Search for Balance

Giving Tumblr a try, for now all posts will be there, at: http://brycebaril.tumblr.com

Ok, oil is expensive and it is creating pain for our economy.  Prices are crazy high, vacations are being canceled, companies that rely on fuel are going out bankrupt left and right, mass hysteria -- bad, right?

There could be one hell of a silver lining here; investments in new technology.  Not just green technology, which is great and all, but for the most part doesn't solve the problem. 

What I am hoping for is money going into replacement technologies.  We're not out of oil yet, so we actually have time to develop reasonable replacements without our entire oil-based infrastructure crashing to a halt.  If you think prices are high now, wait until there are real production problems.

Here's hoping that prices stay high long enough to actually drive enough money towards replacement technologies to actually make a difference. 

I attended the Google Scalability Conference again this year.  Hard to say no to a free conference in your home town. 

Here's my quick run-down of how it compared to last year:

Talks: Even

Last year I had hoped for more of the talks to be in-depth and technical, this year more were, but their topics weren't as interesting, nor their depth as great as last year's.  Both years had a couple of corporate shill type talks.

Food: Advantage '07

Last year's food was amazing, and the full bar afterward had some decent scotch.  This year the lunch was deli meat on dry bread, and only beer and wine afterward.  But still, both pretty good for a free conference. 

Schedule: Advantage '08

Last year's dual-track was annoying, I hate having to choose between two bad sessions or two I want to see.  I'm glad they were able to make this year a single-track.

Talking with other conference-goers afterward I asked various people what their number one take-away message was, and didn't get a single answer more than once.  That sounds like the sign of a well balanced conference, if also the sign of a conference with nothing too earth-shattering.

My number-one take-away was how many people were negative towards the maidsafe idea.  I've had the same idea in the past, along with others along the same vein.   I'm still pretty optimistic toward the idea of harnessing the true Internet cloud to create a coop of resources. 

Apple announced its new iPhone 3G yesterday, to luke-warm receptions.

While some are foaming at the mouth about it, most are justifiably nonplussed. 

Another point of view I saw yesterday claimed the iPhone 3G is 2-3 years behind the times.  I'm somewhat inclined to agree here, 3G should have been in the original iPhone, and GPS isn't all that important to me, given what the original was able to do with triangulation.  That isn't to go as far as to agree on the 2-3 years behind, in some ways it still leaves its competition in the dust.  That being said, the iPhone 3G is just an evolutionary release that brings little of note to the table.

The thing I like the least about what Apple is doing with the iPhone is the Application Store.  While I'm not happy about Apple controlling all of the application distribution on the iPhone, what riles me the most is Apple taking 30% of all revenue generated by 3rd party applications.  That's a pretty stiff tax for just using their platform!  As much as Microsoft has been deemed the 'Evil Empire' they don't charge a thing for anyone to release software for Windows, and if they had there is no way that Windows would be the market leader the way it is today.  In my eyes Apple sets sets unprecedented lows here when it comes to milking the developers who might try to enhance their platform.

In the end, I will probably get one, not because I think it is the phone I want, but because it is the best phone for me right now.  The rank of features I'm looking for in a phone runs Internet > Phone > Email.  If Blackberries had a better internet experience, I would be more strongly considering those.  The two projects that I was holding out for were the OpenMoko and Google Android OS.  Unfortunately, OpenMoko has been stumbling, and at this point I'm writing it off until next year at the earliest.  Google's Android OS has potential as well, but there simply isn't enough out there about it yet, nor any reliable dates.

This is a continuation of my earlier post on Twitter, and hopefully (one of) my last.  People frequently ask me what Twitter is all about and why someone would want to use it, so here is my answer for them.

What is Twitter?
Twitter started as a microblogging concept, a personal blog where your entries have to be 140 characters or less.  While some people certainly still use it as thus, it appears to have evolved into something else.  I see Twitter now as a hybrid between IM and email with a little IRC thrown in for good measure.  My guess is this comes from the push nature of twitter, where bogging is generally pull: you send emails and IMs, but you visit blogs or pull in RSS feeds.  Now that it is being used as a communication platform, it feels like a worldwide chat room where instead of having to mute people you don't want to hear, you unmute people you do want to hear. 

