Tasks for a new startup – Radioki.com and Startup Weekend SF

Saturday was a busy day. Spent at Startup Weekend SF.

Today will be an even crazier day as in less than 24 hours I will be taking 4 pages of notes sketching out a whole application and putting together a mess of parts and web services into what will be a compelling and useful service for many people. After I post this, my evening (well early morning) will be reading API and data format specifications and working out how to build out our first functional pieces.

However just having a great working application is not all of the tasks that a modern, web 2.0, 2009 edition company needs to do to be successful. Here for my own use (and my teams) as well as I hope for many other entrepreneurs is a checklist of tasks we also will have to try to do this weekend. Please add anything I have missed in the comments below!

[and before you mention it - legal structure & incorporation, partnership agreements etc are indeed important and if as we hope it does Radioki takes off we will complete them, we are building this in the context of pre-existing friendships as well as the Startupweekend open & collaborative ethos]

• Register your new brand domain. We did this Saturday afternoon. Nothing at Radioki.com yet, but that will change rapidly.
• Sign up for Twitter for your new brand. I’ve set up @radioki follow us to get updates on our progress, access first and we hope a few other surprises.
• Set up an internal tool for documentation and collaboration. We chose the very simple and easy to sign up for and use PB Wiki as a repository for our team notes, drafts, pseudo code, internally important data etc.
• Establish a simple version control system. Even if you have just one developer, work with a version control system everywhere you can (which is pretty much most things). A wiki for internal team documentation gives you version controls & who made what change data tracking inherently (assuming you as I would suggest use a private tool for that collaboration)
• Register for all of the relevant API keys your applications will require. These days this can be a very long list. In our case we have at least three major API’s which we will use, multiple web services, Javascript frameworks, web hosts, domain registrar and much more which we need to sign up for and use.
• Establish early on (as in before we launch) customer support & feedback channels. Almost certainly in our case this means that we will create and set up a GetSatisfaction for Radioki (using the free version first until we have a business model to support more) – note, when we complete the next task, we have to go back to sites such as Twitter and GetSatisfaction and upload our logo there as well.
• Design a logo and pick a basic design pattern. Be comfortable with this being basic and expect it to change, but to launch quickly create a simple (even text only) logo to use at your avatar image across the web, to use on your home page, and along with it a basic color palette and design style for your overall web presence. Expect to change this but spending a few minutes early on in the process helps you create a clean, consistent look across web services and sites.
• Set up corporate email addresses. Even if all you do is have them auto-forward to your regular email, yourname@newcompany is useful and is used as proof of employee status by some sites such as GetSatisfaction.
• Join the appropriate networks as the new corporation. In the case of Radioki this means Facebook but because we have a strong Music component also means active engagement with Myspace.com (and especially MySpace Music).
• Update the personal sites and network profiles of all founders. When you launch your personal site and blogs should note this and the profiles of all of the founders (and early employees if you have any) should be updated to reflect involvement with the new company. This is a signal for people who follow you on each network or who read your blogs that you are working on something new.
• Link back to and thank publically as well as privately all the services your new company uses and works with. Besides being just common politeness everyone who builds any service wants to see it used and welcome thanks and updates about how their solutions are being deployed. Also many API providers offer directories of applications using each API. Building relationships with each company your solution relies upon and works with can also lead to lots of helpful advice, guidance, updates about new features and opportunities for promotion.
• Remember to add contact information and background to your new company site. Yes, focus on getting the service built and launched, but also remember to include who you are who are building the company as well as how to reach you and who to reach out to for any media who might want to contact you. Photos of the core founding team are great as are short bios. All serve to humanize what can often be a dehumanizing process (web applications for example). And yes, real names and a corporate mailing address do combine to give lawyers someplace to send stuff – but it also gives journalists, bloggers, investors and future business partners someone to talk with as well.
• Build logging and analytics into your site and application from the beginning. Deploy Google Analytics or another similar product on your new domain from before you share the URL with anyone (hmm we’ve broken this one so have to fix this quickly) For your main application make sure that user actions are logged so you build up a history of interactions. In our case this means ensuring that every search query entered is captured. Ideally you also log what output (or if something failed what error messages) resulted from that interaction.
• Reach out to your friends. A new project whether big or small is perhaps the best excuse to catch up with your friends old and new. In fact I love it nearly every time a friend sends me an update about new projects or companies. Often these updates are the first time I’ve heard from someone.
• But don’t forget to also reach out to the media. Start with the media who are also your friends. If you friends also covers your space then reach out to them on a personal level. Don’t send your friends mass, blast emails if you can avoid it – if not, then follow up (or send in advance as well) a personalized note. Do not rely on your friends having your contact details handy – include a direct phone (cell phones are great) as well as your personal email address.

And those are just the relatively simple, basic stuff. When a new company is launched a whole additional set of tasks get added nearly immediately. A few things to think about relatively soon.

• Corporate banking relationship. This will require legal incorporation in some form (or will require initially to work off a founder’s personal accounts – opening up reams of tax/legal complications. However such a relationship is a key part of being a real business – it gives you a way to sell to people via giving you a means of depositing checks.
• Corporate legal relationship. Establishing a legal relationship, even if a relatively simple and low cost relationship is another part of being prepared to be a real business. A lawyer may early on be called upon to help with incorporation, reviewing various agreements and you hope reviewing customer contracts or investment documents (or best case both).
• Building out the non-functional parts of your new site. What I mean here is collecting excerpts of blog posts and news articles & embedding audio or video coverage. This also includes keeping a new corporate blog up-to-date and continued use of the corporate Twitter account etc.
• An ongoing PR relationship. Of course with a firm who knows your business area, with whom you can work closely and who gets your product as well as process. Great PR firms add incrediable value.
• Telling a clear, updated and ongoing story. If you (or co-founders or early employees) are not great storytellers or public speakers then likely your PR firm (and perhaps other advisers) will need to help with this but especially early on it is vital to have a clear story about the company and your new, emergent brand. This story should be short and clear (oh and compelling)
• Have a business model (or two or three or four). You do not have to implement the business model immediately, nor do you need to share it with anyone (though your co-founders should also know). But having a business model in mind can be exceptionally helpful as you evaluate what to use/not use, what to build/not build, what to track/not track

And yes, this list is long and incomplete.

I skipped over raising money, I skipped over legal incorporation (rarely a good reason not to just incorporate as a Delaware C corporation). i skipped entirely over office space. Until an income is generated a large number of boring but important tasks are delayed (salaries and benefits for example).

For now, sleep then back to work.

Why I buy local (and organic)

I buy almost everything locally, mostly from small, often independent (or at least local small scale chains) stores. Most of the food I eat and cook for my friends comes from local shops and for the most part local farmer’s markets. For the most part I buy organic produce, eggs, milk and other products including meat when I can. The rest of my meat is at a minimum free range and cage free (though as I noted in earlier blog posts I was against the recently passed Proposition 2 which mandates larger cages/cage free raising of poultry in CA).

However, when you talk about Organic (especially certified organic products) and the dilemma of large scale businesses starting to produce and others to sell organic products the arguments against buying organic usually assume that people buy organic because of health concerns (no pesticides etc) or from a belief that the flavor is better. And then an argument is made that the health claims are dubious and the flavor differences minor.

That is not, let me repeat, not why I buy organic or why I mostly shop locally.

I buy locally and buy organic for many other reasons. First and foremost I prefer to spend my money with people who care about what they do – who value their own labor and strive to be the best at what they make. I have to eat, I far prefer to spend my food dollars as directly as possible and with vendors who are passionate about what they grow and/or sell. That passion translates in no small part into a focus on selling high quality (and in the case of food usually great tasting) items.

Organic farming is also highly innovative farming. It is looking for creative and as importantly sustainable ways to grow and cultivate products. This innovation usually permeates all aspects of a good organic farm’s business – from the soil to the packaging they use to present the final products at the market.

I usually go to the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market run by CUESA (The Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), a group well worth supporting if you have money to donate and/or employer matching funds to use before the end of the year.

