Here's a good midway point of the year article by Jim Tobin from Ignite Social Media on what the future of social media might bring. How many of these do you agree with? My 2 cents is that #4 will be more portable in regards to social media being more mobile rather than portable.

I haven't had a chance to check these guys out Ecairn, but let me know if you do.

I've written about this in the past in regards to whether your online identity is alligned with your offline identity and Dan Thornton's article takes it one step further. Check out his post, Is your online indentity in your control?

Richard at Dell has a nice compilation post from yesterday of things you should check out, not the least of which are The Blog Council, which I'm still on the fence with, and Feedly, which I have not checked out yet.

I love Mike Manuels' post about measuring social media as well, since I sat in a bar last friday night and talked essentially about the same thing with Jason Breed from Neighborhood America. The bottom line and Mike's post back it up. Very few companies have a clue about how to monitor their online engagements with social media as well as their online personas in general. You have to have a way to monitor your web traffic but then if and this is a big if, you are monitoring your social media interactions, what is the data that you are wanting to pull from it? What are your goals?

Read this post on Stowe Boyds blog,  How we are made great and then lastly on Jason Falls blog, KatFrench has a great post on social media specialists chucking their backgrounds that basically asks the question, who's running the ship for social media?

I drove to Half Moon Bay by myself to my first twitter meetup on July 22, 2008. I heard about it from Laura Fitten (@pistachio, http://pistachioconsulting.com/).  Laura and I are connected through Twitter.com. 

The drive was longer than I expected.  I initially thought Half Moon Bay was near Stinson Beach.  It's not.  The drive ended up being almost two hours, including San Francisco Bay Bridge traffic that I had to pass through.  The closer I got to Half Moon Bay, the more beautiful it was. 

I was reminded of the only other time I had been there.  In high school my science class had gone to Half Moon Bay for a fieldtrip to see the tide pools.  That memory and the view around me made me eager to plan a trip their again soon, with my kids. 

I finally arrived at the Half Moon Bay Ritz-Carlton!  It was a stunningly beautiful hotel nestled next to the bay.  The view was incredible!  We were supposed to be meeting by the fire pit on the ocean side of the Ritz.  What I didn't realize was that the Brainstorm: TECH Conference that I had heard talk about was also going on there at the same time!  In the same location!  It was so crowded with people it was difficult to get to the fire pit area,  which by-the-way contained no fire. 

I first spotted Lucretia (@geekmommy)!  Laura Fitten (@pistachio) was also there!  Lucretia and Laura are both twitterfriends of mine and we recently met face to face for the first time last week at the San Francisco BlogHer '08 People's Party.  I stayed with Lucretia, most of the time, and got to meet her family, her husband and adorable daughter!  I met Shel Israel (@shelisrael) , also Ryan who has a startup and no business card!  Robert Scoble was there, and I had orignally hoped to meet him, but in the end I was standing next to him and didn't make the effort.  He seems very friendly, maybe next time.  He actually looked much younger in person than I had expected from the pic on his blog.  There was a barbie doll version of him floating around that was hilarious!

Funny story.  While I was standing next to Robert Scoble I was trying to set the date on my camera and had it pointed down and ended up taking a pic of his shoes!  Made myself laugh!

The BrainstormTech people were beginning their dinner outside near our meeting spot and everyone started leaving the tweetup to find dinner elsewhere.  Men that looked very much like secret service men, with the dark suits and earpieces, told us we had to leave.  Right before that a woman had told me that I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures.  Oops, too late!  (If I suddenly disappear, you'll know why).

I had talked with Cathryn Hrudicka (@creativesage) on twitter and had hoped to meet her some time soon, but I didn't realize that she was going to be at this meetup, so when she came up to me I didn't place her at first, but luckily she did me.  I was very pleased to meet her!  She had ridden with another couple who initially wanted to leave early, so I offered to give her a ride home. 

I was a little nervous about driving out of Half Moon Bay at night because there had been quite a few turns and I didn't have clear directions home.  I initially wanted to leave before dark, but Brian Solis's cheeseburger description changed my mind.  Luckily Cathryn knew her way around Half Moon Bay a bit more than I did so between the both of us we found the restaurant and the rest of the group. 

