the passion for the concept that was alive this weekend carry on?  Only time will tell, but regardless, the experience of the weekend was certainly positive for me.

Update: checkout the article about Startup Weekend in the Washington Post.

A few quick updates:

• Viget South hosted the innagural Refresh the Triangle meeting on Thursday in our Durham office.  Jackson Fox gave a talk to a packed crowd.  From the looks of it, a good time was had by all. 
• I managed to make it up this morning to chat with Geoff Livingston and Hart Rossman on John Hrastar’s 8 am “Business Destiny” radio show on WTNT 570 AM.  We talked about how Web 2.0 is impacting business - a bit of a precursor to next week’s New New Internet conference (both Geoff and Hart are speakers).
• Startup Weekend DC is in full swing here at Viget HQ.  Photos are going up on Flickr and we even have a real idea in the works.  More soon …

We’re just a few weeks away from the Web 2.o for Business conference being held out in Reston on November 1st, and the speakers are pretty much set.  We’ve got 3 tracks and a ton of great content to cover.  I’m thrilled with the quality of speakers that we’ll have in town. 

The panel I’m most excited about right now is “The Future of Web 2.0 for Business” which will be have Brad Feld and Alex Iskold (AdaptiveBlue) along with moderator Ryan Carson (Carsonified!) talking about where the web is headed.

If you follow these guys, you’re just as excited as I am to hear them sharing ideas together at once.  Ryan runs the future conferences (see you in NYC!), Brad talks about his experiences and investments in the likes of FeedBurner and Postini on Ask the VC and his own blog, and Alex has been on fire lately writing on Read/WriteWeb and earning praise from guys like Brad, Fred (who says Alex’s posts are “better than most Gartner research reports”,) and others.

Alex’s recent post “The Structured Web - A Primer” is a good example of why people are noticing.  He has an ability to summarize big ideas in a thoughtful and clear way.  In the post, he hints at his vision of the future:

“To me, what is coming is not a single thing, but a web that is characterized by several major themes.  Among the evolving aspects of the new web are Semantics, Attention (Implicit Behavior) and Personalization. Regardless of what we are decide to call this next web, the information in it is going to be more meaningful, more automatic, and more tailored to each of us.”

Thanks to these guys for taking the time to travel to DC for the event (Ryan from London, Brad from Boulder, and Alex from NYC.)  It’s great to have a big-time web conference in DC.  If you’re anywhere close on November 1st, come check it out and catch this panel.  You can use the promo code “viget” to save $100. 

Update: Hans Hwang, VP Advanced Services at Cisco, has joined the panel as well.

Separete from my full-time gig at Viget, I’m a partner in ExecutiveBiz, which is putting on the conference.

On a recent trip to my neighborhood Home Depot, I bought about 40 strips of white trim in both 12′ and 16′ lengths.  That’s a lot of trim.  Even with their handy large-item transport carriage that hasn’t been redesigned since 1850, I almost killed myself and several others dragging them up to the register.  It was a busy day, with long lines typical of this area, and I was particularly focused on getting through quickly.

At the register, I informed the check-out person that I had 15 strips of 16′ trim and 26 strips of the 12′ trim, and that at $0.32 per linear foot, I should owe them $176.64.  She still needed to scan one piece of trim to verify the price/lf — makes sense to me.  Scan … scan … scan …

Check.  It was indeed $0.32.

Then she needed to count to be sure I had 41 total. Okay, I guess.  That shouldn’t take too long.  1 … 2 … 3 …

Verified. 41 it was exactly.

Then she wanted to segment the trim to confirm my 15/26 ratio, thereby ensuring that I had exactly 552 linear feet of trim.  Segmenting it like this would have taken 10 clumsy minutes of manual labor at the front of a long and frustrated line of customers.  It was easy to eyeball that the ratio was close, so what was the point?  Would I really go into a store I frequent and lie about how much trim I’d picked out to save $3-4?  Even if it were an honest mistake, would it be worth it to Home Depot to hold up that line for that extra $3.50?

What held up that line was a bad policy of mistrust.  Not of me, the customer, but of the Home Depot staff.  My check-out person was just following protocol.  She wasn’t authorized to eyeball anything or make any logical judgment based on the situation.  She wasn’t entrusted with any decision making, or any freedom to solve small problems as they come up in a way that benefits both customer and company.  She was just doing her job, and it was pissing everyone off.

When a manager finally helped solve the problem, he did it in an equally inane way: ignorance.  He didn’t want to know anything about the situation, he just keyed in what I told him the cost should be without looking to see whether I was buying trim or a tractor.  He was such an escalation bottleneck that the best he could do was resolve every issue as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.  The result is that some decisions are likely bad, and the staff he should be mentoring is learning nothing but bad habits.

Trust your staff — especially those on the front lines with the customers — to make lots of smart little decisions, then put metrics is place to make sure it’s working.  If you have the right culture and hire good people, everyone will be happier.

Last Thursday (sorry for the delay — been on travel) I talked with a group of direct marketers on the topic of search engine optimization in the context of marketing as ”conversation.”  The event was put on by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington.  The Buzz Bin managed to live blog the day, and covered my SEO for Web 2.0 talk here.  Thanks for taking notes, guys!

I live in Virginia.  Falls Church, to be exact.  TomTom, the navigation system I have in my car to help me find things, knows this.  In fact, it knows exactly where I am at all times.  

When I enter an address that I’d like to find, the first step is to pick the city.  It’s smart enough to auto-complete (good UX).  As I type, it guesses where I mean, first by completing the city name, then adding the state.  For some reason, though, it completely ignores where I am right now and sorts alphabetically.

When I try to enter “Alexandria, VA” (which is about 15 minutes away) I first have to get through that long name, then scroll down as it displays “Alexandria, AL” and “Alexandria, TN” and every other Alexandria in every other state that’s 100’s of miles from where I am right now. 

Would it really be that hard to factor in where I am and sort the list by those cities closest to me, which one could assume with 99% accuracy that it’s the one I plan to drive to?  In the off chance I’m looking for that 1%, let me scroll then.

The same concept applies to web products.  Use the data you know about your web users to make some assumptions and create a great user experience.  It’s not that hard.

But how many people watching Monday Night Football tonight really do (enough that they’d influence a major purchasing decision?) .005% of the audience?  Why, between ads for trucks and beer do they stick ads for IBM BladeCenter, which must appeal (or even make sense) to almost no one? 

Because it works, I guess, but after talking about targeted search advertising all afternoon, mass market television advertising is inefficient enough to make you laugh.