EightBlack.

Charlene Li from Forrester interviews Max Levchin from Slide at the first Keynote of the Expo.

I only recently learned who Max was - which is probably the way he likes it. Fame and fortune came his way with the creation of PayPal and he gracefully exited PayPal with US$1.5 billon of eBay’s money.

Most entrepreneurs in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief when Max recounted the 4 failed start-ups and an obliterated credit history before finding success with PayPal.

He’s clearly excited about the future of Slide. Who wouldn’t be given the mass exposure their applications receive within Facebook. According tho the Slide website they reach 144 million global viewers each and every month and have 30% of the US internet audience. (Slide make those zany applications like Funwall and Superpoke).

Max strikes me as still the sort of guy who doesn’t really know what all the fuss is about, is clearly uncomfortable about the fame and attention and simply wants to get on with his quiet world domination plans.

Bravo.

My poor MacBook Air is struggling under the weight of video content from yesterday. That along with my jet-lag and I’m running behind.

Anyway, coming shortly is the Keynote from Day One with Tim O’Reilly (founder of the Web 2.0 Conference Series) and an interview with Charlene Li (from Forrester) and Max Levchin from PayPal fortune and now the driving force behind Slide.

I thought Max’s session was great. Especially the part about him failing miserably at the first 4 start-ups (before he hit pay dirt with PayPal) and ruining his credit history. I doubt though he’ll need anyone else’s money anytime soon though.

Standby for the videos. It will be up on Blip.tv soon and posted here shortly.

Coming later today will be Marc Andreessen with John Battelle, Mitchell Brown from Mozilla and Jonathan Zittrain from Oxford University.

This interview actually happened by accident. A lot of the good ones normally do.

Day One at Web 2.0 is always a little quiet as the Expo doesn’t actually start until Wednesday. Today - there are just 2 workshops. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. I still think about 1000 people show up though.

I sat through Jeff Clavier and Rob Hayes presentation on “Starting Up: Strategies for Financing and Growing Your Web 2.0 Start-up”.

I’ve actually seen this before - but there’s always something to learn.

Anyway, at the end of the session, I was waiting in line to ask Rob if he’d mind me interviewing him for the blog. The guy who spoke with Rob before me was Christian Sepulveda. I was intrigued by his story and the effort he went to attend.

Christian is from Santiago in Chile. And the Chilean government, in their wisdom, sponsored 14 budding entrepreneurs and sent them to Web 2.0. Bravo is all I say.

Christian also managed to convince his government to back his own start up - Ubiqq, to the tune of US$80,000. More Bravo.

The Web 2.0 Expo attracts a lot of “headline” acts. But it also attracts quiet achievers like Christian, who make a herculean effort to attend. And I don’t care where on earth you come from, entrepreneurs are all the same - they have that glimmer in the eye and that strong desire to succeed.

It was clearly evident in Christian’s eyes from the very first moment we spoke.

Clearly, Web 2.0 is attracting more and more people from around the world. And that’s a good thing. Now if we could only get more VC’s to countries like Asia and Latin America, that would be even better.

One of the best things about being stuck in a plane for 14 hours is that it gives you time to think. And clean out your inbox.

I remember when Dave used to work with me, he would just cringe every time I went away. Too much time on my own, perhaps the odd glass of wine or 10 and a lack of oxygen gave me the impetus to write a gazillion emails and then fire them off to him when I reached a wi-fi connection at the other end.

He was always good natured about it. But I reckon he used to think “what a pain in the arse he is”.

You know those stories you hear where exciting things have happened to people when they’ve flown long haul - well, I don’t think they’re true. Jessica Alba has never been on any plane I’ve been on. I’ve never had anyone remotely gorgeous sit next to me (and if they did, they promptly moved), and nothing even anywhere near terrifying has happened, apart from getting into a fight with a drunk Russian on a Qantas flight from Singapore one day.

Oh, I nearly forgot.

There was a time when our son was only a baby and I had to take him to the bathroom to change his nappy. How on earth you’re supposed to perform a task like that in a toilet the size of a shoebox is beyond me. This one had one of those folding tables in it. How hard can it be - I thought.

