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.

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 …

This isn’t a post about politics, it’s about how creativity spreads.

When I was a kid, if I created something that I thought was cool I might show it to my friends and family — an audience of, say, a dozen (I didn’t have many friends). Even professionally-creative adults way back then, who were capable of making something that actually was cool, would have to go through a lot of effort to get that cool thing out to more than just their inner circle. Distribution was hard.

In case you haven’t seen this video, it’s another good example that times have changed.

will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas isn’t into politics, but he watched Barack Obama speak in New Hampshire on January 8th.

In a moment of inspiration he turned that speech into a song, then made a video with his friends. Even as recently as 2004, that probably would have been the end of it. But it’s 2008, so he put the video online and within a few days millions of people had watched it, potentially influencing the outcome of a Presidential election. The story in his (trimmed) words:

but that speech…
it inspired me…
I came up with the idea to turn his speech into a song…
so I called my friends…
and they called their friends…
in a matter of 2 days…
We made the song and video…

Usually this process would take months…
a bunch of record company people figuring out strategies and release dates…
but this time i took it in my own hands…
and we did it together in 48 hours…
and instead of putting it in the hands of profit we put it in the hands of inspiration…
then we put it on the net for the world to feel…

And the video:

When distribution is free and easy, creativity (with a flash of inspiration) goes a lot farther than is used to. So go do something creative, put it out there, and see what happens.

TechCrunch reported the end of ProtectMyPhotos, a backup service that competes with Mozy (my service of choice), a few weeks ago.   David posted today another candid interview with an entrepreneur — in this case ProtectMyPhotos founder Cliff Shaw — who is refreshingly open about what went wrong.  A few nuggets I found interesting:

• Be passionate. “We were bored with backup … an idea that put us to sleep.”  It’s impossible to run a small start-up well if you’re bored.
• Know your market.  “On paper, ProtectMyPhotos looked like a slam dunk … People may care - but do they care enough to part with their money?”  Mozy and Carbonite seem to have cracked this code, but, for whatever reason, ProtectMyPhotos couldn’t.  First, know that there is a market.  Then, make sure you know how to serve it.
• Build-in viral.  “ProtectMyPhotos had no way to promote itself to the friends and family of its members.”  If you’re trying to stay small and limit marketing spend, enabling your users to promote the service for you is essential.  Even if you have sizable marketing budget, viral should be part of your core strategy influencing not just into your marketing plan, but your product design.

Cliff offered some specific numbers.  They launched in October, 2006, went through $280,000, and earned 4,400 customers.  They also kept very small - 2 founders and a part-time developer - which Cliff took pride in.

“From the outside, with a 2 person team, we made ProtectMyPhotos look like a heavily-funded market leader.”

While I agree with his suggestion to “fail quickly,” I have to wonder whether the business would have been better able to compete with a slightly larger team and more money.  He says “we could’ve lost $2.8 million” but it would seem they also could have sold for $76 million. 

In the end, I think it’s about balance.  You don’t need to raise VC, but you need the right team, funding, and strategy to create the right product at the right time for the right market. 

Easier said than done.  Luckily, when guys like Cliff share their insights about failure, we can all learn a bit and have a better chance of being successful ourselves.

Jim did a great job presenting about Twitter at the DC Social Media Club meeting last night (hosted at Viget.)  He told some engaging stories about his Twitter habit, and how he’s used the service during everything from the Virginia Tech tragedy to his travels to Iraq with President Bush. 

The discussion got me thinking more about how Twitter is being used practically, right now, to address real business issues.  I experienced an example this week.

I’m a fan of Mixx, in part because I love to see local start-ups do well.  They’ve been getting Crunched lately, which is cool.  I signed up a while ago, but I’m not very active yet.  I do have the “Allow other users to share Mixx items with me” option checked, which I believe is the default.  I’d never received an item from other users, though, until this week when I pulled up my email to see about a half-dozen emails from Mixx, all saying “Someone has shared a link with you from mixx.com.”  I was surprised, and happened to tweet:

“wondering why i have so much email from mixx this morning”

1 minute later I got this reply from Justin, so I figured something was up system-wide:

“@barn: i have a lot of mixx e-mail this morning too”

3 minutes later I got a direct message from Will, who works at Mixx:

“we are fixing the issue as we speak. Someone did a little spamming last night.”

Had I been concerned (which I wasn’t) my concerns would have been allayed.  Communication problem solved. 

Now, I know Will — we follow each other — so that was easy for him.  Following all of your users might be difficult (but why not try?).  He could also track the keyword “mixx” and contact complete strangers the same way, when needed.

Is this a good way to use Twitter?  Is this an efficient way to communicate with your users?  Regardless, it’s effective and it’s working right now, so why not use it?

As part of my pre-Redskins-game prep, I just finished reading a Post article about Demetric Evans, a defensive lineman from Haynesville, La. who has been with the ‘Skins since 2004.  I never really knew much about him.  The article focused mostly on a tragedy he went through at age 12, when a classmate accidentally shot and killed his best friend while showing off the family gun.  Later on, during a brief stint out of football before he earned a spot with Washington, Demetric survived a carjacking at the hands of criminals who had killed other victims.

A fellow lineman and friend, Renaldo Wynn, said:

“With all the stuff that happened to him … a lot of guys would have been like, ‘I can’t do it.’ But making that team was nothing for him … And with the things he saw at 12, man, a lot of guys go to a life of crime or violence and could have easily retaliated or went the wrong way. But he didn’t. The adversity he went through in football is nothing like what he went through in life, and that was his motivation.”

