What we’re working on
We’ve got some big ideas cooking here at Biznik, after our brainstorming session last week with Shelly Farnham, Peter Fosso, Lara Feltin and me, Dan McComb. I’d like to share some of them with you.
1. Social tagging. One of the things that’s been missing on the Biznik site is a ratings system with teeth. The reason it’s missing is because it’s so damned difficult to rate a person - not nearly as simple as rating a transaction on eBay, for example. But I think we’ve found a solution in social tagging. The idea is pretty simple, and it’s popping up on a lot of sites now: upcoming.com, 43things.com - even Amazon.com is using tags now. I’m working on a way for you to tag other members, and those tags will be visible to everyone else; the words that are repeated will be displayed larger than the ones that aren’t. This should give us a pretty good way of rating each other subjectively.
2. Growing Biznik. Last week someone from Hong Kong joined Biznik, and it was a reminder to me that we don’t yet have in place any structure for Biznik to accommodate members outside of Seattle. So we’re working on a way to scale it, so that someone in Hong Kong, or anywhere else for that matter, can join and start their own local Biznik and be part of the bigger Biznik network. Currently we’re looking at a grow-split approach, but we haven’t settled on a final approach yet. We’ve got a lot more thinking to do still.
3. Educational Events. We’d like to have more educational events. Byron’s presentation went over very well, so we’d like to do more like that. Few members seem interested in paying for these kind of events, so we’re going to try to create these educational presentations either from within our membership or by inviting outside members to present to us, and perhaps promote their services in return for spending time educating us. First up, we’d like to do a January presentation on business taxes. Christopher Braxtan, and Jessica Hale have all offered conference room space that will hold about 12 people for these events. If you’d like to suggest a topic for these events, know someone you’d like to invite to speak, or would like to present one yourself, please let us know.
4. Blogging options. Notice how the three most recent blog postings from the Biz Blog are posted onto the Biznik home page? That’s because we’re parsing the RSS feed that’s produced by the blog. We can do the same thing with your blog, no matter where you host it, and we’re working on a tool that will let you control this in your account. You’ll be able to enter the url of your blog, which will then pull the top 3-5 headlines from your blog onto your member profile page. If you don’t have a blog, we’ll have an option for you to have a basic one on your member page. This should help get your blog a wider audience, and be a great way to help you promote your business.
2 Comments Meeting outside the box
Our first meeting last May was a breakfast meeting held at 7am. “Why the ungodly hour?” people asked. Many friends whom we wanted to join this group said they simply don’t get up that early for anything. “That’s why I’m self employed, so I don’t have to.”
I can relate. That’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen a path of self-employment - so I can choose my own hours. I hate alarm clocks. But regular attendance seems important for a successful networking group. If you aren’t showing your face at meetings, others will either question your level of commitment and professionalism, or they’ll forget about you. A weekly lunch hour meeting is too difficult to commit to attending regularly. And I’d ask myself, “What else are you doing at 7am besides sleeping? If marketing your services is important enough to you, you’ll be there.”
That’s where I was wrong. A good dozen like to meet at that time. Another dozen like to get together between 11 and 1. And our Happy Hour events that start at 5:30pm are the most popular of all.
When we talk about “Radical Self Promotion,” we’re talking radical. This is a business networking group that doesn’t suck — for people who think outside the box. If we can be radical about our self promotion, we can be radical about our marketing and our networking. If I can ask the question, “What else are you doing at 7am,” then why aren’t I asking, “What else are you doing at 11pm?” I tend to work late at night — I’m writing this blog at 11pm. We haven’t started organizing late night meetings yet, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Just as nothing is really beyond the realm of possibility. What time do you want to network? If you can find 5 or 6 others who want to network at that same time, let’s organize a meeting.
Naming names
If the only factor in choosing a name was whether or not it was being used by another business networking group, we would’ve ended the hunt long before we unearthed the name “biznik.” It’s not enough that no one else is using the name, you also need to own the domain name. And on top of that, if you’re serious about the online part of your business, you need to own the domain name with the .com suffix. Afterall, you don’t want to be telling someone about your site and have to add, “Don’t forget that’s with a .biz, not to be confused with the .com (which is a different company somewhere else.)”
