saint-rebel

Here is an edited snippet of our panel provided by SXSW. Maybe I can get my hands on a full unedited version….

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Starting to feel better after the post sxsw immune system crash. Here are the top 8 for me this year. (Please forgive the shameless namedropping)

1. The Boarding Pass (Friday March 7th, approx 8:20am, PHX Airport)
Arrive at PHX with Sally (my smokin hot wife) and Johan (the crazy danish intern) and breeze through security pretty easy, and arrive at the gate to see other folks from #phx. Sean [name removed to save him from waterboarding at gitmo.. apparently it is a federal offense to tamper with a boarding pass] whom I invited to speak on my sxsw panel let me know the night before he got my boarding pass for me. When I walked up he was anxious to greet me and handed me my boarding pass as seen below.

This was the culmination of the prior week long tirade of finding creative ways to call each other “A fucking loser” - male bonding at it finest. I had Sean squirming for a comeback after the last burn I delivered, and happy to say Sean stepped up big with this one.

2. My Panel at SXSW (Friday March 7th, 5:01pm, Room 19AB 2nd floor Austin Convention Center)

Really hard to sum this up.. but it was quiet possibly the highlight of my year so far. Andrew Hyde joined Sean and I for the panel. It started with a Keynote slide of Godzilla.

Got to drop the F bomb in the middle…

and wrapped with a a special guest panelist, the unicorn

Andrew - Joshua (me) - Sean - The Unicorn

Damn he was smart.. Listen to this interview

SXSWpanel Slide Deck

The fact a professional writer form Wired.com had to report on the trainwreck made it all the better.

Favorite Feedback

3. PureVolume Night 1 and 2

All the other sxsw parties are cool and all.. but after 1am it is vodka+redbull till 4am. The DJ was slammin, and the people are always chilln. Met Austin from PocketFuzz.com who ran the txt board in the dance room.. was cool; you could txt anything to this number and it was projected on the screen. Hours of fun.

4. The Crazy Weird Carni band at the 16bit party.. no not really

The band was terrible.. but the night saw some highlights:

• ordered 2 large pizza’s to a bar with 400+ people inside and 400 more waiting in line outside
• actually managed to locate the pizza dude when he arrived
• navigated pizza through crowd and then nearly ate dirt in the last 5 yards
• saw a large chunk of the digg posse jump the back fence
• asked Robert Scoble if he was going to show up to the fight the next day that the unicorn called him out on.
• the rick shaw ride through Austin

Also the planning for that night was near flawless.. We were 30 minutes early to every party… and therefore a) got drinks early, b) didnt have to wait in line c) got to meet more people who also were not standing in line.

5. Partying with my wife like we were in college again.

This May will be 5 years of marriage to Sally.. And I think besides a few brief episodes in years 1-2.. this was the first sustained party effort together since we were in college. Also it was fun to forget about work, clients, customers, reputation.. all that.. and just be a dumb kid again.

6. Digg Party FTW

I met some very nice people from Digg a few days earlier, and their coolness and a good word put in for me by The Unicorn landed me on the VIP list.

Here is why the digg party bwnd all others;

• Same purevolume craziness just 4 hours more 9pm-4am
• Met more killer people from digg
• Met more killer people from other awesome companies
• Met Mark Cuban and got to tell him something like “you have no answer for the Big Cactus, this is the Suns‘ year”
• Met Moby.. See number 7
• Sally got a picture with Moby and Mark Cuban
• Got some free digg schwag
• I think I play guitar hero better the more I drink
• The guys from Ustream.tv made me look sober

7. GaryVee pwns Moby

Moby comes in the back gate.. he is in the place for of all of 27 seconds and GaryVee innocently goes to shake Moby’s hand and knocks his drink to the floor. Moby’s drink on Moby’s shoes… So there is Gary, and there is Moby.. both giving each other the wtf? look. Was waiting for Moby to break into song of something… Of course twitter reaction time was instant.

8. All the kick ass people

Total Awesomness was everywhere:

The Blue Favor crew et all, Andrei, Paul (Jesus) Nixon, Pistachio, GaryV, Beth, Aubs, Andrew Kortina, Andrew Hyde and the domination of VCWear.com, the Unicorns Agent Matt, Lorenz, Austin, Andy Kaufman, Mel, Jermey, Thanks Jade and Integrum for Dinner, Josh Bloom, Thom Singer, you, and you, and the other guy, and her, and you, and all the other 432 uber rad people I met, drank, and plotted world domination with.

3am ish?

8b. The cool business cards

see em here

What sucked?

Feeling sick as soon I got off the plane in Phoenix after SXSW, The Facebook Keynote, panels starting at 10.. thats about it.

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sxswpanel slides

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The dopest T-shity VC wear will never sell

Join myself, Sean Tierney and Andrew Hyde for a complete Train wreck of a panel at SXSW.