So, I put him on the table, removed the nappy (this was only the 3rd nappy I had ever changed mind you) and then, much to my horror, a piece of poo fell out and started rolling around the place. The little prick started giggling. I started to panic and wave my arms. But no one could see. I then started yelling loudly. But no one came and my wife was in a coma, out cold, safely back in her seat.

So I pushed the button. The one you’re supposed to push if the toilet explodes or your kidneys get sucked down the toilet bowl after you flush it.

What else was I supposed to do? Touch it? Pick it up? No way.

All of a sudden, there were 3 flying mattresses knocking on the door, thinking something dreadful had happened. Which it had, if you asked me.

Son was still laughing, only because he was now naked from the waist down and he could see I was clearly in a state of panic. I opened the door and at the same time, screamed for assistance.

Suffice to say, I was not met with the most sympathetic of audiences. My wife to this day, still cannot believe it happened. It is probably one of the reasons that after 10 years of marriage she still uses her maiden name.

Anyway. Back to plane travel. And a lack of exciting things happening. Not once have I ever been on an action packed flight.

No massive clear air turbulence. No wing falling off. Nothing bursting into flames. No air marshall running down the aisle, gun drawn and yelling for assistance. And I’ve flown a shitload. Easily 3 million miles. No worries.

I suppose I should be grateful.

So this post was written at 32,000 feet. While I was sober. And semi-awake. With complete tranquility onboard.

I decided to put a link to all the great content I’ve collected over the past 12-months. Some of it has to do with the web. And some not.

Like the session with Seth late last year. Like this piece on how to be creative from Hugh McLeod.

Or like this manifesto written by the legendary Tom Peters.

We all suffer from information overload. The web has seen to that. And Google has made sure of it.

But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share it. What a great reason to start a blog (if you don’t have one already).

We’re all sitting on great content - its on our hard drives. Time to set it free and then move on.

And as the saying goes - I’ve shown you mine. Now it’s time to show me yours.

Ok, so call me old fashioned. Or technically challenged. My 7 year old son would agree on both counts.

One of the things I’m going to make a concerted effort to explore and understand at Web 2.0 is Twitter. No doubt, they’ll have plasma screens plastered all over the joint, showing “live” Twitter conversations.

And until last week, I was sort of trying to ignore it. Along with a hundred other things. Then I got this email from Dave Taylor, one smart dude and one of the founders of the highly successful Blogworld Expo event.

Anyway, much clearer now. Thanks Dave.

I’ve re-printed his email below. See if it makes sense to you…

The world of blogging proceeds apace, and there are even new
Fortune 500 corporations jumping into the blogging space in these first few
months of 2008, which either means that it’s a great validation of the
marketplace or a proof that things are getting a bit musty and unexciting.
Or maybe both.

Truth be told, some of the old guard in the blogosphere are finding that
it’s harder to stay focused on creating so-called long-tail content because
they’re being sidetracked by new microblogging systems out there, most
notably Twitter.

Blogging started out as personal diaries, and even now when I speak with
different organizations about blogging, someone invariably says “isn’t that
just personal diaries and stuff?” It’s not. Just for the record, blogs are
tools and more sites than you realize are now using a blog backend to manage
the publication of their information and pages.

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to go back in time a decade and be one of the
very first bloggers out there? Unfortunately, I can’t turn back the dial on
your clock, but in a very similar way, Twitter is at its early stage and
jumping aboard now can reap rather surprising benefits.

The big difference is that Twitter is like blogging one sentence at a time.

No worries about being too long-winded but rather the challenge of conveying
interesting and fun concepts, engaging ideas in less than 140 characters.
Ten to fifty times a day. Or more!

Most people are using Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/ - to send out daily
updates on their personal life (remember, I told you it was like the early
days of blogging) but some of us are figuring out that it has far greater
potential to communicate with a core audience of engaged followers, of
people who pay attention to you and who want to know what you’re doing and
what’s new with your business.

My Twitter account is http://Twitter.com/DaveTaylor and if you look at my
page, you’ll see I have over 700 people who pay attention to what I’m
sending out. That means that when I write a blog post now, I promptly
twitter about the new page and instantly see dozens to hundreds of thought
and opinion leaders hop over to my blog and read it, add comments, and often
blog about my postings on their own weblogs.

