Conferences and Startups

View from the conference hotel

When you are a pre-revenue startup, attending a conference can be one of your largest out-of pocket expenses. Is it worth it?

I attended my first conference for TheBlogFrog this weekend. I won't go into all the business relationships, interviews, and specifics here, you can see those at the BlogFrog Update Headquarters. Instead I thought I would post what I learned about conferences from a startup perspective:

Face-to-Face is best. No matter how social the internet gets, a face-to-face meeting will always be 10 times better than an email. Previously in our companies lifetime we had emailed many potential cllients and these emails were largely ignored. At the conference there was plenty of down time where people were looking for someone to talk to.

Schwag works, if you do it right. We had some great inexpensive schwag to hand out and it really made a difference. Many great introductions came because people really wanted our adorable kids t-shirt.

Location makes a big difference. Even though many attendees may never venture outside the venue, the location sets the tone and feel for the conference. I loved Chicago. I even liked it better than New York because it is more open, the people are nicer, and it smells better.

Content is still important. This particular conference chose to go with an "All Panel" format. Panels are tough to do well. I would have much preferred a scripted presentation format.

Get out of your comfort zone. Author Tim Ferris says that how sucessful you are will be directly related to how many uncomfortable situations you are willing to put yourself in. Your natural instincts will usually be introverted. Extroverted is the more difficult choice. (This is also made more difficult by the face that I was one of 20 men at a conference of 1500 people)

An exciting weekend at an exciting conference. I can't wait to do it again!

The Trouble with High School

This is a pretty loaded title for a blog post. Undoubtedly there are lots of problems with high school, as you would expect from any large social institution. But I want to highlight one problem in particular - and that is a corrupted high school social economy.

I recently volounteered leading outdoor trips for a group of 17 year old boy scouts. They were great hardworking kids, the kind of person that will make great employees when they are older, but they were largely alienated in their High School because they were "too good". What I would tell them is "High School is NOT the real world".

The real world has an economy that rewards people for hard work, creative thinking, and being a team player. The problem is that the high school "social economy" seems to reward the exact opposite of the real world. As an example: a hard working, team player who is nice to everyone would get promoted quickly in the corporate world. This same person in high school would be labeled a "goody-two-shoes" or a "geek" by the majority of his classmates.

The Real World Rewards	High School Rewards
Hard Work	Achieving without trying
Getting along with those you don't like	Picking on those who are different
Respect for authority (your boss)	Disrespect for authority
Follow procedures or change them	Any rule is bad

I worry that some kids get the feeling that this is how the real world works so they spend their energy developing the wrong skills and values. I was one of these kids. I was a relatively good kid most of high school- excelling at school, being nice to everyone and the sort. Then I finally got frustrated that being good "wasn't getting me anywhere" so I started slacking off, etc. In short I became a typical high schooler. When I got into the real world I had to "unlearn" these habits and reprogram myself on what traits are truly valuable.

I'm not sure if we can do anything about the mob mentality of high schoolers, but we can at least tell teenagers that what others value in high school is not necessarily what the real world values. At least, this seemed to really help the group of high schoolers I was working with.

Creative Response to a Job Posting

TheBlogFrog is looking for a programmer, speciffically a .NET developer. But not just any developer, we're looking for an all-star or "rockstar" programmer. I posted a job listing in Craigslist for a "Rockstar Programmer" and this is one response I got:

I am applying for the Rockstar ASP.NET Web Developer.

As a Rockstar, I sleep in till 3 in the afternoon, assault women with fish, throw televisions out of my window, and drive my car into pools. But hey, that's life in the fast lane! Web developing? Well, if i have some time between groupies, sure. But who has time for developing enterprise level web applications in a multi user environment when I can have two chicks at the same time (what else would you do with a million dollars?).

Why would the life of a Rockstar be incongruous with a career that stresses methodicalism, innovation, and above all professionalism?