Why would you want to use Twitter?
I'm frequently impressed with how the publicity of Twitter as a communication platform exposes its best features.  You can watch stock tips being exchanged, you can get trickle-down publicity from the power users by engaging them in conversation.  I only wish I had started using it more seriously when I first created the account.  I can attribute multiple signups at MarketOutsider.com to my use of Twitter.  If nothing else, whenever I'm downtown, I can usually find some people to grab lunch with me via Twitter.

You do still have to monitor your own quality of service with Twitter.  Some users follow as many people as they can, which in my mind is crazy, as you would just inundate yourself with noise.  I follow about 70 people, which is about all I can handle.  Luckily many of them only say 1 or 2 things a day.  I'm told if you have too many followers, it can also be burdensome; every time you say something you get hundreds of replies.

Power users
The users that get the most out of twitter are its elite power users.  These are people like @JasonCalacanis who have tens of thousands of followers.  These users serve as a sounding board, a set of free labor, a market test group, or any other of a myriad of uses.  A few weeks ago Jason asked for comments on a design mock-up for Mahalo, and he got over 500 comments within a couple hours, for FREE.  When @therealdvorak couldn't find something on google, he asked his followers and instantly got five messages with exactly what he was looking for, again, for FREE.  The ones who are using it well are pulling off the ultimate in marketing, perfectly targeted $0 CPM advertising.

Corporate use
It might be interesting for a large corporation to use an internal version of Twitter to help relay ideas.  It's publicity would help keep things open, and encourage others with input or related tasks to be informed where email wouldn't.  I wouldn't want to be the first one to accidentally send a message to the public Twitter that was intended for the corporate one, though.

Bots
Twitter's API has made for some interesting bots.  @StockTweets follows stock traders on Twitter who share their watchlists and trades.  @lotd is a club for people to share song lyrics.  @winetweets is a bot that shares people's wine reviews.  My feeling is the best twitter bots are still to come.

Summize
The public nature of twitter makes for some interesting analysis.  You can use Summize to watch a search term as it happens in Twitter, or get the sentiment expressed by twitter users for a particular subject.  Any time you can watch the thoughts and activities of a large group of people in real-time, you can get some interesting network effects.

What is the future of twitter?
I have a feeling that if the concept that makes twitter so viable really starts making it to the mainstream, the concept will have to leave the confines of Twitter's servers.  Whether this is in the form of an open standard like email, or an open-source replacement, or what, a single company--especially with Twitter's technical problems--can't and probably shouldn't own a communication platform.

Revenue stream?
Twitter can't operate without income forever, so they will need to find a revenue stream.

There is a potential for an Ad-based revenue model, given users are providing them with information that could be used for targeting, maybe with a potential for mobile location-based advertising to those using twitter over SMS.

They could also consider a freemium model, where those users with high numbers of followers, maybe >10,000 pay a fee.  These users will probably be fine with that, as they are the ones who can most easily get value out of Twitter, as described above.

The last option I've considered is having a corporate version that they license for companies to set up their own private Twitter networks.  I'm not sure this would really make sense with the whole Twitter concept, but it has potential.

I've been attending quite a few entrepreneur group meetings recently, and I think I've found a pattern that correlates with their life-cycles. 

Hypothesis

All tech entrepreneur groups devolve over time to where they are only attended by predatory service providers, at which point a new group will have been formed to avoid said service providers.

Methods

Simply attend meetings from each forum at least once and talk to as many people as I can, and Google to find out when they were formed.  I considered counting business cards, but that would favor the service providers; many entrepreneurs don't have business cards yet.

Results

WTIA(WSA): (est. 1984) This, the first group to really become popular in the area, is all but overrun by service providers.  I've been to a few of their networking events, and of the 50+ people I've talked to I met two other entrepreneurs.  Pretty much everyone else there had a service they were looking to sell.

MIT Enterprise Forum: (Seattle chapter est. 1984) The meeting I attended here was a different format, being a sit-down presentation with relatively little networking opportunity, but of the few people I did meet, there was a rough parity of entrepreneurs and service providers.  I wouldn't consider this a

NWEN: (est. 1985) Due to my wife's work schedule I haven't been able to attend one of these, so I'll rely on my co-founder Colin's experience: "...out of the people that I talked to, I'd say that about 25% were service providers, and the rest were entrepreneurs or NWEN old timers."

