An Interested Mind by Matt Sederberg

Twitter

2008-11-26T03:36:00.000-08:00

I'm now on twitter, the microblogging service that limits user entries to 140 characters. I'm msederberg, feel free to follow me. Still trying to make sense of how twitter will fit into my daily routine and what my strategy will be. I've noticed that some bloggers that I'd followed pretty closely, such as Paul Allen and Guy Kawasaki, have greatly decreased their blog volume and instead twitter many times a day.

However, the twitter crowd that I "follow" is still a very small subset of the internet group that I'm usually in touch with. It seems like twitter is still in the early adopter stage, but it's growth is impressive: 343% since last year.

I recently downloaded TweetDeck for my Mac and this has greatly increased the usability of twitter for me, since now I get popup notifications when someone I'm following tweets, instead of needing to check back to the twitter website. Using TweetDeck, I searched for recent tweets about NURBS and T-Splines and a few other topics and began to follow the users who had tweeted about those subjects. I feel like I'm slowly being connected to a relevant twitter community.

Bob McNeel

2008-07-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Great article on Bob McNeel, one of my mentors, and a member of our board of directors. Bob has a unique, refreshing way of doing business, as you'll read in the article.

Here's one excerpt:

"When I arrived in the offices of Robert McNeel & Associates in Seattle, Bob was on the phone, telling the caller that Rhino probably wasn’t the best option for what they were looking for and that he (or she) should probably look for a specific vertical application for the industry that they were in as it might do more. Throughout my two days with Bob and the development team I was trying to figure out why this laid back approach to developing and selling CAD tools worked. In the most capitalist nation on the planet McNeel is an anathema to corporate culture. There is almost a total lack of greed and it’s incredibly refreshing.

"While CAD vendors spent millions in marketing, McNeel & Associates doesn’t, instead preferring their customers to be the product’s ‘marketeers’, spreading the good word by mouth and if that’s a slow process then so be it. The McNeel ethos is to listen to the customers, help customers, because if the customers are happy, the products do well. It’s not about milking customers."

Business principles from Ratatouille

2008-05-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

The Economist has a nice article highlighting the resurgence of Disney, and paralleling it with the premise of Ratatouille--that for the long-term success of a company, it's important to value innovation and encourage quality work, not to merely chase dollar signs.

Lenovo +/- stat

2008-01-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

There is a new stat this year in NBA box scores: the "+/-" stat. I recently discovered that this is called the Lenovo Stat, and is designed to measure a player's overall contribution to the team. Specifically, it says what the point differential was when that player was on the court during the game--whether his team outscored, or was outscored by, the opponent.

Here's the box score from the Utah Jazz/New York Knicks game today.

You'll notice that nearly all the Jazz players have a positive "+/-" stat, and nearly all the Knicks have a negative "+/-" stat. This is because the Jazz led the entire game.

However, one interesting note: David Lee on the Knicks played over 37 minutes, and had a positive Lenovo stat: +3. This means that when Lee was in the game, the Knicks outscored the Jazz! In the 11 minutes Lee wasn't in the game, the Jazz outscored the Knicks by 14, and the Jazz ended up winning by 11. So, even though Lee only had 14 points, you could point to the Lenovo +/- stat and say he was easily the MVP of the game for the Knicks.

One clunky laptop per child?

2008-01-19T17:01:00.000-08:00

Like most socially-minded geeks, I have been fascinated with Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. Mr. Negroponte, a tech guru at the celebrated Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled his dream in 2005 to make laptops available to children in third-world countries across the planet. The idea was to mass produce the laptop (he would only accept orders in quantities of 1 million or higher) and make it robust enough to withstand poor conditions.

Unfortunately, the early reviews are somewhat mediocre. The Economist cites poor implementation of the technologies, lackluster go-to-market execution, the emergence of commercially available low cost computers, which the OLPC people regarded as a threat rather than competitors, and, most disappointingly, the "hubris, arrogance and occasional self-righteousness of OLPC workers. They treated all criticism as enemy fire to be deflected and quashed rather than considered and possibly taken on board."

It will be interesting to see if the OLPC is able to succeed. Hooray if it does; if it doesn't, it will provide a valuable lesson about how even the most high-minded of ideas should not be exempt from the rigors of external critiques.

Successful cross-cultural relations

2007-12-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Kwintessential has some great info about establishing relationships with people from foreign cultures.

Is Facebook dying?

2007-12-04T14:51:00.001-08:00

I'm a huge fan of Facebook as a tool for keeping in touch--I'm even currently trying to push my great-aunts and uncles to join, as well as my extended family, so we can all get to know each other better.

But is Facebook on the decline? Perhaps, according to this article.

