Josh Dilworth

Doug is, like, on TV and stuff

Over the past year our colleague Doug Freeman has been hard at work co-editing The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology.

Buy it, yo.

For a city that lives up to its “Live Music Capital of the World” tagline, you can image that this was quite an undertaking.  And the result is a time capsule that includes almost 30 years worth of retrospective archives of the most unique and interesting music finds from the city we call home. 

Music has long since been a personal passion point of Doug’s (even after we lured him over to the dark side) and it shows through the work he and fellow editor, Austin Powell, put into this project. 

If you live in Austin chances are you like music and if you like music chances are you like Austin – net/net you can order a copy of the book here. 

Or if you prefer to do your shopping with a beer in hand listening to what else, live music, then you can grab a copy at the official book release party this Wednesday, March 9 at Antone’s. 

Additionally, the concept of the book and music journalism will be argued in detail on that panel that Doug is moderating at SXSW. 

On a personal level, I’d like to congratulate Doug on the fruits of his labor.  Not only is it a great book but it looks fly on my coffee table as well. Thanks, Doug.

Disclosure: Doug Freeman doing his own PR is highly amusing. See video below.

Meet LiquidSpace.

So proud of LiquidSpace, from recent funding to last night’s launch.

Really proud to be a part of this team. Has been a pleasure through and through. Mark, Doug and Candice — you rock.

This says it best:

The modern workforce isn’t just becoming mobile, it already is mobile. Employers and employees both, are seeking productivity gains while at the same time increasing their use of third places including co-working sites, office business centers, hotel meeting rooms and other flexible venues. Companies large and small are adopting alternative workplace strategies to reduce their current real estate footprints and put what space they have to better use,” said Founder and CEO Mark Gilbreath.

A map of our spaces is here.

I’m also very proud of the badass splash page we did for LiquidSpace. 

Disclosure: LiquidSpace is a client.

Scoble @SRI

It was awesome to welcome Robert back to SRI, and his headline makes an important, but subtle point:

The Coolest Tech Tour Ever: How SRI is Augmenting the Human Condition

Doug Engelbart was a key figure in SRI’s history, and a great leader.

His work was ultimately about a core goal of augmenting human ability — an idea that came alive in early SRI breakthroughs like the mouse, the GUI, hypertext and beyond.

Doug’s vision for AI was one that gave us prosthetics — not replacements. Siri speaks to this distinction well. Or, take the first down marker in football — it is the earliest commercialization of truly augmented reality, and a technology developed at SRI.

Augmentation always was and still is the higher purpose that drives the organization.

SRI focuses on real/usable and moreover practical AI — not fake/dream AI. And AI is just one area of research – the SRI augmentation theme spans surgery, drug discovery and therapeutics, robotics, software security, haptics, materials sciences, and more.

The point here is that whereas more showy efforts like IBM’s Watson really strive for a kind of technology that replaces a human, SRI is, again, focused on the Engelbart-ian tradition of extending, heightening, and exploring what human can be and do with technology at their side.

That’s a big distinction.

As someone who has spent a great deal of his career bringing non-trivial “augmentations” to market, I think it’s high time we remember that, despite all of the pop-cultural associations of technology that force us into the familliar machine vs. human dichotomy, the most interesting and productive innovations are those that help us do more with less.

Technologies that seek to replace or even replicate a human capability are considerably less interesting, both intellectually and practically.

I highly recommend watching all of Scoble’s videos if you have the time — you’ll leave re-enchanted with technology and the many great opportunities in front of us.

Disclosure: SRI is a client.

Bittersweet.

Beluga got snapped up by Facebook this week, which was simultaneously totally awesome and also totally sad because our work together had really only just begun.

The plans we had made…

Major congrats to the team — Ben, Lucy and Jonathan. You guys rock hard. And we’re still going to eat everyone’s lunch at SXSW.

I feel this way every time a client gets acquired, and it’s the consultant’s curse. Siri was much the same way — Apple did the deal a mere 6 weeks after we launched. It’s good for the agency in terms of branding and track record, but it always feels too early, no matter how much sense it makes or how large the multiple.

And for the entrepreneur it’s always a tough decision too. You don’t get into business just to get out of it. It always comes down to, is this going to help be leave the world an even better place than I found it?

The very best acquirers know as much to be the ultimate bargaining chip. It’s very gratifying to see clients go on to new opportunities where 1+1=3.

Disclosure: Beluga is a client.

Hurricane Party Launches, Revelry Ensues.

From RWW today:

Speaking of SXSW, Hurricane Party planned this week’s release (as has every other startup on the face of the planet) to coincide with the festival. Some apps, however, are better suited than others for breaking out at SXSW and we can see Hurricane party being one of them. Over recent years, complaints have grown increasingly common over the size of SXSW Interactive. Hurricane Party, however, could give users a quick way quickly organize their friends when, once again, the Foursquare party is full beyond belief.

