May 28

is here again. You won’t want to miss this free event if you’re a coder in Phoenix Metro.

WHAT: a single day event with ~50 sessions covering various programming languages and language-agnostic techniques for people that write software
WHERE: University of Advancing Technology at 2625 W. Baseline Road in Tempe
WHEN: all day Saturday, May 31st 9am-6pm
HOW: there is no cost to attend and they provide food – come a bring a friend. You’ll want to sign up for their sessions online though as most sessions appear to be over half-full at this point
WHY: it’s the single most condensed day of info you’ll get on coding tactics in Phx this year. Sessions are given by local experts and you’ll meet a ton of fellow coders from diverse groups and styles.
WHO: anyone who writes code or wants to learn.

JumpBox is fortunate to be one of the three sponsors at this year’s event. Last year’s was fun. I’m this year on using virtual appliances to setup instant dev infrastructure based on popular open source server applications. In 15min you can have the major building blocks you need in place for a software project. Come nerd out with us this saturday!

May 18

So for anyone with free time who is looking for an interesting business to build, this is a service I want:

A structured online collection of magazine print ads that allows you to see how the ads have evolved over time.

I wrote this idea up and submitted it to Cambrian House last week and it should be competing in their tournament this week. Think of all the ads that have been created over the years and the amount of thought that went into each one. Then consider that the agencies work with the vendors to refine the ads over time to improve their performance. There are huge lessons locked away in pages of these magazines that are waiting to mined if only the ads were available in a sorted format that allowed the viewer to easily track their evolution.

We’re in the early stages of planning our print ad campaigns for JumpBox and we’re trawling through a bunch of magazine ads from various tech zines to see which ones run consistently and how they change from issue to issue. The premise is that the ads that run consistently are the effective ones and the changes to campaigns that stick are improvements. It’s a tedious process though and there’s clearly an opportunity from someone to turn this into a web-based research service. It seems like it would even be possible to make it “iStockPhoto-like” in that you could have users claim a magazine and then scan, categorize and submit the ads and earn a percentage of the subscription revenue generated given how frequently those are viewed by paying subscribers. Or the ironic alternative is that the revenue model could become ad-supported.

Does a service like this exist already? If not, who wants to build it?

May 17

Rob Brooks-Bilson just posted on a topic we’ve been discussing in the office lately: the sterility of 99% of the food options in AZ, the idiocy of the food reviewers and how to find the true gems that are out there (because there are some gems). I know Rob from back in the day having run the local CFUG. Rob is an accomplished chef, a bright technical mind and he authors the “Foo(d) Bar Blog,” a great food-focused blog. I respect his food opinions immensely and couldn’t agree more with his post.

<begin AZ food rant> The Ahwatukee Food Review that Rob mentioned seems to be either “advertorial” or just ignorant. The fact that Oregano’s won 11/33 awards is asinine. I don’t know enough about the Ahwatukee publication to speculate but I’ve seen other reviews by New Times and AZ Republic that seemed to blur the lines between legitimate editorial and advertising. The peoples’ choice “Best of Phoenix” always seems pretty shady as well too- that or we Arizonans are just clueless when it comes to picking good food. I spent the month of November living up in SF and coming back to AZ was like returning to culinary sensory deprivation after being on a food furlough program. Don’t get me wrong- I like AZ. I grew up here and I’m still living here. But our food in general is completely pasteurized and lame. It’s like what you’d eat if Walmart, Clear Channel and Microsoft got together and threw a dinner party.

What Rob made me consider though is “how much of this lameness is perpetuated by reviewers promoting crappy places and then people recommending them because they don’t know any better?” Food is one of those things like music where the best discovery vehicle is usually a recommendation from a friend who has good taste. But when you don’t have exposure to good stuff, you recommend what you know. You turn to reviews and eat the blah crap that chains can afford to promote and then tell your friends how good the Olive Garden is. In the interest of averting the extinction of the few undiscovered restaurant gems that are hiding around Phx Metro, we should figure out a better way to promote them. One of my favorite Chinese restaurants just closed down presumably for lack of business- everytime I went there it had one or two other people eating there. They weren’t good marketers at that place but they were outstanding cooks and it seems this is a tricky problem because we can expect the people who are right off the boat with the best food skills will also be the same people who have no idea how to market their restaurant.
<end AZ food rant>

So I hate to complain about something and not offer any solutions. The way I see it there are three parts to this problem and a few things that can be done in each realm:

PART I – DISCOVERY

We need a better mechanism to share food recommendations with trusted sources. Does anyone know of such a service? If so leave it as a comment. I know Yelp.com does food reviews among other local things but is there a de facto one that everyone uses? I’m not real keen on joining another social network. Traits of my ideal system here would be that it is: neutral, open, has a trust component, RSS feeds, is searchable by cuisine and geographic proximity, has maps integration, etc. Unfortunately I have zero time to devote towards making anything like this and I imagine something decent has to already exist. Microformats and Structured Blogging would be ideal for this but we’re not pushing that forward because we couldn’t make a business out of it and are focusing on JumpBox instead. For now I’ve setup an open Facebook group here and seeded it with my local Phx restaurant suggestions. I would love to see someone do the equivalent to the Starbucks Delocator for local neighborhood restaurants.

