Facebook Connect
I’ve added support for Facebook Connect to ShareEdmonton, and was surprised at how straightforward it was. Little bit of a learning curve initially, but nothing major. I’m impressed with the way it works.

OAuth
Looking into this one for use with Twitter and Brightkite. I’m not very far along yet, but it also seems fairly straightforward. Check out this ReadWriteWeb article on how a recent OAuth security flaw was addressed by the community.

MSMQ
I’ve been using this since January, actually. It works great, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. I want to explore some of the more advanced uses now.

OpenCalais
You might consider it a semantic web service, because Calais is all about giving meaning to data. I came across it via bit.ly, which uses Calais to automatically extract names, places, and other metadata from the links you shorten.

Google Maps API
Again, this one is fairly straightforward. Lately I’ve been looking into the non-visual services it provides. For example, geocoding and reverse-geocoding in the background, without necessarily having a map on the page.

Public Data Sets on AWS
This one I’ve looked into the least so far, but I’m keen to check it out. In particular, I’d like to explore working with the Freebase data dump. It’s still amazing to me that you can tap into such a vast amount of data with relative ease.

As you can probably guess, almost all of these are related to work I’m doing with ShareEdmonton. I should have an update on that soon.

We had five demos:

• I showed the first little bit of ShareEdmonton, and EdmontonTechScene. It wasn’t the best demo in the world, but it wasn’t bad for having just two days
• Graham Batty showed us bittablog, an interesting microblogging service that he recently cooked up.
• Ryan Leland showed his unique take on social networking – you-vs-me. It was a definite crowd pleaser thanks to the humorous topics like Cougar-vs-Bear. You can use the democamp invite code to check it out.
• Mark Matichuk showed us Clinitrust, a secure messaging platform for medical professionals.
• Our final demo was Peter Urban and Paul Bellows, who showed us their new joint venture (between Smibs and Yellow Pencil). It’s a tool to help move content from one CMS to another.

The general consensus afterward was that Peter & Paul’s was the demo of the night. Though they did a little too much talking in my opinion, the product is definitely intriguing. It’s not hard to see that there’s a big market for what they are doing. It’ll be a time saver, indeed. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of it soon.

See what I mean about the tripods and cameras? After the demos almost everyone wandered over to RATT (Room At The Top) in the Students’ Union Building. A little too much drinking and karaoke ensued, but it was a fun time!

Twitter featured more prominently this time at DemoCamp. We had TwitterFall up on the big screen before we got started, and that encouraged lots of people to start tweeting. Soon after the demos started, we broke into the top ten trending topics at Twitter Search, and eventually rose as high as #7. Very cool!

Don’t miss Walter & Alain’s great list, 10 things I liked about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Brittney also has a funny post of fun facts about DemoCamp Edmonton 6. Also, Cam and I did an interview with The Gateway, who wrote about DemoCamp and IDEAfest today.

I can’t wait until DCE7! Thanks to everyone who came out last night. If you’d like to be notified about future DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Edmonton, sign up for the mailing list here.

We’re not the only podcast hosting service that shutdown in 2008 – at least two other services also called it quits recently:

• September 16, 2008 – Podshow Creator shuts down (screenshot)
• October 3, 2008 – Podcast Spot shuts down
• December 26, 2008 – Podango shuts down

The most visible of these services was Podango, so news of its demise created some discussion over the holidays. From Podcasting News:

While Smith attributes Podango’s state to the effects of the financial market, Podango and other podcast hosting services have not demonstrated that there’s much of a need for podcast-specific Web hosting services.

Podcango’s situation raises the question: Is there a real need for podcast-specific hosting services?

It’s a good question, and one I have thought about quite a bit in the latter half of 2008. For the vast majority of people, YouTube, Flickr, and similar tools are good enough. If they want to share some audio or (more likely) video, these services make it easy to do so. Increasingly, video cameras come with built-in support for YouTube, so the user doesn’t really have to do anything but record. This was the curve we attempted to get ahead of with Podcast Spot.

For a smaller number of people, something more advanced is required. Maybe they want to sell advertising, or have more control over production quality, or gain access to better statistics. I think this group can be split into two – the DIY crowd, and the use-a-hosting-service crowd. So yes, there is a need for podcast-specific hosting services, but perhaps the market is a lot smaller than everyone thought.

