saint-rebel

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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Source: WikipediaThe US government has seemingly been on mission to prove to the American people that it is inept, inefficient, and corrupt. Yet there is one or two great examples of the government working to the benefit of the populous.

Enter Public Broadcasting. PBS is a funded by grants of the US government and private viewers, and today I think they have earned their. Frontline has just done a 2 part series called Bush’s War, which is like disinfectant for the sickness that is the Bush presidency, and the false pretenses that took us into Iraq.

From the Frontline story:

Within hours of 9/11 Rumsfield dictates to his secretary that the US response should include a hit on Iraq/Saddam Hussein.

The evening of 9/11 Rumsfield drops a physical rock (stone) on the conference table to emphasize to make his case for including Iraq in any US response.

Watch it online, learn it.. and understand you, me, and the world have been lied too, again. What are we going to do about it?

Popularity: 72% [?]

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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WOW.. and awesome sum it up.  For all the cool kids I met, It was a pleasure.

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