And we’ve got a hell of a lot of shenanigans planned, so look out.

Two other items of note. For this launch, we wrote what is easily the best press release we have ever done at JDI.

And, Hurricane Party, for their part, produced one of the cleanest and most elegant screencasts we’ve had the pleasure of distributing. Props.

Disclosure: Hurricane Party is a client.

Form D and PR Consequences

Privately to clients we’re always giving (often belated) instructions related to Form D filing consequences.

Today, Dan Primack, one of the most skillful journalists out there at scouring filings for news, gives some good advice:

Last week we broke news about a new later-stage fund being raised by Union Square Ventures, which also is in market with its third early-stage fund. The fund strategy info came from a source, but the dollar amounts came from an Form D filing with the SEC.

USV, of course, declined to comment sue to regulatory restrictions. Partner Fred Wilson did, however, write a blog post about how Form D filings can catch issuers off guard, since they typically are submitted by outside counsel:

So when you are getting close to finalizing a funding transaction, be sure to talk this issue through with your lawyers so that you are in control of the substance and timing of the message.

Good advice. And here’s an addendum: If you are an attorney representing a Form D issuer, don’t wait for your client to initiate the conversation. Just throwing a bunch of papers in front of a startup CEO of venture capitalist to sign, and assuming they’ll figure out the consequences, is a bit presumptuous. They’ll thank you for it.

Yup.

Sorry if I’m being pedantic here, but you have up to 15 days (if I remember correctly) from the close of the transaction before you have to file the Form D, though lawyers usually do it immediately because they don’t think twice. The filings are then publicly available generally 3-5 business days after that.

Among other things, the amount of the financing, the names of executive officers and directors, etc. are also in the filing.

Reporters like Dan typically runs a feed or scrape for certain keywords against EDGAR for example, and Techcrunch actually has interns who do this in real-time for Crunchbase, and send along interesting findings to the editors, etc.

Basically, assume that people are paying attention.

So you can have your lawyers delay on both the closing and the filing to buy a few weeks, but my counsel is that you ought to control/shape the story before it is shaped for you.

Pro tip: name your company something vague and inane, e.g. “Widget Corp America” and then your brand can be the DBA. This way, the work needed to uncover the news behind a filing is all the more difficult, and it helps. 

That is — the filing will say that “Widget Corp America” raised a big A round, but only the most clever reporters will attach the company name to the DBA or brand — ie the actual name that people know you as.

UPDATE: (got some good feedback on this post): Another important point is that in some cases it is probable or even obvious that you have an exemption from the securities laws registration requirements — which would allow your compamy forgo it altogether.

Why?

Because the filing of the form is a step to ensuring you have a “safe harbor” exemption, but is not always the only way to skin the cat.  So if you are really wanting to be stealth and you feel good enough about your exemption you may opt not to do one at all. Consult with a lawyer of course… 

So, ask you lawyer about filing a 4(2) transaction as an alternative. you’ll have to take on some semi-burdensome additional state-level filings (which journos don’t typically monitor), but as long as all your people are accredited and your exemption house is in order, you might be able to avoid the disclosure issue altogether.

The more you know….

5 Predictions for Online Data in 2011

Check out my (now) annual data + marketing post over on Mashable. 

I think it’s a particularly interesting time, and as I say in the post, everything that can be data-driven, will be data-driven. 

Feedback and debate definitely appreciated.

Congrats to ChallengePost on a great year (+ Fast Company profile)

ChallengePost really has had an incredible year. This Fast Company profile of the CEO is worth a read.

Overall, this is a story about huge establishments like the US Government, Samsung, and the World Bank working with a tiny startup to open up to the public for the first time in a meaningful new way that points not only towards a more open and transparent government, but a way that corporations, too, can collaborate innovate and do R&D out in the open, instead of behind closed doors.

Challengepost = long-tail of Netflix Prize or the X-Prize, a challenge platform, funded by Betaworks, Dyson, Calacanis, etc. and Woz is on the board (oh snap).

Challenges, as a vehicle for innovation, are both capital efficient and unusually successful. In the process, they capture the public’s imagination and ambition. In fact, this Harvard Business Review study shows that successful problem-solving percentages go up by 30 percent when a challenge is employed:

http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-050.pdf

Among other things, this year ChallengePost was selected by the US government to host all of their challenges via a new effort called Challenge.gov — which is an initiative is a product of the March 8 Guidance from the Office of the President, which committed to make available a web-based platform for government challenges and prizes. ChallengePost was selected to create the platform for posting and managing national calls to action. 

The company was selected because of its experience running over 100 ambitious online challenges for corporations, non-profits, individuals and local and federal government agencies, including the World Bank, the City of New York, First Lady Michelle Obama, Samsung, Thompson Reuters, and more…

Disclosure: ChallengePost is a client.