It wasn’t all bad news for podcast hosting in 2008 though. Some familiar services still appear to be going strong: Libsyn, Podbean, and Podkive to name just a few. Back in July, RawVoice announced they were entering the market with Blubrry. In August, Wizzard Software announced increased revenues and decreased expenses and losses. And on October 21st, Blip.tv announced they had raised another round of investment.

I’d expect 2009 to be similar – a mix of ups and downs for podcast hosting services.

It’s important to realize that we’re talking about podcast hosting here. I don’t think the demise of Podango or any other service should be taken to mean that podcasting itself is in trouble. As Paul Colligan said:

Podango’s problems say as little about the future of Podcasting as GM’s problems say about the future of cars.

Podcasting is all about communication, and the need for that hasn’t gone away. Podcasting itself is doing just fine.

For that reason, I have been more than happy to go back and share my own experiences from the competition and beyond. Last night I talked about the VenturePrize process and making it to the finals, and James talked about his experience last year in the student competition and gave his presentation from the finals too.

As a presenter, I think the most enjoyable part is the question and answer period. Both James and I answered a ton of questions last night, but one stuck with me. After I had explained that we were shutting Podcast Spot down, someone asked what I would have done differently.

I didn’t have to think about it for very long, probably because Dickson and I have talked through this a number of times. There’s a ton of things I might have done differently, but two things in particular:

1. I would have avoided using the word “podcast” in the name of our service.
2. I would have focused on sharing audio and video for a specific niche.

I personally have nothing against the word podcast. I don’t think we hitched our wagon to the wrong horse or anything, because the underlying technology is sound and in use by millions of people around the world. The word itself has always been confusing and misleading, however. I’ve written many times that podcasting is just a word, but unfortunately most people don’t see it that way.

I also think it would have been a good idea to target our service to a specific group of people. As a service for anyone and everyone to share audio and video, we were a little too much like a YouTube clone (even though our feature set was quite a bit different). I think we could have executed more effectively with a smaller target customer base.

The follow-up question is, of course, why didn’t we do those two things? That question is much more difficult to answer!

We regret to inform you that after two years of helping you share your creativity with the world, we have made the decision to cease Podcast Spot operations beginning on November 30th, 2008.

We’d like to reassure you that we’re not just flipping the switch – our plan is to shut the service down in phases. Starting December 1st, 2008 you will no longer be able to upload files to Podcast Spot, but your domain, downloads, and RSS feed will continue to operate through February 2009. During that time we’ll work with you to redirect users to your new site and feed. Beginning March 1st, 2009 Podcast Spot will be taken offline completely.

We are doing our best to ensure that the entire process is handled as smoothly as possible, and in a manner that is professional and courteous. I know if I was one of the podcasters I’d want lots of notice - so that’s what we’ve done by not taking the site down completely until next year.

Recently we’ve been in touch with Libsyn, and they have agreed to help migrate our users to their system (on an opt-in basis). That’ll be a great help for a number of our podcasters, because it means they don’t really have to do anything - we’ll work with Libsyn to make sure everything happens seamlessly. Thanks to Rob and his team for making that happen.

One other thing I should mention is that I’ve taken the Paramagnus Blog offline - it now redirects to the Paramagnus category here. I’ll post about the reasons why and what I have learned some other time, but the gist of it is that we never updated that blog anyway.

We’ve got more details up on the site, and we’ll post further updates there.

The first question we’ve generally been asked after breaking the news is “why?” Obvious question, but difficult to answer. There are lots of reasons which I’m sure I’ll explore over the next while. Dickson and I didn’t make this decision on a whim, we put a lot of thought into what would be best for us and for our users.

Even though we’re confident this is the right decision, I am still finding it hard to swallow. We put a lot of time, sweat, and money into Podcast Spot and we remain incredibly proud of what we’ve built. I know we’ve both learned an enormous amount from the whole experience. Still, I can’t help but be a little sad.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more about this in the future, but for now, I’d just like to say thank you. To our customers, to our friends and family, and to everyone we’ve met along the way, thank you for supporting Podcast Spot.

