Monthly Archives: February 2007

Review: Sean Hayes @ The Independent 2.22.07

Music

A bit of a belated blog entry about the Sean Hayes show last thursday.  I’ve been digging the Sean Hayes tracks my girlfriend plays (at a volume that is usually preferred by dogs) in the background at home, and so I figured $15 was a small price to see him before he explodes into American conciousness (which he will).

We arrived at The Independent early, and got in with relatively little hassle (I suppose two ID checks were neccessary).  The place was empty.  Two hipsters and three old folk (35) sat around the large space, bathed in red light.  We got some drinks (excellently mixed by the friendly bartender) and sat down to wait.  Hipster by hippie, the place filled.  By the time the fun, bouncy country-rock openers Sensations finished, the place was packed.  I guess fashionably late is still in style.

Sean Hayes took the stage after his band, bright eyed and booze-hoisting.  He looked typically indie: old fashioned hat, rolled up shirt sleeves, tight jeans.  His small guitar looked like the type that parents give their 8-year-old when they expect him to give up lessons after a week.  I was beginning to lower my expectations.
He began to strum a single chord slowly and powerfully, in a method that seemed like absentminded tuning.  Gradually, as would become a theme throughout the night, the chord transformed into a song.  Hayes’ voice, the true star of the evening, suddenly lit up the room with it’s wavering sustains and folky tones.  I brightened up; this was what I had caught a glimpse of on his record.  It was even more powerful in person.

Hayes ran through many of his album tracks as well as a bevy of new songs (indistinguishable in quality), dancing, muttering, and gesturing at the audience like a bunch of old friends.  Like his music, The Independent became a weird combination of Mass and a dance club.  Compelling rhythms (“All Things”) and morose blues/worship/folk songs (“Fucked Me Right Up”) somehow fit together, pushing the audience to dance, bounce, cuddle and grind.  Somewhat bizarre but fun and different that most concert experiences .

Much credit should go to Hayes’ band, who propelled his songs into the air and often kept them going with surprise reprises that Sean would ruefully smile at.  The drummer, tremendously, actually played for the opener, Sensations, as well as filling in for Hayes’ 2+ hours of music.  Yes, 2+ hours.  We arrived in SF at 7:30 and left at midnight.  And it was totally worth it.  If you get a chance, scope out Sean Hayes while you can still afford to.  He’ll soon be more than a Little Baby Star.

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Community Next: Hot or Not?

Community, Tech

I had the pleasure of attending the Community Next conference at Stanford this weekend.  The following is my story.

(cue Law and Order orchestra hit)

Community Next was organized by the (in?)famous and high-energy Noah Kagen.  Sadly, I didn’t get to chat with him for very long, but he graciously cleared up some registration problems (not their fault) quickly for me, so he gets points for that.

Squeezed into Stanford’s Annenberg Auditorium, Community Next was definitely underestimated.  As I heard it, the waiting list was 3x the size of attendees…not a bad feat for a first-time conference.

After some cute “social networking” activities that didn’t quite catch on (finding the attendee with your “weird fact”, signing “Hello, my name is” shirts) and a generous collection of Noah’s Bagels, the varied group of Web2.0ers shuffled their way into the auditorium.  This was defintely the right crowd for this conference: strangers meeting left and right, reluctant to move from the idea-riffing of the hallways into the confines of the presentations.

After the somewhat appropriate notes of The Who’s Baba O’Reilly (“The exodus is here/The happy ones are near/Let’s get together/Before we get much older”) faded out, Noah briefly introduced the conference (saying something about cheating girlfriends and the Amish) before giving the floor to Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan.  As would become the standard, the two presenters ran down a quick list of their top rules and were shuffled offstage before they could go into much depth.

Highlights (paraphrased):
“Be authentic…your social networking site should be built by lovers.”
“Let community create you (integrate, don’t infiltrate)”.

Tara Hunt ran into the same time constraints, making it very obvious that this conference should have been two days long (and probably will be next year, if this year’s success was any indication).

Next was a very interesting panel discussing “creating, analyzing, and marketing your own online community” featuring Hiten Shah of Crazyegg, Matt Roche of Offermatica, Mike Jones of Userplane (who looks like Jason Statham in The Transporter but is actually less terrifying), and Joe Hurd of VideoEgg.  A much more business-minded group than the semantic openers, the highlights of this discussion included the suggestion to build one user at a time…literally.  MySpace and Friendster, one of the panelists pointed out, started adding their friends one by one.  “I would see Tom on IM at 3 in the morning, plugging away”.

