Does anyone else have a problem with Facebook loading? I find that at least 50% of the time that I click on the links in a Facebook email, it doesn’t log me into the system. Don’t get me wrong, I am totally impressed by the growth of Facebook and business acumen of Zuckerberg and his advisers, but if your company has that many users and that much money, shouldn’t you get the page loading working?

I am in Facebook to explore and learn, I haven’t yet figured out why I love it. I know my brother, who is a senior in college is addicted, but I am still haven’t figured out what problem Facebook is solving for me. For now, I will stick with it and learn from the excellent UI and business execution. That said the only social network that remains truly interesting to me right now is LinkedIN.

Thoughts?

This is your brain on fundraising

I am looking forward to moving past the crushing stage.

Hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I had a really nice few days with my family in Chicago and also got the chance to meet with some interesting folks who I am looking forward to getting involved in PlansForUs.

In other news, we are in the middle of raising our seed round and thanks to the input on our presentation from this blog’s readers, we are getting a really nice response to our presentation from investors.

Here are a few things that I came across over the last few days and found interesting:

Jens Lekman-You Can Call Me Al
This is a superior cover of an already great song and has quickly become my wife’s favorite track. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig
How do you deal with issues of copyright in a world where information so freely moves about? It is a big question that we see grappled with rather inarticulately by the RIAA and Viacom among others. Mr. Lessig’s book is well worth a read for anyone, as it lays out the huge challenges faced by owners of intellectual property. A challenge that is fundamental though not unprecedented. Interestingly enough I am not getting bogged down as I have in the past with these types of books.

Tatebanko-
Not quite sure what this is, but in my search for creative Christmas gifts this popped up on the radar. Thoughts?

Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation by George Siemens
This has been around for awhile and as someone exploring Educational Technology I should probably not admit that I just got around to reading this, but that’s the case. Educational Technology and it’s advocates are a fascinating and passionate bunch who I have learned much from, though I do often cringe at the relentless pursuit of the new/new by these folks. Regardless, I had a favorite quote from the piece:

The tipping point occurs when the node itself has created a strong enough network to begin to influence the entire thought process (neural network). Once it is no longer a rogue node, it continues to embed itself as node that is used by the rest of the network.

I’ll let you read the piece to place the quote in context.

Finally, this piece
Overcoming Bias-Are Almost All Investors Biased?

Enjoy.

Last week I posted a presentation that I had been working on for awhile and asked for your feedback on how it might be improved. Thanks to my partner Steve, friends, family and the vibrant NextNY Community, I got that feedback. This presentation is still kicking around among a few friends and colleagues and I look forward to integrating their feedback, but in the meantime I wanted to show you the improved presentation. I am thinking of adding my notes into the comments section for each slide, but I am not too keen on adding an audio track. If you have any opinion on either the notes or the audio track, please let me know.

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I look forward to your comments.

I just want to throw out an electoral prediction based on nothing more than my new found enthusiasm for Barack and an interesting editorial from David Brooks.

The November 2008 election is going to be….. Obama v McCain

This ballot presents all sorts of interesting generational differences, beyond just the obvious policy differences. We will just have to see if I am right. Put your prediction in now in the comments, if you get it right, I’ll send you the book I am reading at the time…lucky you.

I know that I still haven’t answered my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Teacher’s Needs question, nor have I posted the updated presentation. The presentation should be up by the end of the week. The hierarchy of needs may take a little bit longer.

I read a post in VentureBeat today. It is entitled “Exclusive: Barack Obama to name a Chief Technology Officer.” I know, I know the title is riveting.
OK, back to it. First off, I am not a member of One Million Strong for Barack. Also, I am pretty sure that I am going to keep my political opinions to myself in this polarized age, since my views liberal/conservative/independent don’t offer a whole lot of upside to PlansForUs.

Here is the statement to help set-up the whole discussion:

The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.

This is just fascinating.