At the market this morning, a smaller scale market between the Holidays, I spoke with one rancher who sells a wide range of meats they raise and slaughter themselves. Usually they have poultry but he said that they would not until the spring due to it being out of season for chicken at the moment. While that means that today they lost a bit of my business, it also is a reminder of the seasonality of all food and it encourages me to look at other proteins this month.

Another merchant, Frog Hollow Farms, who I personally think is one of the premier orchards in the entire US (and probably the whole world for that matter) unveiled new packaging they designed specifically for their pears. It suspends each pear in an individual sling of material so it neither touches other pears nor touches the overall packaging, they keeping their amazing pears fresher for longer and bruise free.

Shopping at the farmer’s market, which I do nearly every Saturday morning, gives me a real appreciation of the seasons here in northern CA, by going to the market without planned recipies or menus most of the time I have learned to buy just what looks the best at the moment. I also always talk with the farmers about what is really good at the moment, usually they offer samples, and I then adjust my menus. At the moment there are some great pears, lots of citrus, still great brocolli and caulliflower and indeed quite a range of other flavorful vegetables.

By being flexible I am also able to spend not much more (indeed less usually) than I would if I were shopping at a large, national supermarket chain. Today one of the butchers at the Ferry Building had a special on Sirloin Tip steaks (free range and locally raised and very very good, I’ve had them before) offering 5 individual steaks – ranging between 1/2 to 3/4 of a lb each for $20. I don’t eat a lot of red meat, but that is 5 quick and tasty dinners or lunches in the next week (or longer if i freeze a few) for $4 a meal. And these steaks cook in about 5-6 minutes total in my cast iron skillet on the range top.

For the most part I buy my meats from my local butcher’s shop, a store which has been there since 1889 (making it probably the oldest continously open butcher’s shop in CA), Drewes Bros. Christmas Eve there was a line of over 60 people waiting to pick up holiday turkeys, hams and standing rib roasts. They only sell extremely high quality, mostly local products from passionate producers and offer great service and very fair prices (often cheaper than large supermarkets in fact). Plus they greet me by name when I enter or stop by.

I would much rather that my spending support such a fantastic, local treasure, than to help pad the profit margin of a large supermarket chain such as Safeway (and full disclosure, I say this as someone who does in fact own a few shares of Safeway).

I choose to buy mostly organic because to grow vegetables or to raise animals in an organic manner requires a lot of attention to detail, it requires a committment on the part of the farmer and most of the time it also involves returning to a focus on seasonality and on techniques such as crop rotation and multiple use farming. By “mulitiple use” which isn’t quite the right term I mean techniques such as raising both crops and animals and via rotation grazing those animals on some fields for a few years, then alternating with growing crops on those fields taking advantage of the natural fertilizer from the grazing animals.

When I do shop at larger stores a Safeway or a Trader Joes, I try to mostly buy organic, seasonal, and when possible local products from those stores as well. While I prefer to buy closer to the actual producer, such purchases do help shift large dollars to organic methods – and in turn that means more people working on innovation around large scale, organic agriculture. That, in turn, lowers costs (for the farmers as well as consumers) and should draw more and more farmers and farmland into organic methods.

In the long run that should also have an impact on US (and other countries) agricultural policies which currently prevent many of the simplest and in fact easiest forms of organic techniques – such as wide scale crop rotation or cover crops (which US policy prohibits on farms recieving certain forms of subsidies such as corn or wheat – they can’t use fallow fields to grow market crops such as vegetables or fruits).

From a health standpoint one of the best aspects of buying seasonally and fresh is I can spend around the same amount as I would at a big chain, but instead of getting lots of calories from say processed baked goods, I can get far fewer calories but much more flavor from a perfectly ripe local pear.

I’ve chosen to emphasize quality over quantity in my food buying.

So please do go out and sample your local farmer’s market (there are new markets opening up and extending their seasons all throughout the country). Also when you are choosing where to live, look to live somewhere where you can walk to a local shop to buy great quality local foods. Since my butcher’s shop is literally on my way home (it is across the street from the Muni stop I use to get downtown most days) I can pick up a piece of meat or fish for my dinner and walk home – with less effort and time than navigating the parking lot of a big supermarket (if I had a car which I do not). And for produce, when I can’t make it to the farmer’s market or when I need something midweek, there is a great local produce market also on the same few blocks across from the same muni stop.

Many a night I have picked up some vegetables, a loaf of bread baked that day, and some great meat of fish on my way home. All for less than the cost of a single dinner out at a low cost restaurant and usually (day before xmas excepted) taking far less time than just waiting to pay at a big chain supermarket.

the photo above is a shot I took of a drink from Blue Bottle, a local coffee roaster and cafe who import their own beans directly and roast them here in the Bay Area in the East Bay

Two models of retail – the Dollar store vs the Apple store

I contend that there are two primary models of reatail, at least in the US (there is a third model I’ll mention at the end which is rarely seen in the US).

In the title I called these The Dollar Store and the Apple Store but more accurately these are the “everything and the kitchen sink” versus the sparse and mostly open. 

In the first model, call it the Kitchen Sink model the buisness model is to have everything that someone might possibly be looking for, to have a surplus of choice and options, to fill most available space with products for sale and to, in theory, sell a lot to everyone who comes through the door. Typically these models combine having everything (or trying to appear to have everything) with a lot of emphasis on price. 

The logical extreme of this model is the Big Box Retailers such as Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Target and countless others overwhelming the suburban malls of the US (and occaisonally making inroads into he urban centers as well). Typically these stores attempt to have most active inventory right on the store shelves with the customers pulling their own products as they shop. Employees restock the shelves, sometimes help guide customers to the right aisle, and only in select departments of the store (if at all) have a direct customer service role, often taking custom orders for those products which the store does not keep in stock. 

Though in many of these models the store deemphsizes such products in favor of products which can be kept in stock on the stoor “floor”.

In contrastthe other model of retail is the Curated Experience, of which The Apple Stores are a fantastic example. In this model the emphasis is less on keeping a wide selection of products in stock, but rather on highly currating what is avialable for sale. 

Typically these stores have displays which highlight the products which are available but the full inventory of the store is not on the main storeroom floor but rather is kept in the back in a storeroom, off limits to the customers. Most (non-Payless) shoe stores operate in this manner. As do most higher end designer clothing stores. But the Apple Store is an example which many more people have likely experienced directly.

In many ways this is a very old fashioned retail model, this is how, for example, the old fashioned grocery stores operated in the days before the grocery cart and customer self service. Speciality food shops occasionally still operate in this manner, with all the products behind displays and cases and only available via a direct interaction between the customes and the shopkeepers. 

This model of retail is labor intensive, most of the staff has to be able to inteact with and literally serve the customers. It is also built upon the taste and curatiatorial skill of the store’s buyers. In place of trying to have everything that anyone might possibly want this model of store posits that they can choose between those goods (or services) people should want and those which they should not. 

It is the model of a bookstore which instead of cramming every available inch with books stacked upon books (and often barely if at all sorted) is highly seletive with what they buy, turning away more books then they choose to purchase (here I’m describing mostly a used bookstore but the same model also holds for new bookstores to a lesser degree). 

In my experience though I occasionally will suffer the cramped, overly full bookstores, it is the stores such as Aardvark Books here in San Francisco which I return to time and time again, and from whom I buy many books over the course of a given year (in 2008 I’d guess around 100+ books perhaps). What often draws me into the store is a carefully currated window display of the latest used book purchases of the store – almost always hardcovers, in perfect (or nearly so) condition, and not infrequently books which I had recently read reviews of in national publications (I’m fairly certain that they buy books from a number of locals who receive review copies as nearly every book which is getting active reviews ends up in their store window within a month or so of publication). 

The curatorial model is not limited to physical retail stores, if anything it has even more value online. It may seem paradoxical, as online it is technically possible for many stores (especially any store selling digital goods) to have nearly infinite inventory. And I’m not arguing that there is not a place for such mega stores (call them the Amazons of this world) but there is equally a great deal of value in culling away the cruft and of practicing great curation to only highlight a select group of pruducts.

