I feel very honored to be ranked #4 by LinkedIn as one of the "top 10 media writers of the year" in the debut of its "Top Voices of the year" list that named 80 writers across eight industry sectors.

I also feel a little uncomfortable about drawing attention to such accolades as do the majority of former newspaper reporters. We don't mind if someone else blows our horn but it feels crass doing it yourself. In today's media world that attitude is a handicap because if you can't handle a certain level of self-promotion no one will see your work.

The early Blogosphere...

When I left the Financial Times more than ten years ago to become a "journalist blogger" I suddenly fell into a very small, very strange community of writers I hardly knew before. It felt great to be part of this tiny and very feisty band of bloggers with Robert Scoble, Om Malik, Renee Blodgett, Dan Farber, Anil Dash, Doc Searls, Craig Newmark, Andy Lark, Dennis Howlett, Nick Denton, David Galbraith, Dan and Steve Gillmor, Jeff Clavier, etc (please see: Original Thinkers list).

I marveled at the variety of forms and media formats that "blogging" allowed -- it seemed as if it were a superset of all other media forms rather than a subset because it could include them all.

And I marveled at the pure meritocracy of the blogging environment. I could write something at midnight and by the time I woke seven hours later the Blogosphere -- as we called social media in those days -- had discovered it without my having to do anything, had picked it up, picked it apart and carried it further afield into other communities, other blog posts.

I marveled that if I wrote something of value the world did indeed beat a path to a better mousetrap! 

That early blogger culture certainly wasn't shy about self-promotion -- there was always a need for some braggadocio -- but it didn't matter because only the good posts rose to the top.

I came to terms with self-promotion realizing that it is OK if I have something of value. The worst self-promoters are the ones that are noisy and empty.

Blogging and bragging...

Today's online media world is far removed from those early days of blogging and the noise level requires certain level of self-promotion. But I see many people -- not just former newspaper reporters -- struggling with the most simple of promotional activities such as tweeting out a link to a recent article, or mentioning it on their Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

Blogging and bragging today go hand in hand and like it or not you have to do both. Here's how you can deal with the discomfort:

- Focus on producing content that is of value to your community. If it doesn't waste people's time but makes their life better, easier, maybe more wonderful? Is it of service to others rather than blatantly self-serving? Then it is perfectly fine to bring attention to it because you are helping others.

- I'm developing a concept called Media as a Service (MaaS) defined as: editorial content that is of service to others in some way; it doesn't waste people's time; it doesn't try to "engage" for engagement sake; it doesn't chase the fashionable content marketing trends of the day... If it passes these "MaaS" criteria then promoting it is fine and no one will complain.

- "Content marketing" fails because it looks and reads like marketing. It is self-serving rather than being of service. Every company is a media company but media companies don't focus on themselves -- they provide a media service. 

MaaS media is the best media

- When you write a blog post or column or share anything online -- make sure it offers something of real value, that it has originality, and it serves others more than it serves you. 

- If you have nothing that fits MaaS criteria wait until you do.If you have nothing original to say don't say anything. Don't waste people's time. Wait. You will come up with something good.

- Trust your instincts rather than trying to second guess what others would like. If you find something interesting and useful it is likely others will too.

- Write in the moment, write because you have to, even at 3am because you feel you'll explode/implode or you'll drive yourself crazy if you don't. 

- Write because it clears room for more ideas. Writing is an innovation engine. 

- Write for your audience and especially write for an audience of one -- yourself. Because then you've made at least one (v. important) reader happy. 

Spiritual rewards...

The more you do it the more you'll discover that the act of writing and publishing is an extraordinarily fulfilling activity. There is a professional reward but there is also a spiritual reward that is rarely spoken about. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

Maas Media is the best media!

[The news release is here: Axis Technology and Delphix Partner to Address Data Masking Dilemma]

App development teams need their own clone of the production database — which includes terabytes of sensitive data — for rapid testing and updates. The rush to produce apps creates a security nightmare as each new clone of the database also clones the risks of losing control of that data.  

After highly publicized security breaches at Sony, and Target, it's not surprising that data masking is one of the most requested features by enterprise IT departments.

Delphix masks the sensitive data but more importantly, it eliminates the need for multiple cloned databases. It creates one master clone and then delivers just the data that each apps team needs, when it needs it: it is a pure definition of Data as a Service. There's no need to provision extra servers, storage, and software to set up each dev team, which can take weeks and as many as 300 IT service tickets.

There's an app for that...

We live in an app world, and apps have become the competitive differentiator for every large business. If your apps can launch in six months instead of 12 — Delphix enables a two-times faster production schedule — you have a six-month market lead that is yours to lose. 

[Please see my recent post on Coca-Cola CIO Alan Boehme and how he has been trying to gain a six-month advantage in his business by searching for innovative software. He has tried partnering with Israeli startups, but so far, with mixed results.]

People and IP...

Axis is not a big acquisition but it is strategically important because of its engineering team and its IP. 

Delphix has one of the strongest engineering teams in Silicon Valley. And a strong IP portfolio keeps them working and reduces the inevitable legal challenges that market leaders face.  

- - -

The more I learn about Delphix, the more I see a myriad opportunities stretching way beyond apps development, to create tremendous value in this modern world of ours and its billions of users. 

As a journalist, I've always tried to report on the biggest, most original story I can find. And that's why I pursued and joined Delphix — it's a huge story.

Delphix has the means to become one of the most important Silicon Valley tech companies of this decade. 

- - -

Media coverage:

- Richard Chirgwin at The Register has a very good explanation of data masking and why it isn't a trivial task.  Delphix offers a mask for your data • The Register

- Mike Vizard, a veteran IT journalist, writes about Delphix on IT Business Edge, and notes that

Most IT organizations are just now coming to understand the potential use cases for data virtualization inside the enterprise.

 [Mike Vizard's blog is called "IT Unmasked."]

I pursued a job at Delphix for a simple reason. It is awesome. I rarely use that word and when I do, it is in its awe-inspiring original meaning.

When I first met Jedidiah Yueh, the 40 year old CEO and founder of Delphix, more than two years ago, I was blown away by the potential for Delphix' virtual database technology, by its leadership, and by its deep bench of IT engineering talent, such as Delphix CTO Adam Leventhal, one of the authors of Dtrace -- an extraordinary performance analysis technology that is crucial to making our digital world work so magically.

And Rick Caccia, Chief Marketing Officer, and other senior Delphix executives are all valley veterans with long and proven careers in IT markets.

I've met with thousands of CEOs from the largest (GE, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle etc), and the smallest startups and none has impressed me as much as Jed and the Delphix team. I wanted to explore this new world of corporate media with a company that ticked all the boxes.

Over the past two years Delphix has almost quintupled in size from about 60 to nearly 300 people and has extended its core technologies into huge markets in application development.

There's an app for that...

Global spending on IT is about $2 trillion, about half of that is related to app development. We live in an app world and there's an app for everything.  Competitive strategies today all require app development and app delivery faster than the competition. 

Delphix technologies can be used to speed app development by more than two times. This translates into a market lead of as much as 6 months in some cases. 

Apps are just one aspect of Jed's goals for Delphix. He wants to build the next big Silicon Valley technology company. It is rare to find that type of ambition in Silicon Valley. Startups want to be bought and an IPO is often seen as a finish-line. 

But also, it is unbelievably difficult to build another Oracle, Intel, or Google because of the massive scale needed to compete. Incumbent tech companies that are already at scale can easily keep out competitors. 

Delphix has been flying under the radar and doing very well but it is a tough business, especially when you have innovative technologies to sell. Corporate budgets are set up for buying existing technologies. 

In Delphix I feel that I've discovered an Oracle, an Intel, a Google, long before they became iconic Silicon Valley companies. Finding such a company is a rare experience. If I'm to give up a 30 year career as an independent journalist then it should be for a company such as Delphix. I would not have done it for anyone else.

I'll still be writing Silicon Valley Watcher and I'll still be meeting and interviewing people and startups. Delphix is my day job, my "sponsor" for SVW. Delphix is where I'll try out some of my corporate media ideas.

The biggest risk...

The biggest risk for Delphix and others engaged in corporate media ventures is that no one will see the content produced. Which is not much of a risk to prevent experimentation. 

Yet corporations will fuss and stress over any form of publishing. They use an incredibly slow process that involves dozens of stakeholders at every step. It's a long slog involving a lot of people working very hard and producing very little.

It's fine for producing content marketing and corporate PR but it's not appropriate or sustainable for producing editorial content, which needs to be fresh and of the moment rather than three weeks later, written by committees.

The process for producing editorial content within companies should be similar to the structure of a newsroom on a small newspaper or news magazine because it's designed for speed and quality.  

Every company has a media company...

I'm beginning to realize that there is a twist in the saying, "Every company is a media company." It is probably more accurate to say, "Every company has a media company," inside the organization.

But how do you build an editorial media group inside a company that is a peer to the other corporate departments?  

The problem of silos...