Dan and I were having coffee with Danny Bronski back when the group was still “bizgroup.biz.” Two “biz”es in a name is catchy, so the conversation about what to rename ourselves hadn’t even been opened yet. Instead we were talking about other online resources - what they offered, what was successful, what wasn’t, and after about 15 minutes of taking notes, I noticed that each time we referred to another online business, we referred to them by the domain name only, void of the suffix. “Craig’s List”, “Judy’s Book”, “Ebay”, with the exception of “Amazon.com” which did a great job of marketing their name with the .com in it, we didn’t once clarify that we were talking about .com companies. “Tribe.net” owns the .com so when you type in “tribe.com” you are redirected to their original homepage.
If it had been possible to purchase “bizgroup.com” then we might have been fine with keeping the name “bizgroup.biz.” But that wasn’t an option. And Bronski told us Biz Group wasn’t trademarkable. Fast-forward through dozens of possibilities, and Biznik was born. To me, it feels like we unearthed a gem.
Lara Online
It think it’s time for me to introduce myself, Lara Eve Feltin - the other half of Biznik - and to jump in here and start blogging. Dan McComb and I are partners in life, and now that we’ve started organizing Biznik together, we’re also partners in business. We’ve both been self employed for over 8 years, and it’s been very natural throughout our relationship for each of us to consult the other at times on aspects of our businesses - Visual Contact and Studio LEAF - from accounting, to proposals and client interaction. Consulting each other has taken on a new air now that we’re working together. More than just bouncing new ideas off the other, we now wait to before making decisions until we’re sure the other’s in agreement. I still feel like an independent, only now I’m in an independent partnership.
I’m looking forward to sharing some thoughts and ideas behind many of the concepts of Biznik as we develop the intention, purpose and philosophy.
Happy Hour change of venue
Turns out the Columbia Tower Club had some hidden costs that put it out of our budget range, so another member has stepped up to host our December Happy Hour at his Capitol Hill palace.
In the spirit of the holiday season let’s make this a potluck. We’ll have a cash bar with $3 drinks. We’ll supply the main course; bring something to contribute based on first letter of your last name:
A-H: Appetizer/Salad
I-P: Side Dish
Q-Z: Dessert
Ed Reese reviews Google Base
Biznik Ed Reese sends us this review of Google Base, which was just released a couple of days ago. I also checked it out, and it looks like a really compelling service for people with a product or service. Here’s Ed’s review, reposted below:
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I wanted to share my experience setting up and using the next Google offering called “Google Base.” It’s in beta form but functioning well and I believe there will be a HUGE future with it and wanted to share with the group.
What is it?
It’s essentially Craigslist on steroids. Normally web spiders take a few weeks to gather data and post to Google. And then you compete with all the big corporations paying big bucks for placement high on google. This offering is much more specific in regards to your product/service. You add the exact parameters of your product/service, photos, keywords, descriptions, contact info, location, etc. and upload it to Google. It’s then live within about 45 minutes on the web. It’s not about Google finding you and defining you however their spiders see fit, it’s about you defining exactly what you offer and saying “Here I am!”
Here’s an example.
Yesterday I uploaded information about my vacation homes on Google Base. Today they are 1,2,3 on the first page of google base.
Here’s how to get there…
Type in base.google.com (no www). Notice that you can search via “web” or “google base.” It allows ten keyword combination you think will work for your product. If you type in “Seattle vacation rental” you will see my places at the top of the list. I was pretty amazed that it worked that quickly and easily.
How do it try it?
Go to base.google.com and sign up. You’ll need a Google account (free) and then register with Google Base (free). Then it will walk you along the set-up process. From a database standpoint it is very interesting. You are allowed to set-up the exact parameters that you want your information found. You can add up to ten photos, ten keyword combinations and unlimited parameters for your business. This part is very, very cool. The database is intuitive regarding your parameters. It would take three pages to explain how, but just give it a shot. It’s very intuitive and easy to use.
What will it become?
