You might be wondering who the hell I am. I’m Cecy Correa, and I’ve known Joey and the ACTLab peeps for a couple of years now. Joey asked me to do some write-ups for Austin three-oh (it’s not Austin thirty), so here I am!
I attend Refresh Austin pretty regularly. Refresh Austin is a monthly meet-up of developers and designers in the Austin area. We meet at Buffalo Billiards the second Tuesday of every month (you can check out the Refresh Austin site here.)
This past Tuesday Michelle Greer kindly organized an excellent panel on start-ups and how to get funded our acquired. The panel included Jason Cohen (SmartBear software), Pat Condon (Rackspace Hosting), Jim Curry (Rackspace Hosting), and Josh Baer (OtherInbox).
The panel was excellent! We’re about one month away from SXSW, but the quality was on par with SXSW. Video of the panel should be posted soon, so here are a few interesting bullet points I took from the meeting:
Bootstrap: Most start-ups thrive due to bootstrapping. It’s not greed! Bootstrapping builds a good sense of what’s really important in your business, and allows you to focus on what matters. Once you make it as a successful business, what you have learned from bootstrapping will keep you on the right track.
Don’t get VC unless you need it: Sure, Venture Capital is great. Someone gives you money and you get to work on your business. However, you should not rely on VC. If you can get started on your business, get started! Don’t let the wait for capital freeze you and keep you from even starting your business. Acquire a couple (or a few) clients to get you enough of a cash flow to stay afloat. Having a small number of clients will help you focus your business, while proving to a potential Venture Capitalist that your business is worth it and can make money.
The business plan: Most panelists agreed that a business plan is not important: You can’t predict where your business will be in 5 years or 10 years. Moreover, you can’t predict how your business will change in 5 to 10 years. That said, I think a business plan is important because it allows you to sit down and write down your ideas concisely. Writing a business plan will allow you to articulate your idea for your business, which in turn should enable you to give a good business pitch when the opportunity arises. Ultimately, panelists seemed to agree that a business plan should not be longer than 2 pages.
NDAs: Should I sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and what are the rules for disclosing information in a business meeting? No! First of all, a Venture Capitalist is not going to sign an NDA, so why should you? Just keep it simple and refrain from disclosing secret information about your business. You can discuss your business at length without revealing anything that you feel would compromise your business. Do keep in mind, however, that if you think your idea is too good to be revealed, it probably isn’t. Think about it: if your idea is that easy to steal, you probably need to move on to another idea, or fine tune your current one.
That’s it! That’s what I took from it. The next Refresh Austin for March 2010 will be a lightning speed round for those lucky souls presenting at SXSW who want to practice before the big event.
So I bet a lot of you all thought Austin 3.0 was down and out for the count? Well nothing could be further from the truth. We are still going full force, however our blogging efforts have been less then stellar and for that we apologize.
Kristine and Dustin just began their first semester in the Media Studies master’s program at the University of Texas at Austin where they have been tearing it up talking about new media and geek centric issues.
I am hoping Dustin will soon write an article about his adventures with the Drupal development movement taking place here in Austin, as he has been one of the behind the scenes players hosting barcamps and monthly development meetings. His work with Lauren Roth and other great geek Drupal leaders like Lynn Bender and Four Kitchens has been invaluable.
Kristine has been working in the ACTLab where she has been tearing it up learning quickly how to “Make Stuff” and has been taking her new media skills to a new level. Maybe she post about her experiences taking an ACTLab course for the first time.
Me (Joey), well I have been up to no good. While I have been less then good about going to all the tech happy hours, I have met some really cool people when I have made the events. In the summer I attended John Erik’s going away party and met some very delightful geeks and new media moguls.
Oh and a shout out to Conjunctured who recently celebrated their 1 year anniversary, I remember going to Jelly and watching Dusty, John, Caesar and the rest of the crew put together that great business, it was awesome to watch. You all rock!
I have also had some great conversations with the Austin Entrepreneur Network folks here in Austin, they have been tearing it up as well, hosting low cost seminars about all the new media technologies.
And of course GeekAustin has been the backbone to our great scene here in Austin, Lynn’s work is always amazing to watch.
And Whurley, don’t think we are not watching you kick ass as well! Oh the list could go on forever.
Enough Shout Outs.
If you are all are wondering why I have broken out into such a different writing style from my previous academic style posts, it probably has something to do with the fact that I have been working for the past 6 months in the automotive industry doing new media development for various Austin Automotive companies such as Boost Logic, American Racing Technologies, UpRev and other companies.
As well as making my way around the automotive industry, this fall I am helping TA 3 courses in the ACTLab. In addition to the ACTLab courses, I was invited by the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio to be an adjunct in Audio Production. I have since had a great time down in San Antonio once a week working with a great set of students who are truly amazing and inspiring. This last week I took the students to a music recording studio (Studio M), yes they still exist! We had the pleasure of meeting with Michael Morales who gave us a great tour and really brought to light the new vs. old mentalities of copyright and new media production. We had a great discussion. And one question I came away with was “will we be able to sustain high-end high level purpose built recording studio’s when everyone is making their music at the coffee shop on their laptop?”
So while this post brings you all some what up to date, I hope it leaves you wanting more. Trust me, there are some great articles in the making and I look forward to seeing what Dustin and Kristine have to write about their new found geeky experiences in Academia.
So the Austin30.org crew hit up the GeekAustin/Drupal event last night at and we have to say, it was an awesome time. Four Kitchens gave a great talk about Drupal and it’s enterprise/non-profit capabilities. They discussed user tracking and organizational aspects of drupal which was quite impressive. I would like to thank Lynn once again for hosting the event, we all had a wonderful time.
Most fittingly, we received a tip on this upcoming charity event from the folks at Austin Browncoats.
