Economics as Networks - application to business analysis

September 6th, 2006

My friend Robert Scoble has sparked a great discussion on his blog about the “froth” in the current Web 2.0 market. While reading his post and many of the 90+ comments on it his readers have generated, I started to compose the rest of this post below as a comment. I have decided to post it here and link back to his post. This reflects an application of my thinking on Economics AS Networks, namely the value that this type of analysis can offer a startup firm in thinking through where to position themselves and where (perhaps) to capture value.

This is a comment/reaction to Getting Outside the Frothy Bubble by Robert Scoble

One immediate thought is to stop focusing on the tech (as many of us do all too easily) and start thinking about what people do/need to do.

and from that, what, where and how they might pay for it (or if not them directly, who would pay for them - i.e. advertisers of some form)

A simple thought exercise to help:

take your firm. Think about what value you generate (where it flows from - and yes investors are a source here, as are founders, customers, advertisers, sales channels etc). For a startup, once it “enters” your company it probably doesn’t have too many places to move around (i.e. perhaps paypal then to a bank account for example). And where do you “spend” this value - i.e. where does it go (employee’s salaries, benefits, bandwidth, hosting, software, physical products, shipping costs etc)

Now focus on the “value in” part of the network. What ROLE do you play for those parties?

Is it a “critical path” (for your investors, for example, are you their mad money or a vital and key part of their investment strategy?) For your non-investment sources of value, are you a discressionary cost OR can you move from “optional” towards “necessary”?

In either case what then are you competing with? Are you set up to continue to gain value from existing sources? Or must you continually generate and discover NEW sources of value? (i.e. are you Gillette who will make money from my purchases of razor blades for many many years to come? Or are you a restaurant I stopped at the one time I was visiting a given city?)

Now also map this process to your business’s normal thinking about your “customers”. Are they, in fact, your sources of value? Or, as in many cases, are your “customers” part of the value you provide to your actual sources of value? i.e. Advertisers or other partners who rely on your relationships with readers to in turn deliver value for them, value that you assume is greater than the amount of value you charge them (or else they are unlikely to sustain the relationship with you for very long).

If you apply this type of analysis to most Web 2.0 companies I suspect that you will find that they have structured themselves as part of a fairly unsustainable network. They are, mostly, an optional expense on the part of their sources of value (other than investors and founders) and while the costs they have/will incur also relatively low, they may for quite some time be greater than the new value they are creating.

On the otherhand, I think this analysis does offer some suggestions for many of the current Web 2.0 firms (or anyone starting a new firm) for how to build something more sustainable in the long term.

1. Think deeply about what “advertisers” are seeking to achieve and design your products to even more directly than Google adwords to deliver that value for your advertisers. For example, the move of a site such as MySpace.com to offer fulfillment services for independent labels and bands to sell their DRM free mp3s directly seems to me a very good approach. I wouldn’t be surprised if a possible additional step (or steps) would be to partner with event demand services such as Eventful Demand and/or ticket fullfilment services to offer a competition for ticketmaster. Done well both myspace and 1000’s of bands and venues could directly grow real value - at the same time being directly aligned to the interests of the users/fans on MySpace. Keeping in mind, however, that all of the sources of value here (the fans) are spending their entertainment dollars - so this is in some competition for their other entertainment options (other bands, ticketmaster handled venues, movies, games etc)

2. Look to align your generation of value with how your sources of value look at their costs - and in most cases strive to achieve an ongoing relationship, not a one time sale relationship. Microsoft, for example, while they do sell individual copies of Office and even Windows, generates the vast majority of their revenue from ongoing relationships with large corporations and other organizations. These relationships achieve an ongoing revenue stream for Microsoft and periodic bumps, generally aligned with when the organizations enter into an upgrade cycle for their computing needs. In essense these firms (and governments or other organizations) pay a “Microsoft tax” per employee, one they factor into their costs of hiring and firing. There are, of course, many serious debates about the ‘value’ of this tax for a given company, but by for the most part thinking in terms of “per employee” Microsoft has set itself up to fit into the existing costs model for most businesses.