PART II – PATRONAGE

It seems to me the 2nd part of this problem lies in the need for people to consciously patronize new “mom & pop” food places and divert away from chain restaurants. I’m not suggesting everyone boycott chain restaurants altogether – sometimes fastfood is just too convenient, but if folks were to commit to finding one new small-business-owned eating establishment each week and bubble up their feedback either via their blog or one of the above systems, it would help foster a better restaurant scene. And more importantly, it would ensure that little places like Sesame Inn get a constant flow of new customers, get awareness inspite of their lack of marketing abilities and stay in business.

PART III – MEDIA REPRESENTATION

This one is a tougher nut to crack. Moving mainstream media is like trying to parallel park an aircraft carrier with all the intertia involved. I have no extra personal bandwidth to engage in a campaign to bring mainstream awareness to the under-promoted food gems in AZ, nor to do I believe that’s even the best thing to do. But hopefully someone in a position will work to fix the legitimacy of these food reviews or at least disclose when there’s a bias towards advertisers. There may be enough web-savvy people at this point where mainstream media can be ignored entirely and a web-based system provide just enough awareness of the good places amongst the right people where the gems will be sustained. This system doesn’t have to be centralized on something like Facebook or Yelp either. Maybe we Phoenecian social media people can agree on a standard tag that’s not used anywhere yet like “PhxFoodRec” or something so this decentralized info can be searched conveniently?

So here are my food recommendations for good restaurants in Phoenix. Join the Facebook group I just setup and share yours, or post them in a comment here. And if you know a good site for discovering and sharing good local restaurants, please let me know.
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My Phoenix Restaurant Recommendations

Fate – Asian Fusion – 3rd st. & Roosavelt – Johnny Chew is an amazing chef. cool atmosphere
Portlands – Bistro – Portland & Central – pricey but good
Takamatsu – Korean – 42nd Ave & Dunlap – incredible beef bulgogi
Atlas Bistro – Bistro – Scottsdale & Oak – tiny place adjoining a wine bar, great date place
Grazie – Italian – Main & Goldwater in Scttsdale – best italian in Phx, cool patio, huge wine list, Marcello rules
Postinos – wine bar – 40th & Campbell – converted post office, great bruschetta and huge wine selection
Merc Bar – Bar – 24th st. & Camelback – lounge with great cheese plates, best martini in AZ
Los Dos Molinos – Mexican – Central & Baseline – extremely spicy salsa, great margaritas, unique atmosphere
Thai Basil – Thai – University & Mill – best Thai in Tempe
Duck ‘n Decanter – Deli – 16th st. & Camelback – a fixture in AZ since 70’s, best sandwiches in Phx and cool shady patio w/ eucalyptus trees
Sylvia’s la Canasta – Mexican – 7th Ave. & Missouri – one of the more legit mexican restaurants
Honey Bears – BBQ – 52nd & Van Buren – best pulled pork BBQ in Phx
Goldman’s Deli – Deli – Hayden & Indian Bend – solid jewish deli in Scottsdale
Arcadia Farms – Deli – Scottsdale & Indian School – tasty sandwiches, mostly women for some reason, good pastries, braided trees on patio are cool
Swaddee – Thai – Pima & Via Linda – #2 Thai place in Phx
Farms at South Mountain – 32nd st. & Southern – good for brunch, awesome ambience and fresh food
Hannah Zen – Sushi – 7th Ave. & Missouri – pricey but some of the best local sushi
Sabuddy – Israeli – Scottsdale & Shea – best Israeli food in Phx
Pita Jungle – Mediterranean – multiple locations – best mediterannean
Cafestesia – Greek – 20th & Camelback – best Greek
House of Trick’s – Bistro – Mill & 7th St. Tempe – best patio in AZ, great brunch, lunch and dinner
Royal Palms -? – Camelback and 52nd St. – best Lobster Bisque in AZ, cool to walk around grounds
Elements – contemporary – Camelback Mtn ~57th st. & McDonald – Incredible view of city, modern interior, amazing soup
Camelback Inn -? – 54th st. & Lincoln – Best gazpacho, can eat it poolside at their resort, great brunch
El Chorro -? – 52nd st & Lincoln – wood-fired stuff on a patio, always packed day before Thanksgiving
Lon’s Hermosa -? – 55th st. & Stanford – Fixture of phx with desert surroundings, great ambience and solid menut
Durant’s – Lounge/Steakhouse – Central & Thomas – best steaks in AZ, has original upholstery from 70’s i think

May 06

How did Apple nail so many features of the iPhone and yet get picture messages so horribly wrong?

