While I was away, John Rife posted an excellent assessment/announcement over at his blog FindingJohn. I've been friends with John for about a year now. He has a lot of passion for both Orlando and for technology, and a ton of experience when it comes to investing. We've had a number of conversations over the last couple of months sizing up the local tech scene and trying to determine our collective needs. It's great to see him moving in this direction, as I think it will help our community a great deal.

Why More Local Venture Funds are a Good Thing

As most of you probably know, Gavin and I have so far chosen to self fund Emurse.com and our other web products (hoping for a new yet-to-be-announced-product to launch soon, possibly barcamp?) The #1 reason for doing so is, well, because we can, but a close second is the lack of available options locally. We do not intend to leave Central Florida. In fact, I moved back to Central Florida from DC largely because of our growing company. The idea of packing our bags and heading west feels like we'd be selling out. We don't particularly have a problem with the west coast, but we don't particularly love it either. Orlando, we love.

Many of the issues entrepreneurs have with outside investment (besides the obvious equity exchange) revolve around losing control, losing corporate identity and risking their culture. When there are a plethora of options available, these risks are minimized by the presence of choice. If you don't like the investors, don't work with them -- there are others to choose from.

To give you an idea of what goes into choosing an investor.. I can't speak for everyone, but in our case, it's not so much the money that would be important as much as the connections the money might carry. Being on the east coast, someone with west coast ties would be appealing. We're in the HR space, so someone with strong local ties would be nice (easier to pilot beta products with someone right down the street). Then there are other questions, like what are the other companies in the investment groups portfolio? Are there in house partnership opportunities? How does the web industry view the investment group? Are they well received, controversial, or flat out hated? This might all come across as being picky, but investment is more than just money, it's an added business partner.

No one investment group will appeal to everyone, and thats where the necessity for multiple firms comes into play. Off the top of my head, Dan Rua and Inflexion comes to mind. There is also the option of the UCF incubator, but from what I've been able to gather, it wouldn't necessarily address our particular needs. The EDC can also help match up investors with investments, but I'm not sure their capacity. All in all, the Central Florida region desperately needs choice. We're far from establishing our own version of Sandhill Road.

Why Orlando?

I get asked pretty often why we chose to base ourselves out of Orlando. In most folks eyes, it's the tourism capitol of the world and not much more. What is sadly overlooked is the rapidly growing $10 billion a year technology industry that resides here in Metro Orlando. The fact that the metro area has 7 airports gives us easy access to other markets when we need to be there. Florida has an extremely friendly business tax system (Tax Foundation named us 5th in the nation), and no state income tax. UCF, UF and USF are all within a hundred mile radius of Orlando. UF is the 3rd largest school in the country, UCF is the 6th largest in the country, and USF is the ninth. All in all there are more than 25 colleges and universities in metro Orlando, and more than 50 technical schools. There's plenty of talent here, and it's cheap talent, because our cost of living is so low. In the last couple of years, more than a few leading business magazines have echoed the same sentiments -- Orlando is a great place to be an entrepreneur and a great place to live.

We have a great community locally that's finally starting to come together. Ryan's done amazing things with Florida Creatives, and Gregg appears to be organizing the barcamp to end all barcamps. Josh's blogOrlando format has not only taken root here, but all over the eastern seaboard. There's a ton of money here in Central Florida, and more choice in the venture arena can help get financing into the hands of people who need it. The success of our area's new companies will help create even more mentors and knowledge locally, and that will help create even more success.

Orlando's monstrous growth rate, local wealth, ample qualified talent, great weather, low taxes and creative spirit make it an amazing place to live and work. All that's left for this town is for the startup scene to start connecting the dots.

I've had some people ping me on the bubble post I wrote the other day, so here's some clarification/etc..