Which type of customer are you?

2007-10-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

I just read an interesting article at BYU's website discussing how companies issue customer service to disgruntled clients. The article asserts that organizations train their employees to issue customer service in a standard way (apology + compensation) but in reality, there are three types of customers, and each would prefer to be reconciled with the company in a different way.

If a company can train its employees to offer three different "types" of compensation, it would stand a better chance at retaining customers.

Legal answers for startups

2007-10-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

I noticed Guy Kawasaki interviewed one of the partners at Fenwick & West, a large Silicon Valley law firm, and got some great answers about legal decisions that high tech software companies need to make.

Fenwick & West was actually the first law firm we used when we started T-Splines, and they did a great job with the project they were given.

Animoto

2007-08-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

My friend Bjorn pointed me to this site where you can make music videos from a series of photos in literally about 70 seconds, for free.

Here's a quick video with pictures I tossed up there from a tutorial I was doing.

Why Startups Fail

2007-08-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Great article pointed to my by Roger on the importance of creating a product, not merely technology, if you're a startup company.

Another YouTube video

2007-08-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've uploaded another video to YouTube for my software company and I'm doing a test run here of embedding the html here on my blog. This video was made using Apple's Keynote and iMovie software.

Online shopping cart reviews

2007-06-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

We're doing a makeover of our website store. I've spent hours trying to decide on our approach, since this is a major decision for us. I've considered three options:

1. Hire a programmer to write us a custom store. This has the advantage of potentially getting me exactly what we want (and nothing I don't want), but it will either be rather expensive (if I have someone local do it) or difficult (if I use an off-shore programmer from someplace like rentacoder.com.)

2. Use a free, open source store like OSCommerce and invest some time myself into figuring out how adapt it to my website. This is an attractive option since I'd like to learn how to do this, but my time presents a high opportunity cost.

3. Buy or subscribe to a professional, ready-built store. There are hundreds of these on the internet, and the difficult part about this is figuring out which one is the best fit for us at the price we want to pay. I searched for hours to try to get an objective ranking of these sites, stumbling past very disorganized pages at Wikipedia, pseudo-rankings filled with Ad-Word links, and old lists, trumpeting the state of the art (in 2004). Finally, I came to TopTenReviews.com, which had exactly what I was looking for--an objective ranking of the top ten shopping carts in 2007! I really like this TopTenReviews.com site; it seems like the ConsumerReports for Web 2.0 and media. I will definitely return here again. (BTW, it ranks ShopSite as #1. I used ShopSite in the past and found it to be very good, but it had some minor annoyances. Hopefully they've fixed these by now, but I'll probably try #3: MonsterCommerce.com. I'll report back on how well it fits our needs.)

"Cheapo" flights online

2007-06-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

A European friend coming to the states asked if I could help her purchase a cheap ticket online last week.

I went through my normal routine:

1. Go to www.kayak.com. Kayak usually has very good fares because it directly searches the databases of most travel sites (orbitz, travelocity, etc.) as well as the airline websites (delta.com, jetblue.com, etc.) However, they didn't have a very competitive price to get from Europe to the states.
2. Check out travelocity.com directly. I know it probably shouldn't have anything that kayak.com wouldn't pick up, but I decided to check anyway. Nothing.
3. Finally, I googled "Sofia Salt Lake airfares" I came up with a site I'd never heard of before: cheapoair.com. This seemed like a VERY fly-by-night name (no pun intended), but I decided to check it out anyway. They returned very cheap flights--about 2/3 the price of the cheapest one on Kayak.

How was cheapoair.com able to do this? Well, one way is that they don't limit their flights to be on a single airline the whole trip--some flights included legs from Bulgarian Air, Czech Air, and United all in the same package. I'm not sure how that works--whether you need to recheck your baggage after each leg, or if the airlines are communicating and recheck it for you. I was a little wary, though, so I didn't select one of those options, instead finding a slightly more expensive one that stayed with Czech air the whole time.

The other way it looks like cheapoair is able to do this if by charging TONS of fees--we're talking nearly $200 in fees for a $375 ticket. Even after paying the fees, this was still the cheapest option, but I don't think I've ever seen so many fees.

Anyway, I found out that cheapoair IS a legitimate website--I spent a decent amount of time talking with them on the phone (long story), and I already have my purchased ticket in hand. SO, despite the name, this appears to be a reputable company. Make sure you know how large the fees are before booking through them, but I will now definitely include them on my list of places to check for airfares.

Seth Godin live at the Salt Palace

2007-05-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

This afternoon Seth Godin stopped by Salt Lake City to promote his new book The Dip, currently #8 on the New York Times bestseller list.