“Ask your users about advertising” was another theme (reiterated by Heather Luttrell of 3jam and indieclick later in the conference); they know you have to pay the bills, and they’d rather have input than have it sprung on them.

And one of the best quotes of the conference came from Matt Roche: “MySpace is a massive popularity contest…like digital binders covered in stickers.”  So true.  What does that make Facebook?  A pretentious art student’s portfolio?

I won’t go much into his presentation, but Nikhyl Singhal of SayNow has an amazing product that links fans and artists by voice…they sent my band, Monsters are not Myths an invitation a few weeks back, and now I’m fully convinced.

Lunch was delicious Hawaiian BBQ and a significant amount of social networking.  I felt really dumb not having any business cards yet (that’s definitely on the list for today).  Oh well.

Things got much more exciting after lunch, as we were treated to the best presentation of the conference: “The patent-pending skinnyCorp method for creating online awesomeness and other cool stuff” by Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell of Threadless.  These guys could go into stand up comedy if they weren’t making tons of money from Threadless, Naked & Angry, and Extra Tasty!  But they weren’t just funny: they were right.

Jeffrey and Jake hammered in this major point:

“Your Project Is Not Good Enough”

No, they weren’t trying to get us down.  Their point was that you are never “finished” with your product unless you’re shutting it down.  They’ve started a number of projects because they wanted to use them (iparklikeanidiot.com being my favorite), and every time one of these projects became stupid/useless/uninteresting,  they shut them down.  The ones they didn’t shut down they continue to expand and enhance (and they’re making a lot of money from it).

Their four commandments (“We figured out that because we have four commandments, it means each of our commandments are 2 1/2 times more powerful than each of Moses’ Commandments”):

1. Allow your content to be created by it’s community
2. Put your project in the hands of it’s community (actually, not just pretending)
3. Let your community grow ITSELF
4. Reward the community that makes your project possible

I would have loved to chat with these two later, but they were swamped with questions.  Truly the best work of the conference.

We were swung through a couple short presentations next: Heather Luttrel spoke about monetizing with ads (and not pissing off your audience), Fred Stutzman of claimid gave us some figures about social networks, and Jake Mckee emphasized how important even a small but evangelical percentage of your community can be.

Ted Rheingold, John Vars, and Steven Reading of Dogster (and Catster) went through a (slightly too long) discussion of how they started the two sites.  It was very impressive, offering a few relevant points and one slightly painful statement: “I’m so sick of everything being beta”.  Flock 1.0 is coming soon, I promise!

Lastly, we had an interesting panel moderated by the funny and incredibly intelligent Guy Kawasaki.  Akash Garg of hi5, Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls, James Hong of HotOrNot, Markus Frind of PlentyOfFish, Max Levchin of Slide and Drew Curtis of Fark meditated on how they reached 5 million members.  The answer was mainly: right place, right time, a concept they would enjoy, and a lot of experimentation.  Also, the best quotes of the conference:

Curtis: “Basically, we’re a complete waste of time.”

Suhl: “I was working for a big sportswear manufacturer in Portland…”
Guy: “And you decided to ‘Just Do It’?”

Hong: “How HotOrNot started…I was drinking.”

Curtis: “Actually, I could have flipped a coin…and had a Curry Recipe Database instead of Fark.”

My conclusion: Community Next, while a bit rough around the edges, is definitely Hot.  It’s great to see so much emphasis placed on community and so many minds thinking about it.  Here’s hoping we see an expanded conference next year with more presenter time, more space, more organization, and more Hawaiian BBQ.

-Evan

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Steve Jobs is against DRMs too?

Tech

I just read a fascinating column by Steve Jobs. Addressing the anger over the Apple DRM system, Jobs explains why the system is in place and what the three alternatives are. To summarize:

1. Continue as we are: “each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music”.
Pros: Competition is good, it’s what capitalism is based on, and it will continue to provide consumers with choice and innovation.
Cons: We continue to be relatively locked to whatever mp3 player we happened to buy (*cough*Zune*cough).

2. Apple liscenses out it’s DRM technology, allowing users to buy their music from any online store and play it on any player.
Pros: Apple would receive a small fee for the technology, and consumers would no longer be locked to their hardware purchases.
Cons: With wider knowledge of the DRM technology, there is bound to be a leak that will compromise the system and upset the record companies (thereby halting all online sales).