3. Don’t get too greedy or try to capture too high a percentage of the system’s value. IF your business is not working in the “discressionary” side of things. That is, if you are an “input” into your sources of value’s network, then they MUST be able to take your goods or services and in turn add value on top of them. If they can’t, you will not be able to sustain the relationships over time for very long. Think of any wholesaler - if you tried to sell your products to retailers at 100% of what they could sell them for, it is unlikely you would have a strong retain channel for very long (unless you found a way for them to make a lot of money somewhere else as a result of distributing your product and collecting funds etc on your behalf). On the otherhand, if your goods/services are part of a discresionary spending, then the parties purchasing from you are not, in turn, expecting to use what you provide to directly make themselves greater value. In this case you can charge more (perhaps) but have to watch out for a new issue. (see below)

4. It is better to charge a price at which people’s reaction is “I’d be silly not to buy this” than a price that generates a lot of questions and long decision cycles. This is not, however, an argument for always selling at the lowest price. Rather it is an argument of aligning your price with the scope of your sources - you want to be high enough priced that they consider you - i.e. not so low that they ignore you entirely. A large corporation won’t invest much time thinking about a purchase that is a few hundred dollars, nor will most want to spend tens of millions. But there is some price that is high enough to be serious but low enough that their reaction is “it would be silly of us not to spend this money”. For individuals, likewise, there is a price where it makes more sense to buy than to think about it for very long. Recently I had to decide between two swimming suits that were for sale, I didn’t know which size would fit me, the fitting room was unavailable, and I had little time to meet up with a friend to go swimming, but when I learned that the cost for BOTH swimsuits would be a combined $14, it was priced such that it would have been silly of me not to buy both suits - to costs of not buying one or both was higher than of buying both.

For entertainment purchases many people, myself included, think somewhat (though not entirely) in terms of my hours of entertainment. i.e. a new book is a couple of hours, a movie a couple of hours, a new game perhaps 10’s of hours. A magazine subscription a few hours each month etc. I also think in terms of who and what I want to support - so I’ll buy books (lots of friends who are writers and I’m trying to sell a book myself), I’ll go to independent movie theaters when possible and watch independent films.

So much more to think about, I’ll be following up with more posts on this and related topics in the months to come and if you seach through my archives you will find many more posts, both here and on my personal blog Searching For the Moon

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Is Economics Zero-sum?

July 29th, 2006

Tonight I had a great conversation with a bunch of people in San Francisco, starting from “what books are you reading?” and including the war in Iraq, economics, how to make corporations ethical and much more. But as a part of the conversation the topic of whether or not economics is zero-sum came up. With the specific claim that “economics is defined as being zero-sum”.

Certainly if you start with the definition of Economics in Wikipedia you see that economics has historically be defined as a study of scarcity (with alternative definitions as to what is scarce and what this mean).

I argue that economics is NOT inherently zero-sum - that is, you can study economic activities from a perspective that allows for non-zero-sum activities and indeed, if you do not do so, you are missing crucial aspects of economic activities (both future cases, current cases and even I would argue historical cases).

My view of economics, which I do not think falls into ANY of the classical (or even neoclassical schools) is that economics can be defined as the study of the flows of value. And value, in turn, can be defined as being created by agreements between entities - a series of links and relationships over time. (entities for this purpose being perhaps recursively defined as “any person or legal body that enters into agreements and can hold value” - so people, trusts, corporations, churches, co-ops, communes, governments, central banks, families, villages etc are all entities for this type of analysis.

I usually describe this as the study of economics AS networks. I represent all economic relationships as links between entities over time. Then to study economic activity is to look at the patterns, structures and flows of value across a web of entities.

I claim that through this structural analysis a great deal can be explained about issues that economists have studied for centuries - how prices are set, how wealth is created (and what “wealth is”), how corporations and other organizational structures work and interact (and why/if they add value).