I don’t know, but my guess is that they are going to do their own Craigslist type of thing, incorporate Google Adwords and make a ton more money. I think it will be very successful. People don’t really know about it right now, but they will. I just read about it yesterday. I’d be an early adopter on this train.
Am I affiliated with Google?
I wish!
Best of luck! I hope you find this useful.
Cheers,
Ed
Idea: Blogs as a networking tool
Howard Gutknecht sent me this message, which I want to repost:
We’re all “Subject Matter Experts” in some field. We could be blogging on what we know just as easily as we type our stream of e-mails. Maybe some of the e-mails we send we could just copy and paste into a blogging tool, edit them a bit, and BOINK, it’s up on your blog for me or anybody to read.
We could link our blogs together and use the posted material to get to know what we all do in greater depth. We could toss opportunities for large-scale projects or research grants out on the table, and have the various experts in the group opt-in to go after the work, then use the tools we have to structure the work, plan it, track progress, show the clients where we are on the work, and have a lot of fun doing it. Real estate? Educational websites? Financial planning? Events? What’s your passion?
I love the idea. I’m working on a tool that will allow you to pipe your current blog feed into the Biznik site, just like I’m doing with the Biz Blog on the home page right now. Shelly Farnham, Lara Feltin, Peter Fosso and I had a big brainstorming session about what’s next for Biznik yesterday, and I’ll be posting a summary of that shortly.
Biz Blog Widget illustrates flexibility of RSS feeds
I announced this yesterday on the email list, but for those of you who aren’t subscribers I thought I’d post it here: I’ve created a simple Biz Blog Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Just download and install this puppy and you’ll be able to read Biz Blog headlines on your desktop. It’s definitely style over substance this evening, but it’s also a reminder of how freakin’ powerful RSS is. If you’re syndicating your content, you can pull it into anything.
For example, I logged into my Tribe account this evening and discovered they’ve added a tool that lets me have a blog on Tribe - with the option of pulling content from my existing blog which is maintained elsewhere. It’s very cool of them to not force me to use their blog engine, but at the same time allow me to publish my blog there.
Tomorrow’s a major Biznik brainstorming session with me (Dan), Lara, Shelly and Peter. Something tells me we’re going to need another developer to work on this by the time we’re done.
Watching old and new media collide
Chuck Tanowitz writes a blog called “Media Metamorphosis“. He’s a public relations professional in Massachusetts who is “working on the edge of old and new media, watching them collide.” And that collision has huge implications for how we promote ourselves as independent business people. He writes:
Life is always more interesting at the junctions and that’s where we are today, where the old media—dominated by companies with big budgets and high production value—meets the new media—the people sitting in their homes who have the power to reach the world. In this new world it’s the stories that will win and the people who can tell them the best will get noticed.
You know what that means, small business owner? It means we’re on the right side of history for a change. We’re in the middle of a communications revolution that is leveling the playing field-in our favor. Small is the new big.
I’m not sure what all the new rules are, but I’m pretty sure this will end up being one of them: Never try to fake authenticity. If markets are conversations, and they are, then for God’s sake stand up for something real.
Dave Winer observed today that the former mayor of New York, Rudy Guiliani, chose not to hide the fact that he was a NY Yankees fan, publicly wearing the cap even though he knew it would piss off half the town. Bad politics? Maybe, but authentic. Yes, you can fake real, but not for very long. Look what happened to McDonald’s when they tried to fake it.
One of the ways that I believe Biznik can be authentic is by not pretending to be the networking group for everyone. We’re the networking group for the forward thinkers, the early adopters, the urbanites, the progressives and the radical thinkers with a story to tell.
1 CommentSet up a Google personal home page
Here’s yet another reason to set Google.com as your homepage. It’s already easy to customize your Google home page to display a variety of information that is relevant to you - news headlines, weather, recipe of the day, quote of the day, etc. But this addition makes it REALLY useful: you can now add an RSS feed to your home page, so that, for example, you can see the latest Biznik headlines every time you open your web browser. Here’s how:
1. Go to google.com. If you haven’t already set up an account, you’ll see a link in the upper right-hand corner that says “Personalized Home.” Click it. Click “Personalize your Google Homepage” on the next screen.