Right now when you receive a picture message via SMS on the iPhone you get an alert that looks like this:

iphone-pictureMsg.jpg

But since there’s no copy/paste feature, you’re apparently expected to hold the 9 character MessageID and the 8 char password in your head, switch over to safari, go to viewmymessage.com and type these in the form fields. I guess that’s realistic if you’re this guy but us mere mortals don’t have that kind of mental swap space.

AT&T should just put a link in the SMS to retrieve the picture. It’s no Treo experience like getting the pic immediately but it’s a one-click retrieval step at that point since the iPhone automatically creates links for valid URLs in messages. And this method would be no less secure since they already put these tokens as text in the SMS now.

If getting AT&T’s cooperation to fix this isn’t an option, Apple could still solve it by the having the SMS app recognize and parse the MMS alerts that AT&T issues and create a dynamic local page that posts those variables. Either one of these would make multimedia messages tolerable on the iPhone- it’s basically unusable now. I don’t know how Apple is prioritizing their improvements – I know they probably don’t expose that anywhere but it would be good if they allowed people to vote for fixes. BTW, Matt Assay has a good discussion of other iPhone brokenness. It’s such a beautiful device but has some things that are conspicuously annoying. It’d be great if their calendar worked more like the Treo’s and I still haven’t figured out if/where it syncs data from the notes app to the Mac.

May 02

Just a quick show of hands, how many people would find it useful to have an event like BarCamp only focused around tactics for promoting your stuff? We were kicking around the idea yesterday of an event called “MarCamp” (and actually Austin came up with “MarKamp” which is even better) that would take the same unstructured, self-organizing format of the other *Camp events. A quick search reveals this event back in 2006 in SF but it doesn’t like like anything came of it.

This is something I really want to see. We have all these different marketing initiatives we’re kicking around now and I just want to run a “Matrix training program” and instantly have all this experience now. It would be great to have a BarCamp style event where you could sponge up experience from folks that have learned this stuff the hard way and then contribute back what you know.

I will help make this event happen if there’s enough interest. Topics that I would most like to see:

  • referral programs
  • affiliate programs
  • reseller programs
  • loyalty programs
  • adwords campaigns
  • building effective landing pages
  • web analytics
  • split testing (GWO, adwords, email)
  • writing effective copy
  • focus groups: how to conduct an effective one and analyze/apply the results
  • experience running call-in “fireside chats” on something like gabcast
  • lessons in establishing user community for your product
  • social media services, the right way to use them for biz: twitter, facebook, linkedin, stumble upon
  • conducting publicity stunts that work
  • pulling off the effective tradeshow
  • If you can think of others of interest, add them in a comment and let me know if this is an event you would attend. If we get even ten talented marketing folks interested, I’m doing this. We’d most likely be able to get a free venue like we did for BarCamp Phoenix. Of course the inherent paradox here is we’ll need good marketing skills to promote awareness of the event to all the marketing people we’d like to attract ;-) All thoughts on this idea are welcome in the comments field.

    May 01

    iStock_000000446664XSmall.jpgThere are a lot of parallels between wind sports and startups. One thing we’ve encountered lately with JumpBox is something I can only describe as the tendency to “fight the wind” in our desire to artificially accelerate the pace of adoption. Everyone who’s tried to wind surf for the first time falls into the trap of trying to muscle the sail into position instead of respecting the wind and working with it. You end up completely wearing yourself out on that first day. By day two you’re so physically exhausted that your only option is to learn to work with the wind.

    I feel like we just woke up on day two with our startup. We work ourselves into a state of mental gridlock with all these “open loops” as David Allen calls them. And the reality is we’re doing fine and just need to continue to execute and lower our expectations of how fast we can realistically run given our size.

    I would be curious to hear from others who are running a small business: a) do you find yourself encountering this same tendency? and b) how have you coped with it and do you have any reliable techniques to relax and “work with the wind?” We’re in an emerging space and we’re not for lack of a killer product at this point- we have incredibly positive feedback from everyone who uses our stuff. Our real issue is that we see such incredible opportunities and yet we can’t tackle them as fast as we’d like and the market itself is still in its infancy. On first glance it seems our greatest challenge is in spreading awareness, but in reality it may be more in developing patience and becoming comfortable with the natural pace of adoption.

    Anyone else in the same boat (or on the same surf board)?

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