Buyers will then shop such stores less on pure price comparisions and more on an appreciation of the service offered in making them (the buyers) aware of products that they should own and enjoy. 

A short sidenote here. A few days ago I was at a local seasonal market, the Mission Market, which was an experiment where a number of local vendors (many without physical stores) had a booth at a converted Armory in the Mission district of San Francisco. One of these merchants sold music, mostly CDs. Now I have not bought a lot of physical CDs in the past few years (though I have bought more music in the past years than ever before). But I ended up buying two fantastic CDs from this man, entirely because he had a very select collection of works for sale, all clearly curated with care. And of the works he had in genres I enjoyed (which were nearly all of the genres of music he stocked) I already owned a pretty large portion of the works he was selling. 

And not just owned the works, but these were among my favorite albums of the past few years, music which exactly defined what I like.

So I was immediately favorably inclined towards him and especially towards the works which he had for sale that I did not already own – assuming, correctly as it were, that since clearly our tastes overlapped considerably, the works he also chose to stock would quite likely also be works I would enjoy.

And indeed that was exactly the case.

And that, in short, is the Curatorial Retail model. 

At the start of this post I mentioned that there is a third retail model, but one which is rarely seen in the US. That model is the Bazaar Model which can be a variation of either the Kitchen Sink or the Curatorial model but with the addition of a highly variable price. In many parts of the world this is the dominant model, where price is nearly infinitely negotiable and most (though not all) goods and services are subject to rounds of bargaining before a price is agreed upon. 

In the US this is not a common retail model, though to a degree the proliferation of discount codes (especially online) and complex sales at larger stores (Macy’s for example) combined with loyalty cards/store credit cards sometimes creates an environment which feels like every price is variable and subject to many factors. Online the purest form of Ebay historically was intended to be this exact model with the buyers competing to offer the best price to the seller. 

However what the pure auction does not capture in the true Bazaar model is that most of the time the negotiation is not multiparty (i.e. an auction with many buyers and only one seller) but one-on-one. One buyer, one seller who negotiate between themselves about a transaction which can either happen at a price, not happen at all, or be modified (expanded to include other products, shrunk to be something smaller).  The buyer always has the option of walking away (and the seller of simply not agreeing to sell).

With the exception of most tourists to such markets (who usually get the worst prices in part as a result of my next point) buyers and sellers who have a history with each other, who expect to do additiona business in the future (sometimes with the roles reversed) have more complex incentives in the negotiation process than just maximizing revenue/minimizing expense on a given transaction. 

Instead when there is an expectation of repeat business many other factors come into play. 

It is here, in part, that curation can add value, considerable value in fact, to even the Bazaar model of retail. A buyer who trusts the tastes and instincts (and fair dealing) of a seller will often value that the seller put something aside for that buyer over getting the lowest possible price for the product. 

It is my view that in the long term success will depend more on curation than on stocking the kitchen sink. 

And I mean this for both online retailers and for physcial stores. 

brainstorming about business opportunities

I am an entrepreneur. When I dream, I dream in business models (seriously, though not every night). That said, I need to find a way (or more likely many ways) to make money in the current economic environment. Projects or businesses which will prosper now and as the economy turns around will have many growth opportunities. Businesses which may have some “exit” in mind – though my dream exit is less an exit and more a route to enduring success and sustainable growth.

What do I mean by that?

I don’t particularly want to build something to sell it – even to sell it to the public (i.e. via an IPO). Rather in my ideal world I build something which can stay private, but can also grow into a large and comprehensive entity, with ongoing growth into new opportunities while building on a solid base. A business which would employ a lot of people, share great rewards with those people (as well as with partners and customers) and in turn have a large impact on the world.

Why would I want to keep such a business private? Well first and foremost when I think of great companies only a handful of them are public – and if anything being public limits them in a wide range of ways. I think a very well run, private company, has much greater flexibility than a public company and can more often place long term bets (which admittedly is not always doable in the tech world – but then again my fantasy company though almost certainly driven in part by technology is not a pure tech company). Yes, being private means that as a company you have to be a bit more creative with how you reward your employees – and with how as the owners you diversify your own finances – and with how you obtain the resources to grow and build the future.

So unlike some of my peers here in the valley, my goal is not to build something to sell it, or to make a “quick hit” for myself (though certainly I wouldn’t complain about that) instead I want to build a business (or likely related businesses) which give me a base to explore lots of ideas and a platform from which to have a big and oversized impact on the world. Starting by the customers I serve, the business partners I help, the employees (and their families) I help support.

On a personal level money matters to me – but only up to a point – what matters more is the freedom and flexibility to have a big impact on the world. I want to travel a lot – not just to be elsewhere – but experience a lot. I want to spend a lot of time around the smartest and most impactful people in the world – from formal experiences and conferences – and less formally at lunches, dinners, salons, and meetings all over the world. At somepoint in my life I want to live in many different cities (including outside of the US) and even when I have (as I hope to sometime not all that far from now) a family I would hope to raise that family in multiple cities and countries – and to expose my future children to many cultures and ways of engaging with the world.

So with that as my goal(s) what opportunities should I be pursuing in 2009 (and the rest of 2008)?

In the past few weeks I’ve blogged about a number of business opportunities and ideas I have had: Radio Schedules 2.0, a new(ish) approach to local media, the future of media being curation, and what I would have submitted to the Knight Foundation

A common theme to many of my current ideas have been some degree of rethinking of media – both on and offline – as well as a newish approach to how commercial content plays a role in the media – more than it does currently online but in somewhat different ways than it does offline.

I am still also passionately interested in the core idea which led me to start Nearness Function over a year ago, ideas around how a new form of advertising network could function as a buffer and valueable partner for software and new media firms and a valued partner for advertisers and their agentcies and media buyers. At the core of my belief is that brands matter – more so now than perhaps ever – and that to build great brands requires sustained, ongoing investment and engagement – and that as attention shifts to the “web” (or more accurately to services and communities woven together largely over and via the web) brands will have to engage with audiences via these same services.

And unlike many in Silicon Valley I do not find this inherently a bad thing – if anything I think it is inherently a good thing – that great brands at all scales of brands serve a very valuable and useful purpose. A few months back I launched a new blog, which I need to update more regularly, Slow Brand to discuss my views on branding (and occasionally food) though I need to blog there on a more consistent basis to build up that blog and get my voice out more often.

My friend Tim Ferris (yes of the 4 hour workweek fame and who is launching a new TV show Trial by Fire this week on the History Channel) talks about Lifehacking and indeed to a degree I should implement many of his lessons and suggestions, but my goals are not entirely (or at least not solely) about myself – my body, my life experiences – but are also very much about what I can do for others, what I can build and help create.

As I think about what I want to do I find myself pulled in a number of not entirely complementary directions.