Let me say that again: when I publish blog entries, I update the hundreds of
followers I have on Twitter and *instantly* see a spike in traffic.

There’s so much more to Twitter, which I’ll talk about in the next issue of
Blogsmart News, but for now, sign up and start following people who are in
your marketspace and start sending out short updates of your own to
demonstrate you’re an engaging member of your community!

See ya online. Both on Twitter and my blogs, of course!

Dave Taylor
——————————————————————–
Intuitive Systems: Online Strategies and Communications
——————————————————————–
Innovative Business Thinking @ http://www.intuitive.com/blog/

ps: Want to connect with me on a social network? Here’s how:

Facebook: http://profile.to/d1taylor
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/DaveTaylor
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/d1taylor
Digg: http://digg.com/users/d1taylor
Twitter: http://Twitter.com/DaveTaylor

I don’t know about you - but now more than ever, good people are hard to find. Especially to fill this slot. If anyone has someone they can recommend, there’s a $2500 finders fee attached.

There’s an often used saying in the online world that “content is king”. Especially when it relates to search. And even more so perhaps when you you talk email marketing.

I don’t know if you are like me - but my inbox is somewhat out of control. It’s the culmination of being online for a while, for being on far too many email lists and for some sort of delusional fear that I have that if I “opt-out” of something, I may miss out.

So, my inbox keeps swelling. And I never get to digest the content.

About a week ago, I received an email from a marketer I respect. This guy is an exceptional copywriter. He’s also got very solid credentials in the internet marketing space, save for a couple of “unresolved issues”, of which I won’t bore you with now.

Well, ok, I will.

You see, this guy IS an authority - there’s no disputing that. But the problem is that HE thinks not enough people give him credit for being the pioneer. And this comes out in virtually everything he says and does - both verbally and in writing.

Anyway, that’s not my point.

My point is this. In an email he sent last week, he suggested to his followers that they opt-out of virtually every list they are on and just stay with the sources of information they truly value. Which I thought was solid advice. So last week, I started unsubscribing to everything that was of little value (or simply a pitch fest).

More importantly, through this guy above I met Perry Marshall. That was way back at the end of 2003. Now, those of you who have anything to do with Google AdWords, will know of Perry Marshall. He needs no introduction. Here he is.

If someone said to me - “ok, you can only listen/subscribe/engage with just ONE marketer, choose carefully”, then I would probably choose Perry.

This morning, he sent this email. I think it resonates perfectly with the work we are doing at the moment with our clients and it struck me that what Perry outlines is 100% spot on. That “context” rather than “content” is way more important.

I’ve copied the email word for word below. I thought it was a great story.

Simon,

Earlier this year a fascinating experiment was
conducted in Washington D.C.: World-
renowned violinist Joshua Bell, who wows
thousands at venues like Boston’s Symphony
Hall and performs with the world’s top orchestras;
shows up in the Washington D.C. subway in blue
jeans and a baseball cap … toting a violin case.

Stradivarius in hand (1713 vintage, original finish,
$3.5 million purchase price), Bell plays Bach’s
Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor. One
of the most difficult violin pieces ever composed.

Object of experiment: To find out: would anybody
stop and listen? Would anyone toss money in his
violin case? Would anybody take note that one of
the world’s most prodigiously talented musicians
was performing the world’s greatest music on one
of history’s finest instruments… if it didn’t happen in
the familiar surroundings of a concert hall?

They asked Leonard Slatkin, director of the National
Symphony Orchestra, what he thought would happen.
He estimated that if 1000 people walked by, at least 30
would take note. He figured Josh would collect $150.

The entire passionate 45-minute performance was
caught on hidden camera, and the results were carefully
recorded. Out of 1070 people who passed by:

-Seven people listened for more than one minute
-27 gave money, most without stopping to listen
-No crowd ever gathered at any time
-Bell collected 32 dollars and change

In reporting this story the Washington Post waxed long
and eloquent on why the commuters failed to recognize
the force of Bell’s talent. It quoted philosophers Kant,
Hume and Liebniz, contemplating the very meaning of
art itself.

