John's Music Blog

My goal when I started this blog almost a year ago was to:

1. Create a resource for entrepreneurs and inventors
2. Have a conversation with those entrepreneurs (or entrepreneur wannabes) on strategies, tactics, and best practices.  

On the second goal, I feel like I’ve fallen short.  There’s not enough dialogue.  (more…)

Howard Perlstein, founder of HOW, a  management consulting services company based in Brookline, Massachusetts, just became my 1000th connection on LinkedIn.  We were introduced by a mutual friend and met for coffee. He talked about his business, and I talked about mine.  We also talked about ways that we might be able to help each other.   I have no idea, yet, whether I or he will reap any financial reward, but, as I said to Howard, if you don’t take the occasional random walk, you’ll wear out your path.

Someone asked me recently, if I actually know all of the people in my LinkedIn network.  The answer is “yes.”  And I wish that I had started using LinkedIn sooner, because I’m missing the other 5000 people I’ve met during the past 10 years. OK, 5000 is a guess, but I’m not far off.   And somewhere in those 5000 is someone I can help. Sometimes for fun and sometimes for profit.  And while I can’t help everyone, as a good friend, Barba Hickman, founder of Applied Clarity, said to me, “If I start off each day thinking about how I can help someone, the business pretty much takes care of itself.”

A recent blog entry by Denise Shiffman on Viral Voice referenced an article in InsideCRM entitled The Facebook Marketing Toolbox.   I’ve only been using Facebook for a few months, so this article was a great find, with links to tons of resources and recommendations.  Thanks Denise.  This article is required reading for my new client, StorMagic, and my nephews who continue to grow their restaurant, Black and Brew, down in Lakeland, Florida.  Keeping getting the word out!  For all others, reading is optional, but highly recommended.

The truth is that this post is not about entrepreneurs or inventors.   If I really stretch it, maybe this post is for individuals who are looking for opportunities within startups.  It’s definitely for people who think they have spent too long working for one of the bigger systems companies and are now looking for other opportunities in faster-growing, more nimble environments.  It’s for people who were recently laid off, or who are about to be laid off. At any rate, it’s for people looking for the next career opportunity. 

Sometimes, I think I should be in the headhunter business, because I get almost daily calls from truly talented people, who for reasons that sometimes escape me are looking outside their current employer for the next career opportunity.  I guess the reason that I’m not in the headhunter business is that I don’t have as many companies coming to me with good jobs to fill as I do good people coming to me looking for jobs.  Maybe the Tycoon widget from Myndnet, that I added to my Facebook profile will help change that, but I’m not sure yet.  Check it out. (more…)

I posted the following question on LinkedIn about five days ago:

What’s the best strategy for creating end-user awareness of an innovative product through social networking?

Here’s the dig.  At least I think it was a dig:

Try and be a bit more simple and straightforward in your communications than you are in your questions. (more…)

As a fellow baby boomer, Denise Shiffman’s recent blog post really hit home.  She said, “Facebook is the new email.”  She wasn’t the first to make the connection.  In fact, the Scobleizer has a whole running debate here from October, 2007.  But because I know Denise, and implicitly trust her, she gets credit for getting my attention. 

As a boomer, I live on email, but as my blog readers know, I’m on Facebook now, too.  In fact, it’s about the only way that I communicate with Steve Zivanic, who created this viral campaign for very-traditional Hitachi Data Systems (HDS).  I just checked one YouTube posting of his video that reports 320,000+ downloads.  Good job Steve.  Steve’s left HDS and found a fitting home at myndnet.  He tells me they understand the value of viral marketing. (more…)

Mike Worhach, President and CEO of Sepaton, walked into the Starbuck’s where I was meeting  Paul Gillin this morning, and said, “Every time I see you, you’re taking notes.” Confirming once again that it’s important to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, I was having a follow-on to my meeting with Paul last week.  Paul has been amazingly generous with his time, given that he has started writing another book.  I’m eight chapters into his book from last year (2007, for those of you who are keeping track), The New Influencers, and I wanted to pick his brain on how he might be able to help one of our clients.  But I also got an added bonus, which was getting a few quick tips that could make a big difference for anyone.  Here’s one. (more…)

Paul Gillin was kind enough to meet me for coffee on Friday morning.   Paul and I go back a long way.  He played a key role in the success of TechTarget, and I spoke at one of his first conferences, the highly influential Storage Decisions conference.  When we met for coffee this week, Paul  brought with him an autographed copy of his latest book,  The New Influencers , which I am reading, while on a 3-day holiday in Syracuse, New York.   Who wouldn’t want to be in Syracuse, the land of lake-effect snow, in the middle of winter?  But it’s a great place to go to catch up on reading.

 As part of my New Year’s resolution, I’m determined to become more engaged in the “new social media.”  There are a couple of reasons.  The first is that, while I have an enormous network of contacts, I need a more effective way to maintain communication.  The second is that, I have several clients that need a more effective way to reach potential customers and influencers than traditional marketing approaches provide.  (more…)

In all of my excitement about Facebook, I forgot to mention Xing, to which I was introduced by Billa Bhandari, who is CEO of Akoura.  Akoura offers some interesting security software.   If you use Akoura’s DataSecure product, you get a perfect excuse to use the word “obfuscation” in polite conversation.  DataSecure is a software product that, in the company’s words, “protects information through the use (of) unique obfuscation technology and strong authentication that transforms any sensitive information into plausible covers.”   Personally, I’m interested in both obfuscation and plausible covers.  I have a feeling that there are some government agencies similarly interested.

I first met Billa, when he and I worked at State Street Bank.   I’ve posted a profile on Xing, and I like the way in which it visually shows you how you are connected to other people, but I am a long way from being a heavy user.  OK, I only have one connection, which is Billa.  But Billa is connected to over 2000 people at last count, so Billa’s a good person to know.  Which reminds me, I owe him a call.

Are any of you using Xing?

I was an early user of online business-networking sites, but have until recently avoided the social-networking sites.  So what exactly would induce a 50-something, former storage analyst to join Facebook?  To hang out with some storage geeks, of course.  Turns out there are several storage-related groups on Facebook.  Here are a couple: 

• Storage Gurus, which includes members like Steve Terlizzi and Joel Reich 
• Fans of High End Storage, which includes members like Barry Burke, Marc Farley, Steve Kenniston, Dave Vellante, and Roland Bavington

The names are pretty familiar to those of us who have been around the storage industry.  What surprised me most about joining Facebook was to see who else was already there.  Sure, I found the storage geeks. But I also found some stoggier investor types and business executives mixed in with the edgier and younger folks I expected to find.  Finding my 20-something nephews in Facebook was not a surprise. (more…)