But underlying this analysis are also a number of other perhaps more controversial claims. The first of which is that there is NO intrinsic value - a bar of gold is not inherently worth anything. It is only when that bar of gold gets enmeshed within a network of relationships that value is ascribed to the gold. And likewise, it is only when a person places there time (and mental and physical effort) into a web of relationships that it is ascribed a value. Currency/specie also does not inherently have value, though it can be thought of as being a physical embodiment of a link - between whomever holds (owns) the bill and the central bank that created that bill - and since in most cases there is a large number of people also holding similar bills and thus creating together a fairly common for a given period of time value for that currency. But this is not always the case - consider a gift card/certificate - which is a link between the holder of the gift card and the issuer - but unlike say a $50 bill (US) a gift card often has many more restrictions (a small universe that accepts it - perhaps just one store) and may have a time limit (expires in 30 days) etc. Some gift cards (American Express perhaps, Visa/MasterCard as well) might have a more widely held acceptance and thus might have value outside of a direct transaction (i.e. I have accepted a VISA gift card from a company in lieu of a check from them and was not too unhappy with the swap).

But to get back to the question - is Economics Zero-sum?

From my network centric perspective I would say NO. Value, net across the world (or the boundaries of the economy being studied) is not fixed - instead it fluxates over time and many forms of human activity change the sum of value available to the economy at any given point in time. Thus transactions around that time - and transactions across time - do not have to be zero-sum. Further, there are many cases - historical as well as present or future - where all parties in a given transaction gained value - indeed were this not the case I would argue that society would be vastly different and many fewer agreements between people would take place.

In part I agree with the definition of value as being in part captured time, though I also agree with the idea that value is also encapsulated energy (and might argue that time and energy can be converted in some creative ways). But I also think that a better definition of “value” is to relate it to the network around a given unit of measurement and transaction.

So if economics is not zero-sum why has it historically been defined as being about scarcity? (and not abundance, indeed many make the claim that economics can’t deal with and indeed explicitly ignores anything that is abundant - such as energy from the sun, air, etc)

I argue that this is due to the focus on the exchange of physical units (specie) historically - now shifted to the movement of digital bits but still driven by accounting and balancesheets - a focus on either/or, on who owns what (and an assumption that if I own it, you do not).

A network perspective, however, thinks of interactions as collections of links over time. Links in my model are single directional, so the entity linked to may not link back (for example the central bank does not know that I have a given bill, while I when I hold that bill in my pocket could be thought of as having a link to the central bank). This also means that links while they can and are transferred from one entity to another do not preclude the creation of other links. This is a critical point - the number of links between entities is NOT finite.

New links can be created WITHOUT the transfer or destruction of old links. A link may have a denomination associated with it (often implying a related link to a given central bank) but the summation of all of these links is not finite, nor is it fixed at a given point in time. Some links imply relationships that are very short term (immediate purchases for example) but many others represent very long duration relationships (30 year mortgages for example). As you introduce time into the equation it becomes inherently (I argue) non-zero-sum.

Further, since agreements and relationships can be created and evolve over time, with a group defining the value, what starts as an isolated relationship, separate from existing central banks, can evolve over time into something that denominates value for a large number of people and may even be exchangeable with currency from other central banks. Recent examples of this might be airline miles or Linden Dollars (the currency of Second Life)

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Moved to San Francisco (Noe Valley) and other updates

July 19th, 2006

Lots to write about and more to come. I will be sending out a massive update to my contacts via email - if you are reading this and don’t get it from me in a few days, please leave a comment or email me and I’ll make sure you have a copy (though much of it will be referenced below as well - but some specifics will be email only).

I moved from Berkeley to Noe Valley after returning to the Bay Area from Seattle. My new place is working out very well, still need lots of furniture (including lots of office furniture - if you know anyone who is selling some contact me). It is technically a one bedroom (albeit a nearly 1000 sq. ft. one bedroom upstairs) but it is a the “extra” 700 sq. ft. downstairs which make it a truly amazing place. That downstairs room, nearly 30′ x 25′ with hardwood floors is what I am going to turn into an office / media room / event space and guest bedroom. For people in San Francisco I am looking at sharing this space in some form of co-working space - contact me if you might be interested - it is a large, open space with lots of character (and a separate entrance) and could work really well for either shared desks work spaces, small group event space, or as a shared studio space for video or audio production. And there may be space for a workshop and in the future the landlord may add a downstairs bathroom!)