Much has been written about the problems with corporate departments operating in silos, separated from each other. The potential benefit of building a "media company" inside an organization could quickly become a strategic asset if done right, because it would operate across a horizontal span, across the many silos of a modern corporation.

A cross-silo corporate media platform reporting on the various departments within a company, through internal, and external media channels, is an incredibly exciting prospect because it could become the medium for unlocking all of the potential inside every company. It could engage all of its people in a common direction and message.

Corporate media is changing and there's lots to explore at Delphix. I'm grateful to yet again, have an opportunity to be part of something new in the changing world of media. It might even lead to a new form of corporate organization that would become a standard for all future companies. If it works. 

I had no idea what I was doing, how I would make rent or what "blogging" was, and how it related to journalism. Remember, this was mid-2004, it was a brand new medium.

When Intel heard of my move, I later found out, it held an emergency meeting of its corporate communications teams to determine how they should work with bloggers. Is Tom Foremski still a journalist?

Intel held a similar emergency meeting ten years earlier in 1994 when CNET launched News.com. Are online news reporters journalists? 

In mid-2004 when I became the first journalist to leave a major newspaper to make a living as a stand-alone "journalist blogger,"  it wasn't just Intel but also IBM and many other large companies that were puzzled by this new medium and what to do about it.  I didn't realize till years later that my actions had caused such a commotion.

Gut instincts...

I knew nothing about blogging but I knew that there was something important and game-changing was occuring but exactly what? How would it develop? Was it journalism or was it a daily diary? Or was it just how software engineers communicated?

My friends Dave Galbraith and Om Malik urged me to jump in if I wanted to understand this phenomenon and they were right. 

 You have to be in it to know it. 

A Blogosphere without rules...

How many opportunities in life do we have to jump into something significant and powerful, that it will rock global societies and governments, yet is so nascent, so new that there's no rules, no predictability, and no labels?

Blogging was exactly those things and more. 

Many people were distracted by some of the mundane content on blogs. I saw it as something much more important, it represented a new aspect of the Internet -- this was now a two-way publishing medium.

Blogging platforms represented the emergence of two-way media technologies, which led to the development of the world of social media. 

We now could use both sides of the computer display: one-side to publish content to, while the other side of the same display could be used to create media and publish back. A web page was now the paper and printing press! at the same time!

The effects of the two-way web are still being felt today but ten years ago my main question was what do I do as "journalist blogger"? What do I write? I was facing a blank screen and a blinking cursor. 

I started with what I already knew how to do, writing news and analysis in the style of the FT.   But I also found that I could write in other formats, there was a lot of goodwill towards tolerating strange media experiments: the 3am type posts, and fun formats made up just because I could! 

Such as taking out the spaces between words for a secret message to Steve Jobs; leaving little easter egg links under a period; expressing my opinion about someone mentioned in a post by putting a link under his name to the Urban Dictionary definition of "Jerk."

I hired sub-editors and we would pass editing comments to each other in the source code of the page but otherwise invisible to readers. I wrote a column that continued as a column on  three separate online publications returning to the first. They were written in such a way as to look as if each column was stand-alone, but also, they formed a continuous narrative that  led back to the beginning. 

I loved the medium. I began to think of blogging as a superset of all other types of writing because it could contain all the others. It was a tremendously creative experience and it continues to be, even though blogging has became dull and looks the same as the old media it was supposed to disrupt.

I feel strange and self-conscious when I say this, but the past ten years of being a "journalist blogger" has provided a spiritual journey of immense discovery and insights. I'm very glad I made the decision to jump into that strange world.

Ten years later I feel in a very similar position, I've jumped into the changing world of corporate media. 

This is not "content marketing," which is a very popular term these days, which is a subset of corporate media -- a full-spectrum term that describes all types of publishing, such as white papers, press releases, marketing brochures, etc that every corporation produces.

The problem with content marketing is that it looks and feels like marketing. Every company is a media company but media companies don't write about themselves all day long. Media companies provide a service but content marketing is self-serving.

Today, corporate media has to include a whole set of new media formats such as producing editorial content that is comparable in quality to that written by independent journalists. This is not corporate PR it is something entirely different.

Every company has a media company...

Every company is a media company because it has to be, because of the continued decline of an independent media industry, because there are so few journalists around to help tell the stories of even the largest companies. Every company has to have a media company on the inside. 

Corporate media is fascinating to me in the same way the embryonic blogosphere was ten years ago. Here are some reasons:

- Corporate media has a business model, the media it produces is a loss-leader for the services and products the company sells. 

- Corporate media has a business model and that means it doesn't need clickbait headlines or rush to cover subjects dictated by popularity just to pay the rent.

The media industry has an unstable business model and there's no end in sight. Advertising doesn't work and paywalls cut you off from the web's best virtue -- the potential for unlimited distribution. 

[Please see: The 'Blue Dress' And The Incredible Scalability Of Content]

Corporate media can produce editorial content that is the equal -- and increasingly these days because of the loss of experienced media professionals -- it can be better than that produced by independent media companies. 

But there's lots of questions and lots of uncharted waters to explore around, "Every company is a media company."

I'm very excited to be yet again, in a unique position, to jump into exploring a new type of media. 

My job at Delphix will be defined over the coming months. But it is not PR. My title is plain and accurate: Editorial Communications Manager. Editorial content is not PR, and it is not content marketing...

More on this in my next post.

(Above) I was speaking at FutureComms14 conference in London last summer.

I have some exciting news to share! I've joined Delphix, a hot Menlo Park based IT startup, in a senior editorial communications role. 

 I've been writing a lot over the past few years on, "Every company is a media company." Now I'll find out what does that mean?!

I'll be sharing more information over the weekend and next week about my decision and why I chose Delphix — a true gem of a company.

Silicon Valley Watcher will continue, media as a service fits well with Delphix's data as a service message. But there's much more to this story, much more. 

Ten years ago I jumped from the Financial Times into the then exotic world of "blogging" becoming the first journalist to leave a top job at a top newspaper to become a "journalist blogger." My gut instinct was that something important is happening and I want to report on it by being in it.

Ten years later my gut instinct tells me there's something very interesting going on in corporate media (this not "content marketing," which is only one narrow segment on the spectrum of the corporation as publisher). I have some controversial ideas to share on this subject in future posts.

Teaching companies to be "media companies" means teaching all the best practices of journalism that have developed from more than two centuries of best practices. How far do companies need to go in becoming a media company? I love it when we don't know all the answers! We can figure them out together.  I'm very excited! 

Aarti Shah at Holme's PR Report has some details on my move here.

I'll be writing a series of posts that will introduce some of my new ideas describing the next steps on the journey of every company is a media company. And I'll be presenting a Masterclass presentation at Sean Saunders' PR Summit in San Francisco mid-August.

Google Confirms Plans for Wireless Service - NYTimes.com by Brian Chen.

A person briefed on Google’s plans... said the company wanted to make use of the fiber network it had installed in various cities to create an enormous network of Wi-Fi connections that phones could use to place calls and use apps over the Internet. In areas out of reach, Google’s network would switch over to cell towers leased by T-Mobile USA and Sprint, this person said. - NYTimes March 2 2015

From SiliconValleyWatcher August 2005:

What's Google up to? It's going to become a wireless telco with its own fat backbone...

I think it is very clear what Google's strategy is, or rather has to be. I think it is getting ready to do a wireless telco buy. Because everything is rapidly being walled up into gated communities, and the gatekeepers are the cable companies and the wireless mobile phone companies...

Google is not interested in search. It is interested in connecting the dots in user behavior. My cell phone can tell Google a huge amount of information about my user behaviors. And as Om Malik at Business 2.0 GigaOm, rightly points out, location is a powerful thing when you are in the contextual ad business... 

Eric Schmidt, on Charlie Rose, said the mobile phone is more important than the PC, because there are huge areas of the world where the PC-based Internet doesn't reach but wireless cell phone technologies can. "We'll get them all, even the ones in the trees," he said...

 

The wireless telcos won't allow the PC-ization of their markets because they saw how Intel and Microsoft sucked in all the margin from the PC market, leaving PC makers with crumbs...

 It [Google] has to hedge its bets and it has to become a wireless telco. 

Above reprinted from Silicon Valley Watcher August 2005

One of the high points of my summer was talking at the FutureComms14 conference in London. Organized by MyNewsDesk, a provider of corporate communications tools, it drew together a fascinating group of people interested in the emerging technologies of promotion. 

In this blog post there are excerpts of a video interview that covers some of the things I spoke about. I'm looking forward to the next one in 2015.

Technology and media expert Tom Foremski talks #FutureComms - Mynewsdesk

[BTW: There are a couple of points in the otherwise excellent post that need correcting: I first started talking about how every company is a media company in 2005 and that's also when I wrote my infamous "Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!" post (at 4am).]

In 2009 I attended The Europas Awards in London (above), celebrating the best European tech startups. It was a very boozy, rowdy, and fun event presented by Mike Butcher, Editor of Techcrunch Europe.