There’s momentum now, agrees John Bristowe, a development advisor with Microsoft Canada in Calgary. Bristowe, who talks to developers throughout Western Canada, noticed the shift in 2004. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, “but the tech community really began to take off.” Case in point: Calgary. “We’ve always had a vibrant developer community,” he says, “but what you’re seeing now is a growing interest in venture capital, entrepreneurship and the sort of things you only hear about down in Silicon Valley.”

The column introduces topics like “the unconference”, “tagging”, and “agile software development”, and profiles a number of individuals, myself included:

When Mack D. Male co-founded a software company in Edmonton at age 16, his goals were clearly and rigorously defined. One: fame. Two: fortune.

Eight years later, his ambitions have matured, and Paramagnus has grown in step.

I can’t say I’m incredibly pleased with the photo - it’s kind of an awkward pose! That said, I think it’s pretty cool that they made the three photos look very similar, considering they were taken by different photographers in different cities! I haven’t yet seen what it looks like in print, but the photo online is pretty high resolution. The photographer I worked with was great too. He did his best to stick within the strict guidelines the magazine gave him.

I am quite happy with the article. I think Tyler managed to capture our conversation at Starbucks very well. He also did a really great job of ensuring he had the technical details of podcasting correct. I would however like to clarify one comment Tyler made:

Suddenly more money was going into podcast creation than was being made, and Paramagnus was left to search out the next big hit.

We’re always keeping an eye out for what’s new and cool, but that doesn’t mean that we’re ignoring Podcast Spot. We’re long overdue for an update, but we’ve still been working on it. And yes, we have something new in the works also.

Anyway, give the article a read and let me know what you think! There’s lots of other interesting things in “The Tech + Media Issue” too, so be sure to check it out.

Read: Unlimited Magazine

The biggest positive about the location is also the biggest negative - you can’t get more central than the Empire Building.

I loved being right smack dab in the middle of downtown Edmonton. The Jasper Avenue address looks good on marketing materials, for one thing. It feels like the place a business should be. More importantly, it is easy to get to from pretty much anywhere in the city. The office was more than a place for Dickson and I to code…it became a meeting place for us and our friends. Going to the hockey game? Let’s meet at the office and take the train. Out for dinner? Meet at the office and then we’ll go. It was quite handy!

But being so central has it’s drawbacks too. Parking is pretty much nonexistent…I don’t want to think about how much gas I wasted driving around looking for a meter. There’s also the issue of Edmonton’s street people - not a major problem, but sometimes an annoyance. And the biggest drawback of all - cost.

That’s the main reason we decided to bid farewell to the office. We’ve changed quite a bit in the last two and a half years, and we just couldn’t justify the cost any longer. Our servers are in a data center now, and we’ve been working remotely more and more frequently. As an Internet+software company, we don’t really have visitors in meatspace.

That said, I still think there is value in having an office, and we may find a new one before long. Being in the same room usually can’t be beat when you’re working to solve a problem. We certainly accomplished a lot in 712 over the years. A new office will certainly be somewhere else though, with a smaller monthly bill and lots of free parking

Moving is hard work. It feels like we have been moving out of the office for months! Tonight I finally handed over the keys and access cards, making it official. The broom in the picture above was one of the last things we moved out. It’s kind of funny, because neither of us remembers buying it, and it clearly hasn’t been used (the building had a cleaning staff). Moving is definitely a good opportunity to clean house.

Now it’s finally finished. Nothing left to move, and we’re officially a virtual company again. So long 712!

That said, it’s just the first step, and there’s still a long way to go. We’re eager and excited to continue improving the podcasting experience, with Podcast Spot and other products too.

I’d say that still holds for today. We’re going to spend some time going through what we’ve learned over the last year, and combined with our ideas and plans, we look forward to making our second year even better.

As I said on the Paramagnus blog, thanks to everyone who has supported us and especially to the podcasters who call Podcast Spot home. It’s still pretty cool to me that people are using something I’ve built.

Read: Paramagnus

The worst part is that there is supposed to be a follow-up article. Will it be better, or just as bad? Does it even matter? I don’t know. We’ll find out soon enough I guess, and I’ll definitely be writing about it here.

In any case, I wanted to write down my concerns with the first article, so that I can look back on the experience and hopefully take something positive away from it. If you’ve got some spare time on your hands, you can read my very long entry here. If you do read what I’ve written, I’d love to know whether you think my concerns are legitimate or if instead you think I’m bat-shit crazy.