1. I am a very value-adding consultant. My primary skill being to brainstorm with people, especially senior management/founders/investors asking tough questions and helping explore business models, potential partnerships, avenues forward and technical evaluations and decisions. I’ve been told by one VC friend that my 1 hour, emailed evaluation of a company they were looking at, entirely on the basis of public data about the firm, came to the same conclusions it had taken them over 1 month to reach. Now, there are challenges packing up and promoting my consulting and much of what I have done in the past has been on a fairly informal basis – I’d love to do much more of this type of advising/consulting, for a high but fair fee (mostly $ but in some cases perhaps also equity). I think I’d also be very valuable for an investor or M&A person in helping evaluate potential deals.
2. I am a skilled facilitator. I’ve been doing “open space” events since the mid-90’s and have become skilled at the art of facilitating open space events and meetings, as well as the related skill of helping curate other forms of events. This is an art – done well my role almost disappears into the background – achieved by means of the invitations, the settings, the structures lightly imposed upon the event and the group, and gentle nudges and one-on-one conversations and slight changes to the schedule made on the fly. I enjoy such work – whether for a non-profit event or for for-profit businesses and I would like to do more. Especially events which might involve the MeshWalk format I’ve used many times quite successfully. I’ve organized dozens of evening events, helped with lots of weekend and multi-day conferences, and organized a couple three+ day conferences on my own. (The first of which was over 20+ years ago when I was in high school, a science fiction convention which still occurs to this day in no small part because we designed into it a great sustainable structure & financial model)
3. I am a writer. In the past years I’ve written hundreds of blog posts and lengthy emails to mailing lists, not to mention over 7000 tweets. My non-fiction writing has blossomed in the past few years, occasionally even earning me if not direct income then some value in trade (conference passes and access for example). I have multiple non-fiction as well as fiction book ideas, just a few weeks ago in fact I started a new fiction book which is going well so far (though as I write this post it is still early, about 4000 words written but it is going quickly and I have much to write). I also have a major piece of non-fiction I want to write on Networked Economics a topic I have been thinking about since at least 2004 and which I started and ran multiple conferences in no small part to help myself learn.
4. I enjoy connecting people and businesses and serving as a translator between industries. Yes, I am a geek, I wrote my first application when I was about 8, am the 3rd generation of my family to write software (my grandfather was one of the first employees of Rand Corporation and then later at Aerospace Corporation he oversaw the deployment of early IBM mainframes to detect nucluer explosions, my mother has been a programmer since the late-60’s and I would do her student’s flowcharting homework as a child). I’ve had a server on the Internet since about 1991, served as an editor of some IETF standards. In short I have deep and extensive “geek cred”. But I am also passionately interested in business and economics – in topics such as branding and business and process innovation which are non-technical. I find that I can offer a lot of value bridging between the possibilities of technology and the needs of business.
5. I come up with business opportunities. However though I have, I think, had many great ideas I also need to work with others to implement my ideas. While I have many skills I do not have every skill needed to build a successful business (or at least have not had them all so far – still working on it). I have ideas about technology and design which are best implemented by others. While I can and have sold at a very high level, my sales process is too slow and sporadic for sustained growth – I need to work with others to keep myself closing (and/or to help close and implement deals). I will keep practicing the art of the close and of selling – it is a necessary part of being a successful business person, but I also know that my value is multidimensional and that in many ways I would make more money with the right partners than I could alone.

So those are where my thoughts are at the moment. I have many opportunities I’m working on and many ideas (probably too many ideas) but I am faced with the dilemna of evaluating which to pursue now and how to best go from my current state of not enough income to one of a surplus of resources – cash but also other resources such as great staff & partners.

I welcome suggestions and opportunities.

The Future of Media is Curation

Much has been written in the past few years about the Future of Media, dozens (perhaps hundreds) of conferences and discussions have occurred and there has been a lot of mashing of teeth, a lot of posturing, volleys of lawsuits on the behalf of some parts of the media landscape (RIAA I’m looking at you!), at least one major strike (Writer’s Union), numerous failing and flailing businesses and much confusion about what the future holds.

Starting with a shifting and varied definition of just what “media” is anyway. 

Without picking a particular definition, though I’ll try, here are a few of the many sources of what I include as “media” – books, magazines, journals, weekly newspapers, daily newspapers, radio, TV, blogs, online video, podcasts, Internet radio and other streaming audio, electronic books, online magazines, games (console, computer, online/web, even mobile), art (a broad category indeed).

And almost certainly there is someone, somewhere, creating a new form of content and experience which should be included in my list above.

So with so many variations what isn’t media?

Short answer – increasingly many things not previously part of the “media” have some aspects of the media – Gap’s recent Vote for t-shirt campaign for example, the ads are fairly traditional “media” – albeit delivered online, but the shirts themselves were also a form of media and self expression.

Building on this expansive and highly inclusive definition of media – which includes media whose purpose is to entertain, media whose purpose is to inform, media which is intended to persuade, and media which is entirely personal and esoteric, what does the future hold for media?

I claim that the way forward for Media, at least the media which will have a sustainable and lasting future, media which will remain important as well as viable, is curation. 

What is Curation? 

In a way I am using an old word in a new way. I’m not, however, the first or the only person to use this broader usage. Originally curation referred entirely to what a curator did which, in turn, was to maintain a collection of art or artifacts, usually for a museum or art gallery. A curator would manage a museum’s collection, would put together a particular show or exhibition. That process might, occasionally, be referred to as curation. Virginia Postel made a similar point, though she used the term Age of the Editor back in 1994 in Reason Magazine. 

My meaning of curation is broader:

Curation - To select and highlight specific media usually ground in a particular point of view

Simple perhaps, but I think also something new – something different than Editing, though not unrelated to what a good editor does at a magazine. Indeed I would say that some editors are also acting in a curator role, though many are not. The key point, I think, is that curation is a process that filters, that selects a set of things to be highlighted, that is about less not more.

So why do i claim this is the Future of Media?

Because as we entered a world where everyone can (and most people will to at least some degree) create media the volume of media available to all of us is increasing at a rapid rate. The technology which only years ago was only available at great expense to a small set of highly trained people is now available for free or for very low cost – digital cameras often with video capabilities are most new cellphones to note just one key example. 

Thus “professional” and “amateur” content will continue to proliferate and expand – likely with the “amateur” content vastly exceeding in quantity the “professional”. But value will be created by curators, such as the founders of I Can Has Cheezburger, Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Robert Scoble of FastCompany who each filter through a huge amount of media and select a small set of content to present to their respective audiences. In some cases they create the content themselves, hire others to create content, or select and promote works created by a large pool of people. 

Some curators will be highly selective, highlighting only one work a day if that, others will create a large pool of content every day. Many will work in many different mediums each an avenue for different forms of interactions and media. 

A few other great examples of modern curation at work

• Monocle magazine - a traditional print publication with a solid web presence, they look very much like a traditional if highly polished magazine, but they are also functioning as curators in many ways. They select a small set of physical goods which they sell customized versions of to their readers. In the content of the magazine itself they adopt a rich multimedia sensability – lots of photos and video on the web. See http://monocle.com
• Jason Kottke –  For many years Jason has blogged as a curator of as he calls it “fine hypertext products” in short he links to the best stuff he finds across the web, often design related, but wide ranging, across many topics, and for his passionate audiance almost always of great interest. His audiance is passionate enough that he supports himself from his blog and he selects his advertisers with much the same care as the sites to which he links. See http://kottke.org/
• WallBlank – A site that sells one print a day, five days a week, either a photograph or a print, always a limited edition and selected with care. One of a number of similar businesses which sell a small set of limited editions, usually only one or two works a day (or a week). See http://wallblank.com/ other similar businesses with some differences are Threadless, PleaseDress.me and 20×200.com 

Mixing online & offline advertising – seeking examples

I have been following the move online of offline publications for over a decade (I’ve been on the Internet since 1991, went to my first websites via Gopher search) but something I have been wondering about since the mid-90’s and still almost never see is why so many publications who have offline publications (magazines or newspapers of any frequency) do not include their print advertisers as 1st level content in their online presenses.

And, in many cases have entirely different advertisers online vs. offline with little overlap and very limited even acknowledgement in the online presense of the offline advertisers at all.

Now there are 1000’s of publications around the world and I only read a few of them offline or online, so perhaps there are some great examples I have missed – please leave comments w/links to examples, especially those that do it very well.

And sure, I know there are objections from some that “ads” are not content (I’d argue that they most certainly are content) or that people would just ignore them online (though I’d ask if they have ever really be tested). To address the content question – there are entire magazines offline which are almost entirely based around the “content” of ads (the many highly profitable Vogue magazines for example) and other magazines such as The New Yorker where the ads make up a key part of the look and feel of the magazine (especially the small format ads) but in both cases the offline advertisers seem to have no part at all of the online presense.

I have been thinking about this as I have been looking at magazine and newspaper websites in preparation for thinking about a submission to the Knight Foundation’s $5M News Challenge (deadline is Nov 1st). Now I am at a slight disadvantage as many of the judges are friends of mine (so will have to recuse themselves while evaluating me) but I hope that the idea I have, whether I implement it or not may inspire many people to copy it in the future (it is geographically specific so I’m happy to see many people copy it in cities around the world – and even in the same cities as I think there is plenty of room for many).