I couldn't make it this year but I'm sure that the 2014 awards very much the same in tone and booze. Mike Butcher was the MC, and even one of the winners was the same: Soundcloud. The other 2014 Europas winners included: FoodPanda, Babbel, Startup Bootcamp, Brainient, Supercell, EyeEm, GoCardless, DataSift, Petcube, BlaBlaCar, BigHealth, ZenMate, Bitstamp, Hailo, Evrythng, Swiftkey, FarFetch, CodeClub, Index Ventures, and Telegram.

[At the time of writing I found no US coverage of today's Europas Awards, not even at Techcrunch. I scooped the US press. It shows how little interest there is in European startups.]

The above video captures some of the boisterous nature of the Europas, it's nothing like the sedate US "Crunchies" startup awards. I shot it during a week-long Traveling Geeks trip to London and Cambridge in July 2009.

It's a little pixelated at first but settles down quickly. You'll see plenty of familiar faces, such as Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Robert Scoble, Rocky Barbanica, Sarah Lacy, Paul Carr. You'll see a young(er) Hermione Way interviewing me, and also European entrepreneurs Alexander Ljung, founder of Soundcloud; and Mathys von Abbe, founder of Dutch startup Moby Picture.

- - -

Traveling Geeks: A Guardian Newspaper Media Panel, Twitter, From Back to Front And Beyond... -SVW

Innovation And Culture - Reflections On My UK Trip -SVW

- ZDNet - the largest IT business news site. A division of CBS News. 

- Memeburn is the top startup news site in South Africa and is published by Matthew Buckland. 

But he writes, “The concept of blogging as we knew it has lost some of its meaning and even a bit of meaningfulness.” It certainly has and Om is being too gentle in his criticism because blogging has fallen very far from the promise it once had, and in attaining real meaningfulness.

I started blogging in mid-2004 when I left my job as Technology Correspondent at the Financial Times to become a journalist-blogger. At the time I didn’t know I was the first newspaper journalist to leave his job journalist to become a professional “blogger.” I did it because I felt something fundamental had changed in the media industry and that it wouldn’t be the same again, the media jobs would not come back, and the media business model had seismically shifted.

I wasn’t  sure what I was doing since I had never blogged before. This was when Om was still working his day job at Business 2.0 magazine and I remember at the time that he was very much an evangelist for blogging, urging me to start. 

Dave Galbraith, co-founder of Moreover and Yelp was also urging me to start blogging. I was thinking what is it? I already write five news stories a day plus news analysis and features during the week, blogging can’t be much different. So I left my newspaper job to become a blogger even though I had never blogged before.

Om and Dave were right about blogging, and its importance. I started to see blogging as an incredible superset of all other media.

I found that I could write stories in the same way as at the Financial Times, same interviews, news analysis; but I could also write those 3am posts that played with ideas and even the format of the text, hiding hyperlinks inside a period; writing stories that had text hidden in the source code of the page; playing with it because I could and because of the wonderful flexibility of the medium.

It was intoxicating because I could be creative and innovative in ways that no one had considered before, and that’s still true today. Digital media is an incredibly innovative space.

My Homebrew Club…

Back in 2004 there was a very small blogging community and I was suddenly part of it. They became my “Homebrew Club,” people like Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Dave Galbraith, Gabe Rivera, Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton, Dan Farber, Steve Gillmor, Chris Pirillo, Shel Israel, Shel Holtz, Jeremiah Owyang, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, Rene Blodgett, Anil Dash, Steve Gillmor, Dan Gillmor, Ross Mayfield, Jeff Jarvis, Mike Arrington,  Scott Beale, Craig Newmark, Marc Canter, Stowe Boyd, John Furrier, JD Lassica, John Battelle, Richard MacManus, JP Rangaswami, Richard Edelman, Steve Rubel, Jeff Clavier, Jeff Nolan, Loic Le Meur, Loren Feldman, Andy Lark, Sam Whitmore, Nick Carr, Danny Sullivan, Charlene Li, Dennis Howlett, and more (see my Twitter “Original Thinkers” list and a description here).

There was much excitement in the air, there was a palpable sense of change, that big changes were about to happen. 

A media meritocracy…

There was a widespread belief that blogging would become a serious challenge to the establishment and its control of ideas, that the blogging movement was intrinsically revolutionary, that it would disrupt everything, and it would topple mass media.  

Armies of of citizen journalists would arise and in their vigilance they would make transparent all government and corporate misdeeds. The hated gatekeepers of mass media would be swept away and their censorship of the truth would be vanquished.

Sadly, things turned out differently. Blogging, and other forms of social media, became mostly amplifiers of establishment ideas, a place for people to share links to mass media content.  Social media became social distribution of mass media (SoDOMM). Blogging failed massively.

And now with the trend toward paid traffic, it’s even worse because money speaks loudest and free speech becomes worthless when no one can hear it.

[The disruption of the media industry is solely due to the devaluation of its business model by low cost advertising by Google, and other technology-enabled media companies — and not because of blogging, or any other social media.]

There used to be a strong camaraderie among the early blog sites and bloggers, yet today, they don’t even link to each other. 

All the blogs/news sites look alike, they look like the mainstream media they were once trying to disrupt. 

We should bring back blogging and some of those early ideals. And bring back the fun and the variety of writing styles. There’s a lot of mainstream-looking media to disrupt.

- - -

Please see:

 5years - Lessons And Insights: Sniggering About Blogging ... And The 'Original Gangsters' Of Blogging -SVW

Social Media Is Not Free - Facebook Wants To Be Paid -SVW

In three days I'm off to London for a week,  then Amsterdam, hopefully a few days in Berlin, and then Warsaw (above) returning in early June.

I'll be making a series of presentations around my favorite topic: "Every Company Is A Media Company - the transformative business equation of our times."

I'll be conducting some sessions with PressPage, which builds digital corporate newsrooms for large corporations; I'll be presenting  at private corporate and PR agency events, and at Ragan's prestigious 2013 International Social Media & PR Summit in Amsterdam.

I first started talking about how every company is a media company more than eight years ago. The concept wasn't well understood at the time but now, interest has sky-rocketed and it's a topic that has shot to the top of the priority list for many corporations, as they try to capitalize on the amazing media technologies that are becoming available.

Silicon Valley is central to this global trend in business, its startups are creating powerful media technologies and services -- it's rapidly transforming into a Media Valley.

Companies can quickly change their competitive landscape, and their position in it, by mastering the art of media publishing. If they are able to do it first, they can overshadow their much larger competitors because in the media world, if you become the go-to media source in your sector -- it's very difficult to challenge that position. It happens all the time in the media industry, and now it is happening in other industries too. Think Zappos, who else do you know that sells shoes online? 

I'm happy to help enterprises become media companies and teach them the best practices of a media organization, and guide them through the treacherous waters of social media, and the many other media channels.

Rediscovering best practices

I often see corporations making big mistakes with their media strategies. Sometimes they are trying to reinvent the wheel, when we already have figured out best practices on how to do certain things, from hundreds of years of newspaper publishing. 

My work in this area will become the foundation for a new, services side of SVW that you'll be hearing more about over the course of this year. It's what will help support the editorial coverage, and enable me to continue working as an independent journalist.

Best-of-breed media services collective

I will also be meeting with companies that offer a variety of media services to enterprises of various types, and pull together the best of them into a group of top-class media services providers.

From digital newsrooms, to crowd sourcing ideas, media content development, to building communities around a company's thought leaders, there is no need for companies to develop their own in-house technologies when there are some excellent platforms available that they can be put to use right now.

Speed to market is vital -- you need to become the "Zappos" of your sector.

I'm hoping this carefully selected media services collective will become an important resource for every company that's trying to become a media company.  

Please stay tuned for more details, and stories from my travels.

- - -

If you'd like to book a session with me and your teams, send me a note: tom at SiliconValleyWatcher.com. From May 5 to 12 I'm in London; From May 12 to 20 I'm in Amsterdam; then possibly Berlin if I can finalize some meetings, and in Warsaw until June 5.

If you'd like to participate send your article to editors@siliconvalleywatcher.com with "Guest post" in the subject line somewhere. I don't mind if it's been published somewhere before if it's still relevant. I might lightly edit for clarity and pace but I promise to preserve the spirit and meaning of the original.

This Friday:

Silicon Valley Leadership Group: Anne Smart On The Importance Of Cap And Trade

Take A Look Into Topix - Mass Bullying Across Thousands Of Small US Towns

GE Global Software Center HQ in San Ramon, CA.

I'm pleased to announce GE Global Software as a sponsor of Silicon Valley Watcher. GE Software is a new division, headquartered in San Ramon. Its mission is to speed software innovation within GE by developing new applications and working with local companies. It has become one of the largest "startups" in the Bay Area, with more than 400 software engineers. You'll be hearing a lot more about GE Software over the coming year.

This year, we decided to invite our readers to throw their suggestions into the ring as well. The response to our call fornominations was amazing. We received 1,159 votes from more than 400 people, so a huge thanks to everyone who contributed to this year's list.

Thank you everyone!