I'd been looking forward to this event for some time, and was happily in attendance. This was one of the more effective book tours I have been aware of. Rather than sitting at a table next to a stack of books at Barnes & Noble, Seth marketed one of his greatest assets--his public speaking ability--and billed the event as a speaking engagement, with a door fee of $50. Oh, and by the way, we each got 5 "free" books. Why 5? So we would read one and give four away. This is a brilliant marketing tactic, but like everything that makes Seth so good, this wasn't trickery--simply an effective way of communicating a solid product, where all parties involved would benefit.

Seth used his hour speech to expound about the concept of The Dip, and to respond to audience questions.

Seth began by observing that there is a shortage of superstars. Superstars, unlike the rest of us, don't need to advertise themselves. People come to them. Pixar doesn't put out an ad when they're looking for the head animator of their next film--they approach a superstar.

However, there are all sorts of niches that are in a superstar vacuum, many opportunities for people to be the best in the world. For instance, you can be the best newpaper boy in the city of Orem, UT, or the best baker on Center Street, or the best 3D free-form modeling software in industrial design.

So why do people stop short of doing their best--why isn't everyone the best in the world, instead of having so many average people?

Because of The Dip, says Seth Godin.

Before every big upside, there is a dip, and too many people don't know when to stick it out and when to quit.

What makes this difficult is that really successful people quit all the time--they just know when to quit and when to push through.

I'll let you read Seth's book to get all of his insights about evaluating dips, but one significant one is to do your best to judge the size of the dip before you start something. Count the cost. Then you won't be surprised at how long it takes to get through it.

Moms worth six figures?

2007-05-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

When I was at my parents' house a while back, I noticed a link to my blog on my mom's bookmark bar. So Mom, if you read this, this post is for you: according to this Reuters article, the work that stay-at-home moms do is worth $138,095 a year.

Wow!

Mom, thanks for staying home to raise me! Happy mother's day!

Seth Godin Coming to Utah

2007-04-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Phil Burns over at tagjungle.com is leading an effort to get Seth Godin to come to Utah as part of his upcoming book tour. $50 gets you a seat to hear Seth speak (certainly to be well worth the money) as well as five of Seth's new marketing book. Right now, this is in the planning stages, and we need to get 500 people to pledge to attend in order to get Seth here. This number needs to be hit by April 30. Details, copied from an email from Phil, follow below. I'm pretty excited about this myself and signed up within minutes of receiving the email.

If you’re interested in hearing Seth speak, there are a few things you need to do.

· First, pledge to pay $50.00 at http://www.pledgebank.com/SethGodinUtah

· Next, blog about it! We’re trying to create a blog storm about this, even a quick simple post advertising this will help a lot

· Third, tell everyone at work or who you think will be interested about it!

· Finally, all the details and updates are being managed at a new site, www.wordmob.com keep an eye on the site for details

Here’s Seth’s blog post announcing this opportunity:

T-Splines overview video

2007-04-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a YouTube video that gives a four minute overview of my company's new industrial design software product.

Embeded YouTube Videos in your own website

2007-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

All right, this isn't really new material for my blog, but I'm trying out how to imbed YouTube videos on website. So here goes, my sister and I performing at graduation last year:

(BTW, instructions for how to embed videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/sharing)

Report: Bulgarian Folk Dancers in Helper

2007-03-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I drove down to Helper, UT with my girlfriend and her mom to see the visiting Bulgarian folk dancers from Montana, Bulgaria.

We'd hoped to get in Helper in time to see their charming mining museum, but didn't quite make it before closing. Instead, we walked around the outdoor "courtyard" of the museum, where we examined pieces of mining equipment (and learned a lot about extracting ore from the earth).

After dinner at the bustling town diner "Balancing Rock" (the rural boys playing pool under the second story balcony reminded me of Professor Harold Hill's famous song in the Music Man), we made it over to the folk dance concert just as it was starting. The concert was at the Rio Theater. I hadn't been able to locate an address for it before embarking on our day trip, but I was sure we'd be able to find it. Sure enough, it was just a few buildings down from the diner (thanks, Tricia, for the good eyes).

Anyway, the concert was great! It was actually the first time I had seen Bulgarian folk dances done by real Bulgarians. The dances were interspersed by singing by their teacher (my favorite part). She had a rich Bulgarian vibrato, which sounds Middle Eastern and climbs across the musical staff instead of being restricted to the immediate neighborhood of the note.