But one part of my idea (among many) is to build relationships that extend from the online world to the offline aspects of my idea (which is not only online – it includes a print publication – working out the exact details) and not just the articles, reviews, calendar listings etc but also the content from the advertisers.

So as part of my research I’m looking for counterexamples, publications which are doing a good job of including their financial supporters (sponsors as well as more traditional advertisers) into all aspects of the publication – online and offline.

Tips for surviving the downturn or how to live (well) like a grad student

I quit a very well paying job to start my first company in the early winter of 2000 just a month of two before the first (i.e. Web 1.0) bubble burst. Initially I was able to pay myself a reasonable (if lower than I had been earning previously) salary, but having not raised further rounds I cut then nearly eliminated my own salary. While I have earned money in the years since, it has not be large sums. Instead I have adapted a range of techniques to keep my cost of living quite low – and thus allow my resources to be mostly focused on developing my businesses. Many, perhaps all, of these suggestions may help you during the coming downturn.

Basic suggestions for living (well) like a grad student

1. Eliminate as many regular monthly expenses as possible, especially those that also create stress. In my case the biggest monthly net gain came when in 2004 I sold my car and did not replace it. Immediately I dropped from my monthly budget nearly $1000 in monthly costs (car payment, cost of a monthly parking space, gas back when it was still <$2/gallon, oil changes, occasional parking tickets, car repairs, new tires etc). I reduced stress by avoiding having to find parking spaces, dealing with rush hour traffic etc. To make this work I did have the advantage of choosing an office (when I had one) which was in walking distance of my home. I also added to my monthly budget a monthly public transit pass, took taxis as needed and occasionally rented a car or used a carshare service. When I moved to San Francisco a few years ago, I did not move my TV, which meant that I also do not have a monthly cable or satellite bill. Again, instead I buy the occasional series via iTunes, watch other series online (with minimal ads), or occasionaly rent a DVD (Netflix might be another option)
2. Do use services which save you considerable time for a reasonable price. Two main services I would not give up are a business mailbox which is a few blocks from my home and which means I never have to be home to pick up packages (giving me flexibility and security, for $100/year it is money very well spent). And the second is I let the cleaners across the street from me do my laundry – for $1/lb they wash, sort and fold my laundry and I can pick it up usually the next day. The cost is not much more than it would be for me to use a laundromat (which since my apartment does not have a laundry machine would be my only option). Even if I did have a laundry machine, this way all my laundry gets done at once – instead of me having to waste many, many hours on sorting, loads one after the other, drying and then folding, not to mention the energy costs plus the costs of the laundry machine itself.
3. Cook at home. I am a serious cook and foodie, so I do like to eat out (a bit more on how I make that work on a budget below) but I also cook an increasing number of my meals at home. One very valuable thing I suggest it make sure you always have enough food options at home that in a pinch you could feed yourself for at least a week, ideally a few weeks, without needing to do much if any shopping. A few boxes of instant oatmeal, pasta, sauces, tortillas and beans etc all mean you have the comfort of knowing you have, in a pinch, food to eat (and then either drink water or make tea). But most weeks I shop for fresh foods, usually from local farmers markets.So how do I make that work on a budget?First, I shop for quality over quantity and focus on a few, highly seasonal items. What is most seasonal is usually also what is in the greatest abundance (and thus usually even at a higher end farmers market reasonably priced).

   Second, I look for bargains and usually shop without a specific menu in mind. At the Ferry Building here in San Francisco, for example, one of the amazing local, organic, free range butchers often has some specials. Recently I bought nearly 2lbs of amazing free range steaks, each vacuum sealed, for <$10, more than enough for two great meals. When I get to the farmers market towards closing the farmers often offer deep discounts to sell produce that would otherwise go unused, if I expect to be able to cook it, I try to take them up on the offers.

   Third, something I don’t do much currently but could let you get even better deals (and more on this point below) is to shop with others and share your purchases. Frog Hollow Farms is a phenomenal local organic orchard, all of their fruit is usually $4/lb (so pricey but very tasty), however they will sell a 10+lb case for a flat rate that is much lower (I think $25/case) if you can share that case with even one or two friends, it is a great bargain. Many local farms also have CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) which offers a wide selection of seasonal produce, often delivered right to your door (i.e. to your mailbox where someone will sign for it for you) every week or every other week. For a single person however this can be a bit much, but shared with a few others it could be a great deal.

   But the key is to be flexible in what you eat and cook as well as to emphasize vegetables and relatively limited amounts of protein. I’m an omnivore but I try to eat a diet rich in vegetables and fruits, in turn this is both cheaper and healthier.

   A final food tip, splurge on spices and oils, great spices and olive oils will make a huge difference in the quality of your food and the cost of amazing spices is actually not much more than the random and poor spices found in most stores. I buy nearly all of my spices from The Spice House which delivers anywhere in the country.

4. Share. Living with others will be cheaper per person than living alone (I live alone, having a girlfriend who shared my space would cut my costs by a lot). Instead of every unit in your apartment building having a wifi connnection, consider pooling resources with your neighbors, buying a single very fast connection and splitting the costs (assuming the wifi will reach everyone). Of course this has some risk – you have to trust your neighbors won’t abuse the network. Go in with some friends on getting a CostCo (or Sams Club if you prefer, though I think CostCo is the supperior company) and then take advantage of bulk purchases of staples – split amongst your friends. Better still, avoid as much as you can the purchase of new non-perishables (electronics, furniture, even clothing) and instead by from resale shops, local merchants, off Craigslist etc. But you will need toilet paper and why not buy it in bulk, take only one car trip, and share the time & expenses with others.
5. Do not cut corners on the tools you need for your job or what you truly need for your own sanity. For me this means that I have a serious laptop and decent desktop computer and an iPhone – without both I would be severely restricting my ability to do my job (and if you have been reading my blog for long, or my twitter feeds, even having spent a lot of money on my laptop doesn’t mean it is ideal for the job, I anticipate replacing it in the next year). For my own sanity I do indulge my interest in books. I have and buy a lot of books – mostly used, but new books from authors I really like (or as is more often the case these days also know personally). For me reading (and reading widely) keeps me sane and focused. For others this indulgance might be your favorite music (though think seriously about a nearly “all you can eat” plan such as Rhapsody in that case) and/or live concerts. For others it might be your gym membership etc. Don’t go overboard, do look for bargains when you can find them (and when taking them doesn’t negate your values). For me, though I do like to save money when I can, I don’t mind paying nearly full price for books from my favorite bookstore by the authors I really love and support. However I do buy many other books from used bookstores (and do buy used copies from my favorite bookstore when they have one of a book I’m looking for) when I care more about the content of the book than supporting that author (i.e. business books not by friends of mine).

Underlying all of my suggestions is an assumption that you have a good general grasp of everything which you spend money on each year, each month, and most weeks. People may disagree with my final suggestion and there are certainly valid arguments against it, for example if you are in the rare category of people who take good advantage of credit card points programs, but I suggest living a mostly cash based life. To do this I withdraw cash from an ATM only a few times each month and then use that cash for almost all of my costs of living (other than rent, phone, etc). My food, transportation, personal purchases, cleaning, entertainment etc all for the most part come out of the cash I withdraw. This allows me to have a lot of personal flexibility but also emphasizes relatively low cost but high impact rewards to myself – great coffee or a good book – but makes me slower to spend lots on a meal or larger purchases. Lots of small credit card purchases can very rapidly add up, incur interest charges, but more critically inure you from the full impact of your choices by delaying that impact until the next billing cycle.

A mostly cash lifestyle, in contrast, gives you simple measures of how rapidly you are spending money. Your wallet shrinks and you find yourself seeking out your bank’s ATMs with greater frequency.