The restaurant was part of a hotel, simple but nice.  We had a table of twelve that included Laura Fitten, Shel Israel, Stowe Boyd, Brian Solis, Cathryn and myself.  Cathryn and I ended up sitting across from Brian and Stowe.  They seem to know each other quite well and were enjoying the night and a bottle of wine.  After we all got aquainted they wanted to get another bottle of wine and share it with Cathryn and I.  I was driving, but was really good and only had a small glass.  I had my friends on twitter DM (Direct Message) me to remind me not to drink too much wine!  (Thank you Mark and Tina!)  Brian and Stowe were a lot of fun and Cathryn and I really enjoyed the dinner. 

Even though we got turned around a bit at first, the drive home was very enjoyable thanks to Cathryn's company.  It was such a pleasure to get to know her. 

Even though I had a long drive by myself, I am so glad I made the effort.  I got to see some special friends again, and make some wonderful new friends.

Köpenhamn, Reboot 13.00-14.00

Växlade mellan den amerikanske bloggaren och ”sociala medieexperten” Stowe Boyd och holländska interaktionsdesignern Iskander Smiths föreläsningar. Sessionerna överlappade inte bara varandra i tid, de hade också ungefär samma utgångspunkt. På nätet agerar vi alla som superegoister, och i grunden ickedemokratiskt – vad innebär det i praktiken?

Gemenskap över nätet är självbespegling i sin renaste form, menar Boyd. I de sociala mediernas olika rum pysslar vi om och putsar upp våra självbilder - och bekräftar andras. Enligt Boyd är det denna narcisism som bidragit till att gamla maktstrukturer, as we know them, nu monteras ned: media, politiken, etcetera. För när vi känner oss sedda och personligen bekräftade vill vi göra saker tillsammans, då lyssnar vi på varandra, påpekar Bowd.

Smith är både mer specifik och pessimistisk i förhållande till nätokratin. Även om han också hävdar de sociala mediernas demokratiska potential, pekar han ut konkreta exempel på motsatsen. Flera av de virtuella världarna och andra on line-communities styrs redan av självutnämnda tyranner.  Vilket är ett irl-problem, argumenterar Smith. I de elektroniska samhällena vars invånare är avpersonifierade kan egoismen härja fritt. Snart dags att sluta upp i de sociala mediernas befrielserörelse, manar Smith.

Nu: sen lunch.

2. I haven't seen a lot of innovation in user interfaces for help desk applications, I wonder if creating a riff on the basic Getting Thing Done UIs I have seen would work and be helpful.

3. With all the unstructured data out there I wonder if a simple graphical tool designed to turn this data into actionable information would be helpful?  

What I am thinking is a visual environment with drag-and-drop parsing workflow creation where one could use predefined rules (or create their own rules) that parses a document extracting the information needed in a structured format 

So for instance you could create a "parser" for a series of emails that always have the essential same structure and get that data into a dB.

Hmm, maybe I need to think more about this, it may actually be quite useful...

4. Another interesting blog post today on /Message.  Stowe is right, at every turn and with every interaction we are exposing ourselves to loosely coupled, information rich data flows and we need to be able to mine these flows to extract actionable information otherwise we are stuck with static silos. Information is out there, we just need better means of extracting it from the crushing weight of all the data we see every day.  

5. Another OpenID mechanism.  From the site "Emailtoid is a simple mapping service that enables the use of email addresses as OpenID identifiers."

Besides, those limited posts are not exactly conducive to elegant prose.

But rather than be a killjoy, thought I’d delve further into the phenomenon of Twitter. I started by asking one of the savviest technical guys I know, a certain M. B., what appealed to him about Twitter.

What he stated made absolute sense. To boil down his much more eloquent and in-depth comments: it is quick, convenient and can be used with your phone- you can take it anywhere and you don’t need to lug along a laptop. (And, if you think about it, that’s what’s been happening in Europe and Japan for years. They have been making much better use of cell phone technology for years. But North America is getting there….finally.)

That’s just in the case of the average user. Apparently Twitter has also been a boon to the Los Angeles Fire Department in terms of communicating during disasters- that’s striking in its cleverness – especially as municipal agencies aren’t exactly quick to embrace change, technological or otherwise.