I. OPEN GOVERNMENT

He wants Cabinet officials, government executives and rulemaking agencies to hold meeting that are open to the public and transmitted with a live feed. The CTO’s mandate will be to ensure this happens. Specifically, Obama wants the public to be able to comment on the White House website for five days before legislation is signed.

Look, I don’t know if this going to just be edited crap and it ends up as a PR stunt, but the notion is really fascinating. What happens when you link this data dump with the media amplifiers or data management software, you could have some really interesting stuff come out of this. With filtering technologies, we could all become Tim Russert (for better or for worse) as we search the government data dump for inconsistencies. Even more interesting, how does freeing this information effect accountability and transparency? Is there a historical precedent?
The one policy that is stupid is the Privacy policy, but I guess every candidate has to have a position to save our children from the pandora’s box of content that the Internet has unleashed.

Obama is a pretty interesting dude and his message definitely resonates. Looking forward to the next few months of the campaigns. What are your thoughts?

I like these quick hits because they give me a chance to clear my mind and share something that is not directly related to the daunting work of getting PlansForUs off the ground. No one really tells you how hard it’s going to be, but man, there are just a litany of issues, particularly as a 1st timer.

Anyway, last night my beautiful wife and I made a great dinner, albeit an utterly gluttonous one, that had us both staring blankly by the end. This is a rarity at our home, because there is a lot of great take out in Union Square and most importantly…we don’t have a dishwasher. So without further ado here is our meal from last night.

Garlic and Olive Oil Smashed Potatoes-Really good, easy, fresh potatoes. With that said it took us about 20-25 minutes to get our potatoes properly tender.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts-These are just ridiculous. We have them all the time, they are easy and so good it is astounding. Also, it ends up that they are really good for you. A bonus.

Burgers-I am from the Midwest, so it is rare that a meal goes by without it including some sort of meat. As you can see, this meal was consistent with that theme.

Berger Blauer Zweigelt 2006-This wine is cheap and good. The linked review does a better job of describing the flavors. I can just tell you that my wife and I enjoyed it very much. A bonus feature to this wine is that they use a bottle cap to “cork” the wine. Really kind of awesome.

There is a question going around the NextNY forums about blogs as labors of love…I will admit that this blog is absolutely a labor of love. That said I would always love to hear from my readers, it makes me feel awesome to see a comment in the morning, or to see a new reader on my Feedburner or MyBlogLog.

Enjoy the weekend, I’ll be seeing a near complete look at our new PlansForUs wireframe design, which will really improve our user experience. Looking forward to it.

Quick Hits, is a way to blast out a couple of recommendations music, books, food, movies or otherwise. Hope you enjoy.
I am currently in the midst of reading three books. I will admit that the reason I am reading three is because at least two require a great deal of concentration and subsequently I am resigned to reading those two on the weekends, when I have more energy and time.

On Intelligence-Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakesee
I figure by better understanding the natural inclinations of the brain, I can improve how I think about executing the functions of PlansForUs. Perhaps we get a natural viral boost if we model our systems on human biology. I have no idea, but this book is not a bad place to start that line of inquiry. Jeff also was the founder of Palm and Handspring, so there are some interesting insights into the brain of an entrepreneur.

Einstein: His Life and Universe-Walter Isaacson 

An exhaustive biography of a very influential man. In the age before entrepreneurship really blossomed, it would seem that Einstein had the make up of an entrepreneur. He had the ego, energy and intelligence and it is interesting to chart his path. This book is exhaustive and consequently has been slow going…however Einstein is a fascinating character.

The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini 

We have owned this book for some time and my wife thoroughly enjoyed it. I began the book this week as a consequence of the following two events. On Intelligence and Einstein were killing me and my wife told me that the movie for the Kite Runner was coming out soon. It is a great book and I am enjoying it thoroughly.

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of quick hits.