(The spectacular Oracle Arena.)

It was a dark and stormy evening but it was also Bollywood Night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland and I had two tickets to see the Golden State Warriors play the Dallas Mavericks -- thanks to Tibco Software.

[Vivek Ranadivé, CEO of Tibco, is one of the owners of the Warriors, and the first Indian-American NBA team owner. The scrappy kid from Mumbai has done very well, arriving as a teenager in Silicon Valley many years before the recent waves of Indian engineers.

Vivek Ranadivé is also one of the most interesting personalities in Silicon Valley. I knew him when I worked at the Financial Times and he became one of my most important contacts because of his long history and extensive contacts within the valley. When I left the Financial Times he took a keen interest in my publishing venture. Tibco became a founding sponsor of Silicon Valley Watcher in 2005, and has remained our most loyal supporter. I hope my readers appreciate Tibco's important contribution to SVW.]

I'd never been to an NBA game and was looking forward to it immensely. I set off with my son Matt, and we braved the nasty cats and dogs weather, driving across the bridge to Oakland. And I'm glad we did because we had a brilliant time. Here's a taste of the event:

The Warrior Girls, the Golden State Warriors' cheerleaders got into the Bollywood spirit with colorful costumes.

Sport is theater...

The first person we ran into was Cory (Scoop) Johnson (above with Tim Draper) CNBC's original Silicon Valley reporter. He now works for Bloomberg TV.

Tim Draper, founder of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is as well known for his eccentric personality as he is for his VC prowess.

Al Seracevic, sports editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, quickly took Matt and I under his wing and gave us for a whirlwind tour of the benches and the media balcony. It great catching up with Al, I hadn't seen him since a very late and very liquid North Beach adventure about a year ago.

It was also good to bump into

Zach Nelson, CEO of Netsuite, who had a great seat down on the court.

Vivek Ranadivé's daughter Anjali (on screen above) sang the national anthem.

The Dallas bench...

Here's where the sports hacks perch.

Elevator to the Grandview Suites.

A very spirited crowd.

The always hardworking Tibco Comms team.

A rainy treck home.

I've worked in traditional media and in the "new media" so I've accumulated a few observations that have helped me in my work.

I came up with about 25 tips. It was a great turnout and I received some excellent feedback. It was interesting to see how people picked out different tips as being important to them.

I was also asked to write them down, so here is the first installment in a regular series that will appear on Fridays. I hope you'll find some of these tips interesting and useful. And please share your tips too!

#1 - Know your audience.

This seems like a very basic tip but in the same way that I have to remind PR people that they need to know the publication they are pitching to, writers need to have a good knowledge of the publication's readers.

When I worked at the Financial Times we needed to run reader surveys and focus groups to determine who our readers were and which sections they were reading. These days various online tools provide a very detailed snapshot of a publication's readership, in fact, a much more detailed analysis of the readership of a single article!

This would have been impossible just a few years ago.

When I left the FT in 2004 and became a "journalist blogger" it was interesting to see where my articles were being read and shared. Sometimes they would end up in communities that you would not expect, such as music DJs, or video producers.

That's an unexpected bonus to be picked up in diverse communities of readers but in some ways, that can be a distraction. It is important to know your core community and the topics that are important to those readers. It requires constant monitoring.

#2 - The importance of deadlines.

When I was working at the Financial Times we had three major deadlines throughout the day with the first deadline at 10am, which meant we had to write one to three news stories in about 2 hours. That's a very tight deadline to get your news list sorted and discussed with editors, then all your research and interviews, and then write the stories.

Once a story has gone to press that's it - it can't be changed until the next edition, which is hours away. This is both good and bad. The good thing is that your work is finished and you can move onto the next story.

But in today's online world a story is never done, you can go back and make changes, updates -- all day long. There is no end to a story. But you do need to end a story so that you can go onto the next one.

That's why it is important to set deadlines, even though they are arbitrary, so that you don't spend all your time fiddling with stories and can get onto the next one.

Deadlines also help with procrastination. When you have an hour to research and write a breaking news story you don't have time to stare out of the window. You need to get the job done well and on time. Deadlines are a great productivity booster.

Veteran writers will instinctively know how much time they need to meet a deadline and they will push it to the limit because there is nice adrenaline boost as you feel yourself working at peak productivity.

But it is tough to set arbitrary deadlines. I try and schedule events and other things throughout the day which forces me to get my work done before I go off to lunch, or yoga, or go join friends at archery in the park.

Another suggestion is to keep a kitchen timer on your desk and allocate specific amount of time to each task.

Having a set time where there is an end to your work day also helps to set a deadline.

Although the US workplace culture values long hours at the office and then taking your work home it doesn't mean it's productive work. Sitting at a desk is easy.

When the French instituted a 35 hour work week many people, especially in the US, sniggered because of our long work hours and a masochistic pride in being "always-on."

But France didn't sink below the waves. Instead, the French labor force became the most productive in Europe. That's because it had to get the work done in the 35 hours allotted.

It's amazing what you can do when your time is constrained. Seek out those constraints and use them to your advantage.

More tips next week. It's time for some archery in the park :)

Since then, I've played around with PearlTrees and I can see lots of interesting uses for this technology, and its potential in creating a giant, curated web, one which goes beyond simple search, and beyond social tagging as in Delicious.

And I'm excited now to be working with PearlTrees, as an advisor, in helping this startup grow to the next level. I'm very fortunate to that I can work with companies that interest me anyway, rather than having to work with companies that don't.

[Full Disclosure: This is part of my media/business strategy consulting services that help finance my journalism on SVW. I'm also part of the "Intel Insiders," a small group of advisors to Intel; Tibco Software is a sponsor; and I've done consulting work for SAP. You can call me at 415 336 7547 if you'd like more information on my consulting services.]

PearlTrees users create a visual metaphor of a pearl and then connected pearls, which are web pages. For example, I created a very simple pearl based on my recent coverage of the Google v Italy court case.

http://pear.ly/kaKn

In this image, you can see some of my research that went into this story because each pearl is a web page with information about the court case. If you click on the link above, it will take you to PearlTrees and you can interact with the pearls. [Very soon, a new version will allow live Pearls to be embedded on any web page.]

It gets more interesting when other PearlTree users grab my Pearls and add them to their account, and then add comments, or add new pearls to the same topic. In this way, a community can collectively add a lot of value to a topic or story.

PearlTrees is still in early beta but it is already very useful in its current version. The beauty of PearlTrees is its simple user interface, and Firefox addons that make it easy to integrate into your workflow. With just one-click, through pull-down menus, a web page can be 'pearled' and added to your topic pearls.

Over the next few weeks and months I'll start sharing some of the Pearls that I create as part of my daily work. And I'll also be highlighting some Pearls made by others.

I expect different communities to use PearlTrees in different ways. And so will individuals. And there are already some patterns emerging.

For example, Patrice tells me that he knows instantly if a PearlTree belongs to a man or a woman. Their shape is different. Women tend to create PearlTrees that are circular in shape, many pearls connected in a radial form, like spokes in a bicycle wheel; while men tend to create tree-like Pearls, with many sub-branches.

And that's what I like about the PearlTrees concept - it is simple enough that it can be used in so many different ways. I'm looking forward to seeing this idea evolve and find its way into many different communities.

I've had companies tell me: "Yes, we know we are in danger of disruption but we see it, we can adapt, we can change and take advantage of it."

Good luck. Even when you can see the train wreck ahead. You will likely slam right into it. Disruptive technologies disrupt. Technologies are not called "disruptive" just for the sake of it.

Niki Scevak, a serial entrepreneur, writing over at Bronte Media, has a nice analysis of AOL versus Yahoo. He says that AOL, under Tim Armstrong and his team, has a more realistic understanding of the advertising markets, and where things are headed.

Carol Bartz, who I am sure is an excellent manager of large companies, seems lost. See Arrington’s article on a speech she gave recently where she said: “she’s counting on an improvement in the economy to drive Yahoo growth”.

Well, let me save you some time Carol: Stop counting. The economy won’t help you...

The second thing that enrages me about that statement is that it’s completely out of her control. And what track record does Bartz have in forecasting economic indicators? Where are the statements related to things under her control?

Mr Scevak says he will short YHOO and buy AOL.

My main reason for thinking this is that AOL has a management team that is in tune with the reality of the Internet. Yahoo has a management team still grasping with the basics of advertising and that’s not mentioning the basics of online advertising.

A better strategy might be to short both because there is a huge disruptive wave moving through the media industry. The disruption is affecting every media business, old and new(er).

AOL might have a better view into the disruption but that's no guarantee of success. Just because you can see the train wreck ahead, doesn't mean you can avoid slamming straight into it.

Look at what happened with the microcomputer/PC technologies. Over a period of about a decade, that basket of technologies disrupted hundreds, if not thousands of companies, in the computer industry. IBM barely survived. It had to reinvent itself as a computer services company.

So many companies, DEC, etc, saw the disruption ahead. But they couldn't change fast enough, they couldn't downsize fast enough, they slammed straight into the train wreck. Some did make it through to the other side but many didn't. Disruptive technologies disrupt.