I always use my own bank’s ATM. Not just because I hate on principle the idea of paying any fees to get my own money but because by forcing myself to make that extra effort I raise the pain threshold for getting out cash. I also generally always withdraw the same amount of money with each visit, this allows me to have a rough gauge of how much I am spending in a month by thinking back to how often I went to ATMs or looking at the receipts in my wallet. I try to visit the ATM fewer times a month than there are weeks in that month, the weeks when I have to visit the ATM once during the week and again over the weekend are generally times I am spending more money than I really should be spending.

I hope these tips help you, please add other suggestions in the comments.

Shopping for a Car part one, personal notes

This is a personal note about thinking about buying a car. In the next post (which may be posted elsewhere and I’ll then post a link to it from here I’ll analyze the current state of car shopping online in the US, which I will argue is pretty dreadful)

The last time I bought a car was Dec 1999, before buying I did a fairly significant amount of research online, though in the end I didn’t quite do enough, the deal I ended up signing was not particularly great and four years later when my car loan was due in full I calculated the value of my car at that time, how much I was actually using it, and decided to sell it and pay off the loan instead of buying it outright and keeping it. Probably the right move as I had almost not used the car at all, but at times I wonder. Though I went for a few more years where I really didn’t need a car, now I suspect I do really need to own a car again, far too often the lack of having a car is impeding me from real business (and personal) life matters – and no, ZipCar or CityCarShare are not alternatives for me.

First why both ZipCar and CityCarShare are not good options for me.

1. My usage needs are almost never fixed or known in the future. I never know when I would want to return from someplace when I want to drive, in fact all I usually know is that I don’t know how late I’ll be staying. Mostly I don’t need a car for shopping (I don’t shop all that much at all) rather I would need a car for business events outside of San Francisco, or inside of SF but not nearby (currently it takes me 30-60 mins by public transportation and/or walking to get to many events, time I don’t always have)
2. While ZipCar’s day rental is indeed an option, it is also a really huge and very new to my budget financial hit. $60/day for car, gas and insurance is I’ll admit a decent deal, but it is pretty painful as compared to typically spending ~$60/month or less on my entire transportation budget. For the month, not for a single day. I buy a $45/mth muni pass and most months may take an occasional taxi or use the BART or CalTrain (at most spending say $100 in a month of a lot of taxis and trains). The very rare exception is taxis to the airport, but even if I owned a car I’d probably still use a taxi to avoid parking fees as my typical trip is usually a week+ in length.
3. My other likely usage of a car is long trips – driving down to LA, driving up to Wine Country, to Portland, driving to Half Moon Bay, to Monterey, to Santa Barbara. If I owned a car I’d like do such drives on a more regular basis, many weekends most likely in fact (though certainly having a girlfriend or at worst friends to join me on such trips would make that even more likely). This too is not a particularly good option for ZipCar or CityCarShare. I could, I guess, rent cars on a more regular basis (I haven’t rented one yet in 2+ years in SF) or experiment with using ZipCar’s multiday rentals for a few days at a time before I buy a car, that’s an option indeed, though only for shortish trips.
4. The closest cars for both ZipCar and CityCarShare are a 10 minute or so walk from my house (about 1/2 mile or longer w/hills) That means it is far from spur of the moment, I can’t just walk out of the door and pick up the car, instead I have to reserve the car online (or over the phone I think) and then go there, drive back home if I need to load up the car with items from my house (which very often would be one reason I might need a car). In contrast if I buy a car I’ll likely also negotiate with my landlord for a parking space in my building – which also removes the issues of finding a parking space or dealing with street cleaning on weeks when I’m traveling.

So though I may cancel my CityCarShare account (haven’t used them in 6+ months so it is wasted money) and I may sign up with ZipCar in part to use them as an extended test drive service for the next month or two, I have decided that I almost certainly need to buy a car.

But how to buy a car? Car buying is a pretty horrible and painful process, at least it has always been so for me in the past, rife with scams, pushy salesmen (“used car salesman” is an insult for a reason) and countless issues whether you are buying a new car or an older used car.

A few of the issues I’m considering:

• Technology inside of cars is more impacted by Moore’s Law. For many decades most of the technology in cars changed slowly with gradual but relatively minor changes. However increasingly cars are deeply computerized and technological, I suspect but don’t know for sure (going to research this) this has some pretty serious impacts in considering a used car. From whether or not mechanics will be able to maintain a car over time to whether even on a not all that old used car I’ll be able to use many modern tools (play my iPod on the car radio, have accurate and updated navigational systems, have a secure car from a locking/alarm standpoint)
• My tastes and the car industry are clearly diverging. I hate blind spots in cars I drive, yet many “modern” cars seem to me at least to be minimizing the rear window and creating ever larger and more annoying blindspots due to roof framing and window/rear end shapes. Also many cars intended for younger, urban drivers such as myself (Scion for example) have for some bizarre to my eye reasons moved dials etc to the center of the car vs from in front of the driver. Many cars (starting with “new Beetle” from the late-90’s also now have to my eye vast expanses of space in front of the driver yet inside the car (you can literally put a large pizza box on the front dash of a Beetle) which is not a design I like at all.
• My not owning a car is a statement of my green & environmental bent, but generally I don’t like most of todays hybrids. I hate driving the Prius, I don’t like the look, the controls, the feel of the seats, the blindspots, or the overall feel of the car, I haven’t been comfortable when I’ve driven it in the past (via City Carshare). I’m not much more of a fan of the look of most other hybrids on the market, certain Lexus models being a possible exception, but they are larger, bulkier, far more costly and not all that frugal of cars in any case. Especially given the performance of European sold cars today, I find the majority of US cars depressingly bad and behind the times (why we don’t have current generation diesels for example is something I really don’t understand – in Europe there are many which get 40-50+ mpg, with great performance and very very low emissions.)

Features I want in any car I buy in the future:

• Flexible and ample storage. Two of my past three cars have been a hatchback (and yes, I realize for some bizarre to my mind reason hatchbacks are not popular in the US). I loved the flexibility of having a car that could easily convert to hold a lot of stuff, I didn’t use it all that often but I did my share of moving for myself and friends, here in SF I could easily see using a car with ample storage to take advantage of Craigslist, to help friends move, to throw even better dinner parties, to take trips to Napa and come back with some cases of wine, to perhaps go golfing for the first time in many years.
• Great city (and highway) gas mileage. 20 mpg is not great neither is 25 mpg, I’m looking more for 30+ mpg ideally closer to 40 than 30. And yes, I know this is here in the US getting into the realm of seemingly impossible to buy, but if you look at the cars for sale in Europe they manage it (for cars larger than Smart cars in fact)
• Fantastic handling and power when I need it. I am not a crazy or fast driver. But every car I have owned has had sports handling and more than ample power so when I needed it I could always accelerate more. Cars that went to 60 in very fast times (sub 7 secs I think though I’ll see if I can look up the details). Cars that could cruise comfortably at 80-90 mph and were perfectly happy to go much, much faster (my last Honda was happy to go up to 150+ though the fastest I ever took it was about 100 mph).
• Not a manual transmission. I do not know how to drive stick. Nor am I interested in the least in learning. I do not want to think about driving when I’m driving – I much prefer to think about the road around me, I don’t want to have to monitor my car, revs, current gear etc. I simply do not care. Doesn’t interest me in the least. I’m not a car person – I want to get into the car and drive, under whatever conditions.
• Extremely reliable. Did I mention I’m not a car person. I do not want to get to know my mechanic on a first name basis, I’d much rather own a car that requires only a minimal amount of regular services – oil changes, tire rotations, checkups occasionally but does not require lots of repairs and tweaking to get good, reliable service. And when or if I do need service, I want to drive a car that can be serviced wherever I happen to be most of the time – i.e .not something so obscure as to only have a handful of mechanics capable of servicing it as needed.
• Value for my money. For my use a car is an expense, not an investment. I am not going to buying a collectible car or doing so much service and improvements to the car to render it capable of even holding even with what I pay for it, I fully expect nearly any car I buy to lose value as I own it, but my preference would be for a car (like all of my past cars) which holds a good portion of that value even after many years and miles. My last two Acuras even after I used them heavily held their value solidly, as did my Honda. Cars which tend to have solid and relatively stable used values for many, many years would be my preference over cars (such as many American models) that tend to crater quickly and don’t hold a great deal of value when they are much older – due to reliability issues etc.