• Booms are always followed by busts. It's a natural occurrence. The internet has done nothing at all to change basic economics. Are we at the top of the boom? No, no we're not (and thats where I disagree with Dvorak). Are we heading into a boom/in a boom currently? Absolutely. Will it crash/correct/adjust itself at some point? Yes. I know people like to pretend that we're unlocking unlimited wealth here, but we're not. There will be winners as well as losers. Sorry.
  
• "Isn't there a ton of growth ahead of us in online advertising?" Unbelievable amounts, but you should seek diversified revenue streams anyhow. And just because the industry itself has a ton of potential, doesn't mean that your product does. Don't start spending money you don't have on fancy chairs and pent house office condos. Stay smart/productive/focused.
  

CodeJam 7 is winding down, and most everyone has already left us behind. Gavin and I are in the "office" wrapping up and preparing to check out in the morning.

Lots of discussions, lots of new people, and a little bit of new code here and there.

Good times indeed.

I'm tired as heck though, and strangely looking forward to going back to sleeping on Gavin's futon. It's probably more of the desperate need to do laundry than anything else. 8 more days until my glorious return to DC.

On the Emurse side of the coin, our friends over at SolutionWatch.com gave us a shout out on their Web 2.0 for Students round up. "One of my favorite applications of the year." -- We're flattered, and thank you for the continued support!

This past week, we rolled a whole new set of statistics out for web resumes.

Basically, it's everything you could dream of for keeping track of who, what and how people are viewing your online resume. We'll be adding a few more reports to the selection soon (like search terms), but the new 8 or so options should give people something to chew on for a bit. If there's anything in particular your looking for, drop us a note and we'll add it in. The engine was the work, dropping a new report in on a whim - eh.. not a problem ;)

Still cooking up those big changes in the kitchen. The first batch of cookies will hopefully be done in a week or two, the next one is a full on cake though, and will probably take a bit more time. Technology wise, we're pretty much all wrapped up. We're working on the work flow now though, which in our minds, is the most important part. Gotta keep that usability bar high ;)

Tags, clouds, voting OH MY!

After a fairly late night yesterday, we launched the newest incarnation of Engadget this morning. Check it out. There's still a ton of work to be done, and plenty of tweaks to be made. The idea was to get as close as we could in the time we had, and then put it out there. We'll listen to the community and build up from there.

The comment structure is a different one, in my opinion, it's kinda neat. Basically, the idea was to watch how Engadget users were using the site and kind of bring that work flow up to speed. The challenge was to try to find a hybrid approach between the flat discussion format thats used throughout the blogosphere, and the threaded conversation models present on forums. What we came up with is something Gavin affectionately calls "Hyperthreading". It's flat, but with references to the things they're in reply to. You can then choose to view these inline, you can tear the thread off into a new page (and subscribe to it via RSS), or you can continue to skim the conversation flat style like you're used to (and many seem to prefer). It's a bit different, but if you want to innovate, you have to be bold and try things.

Let us know your thoughts.. We're open and willing to adjust things (and expecting to!)

I've mentioned in the past how I felt Facebook is truly the social network positioned the best. Let's go ahead and make that a "was."

I wasn't going to hop on the hate bandwagon. In fact, I actually thought their new stalker features were fairly clever, if nothing else, original. Seeing how poorly their user community reacted to the change makes me wonder if they really bothered to run it by anyone though. Say it with me guys, Usability Tests. Not only would their users give them interesting feedback on their thoughts regarding features, they'd probably help them further improve things like the navigation (which I personally think could be better.. just my opinion, of course...).

Anyway, now they're allowing any creepy internet predator guy to create an account and "poke" sorority girls at colleges.? The charm behind Facebook is the exclusivity. The technology, as many have noted, isn't anything special and quite easily re-creatable. How is this going to pane out? I'm not sure, but I'm no longer going to emphatically preach that their going to win the war.

Unless they know something that we don't. I mean, when Netscape made the switch, we knew damn well we were going to piss off anywhere from 20-40% of the user base. It wasn't a profitable enough user base though. So... Here we are.