Even if you see things coming, as the newspaper companies now do, there's sometimes little they can do about it. The Internet is a hugely disruptive media technology and that's where we see the disruption the most.

Newspaper, and other media companies, have to act a lot faster than they are. Many won't make it through to the other side no matter what they do. Disruptive technologies disrupt.

(Oh, and by the way, every company now is a media company, every company is in a disruptive pathway. And here's a plug for my media/business strategy consultancy services, which help me publish SVW - 415 336 7547 or tom@foremski.com.)

I hardly see any product or company discussions in my Twitter or Facebook streams. I see occasional gripes about airlines, cable TV service, and sometimes I'm asked to become a "fan" of a company on Facebook. But that's about it.

The fact that airlines lose luggage, are late, are rude, is not new, it's par for the course. Same for cable TV companies. Social media does nothing to improve airline service or inform me much about things I didn't already know about a product or company. As for joining a corporate Facebook fan page, one click is about the extent of that engagement.

Even advertising on social media doesn't work well -- the ad inventory is very cheap, a reflection of its effectiveness.

Yet social media is great at promoting social media experts who say that they advise corporations on their social media strategies. Or maybe social media is not good at promoting social media experts because I don't see the results of their work.

I do think companies need a social media strategy. But I think companies need more than just that, they need an overarching media strategy, which includes social and traditional media strategies tailored to each department, to each aspect of a corporation. It's all related and it's all important, because these days, every company is a media company -- and that means every company needs to master all the media technologies out there, the tools, and the best practices.

A social media strategy is not a standalone strategy but that's what is being pushed by many social media experts, probably because they only have experience in that narrow area. And how much experience can they truly have when social media is still so young?

My consulting work focuses on helping companies with their media strategies -- which is more than just social media. I've got extensive experience with traditional media and social media -- there are very few people that can claim the same broad experience.

I'm also working on a book project with two colleagues that is focused on this very important topic and what it means, when every company is a media company.

My consulting work helps pay for SVW, and it helps me continue working as a journalist. So if you need a hand, call me: 415 336 7547. I can evaluate your newsroom, I can give you a second opinion on your current media strategies, I can advise you on so much more than just social media.

At the time (late 2003/early 2004) Dave and Om were full bore into the blogger scene. You should start blogging was their line. I told them I write six news stories a day, I'm already writing all the time, what would blogging give me?

I was wrong, they were right. When I did leave the Financial Times to become a journalist blogger I had no idea what they were talking about but I soon found out. It became an incredible journey of self discovery, insight into big ideas, and also a spiritual journey. Who would have thought that 'blogging' could do all of that?!

Our Harrington sessions were tremendous idea sessions. I would often stagger back home not due to the beers -- we were fairly restrained (especially compared with London) but due to some of the ideas that would come bursting out later on based on our conversations earlier that evening.

Dave Galbraith is Scottish, an architect by training, he has worked with Nick Denton (a former FT journalist) at Moreover. He also worked with Nick Aster (Triple Pundit), who was at Moreover, and Nick helped build the infrastructure for Nick Denton's Gawker blog network, (and Nick Aster also set up my site SVW.) Dave also worked with Max Levchin, a co-founder of Paypal, on founding Yelp . . . and much more.

Dave runs several great web sites, one of my favorites is Smashing Telly - a hand picked browser-based TV channel. Also Oobject, Cribcandy, Popgloss, Wists, and Yokiddo. You should certainly check out his blog too, Dave is always way ahead in his thinking.

I'm glad he's back in town for a few weeks, maybe I can persuade him and Om to do another Harrington pub session for old times sakes, or rather, for these new times. That would be a killer conversation.

[San Francisco Ferry Building Monday eve]

In case you missed it, late last Friday I said I would publish your guest posts on Fridays. Why worry about feeding your blog, and maintaining an audience? Publish here on SVW (you can publish on your blog too (...a little later)). Send me your guest post, any length (it's your call, your name, your content) to tom(at)foremski.com.

I reserve the right to maybe do a little light editing if needed, only to make you look better. So send them in, don't be shy :)

I'm announcing Guest Post Friday! Send me your post with that subject line to tom(at)siliconvalleywatcher.com, with links and with any graphics, and I'll publish it on Friday. I'd like to get first shot then you can re-publish elsewhere.

(I do reserve the right to not publish, and to do some light editing if needed. And you have to use your real name.)

Here is the panel discussion from "Fridays with Foremski" a proposed weekly video series that showcases the extraordinary region of Silicon Valley.

It's a lively discussion about President Obama's tech policies and what Silicon Valley needs to continue to do what it does best: disrupt industries.

The panel is part of a pilot program called "Fridays with Foremski" that follows me around Silicon Valley as I speak with local entrepreneurs, thought leaders, report on conferences, etc. Silicon Valley is an unique place and we want to produce a professional program that captures some of the essence of this amazing community.

We'd like to attract a couple of large underwriters for the series, we're talking with one large company, if you know of another let me know. That way you might see a second episode . . . coming to a Friday near you :)

Produced by SF Media Collective. Recorded at the Horn Group.

Please see a Silicon Valley sampler:

Behind the scenes:

More behind the scenes...

(If you read this consider yourself tagged :-) send me a link and I'll add the first 25 to the bottom of this post, I'd love to find out more about my readers. Don't be shy.)

1: I was born in Salzburg, Austria, left after 6 months.

2: My parents are Polish.

3: My parents wanted to emigrate to Canada but couldn't because I was under 2 years old.

4: I had whooping cough as a baby. There is a saying that to cure it you have to cross over a body of water, in this case the English Channel seemed to do the trick.

5: I really miss not living with my kids.

6: I like Hugo Boss suits.

7: I think of myself as semi-literate.

8: I like to notice irony and believe "ironic design" proves the hand of the supreme being more than "intelligent design." Because there is someone/something paying attention, moment to moment, and trying to mess with us. Intelligent design is more about "set it and forget it."

9: I'm an atheist.

10: I'd like reason and logic to make a comeback, I'd like to see a new enlightenment.

11: I try not to think too much, instead, allow myself the space to think.

12: I keep a pen and a slim moleskine notebook always on hand - it's my hipster PDA - it's instant on, high definition, stylus input, sharable, and 100% recyclable.

13: I prefer offline to online.

14: I've never had a wine cooler and want to keep it that way.

15: I don't know how to small talk.

16: I am afraid of karaoke. I can't carry a tune even if it were super-glued to me.

17: I like thinking on my toes.

18: I like "and" rather than "or." The world is not black or white it is black and white and more.

19: I like to have my cake and eat it.

20: The more I write the more authentic I become.

21: I like Manhattans.

22: I like Manhattan.

23: I like road trips.

24: I'm intensely interested in the future of media.

25: I prefer conversation more than going to the movies.

I flew in Wednesday morning and booked into Planet Hollywood. After a nap and some blog posts it was already evening. I set off onto the strip heading for The Venetian to catch a "blogger" party sponsored by Lenovo. It was mostlyt full of the same people I see all the time but also some of my favorite people such as Paul Mooney, that I only see once a year.

Paul Mooney is OG or rather OB, an original blooger, he's the real thing  - no fancy rooms or flights paid for by sponsors. He used his frequent flier miles to make it to CES and is couch surfing while he's here. (Photo of Paul Mooney and John Furrier.)

Also at the party were the social climbers of the blogosphere, Julia Allison, Megan Asha, and pals. It was nice to chat with them but it also seemed a little sad that they would travel all this way from New York city to socialize with CES geeks and bloggers, hoping to climb a little higher in their media popularity.

I would say that Ms. Allison peaked when she made the cover of Wired magazine last year, for no other reason than being an example of someone that pursues Internet publicity. I'm happy to make my micro contribution to her cause, but these days it all seems a little too dated, a little too 2008...

She tells me she has ambitions beyond Wired, but I promised I wouldn't say which magazines she is targeting this year. It seems like a harmless hobby.

It was also great to run into pals Ken Kaplan of Intel, Chris Heuer and his lovely wife Kristie Wells, JD Lassica, John Furrier, and Brian Solis.  

I'm very much looking forward to Thursday afternoon. I have a meeting with Craig Barrett, chairman of the world's largest chip maker, Intel (and one of my most loyal sponsors.)

- - -

Please see:

Internet Famous: Julia Allison and the Secrets of Self-Promotion

Julia Allison and Meghan Asha Dish About Digital Cribs Via TelePresence - DigItAll Consumer

Here is the third video in a series that SanDisk commissioned as part of its "Life Moves" series that encourages people to use flash disks to create and share videos. The series contains a mini-documentary on SVW and covers some of my work--which includes non-geek coverage of Silicon Valley/Bay Area culture with Allison Lovejoy from Lovejoy Lowdown.

The series is co-produced by the SF Media Collective (of which I am a founding member) and Bunny Production. Special thanks to Aron Pruiett, Celso Dulay, and Chris Knight.