Now what about Twitter’s use for public relations? Think about those two words- you’re relating with the public – and this is a new way to do so. It’s also a great way to give companies a human face and to connect to their key audiences. Innovative companies are using Twitter for customer service purposes and gaining credibility boosts for their efforts.

The best (and best-known) example of this is Zappos. In fact Tony Hsieh, its CEO, has created a handy and well-written starter guide and tutorial for Twitter.

And Twitter may change the way the industry intereacts with clients. The nifty blog PR 2.0 pointed out just last week the use of a new application named TwitPitch. For this year's Web 2.0 Expo, social web application expert/author Stowe Boyd was only accepting TwitPitches for meetings with companies. No e-mail proposals at all.

TwitPitch (which may be named ironically- think about it) takes the idea of the conciseness and clarity required of good PR writing to a whole new level. You have 140 characters- go! It will be interesting to see to what extent this catches on and what it means for PR practitioners.

In the meantime, Twitter will have its more mundane and narcissistic uses. But as one of our profs noted, it must be remembered that it’s not the technology that’s stupid, but the way that some people use it.

So for every idiot out there who is going to bars with “Twitter walls” and posting what they are doing so they can see their posts up on that wall --You’re in a bar texting that you’re in a bar texting. Way to go -- there’s someone else making good use of the technology.

Maybe those who really want to feather their nests should get tweeting….?

Yet the rumormill is wondering if John Batelle (founder of the Industry Standard and Wired) is, once again, in danger of premature solicitation.  He's building what many feel (including me) to be an institution far ahead of its time.  It will be worth 100x more in a year because it's not *just* monetizing blogs.  He's developing platforms for brands like American Express Open and teaching us all what the next advertising model will be (hint: page views and CPM don't enter into the conversation, but monetizing the Long Tail sure does).

Un avant-goût du programme de Going Solo. Il ne suffit pas de "savoir faire des trucs" pour avoir du succès en tant qu'indépendant. Il y a plein d'aspects "business" au boulot d'indépendant que l'on sous-estime souvent au départ, et qu'on doit apprendre sur le tas. Going Solo, ce sera l'occasion d'apprendre des choses comme par exemple comment fixer ses tarifs, se faire connaître, effectivement décrocher des mandats (et se faire payer!), trouver des clients ou les laisser nous trouver, expliquer au monde ce que l'on fait, trouver un équilibre entre travail et "vie" (pas évident quand on a fait de sa passion son métier), ou encore gérer l'administratif qui accompagne la vie réseautée que nous vivons aujourd'hui.

Je donne dans ce billet un plan des sujets que je désire couvrir durant la journée de conférences que sera Going Solo. Trois orateurs sont d'ores et déjà annoncés: Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, et Martin Roell -- vous les connaissez probablement de nom. Je suis à la recherche d'autres bons orateurs, particulièrement un peu à l'extérieur de mon réseau, donc n'hésitez pas à me faire part de vos propositions!

Thèmes au programme

• les compétences que doit avoir un freelance (faire son travail, le marketing et le réseautage, les contrats et le cash flow)
• Fixer les prix, conclure un contrat, négocier les contrats (Le plus dur des jobs)
• Quelles sortes de travail font les freelances dans le monde 2.0 (certains travaux sont plus appropriés au travail en soliste)
• Le marketing et s'occuper de son capital social (blogguer et être un bon citoyen en ligne)
• Outils d'assistance (Quel software/outils,méthodes peuvent être utiles à un freelance?)
• Le travail collaboratif (coworking) et rester en contact avec ses "collègues" (compenser le fait de "travailler seul", nous restons des animaux sociaux)
• Implication de faire de sa passion, un job. Comment faire la distinction entre vie privée et travail
• Les clients internationnaux, le voyage, les différentes lois et règles d'impôts, la comptabilité
• Freelance ou petit entreprise ?
• S'adapter à différente sorte de client. (en particulier, comment travailler avec les grandes entreprises que vous approchez ou avec celles qui vous approchent)

Orateurs

Suw Charman

Suw Charman a commencé à apprendre le Gallois depuis avril 98. Elle a dirigé un site Internet qui traite de l'apprentissage du Gallois. Elle créa par la suite son propre business (Get Fluent) qui propose par inscription via email, du matériel d'apprentissage pour le Gallois. Elle a aujourd'hui acquis une grande expérience dans la création et la gestion en freelance.