Over the summer I’ll be slowly furnishing my new apartment. While I put my offline world in order, I will soon be doing the same to my online world. In the upcoming weeks I plan on doing the following online updates/upgrades:

1. A total rewrite of the JigZaw website to bring the site in line with what I actually do, what JigZaw has available for sale (in terms of IP), and to add hooks and links to all the projects and activities I am working on through JigZaw (or at least link to those not through JigZaw)

2. Clean up/update the MeshForum.org website including highlighting the recent MeshWalk in Seattle and preparing the site to accommodate and highlight future MeshWalk events as well as gear up for MeshForum 2007. Also, link in the Haystack, Wiki, and Podcasts - both on IT Conversations and any other future podcasts from MeshWalk events or from MeshForum’s that don’t make it onto IT Conversations.

Other parts of the MeshForum update will include adding space for a future MeshForum Journal and/or data sandbox/exchange for Network data sets and visualization exploration.

3. Cross link and update ALL of my blogs, including this one, and fix various problems with each (broken titles in this blog, unsearchable archives on blogger.com, non-feedburner RSS feeds, poor design/tracking/monetization options, any incorrect data in the sites etc)

4. Build new sites/subdomains for my assorted projects, including some primary site for me as my launching point/CV on the web. From this site (possible draft of the site - my googlepages site though that is missing a number of links) add links to my Flickr photos, CV online, events I organize/promote, web projects, new media projects, writings, press coverage, businesses etc)

5. Consolidate and update my presence on the many online social networks which I have joined at some point in the past - at a minimum make sure my profiles are up to date, in many cases I should also consolidate contact data from contacts across the networks and/or gracefully migrate out of networks I no longer actively use, concentrating on the ones that may offer me real value for a time investment into them (I’m on and at least semi-active on Ryze, Ecademy, LinkedIn, omidyar.net, Vox.com and much less active on sites such as Tribe.com, friendster, myspace.com and probably another couple of dozen sites)

6. Simplify and clarify which mailing list(s) I manage and make sure that everyone who is on each wants to be on them - and also extend invitations to many of them to many more people, currently there are two MeshForum related mailing lists (one for announcements that is lightly used, one for discussions that is a bit more heavily used but not very large yet). I should probably have an announcement only mailing list for my personal contacts, a “real” one for my various events announcements, and a newer one for my “trusted advisers” as I move forward with many new ventures (and/or old ventures revamped).

7. Emphasize and make more visible the Events for Geeks calendar I have started on Google Calendar (and invite others to help me manage it and maintain it)

8. Launch NELA (Never Eat Lunch Alone) perhaps with a spiffier name - and get some working code up for people to see and use

9. Put back online at least working demos of ALL JigZaw software from the past and make it possible to find it and contact me if you are interested in buying either a license, a custom version, or perhaps full IP rights to the code (or pay us to make some/all of it Open Source)

10. highlight services I can offer via partners, including offshore and nearshore development, very high level consulting both technical and business, and much much more.

11. Promote events I am organizing and/or ones friends are working on that I am helping with.

12. Create a rallying point and central hub for planning for the OneWebDay San Francisco event which I may be working on (may be organizing in fact - it should happen and it should be a great event - so I want to work towards making it happen)

13. Promote groups, such as Hope Street Group, which I have worked with for a long time

14. Build a website and presence as I write my book on Economics (first as I sell it, then as I write it)

So not too much…. okay quite a lot actually. I am going to start with bitesized chunks and first and foremost is rethinking/updating my server(s) and hosting agreements to pull everything together into a more manageable configuration and arrangement.

Suggestions/help welcome! (and of course paying work considered as well!)

