All in Random Stuff

Kind of tech partied out

Charlie O'Donnell
Random Stuff, Venture Capital & Technology

Back in February of 2006, when nextNY started, there weren't a lot of social events going on in the NY Tech scene.  Now, it seems like there's a party going on every other day--and not parties for specific user groups or industries, where the chances of you making a connection to someone relevant are pretty good--just these big generalized "tech community" parties with sponsors no one really cares about. 

It's fun if most of your friends are tech and digital media folks, but mine aren't.  I grew up here in NYC and was a finance guy long before I was a tech guy--not that all my friends are finance people either.  My best friends work in publishing, law, and television production.

That's not to say I haven't made really good friends in the tech community.  I have, but I don't only see them at "industry" events.  I try to see the people in the tech community that I'm actually friends with in smaller settings like at the Shake Shack or for 1:1 lunches.  I play on sports teams with them and invite them to go out with me and my non-tech friends. 

So when I bounce from these bigger, generalized, noisy parties early, it's often because there's someone I know for years, maybe since junior high, waiting somewhere for coffee--or I just have a ton of work to do and can't go out every night if I ever expect to see my parents and other family. 

I think because I don't necessarily take part in the "scene" as much as others, I get a little bit of a reputation of being standoffish, or not sociable.  In actuality, I'm very social--just not necessarily with 300 random strangers who also have websites. 

Sometimes, I think that people think this is what is meant by "participation" when entrepreneurs out looking for money or deals for their startups attend these parties.  I don't know about you, but I never quite feel like these big things are my community and I always wind up hanging out with the same people anyway.

I think entrepreneurs are better off spending as much 1:1 time with people who's opinions they respect and admire, who actually know their space a bit, and also creating communities around them.  No matter what the industry or interest, there's a smaller community of people that you should be gathering together to leverage and exchange ideas.

Hey, if you wanna drink on someone else's tab, these big parties are great... but don't mistake them for or let them replace the more authentic, true relationship (and dare I say friendship) building that needs to be part of your networking.

Weirdest random Plugoo exchange ever

Charlie O'Donnell
Random Stuff, Venture Capital & Technology

[SABYA] I WANT SOME WIDGET           2:09 PM
[SABYA] ARE YOU THERE

ceonyc                                                2:09 PM
What kind of widget?

myplugoo                                             2:09 PM
[SABYA] FLASH CONTET

ceonyc                                                 2:10 PM
Ok... I get you flash widget.   How much you pay?

myplugoo                                               2:10 PM
[INFO] Visitor [SABYA] has left the conversation.

Nobody here but us low horses

Charlie O'Donnell
Path 101, Random Stuff, Venture Capital & Technology

A friend of mine's dad runs a large landscaping business with over one hundred employees.  While the business has been in the family since 1939, when he took it over in the early 70's, he really took it to the next level.  That often happens when the reigns of a business finally pass on to the next generation.

Anyway, what we're doing at Path 101 doesn't even hold a tea candle (yet!) to what he's accomplished.  This is a real business that sells real stuff with revenues, EBITDA, 100+ employees, trucks, etc!  It would be easy for someone with so much success to dismiss a small angel funded web startup in Alpha, but instead, he took a lot of interest  in what we were up to.  He even brought me up to a neighbor as another guy running a business who knows what it's like to work hardest for yourself.  I really appreciated getting that kind of respect towards our humble beginnings--especially from a friend's parent who might naturally be prone to a more unbalanced power dynamic.  Instead, it felt like two entrepreneurs shooting the breeze and it was pretty cool.

And yesterday, I got a nice note from Marc Cenedella checking in to see how things were going with Path 101 and an invite to come chat about the recruiting market and startup stuff.  I'm sure I'll learn a lot more than I can contribute to the conversation, but similar to my friend's dad, he asked some questions in our exchange about what the sweet spot is for when in a person's life Path 101 is useful. 

I really appreciate when successful folks like this can take a second to think about somebody else's business--but more so than that to take it seriously despite the vast distance between our respective progress.  It's a stark contrast to a recent situation where someone told me how they'd do things completely differently and never really acknowledged the progress we had made or my vision for the company.

At the end of the day, I just don't sweat situations like that.  You can't impress everyone and not everyone is going to care what you're up to.  You've got limited time and resources in a startup, and you just need to work with the people who believe in you and not worry about everyone else.  I guess relationships are kind of like that, too.  Some people are going to accept you and be excited to be with you.  If you spend more time building strong relationships with these people, and less with those who aren't interested, your life will turn out just fine.

Subway Thumbing

Charlie O'Donnell
It's My Life, Random Stuff

I wish I knew who all these people were.


I wish I knew whether the girl standing in front of me reading Marie Claire with the trail of stars tattooed on her ankle was with anyone when she got it.

What about the tall geeky couple to my right? Are they actually a couple? Where did they meet?

The guy with the Handsome Boy Clothing Co tshirt...is that a bible pamphlet he's holding? Where'd he get it? Does he have one for each day?

The woman conked out with her mouth open... Does she fall asleep everyday? Did she go out late last night? Maybe yesterday was her birthday.