3. Abolish DRM’s and let the music free.
Pros: The ability for smaller, innovative startups to compete in the online music market (see Amie St for an example), potentially creating more sales for the record companies. Oh, and we can do whatever we want with the music we buy with our own money.
Cons: Er…well, there are only cons for the record companies, who could potentially lose lots of money to music sharing. At this point they would either have to downgrade the plating on their toilets from gold to silver, or pay the musicians even less. I’m guessing they would choose the latter.

What does Jobs propose we do to acheive #3 (more likely than #2 and better than #1)? Convince the record companies. Once they’re convinced, he claims Apple will happily discard DRMs and come over to your house and trade some music with you, as long as you promise to let them play your Xbox for a bit and not tell anyone about it.

I’m extremely appreciative of Job’s candor here, and I understand that he’s running a highly competitive business. However, the end of this article does not exactly imbue me with hope and excitement. Convince the record companies? When has that ever worked? And is it at all reasonable to expect the millions of casual music downloaders (who don’t know a DRM from a BMW) that they should picket in front of Universal and stop their download of the new Norah Jones album? Not really.

I’m not sure who to put the responsibility on…I suppose Jobs could stand up and say “No more DRMs.” to the record companies. He certaintly has balls to write this public column that essentially condemns the record industry. And he has significant power, considering iPod’s are the top-selling mp3 player and Apple has such a loyal consumer base.
But if Jobs did put his foot down and the record companies refused to continue working with Apple, I somehow doubt the consumer feeling towards Jobs would be rosy. He’s in a tough spot.

The artists won’t be any help. It’s hard enough actually making money that you don’t owe to the record company as a successful band (See “So You Wanna Be A Rock’n’Roll Star?” for a great example of how a wildly successful album and quick rise to stardom do nothing to elminate your debt). And those that have been financially successful haven’t exactly been clamoring for DRM-free music (*sneeze*Lars Ulrich*sneeze*).

My conclusion? We’re not going anywhere for now, unless a big gun steps up to the plate or the rest of us get off our oh-well-I’m-going-to-burn-this-from-my-friend-anyway and what’s-a-DRM butts and picket. But it’s good to know that Jobs hears us and is not using DRM’s just to make us unhappy (that’s more like something Bill Gates or Carl Rove would do).

I welcome any suggestions that would put us in a better situation than the one I just suggested. Until then, invest in some Apple stock!

-Evan
evan at flock dot com

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Get your marketing out of my community

Community, Marketing

I just read a great blog by Tara Hunt. It’s a cool article (on a great site), but it really worried me. This is exactly what scares me about the Community Ambassador position: that I’m going to be asked to do something to promote the product that is not in the interest of the community. I’ve been there (it’s called retail) and I don’t want to go back.

“Community has turned into a garish buzzword, leading hungry marketers by the snoot down a new path of public/commercial boundaries being crossed.”

Will Pate and I were just talking about Community as a bad word today. We’re trying to choose the name for the next version of the Flock.com page currently called “Participate”. I’m against using participate (it brings to mind memories of “Participation is 20% of your grade”), but I’m nervous about using the word community. Do we have a community? Yes…a small but dedicated community. Why do we put so much emphasis on it? Mainly because it helps to drive quality in the product and support, and because it makes Flock that much more fun to use and talk about. But is part of it because we (and/or the higher ups) think community sells?

This section of Tara’s article defined what we need to be doing:

“We have to be willing to lose ourselves to the community. We need to become community advocates. We need to reverse the line of communication and bring word back to our bosses and our clients that their products are hurting the environment, exploiting labor, not acceptable to be tested on animals, falling apart, causing addiction, causing health issues, hurting our children, driving us further apart, etc.”

This is totally true. This is my goal. This is Will Pate’s goal. It’s probably unacheivable in any company without getting fired, but we’ll try.

Don’t get me wrong: I think Flock is headed in a great direction. I’m not concerned about Flock specifically so much as the general direction of Community/Company interaction. The most wonderful thing is occuring right now: companies are finally noticing their customers and even interacting with them via blogs and the like. We just have to be careful that this communication stays open and honest and does not become yet another vehicle for overzealous and heavy-handed marketing (see all the MySpace spam accounts as an example).

Here’s hoping we can win the fight, at least at our small level. Keep telling me what you like about Flock. Keep telling me what you dislike about Flock. Keep telling me what’s important in your world and what should be important in mine. Keep telling me about cool stuff you found on Digg (though I probably already saw it because I’m addicted to Digg). If we listen to each other, we can do more than create a great product: we can create an awesome community that is more than a marketing ploy. And wouldn’t that be fun?

-Evan
evan at flock dot com

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