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Gnomedex 6 Day 1

June 30th, 2006

My initial post from Gnomedex 6 in Seattle on June 30th 2006. I missed my first set of notes, got deleted by my borrowed computer.

Some notes - I have not been blogging of late because I have been offline without a computer while my laptop is getting fixed (more on that in a later post).

Michael Arrington started off Gnomedex with a dicussion about web 2.0 business models. I asked about whether/how people can think about models that impact the world outside of the web - he cited a site about swapping items (for free) as well as eBay, I think there are far more examples and opportunities - to look for ways to think about businesses that are focused on sparking activity and actions offline as well as online. MySpace is one example (follow bands, get laid, flirt) but there are far more opportunities.

Dave Dederer - of the Presidents of the United States of America - led a discussion about music and the web, the differences of business models and the opportunities. I asked/pointed out that musicians have long thought about their fans as a passionate community - as the world moves to lots of microcommunities bound by passions not geographies there may be lots of ways to capture lots of value from those groups.

Now John Edwards will talk and I will save this blog and blog that seperately.

tags:
networks,
web20,
meshwalk,
gnomedex,
meshforum

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BloggerCon IV - Marc Canter, Chris Pirrilo, Lisa Williams and Me Shannon Clark

June 23rd, 2006

BloggerCon IV

Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

I guess I’m keeping good company at the moment… go look at the comments on Flickr - very amusing

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Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte

June 1st, 2006

Edward Tufte has a new book out and shipping soon! Beautiful Evidence it is his first major book in nine years and the result of many years of writing and discussing it online via his website. Check out the proof pages at his site and then order your copy today!

Or better yet, register for one of his courses, $360 for a full day and the best investment you (or your company) is likely to ever make in your training. I know that for me it was the only professional training course I have ever taken that even now over 7 years after I took it I think about often and his insights and suggestions have influenced much of how I think about and see the world. As I write my own book about Economics and build a consulting practice around it, the approaches we’ll take to visualizing highly complex systems and information will start with the lessons of Edward Tufte.

I hope that my copy will have arrived in time for WalkMesh. WalkMesh will be June 15th, starting in South Park in San Francisco at 8:30 am - please join me there and on our walking tour and conversations. If I have my copy by then, I will bring it to share.

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Fix for gmail access problems via POP3

May 30th, 2006

A very close friend of mine just had the following puzzling symtoms.

- she changed her gmail password while travelling and using someone else’s computer

- turned on her computer, fired up Outlook and got a password needed prompt (which made sense as her password had, indeed, changed).

- however even after putting in her corrected password the prompt kept returning

- we tried checking all of the account settings, the port numbers per gmail’s help and in short everything on the gmail.com help pages to try.

No luck.

So, I went and did some googlefoo - searching for people posting about related problems - finally on the second page of a thread originally started in 2005 on a message board about GMail, I found a solution.

The solution.

Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha (note the https)

reset your account and the captcha there.

And *poof* Outlook was happy.

Apparently Google, without adding any hints about this on their help pages have added some testing for whether or not someone is a human. However they have added this testing to access which is, in fact, intended for computers to use - i.e. POP3 access of email.

Morals of this story.

1. captcha’s and other measures are good and useful, but take care that they are only an issue where humans are, in fact, intended to be directly accessing the pages

2. I was only able to find the source for this solution because I have been searching online since 1991 (and actually searching electronic databases since the mid-80’s). I knew what types of searches might get me to a forum where a solution could be found, and I was patient enough to look at multiple places and posts until I found one that was likely, and further I put up with the backwards structure of this particular discussion forum which relgated NEW posts to the last pages (contrary to normal best practices which put the current posts first as those are what most people want to read most quickly).

So, if you have further issues with gmail you might check out the GMail Forums where I found this solution.

Or, if you work for Google, you might think about fixing this issue which I would guess 1000’s (if not more) of your users encounter every day. Access denied via a POP3 client, while access is working via the website.

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WalkMesh June 15th San Francisco

May 22nd, 2006

On June 15th I will be holding the first WalkMesh, urban walkabout, in San Francisco.