But as a marketer I can’t imagine a more perfect setup
that proves the overriding priority of context. A whole host
of factors prove to be vastly more important than the skill of the musician, the difficulty of the composition or the quality of his instrument:

1) The time of day
2) The mental state of the listeners
3) How long people can listen
4) How much they paid to be there
5) What the violinist is wearing
6) Whether he’s in a symphony hall or not
7) The acoustics
8 Whether everyone is wearing tuxedos and evening gowns or not
9) Whether they know he’s world-famous or not
10) Whether they recognize the difficulty of the composition or not
11) Whether there’s a conductor or not
12) Whether the conductor is famous
13) Whether they know the violin is a $3.5 million Stradivarius or not
14) Whether the last violinist they saw was homeless or not
15) What’s announced on the PA
16) Whether there’s seating available or not
17) How quiet the hall was when the concert began
18) The amount of external noise and commotion

Bluntly, from an artistic point of view this experiment was a dismal failure. A man in a tux carrying a cello through an orchestra hall will look like a musician even if he’s never played a note in his life. And he’ll command vastly more respect than any virtuoso in a baseball cap on a subway.

Just goes to show ya: the packaging, context and positioning of everything you do takes on the profoundest
importance. The chief factor that allows Starbucks to charge $4 for a latte is the cup and the atmosphere of the store. NOT the coffee.

The core virtues of the coffee matter only after you have created a context in which they can be fully appreciated.

Finally, this is another means to recognize that when you spend money on a promotion and it flops, two-thirds - or maybe nineteen-twentieths - of its success hinges on the state of mind of the prospects at the time they received your communication. Including, literally, what was going on in the room at the time your communication showed up.

Context is everything.

Perry Marshall

P.S. I’m inviting you to come visit me in just a few weeks, at my home office right here in Chicago and spend a couple of days with me. You and I will roll up our sleeves and work together. Before you go home, your website, your sales process, your Google Ad campaigns and your marketing strategy are going to be measurably, demonstrably superior.

Only 2 seats remain for each of the 4-Man intensives I’m doing in April. Apply here:

http://www.perrymarshall.com/adwords/roundtable.htm

Do yourself a favour. If you aren’t on Perry’s list, opt-in now. You won’t regret it.

PS. No affiliate links used in the above.

This year, we’ve got a lot lined up for our video series. Plenty of guest speakers, plenty to cover. Here’s an up to date chat with Australia’s leading Wordpress authority, James Farmer.

We talk about the latest investment into Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg and the entity behind Wordpress. He’s now a little better off, thanks to a cash injection of some US$29.5 million.

Stay tuned for more video content. And if there’s someone or something you’d like covered, drop me a line.

Click To Play

Ok, this is the last of the video series from Blogworld Expo. The hard disk space on my Mac is about to run out! And my digital camera is exhausted. The session, titled “Going Global With New Media” was presented by Des Walsh (an Aussie) and Rich Brooks (A US based internet marketing consultant).

For those of you who were there, I edited out the start - where Des and Rich were mucking around with Second Life and they couldn’t quite get the demo to work. Frankly, I can’t get my head around Second Life. To be honest, I have enough trouble with my first life to worry about another one.

There were some interesting questions from the audience, and the whole one hour 20 minute presentation was more like a group of friends sitting around having a dinner party conversation. Which was a whole lot better. Except for the fact that we weren’t drunk.

I was intrigued by a question from the enigmatic Scott Allen. He asked “Since we’re talking about global, what do the non Americans in the room think of they way Americans do business”. Or something close to that.

I pulled out the question in a separate clip.

Click To Play

I bit my lip. You have to remember that I’m married to an American and I learned long ago that if I wanted to have any sort of sex life at all, I had better be careful of what I say about the “mother land” and the gun slinging Texan of a President. Actually, my wife thinks he’s a buffoon, but let’s not go there.

(Now look what’s happened, I’ve just committed the cardinal sin. Blog etiquette says that you’re not supposed to talk about sex or politics and I’ve just mentioned both in the same paragraph).

Anyway.

Des Walsh is a fountain of knowledge and Rich clearly knows his stuff. It was interesting to note that before their presentation in Vegas, neither Rich nor Des had actually met, forcing them to depend on the technologies that were at the very centre of their presentation to this audience.

Des had also just presented at AdTech China, along with Corporate Blogging Guru, Debbie Weil.

This was a good session to immerse yourself in. It’s worth watching the video in its entirety. It’s solid in content and Des and Rich presented well together.

