As I mentioned on the Viget blog, I’ll be speaking at the Tech Cocktail Conference in Chicago on May 29th.  Corey, COO at Squidoo, and I will be telling the story of how Squidoo (a Viget client) went from concept to profitability.  There are a couple things about the way they did it that make them a bit unusual compared to a lot of the start-ups you read about:

1. They didn’t take VC.  Granted, it’s easier to self-fund when you‘re already pretty darn successful, but as a philosophy (don’t raise money unless you have to) it’s still important.
2. They don’t charge for anything.  Chicago is home to our friends at 37signals, makers of Basecamp, and advocates of the revolutionary (and for some odd reason controversial) idea of making good software and then charging for it — couldn’t agree more.  Squidoo’s model is different, though, and they’ve made it work to a similar end without needing to charge users a fee.  In fact, you get paid to use Squidoo.  We’ll talk about how & when we think that model can work.

Frank & Eric have put together a great line-up.  If you’ll be in Chicago at the end of the month, come on by …

It’s an especially social week for me (having 3 small kids tends to limit your evenings out, assuming you like your kids). 

Tonight, I’ll be joining the panel discussion at Refresh DC’s April event along with Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine, and Eric Rupert of Odeo. 

Refresh DC April Meetup: Startups 101
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
3601 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 600
Arlington, Virginia

Jackson’s moderating, and judging by the growing list of attendees, I’m looking forward to a lively discussion.

Tomorrow night is TECH Cocktail. 

Thursday, April 24, 2008
6:30pm - 9pm
MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC
techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com

Viget’s one of the sponsors and a bunch of us will be down there.  Hope to see you out at both of these events!

My drive-the-other-kids-to-school duties had me out and about this morning, so I was able to swing by Viget to check out the beginning of DC Design Talks and welcome all of our guests to the Lab.  Turnout was great, and what I caught of the early talks by Samantha and Nathan was great too.  Some early photos:

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Aaron spoke last night at a Viget-hosted meeting of DC’s Social Media Club.  He covered a lot of blogging topics, with a focus on how engaging in social media effectively can impact a brand (for a company or an individual).  My favorite line was:

“Authenticity will always garner trust, even if you’re an ogre.”

Brand is “less about perception and more about trust.”  Building trust is what’s important, and that has nothing to do with who you are or what your message actually is — it just matters that you’re direct and transparent about it.  I find that a common concern among companies and individuals is that too much transparency will reveal the “warts” and be a detriment to establishing credibility. 

When the goal is not a perception of perfection, but in fact a real relationship rooted in trust, it changes the game.  The warts become a good thing (because they show it’s real) and a positive pressure is created to not just seem worthy of trust and respect, but to actually be worthy.  Everyone wins.

You can watch Aaron’s entire presentation here.  Thank you again to Aaron for speaking, attendees for attending, and Larissa / Livingston Communications for organizing.

Viget is hosting the DC Social Media Club event on the evening February 21st.  Aaron Brazell, Director of Technology at b5media will be giving a talk on “Blog Draft Day: Making it Into the Bigs” and he’ll be:

“sharing some of my own experiences as well as insight I’ve gained managing proverbial ‘A list’ blogs at b5media.”

Should be a good discussion.  I spoke on a panel with Aaron last year, so I can promise you first hand that he’ll be worth fighting the traffic for.

Compliments of Viget, there will be plenty of seats and soda (you’ll have to know the secret phrase to get an adult drink) as long as all of Aaron’s ~1,000 twitter friends don’t all show up at once.  To be sure you get your spot, contact Larissa at the Buzz Bin.

A big congrats to Samantha, the newest member of the Viget family (until Monday, when David starts).  It was just announced that she is a SXSW Web Awards Finalist for the Blog category.  Last year was my first SXSW experience, when Squidoo won for the Community category, and it was a blast.  The Blog award recognizes:

Sites that revolutionize the power of publishing by providing regularly updated content of a personal or professional nature.

Her blog, Bad Ass Ideas, is one that I followed well before she applied at Viget.  Of all her posts, this one is my favorite. 

Samantha’s recognition is much deserved, and I have a lot of respect for her commitment to sharing her knowledge and insights with the community.   It’s something we really believe in at Viget (which will be even more apparent in the coming weeks as our company-wide blogging plans are revealed).