My guess is that I am not going to be buying a new car (unless I close some amazing sales in the next few months – which is in fact a real possibility) but neither do I want to buy a beater and extremely cheap car (see above, I don’t want to spend my time with a mechanic). Instead I will probably plan on shopping for a lightly used car – a dealer’s demo model, a short term lease return, likely something which is just a year or two old so fairly modern and not yet completely out of date, but possibly with relatively high mileage for that age (my first car I bought for a deep discount because the last owner had put ~40k miles on it in one year).

But at this point I don’t have much of a clue as to what cars I should even start looking at – which models I should try to test drive and then watch out for as used car sales. Nor have I settled on a budget which I’m comfortable spending or once I have settled on that, researched what my CA car insurance rates would add, what my other CA fees (smog, license plates, parking space if my landlord charges me etc) plus estimated the gas costs then I will try to decide if I’m better off just biting the bullet and spending a lot with some combo of zipcar and car rental companies perhaps with taxis to get to the cars I’m renting.

Or if there is some other option I should consider – perhaps a very cheap car + zipcar. i.e. a cheap car with low insurance costs but some reason to also believe low maintenance costs but which might not meet all of my needs (might be smaller for example) and then use Zipcar for certain other uses.

Anyway it will be complex next few months as I research this.

Notes on Transit – transitcamp without being there

This weekend in Palo Alto TransitCamp Bay Area will take place. I was not able to attend (in not small part because via public transit it takes me 2+ hours if I catch all the right trains and buses to get from my house to Palo Alto) but as my contribution here are some observations and thoughts I have about Transit.

First some personal background. I grew up in Oak Park IL, moved to Chicago where I lived for another 13+ years, two years ago I moved to the Bay Area. In 2004, I sold my car and have not replaced it, when I sold it (a 2000 model I had bought in Dec 1999 as a new car, that car had only ~13k miles on it). So for about the past 8+ years I have primarily relied on public transit, not on a personal car for the majority of my transportation. With the occasional taxi ride (often to/from an airport – more on that as well, and yes, to a degree taxi policies and licensing should be considered as part of overall transit).

Here are a couple of observations followed by a few suggestions. Primarily I will focus on issues specific to the Bay Area, but I’ll note some additional elements based on my experiences in other cities both in the US and around the world.

• Current transit is, mostly, focused on the needs of “commuters”
• In the Bay Area we, simultaneously have too much and too little transit (I’ll explain)
• There are many options for how to pay (as an individual) for transit – in the Bay Area we have nearly all of them (far too many)
• When thinking about transit private (individual) and private (corporate) should be part of the discussion, as well as all of the factors that influence those choices (tolls, parking availability & pricing, zoning requirements especially around the construction of new parking, metered vs free vs permit parking, zoning rules around mixed use vs. sole use vs. “strip malls” vs. sidewalk frontage or set backs etc)
• Tourists have different needs than residents, not all residents have the same needs, and those needs vary by time of day, day of week, month, the weather and the age & health of the individuals.
• The groups who have the most political influence are rarely those who have the most vital needs for public transit, though the aspects of public transit which do impact those with political influence tend to be those which get the greatest funding.

Here in the Bay Area by my count there are at least the following varieties of transit which should be discussed.

1. Private Cars
   • an unusual aspect being the commuter lanes & toll policies which combine to create an unique system in places of the bay area for ride sharing by strangers (essentially “hitching” but with a more fixed pattern)
   • toll policies preference travel in certain directions
   • parking and zoning regulations dictate certain patterns in SF while zoning & building patterns dictate others in the rest of the Bay Area
   • motorcycles and scooters
   • special cases of rental cars
   • special cases of tourist cars (“go cars” guided tours of San Francisco for example)
2. Shared Cars (City Carshare, ZipCars) and Commuter vans
3. Taxis (and to a lesser extent limousines)
4. Amtrak
5. multiple ferry services
6. CalTrain
7. BART
8. Muni – buses, cable cars, and light rail
9. A large number of public bus services – most one per town around the Bay Area, a few like AC Transit crossing multiple towns, and a couple which cross towns (TransBay)
10. Private bus services
    • Corporations (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and a few others) have formal bus services for employees
    • Certain buildings & neighborhoods in San Francisco (and some buildings in other cities) have bus services, typically for residents or workers in those buildings usually between the buildings and main transit centers (Caltrain station being a main point)
    • Local universities have services for students between residences and campus locations and between multiple campus locations throughout the area (U. C. Berkeley in Berkeley, UCSF and many other schools throughout SF
    • Tourist specific buses (some of which do offer “on/off” services. There are some public tourist buses as well (in the Presidio, in Golden Gate Park)
11. Public handicaped special bus services
12. Greyhound
13. Bikes
14. Walking
15. Select light rail in other towns than San Francisco
16. Major airports (Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose)
    • these also have internal transporation and special buses connecting the airports and trains
    • for some reason no airport in the Bay Area has trains that run directly to the terminals
17. Private airports (and to a lesser degree helicopter pads)
18. Private boats & boat dock

That is a lot of transit options – many of which any one person rarely experiences and uses. Like much of the state of CA the private car, usually driven without passengers is a very commonly used form of transit. For that matter there are many people who never use any of the other services – especially public buses

Payment methods and models:

1. Pay on entry – most buses, MUNI in SF, Ferrys
2. Pay on exit – CalTrain – exact amount varies by start and end point (and varies considerably from a low of <$2 and a high of many multiples of that
3. Prepaid – MUNI (monthly passes), most Tolls w/automated pass, to a degree BART since you have to have a card with value added to it already (new “TransitLink” will have aspects of this
4. Payment via special unit – bus coupons in San Francisco, parking cards in SF

Some questions I have:

1. What is the GOAL of Public Transit? (Not or at least not solely I’d argue to “get workers to work”)
2. How should transit be funded (currently few if any transit services are fully funded by the riders in the case of public services)? Private services (buses etc) are parts of the cost of some other business (office building, large company etc)
3. How can the many specific focuses and political complications of have dozens of public transit agencies be minimized to better serve the needs of the entire Bay Area?
4. How can Public Transit in particular emphasize the public service aspects of transit, not just serve the needs of one sector of the public (businesses whose commuters have to get to/from work during “regular” business hours).
5. In particular, in my view, public transit should have many 24hr options, be sure to have 24hr access to hospitals in particular, should avoid creating isolated sections with no inexpensive transit options for much of the day, and transit should build into their business models flexibility to accommodate changing circumstances (planes which are delayed at airports for example)