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3. Into this box, type: http://biznik.com/blog/?feed=atom and press “go.” You can enter the url of any valid RSS news feed here, so the possibilities are as endless as there are news feeds!
That’s it. Now, you’ll see the top 3 headlines from the news feed every time you load the page. Click “edit” and you can choose to display up to 9 items at a time.
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Word of mouth - the strongest form of advertising
Today I discovered Mike Industries, a blog by Seattle entrepreneur Mike Davidson. He’s CEO of a startup called Newsvine, a company that believes “in turning news into conversation.” He has some interesting things to say about the importance of networking.
When I was in business school, I was kind of “anti-networking”. I wanted to get a job after college based solely on my own skills and experience without the help of “being a friend of someone at the company” or “knowing someone who knows the hiring manager”, etc etc. The reality of the situation though is that in the end, it is people who will be hiring you, so you must meet a lot of them and be nice to everyone along the way. Word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising…
When I hear the word “advertising”, though, I hear at least a faint echo of the word “dishonest.” That’s because advertising is a tool for manipulation. And I don’t like being manipulated. The Chicago-based Word of Mouth Marketing Association (yes, word of mouth now has an association to speak for it) suggests that using word of mouth is a way to overcome that: “Word of mouth marketing is the most honest form of marketing, building upon people’s natural desire to share their experiences with family, friends, and colleagues.” In a nutshell, word of mouth is real.
Word of mouth may be the strongest and most honest form of advertising, but at least in the beginning, it’s also one of the least efficient. You do a great job for someone, and MAYBE they tell someone else. And if they do, that person may or may not choose to act on that information right away. More likely, they’ll tuck it away until something else triggers action, like hearing another friend talk about you.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was word of mouth that everyone could hear? This, I think, has always been the promise of the Web. A few companies have really nailed this down - Ebay, for example. You can tell at a glance what other people are saying about the person you’re thinking of buying from, and you can decide within seconds whether you want to do business with her.
Enter Biznik. One of our goals is to do for business networking what Ebay did for auctions. We’re creating a word-of-mouth network for independent professionals that everyone can hear. Our network is based on old-fashioned face-to-face interactions, with a powerful web component. My favorite websites are ones that link the Internet with my real world. For example, I like Tribe and Friendster, not as stand-alone tools, but because when I go to a party and meet somebody I find interesting, and forget to get their email address, I know that I can go online, find the profile of the person who threw the party, and stand a good chance of finding the person I’m looking for. So these services are basically providing me with an online index to my real-world social life. That’s powerful.
We’re evolving both the web tools and the face-to-face component of Biznik in response to your feedback. That’s why this blog exists - so that we can talk to you, and you can talk to us, and together we can put “the strongest form of advertising” to work for you and your business.
What is so radical about Biznik?
I was setting up a blog for Kitty Harmon of Tributary Books a few weeks ago, and while we were working I told her about Biznik. She said she loved the name, and told me a story about names that end in K. “Gordon Bowker was one of the founders of Seattle Weekly,” she said. “He was also one of three founders of the first Starbucks store in Pike place Market. He was also a founder of Redhook Brewery. When I was working at the Weekly, David Brewster (publisher) told me that Gordon thought of the names for all of these because he believes that the hard K is a powerful component of a name, especially at the end of a name.” [NOTE: I edited this post heavily on 11/16/2005, after Kitty corrected me for having the name wrong - this post previously and incorrectly attributed Howard Schultz with naming Starbucks]
Regardless of how it’s spelled, I like the sound of Biznik. It sounds radical. And who wouldn’t want to be radical about self promotion? But there are plenty of other ways to pin the radical label on Biznik. The dictionary on my Powerbook defines radical as “departure from tradition, innovative or progressive.” Here’s a few ways I identify with those words.
Departure from tradition
The traditional ways of doing business don’t cut it any more, and we know it. Reckless disregard of the environment by businesses (with the complicity of our government) have brought us global warming, pollution, and extinction. An October 13 Washington Post article reads: “New international climate data show that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record, continuing a 25-year trend of rising global temperatures.” I happen to like this planet, so I’m unapologetically radical in wanting to break with the tradition of fucking it up.