Speaking of community, it will be great to have the DC web community represented (the Library of Congress blog is also a finalist) at SXSW.  We’ll have six folks from Viget there, and I know a lot of other local web people will be making the trip.  I dare say Samantha can count on some rowdy cheers at the awards ceremony …

Jackson and Jason have been kicking around for awhile the idea of putting together a low-cost, one-day conference series targeting the DC web community.  After a very successful BarCamp and lots of Refresh meetings (and happy hours), I think they realized that the community is willing (dare I say asking) to participate in these kinds of events.  Enter the DC Talks series, and their first event on February 29th, DC Design Talks 2008.

The DC Talks are quarterly conferences for Washington, DC-area web professionals that feature some of the region’s best speakers and practitioners at a fraction of the cost of other conferences.

Unlike BarCamp, where anyone can talk and a lack of structure is part of the idea, DC Talks is more of a “real” conference in that speakers are pre-selected and probably a bit more prepared.  Unlike “real” conferences, though, no one is out to make any money (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and the cost to attend is just $35.  Viget is hosting at our new office, and I’m sure other sponsors will kick in to cover meal and swag costs.

They tout it as a “local” event, but based on the current speaker (and growing attendee) list, which includes a couple of guys from our second home, Durham, NC, and another from Boston (sort of), I’d say it’s worth traveling for. 

I’ve blogged about Viget’s Third Third Thursday tradition before, and this past week it was that time again.  We embraced the season and set out in style for ice skating downtown in DC.  I was excited by the forecast — snow — but initially less excited by the reality — semi-frozen rain (with a bit of snow mixed in) — because I thought it would discourage the fun.  Boy was I wrong.  Even though we all got a little wet and risked serious injury, most of the group got out on the ice and had a blast.  Those who decided not to skate hung out and watched us skate gracefully try to avoid falling.

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Viget is one of the sponsors helping to cover the cost of drinks at Nick’s launch event for Social Times on 12/13/07 at MCCXXII in DC.  One of our clients, Razoo, will be demoing along with several others including Gary V.  There’s no cost to attend — just register here.

I was able to attend the Potomac Officers Club event last week which, contrary to what a lot of people assume based on the name, has nothing to do with the military.  It’s a CXO-only networking group that brings in notable speakers every month for a meeting at the Ritz in Tysons.  Most speakers are business-focused, as the POC has hosted Jack Welch, Charles Schwab, and Bob Johnson.

The November event did have a military slant, however, and featured Lieutenant General John F. Sattler, Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, J-5, The Joint Staff.  General Sattler is very close to the activities going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He gave the room of about 80 executives an overview of what is happening right now in those places, and how it relates to the U.S. strategy to fight terrorism.  It was an engaging discussion, and refreshing to hear information and personal opinion directly from military personnel with direct knowledge of and experience with the situation.

My dad and both grandfathers were in the Navy, and I have a ton of respect for our military and those who serve.  I also find the military culture to be fascinating, and often relevant to how businesses operate — but not always in clear ways.  I wrote down a few quotes from General Sattler that I found particularly interesting (may not be word-for-word).

On the importance of finding strong leaders:

“We’re always asking, ‘where’s Spartacus?’  If you put a lion in front of a flock of lambs, you’ll fear those lambs.  But put a lamb in front of a pride of lions, and you’ll beat those lions everyday.”

When asked if a change in the administration will be disruptive to the current military strategy, General Sattler said this about following a leader:

“In my 36 year career, I’ve been through multiple administrations.  The Commander in Chief is the Commander in Chief.  As long as the order is moral and legal, I’m going to follow it.  I’m not supposed to have a personal bias.  If I have a personal, I’m going to resign.”

My favorite quote of the day, which I find relevant to any organization structure, was:

“Responsibility minus authority and resources equals failure.”

Last Thursday, thanks to ExecutiveBiz, I was able to attend Fight Night, the black-tie charity gala dubbed by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the biggest social events of the year.   It was, by all accounts, an impressive event. 

Fight Night brings together the heavyweights of business and government, entertainment and community service, as well as legends from the boxing world, for an evening of fun, auctions, and even professional boxing.

Indeed, boxing legends like Héctor Camacho and Joe Frazier were there, as were celebs like Quincy Jones and Chris Tucker as well as business icons like Bob Johnson.  Three mayors made appearances (Barry, Williams, and Fenty).  Ted Nugent did an incredible rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.  My favorite entertainer of the night was Hammer, especially since he was so cool about grabbing a photo (alas, he didn’t perform).

The whole event supports Fight for Children, and non-profit founded by Joe Robert, CEO of J.E. Robert Companies, in 1990.  They raise millions of dollars each year to support DC’s underprivileged kids. 