Stowe Boyd

Connu pour ses écrits sur /Message. Il est obsédé par les outils sociaux et leur impact sur les affaires, les médias et la société. La plus part de son temps est passé à écrire et travailler avec ses clients, il donne aussi des conférences dans différents événement comme Reboot, Lift, Shift, Mesh, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Under The Radar, et Web 2.0 Expo, pour n'en citer que quelques un.

Martin Röll

Martin Röll vit à Dresden en Allemagne.
Il est coach et aide les organisations et les entreprises dans un processus de productivité, de résolution de problème difficile.
Comme par exemple, trouver un équilibre en vie privée et travail, se concentrer sur son travail, savoir définir ses priorités. Il utilise la méthode de David Allen "Getting Things Done" (que nous utilisons aussi à Liquid Concept)

When software design, or communication plans, do not consider the social aspect and individuality of their intended "audience", there is little chance that audience will become an engaged community. Now if the design objective is strictly about efficiency, compliance or risk management, maybe this approach is good enough. If the objective has anything to do with learning, engagement, innovation, etc., consideration of the individual as a social entity becomes critical.

example: I need a new pair of shoes, so I ask my circle of friends what kind to buy - they give me recommendations and if I use one, they get a cut.

So that brings us to Mr. Cuban's new application.

Cuban's approach is distinguished in one significant way: The application introduces commissions to those who display other people's listings and help close sales. By providing even nonsellers with a chance to make money,

I think concept is solid - to me the issue is the same-ol-same-old, how do you get the ads? If Cuban can get the number of ads up - then this could be very interesting.

Reading Stowe Boyd's post this morning, Cult Of Productivity: We Know He's Lying, But Who Cares?, got me thinking again about the whole idea of how we (humans) process information, and is there really such a thing as TMI?

 I think not.

Go back 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, 500 years. Throughout history we have introduced new ways to gather and distribute information; printing press, telegraph, phone, TV, Internet. At each step people complained about too much information.

Now think about it, before all of that, we as humans had to process our daily environment. Can you recall everything you have seen today? Of course not. Our brains already filter the massive amount of information we already receive from our senses. We "see" what we need to see, we "hear" what we need to hear.

Then why is it that we all of a sudden believe that we have to process every email, and every page of every report that crosses our desk? What it is we need is better ways to filter and notice what is important.

There is never TMI, just the myth that we have to process it all.

As to Stowe's commentary, I agree, being stupid about how we filter information is no way to go through life.

Both of these deal with using web 2.0 tools to make our individual lives better (easier? more productive?). Reading these got me to thinking about tools and other approaches. I have an idea for another variation, that I have played with some, but haven't perfected yet. Thanks to Steve and Stowe, I think I now see some improvements I can make in my process to make it viable.

Put it in a Wiki

First I will label my bias, I am partial to SocialText, but what I am describing here will probably work in any wiki.

My first attempt at using a wiki for organization was to build a top page index for each topic/project I was dealing with. It was clumsy and quickly became ineffective.

My approach this time is to create a unique page for each "transaction" I have (a phone call, a thought I want to capture, meeting notes, etc.) With the content documented, I can quickly index it with labels. For:

• a "To Do" that is embedded in the note, I add a "todo" tag
• a reference to a person I was talking to, I add their name as a tag
• a project reference, I add the project name as a tag
• etc.

Now the cool feature in SocialText that I use here is the dynamic ability to create "weblogs" based on tags. If I want to pull out all of my todo's I just pull up the "ToDo Weblog" and everything is listed in traditional reverse chronological order.

 I have lots more to investigate here, but I see real promise in using wikis as a roll-your-own personal organization engine.

My next break came a month ago when I watched a talk given to Google by Suw Charman. About 13.5 minutes into the video she sounded like she could be talking about Phuser! I realised Suw Charman was someone who understood what kind of service we offered so I made contact. She was kind enough to meet me for a chat over a coffee.

I explained the problem we were having - that we had shown that Phuser could work as we intended, for groups of people to plan and discuss privately. The trouble was we had no easy way of introducing new people to all the joys of Phuser so that they could quickly understand how it works. This came back to the problem that there was no public side to where new people could play around and get to grips so that they had the confidence to start their own Private Phuses. 

