A few months ago, after returning from SXSW I submitted their post-conference feedback form. While I had a great experience, the one thing I encouraged them to work on was getting the wifi better straightened out next year.

Tonight in my email inbox, I received the following note from Hugh:

Sean,

Hey . . this is Hugh Forrest from the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin.

I have been spending a lot of time during the last few months reading feedback response from this year’s event.

To this end . . I wanted to thank you for the post-event feedback — getting feedback such as yours helps us to continue to improve the event.

And, wanted to take a second to respond to one of your comments

I ended up having to use my Verizon EVDO connection for the web connection. I know you had plenty of pipe from UT, but the the DNS server was terrible.

Yes, massive problems with the Wi-Fi at the Austin Convention Center. On the one hand, my understanding is that the number of users in a relatively small location would tax even the most sophisticated of wireless setups. On the other hand . . . just have to find a better solution for 2008. And, we are working on this. Only correction in regards to your comment is hat the pipe was not coming from UT, but from the Austin Convention Center.

Also . . not sure if you saw this, but we catalogued a lot of the complaints (err, constructive criticism!) about the event on a recent post on the SXSW Interactive website. See http://2007.sxsw.com/community_blog/?p=97

Thanks again for your feedback about the event . . and I hope to see you back at the Austin Convention Center next spring!

Best regards,

Hugh Forrest

I was already planning on going and covering the event for Read/WriteWeb again next year. However, notes like this (which obviously wasn’t just a mass email) leave me with an even better feeling about SXSW. Great service and amazing conference!

Pretty funny - http://lol.ianloic.com/feed/feeds.feedburner.com/ProfitableSignals

My friend John just pointed this out to me.

I am just getting back from a trip to San Francsico today. I ended up spending most of my time at the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, but went into San Francisco for an afternoon and evening of meetings. On the flight back, I was reflecting on the differences between Silicon Valley and San Fran and saw this great video by ValleyWag.

Absolutely, hillarious! However, I had to wonder what the Pittsburgh character would look like? Maybe an someone Amish?

Found Via: Feld Thoughts

I’ve been trying to keep this blog pretty focused on topics around online advertising, technology and business models. However, I’m not sure that is the best approach - especially now that I’m blogging regularly at Read/WriteWeb.

No matter what, I couldn’t help but point to this exciting news in the Washigton Times.

Hat Tip: Charlie

If you don’t know who Jason Calacanis is, he is currently an entrepreneur in action at Sequoia Capital. Previously, he founded both Weblogs Inc (purchased by AOL) and Silicon Alley Reporter. I have never met Jason in person, but we have exchanged emails and I do listen to his podcast / read his blog / subscribe to his Twitter feed. In fact in one email, I called him a ‘virtual mentor.’

He recently published a set of ‘link baiting rules‘ including:

a) write a blog post where the first paragraph is dedicated to a short bio of me…

b) DON’T start the post off flaming me…

c) DO mention older posts I’ve done that you loved…

d) DO slam someone I don’t like or have had a beef with…

e) DO pick you favorite quote from one of my podcasts, or something I said on another persons blog. …

f) post a picture of me when I wasn’t fat…

g) DO lie and say we hung out one night back in the Silicon Alley days or after a conference and that I’m actually a really cool guy once you get to know me…

h) If you are going to flame me do it in paragraph five but add something like “well, what the heck do I know anyway, but I think Jason might be wrong.” ..

i) do link to a Flickr photo of mine, a digg storyt about me, my linked in account, my myspace page, or my twitter page..

If you follow this “Calacanis Link Bait” strategies I will link to you. If you just come out and beat me up I probably won’t… so, there you have it “how to get a link from Calacanis.”

When reading Valleywag (yes, I admit it — I read Valleywag), it hit me … they must have misunderstood the rules.

Note: Jason commented on Twitter that only 3 of the 20 facts are correct and he was “sticking with no comment” — based on my theory, how about ‘No Link For You’?

My colleague Brian has posted about the new bag he recently purchased, so I figured I’d do the same.

Like Brian, I just upgraded to a Mac Book Pro. Although, it has been a more significant migration for me as I moved from my old Dell.

I decided that I wanted a more ergonomic bag this time around, so I went with the Incase Sling Pack.

Dan Renfer provided me great instruction on how to load the Attention Trust extension into Firefox 2.0  – I believe these steps will work for any extension.

1. Type “about:config” in the address bar
2. Create a new boolean value called “extensions.checkCompatibility” & set it to “false”
3. Restart firefox.

Once I did this, I was able to use the Attention Recorder. 

Thanks Dan!  I hope others find this useful.

The world of Venture Capital has always interested me.  It always seemed like a great gig if you could get it - spending your day interacting with smart people who are doing innovative things. 

Peter Rip Managing Director of Leapfrog Ventures has an excellent series of 3 posts on what he calls “Venture Capital 2.0″

In the Preamble, he contrasts this with where we have been (Venture Capital 1.0)  He then continues with 2 posts on with observations on the dynamics of the VC industry in this new world:

• Post 1 - The LP Conundrum
• Post 2 - Not So Separate, But Still Equal

I found this particularly interesting series of posts, because Peter does a great job explaining the dynamics of the Venture Capitalists in terms of their customers (the LPs) and then proposes what appears to be an interesting approach to managing a fund. 

I was in Manhattan the last two days.  While waiting to meet my sister for dinner, I decided to stop by the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. 

I’ve never done this before, been heard from Apple Evangelist friends & experts that it was the ultimate retail experience.  I was not disappointed. 

In the online media world, we have talked since the first bubble about creating a great customer experience.   The Apple store was an amazing offline customer experience:

• The store employees were knowledgeable & friendly.
• The environment made feel cool (I know I’m not cool, but it didn’t change how I felt.)
• The “genius bar” is much better than “geek squads” (sorry Best Buy)
• The look & feel of the store truly did reflect the Apple brand (at least as I understand the brand)
• Finally it worked (see below)…

It was so compelling - I actually tried a Mac Book.  This is particularly relevant since fiance will need a laptop when we get married.  As much as I thought I’d never say it, we may end up with a Mac.  The great experience is threatening to create a customer!

Jonathan Schwartz has a post on his blog today where he makes a comment I found extremely profound:

I’m a big believer in the transparency blogging drives for me and Sun. Driving information to the marketplace - all employees at Sun can speak their minds and clarify our strategies and perspectives, rather than having a pundit or competitor talk over us. And in reverse, driving information in to Sun - if there are problems to be found in our business, I’d just as soon they were in the open, rather than hidden away. We (and true, the rest of the world) can see and fix problems first, rather than letting those uninterested in fixing the problems take advantage of their existence (whether competitors or litigants). Sunlight’s a great disinfectant.

He later explains the dynamics between the legal team and Bloggers

Are our lawyers in the way? The opposite, they’re driving the change. Want proof? Very quietly, this week, our General Counsel - the senior most lawyer in all of Sun - started a blog. It’s here. He, too, is now the only member of his tribe, the only GC in all the Fortune 500 to have a blog.

That may be the definition of an enlightened (with Sunlight) company leader.