Fight For Children focuses on educational and healthcare initiatives to ensure that all children in the nation’s capital have opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed.

I’m a big fan of supporting charities that help kids, and Fight Night raises more money in one evening than most do all year.  Kudos to Fight for Children for putting on such an impressive event.

We went to Future of Web Design this week.  It was my first FOWx experience, and it won’t be my last.  It was good, but not great — sentiments Jackson shared on the Four Labs blog.

Ryan Carson / Carsonified runs the FOWx events.  He also runs Drop Send.  And Amigo.  And Vitamin.  He blogs openly about his experiences, and has a nice following of people paying attention.  He’s also a super nice guy who I’ve enjoyed hanging out with and getting to know recently.

Ryan strives for good things: authenticity, credibility, and quality come to mind.  He does the FOWx conferences because he’s a web guy.  He loves the content and digs the speakers.  As an entrepreneur who runs web companies, he feels qualified to put on FOWx in ways non-web guys can’t.

That may have been right when he started, but now, I think he’s wrong.

On my way out of the MediaTemple party on Wednesday night, I told Ryan I thought he should dump his web companies and do nothing but conferences.  Vitamin should stick around as a platform for knowledge sharing and a central place for the community to connect and collaborate (with only an occasional essay from Ryan — not any management oversight), but his full-time (4 days, anyway) should be putting on the best events in the world.

My guess is Ryan won’t do this because he likes to run web companies, and that’s fine.  Greatness requires focus, though, and speaking strictly as a conference attendee, I wish he’d just do conferences.  He “gets” the space and now has the contacts and attention of the community needed to put together great speaker line-ups and draw quality audiences, and that’s all I care about — not whether he runs a web company himself or not.

Speaking as his financial advisor (which I am not) I’d suggest focus as well.  If he can put on the best web conferences in the world, he could make a killing doing so.

Speaking as his friend, I’d say screw it, do whatever you feel like.  As long as you’re having fun and you’re proud of the output, let the focus come naturally, whatever it may be.

The New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Business Conference was last week, which I had the pleasure of helping to organize.  Ken wrote a good recap on the Viget blog, as did others like Geoff, Brad, and Frank.  As an organizer and judge in the app competition, I had a unique perspective (not all positive — I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions, for example, but it comes with the territory).  Some highlights for me were:

• Pre-Conf. Happy Hour - On Wednesday night, I was crammed around a table with Brad, Om, James, Frank, Rohit, and Gary.  It was cool to chat with all of them informally.  We teased Brad for wearing a suit (he’d been in meetings in NYC all day) and Om seemed genuinely excited to talk with James.
• Pre-Conf. Dinner - After drinks, we jumped over to a private dinner room that JD scored, where Ryan and Tim joined us.  Gary picked out some great Australian wine, and proceeded to preview his major point of the following day: “it’s over!”  Brad shared some stories about negotiating deals with Google.  Fellow authors Rohit, James, and Tim chatted — presumably about being authors.
• App Competition - There were a number of companies shooting for a 5 minute spot to address the crowd, and the stellar group of judges selected 3: Empressr, Honesty Online, and Spigit.  I enjoyed hearing the pitches and wished each had the chance to present.
  
• James Surowiecki - Author of The Wisdom of Crowds gave an engaging talk that covered the topics in his book, and related them to how crowds operate online.  He made a key point that stuck with me: that crowds are good at evaluating ideas and filtering out the bad ones, but they can’t really innovate.  Crowds are reactionary, while individuals are innovative.
  
• Future Panel - Ryan moderated with Brad, Hans, and Alex participating.  As I mentioned, I was really looking forward to this one, and it didn’t disappoint.  In reality, Brad could have been a keynote — he has a great way of communicating complex ideas in a clear and entertaining way.  Attendee Debbie Weil (who was invited to speak but initially had a conflict) grabbed a quick video nugget with Brad after his panel.
  
• Tim Ferriss - Author of The 4-Hour Work Week did the lunch keynote.  As he does in his book, he offered good advice about valuing your time and focusing on high-value tasks, while eliminating (or delegating) the less important stuff.  I’m not sure his story about outsourcing his social life struck the right chord with the older DC audience, but he was nothing if not entertaining.
  
• Marketing Panel - Rohit did a great job of keeping this panel on track, even with Frank wearing a camera and Gary loudly striking fear into the audience (appropriately).  The overall message was that marketing is completely different than it was even a few years ago.  Gary gave a great example of ROI: he spends several million dollars marketing winelibrary.com with billboards and other traditional media, but spends almost nothing on traditional marketing for winelibrarytv.com, which grows through social networks and word-of-mouth.  The TV site, though, has suppased the store site in traffic and continues to enjoy explosive viral growth.
  