Somehow I doubt thats the case, and they're really just trying to scale this thing to extremely large numbers. It's not wasn't about the numbers though, it was about the penetration rate amongst college students. And that demographic should be a valuable one, more importantly, college alumni should be a valuable one. Wait 10-15 years when these kids are using Facebook to keep up with old college classmates and find future business partners, and you've got an indispensable tool that can write its own ticket. Killing that off to raise your user count, really just makes you another social network.

Anyway.. I hope they know more than everyone seems to think, and they do now seem to be reaching out to their community. Facebook was the first (and other than LinkedIn, the only) social network to actually impress me. We'll just have to wait and see what moves they make I guess.

Is what we wanted to call it, but alas.. It's a little much ;)

Check out the new "Cloud View" on Emurse.com. It's not a tag cloud, more of a relevancy/density cloud like I described the other day. Similar concept, without the interaction or requirements on the user. Aut-oh-matic. Rad.

It's still very english centric. Lots of noise words in spanish/hindi/german for us to figure out. We have massive lists of noise words to integrate, it just takes time. We're also looking to make it a little bit more intelligent so it starts filtering things out on its own. Version 1 though, looks great and serves a neat purpose. Looking at this bad boy gives you a solid idea of what my resume is all about in a couple seconds flat.

Side note: Emurse.com gets a shout out in USA Today via the Kim Komando article earlier in the week.

Kind of ranty, but, it's been awhile...

Tagging: What most people call tags are really just keywords or categories. Tagging is bottom up, the former are top down. If I write a post (as I'm doing now), it doesn't make sense to me to say that I'm "tagging" it as Blogsmith implies (yeah, I know, I share responsibility for that...) I'm really adding relevant keywords. Tags would be if you, the reader, entered in your own keywords. Author Tags, in my mind, are an oxymoron.
Overall feeling: A misunderstood concept. Buzzword-phobia is bound to kick in.

Clouds: Clouds are cool. Not so much in the "OMG Tags!!1!" sort of way, but more in the "OMG Density!!1!" sort of way. It's a great way to conceptualize relevancy in a storm of mixed data. Trendy, sure, but there is some use there. The alternative way to present such data would be to list and rank, and well.. It's all about the quick glance, ya know?
Overall feeling: Cloudtastic.

Voting: The Wisdom of the Crowds, right? Well, kinda. In a purely theoretical environment where every niche, focus, and person has equal access and say, then sure, wisdom, nay, brilliance of the crowd. Unfortunately in 2.0 land, crowd means clique. When dealing with something like Digg or Netscape, here's how it really works; People sign up, people add friends. People subscribe to a feed of things that their friends are doing. All the sudden, information access is limited -- People aren't viewing all the data in the mix, they're viewing a subset of the data posted by their friends. That data gets votes and makes it way to the top of the page. Unless you have friends who have friends, you have very little voice. That's the reason 10% of digg controls the majority of the content -- the other stuff isn't even necessarily being seen. Digg goes as far as to put a nice green ribbon on each item that a friend as had their hands on, which really only adds to the issue. Doesn't seem like the crowd has a chance, does it? Either way, voting is another form of feedback, and that's *always* a good thing.
Overall feeling: OMG user feedback! It's going to transform media! OMG ...

Hive Mind: A natural, sometimes unfortunate, by-product of poor implementation. It's means to me that we need better interfaces and presentation of concepts. Find ways to wrestle control out of the selected few and into the hands of a larger pool of people. On Netscape, the idea is to, counter intuitively, pay people to help perform this task (anchors). The real curiosity behind paying the bookmarkers (navigators) is that it seems like its sanctioning a clique. The flip side is that it might solve the problem on how to drive participation without content. Anyway... We'll see.
Overall feeling: It's human nature. A "solution" would have to start with acknowledgment and then take it into account.

