saint-rebel

$720 Million a day is being spent on the war in Iraq. I think that money could be used in a lot better ways.

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Quick run down of what I have been up to…

• Working with and advising at new Tech Incubator/Phoenix Co-work campus Gangplank
• Launched BestPartyEver.com into Beta, and went “post revenue” with our first paid customer shortly after, where my term sheet?
• Intentionally throwing juice to the party ideas lens cause it will pass juice to bpe {SEO}
• Revisiting the summer of 1994 with the Ghetto sounds of Too $hort
• The PHX suns were booted from the playoffs.. so looking forward to next year
• Working with Wardo on some projects
• And went to SF  with the Unicorn  to horn the digg party.. was awesome.

That is all..

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Ask your doctor about sheepivex..

Watching “CBS Sunday morning” this morning the commercials really got under my skin. Maybe I just woke up crabby, or maybe madison avenue is the devil.

Here is a quick run down of the commercials in rotation this morning….

Big Pharma: Ask your doctor if you have any of these common symptons that may be the sign of a serious illness: skin, hair, bones. Big Pharma advertising is the scourge of the earth IMHO. Yes there needs to be a profit motive for these companies to create the “blockbuster” and “lifesaving” medicine we need. I do not begrudge any corporation of making a profit, by definition that is what they are here to do. But the advertising of these drugs is mind numbing.

Srsly.. the Pharma advert story board is as follows; Ask vague health related question of the viewer that 99% of the populous could answer favorably, show happy people that have been cured by wonder drug, overlay voiceover of disclosures and hurry through the part about anal leakage. Close with prompt to demand this cure for the self diagnosed disease from your pesky prescription pad wielding Dr.

Do Dr’s even need a medical degree any more? I could diagnose myself (of every known ailment) off these information packed adverts, and if only there was 1800 number I could just order LATINNAMEIVEX to my door. Cut out the middle man and leave me and my potentially dangerous side effects to myself. Enlarged Prostate FTW!

Watch this:

Perhaps the only thing more insulting to my intelligence than pharma, is big corp lobbying.
Have you seen this commercial?

Inspirational music, happy kids, uplifting and hopeful message about a better tomorrow for everyone, blue sky and awesome green infographics, brought to you by: The American Big Oil Industry.

Or this one.

Sleek automotive interiors, flashy high tech graphics, verbal description of cutting edge techno-vative gas saving technology, Brought to you by Chevrolet. Srsly? Chevy has not been innovative for 40 years, this is the same car company that has spent billions on lobbying congress to NOT be innovative.

Does the average viewer really fall for this shit?
I guess they do. TV is the perfect medium for checking your brain at the door and just passively accept what you see and hear. No need to question the facts, question the motives, or agenda.

Take it all in my little sheepy’s and consume more.

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I had this idea to see what would happen if I put up a splash page on our web design business website, that was less than politically correct in regards to business to customer relations. More a a rant from me regarding all the “interesting” sales leads that come through our website.

So it started in jest and I was just going to leave it up for day.. but I forgot about it. And I remembered the day after when I was reviewing traffic/analytic stats. To my amazment some interesting trends appears.. such as pages/visit actually climbed for Google traffic, yet the bottom fell out of pages/visit for Yahoo traffic.

So this has now become an unscientific experiment for me. I think I will finish the week out with the “get lost” copy.. and then net week try some super gushy we “we love our clients” copy.. and see what happens then. I will post some charts and whizbang graphs after I compile the data.

The humor is not lost on some, this morning I got the first flame mails, allow me to share:

Your Name: Johnny
Email: **********@hotmail.com
Phone: As if
Message:

I can’t believe how badly written and unprofessional this whole website is. It’s like, you’re beyond a geek and despite your ability to design websites (no doubt the result of hours of fully exploring your total inability to socialise) you have set out to appeal to your adolescent friends’ sense of humor rather than clients. It tells me two things. 1 - You are geeky but stupid. 2 - All your friends are too.

Best regards,

Self made millionaire website developer (without even needing a promotional website which embarrasses me).

Johnny uses hotmail which calls into question his millionaire status.

Your Name: Harry
Email: ***********@gmail.com
Phone:
Message:

I was looking for a web designer but your message on the first page put me off you, far too arrogant!

Also, if you are a good web designer why is your site so bad? Look at the font size of your sales pitc on the home page, lot of good thats going to do when no one can read it!

The offending copy Harry speaks of:

To Harry and Johnny’s credit they both shared thier thoughts within seconds of each other. Harry at April 18, 2008 4:57:14 AM GMT-07:00 and Johnny at April 18, 2008 4:58:22 AM GMT-07:00. Amazing how great minds think alike at the same time.

Tune in next week for Adventures in  Copyrighting part deux.

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Say you were attending an event, not SXSW big.. but not Refresh small.. maybe like a 500 to 1000 attendess size, with 10-15 speaker/panel slots. Say it was a gig talking about entrepreneur’isms, startups, and leaning towards the tech side of things.

What would you like the speaker list to look like?

Option A: Joe Speaker - CEO some large ass corporation that is 20 years out of the garage.

Option B: Pam Presenter - Founder of a mid-size (1-2 million) startup that is clipping along nicely after 2-5 years.

Option C:  Tony Talker - Small business type that has had some success (financially) but is still in the garage and is regarded as being very bright and ambitious in their field.

Would you want only A’s, only C’s. a mix of all?

What would you hope to gain from each?

Here are my quick thoughts.  I happen to fall into the C category, and I guess as birds flock together so do entrepreneurs.  (Hefty generalizations coming)

I found that the A’s are so far out of the garage they have lost touch with me, and my lean and mean environment. They offer good advice, but it is 5 years down the road advice, as we do not have the luxury to solve problems with money or more staff as their advice tends to be.

The B’s are just now getting a taste of their payout and are in a protective mood and not so eager to share for fear of their house of cards crumbling. They seem to be absorbed with their projects and have little time to share with the C group as they are hunting A group companies as prospects.

Now the C’s seem to be on the cutting edge of everything, they are the true innovators IMHO. They are doing the work today that will make A size companies 10-15 years from now. But they suffer from an inferiority complex as the way success is measured (cash, ipo, stock price) as alluded them to this point. Also there are so many C’s, the noise level is such that only a few breakouts (the small startups the get bought by google in early beta) get any respect (could be said because they are now instant B or A companies). But they are also the most eager to share their experiance and gained expertise with others.

So where does that put you? I hang around with C’s all week.. and there is good horizontal information flow, so we are all rising together, but slowly.  Until their is some infusion of A and B ideas, concepts, and mentoring (vertical information flow) most of the C’s move along at a snails pace.

So at a conference, how do you get an A to remember the garage days, and the B’s to slow down for 5 seconds.. so they can both meet the C’s that will soon replace them on those respective levels of success? If you are a C, do want to listen only to A and B’s at a conferance, or does it make sense to hear some of your own language coming from a C. Also if you are an A, are you lacking the vision and drive that you had as a C?  Would a panel led by C’s rejuvenate you and your companies way of looking at your market?

Just random thoughts… as I prepare my future speaking career

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They may regret it now, but the SXSW organizers gave us 1 hour, 250 people,  and microphones… What the hell were we thinkin?Enjoy. 

 

 EPIC FAIL: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Say you were rich and famous, okay say you are more rich and famous than you are now. How would you give back? How about interweb celebs doing quirky self-effacing things for charity?  Okay done.  Check it out >

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