I am back from the TechCrunch party and I'm overwhelmed by the crowd. I've met some interesting and smart people like Scott Wheeler from Directed Edge, and many others. I've also met many of my friends, but I already know that they're interesting and smart, so it was no so big surprise.
Anyway, there were seven or eight start-up elevator pitches presented, and I was quite happy to see the presenters well prepared. I hate boring presentations, and believe me, you can get people bored in less than two minutes.
I remember when my friend and I wrote a TV sitcom pitch. It is possible that our sitcom was funny, but the pitch definitely wasn't. We tried so hard to put too much on one page that we lost our main desire: fun. Or pitch failed and so did we.
It is hard to be short. Look at me, this is my forth paragraph, you've already read 158 words, and I haven't tell you anything about writing good elevator pitch yet.
Here it is: Solve my problem.
It's not easy to do, but that's the point. Don't tell me who you are, how many employees you have, don't bother me with your blabla mission. Just tell me you have a solution for my problem.
Do you need to understand your data, do you need to have a report prepared for tomorrow presentation but your IT department cannot help you? We in Good Data can. Yes, it is on-demand, software-as-a-service, collaborative, Ajax, heuristic ETL, automatic, intuitive - but these are only features. Who cares, if it solves your problem?
I believe that when you do something, it solves somebody's problem. Find that somebody, invite her to an elevator, and tell her your solution. If it really solves the problem, you can always present your company later.
TechCrunch meet-up in Prague starts in one hour
Good Data is proud to be part of it. It's exciting how many people promised to come. I guess there will be so many questions about Good Data, but I would like to be a big ear tonight, to listen what's going on in other heads than mine.
:. Labels:
meeting
Video kills the rock'n'roll
I read faster than you talk. This is only one of the reasons I actually don't like video blogspots. I see it more and more often - a video without any added value.
To create a video is a long but funny process. However, the fun is over when you have to watch it. It's a little bit strange - why would anyone spend several hours producing a videospot if writing text is so fast?
To answer it, we have to think about the preparation. To write a text, you have to know how to write, and you have to know your point. It should be the same with audio and video recordings, but it's not.
Today, you don't even need an expensive camcorder to be a video hero. You don't need to have a point, just aim, shoot, cut, and publish. Should we blame the technology for that? Or are we victims of our laziness?
I can work with text. I can easily look at the end of it, to read its conclusion, I can look at the paragraph beginnings only, I can skip boring parts and re-reads the interesting ones, I can highlight them, and save them, and share them.
But I'm not able to work with video in that way. I don't know how much time should I skip to watch something interesting, and I have not even a little intention to watch talking heads for minutes if I can read the same in seconds.
That's why I don't like video and why I don't listen to podcasts (nor audiobooks). I am bored to listen to something I can read easily.
Think before shoot. Is your video necessary? Helpful? Does it really show something that's better watched that described?
If not, please save my time.
To create a video is a long but funny process. However, the fun is over when you have to watch it. It's a little bit strange - why would anyone spend several hours producing a videospot if writing text is so fast?
To answer it, we have to think about the preparation. To write a text, you have to know how to write, and you have to know your point. It should be the same with audio and video recordings, but it's not.
Today, you don't even need an expensive camcorder to be a video hero. You don't need to have a point, just aim, shoot, cut, and publish. Should we blame the technology for that? Or are we victims of our laziness?
I can work with text. I can easily look at the end of it, to read its conclusion, I can look at the paragraph beginnings only, I can skip boring parts and re-reads the interesting ones, I can highlight them, and save them, and share them.
But I'm not able to work with video in that way. I don't know how much time should I skip to watch something interesting, and I have not even a little intention to watch talking heads for minutes if I can read the same in seconds.
That's why I don't like video and why I don't listen to podcasts (nor audiobooks). I am bored to listen to something I can read easily.
Think before shoot. Is your video necessary? Helpful? Does it really show something that's better watched that described?
If not, please save my time.
:. Labels:
video
Hopelessly devoted to metadata
I spend this week in Bratislava, leading metadata management training, couching new metadata experts-to-be, and reviewing existing metadata projects. It's all about metadata in data warehouses.
I begin to meta - I say "meta" a hundred times each day. I see metadata everywhere.
I, to begin my third paragraph with this beautiful pronoun, I try to explain the difference between theory and practice. Usually, people and the projects are concerned about the technical side of the metadata issue. However, the technical part is the easier one.
You can find the real problem in business process. That's why most of the metadata projects fail. They can be at very high technical level but without a proper business flow, they're useless.