Innovative
Bizniks are innovators. We’re not happy with the ways things are; we see the way things could be, and that inspires us. Someone once said “an entrepreneur is someone who works 20 hours a day for himself, so he doesn’t have to work 8 hours a day for someone else.” I think that defines a lot of us, even if we don’t necessarily think of ourselves as entrepreneurs. I can’t stand being told what to do by anybody. Except my wife.
Bizniks are early adaptors. We grok technology as a tool for personal empowerment and democracy. A few of us, like Michael Holden, write code that keeps mission-critical applications running, while the rest of us get with the program by blogging about our pet-sitting business. But even a simple thing like blogging about how much you love pets is a lot more innovative, and potentially more effective as a marketing tool, than buying an ad in the Seattle Times (which lost almost 7 percent of its circulation last quarter).
Progressive
No surprises here, baby - our roots are in green urban Seattle. We don’t care what your politics are. As long as you’re not a Republican. Many of our core members are big-time burners, which means we like our self promotion with a side of self expression. And why shouldn’t we? We know that anything we can imagine, we can create, because if we can do it in the desert, we can do it anywhere. Mainstream culture narrows us into units of consumption, target demographics, and focus groups. But we reject that isolation and rebel against it, because it’s not the world we imagine living in. We know that doing anything alone is not only harder than doing it together, it’s a lot less fun. So welcome to Biznik, you radical! The fun’s only just beginning.
Storming the Columbia Tower Club
Biznik Christopher Braxtan has offered to host our December happy hour event in the Columbia Tower Club. We’re working to pin down a date in mid December. Lara’s idea is to have Tiberio cater the event and turn it into a Biznik holiday party. What do you think?
What is a Biznik?
I did a search for the word “Biznik” in Wikipedia this morning, and finding no results, posted this entry. What do you think a Biznik is?
A business person who believes that financial success and radical ideals are not mutually exclusive. Often self-employed professionals, Bizniks are generally more progressive, socially conscious, and urban than their mainstream counterparts. Bizniks embrace technology as a vehicle for radical empowerment and democracy, and believe in creating micro-economies through participation in collaborative business networks.
The word “Biznik” specifically refers to a member of Biznik, a business networking group started in Seattle in early 2005 by participants in the Burning Man festival. The group’s tagline, “radical self promotion”, is an extension into the business world of the Burning Man creative concept of “radical self expression”.
Biznik is an abbreviation of the word “business” (biz), combined with the suffix “nik”, which is a reference to the radical tradition of Beatniks from the 50s. The beat generation paved the way for a different way of thinking and can be said to have formed the first modern subculture. Similarly, Bizniks view themselves as belonging to an urban tribe for business, a supportive network that encourages creativity, radical thinking, and community.
Byron on Blogging
DL Byron rocked the house last night with his talk on business blogging. You could see the light bulbs popping on all over the room.
I really like the idea of bringing in guest speakers to Biznik happy hour. In fact, I’m going to propose dropping the breakfast meeting, which is poorly attended anyway, and adding an event that is all about the guest speaker. Any ideas on topics and speakers, anyone? I’d kind of like to explore the idea of radical empowerment of individuals through technology a bit further.
Biznik Manifesto on the way
I’m thrilled to announce that Phill Arensberg has agreed to write the Biznik Manifesto. His reply to my email query, asking him to get together over dinner to hash something out, was typical of his prose: “bold, unapologetic, full of bravura and bombast. I’d love to get to gether and knock ideas around until they do what we say.”
If any of you haven’t seen his improv show here in Seattle, Stimulus, you’ve got one more chance this Saturday:
STIMULUS
Yep, it’s your last chance to get whomped by the staggering 1-2-3 punch of Betsy Morris, Phill Arensberg and Fort Dudak. Come on by for the closing night of Stimulus. It’s our last show and to demonstrate our appreciation, anyone who’s seen the show before gets in for free. Just make your reservations via the link on the bottom of this page. Thanks everyone so much for suporting our art. It’s meant so much as well as an absolute joy to perform for our friends.Phill
Closing Night this Saturday November 12 [ Party w/ full bar after the show ]
Jerk Alert Improvisation Laboratory
1100 E Pike (((3rd floor)))
10:30p
$10
206. 324. 6328
stimulus@jerkalertproductions.com
How a coffee shop blogged its way to more customers
An excellent article (full link here) about how a coffee shop in Pittsburgh grew its business with the help of blogging. The last line is words to live by: “…most importantly, have a great product so they’ll keep talking about it.”