Social: Social is cool, social is fun, but the vast majority of people will always be at least a tad bit selfish. MySpace helped people find new music, Friendster didn't. Social networks are the platform, not the product. Tons of promise, but over-hyped and not yet applied well in most cases.
Overall feeling: Over used, under applied. Ack! BRB, another friend request...

Rails: Rails is easy enough to help designer type folks code and they love it. It's like giving a 16 year old keys to the Chevette. Rails is a lot of fun to use, but a lot of engineers look at it and see an MVC pattern. Neat. In 1994. When I read about designers saying its the best possible programming "language" (ruby and rails are becoming synonymous), I hope they realize that's like me saying GIMP is the best possible illustration package. Both are *great* projects and can be a tool for many cool things, but let's stop short of calling either revolutionary. Then again, it's young and probably a lot further along than PHP was at its age, so, who knows.
Overall feeling: Too early to say. Trendy? It's right up there with Pog.

Bootstrapping: Maybe I'm too young to remember, but it doesn't seem to me that there was ever a time when this wasn't the way to go. Sure, in the 90s everyone took huge boat loads of cash for their startup, but everyone outside of the echo chamber questioned their super bowl spending patterns. The "new economy" existed then, and I think it still exists now. It just requires you not to be dumb. If you have the means, do it on the cheap and hold on to the pie. Take money for strategy (time to market, partnerships, etc) not false needs. The key difference between now and then are the even lower barriers to entry. Even though I tease Rails, its enabled a whole new wave of "weekend warriors". Thats a good thing, take advantage of it.
Overall Feeling: Seriously. We have a great idea, but I'm going to need tens of millions of dollars to hire 50 of my friends and throw a lot of parties. Expect a P/E of 60 in a year after we go public next month. Social vote tagging, it's going to be huge. Written in rails. Skype me.

Data Ownership: From a consumer point of view, it's my data -- let me do what I'd like, even if that means taking it with me. Right now I'd love to take all my gmail off of gmail and put it somewhere else online. I *love* their service, but I'm too dependent on a "beta" product. It goes down for hours at a time. Can I do this? Sure I can download it to my mail client, but then what? Use a real mail client? Gross. Anyway, this gives traditional players nightmares, but open data initiatives are coming no matter what. Might as well embrace it and build a business plan that keeps it in mind.
Overall feeling: If Emiliano Zapata were digirati, he'd be captain microformat. "I'd rather die on my feet, than let you keep all my data." Heh. That was so cheesy, Gavin's in the bathroom throwing up from his lactose intolerance.

Syndication: Consumers love it. Theres only one problem. Revenue on the web is largely tied to page views. D'oh!
Overall Feeling: The first person to truly figure out this puzzle will be able to buy lots and lots of Pog.

Those that know me well are aware of my 'hobby' involvements.

I'm really into leadership, team dynamics, goal setting, personal development, and all that other 'soft factor' managerial stuff. I'm an advisor for a fraternity up at the University of Maryland, which is an extension of my earlier involvement back in my undergraduate days. One of the primary reasons I stick around is so I can do all those geeky activities at retreats. I'm not sure why, but I've always been into soft factors, and really love passing on the lessons of leadership to others (or alternatively, when someone passes them on to me ;)

Thats a big reason why I chose my masters degree (one day I'll find time to finish) to be centered on knowledge management (with a side focus on usability, but thats neither here nor there). I see a huge lack of software geared towards managing soft factors. Engineers, naturally I guess, may not have the social skills to see the potential applications.

Anyway, reading techcrunch this morning, I saw they had a write up on a site called Mecanbe. It appears to be more centered around personal development, but there is mention of a team aspect to it. Planning, charting and monitoring team performance is something that may turn out to be their money maker. Much of teamwork is simply getting (and staying) on the same page -- fighting for the same cause. That's where goal setting exercises come in handy. As more and more of our teams become virtual, the idea that we can take these activities online seems appealing, but simple chat room sessions just can't cut it.