So, if you're interested, I'll stop by; I'm touring with Winger and Whitesnake right now. But in between snorting coke off of hookers and riding my motorcycle up hotel stairwells, I enjoy the object oriented nature of the Microsoft's .Net framework in a server-side environment. If John Bonham and Linus Torvalds had a kid, it'd be me.

Very clever! However there wasn't even a resume attached. Apparently he didn't want the job he just couldn't resist being so funny!

Who are John Bonham and Linus Torvalds?

Colorado's 14ers

I pulled my jacket out at 14,096 ft and this was in the pocket

Colorado has 53 peaks above 14,000 ft. I grew up next to a mountain I thought was the tallest in the world, yet it measures a mere 11,749 ft. Since we've moved here I've taken to "baggin 14ers". Here is my progress so far:

1. Mt. Yale (attempted - Sawatch Range, 14,196 ft): This was my first 14er attempt. We went up the wrong side and instead of an easy class 2 ascent, it was a class 3/4 scramble across loose shale at 13,000 ft. Most of us, myself included, decided to call it good on one of the many "false summits" (another plague of 14ers). Those who did make it to the top were greeted by 10 year-olds with Teddy bears who had climbed up the correct way.
2. Mt. Harvard (sawatch Range, 14,420 ft): My first true 14er. This one was really neat because it was extremely rocky, but people had actually carved stairs out of the rocks. The last 100 feet is a wild scramble up the side of a boulder.
3. Huron Peak (sawatch Range, 14,003 ft): This was the first part of a trip where we bagged five 14ers in five days. We started up the wrong trail and were at 12,000 ft before we realized we were trying to summit the wrong peak. We bushwacked (hiked without a trail) for about 2 miles before we found the trail. Barely made it to the top before the storms started rolling in.
4. Mt. Belford (sawatch Range, 14,197 ft): Because we were exhausted from the day before, this was actually one of the harder climbs. There was a lot of elevation gain on this hike as well, I believe the trail head was around 9,000 ft.
5. Mt. Oxford (sawatch Range, 14,153 ft): You reach this peak from the top of Mt. Belford by descending down a steep saddle. We had to jog this because the storms were starting to roll-in. On the way back up to Mt. Belford (yes, you end up summiting Mt. Belford twice, once on the way back) the lightning strikes started. We saw a strike about 200 yards from where we were. This was the closest I've been to lightning danger on any of the peaks.
6. La Plata Peak (Sawatch Range, 14,336 ft): This was a very long and rocky hike, but I think this has the greatest views from the top of any 14er so far. The surrounding cliffs are rich in some mineral that dyes them all red. It almost looks like you have summited a peak on Mars.
7. Mt. Elbert (Sawatch Range, 14,433 ft): This is the tallest peak in Colorado. It's also one of the easier ones. Just a steady walk all the way to the top, not rocky at all.
8. Torreys Peak (Front Range, 14,267 ft): I did this one with my Dad. A freak August snow storm covered everything above 12,000 ft in snow. Most of the trail and the top was covered in about a foot of snow.
9. Grays Peak (Front Range, 14,270 ft): You can hike down from Torreys Peak over and up to Grays Peak in about an hour.
10. Mt. Evans (Front Range, 14,264 ft): We picked a challenging 5 mile route up to the top of Mt. Evans. When we finally reached the top we collapsed in exhaustion. We were greeted by tourists in sandals. Yep, you can drive to the top of Mt. Evans, which kinda kills the drama of hiking it. We did see a huge herd of mountain goats though.
11. Mt. Bierstadt (Front Range, 14,060 ft): I did this one with my brother-in-law yesterday. It was a perfect day, probably one of the few days where you could hike a 14er at any time in the day (usually you have to be off the peak by noon due to lightning storms). I also had cell phone access and tweeted most of the trip.

Only 43 left to go. So far I have only done the 14ers you can hike or scramble. Some of them can only be summited with ropes. That will come later when my kids are older and my life insurance is larger.