Salim Ismael

Rod Boothby

Geva Perry

Ben Metcalfe

Chirag Mehta

Tom Foremski

Steve Wylie

Deb Schultz

Chris Heuer

Brian Solis

David Libby

Ohad Eder-Pressman

Adrian Chan

David Spark (also as moderator)

From Microsoft:

Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online

David Howell, Director, Microsoft Online Engineering

Bharat Shah, General Manager, Microsoft Online Engineering

Eron Kelly, Sr. Director, Microsoft Online

Alex Payne, Director, Office Client Product Management

Andrew Kisslo, Sr. Product Manager, Office Client

I'm excited -- I'm confident that this will be the beginning of a great, ongoing dialog with the company. As I have said in earlier email, the folks from Microsoft are looking for insight from key people in several communities so that they know what makes sense -- and what to do -- going forward. We are already looking at future engagements, events and programs, and we hope you will help in making them real for everyone involved.

Top Tech Bloggers Share the New Rules of Pitching Online Influencers in Technology

With me will be:

-- John Dvorak, Columnist, Marketwatch.com; Host, "Crankygeeks," "Tech5," "This Week in Tech," "No Agenda"

-- Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, "D: All Things Digital;" Author, "BoomTown"

-- Jon Fortt, Senior Writer, Fortune (circ. 931,495); Blogger, "Big Tech"

-- Tom Foremski, Author, "Silicon Valley Watcher;" Board Member, Research Fellow, Society for New Communications Research

-- John Biggs, Editor In Chief, "CrunchGear;" Author, "Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals and Scammers in the Internet Age;" Publisher, "BigWideLogic

- Then Thursday evening I'll be moderating a panel: "Web 2.0 in Action!"

Location: Hanson Bridgett LLP, 425 Market Street , 26th Floor,: San Francisco CA 94105

With: Jonathan Dillon, VP of Strategic Partnerships, Yahoo!

Tom Costello, CEO and Co-Founder, Cuil

Jason Devitt, CEO and Co-Founder, Skydeck

Richard Alfonsi, Director, Online Sales & Operations, Google, Inc.

Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook

- November 13 I will be talking with the teams over at Engage PR.

- December 8 I will be at FountainBlue's High Tech Entrepreneurs' Forum on a panel:

Technology Predictions for 2009

from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

at Jones Day, 1755 Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto

http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=147315

For this month’s high tech entrepreneurs’ forum, we have invited an investor, a corporate intrapreneur, an entrepreneur and an analyst to speak on the evolution of the technology markets and to make technology predictions for 2009, while providing advice to entrepreneurs on how to best navigate the business and technology changes expected in the new year.

· Facilitator Jones Day IP partner

· Panelist Rebeca Hwang, Director of Network Strategy and Development, YouNoodle, Member Board of Directors and Chair of Judging California Clean Tech Open

· Panelist Lars Leckie, Principal, Hummer Winblad

· Panelist Eghosa Omoigui, Director, Strategic Investments, Consumer Internet, Semantic Technologies, Intel Capital

· Panelist Katya Stesin, Serial Entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of recently funded Razoom

Virtualization is still a new technology and there are many questions about how best to deploy it and where the largest benefits can be gained.

We've got a great line up of speakers! Please tune in on November 4 for the SVW channel on virtualization followed by a roundtable discussion (it's free!). Also, you can embed the following widget in your website if you'd like to spread the word.

I'm looking for some experts on all aspects of virtualization, if you have any suggestions of people i should consider talking with or including in this event please send them to me ASAP: Tom at SiliconValleyWatcher.com and mention virtualization somewhere in the subject line. Thanks!

Plus, I'll have my own gang of pundits, similar to Steve Gillmor's excellent Gillmor Gang, with a discussion on the week's events. I'll be working with Alex Ross, my new VP of business development and the publisher of "Friday's with Foremski."

We are just beginning to pull together the sponsorships so if you'd like to find out more, please contact Alex Ross [alex(at)siliconvalleywatcher.com].

I'm out of town until the end of this week but when I return I'll tell you more about the series--and I'll be looking for suggestions from my readers about topics and people that they'd like to see on "Fridays with Foremski."

Here is a flavor of what you'll see, compiled from my work over the past year.

It's a great idea for Intel to host an upload lounge with fast speeds. I've been shooting a lot more video these days but it takes ages for me to upload video--far longer than editing the content. At the Upload Lounge I should be able to shoot, process, and upload a lot more video.

See you there!

Foremski's Take:

The list is interesting and there are many similar lists out there, with almost the same names but in different orders. I don't think it is possible to create an ultimate "influencer" list because the order of the names is different in different communities. I would trade my position for a higher spot in a smaller community such as VCs, or financial analysts. That would be much more valuable. Because the game is not about numbers of eyeballs it is about who's eyeballs.

Advertisers still buy media based on aggregate numbers but the real opportunity is to buy the right numbers. There is a potentially very lucrative arbitrage opportunity here.

- - -

I'm always flattered to be included but I take these lists with a large pinch of salt and I suggest you do too. Here is NowPublic's list of top 50 influencers (my bold):

1 Robert Scoble

2 Michael Arrington

3 Jack Dorsey

4 Biz Stone

5 Matt Cutts

6 Pete Cashmore

7 Dave Winer

8 Guy Kawasaki

9 Loïc Le Meur

10 Kevin Rose

11 Merlin Mann

12 Stowe Boyd

13 Jeff Atwood

14 Jeremiah Owyang

15 Veronica Belmont

16 Kara Swisher

17 Scott Beale

18 Marc Andreessen

19 Ryan Block

20 David Sifry

21 Emily Chang

22 Om Malik

23 Timothy Ferriss

24 Nick Douglas

25 John Battelle

26 David Cohn

27 Louis Gray

28 Tom Foremski

29 Tim O'Reilly

30 Ariel Waldman

31 Matt Mullenweg

32 Dean Takahashi

33 Philip Kaplan

34 JD Lasica

35 Sarah Lacy

36 Brian Solis

37 Charlene Li

38 Rafe Needleman

39 Dan Farber

40 Howard Rheingold

41 David McClure

42 Margaret Mason

43 Jason Goldman

44 Leah Culver

45 Chris Shipley

46 Jackson West

47 Liz Gannes

48 Owen Thomas

49 Adeo Ressi

50 Max Levchin

The Most Public Index, Silicon Valley | The News is NowPublic.com

I'm a member of a small group of advisors to Intel to provide consulting and feedback on corporate communications programs being developed by the world's largest chip maker.

Tuesday marked the first meeting of the "Intel Insider" group. I know many of the people involved in the creation of the group and also many of those chosen to take part. And I like the calculated risks that Intel is taking by involving some of the top names in the blogosphere and not imposing any restrictions on what we write about. There is some compensation provided for our time. It is mostly in the form of early access to news and also we get to keep some consumer products that contain Intel chips. There is no requirement to write anything about Intel, or the products.

It's an interesting project and I'm always interested in new ventures where we don't yet know what the answers are, where we don't yet know what are the best practices. And as Intel celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, it is a bold step for what has traditionally been a conservative company.

The Intel Insider program seeks to discover some of the best practices in corporate social/new media and in doing so, the results can be shared broadly. There is no restriction on the Intel Insiders sharing the results of the program with others.

What I like about the Intel Insider program is that it's innovative but it's not about technology -- even though Intel's business is all about innovation in technology.

Sean Maloney . . .

Tuesday we got to spend some time with Sean Maloney, Intel's number 2 executive next to CEO Paul Otellini. I've followed Mr Maloney's career for many years, he always gets the most interesting and also some of the toughest jobs at Intel.

Mr Maloney spoke about Intel's decision to pull nearly all of its TV broadcast spend and to go almost completely online. He said it was because Intel could not be sure it was reaching the right people through TV. There will still be some spending on newspaper ads but not much.

Moving online however, is a problem. He said that the fragmentation of the online media and the differences in how that plays out in various countries has created a "fog." It is difficult to know where to spend online and then how best to measure the effectiveness of that spend.

(I will be posting a short video of Mr Maloney discussing this topic as soon as YouTube has processed the material.)

It was very interesting discussing the latest online trends with all the other Intel Insiders, including some of Intel's top communications and marketing people. I'll be sharing some of these discussions in additional posts this week and over the coming months.

I barely slept the night before leaving for Tokyo so it wasn't a problem sleeping through much of the flight. I woke a little groggy as were coming into land. As I opened up the window shutter all I saw was a bright field of blue and a couple of tiny ships way below.

As we flew lower we were over land that was divided into neat fields of squares and rectangles, all of it laying close and flat to the water, from the ocean and from a broad river delta. Here and there among the fields and rice paddies, were islands of manicured golf courses and verdant woods.

When the aircraft door opened I could feel the warmth and humidity of the outside rush in--a welcome change from the dry, chill air of the cabin. I soon regrouped with Hideshi, Kristen, Bob, and Marshall as we walked to immigration and then picked up our bags. We had about an hour to kill before our bus ride to the Tokyo Dome Hotel, which we did at a Starbucks.

