Tuesday, August 22, 2006

How to Run A Meeting and Other Things To Learn

Guy Kawasaki has a great post today on his blog:

Two particularly useful snipets:

Number 3: How to run a meeting.
Hopefully, you’ll be running meetings soon. Then you need to undestand that the primary purpose of a business meeting is to make a decision. It is not to share experiences or feel warm and fuzzy. With that in mind, here are five key points to learn about running a meeting: (1) Start on time even if everyone isn’t there because they will be next time; (2) Invite the fewest people possible to the meeting; (3) Set an agenda for exactly what’s going to happen at the meeting; (4) End on time so that everyone focuses on the pertinent issues; (5) Send an email to all participants that confirms decisions reviews action items. There are more power tips for running good meetings, but if you do these five, you’re ahead of 90% of the world.

Number 9: How to write a five-sentence email. Young people have an advantage over older people in this area because older people (like me) were taught to write letters that were printed on paper, signed, stuck in an envelope, and mailed. Writing a short email was a new experience for them. Young people, by contrast are used to IMing and chatting. If anything, they’re too skilled on brevity, but it’s easier to teach someone how to write a long message than a short one. Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

SABADABADA: Devoted to BRAZILIAN RECORDS of the 1960's and 1970's

More than 10,000 images of Album art from Brasil.

Bob Dylan Says Technology Sucks

Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Another Useful Invention: The Popularity Dialer

Everyday I seem to stumble across a great new invention or innovation. The Popularity Dialer is one I learned about today. They are still working on some of the bugs, but it's worth a try...

Click here to try: http://popularitydialer.com/index.php

Are You Experienced?

"Good judgement comes from experience...Experience comes from good judgement."

I saw this quote this past weekend on St. Marks Street in NYC and it got me thinking...so I thought I would pass it along to you. Enjoy.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Fuzzy Math 2.0

Read some of the buzz going on around BusinessWeek's hyped up article about Web 2.0 companies:

Signals vs. Noise blog from the folks at 37Signals...click here.

Scott Rosenberg from Salon...click here.

And a hilarious blog post by 9Rules founders...click here.

I don't have much to add to what these folks have already said except that for those of us who were around for the last bubble we definately learned that good old fashioned business sense is how to build real value: stay focused on building a company with useful products, real customers, and a solid business model.

More about how we are doing just that over at our corporate blog: The OrganizedWisdom Experience here.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Design Suggestions for Old School Brands

Check out this site for a fun look at how old school brands might update their logos for the Web 2.0 world...
Day of the Longtail

Consumer choice is a good thing.