Afterwards, I was able to meet Stephanie, the Peace Corps volunteer who had organized the event. I also met Zlatko Zhivkov, the mayor of Montana, Bulgaria, who was a fine fellow. It was a pleasure for me to speak with him and some of the teachers in Bulgarian--an opportunity I don't often have these days. I was invited to Montana (origin: 2nd century Roman word, not the US state) whenver I want to--something I may take them up on!

With Zlatko Zhivkov, mayor of Montana, Bulgaria

Bulgarian Folk Dancers in Helper, UT

2007-03-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, March 23rd at 6 PM, a group of 13 Bulgarian dancers (students from ages 12 to 18) will be performing Bulgarian folk dances in the Helper, UT Rio Theater. Admission is $1. The concert was organized by Stephanie Giacoletto, a Peace Corps volunteer from Helper serving in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian delegation is from the small Bulgarian town of Montana (others in the group include teachers and the mayor), and are staying with the citizens in Helper.

Helper is a mining town in the heart of Central Utah, near Price. The town got its name from the loaner steam engines that would "help" push trains up the canyon just outside of town. Harry Truman once gave a speech in the city at the railroad station as he was stumping across the country. The town boasts a charming, if mostly abandoned, historical Main Street that is reminiscent of the town of Radiator Springs in Pixar's feature film Cars.

Bulgaria is a country of 7 million people tucked away between Greece, the Black Sea, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. Though the country is small, Bulgarians pride themselves as having a little bit of everything: sunny beaches, pristine mountains, wide plains, and dense forests. Bulgaria is known for its yogurt, cheese, rose oil, weightlifters, and computer prowess (it was the technological center of the former Communist bloc.)

I served an LDS mission in Bulgaria between 2000-2002 and toured much of the country during my stay there. While I never made it to Montana, I was in many cities of similar size. My lasting impression of Bulgarians is one of warmth, hospitality, and charm.

I very much look forward to attending the event and mingling afterwards! It's a very rare occurrence to have such a cultural activity in such a charming, rural city as Helper, UT!

The full schedule of the group's Utah performances follows below:

Wednesday, March 21st - 6:00 p.m at Mont Harmon Jr. High in Price (admission is free)
Thursday, March 22nd - 10:30 a.m. at the Student Center on the Salt Lake Community Campus
Saturday, March 23rd - 6:00 p.m. at the Rio Theater in Helper (admission is $1.00)

Movies, Events, and Dating Ideas for Provo College Students

2007-01-13T17:21:00.000-08:00

My buddies Rich Millar and Trent Ostler recently invited me to take a look at their new website, What2doatBYU.com. Their site provides a comprehensive source of information for events, movies, parties, and dances going on for college students in Provo, UT.

Their site has good information to help college students make an informed decision on the ever-present question about what to do on the weekend. I was especially interested about how Rich and Trent chose to publicize What2doatBYU.com: through creating a "group" on social networking site Facebook. The "group" feature that they used is one way Facebook allows people to link up with others who share common interests. Some Facebook groups are professional (Internet Marketers), some focus on special interests (Govorish po-russki? Russian Speakers), and some are just for fun (Han Solo is a Total Stud).

Rich and Trent publicized their site by inviting all their friends to join the Facebook group "What2doatBYU.com Saved me from Boredom!" The size of this group quickly ballooned to over 300 members in just a few days. I was curious about the traffic this was bringing to their site, so I asked Rich 5 questions about internet marketing and What2doatBYU.com.

1. How do you keep your site up-to-date with the latest events?

We are constantly checking our resources to make sure we are up to date. But we are also relying on those who use the website to let us know if there is something missing. That is exactly what the website is designed to do--allow anyone in the valley to post upcoming events directly on our home page or read other peoples posted events so they can find out what's going on around Provo.

2. I know your site has only been up for a short while, but do you have any data yet that shows what the most clicked-on event pages are? What are students in Provo most eager to find information about?

Our top three visited pages are Parties, Dances, and Other Cool Things 2 Do (which includes Comedy Clubs, Museums, Game Centers and much more).

3. I'm curious that you seem to have launched this site from creating a group on Facebook. (Which grew pretty fast--300 people in just a few days?!) Do you know how many of these people actually clicked through to your site? Have you done any other internet marketing for this? What has been the most effective?

There are now well over 300 hundred members in that Facebook group within the short period of just three days. Our statistics show that over 500 people have come from Facebook to visit our site so far with just a handful coming from other sources. This has been the only marketing tool we have used so far. But we do plan to distribute flyers in the near future to apartment complexes and then hopefully just let it spread by word of mouth.