I found a Herald Tribune newspaper. It's always a pleasure to read a newspaper - especially a traditional broadsheet. It was massive when unfolded, much larger than the tiny coffee table I was sitting at.

We boarded the bus and 40 minutes later we were at the hotel. After a quick shower we were back in the lobby where we met Hisashi Katsuya, an executive with IBM Japan. Hideshi had briefed us on Mr Katsuya, a human social network, a central connector for the Japanese VC and startup communities. He works with IBM venture capital group and is the most connected person in the Japanese VC community. He knows all the startups that are worth knowing, he writes a blog on CNET Japan, and meets with 5 or 6 startups a day.

Hisashi grew up in Tokyo and knows its labyrinth of streets and tiny alleys very well. We walk through one of the oldest districts in Tokyo, past a temple and down a cobblestone-lined alley to a tiny restaurant that feels like someone's front room. We sit on the floor and eat and talk about the plan for the rest of the week.

Hideshi and Hisashi explain what they have dubbed Deep Dive Tokyo - an immersive cultural experience plunging us into the history and traditions of Japan and back into modern Tokyo and the tech and startup culture.

Along the way we will see ancient Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and the stunning 360 degree view from the top of Tokyo's tallest building. We will meet Japan's most successful venture capitalist, top Japanese government officials, and Japanese startups. We will experience and see some of the many sub-cultures that flourish in Japan. It's a very full schedule with not much time for blogging or Twittering -- but I can't wait.

[Check back for some images and video from my arrival.]

The Intel media widget showcases Intel's new/social media and it changes all the time. It shows off the human face of Intel rather than a slick ad with a slick marketing message.

I'm looking for one PR company that would like to become a sponsor of SVW and use the media widget format to showcase themselves and their clients. I only want one PR company for this slot - I need a Rooster PR company, one with cojones :-)

- - -

MediaWatch: Media Widgets Will Be The New Ads... Are You Feeling Innovative?

Will Online Advertising Turn Into Rich Media Widgets?

Silicon Valley Watcher Sponsors' Social/New Media Widget

Crawl South Park...

Web 2.0 is coming next week, it is going to be super busy. Wendesday evening the organizers have put together a South Park Crawl where the restaurants and other places will be open to Web 2.0 revellers. I'll be shooting Silicon Valley Minutes on Thursday from noon onwards over at/by The Conversation Group's Blogger Lounge 3rd floor Room 3018.

Poland's Deputy Prim Minister...

Clay Bullwinkel writes: Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak is speaking at Stanford University April 30 4:30-6:00 pm. Attendance is open and without cost, but you need to RSVP in advance because there is a room capacity. I am part of a team which is assisting his visit. My responsibility is the arrangement of meetings and agendas with leading executives of some of Silicon Valley’s big companies, the purpose of attracting R & D investment to Poland.

Poland in an Integrated Europe: Perspectives for sustainable development, greater innovation and strategic partnership in the globalized economy

Please see:

Silicon Valley Skills Crisis: Poland Emerging As A Top Source of Engineers

One in Four Adults Blog!!! Better Educated But Lower Incomes...

The Center for Media Research reports:

BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey, 26% of all adults say they regularly or occasionally blog. Of those:

• * 53.7% are male



• 44.7% are married



• 28.4% hold a professional or managerial position



• 10.4% are students.

Bloggers tend to be younger, averaging 37.6 years old, compared to 44.8 for adults 18+ (the "general population"). Ethnically:

• 69.7% of Bloggers are White/Caucasian (vs. 76.1%)



• 12.2% are African American/Black (vs. 11.4%)



• 3.7% are Asian (vs. 2.0%)



• 20% of Bloggers are Hispanic, compared to 14.8% of adults 18+

Political Views By Pictures...

Why ask people survey questions when you can show them pictures?

Take a 3 minute visual test to determine your "Election Fever" says Youniverse. Then compare your results to others. So far:

• 53% in favor of Obama



• 17% in favor of Hilary



• 23% feel that America should invest more in education



• 21% feel that the current President makes them want to literally put their head over the toilet bowl (!)



• 26% want America to invest in environmental issues (6% in healthcare)33% feel that the outside world sees America as war



• 29% want to change poverty (6% want illegal gun sales stopped)

Youth Fixes Planet...

Kevin Cheng drew my attention to The Tech Museum's 21st Tech Challenge which challenges students to solve a problem working in teams.

This year the challenge is Water Works:

• 1 in 5 people on the planet don't have regular access to safe drinking water.



• Create a device, powered by the river, to deliver water to the village's water tank.



• There is no electricity. Use the flow of the stream to generate power.

Kevin has been working with the teams, he writes:

This year's Challenge will really be something special and unique, not only is enrollment at an all time high, but participants are ranging from as far as India, Taiwan and all throughout the United States.

I've been fortunate to have met and spoken with a number of the contestants, and I was blown away by these kids. Along with the innovative and polished devices, what really stood out to me was each student teams' approach toward communicating and working together. Not only were some kids using technology gadgets like web cams, digital camera, and advanced computer programs but some even went as far as to use applications like blogspot, or facebook. It stunned me to learn about the how each student managed their time and energy between their academics, extracurricular activities, personal lives and their commitment to the Tech Challenge.

Every weekend leading up to the Tech Challenge ( Sat., May 3rd from 9AM to 6 PM ) the Museum opens it's doors and allows access for students to seek help, test their applications, mingle with other participants, or spectate the trial runs. These clinics have been great for the kids, and have had terrific turn out more than doubling expectations. It is also a great opportunity for these young engineers to have fun meeting and interacting with other young minds, as well as the community that supports them.

Out & About At Parties:

David Spark Flips Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 at Kliptronic's roof party.

Owen Thomas and fellow Valleywaggers hold court on Kliptronic's roof.

Ouch Quote of the week:

Owen Thomas on Mike Arrington's refusal to correct an inaccurate story:

Now you know why Mike always insists that you not call him a journalist.

Coming soon to my couch:

Friday's With Foremski - a video chat show

News.com Chief Dan Farber Brings Lessons Of Blogger Media

Black Is The New Search: Barry Diller's IAC Launches Its First Home Grown Business - A Black Search Site

On May 10: Exhibit Launch & Open House: Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2

This five-ton Engine is one of only two Charles Babbage’s computing engines ever built, consisting of 8,000 parts of bronze, cast iron and steel and measuring 11 feet long and 7 feet high. It was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. Come to see the docents “crank” the Engine and watch it mechanically calculate - an arresting spectacle of automatic computing.

The exhibit launch and open house, a Victorian-themed event, promises a stunning display of Babbage’s elegant design and inspired engineering. His designs for vast mechanical calculating engines rank as one of the startling achievements of the 19th century.

I sent them a copy of Chris Anderson's article in Wired Magazine about how storage and bandwidth is free and they disagreed. $35 is what they wanted. Which is very reasonable. IMHO.

Blogger Relations: Inside the Hearts and Minds of Top Online Pundits

Tom Foremski, Silicon Valley Watcher;

Om Malik, Giga Om;

Craig Newmark, Craigslist.org;

Jon Greer, BNET/Media Bridge.

- Coming up, April 22 to 25th I will be speaking at at the always excellent New Communications Forum 2008. Don't miss it! It will be at the beautiful Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa in Sonoma county, just an hour or so north of San Francisco.

I will be on the podium with Shel Israel and Jim Long. Here is Shel to explain:

Jim Long has been an NBC cameraman for nearly 10 years. His current assignment is the dubious distinction of following George Bush. He goes where Bush goes in the world and that recently included African. Jim has been behind the camera in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Those of you who use Twitter know him as NewMediaJim, one of the most popular, accessible and likable residence of Twitterville.

Tom Foremski, the former Financial Times tech business editor who now heads the team at Silicon Valley Watch, the insightful, provocative popular blog. When it comes to stories about business and technology, Tom has been there and done that and he talks about what he has seen with a sense of humor and occasional outrage.

Jim and Tom are two of the best story tellers I know and I am honored to be on the dais with them at the upcoming SNCR Forum in Sonoma April 22-5. We are going to talk about the social, cultural and business implications of the transition from old media to new. i knw they will be great because they are two of the best conversational story tellers I know. I was supposed to have a half-hour lunch with Jim at SXSW. It last nearly three hours. I've had more fun hanging out with Tom in a Palo Alto parking garage than I often have at planned Silicon Valley receptions.





http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/04/new-media-jim-t.html

I have a very special "friend of the speaker discount" 45 per cent off! Email me and I'll send you the booking code for registration at http://www.newcommforum.com.

- Also, I often speak at lunch time events at PR companies about journalism, blogging, new communications and anything else. I do these for free as part of an educational series. Contact me if you are interested in one of these lunch events. You can call my cell on 415 336 7547.

- Exclusive thought leader interview with Jon Flaxman, Chief Administration Officer for Hewlett-Packard. Mr Flaxman reports directly to Mark Hurd, CEO of HP, his job is to drive business process efficiency across all HP business groups. Reengineering HP.