If you are interested in joining me, please contact me directly and/or leave your suggestions at the MeshForum website. In the next few days I’ll post all of the details and confirmations.

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Rick Segal and Shel Israel go on a road trip

May 19th, 2006

so I think this is a great idea, but I do have a few caveats. Shel Israel announced on the Naked Conversations blog today that he and Rick Segal will be traveling the world together to meet with and find great web 2.0 startups outside of Silicon Valley.

I left a comment (perhaps too long of a comment to really call it a “comment” really many comments…).

Rick (and Shel),

First - I applaud the travel, seeking out interesting smart people all around the world, and highlighting them.

But I have to take issue with Jason’s point specifically about Chicago (where I’m from, though not where I am now) and about the description of “the valley”.

I blogged about why I left Chicago months ago at my blog (http://blogs.jigzaw.com/?p=46) - the blog post is a letter which I had emailed to Ron May who’s “The May Report” has covered the Chicago Tech scene (such as it is) for many years.

Chicago does indeed have 37 Signals, and they do really cool, great stuff. BUT they are small, private, and as best as I could tell from when I was living in Chicago and at least a semi-active member of the “tech scene” they almost never attended any Chicago area events, nor did they appear to be holding their own events or helping with other events (their recent Ruby Conference being a welcome change).

Chicago’s tech scene is very limited, with lots of people pursuing generally “small” ideas. While there are many smart people in Chicago both living there and/or attending the University of Chicago, Northwestern or downstate the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, very few of this constant inflow of talent find jobs (or start companies) in Chicago. There is not a virtuous circle of events, investors, employees, and “take over the world” attitude that while perhaps not always needed, certain is helpful in building successful tech based ecosystems with lots of “winners” (in every sense, for the investors, for the founders, for the employees, for the customers and for the world as a whole).

In contrast in just a few months here in the Bay Area (I started spending most of my time out here last Fall, returned to Chicago over Dec, and moved back here full time in mid-January.) I have formed more (and deeper) connections than I had in years in Chicago, sure some of these relationships are built on relationships I had fostered while in Chicago, but many are completely new.

They are renewed not by random, one day “wandering” through “the valley” but by particpating in the highly welcoming and diverse community here in the Bay Area. In the publicly announced events - networking parties, launches, demos, seminars, and in the many gatherings private or semi-private where conversations continue.

Critically these are not all “just talk”, many people here are looking very specifically at “how can I help you” (and then at some point in time, usually not at the same time, what help do I need”. I’ve been invited to brainstorming meetings in VC’s offices, had dinners where the founders of organizations and companies I had only previously read about just stopped by. But all that aside, and granting that I’m perhaps not the typical transplant to the bay area (though I’m perhaps more typical here than not) that’s not what makes this such a vital and helpful place for many startups.

[quick explanation of above. I run MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference where Shel just spoke at, I’ve also since this Fall been helping co-organize SFWIN (http://www.sfwin.org) a monthly networking event for web 2.0 in San Francisco where about 5 companies each month demo their applications. I’m also trying to sell off technology I had built while in Chicago, assisting a number of startups, consulting, helping with a number of other events, exploring some event related businesses, and writing a book on Economics as Networks. So probably not a typical transplant but as I said more typical out there than nearly anywhere else]

What does make a huge difference out here is the deep connectivity of technology and “start up culture” into the general fabric of life here. It is extremely easy here (though impossible in a city such as Chicago generally) to almost ONLY know people who are also working for startups or in many cases successful tech companies such as Google, yahoo, etc. People expect (here in the Bay Area) to also change jobs and try many different things - in just the few months I’ve been out here, people I know have been moving between academia and businesses, between one company and another, between consulting and starting up their own firms. Others have finally gotten their next (or first) round of funding and are starting to “ramp up”.