Suw had a very good analogy explaining how websites like Phuser need to be public in a similar way to buildings like hotels and company headquarters. You enter the building into an open public reception area where people can see what is happening and they can see other people. You then have progressively more private areas like bars or conference rooms and finally you have the most private area, offices or bedrooms. With Phuser we were dropping people straight into the private areas where they couldn't see anyone and were expected to know what they were doing there!

Looking at it like that I could see the problem we had created. For those of you not familiar with Phuser the private areas are called Phuses. Each phuse is like a mini-forum or shared space where you choose who can see it. They are great for making private plans with friends or family and work especially well for cross-border business projects where the team is not in the same place or even time zone but you also need time critical responses. This is where the SMS part of Phuser comes in. You can build each Phuse up with tools for things like finding out when everyone is free or sharing files or photos.

The best thing about Phuser is that you can keep your networks completely separate. You can have two Phuses with different groups of people and neither will know the other exists. Great for client projects which need to be separate or for keeping your friends and family life apart. This idea of separate networks is something Facebook is currently struggling with.

After talking with Suw it became clear how we could have a more public side to Phuser and we set about adding a new feature: Open Phuses. Open Phuses are different to the Private Phuses in that, instead of selecting who is part of the Phuse, anyone in your network of people can join them and take part. Besides helping new users see what Phuser is about they have useful business and social uses for company events and information or discussions with your friends.

To ensure that every new person joining Phuser had something to look at and get involved with we called on our company spokesperson, Mr Phuser. He is now part of every new person's network and he has created a number of Open Phuses about his varied interests (like cheese). When people are ready to use Phuser privately all they have to do is remove Mr Phuser from their network and they are just left with their real contacts. He doesn't get offended as he has plenty of other friends. 

Thanks again Suw! Your advice has had a significant effect on our sign-ups and traffic!

The whole Facebook/Twiter/Pownce/Jaiku storm kicked off and we were going nowhere. Here we had a service which offered more privacy and control over your network than these sites, as well as easy ways to discuss and plan with any group.

Looking for inspiration I contacted Stowe Boyd who by coincidence was going to be in  London the next week. He was happy to meet up and chat over dinner before we went to the Library House after party at the IMAX. I hadn't met Stowe before and found it a pleasure to talk with such an affable veteran of the industry.

I explained how Phuser is this great private social website with practical tools to save you time, frustration and money when planning with a team but that we were struggling to get any traction in the market. Stowe hit the nail on the head: our best strength, privacy and control was also our greatest weakness. There was no public side to Phuser and it was killing us. Without a public side there was no way for the good word of Phuser to spread virally.

Stowe also had another good point. Entrepreneurs don't like to backtrack and reassess the fundamentals of their ideas. But, as they say, when you find you are in a hole, stop digging.

In a further bid to help Stowe kindly offered to buy as much equity as he could afford with the contents of his wallet:

Thanks again Stowe! It took a while to sink in but when it did it set me on a mission.

Firstly, I want to state that I really enjoy Stowe Boyd's blog. I get a lot of brain-food from it and it's something I check most days of the week (though - see previous post - not last week). However, his response to Linda, who argues that being completely switched on to some form of connectivity (Continuous Partial Attention) at all times could lead to a problems (I'm radically over-simplifying - here's her site), is less than constructive.

Here's what she has to say on her site:

"Like so many things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. The latest, greatest powerful technologies have contributed to our feeling increasingly powerless."

Stowe doesn't address that. He takes a five year old quote from an old paper of hers, tells us that she understands her better than she understands herself and that she has somehow declared "war" on "Flow". His view is very much all or nothing - the new race who"get" flow and do nothing else or the (presumably) unevolved humans who don't.

Now I can't actually see an awful lot of difference between "Flow" and "CPA" in some ways but I think that there's a level of sophistication to Linda's views on the subject that Stowe doesn't give her credit for.

"We have focused on managing our time. Our opportunity is to focus on how we manage our attention. We are evolving beyond an always-on lifestyle. As we make choices to turn the technology OFF, to give full attention to others in interactions, to block out interruption-free time, and to use the full range of communication tools more appropriately, we will re-orient our trek toward a path of more engaged attention, more fulfulling relationships, and opportunities for the type of reflection that fuels innovation."