Also - have you seen Edmontonians anywhere around town? The circulation page makes it seem like the magazine is really easy to find, but I’ve had a heck of a time finding any copies. Seems the only reliable location is the airport. I guess that’s just as well

Read: Why The Article on Paramagnus in Edmontonians Magazine Sucks

It all starts with VenturePrize

As most of you know, Dickson and I competed in the 2006 VenturePrize business plan competition. We learned a lot from the experience, and had a great time too. I’ve written quite a bit about the competition on this blog, and also on the special Paramagnus blog we setup to document our experience.

In May, we attended the 2007 VenturePrize competition along with our friends Chris and Don from ProExams, who won the competition last year. Around the same time, we were approached by VenturePrize head-honcho Jay Krysler who wanted to nominate us for the 6th annual Sizzling Twenty Under 30 write-up in the Edmontonians magazine. We thought that was pretty cool, and sent Jay the information he requested (background information on Paramagnus, essentially).

Then we forgot all about it, quite honestly, until July when we received a peculiar phone call and email from Tom Bradshaw asking to meet with us:

After this session we will each write a column giving advice on how you can improve in these areas. This will be part of Septembers sizzling 20 under 30’s. You guys will get a great profile.

He listed the “areas” mentioned in the email: “Voice, Speech and Presentation”, “Visioning and Goal Setting”, “Conflict Management”, and “Health and Wellness”. Tom’s email sort of came out of left field for us, and we said as much in our reply:

We are somewhat confused about the information you have sent us. We’re not sure what the profile or any of the panel members you have mentioned have to do with the sizzling 20 under 30?

Hopefully you can provide some clarification. We were expecting something more related to entrepreneurship, not speech therapy. Sorry to be so blunt, but you’ve sort of caught us off-guard!

Tom’s reply made it clear that we weren’t being considered for the Twenty Sizzling Under 30 at all, but for a different article written by “The Transformers”:

One of the reasons you were suggested to the Transformers, and I am sorry to be blunt back, but we were given the impression that you would have won the venture contest if your presentation had been better? Perhaps this was not the case and as I was not there I can not speak with authority on the matter.

Fair enough - ask a blunt question, receive a blunt response. That said however, we’ve never ever been told by anyone that we’d have won VenturePrize if our presentation had been better. We worked with two mentors very closely, and they were brutally honest about how we could improve. Aside from making both our business plan and presentation less technical, nothing was ever said about our presentation being anything less then awesome. I mean that - we heard countless times from many different people that the judges were very impressed with us. We were under the impression that we didn’t win VenturePrize for business reasons - certain areas just were not as well-thought out as the competition (management and marketing, primarily).

Meeting the Transformers

Dickson and I are both pretty adventurous guys, so we decided we’d accept Tom’s invitation to meet with the group. On August 1st, we met with the Transformers at Dr. Larry Ohlhauser’s downtown office. In addition to Larry and Tom, Steffany Hanlen, Les Brost, and Edmontonians publisher Sharon MacLean were all present.

The meeting was scheduled for 5 PM. I arrived slightly early, and waited in the reception area until the group finished their previous meeting. Dickson arrived just as they were finishing up, and we entered the boardroom, ready to find out what The Transformers were all about.

Let me describe the situation. We were meeting with a group of people we’d never met before. This same group of people was under the impression that our presentation skills suck and that they could give us advice on how to improve. Furthermore, we were meeting on their turf. Essentially the situation was an uncomfortable one, filled with unknowns.

I had only two tasks in mind for the meeting. First, I wanted to find out what the heck we were doing there. Second, I needed to decide if we wanted to participate or not. We started with introductions around the table, and then we asked the group to explain things. They said they’d write an article on us, with each of them taking a slightly different angle based on their area of expertise. I then asked the group how writing an article pointing out our flaws would benefit us. Steffany seemed to be leader, and she tried to answer the question by explaining that it was in their best interests to make us look good.

We then had to make an on-the-spot decision to continue the meeting, or to call it a day and go our separate ways. We decided to continue. Looking back, I’m not so sure that was the best decision.

The rest of the meeting was a fairly typical interview, with each of the Transformers taking turns asking us questions. Things wrapped up at about 6:30, and they said they’d get in touch with us to meet one-on-one in order to gather more information for the article. We thanked them, and left.