Everybody wants to buy a metadata solution. These millions should not be invested to software. Invest them to your people.
Looks like I'm not thinking about metadata, am I?
I begin to meta - I say "meta" a hundred times each day. I see metadata everywhere.
I, to begin my third paragraph with this beautiful pronoun, I try to explain the difference between theory and practice. Usually, people and the projects are concerned about the technical side of the metadata issue. However, the technical part is the easier one.
You can find the real problem in business process. That's why most of the metadata projects fail. They can be at very high technical level but without a proper business flow, they're useless.
Everybody wants to buy a metadata solution. These millions should not be invested to software. Invest them to your people.
Looks like I'm not thinking about metadata, am I?
Are you fed up?
Mark Smith writes:
At today's Open Coffee Club, we have talked just about that. The following question emerged: Will IT fight back? Do they feel that SaaS makes them useless and incompetent?
In my opinion, IT departments are not happy about consuming so much time on operations and deployment, and the SaaS concept will force them to focus on the boring stuff more and more.
Poor IT!
The current situation should have business mad as hell and fed up. With so much of an organization's IT budget being spent on technology, but the situation in business having gotten a whole lot worse, now what? I would recommend that business either take back control of their BI destiny or just write them off as educational experiments. Another choice is to develop a new strategy built on the demands for information and analytics that might need to completely bypass IT and outsource to a supplier that provides software as a service (SaaS) and just requires data feeds to populate their analytics and BI capabilities.
At today's Open Coffee Club, we have talked just about that. The following question emerged: Will IT fight back? Do they feel that SaaS makes them useless and incompetent?
In my opinion, IT departments are not happy about consuming so much time on operations and deployment, and the SaaS concept will force them to focus on the boring stuff more and more.
Poor IT!
:. Labels:
on-demand BI
Getting Things Lazed
This method is not as well elaborated as the famous David Allen's Getting Things Done, but it's pretty easier to use.
It borrows the idea of inbox from GTD. With everything that goes to your inbox (like emails), you just have to do a single action. Archive it or delete it or whatever. Hide it all away! It can be a little bit sophisticated like this: You can use Gmail with GTDInbox extension, and mark every message that needs to be replied by "Next Action" label. It disappears and your inbox is always empty.
Mind like water guaranteed.
It borrows the idea of inbox from GTD. With everything that goes to your inbox (like emails), you just have to do a single action. Archive it or delete it or whatever. Hide it all away! It can be a little bit sophisticated like this: You can use Gmail with GTDInbox extension, and mark every message that needs to be replied by "Next Action" label. It disappears and your inbox is always empty.
Mind like water guaranteed.
:. Labels:
GTD
Sites I'm excited about: Blist, Social|median, Twine
Blist is a spreadsheet-like database. Imagine your Excel where you can easily include different data types like checkboxes, pull-down lists, even images and documents. You can even have a blist in a blist. Very nice concept. I had some ideas about transforming my boring wine list from Excel to a web application, but I guess I stick to Blist now.
Social|median is in almost-public alpha, enter RWW invitation code provided by ReadWriteWeb to sign up. The site is full of so-called News Networks - imagine topic related RSS aggregations. You can comment on their articles, add new sources, clip new web sites etc. Business intelligence network was created yesterday, it has 8 members, aggregates 10 sources, other 14 sources are recommended automatically by the system.
Twine allows you to blog in a different way, but it's not the only purpose. You can create/join twines (spaces) and clip web sites to them easily. You can twine bookmarks, books, photos, documents, emails... and then tag them and share them. You need an invitation to join Twine, I have some.
So these are the cool sites I'm excited about, because I sign up today. I feel dizzy sometimes: Did I clip this web page to del.icio.us, EverNote, Twine, or Social|Median? Or did I only starred it in Google Reader?
Social|median is in almost-public alpha, enter RWW invitation code provided by ReadWriteWeb to sign up. The site is full of so-called News Networks - imagine topic related RSS aggregations. You can comment on their articles, add new sources, clip new web sites etc. Business intelligence network was created yesterday, it has 8 members, aggregates 10 sources, other 14 sources are recommended automatically by the system.
Twine allows you to blog in a different way, but it's not the only purpose. You can create/join twines (spaces) and clip web sites to them easily. You can twine bookmarks, books, photos, documents, emails... and then tag them and share them. You need an invitation to join Twine, I have some.
So these are the cool sites I'm excited about, because I sign up today. I feel dizzy sometimes: Did I clip this web page to del.icio.us, EverNote, Twine, or Social|Median? Or did I only starred it in Google Reader?
:. Labels:
collaboration,
links,
social software,
tools
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