SeattleTechStartups: (est. 2006) These meetings are almost exclusively attended by (SHOCK!) actual entrepreneurs!  While there was at least one service provider there, it was a company that exclusively works with startups and tries to use that experience to give advice rather than actively seek clients.

Open Coffee: (est. 2007)  I didn't talk to a single service provider at this meeting, although I'm told there may have been one there.

Conclusion

While I don't think I have enough data points to validate my hypothesis, the trend looks rather compelling.  I was surprised that the first three were founded in such a small time-frame and that only recently have the newcomers been formed.  My guess is there are others groups I haven't attended (such as Ignite), don't know about, or were founded in the 90s but were short-lived.  Suggested future research directions would be attending additional meetings, especially in groups not listed above, and interview long-time attendees from these forums to find out their past compositions. 

Last summer I signed up for twitter while at OSCON, I was there with a group of coworkers, and we thought it would be a good way to keep each other appraised of where everyone was having lunch/drinking beer/etc.  It worked pretty well despite some technical issues twitter was having at the time.

A $30 charge for text messages and a month later I pretty much stopped using twitter.  At 8:51 on November 28th, 2007, I sent a message: "Wondering if I'll ever use Twitter again" intending that it would be my last twitter message. I had given up on twitter.

Fast forward four months and twitter seems to have a new life.  It has really come into its own as THE forum for quick broadcasting and link dissemination.  After following @JasonCalacanis I saw the ability of twitter to communicate, feed, and especially mobilize a social network.  When he can post a link and within a minute have over 200 people watching him broadcast live video, that is power.

So I've begun using twitter again.  Mostly I don't have much to say, as I don't post here enough to broadcast my new posts.  I do, however, feel I've found more of the pulse of the tech world again.  It is interesting to see people carry on instant-message style conversations in the public domain.  Sending each other links and replying with more links in a forum which will cause tens if not hundreds of uninvolved viewers to follow along.  It seems like this is a win-win situation; those being followed are feeding their social networks and driving traffic, and those who are following get to be a step ahead of everyone else.  These conversations end up being elaborated upon in blog and news stories the following day.

I wonder where the pulse of the tech world will move next...

We're building one monster of a gamer with our oldest daughter so far.  A few months ago, unintentionally, playing a card game  became part of her bed-time routine.  So every night we play one of two games: Go Fish or Uno.  Sure, neither one are very complex and both are heavily luck-based, but there is a skill element in both.  (We've also done some checkers a couple nights)

My wife and I don't really take it easy on her, either.  Sure, the first few nights we let her win a couple times so she didn't get completely discouraged with the game, but now she regularly wins on her own merits.

Watching her developing her skills is fascinating.  She is developing one wicked poker face, and is picking up on our tells as well.  While playing Go Fish the first week or so when she got a card she knew we had she'd make a huge grin and hold it up to her face and smile and look at the person who she knew had the matches.  At which point we'd know exactly what card to ask her for.  She figured that one out quickly.  Now she'll wait until after she gets the cards from us and say, "How was that, Daddy?  I didn't make a face, did I!" 

Right now she's slowly learning how to bluff.  Since we don't play Uno every night, and even when you do you don't often get chances to bluff in Uno it is going slowly, but I think she is catching on. 

Now I just need to pick the next couple games to teach her.

When you are working in a startup of two, you are doing everything: the coding, the business work, the planning-- and all of it sits there on your TODO list with a status of overdue.  Everything has to be done, even (especially?) the stuff that you don't want to do.  A few weeks ago that begrudging task was scoring training data.  (Supervised Data Mining techniques require you to mark up some data with what you expect it to score; it then uses some of this data to learn how to score, and some to evaluate how well it preforms.)

At MarketOutsider we're bootstrapping as leanly as possible.  That means, unlike many companies that might outsource a somewhat menial task like this, I got to spend over a week doing it.  Every day, as I'd score data, I'd hear my other tasks calling to me, but I managed to stay focused on the scoring. 

In the end, I feel doing it myself provided some value, and I'm glad that we didn't out-source.  Beyond the costs of outsourcing and having to train someone and rely on their ability to do it correctly, I also reaped the following benefits:

• I have a much better understanding of the data we're scoring
• I have a list of potential over and under-fitting errors to expect
• I was able to get a better idea of how our customers will use our product
• I was able to identify bugs and flaws in other systems that led up to this system
• and others...

Hopefully going forward the other 'annoying' tasks will surprise me as well.