4. How did you decide what to feature on your site? Are there similar sites for other college towns in America?

We weren't able to find any other sites that are really patterned like ours--specifically for college students. There were a few sites that had bits and pieces of information here and there, but there wasn't a single website that brought it all together onto one easy website to find. We originally looked at sites from major cities such as San Diego that are designed to help tourists find things to do there. From those websites we were able to narrow it down to the categories that we thought would be most appealing to college students here in Utah Valley.

5. As a Provo native, which events/places on your site would be your personal choice for a group outing? For a date?

Personally I love the mountains around here so I would probably pick an event that involved them. In the winter, definitely skiing, snowboarding or sledding and in the summer hiking or backpacking. There are so many beautiful National Parks out here that everyone should experience if they come to Utah. As for a date, I would probably go to the Planetarium on campus or Thanksgiving Point. They have so many neat things to do and see out there, especially in the summer.

No college football playoff?

2007-01-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

Like many college football fans, I heartily enjoyed Boise St.'s amazing, highlight-heavy upset of Oklahoma in this year's Fiesta Bowl. I was actually alone in my apartment, chatting on my phone as I watched the game, but during each of the Broncos' amazing plays, I reveled in the whoops and hollers coming from the surrounding apartments. On the game-winning Statue of Liberty handoff for a two point conversion, a spontaneous celebration erupted in the stairwell, as various football buddies spilled outside, eager for a chance to share enthusiasm by chest-bumping and high-fiving. Americans love college football.

College football bowl games are some of the most exciting athletic contests I have seen. For instance, it doesn't take too good of a memory to remember Vince Young's improbable fourth-down touchdown run in last year's National Championship game against USC--a team many were calling the greatest college football team of all time.

So with Boise. St. finishing the season a perfect 13-0, the question emerged this year, as it does every year: why don't we have a college football playoff? Every other major college and professional team sport crowns an undisputed champion, while college football's champion is effectively determined by the polls.

I just read an insightful (if exhaustive) article on this at Yahoo! sports. The writer identifies the commissioner of the Big 10, Jim Delany, as the most powerful man in college football, and consequently, the person most responsible for blocking the implementation of a college football playoff. The article doesn't villanize Mr. Delany; it merely reinforces what he himself has stated many times: he doesn't work for NCAA football--he works for the Big 10, and all of his decisions are made to look out for that conference, not to look out for the best interests of college football. The other power players in college sports agree: for a college football playoff to ever become a reality, Mr. Delany must endorse the idea.

I myself tend to be rather utilitarian: I usually look for the outcome that brings the greatest good to the greatest number of people. So I can't say I agree with Mr. Delany. But one thing I can say: he has definitely been doing his job. So what would it take to influence Mr. Delany and his friends to implement a playoff? They would need to be convinced that doing so would be more lucrative than continuing to sponsor the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). The best way to do this? Continued success from the mid-major conferences, showing that they belong on the same level as the BCS schools. Go Boise St.!

LinkedIn?

2007-01-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

I'll start off this post not by asking, "Have you heard of LinkedIn?" but instead, "Are you on LinkedIn?" LinkedIn is the MySpace for grownups--a professional social networking site where businesspeople can keep in contact, be introduced to one another, and expand their networks. There are many other professional networking sites, but frankly, none of them carry as much clout, and I can't recall any of their names without googling. Some networking sites, like thehive.com, attempt to bring the LinkedIn idea to niche markets, but my experience is that most of the active members on these niche sites also have a LinkedIn account. The point of this paragraph? If you haven't joined a professional social networking site yet because you're waiting to see which one emerges as the market leader, stop waiting. LinkedIn leads the pack, with over 8.5 million users.

Why use LinkedIn? Evangelist-turned-Venture Capitalist Guy Kawasaki blogs about ten top reasons why he uses the site. Among them are improving your visibility, increasing your connectivity, and giving yourself the ability to perform "blind" reference checks--you can see who (if anyone) has given a potential partner a good recommendation.

My own experience with LinkedIn? Well, I'm sold on the concept, but I underutilize the site. As of this post, I have 54 connections--people from college, my industry, mentors, partners, customers. This is a modest number, but the more active members of my network have well into the hundreds of connections. The most evangelized way to use LinkedIn is to (surprise) make connections--to get your connections to introduce you to their connections, etc. I haven't done this at all yet. I have used LinkedIn to do some background checking; when I was considering hiring a consultant, his LinkedIn recommendations were the clincher in my decision. I've also used it to stay abreast with changes in employment for people I know. But the top reason I use LinkedIn? For the future. The best time to build your network is now, before you actually need it.

Russian Diary

2006-12-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

My fascination with Russian culture, people, history, and current climate is sometimes hard for me to communicate with people who haven't been there. This diary from The Economist's Moscow correspondent does a pretty good joy of conveying the depth and irrationality of the Russian experience.