We debriefed as we walked to Dickson’s car. Our general feeling was that the article/process could go either way. Could be good, could be bad. It was disconcerting that the publisher Sharon never once got the name “VenturePrize” right, always calling it something else.

Meeting with the Transformers individually

I’m going to keep this section short, as I want to get to the article. During the month of August, Dickson and I met Larry individually, with Tom together, and with Les together.

My meeting with Larry went quite well, I thought. He’s a really interesting guy, and came across as very genuine. We met at Starbucks and then went to his office to fill out the exercises he had prepared. I got the impression that Larry is far more comfortable working with his typical patient however - someone a good thirty years older than me.

The meeting with Tom was interesting. He’s a wonderful speaker, as you might expect from a speech consultant, and he had some funny stories and anecdotes to share. Beyond that however, I wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to help us. The stuff Tom does takes days, or even weeks, and we only had an hour.

I think Dickson enjoyed the meeting with Les more than I did. Les brought along a folder of documents that we went through together. Sadly, I felt that he was just going through the motions. Again, I wasn’t sure how Les might be able to help us.

We never met with Steffany. All we did was fill out an exercise that resulted in four words. Mine were “connect”, “participate”, “experiment”, and “inspire”.

The Article

I found out about the article late on the evening of the 8th, when Dickson sent me a text message. No email or phone call from any of the Transformers to tell us that it was published (not to be expected I guess, but the lack of communication was cause for concern). The article is broken into four sections, each written by one of the Transformers.

ParamagnusParadox with Steffany Hanlen

This is the first section of the article, and the worst in my opinion. This paragraph is particularly telling:

A bit of background: In 2006, Paramagnus entered the VenturePrize competition and placed second. As I understand it, the audience watched as Mack, the president and CEO, and Dickson, the vice-president, pitched their business to various judges-angel investors-and essentially presented themselves right out of the money.

As I’ve already said, we never received any feedback like this. We presented ourselves right out of the money? News to me. I’ve spoken with some friends about the article, and a few of them have pointed out that Steffany did say “as I understand it”, as if that somehow makes it better. It doesn’t. All that does is make it clear that Steffany was too lazy to do any research. Either that, or she’s unwilling to back her comments up with a source.

She goes on:

A number of people who saw them in action instinctively knew they had something special, but some expressed concern they would not be able to attract investors, venture money or capital of any kind without some serious help.

Again, news to me. I’d really like to know if Steffany did in fact find people to say this, or if she’s making it all up. I suspect it’s the latter.

I don’t know if it’s our age or something else, but all four of the Transformers seem to have felt the need to butter us up. Steffany does it in the article:

This could be what it felt like when Steve Jobs or maybe even Bill Gates met with people of a ‘different generation’ and tried to explain what they were doing.

Thanks, but no thanks. Comments like this are flippant and meaningless. How many times has “the next Bill Gates” been written in the last two decades? Too many times to count, that’s how many. Even if Steffany did mean what she wrote, the comparison is unfair. I might think I’m brilliant, but it’s not fair to compare anyone to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, myself included. They are iconic men.

I don’t know why she felt it was relevant, but Steffany pointed out that we turned down the offer of snacks or coffee. Maybe we just weren’t thirsty/hungry? Nope, must be that we were impatient and rude. Here’s what she wrote about me in particular:

Mack walked in with the heavy footsteps of a man twice his age. A scowl on his face did nothing but mask the spark of personality, generosity of spirit and humour that resonated later. after he figured out we were not there to embarrass them or tell them how to run their business.

I suppose that was meant to be a positive statement, but taken with the rest of her article, I can’t help but think that it could have been phrased better. It’s a backhanded compliment, at best.

Steffany finally gets on to some analysis:

The problem I see is they are unable to explain what they do, or to express their ideas in a face-to-face conversation with most people of a certain generation-and tax bracket-that could help them financially.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. First of all, Steffany decided she could represent an entire generation by declaring that we are unable to explain what we do. Secondly, she failed to take into account the thousands of people, of all ages, that we have talked with about what we do. We’ve been to dozens of conferences, trade shows, and other events, and I don’t ever recall seeing blank stares.

She finishes with this:

My goal with Mack and Dickson is to help them align their intention and desired results with their vision-just as soon as they see the value in creating one.

