Susan RoAne wrote the book on schmoozing. Literally: How to Work a Room: Your Essential Guide to Savvy Socializing. The recently updated and revised book is a classic because we will all have to walk into “rooms” that contain meetings, conferences, trade shows, business mixers, fundraisers, and parties and be able to schmooze, make connections, [...]
My buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote. Nobody knows if Charlemagne [...]
Check out Launch: Silicon Valley 2007. It’s a half-day conference featuring thirty tech startups who are launching new products and services. Think of it as a poor man’s Demo. June 5th Noon to 6:00 pm Microsoft campus (Mountain View, California) Registration I’ll be giving a speech called “How I Launched a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, [...]
I’ll be speaking at the Salesforce Developer Conference on Monday. This is a free event. I learned something recently: Salesforce.com is really a software-as-service “platform” that has applicability beyond “salesforce automation.” Ergo, this conference is also for software entrepreneurs. Hope to see you there.
At the CommunityNext conference I moderated this panel with the founders of six very successful web properties: Akash Garg of hi5 Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls Max Levchin of Slide James Hong of HotorNot Markus Frind of PlentyofFish Drew Curtis of Fark This is the most amusing panel that I’ve ever moderated, and the speakers [...]
The Kauffman Foundation is launching EntrepreneurshipWeek USA from February 23rd to March 3rd. The theme is “What’s Your Big Idea? Take it On!” There will be educational programs around the country. Stanford is embracing this program in a big way starting with the kickoff event on Saturday. The schedule for the week is packed with [...]
Continuing on from Minnesota, I went to Québec for the Garage Canada conference. The Winter Carnival was also going on at the same time. I thought Minnesota was cold, but it was downright balmy compared to Québec. Despite the -40 degree weather, I found many parallels between Québec and my native states of Hawaii and [...]
I’m on a trip to my new adopted state, Minnesota. (Perhaps I am a Minnesotan trapped in a Hawaiian body instead of Canadian trapped in a Hawaiian body.) The first order of business was playing in the U. S. Pond Hockey Championships put on by Haberman and Associates. It featured approximately 200 teams playing on [...]
My prediction for Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is that it will join The Tipping Point and Built to Last as a must-read for business people. The book explains why some ideas stick and some don’t--and I’ve been on both sides of this equation. A warning though: If you read [...]
A little known story: When I was writing Selling the Dream—How to Promote Your Product, Company, or Idea—and Make a Difference Using Everyday Evangelism, I attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism to learn from the best. It was a very interesting experience. Some of the finest speakers that I’ve seen (and tried to copy) [...]
A new organization for technology evangelists has just been formed in Silicon Valley. (Secular evangelism has arrived!) The organization’s first conference is coming up on December 4th. Here is the agenda. Network Meeting Center 5201 Great America Parkway Santa Clara, CA 95054 408-562-6111 12/4/2006, 11:30 am - 6:00 pm I hope to see you there!
Just a reminder: Hope to see you guys at the Garage/SVASE "Art of the Start" event on Wednesday, November 8th. It’s at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, California. We’re covering the topics of entrepreneurship, venture capital, product introduction, sales, and marketing. The highlight is a fireside chat with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. The [...]