Some specific suggestions

1. In San Francisco (and across the Bay Area more broadly) the last trains, especially across the Bay, should run for 1 hour AFTER bars & nightclubs close (and if on weekends this means running 24hrs – so be it). This both serves a very strong and real public interest (keeping people off the streets when/if drunk) and it as importantly would encourage more people to stay in the city after work for entertainment and/or head into the city on the weekends – without clogging roads with cars and without requiring preplanning in the morning (i.e. choosing to drive instead of taking the train). Combined with bike parking at many stations (already done) and with local bus/transit services so people could avoid driving from train stations home (perhaps also with friendly parking policies that encourage overnight parking without serious penalty)
2. Trains (and buses) which leave from Bay Area airports should run until also an hour or so AFTER the last plane lands – if this means running very very late, again so be it. Ideally the trains would be in communication with the airlines and be sure to wait until all bags were off and arriving passengers were directed from the baggage claim to the buses to trains (and were made aware that trains would be waiting for them). This might be slightly costly (but heck, I’d imagine airlines might kick in some dollars in fact) but would dramatically improve impressions of the public transit services for visitors and locals alike. A related point, ideally public transit should run TO the airports in time to clear security for the FIRST planes of the day (and yes, this might in the case of SF to OAK traffic suggest running nearly 24hrs – see a trend in my suggestions…)
3. Monthly (and Weekly) passes should be available WIDELY. From ALL machines and from all hotels – at a minimum as a starting point. My local Safeway almost without fail SELLS OUT of Monthly MUNI passes – that is completely unacceptable – each pass is simply a piece of paper – 1000’s more of them should be printed each month – NO store should EVER sell out of them. Chicago solves this by NOT selling a monthly pass – instead Chicago sells a pass good for 30 days from first use – but with the variety of ways transit s paid for in the Bay Area that might not work (can’t easily visually show the pass where that mode is needed such as on buses)
4. Fine amounts for not having a pass/ticket in modes of transit where one is required at all times (most of the bay area services) should be SPELLED OUT AND POSTED.
5. Unlike many cities, the bay area does NOT have a single, universal taxi number – and taxi rates are extremely high – which discourages many people from using or thinking about using a taxi. At a minimum there should be ONE number (perhaps per area code) for taxis which would work with ALL taxis. Outside of SF taxis can be nearly impossible to find at times (Palo Alto in particular I’ve had problems at times)
6. ZipCar and City Carshare are good for many people – but serve people who need one-way transportation or need open ended transportation relatively poorly (I most often need a car on days, such as this weekend, when there is an event or events happening down the peninsula which I would want to attend – and which I couldn’t easily predict when I might return from the events – both because I don’t know travel times and traffic well and because I not infrequently will stay late at event and/or want to go out with folks from an event – to get dinner for example). This is a very hard problem for car share services – but for me at least, and I’m sure I’m not the only person, $60/day though perhaps actually a good deal is a very big hurdle to overcome to think about spending to go to an event. (For that matter the $10-12 round trip to take Caltrain down to Palo Alto is pretty painful as well)

Much of the transit system fails because of serious gaps in the transit experience between commuters (many of whom have their passes paid for by their companies or significantly discounted) and the use and costs born by everyone else. I buy a monthly MUNI pass in San Francisco ($45) which is a good deal – and it makes it trivially simple for me to get on/off buses, trains or even the cable cars if I’m traveling within San Francisco – however I can’t, for example, use that pass to get to an airport (why the San Francisco airport at least for purposes of transit isn’t “in” San Francisco still befuddles me).

Yes, the trip planner is useful (though why there isn’t a mobile and iPhone interface for it I don’t know) and NextBus is also helpful, but even so there is also too little flexibility in too much of the transit patterns in the city – travel in the commute times is uncomfortable (very packed – suggesting that even more trains/buses could be run then) but at least trains and buses arrive fairly frequently – but if you wait just a bit everything slows to halt. And if you want to travel on, say a Sunday, good luck – your options shrink to almost none (no Caltrain back to San Francisco after 9:30 or so on a Sunday night for example).

Plus the payment complexities and the inability to pay on the train in most cases (you can’t even pay the gate agent at MUNI or BART but must fight with the often broken/flaky machines) also makes transit a frustrating experience. From CalTrain’s giving change only in dollar coins (and not taking payment on the trains) to MUNI’s insistence on using two different machines at times to get change (for dollar coins and for quarters).

So those are some suggestions and questions and observations I have about transit. I with I could have made it to the TransitCamp this weekend – but as I noted, it would have been costly for me in terms of time (and money).

Economics, live video, and The World Economic Forum at Davos

I am deeply interested in Economics, for many years now I have been researching and thinking about a Networked Theory of Economics, a goal of mine for 2008 is to write and publish my book on that topic (ideally selling it as well so it reaches a wide audience).

So at this time I am very interested in what is happening this week in Davos, Switzerland. This year, in a fairly radical move towards openness, The World Economic Forum has a YouTube channel where they are posting many videos from the press events as well as interviews with attendees and leaders at Davos. Davos has also given a number of leading bloggers full access (though some sessions are off the record, quite a few portions of the conference are on the record). Robert Scoble is wandering through Davos with his cameraphone, frequently streaming live to the web via Qik. Jeff Jarvis and Michael Arrington among others are also in attendance and posting about their experiences as they happen.

As I wrote this, Robert streamed live, I jumped into the live chat. Yup, we live in science fictional times.

I am up late here in San Francisco, as I go to sleep soon, the 2300+ participants at Davos will go on about their day, when I wake up they will likely be almost about to eat dinner and heading to parties (apparently tomorrow Google is having a big party). And I know that because minutes ago I watched live video from and of my friends at the forum, streamed live across the Internet. Of course that same video started by Robert observing the President of Israel recording two videos for YouTube, which are also now likely live on the web as I write this.

Truly this is amazing stuff. When I was growing up, in the 80’s and 90’s CNN and cable news was just getting started, though my family didn’t even own a TV, the impact of live news around the clock was just starting to have an impact on the globe. But the rest of the world was still fairly far away, phone calls cost money – especially overseas calls, and data rates were measured in baud (and computers showed mostly only text and very simple graphics – though that changed rapidly as I was in high school in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Now Robert’s cell phone on which he was recording and streaming live video has more computational power, I’m fairly sure, than the computers I used throughout high school and even into college. He almost certainly has multiple GB’s of storage and very rapid data connections to the web (3G I assume), a screen on his phone that is far denser than the screens we used then – and a camera that records at resolutions unheard of back then – heck nearly unheard of not all that many years ago.

And though Robert notes that not that many bloggers are at Davos this year, the impact of YouTube and bloggers is to help crack open in a fairly major way a gathering that had for years been shrouded mostly in secrecy into a far more open event. Still with a lot of secrecy and I’m sure a lot of security – but also impressively interested in engaging with the world.

In watching the video which I have embedded above, I was also struck by how interesting the group of co-chairs of the forum are – world leaders past and (near)present along side business leaders from across the globe – leaders who were not just white, anglo saxon males – but leaders of large and yes powerful companies from across the globe.

All speaking, at least in this press conference in English, and all seemingly comfortable with their roles, with each other, and for the most part with the press (though the press were for the most part mostly interested in talking to Tony Blair). Personally I was most interested in everyone else on the panel except Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger. I am encouraged by the engagement of the leaders of some of the largest companies in the world in the issues which face us as a globe.

My views on Economics, in the most simple form, is that all economics can be modeled as a network over time. What this means is that value is not fixed, not inherent but deeply and tightly embedded in the economic networks we create and participate within. I have to do more and deeper research and modeling, but in general I would thus be deeply opposed to protectionist steps – and also deeply suspicious of attempts to economically isolate countries (or other entities).

At MeshForum we talk about many types of networks and especially about interdisciplinary approaches to networks. The World Economic Forum at Davos is a prime example of the power of social networks – and the vital importance, even for the very “important and/or famous” of face-to-face interactions, of shared meals and joint experiences. But the spectacle of and around Davos also highlights that there is much more going on, there are other factors – new media old and new, political networks both within countries and globally such as the UN, economic networks both within corporations and between corporations, and newer, creative networks such as the Project(red) campaign which connects individual customers, brands, an NGO of the UN, and millions of HIV patients thoughout the world. $57 million dollars is, perhaps, a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of AIDS to Africa and the world, or to the revenues of the corporate sponsors of the project, but it is also enough to have had a very real and dramatic impact on tens of thousands of our fellow humans who were suffering and now have some measure of hope.

As I live and work here in the US, in this very expensive and deeply futuristic place called Silicon Valley, even here in San Francisco which has at least a small measure of history and culture as well, it is well worth remembering how large and diverse and complex our planet is.

And to recall how small are the links which connect us all. My friends are now there at Davos hanging out, meeting, and sharing meals with some of the people who quite literally lead this world – the leaders of large corporations, the organizers of major efforts to save lives (as well as, less fortunately some of the leaders whose decisions cost lives), and the leaders of many governments (or past leaders).

They say that we, all humans, are connected by just a few steps, but also at far too many times it seems that even in our own countries, within our own cities we exist and live in different worlds. In 2008, however, I see many signs that our common links, our common, global interests are starting to be made clearer and that technology is, in part, helping more people reach out to each other – and to engage and perhaps see the “other” as also human, also worthy of respect and engagement with – even and perhaps particularly when we do not entirely agree.