Let me know what you think. And more on Des Walsh here and Rich Brooks here and here.

My disclaimer right up front with this post is that I’m an Aussie, so my understanding and appreciation of American sports is limited. I know Mark Cuban first and foremost as a prolific and outspoken blogger, and not the even more (apparently), loud and obnoxious owner of the Dallas Mavericks. (How some guy parts with $285 million for a basketball team in Texas which is made up of tall skinny blokes who run around and play basketball is beyond me. But hey, it’s his money).

Given that 50% of the audience who reads my humble blog reside in the US, let me digress for a minute.

I remember when I used to live in the states, being exposed to the passion that is College football so I do have some appreciation for how Americans love their sports.

I lived in Omaha (okay, laugh if you will) and as soon as we moved into our new house, a very large guy came to the door with a 12-gauge shotgun and a Cornhuskers sweatshirt and some beer holders. Apparently, in Nebraska, that’s how you welcome people to the neighborhood.

I sort of didn’t argue. I welcomed him in and then thought, “Oh christ, he’s going to want a beer now and the last thing I want to do is drink a Bud Light with guy holding a small canon”. I wasn’t scared of getting shot. My wife has threatened to shoot me many times. What I was fearful of was inhaling something called a Bud Light - which is sort of like drinking stale cats pee filtered through a jockstrap.

He then said both the gun and Cornhuskers stuff were mine to keep. I sort of got the impression that if I wanted to root for another team, that really wasn’t an option. Which it wasn’t.

I became good friends with my new neighbour and once when we were out driving, I asked him “Hey Jay, what’s all the fuss about Tom Osborne”. Tom Osborne, for the visually impaired, used to be the coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Apparently, in the Nebraska version of the bible, when it refers to the “Good Lord”, it actually refers to Osborne, and not the other guy. I continued. “Hey Jay, what if I walked into that bar over there and yelled out at the top of my voice….”Tom Osborne has sex with goats!”".

He didn’t smile. He just turned to me and said…”Well, if you did make it out alive and without being shot 22 times while running for the door, you’d survive just long enough until someone called Billy Bob or Thelma tied you to the back of a pick up and drove you all the way to Iowa”.

Holy cow, how the hell did we end up talking about Tom Osborne, sex and goats.

Sorry. I digressed.

Anyway, back to Mark Cuban. His closing speech at Blogworld, in front of a packed house of over 1000 people would have made his PR agency proud. I thought he spoke exceptionally well. He’s likeable, he can handle a crowd, he know’s his technology stuff and he speaks his mind. As soon as he finished, the questions came thick and fast and would have kept going until they turned off the lights (which they nearly had to do).

When I say “likeable”, I mean that in a cheeky, roguish sort of way. Cuban would be the guy your wife would worry about you being out late with - because at the very least, a lot of alcohol, strippers, tequila shots, more strippers and the odd bar fight would definitely be involved. And that’d be before the night really got started.

Mind you, this is the second time in the last month that I have heard 2 billionaires talk to roughly the same size audience. The first was John Doerr (who was amazing). And now Cuban. It makes me think that being a billionaire can’t be all that bad.

Cuban has been blogging since 2003 and during that time, has generated both a groundswell of support for his cause (and rants) and an army of hatred against his beloved basketball team, his ability to dance (or lack of) and everything else in between. Cuban was a recent finalist on the US version of “Dancing With The Stars”. His partner was Aussie Kym Johnson. I never saw it but you can just tell that him not making it past the 4th week really urked him.

If you look at any of his recent blog posts, the guy gets an absolute boatload of responses and comments. We’re talkin’ three or four hundred sometime. Per post.

One thing is for sure - he hates losing. At anything. He’d be tough to work for because the same demands he’d put on himself, would probably be placed on you. But this is an unfair assumption that I’m just making up. He might be a sane, rational, likeable, generous boss.

Hollywood makes movies about guys like Cuban. He’s all American. He thinks he’s indestructible. And he’s incredibly popular - either positively or negatively.

One thing is undisputable. The guy knows how to blog.

The video above is around an hour and fifteen. Just do me a favour though. If you’re going to sit down and watch it with a drink, please, please, grab anything but a Bud Light. Enjoy.