Scott Heiferman the founder and CEO of Meetup wrote a great piece a week ago on why he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to running a tech company in NYC. My favorite line:

I love New York. And I’ve got a great company to grow. Silicon Valley Companies succeed because of who they are, how they are, why they are… not where they are. It’s just been a coincidence. The non-SV companies haven’t had the right who/how/why. A company that NEEDS to exist  — a company with a vital purpose to serve milions of people’s real needs — will attract the people to bring it to life — and it can exist anywhere.

I also love New York and could think of no other place in the world that is a better fit for a company like PlansForUs. Now back to hammering on Steve to fulfill our users needs.

Back in August a guy named Charlie O’Donnell tested an interesting tactic for garnering attention and feedback on a business that he was starting called Path101. At the time I wrote a quick blog entry admiring the tactic. The tactic, defined as Anti-Stealth, has been an unqualified success for Charlie as he generated significant interest in his business, found a technical partner, refined his presentation and successfully raised an angel round of funding. A consequence of this tactic has been an ongoing discussion within the NYC entrepreneur community about the business effect of this tactic.

Steve and I have always maintained an anti-stealth bias due to our shared belief in the effectiveness of agile development. Our first act of anti-stealth was launching PlansForUs as soon as we had a working set of tools, exposing ourselves as quickly as possible to feedback. Given that our target market, K12 teachers, has a reputation for a lack of tech awareness this was a risk…but it has paid dividends as we embark on our second iteration with a much better understanding of how teachers might interact and use a tool like PlansForUs. With our second iteration underway, a growing user base and a need to increase our development cycles we need to find our seed-stage financing. This leads us to our second act of Anti-Stealth; revealing our investor presentation to readers of this blog…I know the anticipation is building.

By revealing our investor presentation, we also want to better understand a fundamental question of the anti-stealth tactic, if you do not have 1,000+ readers on your blog would it still work as well?

I have 13 subscribers to my blog, went to Colgate, New Trier HS (Winnetka, IL) and play hoops at Stuy Town. Those are a few of my primary networks, so lets find out if this blog can spread the word on PlansForUs beyond these networks. I promise to give full disclosure on how this plays out. So with the lead of Charlie’s anti-stealth movement and our own agile leanings we offer you our investor presentation (slightly modified).

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As for anti-stealth, we will continue to play around with this concept as an outgrowth of our convictions that agile development is the most efficient path towards success.

I have been pondering this thought off and on after I saw Jack Welch on CNBC a few mornings ago. Now, to be honest I am less interested specifically in what Jack Welch the person would do (though if you want to leave a comment with the answer Mr. Welch, then I would be honored), but what a personality type like Jack Welch would choose to do if he graduated today.

I mean he got his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering but from his biography seemed to revel more in the social than academic aspects of higher education. So my question is, would Jack Welch still go to work for GE today? or Would he do something else? and what would that something else be?

Enjoy the day.

I apologize my relative quiet on the blogging front. Your regular dose of Tyler was most likely a highlight of your day, but I have been consumed with fundraising for PlansForUs. Next week I will share our fundraising deck, so that you can have a better sense of what we are thinking from a long term perspective.

Having grown up amidst relative affluence I had actually, silly me, thought that the fundraising would be a piece of cake…not the case. Needless to say, I am learning a ton and reaching deeply into my network which has been really great, as I have been able to reconnect with some folks that I had not spoken to in some time.

As for the first part of my title…Do you ever watch No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain? It is on the National Geographic channel and it is absolutely brilliant. I did not know who Anthony Bourdain was until I saw him as a judge on Top Chef. When I saw that he had a show, I figured it would be worth putting on the DVR. A couple shows came and went and then I sat down and watched one. Woah, it’s awesome.

In the show, Tony travels to locales foreign and domestic eating the local food with a heavy focus on street food. The characters that he meets and the food that he eats by adopting this very local style of travel is inspiring. I remember when my wife and I were in Vienna, Austria for a friend’s wedding and yearned to break out from the tourist district and get into the real, local style of Vienna. It is that same yearning that is realized every week on No Reservations.

If you like food and travel then I think you’ll love this show…if you don’t, well then maybe this show is not for you.