PS: grab some biz cards and pimp them for prizes

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Welcome to the new year. I have some plans for this year that I am very excited about, allow me to share:

We are making the transition from client services to internal projects at obu web. Building a killer client services company was fun and all, but it had its downside. Chasing client dollars and managing the various dispositions of employees are a near constant drain on enthusiasm. In 08 we will complete this transition to focus only on our internal projects.. those being:

BestPartyEver.com is ready to blow up in 2008. We have invested a good chunk of time, dollars, and energy into this party planning and party ideas resource. It has taken a while to put all the pieces in place, but the response has been great. Traffic and registrations are up week after week, and we still have some great stuff to add to the site still. We are in talks to secure a small angel round to propel bpe forward.  We are also just as committed to building the site and user base organically like we have been.  Takes a bit longer, but we don’t have to give up and control.

MoroPartners.com is a new internet consulting firm that I am working with. Moro Partners is an internet consulting firm that helps businesses successfully navigate the website design, development, and internet marketing process. We are also lending our expertise to established and startup web client services companies to assist them in biz development, strategy and sales. I am learned a lot in the past 5 years and feel Moro is a good avenue for me to share that knowledge to the benefit of fellow industry professionals, as well as companies purchasing web design and internet marketing services.

We will also be making some changes to Flare9 our website builder product, to refine the offering and position it for a possible acquisition.

I will be blogging quite a bit more often on the various blogs I maintain this year as I focus more on the consulting services of Moro.

If you are not in it to Win it, why are you even playing?

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This is not a reference to Obama’s skin color.. but what I would call a Obama/Paul 08 independent ticket.

How come the only 2 candidates that seem to have anything to say worth listening too, have the longest shot of winning?

Ron Paul is too smart for his own good and refuses to play the game of politicking. He does little to endear himself to the talking heads that have their own news TV program, and does even less to play the corporate money game that could easily grease the wheels of his nomination. But you say to me, he doesn’t need corporate money to get elected, he has all that netroots money. No amount of money in the world will get Paul elected, he stands for everything that the current influence and power structure are against. They will not go without a fight, and their pockets are much, much, much deeper.

Now I like the guy, I think he is just crazy enough that if he was able to get elected, and was even able to get 1/4 of his platform passed an impotent and stonewalling congress, we just may have a chance of bringing America back from the brink. I don’t think he has a prayer of getting the Rep. nomination unless his Paulites can somehow how knock off the old RNC guard in some sort of midnight offensive.

Obama.. I like the guy and let me say he has my vote already, but the sad truth is again the status quo is working against him. A blue blood menopausal white wife of an ex-president is as close to a White Male as you can get, and even that is probably too far from the established norm for most of the sheepericans to swallow. Obama has another 15-20 years until the civil rights generation is no longer the “establishment” and then he would have a solid chance of getting elected. When that generation dies, hopefully their prejudices will go with them.

Remember I said he has my vote, but the average American lefty voter is preoccupied with the thought of ol Bill being a first husband, a black man as president may still be too much to process. They can only handle one crisis of consciousness at a time… NASCAR or UFC?.

Since neither of them are going to get their party nominations (I would love to be proven wrong on this) I propose an Obama/Paul or Paul/Obama 08 independent ticket. They have enough support between them, that together they could possibly pull an upset by a slim margin.

So a 3 way run between a Clinton/Edwards for the Dems, Obama/Paul running a middle independent ticket, and 2 god fearing, torture endorsing, over 50 white guys that hate gay Mexicans, for the Reps.

This will be fun to watch.

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What is a sleeper? I think it is most commonly associated with cars. At least that is how I know of it. Imagine pulling up at a red light in your fancy sports car next to an unassuming car that looks like it took one too many trips to the local school PTA meetings, and when the light turns; the car leaves you in a cloud of blue smoke and screeching tires.

The same concept can be applied to a new web startup.. one that slowly does its thing under the radar.

Our startup BestPartyEver.com is sort of like that. We are bootstrapped up to this point and have leveraged our other talents to slowly build our presence. We are opening a seed round to procure that first little bit of outside capital that can help us move things along a bit faster, and in doing so I really started to look at the strategy of some of our neighbors in the space are using to launch their own product/service.

Here is the most fascinating takeaway. If you look at their media “buzz”: all the nifty mentions on the important tech blogs, the articles in the webzines, even the mentions on TV, etc.. They do not have much more of a presence than we do.

Looking at alexa.com and compete.com and comparing our 2 sites, I find that yes they have a slight advantage on us in traffic, reach, and a few other metrics, but here is the difference: we have done it without spending more than $500, vs. they are clearly dropping hard $ on getting the word out.

I think their play is more about getting on the radar of the investment crowd, then building their business. Which makes sense cause they just pulled down some cash.

Maybe it is 2 ways to the same end.

I am also likely consoling myself right now, knowing that without spending any real money, on a razor thin budget, we have built a platform/system that can hang with the “cool kids with money”

And here we are now looking for money ourselves. Yet with an injection of cash, I still think I will play the role of the sleeper. Let the other guy spend money saying how good his service is, I will spend the money on making my service better., and so far it seems to be working. All stats are trending positive, more first time traffic, more repeat traffic, more pageviews, more time on site; week after week after week, and still my only cost is servers and labor.

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