According to their site,
We strive to make all of our charity drives a fun-filled gathering with entertainment and great company.
At Austin 3.0, we respond with a cheerful – hell yes.
Geekstravaganza looks to be an entertaining night with musical acts (Marian Call), an All-Geek Talent Show, All-Nerd Costume contest and Sci-Fi SAT.
This charity geekfest unites Geeks, Nerds and Browncoats alike to raise money for SafePlace in their goal to end sexual and domestic violence through safety, healing, prevention and social change.
Bringing nerds together for a good cause is something worth celebrating..or blogging.
CloudCamp Austin is happening this coming weekend, make sure you stop by. It will be hosted at the ACTLab, from what I hear there will be all types of folks there. Stay tuned!
IT Administrators will soon become the new blue collar workforce. Like licensed plumbers of today, IT workers of the near future will primarily be called on to fix problems after they have occurred, the cubicle will become the new white van and the on call pager will finally be rewarded with time and a half instead of the salaried pat on the back. This is not an attempt to belabor the tired “series of tubes” metaphor that former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens choked up during a Senate committee hearing; I am instead interested in the shifting perception of the personal computer as a piece of specialized work equipment to an information appliance. Read the rest of this entry »
So Dustin and I made the voyage over to Bryan, Tx, as well as Texas A&M (which we came to learn are two totally different places). I had a contact at A&M, a Professor in media studies, Patrick Burkart, who set us up with a slew of talks and meetings to go to in order to orient ourselves with the campus. Our first meeting was a talk about metadata systems and modeling, which at times proved very interesting, especially when the idea of doing qualitative/quantitative analysis of twittering came up. But I digress…. (into academia boredom!)
Emerging from our meetings, Dustin and I came away with a new respect for academia in A&M, while also wondering why the engineering buildings seemed to be 10-100X nicer then all the other buildings
We then met with Patrick where we talked about his upcoming book about hacktivism, cyberliberties and evidently the ACTLab (at least a little, here’s hoping!). We then headed over to The Creative Space in Bryan, Tx where we met with Cody and Bill. Here is a short interview I did with Bill about the vibe of The Creative Space.
After showing us around, the Creative Space people took us to dinner. A couple days before our trip Cody informed me he was organizing the first DorkBot BCS meet and invited Dustin and I to present a project or two. Never ones to turn down a good Dorkbot, Dustin and I showed up with some cool ACTLab hardware projects based around homebrew amplifiers and hard drive speakers. To say the least the crowd was impressed and we were impressed by the crowd. There was some great energy that night.
So yeah, BCS was a good time and if you are ever in their neck of the woods make sure you drop by and say hi to Patrick at A&M and Cody and the gang at The Creative Space.
How does a paradigm change in society? It happens one funeral at a time ..
Finally had the opportunity to make it out to a RISE event this week. Albeit, it was the closing ceremony, I did have the pleasure of listening to John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods elaborate on his perspective of entrepreneurship and business strategy.
Back tracking a bit, for those who are not aware of Relationship & Information Series for Entrepreneurs (RISE) Austin, no worries. Only in its third year, several have described this year’s conference to be the best yet. RISE co-founder, Roy Sosa, proclaimed that this year’s conference saw 133 sessions, over 1600 attendees and over 50 percent growth from last year in session attendance.
Not too shabby for a three-year old un-conference-conference.
Closing the conference out at the Bob Bullock History Museum, the crowd ranged in ages, experience and industries. It was great to see such a diverse crowd. Fittingly, tonight’s speech was a good reminder of that slight twinge of Austin “weirdness” that lends itself to all facets of this city’s culture.
After schmoozing and food, Mackey took the stage and presented his theory of Conscious Capitalism. In a nutshell, businesses of the 21st century will survive and succeed if they adopt the following:
The enterprise must have a deeper purpose beyond just maximizing profit
One must look to optimize for all stakeholders not just the shareholders
Leaders of these future businesses should practice service leadership; you should serve the enterprise not vice versa
Mackey poses the question: What is your purpose?
He defines the four great purposes of any successful business as the following:
Service to others (e.g. SW Airlines, Nordstroms, Container store)
Discovery and seeking truth (e.g. Google, Intel)
Excellence – quest for perfection world class (e.g. Apple, Warren Buffet)
Changing the world (e.g. The Gates Foundation)
Mackey brings up an excellent point that people now expect more from their jobs – not only to make money but to also feel good about what they do. It goes without saying that this economic situation has become a catalyst for this realization. Perhaps all the buzz of a recession sparking innovation is indeed truth.
So will entrepreneurs of the future really adopt this business practice? And, will Austin, as Sosa predicts, be the entreprenuer capitol of the world? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
Looks like this weekend is shaping up to be a busy one for those in the start-up community. Two events are on the horizon for Friday and Saturday.
First up – the Corporate Social Responsibility Conference. Hosted at the Applied Materials offices, this conferences targets entrepreneurs and managers to discuss best practices, collaboratively advise, and elevate conversations regarding corporate social responsibility. Registration for members $25; non-member $65. For more info, check out the details here.
Second – Startup Camp is being held this Saturday from 1pm – 6pm in the ACTLab (Studio 4B) at the University. The session schedule includes an appearance from Josh Baer, who will be discussing how Capital Factory can give your startup money, mentorship, and services to get your startup off the ground
Sex-dub is fast approaching. Actually, it’s less than three weeks away and already, my email/facebook/upcoming etc has been inundated with party invites galore.
Not going to attempt to list everything I’ve already RSVPed for – but as soon as sched.org has it ready to go – you can rest assured I’ll have that posted.
For now, SXSW is hosting an Austin Party on Monday, February 23 at Shangri-La on the East Side. Starts at 7:00pm. There will be free drinks, food, music and a chance to win a SXSWi badge.