This touches on an interesting aspect of human nature, in how people deal with adversity, particularly at a young age.  I’ve had setbacks and frustrations in life, and I’d like to think I persevere and use them as motivation more than anything, but I had it pretty easy as a kid — and certainly never experienced anything as severe as Demetric’s childhood ordeal.  Parents play a big role in how kids deal with challenges, no doubt, as Demetric alludes to in this quote about his single-parent mom, who worked nights when he was growing up:

“To this day my mom never complained about having to work that schedule … That’s one thing I always admired about my mom: She never made excuses.”

Clearly what’s important is an enduring mindset, not a specific reaction to the tragedy (they apparently didn’t discuss the event very much as a family.)  It comes down to how people make decisions, and how those decisions are impacted in the long-term by upbringing and in an instant by tragic events.

Do inspiring stories like Demetric’s alone do enough to motivate kids to make the right choices in life rather than the wrong ones when they face hard times?  Regardless, Demetric’s final quote of the article should be up on a wall at every school in America as far as I’m concerned:

“In life, man, everyone has something they can continue to go back to and make a crutch for why this is not happening, or why I’m not successful. I grew up without a dad and everybody’s got a sad story and all of that, but you know what, it’s all about you as an individual standing up and knowing what you are capable of and having confidence in yourself and really believing that you can do what you want to do, because this life, you can’t appreciate it enough.”

This mindset would benefit everyone, whether you’re a kid struggling to get through school, an undrafted rookie trying to make the NFL, or an entrepreneur struggling to launch a business.  Even though Demetric says talking about these experiences doesn’t do anyone any good, to the extent that’s he’s willing and able, I believe hearing his story could help a lot of people.  I’m glad he shared it.

One of the guys I got to know during Startup Weekend is Micah (say “me hah”) Baldwin.  We talked about Colorado, lacrosse, and excessive partying, among other things.  He’s a classic connector, and he’s just getting into angel investing.  Like a lot of web guys these days, he’s sharing his experiences along the way on his blog and on twitter, much to the benefit of those who pay attention.

Micah wrote a post called Relationships Can Be Based On Money last week that is worth reading if you’re looking for angel money and wondering what the other guys might be thinking.  Don’t take my word for it — BusinessWeek wrote it up in Confessions of an Angel Investor.

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.”

I attended the Mindshare 2007 class graduation in Tysons tonight.  Phil Merrick, who graduated in the first class way back in 1997 when his company webMethods was just getting started, spoke to the group.  He ended his talk with one of my favorite quotes — one that every entrepreneur should know.

“It is not the critic that counts not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the Arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but he who does actually strive to do the deed who knows the great devotion who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

 There’s another, more succinct version as well:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

A central theme to Phil’s talk was advising the room of entrepreneurs to make decisions.  He pointed out that most decisions are binary (yes/no) giving you 50/50 odds of making the right one, and even beyond that many decisions don’t matter either way, giving you even better odds.  Ultimately, though, it’s the ability to make decisions at all that’s important.  Perhaps he should have referenced another Teddy Roosevelt quote:

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

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.

Seth, intro’d as “the #1 marketing guru in the United States” (which he politely disputes,) posted this 6 minute video on his blog today.

It’s a quick summary of a lot of the themes he talks about on his blog and in his books including the recent history of marketing — a great way to get to know Seth and how he thinks. Some points:

• Old marketing (i.e., “yelling at people”) doesn’t work on TV, and, contrary to the hopes of marketers when the Internet arrived as a marketing platform 10 years ago, works even less online. Traditional Web advertising fails because ads are too easy to ignore.
• Getting permission to connect with potential customers is the key to successful marketing today and in the future.
• Web 2.0 is a lot about how customers can “market” (positively or negatively) on behalf of companies over the web — most of the results for product searches are for web pages not built by the product company.
• The key here is that the product / service needs to be truly remarkable so that people will be inspired to talk about it.
• Marketing for the next couple years will be all about empowering your biggest fans / customers to talk about your business.
• Web 4.0 will be when “the Net just gets smart” and — with permission — knows what you’re doing at all times and can therefore manage your life better.  His example: your flight is delayed and it not alerts you, but reschedules all of your meetings on your behalf. 
• Social networks grow fast and often die fast because “the party gets so popular that no one wants to go to it anymore.”  The key to success is balancing scarcity such that the right people are in the network, but enough activity so that these “right” people can find each other.
• He notes that blogging — not pounding the networks in Facebook and LinkedIn — is the best way to build credibility and foster this kind of discussion.
• Seth ends with words like “authentic,” “transparency,” and “reputation” — without these, none of this stuff works.

Ryan Carson runs Carson Systems and Vitamin.  He also puts on some of the best web conferences in the world, specifically Future of Web Apps (FOWA) and Future of Web Design (FOWD).   While I’d love to hit both, FOWA is in London this October, which is a bit of a hike for me.  FOWD is in NYC, though, and a few of us from Viget will be there.

To help promote FOWA, Ryan is mixing 2 of his favorite things: drinking beer and meeting people.  At the recently (and nicely) redesigned FOWA Road Trip page Ryan invites people in 12 European cities to “get away from our laptops and have a good ol’ fashioned night on the town.”  Ryan’s Twittering along the way, and the FOWA crew is documenting the trip.  Looks like they’re having fun so far.

Being the earth-friendly type, Ryan’s also using the Climate Careprogram to offset the CO2 emissions from his trip.

I think this is a great idea — especially for a guy with seemingly endless energy like Ryan — for how to get out and promote a conference while making a real connection with the community he cares about.

I met Ryan at SXSW earlier this year, and invited him to participate in the Web 2.0 for Business conference that I help put together through ExecutiveBiz.   Ryan will be moderating a panel on … what else?  The Future of Web 2.0 for Business.  Looking forward to having him in town — perhaps we’ll invite some folks out for a beer …