Stowe Boyd claims in his post that

"Linda and many others will tell us it will rot our teeth, disrupt family life, and lead to hair on our palms. I for one am not eager to turn off my devices and pay all my attention to one thing at a time, one moment at a time. There are too many targets on the horizon, too many members of the tribe, and too many jaguars lurking in the shadows for that. In my tribe, we don't do things that way."

I was bought up a strict Catholic and rebelled against dogmatism at an early age. Dogma limits your horizons and ties you into inflexible ways of behaviour and thought that undermine your creativity and stop you from making connections and linkages that might otherwise enrich your life. I don't see that Linda's view of CPA is incompatible with Flow, other than being something that Stowe Boyd doesn't like and I don't think the style of dogmatism he's presenting here does him or his thinking any credit.

I'm also intrigued by his claim that Flow is a reversion to an earlier form of pre-agricultural consciousness, scanning the savannah for predators and looking out for jaguars etc. Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bloodrites makes a persuasive case for the advent of agriculture being one of the factors that led to the development of ceremonies of death and sacrifice as a substitute for the ghosts of those events on the savannah - of being hunted and being the hunter. Of course, those ceremonies rapidly became the preserve of men. So perhaps Stowe Boyd's response is just that - a thoughtlessly atavistic reversion to pre-agricultural norms. Certainly he makes it all sound very macho.

Hopefully he'll re-think this at some point - as I said, it doesn't read like anything produced by the generously spirited writer I'd become accustomed to over the last few months. Linda comments on this at Paticls here (second comment) and there are notes on Stowe Boyd's Reboot presentation at Climb to the Stars, plus the comment by Linda that triggered the whole diatribe.

But as I listen and read more on the topic, it strikes me that "flow" is not something that is new. We may be experiencing flow at a different rate and in the web medium with all of the interactive, social network tools that are emerging around us. But it is fundamentally no different. Look at a trader who uses a Bloomberg terminal while simultaneously processing orders, talking on the phone and listening to CNBC in the background. If that isn't managing flow at a high clock speed, I don't know what is. That has been happening for decades.

Stowe Boyd, posted a video and pdf of his presentation in a recent post; it is worth it if you have 30 minutes to listen to it and not pay total attention while you are doing nine other things.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4649359414711652737]

His premise of connectivity being more important than productivity is an interesting one, the fact that the productivity of your collective network is more critical than one's individual productivity. That is a fundamental shift. My personal belief is the most successful individuals are those that can be a huge catalyst for network propulsion but also attain personal goals and meet individual objectives. I would posit that Stowe himself is that latter, personally successful but a powerful network contributor.

We live in a society where you are judged and viewed on what you personally accomplish (even as a member of a team). Without being able to separate yourself individually, it is impossible to differentiate your contributions to the network than any other member of the network. That is something that we must not lose sight of.

"Flow" and managing one's attention are clearly topic du jour; they are right up there with "information overload". The technologies are enabling us to process an inordinate amount of information fractionally and in short chunks of time. And it does give us a lot to think about regarding our own productivity and focus, and the productivity and focus of our networks.

So does the new emerging world of "flow" cause many to be hyper-productive and gain an individual competitive advantage? Or are we so into the bits and bytes of communication, connections and interaction that we've become so fragmented that we are completely not paying attention to anything? I do and will continue to the former but will certainly keep an eye of on the latter.

Disclaimer: For the past couple of years I’ve been inspired, influenced, and sometimes maddened by some notable folks. To make matters worse, I just finished Scoble and Israel's Naked Conversations. I put this out there only to provide a point of reference as to which flavor of Kool Aide I’ve been drinking.

First and foremost, Dave Winer. He's someone I heard about in the mid-80s when he had an innovative software company called Living Videotext. He continues to innovate in big ways. Next is my dear friend Renee Blodgett, as inspiring a character as I’ve ever met. She helped me understand what blogs can do for businesses. Stowe Boyd is noteable as much for his technology insights as for his humanness and “no assholes” philosophy. A cause I can endorse. Batting cleanup is Marc Canter. Marc and I have had an off and on association that has lasted over 20 years. He's my nomination for comeback entreprenuer of the year.