Lots of tats around... All are little stories.

How about nametags with links to our web profiles?

I'm sorry, but even besides obvious reasons I just find women so much more interesting to look at. I find guys to be pretty boring.


Ruoska sings Narua in my ear, in Finnish. No silver bullet for mortgages, UK warned says the peach flavored Financial Times. I can see my feet. The FT has spit out an insert. A guy in a Decepticons tshirt swoops in quickly to pick it up. His hipster bag says Black Paw.

Love and Startups

Charlie O'Donnell
Random Stuff, Venture Capital & Technology

I want to find someone who not only loves me, but lets themselves experience love and doesn't worry about the chances of things actually working out. 

Relationships are like startups.  If you join one because you think it will be successful, versus just joining one because its interesting, worthwhile, and its something you're passionate about--regardless of its ultimate chance of success--then you shouldn't be in one.  Most relationships, like most startups, don't last forever.  They're also completely unpredictable, so you just find good people, communicate well, and do your best.

Ignite NYC: Not your usual conference topics

Charlie O'Donnell
Random Stuff, nextNY

On July 29th, Ignite comes to NYC.  What's Ignite?  It's 16 5-minute presentations that geeks will love, plus a soldering competition.

 

RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.

 

I'll be speaking there, but I'm even more psyched about the other speakers.  Check these out:

* Tom Igoe - Physical Computing's Greatest Hits (or Misses)

* Tony Bacigalupo - NYC's Startup Scene: Where are the geeks?

* Jessica Bruder - How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)

* Karen McGrane - From Typing to Swiping: Interaction Design has come a long way!

* Rose White - Weird and wonderful knitting -- graffiti and science and art combined!

* Audacia Ray - Porn as a front runner in technology innovations

* Charlie O'Donnell - Shaving your head: When to start, how to maintain, and to BIC or not to BIC?

* Charles Forman - How to date celebrichauns with founder fetish

* Natalie Jeremijenko - A bomb shelter for the climate crisis

* Pat Allan - So you're a kick-arse coder...

* Joel Johnson - Indie Games: At Least They're Free!

 

Details:

The first Ignite NYC is going to happen 7/29 at M1-5. We are going to feature 16 speakers. Each speaker will get 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of five-minutes. Ignite is free and open to the public -- you're on your own for drinks. We're also going to be joined by Ignite co-creator, Bre Pettis. Bre is going to lead us in a creative soldering contest. RSVP at Upcoming or Facebook to let us know you are coming. The night will begin with:

7:00PM - Doors Open

7:30PM - NYC Soldering Championship:

With solder irons blazing, and the power of molten metal at their finger tips, New York City's electricity enthusiasts and hardware hackers will connect components to complete circuits for the glory of being the fastest soldering gun in NYC.

On stage and under hot lights, contestants will complete an electronics kit in the shortest time possible while still maintaining the integrity of the circuit. Who will be New York City's soldering champion? You'll need to be there to find out!

To solder you'll have to pre-register, but anyone can come enjoy the opening contest. After the contest, there will be:

8:00PM - Ignite Talks

Is there anybody out there? The results of last week's engagement and influence experiment.

Charlie O'Donnell
Random Stuff

A week ago, I asked readers to comment on how they found a post that I had put up on Twitter, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc., and to repost where they may.  I wanted to see how many people I could nudge into action and what types of actions they chose.

One of the most interesting results was the fact that most of the people who did anything to participate were people that already knew me.  And, that, above all, should be the most useful piece of information here.  If you want someone to do something for you--spread content, interact, etc., relationships count.

That's why I'm so surprised how many entrepreneurs hole themselves up in a dark room when creating a company.  Sure, putting in the blood, sweat and tears in the wee hours of the morning is important to get things done, but disengaging from your life is completely counterproductive.  How are you ever going to get a core set of initial users if most of the people in your life haven't heard from you in nine months?

In terms of how people found out about the post, it was pretty split between Twitter and their RSS reader--and that also accounted for the vast majority of inbound.  Reblogs or retweets counted for only a handful of inbound, which also isn't surprising, because if my closest contacts are reblogging my stuff, there's a good chance their audiences are following me as well, and there's very high overlap.

Still, not that many people came or participated.  Allen Stern wrote, "you should use your good content instead".  Funny enough, two other posts that day proved Allen right.  While this post was sort an experiment that answered a question for me, two other posts combined to get 10x its traffic in a three day time period.

Between July 7th and 9th, over 3,100 people visited my post about why Paul Graham is wrong about NYC.  The post was over a month old, but somehow it made the front page of Hacker News.

In addition, my note about Twitter buying Summize, one of the first public stories about it, generated about 3x the traffic that my experiment did.

So, the moral of the story according to this very unscientific experiment?

  • Build great relationships with people.
  • Good content even trumps breaking news.
  • "Insider", high quality sites like Hacker News can generate boatloads of traffic for a relevant post--maybe even more so than generalist sites can.
  • Make sure you're RSS enabled, Twitter enabled, but don't expect traffic just because you are--these are just mediums.
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