But there is a general, pervasive understanding of “how to do it” (which has had to shift somewhat with the changing cost structures, but entrepreneurs do tend to shift rather quickly). People “get” what to do to grow a successful company - and they see all around them up and down the valley, in San Francisco and even in the East Bay proof of the ability of a relatively few people, with a great idea, business model, technology, some luck and the right funding to truly change the world. And while I’ve been lucky to suddenly begin to know personally people who have either directly or just one “degree” away from this process have built very successful, large companies, in some cases many times over, many people here “know people who know people”.

The critical difference here, however, is also that even if you do not, if you have just moved here not knowing anyone, you can still get to know people in a variety of forums - and then follow up with them. People will meet you for coffee, invite you to their offices to see a demo (or ask to see yours). They will introduce you to their investors (if they think there is a fit) or if not, they will point you to the multitude of events and resources that might help you figure out the next steps.

This attitude of “how can I help you”, of talking with and interacting with apparent competitors, is not rare here. Sure there are exceptions, the entrepreneurs or their companies that suffer from a “not-invented here” perspective and often an unwillingness to help others) but not uncommonly their staff will take a different view.

So I wouldn’t dismiss the Valley and I would encourage you to in your travels seek out not just the entrepreneurs whom you identify in some manner, but also take a look at the communities around them - how they find employees, how the community comes together to connect people to each other, the formal (and as importantly the informal) ways in which ties and bonds are formed and renewed.

Look also at the attitude and perspective people are taking - here I’ve met many people who very seriously are trying to change the world, trying to shape (or reshape or reframe) how people think about the world. Sure, not everyone succeeds, but so many have and are it is inspiring to those of us who are ourselves trying to change the world.

The impact and role of social bonds - formed through events such as Burning Man probably can’t be overstated. These events (and that’s not the only one) help weave communities here in the bay area together - and from those ties and bonds comes introductions, referrals, ideas, support, and at times staff, funding and customers.

In Chicago, while there were friendships I made while networking at tech events (including the ones I helped organize and run) these were relatively rare contrasted with out here, and there were far fewer chances to renew and enhance those bonds - fewer times we met for coffee, grabbed lunch, shared a ride, or talked while at the same party/event.

Still - great luck to you on your travels and I know you will find some great companies and people scattered across the country (and the world).

Shannon

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Events for geeks

May 15th, 2006

I have set up an open, freely shareable calendar of “Events for Geeks” on Google Calendar.

Click here to Add “Events for Geeks” to your Google Calendar

At the moment myself and Jerry Michalski have editing rights - however if you would like to help via adding events and maintaining the calendar, please leave a comment or contact me directly, my hope is that a whole group of people will help maintain this calendar.

With the following goals:

1. List events that might impact the planning of other events - i.e. conferences many people might attend or which might factor into speakers, sponsors and attendees decisions

2. Focused mostly on long horizon future events - i.e. ones that are planned months in advance, less so on ad hoc or every month local events that draw from a local audience, the events here will mostly be ones that at least some people travel to attend.

3. I am very interested in adding events globally, including events not in English (though a translation of what the event is and why it is of interest to “geeks” is appreciated

4. Not all events listed will be technology conferences, indeed many will be arts, political or cultural in nature, or very broadly focused. I personally only plan on listing a few “pure” tech conferences (a JavaOne type conference) and typically only the ones that do draw a wide audience.

5. Unconferences, barCamps, workshops, etc are quite welcome.

6. The format is mostly “all day” events with a URL in the description. Comments can be used to indicate conferences where you will be attending or speaking. Longer descriptions are welcome, especially if they add richly to search results (speakers lists, topics, keywords etc)

7. Some events that are “invite only” will be listed. However ONLY those events that do have a public face (i.e. website) though they are invite only to attend. Events that are private, invite only, and not publically announced will be deleted if they are added. While useful to know about, this is intended to be a resource, not a comprehensive list, and the wishes of the organizers and attendees for privacy will be respected.

8. Invite only events such as “Google Press Day” might be listed though on a case by case basis. Events such as the Renaissance Weekends that are publically announced on their website, but invite only and “off the record” as they happen will be listed but with just a link and note about the invite only nature of the events.

Please contact me with any additions that are needed, I know there are many great events which I have missed!

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