- Interview with Robert Tennant, CEO of Recommind, a hot enterprise search company about to break out from its leading position in the eDiscovery legal market.

- Interview with Guillaume Cohen, CEO of Veodia, a hot enterprise video company. It describes itself as "The Live TV Studio In Your Browser" and it's true, it's a very unique service backed up with some impressive technology.

- I visit the birth place of Silicon Valley: The garage from which William Hewlett and David Packard built Silicon Valley giant Hewlett-Packard. HP opens it up only once a year. Exclusive video coming. I will also put it up on my site (coming soon!) Silicon Valley Garage.com

- Exclusive interview with Dan Farber, the new Editor-in-Chief of CNET's News.com. Dan Farber is one of the industry's top journalists and editors and he built a very successful network of top bloggers on ZDNet. This veteran of old and new media has plans to boost one of the top global media brands.

I meet with hundreds of companies every year, not just from Silicon Valley but from all over the world. They are all passionate about their ventures and about their products and services. Yet many of them will take half-an-hour to explain what they do.

And in that half-an-hour I will learn more about their competitors than I will about them. They often don't know that they are not communicating well.

Concise, clear communication, is vital to the success of any venture. It is the most valuable piece of communications that any company possesses.

And it is also the most difficult to master. I know it is tough because I've been there myself.

When I left the Financial Times in May 2004, I took most of the summer off to set up as a media entrepreneur. I had many lunches and dinners with friends and industry contacts and I told them what I wanted to do.

It took me half-an-hour to tell them about Silicon Valley Watcher and my plans. And I usually left people confused . . . and I felt confused myself.

It took me the whole summer to distill my pitch into my Silicon Valley Minute: "Silicon Valley Watcher is an online news magazine reporting on the business and culture of Silicon Valley." It's evolved a little beyond that to "the business of media and technology" but it is still way under a minute.

It sounds simple, and it should sound simple, but we all know that simple is tough.

Last year I set up a little experiment, a side project: Silicon Valley Minute to help companies with their pitch. I'd had the domain name for a while.

I'm relaunching Silicon Valley Minute. Take a look at these five posts. Not long after they did their Silicon Valley Minute, three of these companies were acquired by Cisco, Google and Oracle. Five more posts next week, and more. Here is one of them: Securent - Rajiv Gupta, CEO (acquired by Cisco).

I will be shooting lots of video "minutes" as I move around the valley and the conferences and also posting them here on Silicon Valley Watcher.

And if you want to make a video minute of your company I'll post it up for free, just send me the video player embed code and the description of your company from your web site, including links. I won’t edit it at all– after all it's your pitch.

I’m hoping Silicon Valley Minute can help companies anywhere, not just in Silicon Valley, or even the tech sector, hone their pitch and maybe get some feedback. And in the process, it might help them succeed.

Having a decent pitch doesn’t require any startup capital and it might even get you some. I look forward to viewing your Silicon Valley minutes!

Please send your Silicon Valley Minute, with your video embed code plus text description, to publish@siliconvalleyminute.com.

If you need professional help creating your Silicon Valley Minute, or any video service at all, please contact SF Media Collective. This is a team of people that I worked with at Podtech.net and includes other top video services experts handling all aspects of creation, distribution and attention.

I'm making some changes. I want to showcase the social/new media work that my sponsors have been doing rather than just showing their logos at the top of my page. Over on the the right of this page you'll see a good example of what I mean: Intel with a video player and some links to its latest and most popular blog posts.

This can be encapsulated into a widget that can then be shared on other sites. I'm offering this type of showcase to all my sponsors and I'm talking with some large PR companies too. The PR firms will get to showcase their own new media practices and also their clients.

There will be five side widgets and a super-widget slot on top of the page. The five side widgets will be rotated daily so that each one takes turns being the lead widget above the fold. I'll be announcing additional sponsors very soon. Contact me tom(at)siliconvalleywatcher.com if you'd like to reserve a spot.

I think this is a much better type of promotion than traditional advertising or marketing because it shows what each company is publishing and its involvement in its communities.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=S7sNxTlqIyI

Gmail becomes Guilt-mail because I don't mean to ignore people's emails or appear to be rude. I read and reply to a lot of emails but I can't keep up with them all.

On Facebook my email count is only about a dozen per day and I can easily keep up with that volume. I tend to respond more quickly on Facebook--at least that is true for now.

Also, Facebook lets me see the face of the sender and I remember faces first and names much later. Plus I can see if we have people in common, etc, which Gmail doesn't provide.

However, Gmail does provide a lot of management tools while Facebook is very basic. I would love a Facebook app that can provide me with a decent set of email management tools. That would be a killer Facebook app, imho. Fewer Zombies and more email management please!

---

PS: You can still pitch me through Facebook but Gmail is OK too...

I have 37,366 unread emails in my Gmail account, which is my one and only email service, and that is spam-free email. That means that pitches often get lost in the white noise of my inbox.

The unread emails have accumulated over about a two year span. And I'm hopeful that I will eventually get to all of them, but at this point I'm also hoping to get a stick of dynamite and blow up my inbox and start fresh.

While over at Facebook, I'm keeping up with my emails and it feels like a much less stressful environment. I often avoid my Gmail inbox because I won't surface for four or five hours dealing with emails.

I only have a limited number of keystrokes per day, and I have to reserve some of them for my writing, therefore I have to limit my Gmail exposure.

If you've sent me an email and I haven't replied, my apologies it is not personal, it does not mean I don't like you, it is my inability to deal with my email correspondence in a consistent manner. I don't know how people do it.

When I used to use Microsoft Outlook, I had a great way of dealing with emails that left a clean inbox. I would use filters and I would flag messages and I would send them into a "Very Important Emails" folder so that I could deal with them later.

But I would rarely visit that folder because I would prioritize my other tasks first: interviewing people, writing articles, call the kids, eat. Then late at night once I had finished all my other work I couldn't face several hours of dealing with my emails...

At least with Gmail, I can't hide the important emails inside a folder so I do answer quite a few every day. But it is still an overwhelming job so I'm hoping Facebook can become a more manageable inbox.

Also, only the people that read me and are interested in my work will know about my Facebook PR pitch preference and those are the people that I would rather work with anyway.

I will only look at pitches that come from my FaceBook "friends." I will give those priority over all other communications channels except for face-to-face, which trumps all other channels.

The reason is that if you are my FaceBook friend you are more likely to know what I've been writing about and what I've been up to. And I'm more likely to know a little bit about who you are.

If you are just pitching me because your boss said you should then I'd rather not respond.

It's an experiment, but I think it will at least lessen the number of people that want to get onto my radar yet don't keep track of what I'm writing about. Which is fine, but I'm looking to cull the noise and work with people who I know in some way. Send me a FaceBook friend request if you'd like to work with me :-)

GigaOm and TechCrunch do a good job writing about "Web 2.0" type companies but they are just a fraction of the companies in Silicon Valley and beyond. And thats what SVW hopes to do, focus more on enterprise IT companies, and other tech companies that don't get much attention from the media.

Over the next few days I will post a few articles about my travels to London and New York in December, and some of the big changes that technology is having on media companies--especially in London, where outsourcing of journalist jobs to India is happening at an accelerating pace.

Furthermore...CES

I hadn't planned on going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week but I couldn't resist the invitation to a "blogger" media bus. The bus is a pimped out high tech media broadcast studio on wheels. It sets off from the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus Saturday morning and returns the following Friday. Sponsored by Microsoft, AMD, Skype, and Logitech.

I'll be on board along with Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Loic Le Meur, Hugh MacLeod, Jeremy Toeman, Robert McLaws, Jason Dunn, Marc Canter and Dave Winer. Eight hours on the bus with these merry blogsters should be interesting.

It might even be a bit like Ken Kesey's "Further" bus which was filled with the "Merry Pranksters." I'll be playing the role of Neal Cassady, Dan Farber will be Tom Wolfe, Canter can play Wavy Gravy, Scoble can be Ken Kesey, and Winer can be Timothy Leary(!)

The bus was going to be called the Blue Monster but some senior exec at Microsoft objected to the name. Let's rename it Furthermore in honor of the Merry Pranksters.

Marc Canter has been inspired to write a poem about it:

Oh I'll be there, and on a tare

like a funky throbbing notion

of the blogosphare

And as the day transpires

and the folks get tired

I'll ignite the scene like fire

and suggest new fresh faire

For us all to see

like a big Hee Hee

and a enigmatic blogger

in her underwear

So lets video some news

and pour down some Milwaukee brews

and walk the strip til dawn ah singing of the

Facebook blues

(From http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/225589/)

At CES I'll be moderating some of the live video broadcasts from Showstoppers, and other things at Podtech's Bloghaus.

Technorati Tags: CES2008, bloghaus

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Monday we were down in Santa Cruz at the Boardwalk, one of our favorite local spots. Tuesday we popped into the excellent Vivianne Westwood exhibit at the deYoung. Sarah has an interest in punk music. I should be back to work soon...