• Back Room Interviews - I actually had some work to do, so I snuck into a back room to jump online.  In doing so, I inadvertently sat in on a couple interviews the local trend junkie Greg was putting together.  More good stuff happening on the sidelines of the conference.
• Post-Conference Dinner - After the conference happy hour, I grabbed dinner with the Carsons as well as Mike and Sunir from FreshBooks.com.  We talked about management styles and kicked around creative ideas for keeping a growing company feeling small.  We also swapped travel stories, and I told my River Phoenix haircut tale for the first time in a long time – felt good. 

A ton of work went into putting the conference together, most notably by Suzanne at ExecutiveBiz.  Nearly 800 people made it out and I heard lots of great comments on the way out (and follow-up emails since).  While my day at TNNI was unique (and exhausting,) I must say I had a blast.

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.

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!

Mike Chasen was the speaker at the Potomac Officers Club event last week.  He talked about his experiences as the founding CEO of Blackboard, which he’s built from a 2 person partnership crammed into a tiny office in DC in 1997 to an 850 person publicly traded company with offices around the world.  Blackboard provides software that helps universities put their courses online.  Some points he stressed that stuck out at me in terms of lessons for growing start-ups:

• Focus.  He recognizes that a lot of entrepreneurs try to get started part-time, but he believes in 100% focus for start-ups.  Their original idea was to put college applications online (not courses), but he and his partner tried to do it while keeping their day jobs at KPMG, and it never got over the hump of initial resistance.  They faced the same resistance with putting courses online, but, because they were focused, they pushed through and made it work.
• Charge.  They’ve always stuck with a model of charging for software rather than giving it away for free in the hopes that their audience would grow and ad revenue would follow.  They faced pressure to “go free” in the dot com bubble, and while their decision not to makes them look smart now, he notes that the only reason they didn’t consider it was that they didn’t understand the model.
• Know your model.  One early day of fundraising involved two VC meetings.  In the first, after Mike explained that their model of long-term software licenses would create predictable revenue, the VC told him he was nuts — that everyone in DC makes money on consulting, and that they should give away the software but charge big for integration services.  A quick study, on his 2nd VC meeting that afternoon, Mike explained their model would be to give away software and charge for services, to which the VC countered that the margins on software sales were way more attractive and that services would be a bust. 
• Embrace turnover. He’s been through six heads of sales, and clarified that doing so was a natural reflection of their evolution as a company.  At each stage of their growth, Blackboard needed a different skill set to handle the specific challenges of that stage.  He also noted that they’re “right” about a hire about 50% of the time.
• Network. He credits local networking events for leading him to their first angel investor, who put up $200,000 as part of a $500k round.  They went on to raise more than $100 million. 
• Take it. He recommends raising as much money as you can in each round, even though he admits that their final round of funding (~$50 M) was hampered by their excess in the previous round.
• Pie. His ownership stake in Blackboard is down to 4%, but he points out that if he’d tried to hold on to more equity he wouldn’t have been able to grow Blackboard the way he did.  He’d rather have 4% of a big pie than 50% of nothing.

I was impressed by the story of Blackboard.  Mike started the company with only a couple of years of professional experience and grew it through some turbulent times.  For him to remain at the helm through all that change and maintain his passion and effectiveness is remarkable.

The Era of Conversation event is happening in DC on October 4th, hosted by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW).  I’ll be giving a talk about “building individual relationships and readers” in the tactical “Organizational Blogging & RSS” portion of the event.  From DMAW:

It’s too late to talk AT your customers and donors. The New Media Conversation involves talking WITH them. Blogs, social networks, wikis, user-generated video, and other web 2.0 interactions have put organizations in the listener’s chair. Meanwhile, companies, non-profits, and political organizations are scrambling to understand and embrace the two-way dimension in one-to-one communications [Don’t be discouraged. YOU can do this — and you WILL profit from the experience!]

Start with the basics. This unique “Era of Conversation” event discloses the underlying principles and tools of conversational communications (keynotes). Then, sessions hammer brass tacks into some of the more popular social media tactics (track 1), and spotlight real live case studies with [shock!] actual results (track 2). 

Hope to see you there.  If you have any specifics you’d like me to cover in my talk, leave a comment or email me — or just show up and heckle.