1. There are several online forums and blogs in our market that cater to the “coffee geek”. Geeks are similar to wine conossieurs in that they appreciate the bean the way an oenophile would a grape. Coffee geeks aim to understand and coax the best possible brew out of a varietal bean or blend through an almost obsessive attention to the regions and growing processes of individual plantations as well as the equipment used (including plumbing and barista skills). We know where they congregrate online.
2. In a forum on “where is there good coffee in Pittsburgh”, we had our roaster (one of the most respected in the country) post that his coffee was available at our place and that our staff had trained with their award-winning barista.
3. Geeks travelling through the Pittsburgh area would make the trip to our burb.
4. They’d post about it. And some had blogs. They’d direct other geeks to their blog posts about us (which were often quite detailed).
5. Other geeks would find us either through these third party blogs - or, through Google searches that brought up those blog posts.
6. Those geeks would stop by and either refer back to their forums or mention us on their own blogs. Sometimes we’d even get fans who’ve never been here. And here.
7. The hoi polloi, doing their own searches, would find more third parties talking about us than about any other local coffeehouse.
8. Voila… more business.
9. But that’s not all. We also have something in our arsenal that non-bloggers don’t. A local RSS aggregator, www.pghbloggers.org. They’ve grown from tracking four dozen blogs a year ago to more than 350 today. Every time we post it ends up on pghbloggers. And because we’re one of the few non-political, non-religious blogs out there, we get an extraordinary number of hits from it. I also make it a point to go to the local blog meetings and meet the other local bloggers, which has resulted on our shop being “cooler” than others - and more likely to be mentioned by other local bloggers when they’re thinking “espresso” or having a meeting.
10. Finally, we use as many social networking toys as we can. Flickr. Planzo. Feedmap. Eventful. Each of these applications has a number of core users who may find us through unexplained associations, such as downloading photos of the Virgin Mary Latte.
So, yes, blogging does work. But it’s not going to work on its own. You still have to be a marketer - find the right audience to get some viral punch. Increase distribution channels for your message. And most importantly, have a great product so they’ll keep talking about it.
Mind Camp ideas
Mind Camp wasn’t quite the event I had imagined. But I got to spend some quality time with Shelly Farnham’s mind. She’s a PhD researcher, formerly from Microsoft, who just started doing her own thing as Farnham Research. Her specialty is computer-mediated social interactions, and she gave me some suggestions for ways to improve Biznik.
She proposed adding a tool to change the default sort on the membership page, to allow sorting by:
– most active (rank by how many times logged in, for example)
– alphabetical
– most referrals
The idea, she says, is “recency” - the idea that it should be clear at a glance that something is happening when you view the page. Who was active this week, not three weeks ago.
Other was to make the site “sticky”:
– Tool that allows members to post lessons or info about their field for other members to read and learn from. Users could then rate each others lessons/info, and they could be sorted by most recent/highest rated, etc.
– show who’s online right now? -active sessions? table that you write to with session id and time, and show number of sessions active within past 15 min?
Emilia Kallock and Artwalk
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Seattle Mind Camp
My friend Shelly Farnham (who quit her job at Microsoft on Tuesday) told me about Seattle Mind Camp a few days ago. It’s a brilliant idea, described on their site as:
“What happens when you put 150 of Seattle’s smartest geeks in an empty office building for 24 hours? We’re not sure either, but we’d like to find out. It’s time to meet and connect with those involved in the interesting projects going on in Seattle in a relaxed environment. Come, camp out, create.”
It looks like I’ll be able to squeeze into the event, so I’m looking forward to spending my weekend brainstorming Biznik ideas.