We have our work cut out for us.

I’m sorry, but I simply don’t see the value in filling out a worksheet to find four words. Steffany hasn’t made any effort to suggest that a vision is anything else. Obviously I’m being a bit facetious here, but seriously.

One other thing:

These McNally High School and University of Alberta grads-both 23-have known each other since childhood…

No, wrong. We’ve known each other since grade ten. You might think this is a small point to make, but I think it’s important. If Steffany is unwilling to do five seconds of research to find out how long we’ve known each other, how likely is it that she researched anything else she wrote? Not very likely I’d say.

HumanCode with Les Brost

All things considered, this section isn’t bad. I’m somewhat surprised that Les doesn’t once mention our follow-up meeting with him, which suggests to me that this was written prior to that.

Les very accurately described the initial meeting at Larry’s office as follows:

Their initial human code signaled “defensive, apprehensive and closed”. the atmosphere in the room was chilly and the tension hung in the air like a mist.

He then goes on to suggest how we could have handled things better:

Mack and Dickson could have lowered the pressure on themselves by saying something like, “We’re pleased to be here, but a bit concerned because we are unclear about the process.”

Fair enough. Except that I wasn’t at all pleased to be there. And to be perfectly honest, I shouldn’t have had to feel concerned or unclear about the process. Steffany, Les, and Tom all write that we were negative and closed when we entered the meeting because we didn’t know what was going on. Not one of them attempts to take any responsibility for that. Perhaps if they had done a better job of explaining who they were and why they wanted to meet with us, there would have been fewer unknowns, and we’d have been happier about walking into a meeting with them.

And sure, it goes both ways. We could have done some research and learned more about the Transformers ahead of time. Thing is, they wanted an hour of our time, not the other way around. Explain to me why I should give it to you, don’t make me guess.

CrediblePresentation with Tom Bradshaw

Like the previous two sections, Tom starts by explaining how we walked into the meeting “almost like they had been called to the principal’s office.” Does this magazine not have an editor? Does saying the same thing three times make it more accurate or important? Fail, fail, fail.

This line from Tom’s section made me laugh:

If you total their combined ages, they are younger than the mean age of the Transformers.

Here is Tom’s analysis of our presentation skills:

At this point, I haven’t seen either Mack or Dickson in action talking to potential investors, but there were a few traits I noticed at the intake interview that need to be addressed.

Each has a habit of speaking with a hand in front of his mouth. First, people really do hear better when they can see your lips moving. Secondly, it sends a message that you may be hiding something which reduces your credibility.

Ask either one of them a direct question, and you get an indirect answer.

I wasn’t aware that I had a habit of speaking with my hand in front of my mouth, but maybe I do. I’ll definitely think about it now. I asked a bunch of people if they thought I had such a habit, and no one said yes. We only spent about two hours with Tom, so I am not sure if that’s enough time to notice something like that and classify it as a habit, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

Indirect answer to a direct question? I don’t think so. I think my direct answers are part of the reason that I come across as aggressive.

Magic21Rule with Dr. Larry Ohlhauser

Larry’s is the last section of the article, and the only one that ignores the initial meeting completely. I’m not sure why he felt the need to include so much detail, but Larry’s section is full of seemingly random comments, all of them negative:

Mack and Dickson can only carve out time to meet with me to discuss their health and wellness after work hours…

Mack apologizes for arriving a bit late and orders a small plain coffee. It is not his first and will not be his last this long day.

He states, “My biggest commitment to health is changing my drink to Coke Zero.” I inform him that the aspartame in the drink is broken down in the liver, creating formaldehyde. the only benefit I see is a reduction in his embalming cost when he dies.

I always try to arrive to appointments on time, if not a bit early. If I was late to the meeting with Larry, it was only by less than two or three minutes. I probably apologized simply because he was there before I was. I’ll keep my mouth shut next time, in case he’s got a voice recorder handy.

I did mention that I drink mostly Coke Zero now, but I said it jokingly. I’m not sure why he’s got that in quotes, because those aren’t my words. The context has been completely lost.

Here is Larry’s diagnosis of my health and wellness:

He has failed miserably on his nutrition self assessment. He rarely eats breakfast, and goes long hours without food, finally topping up late at night before bedtime at 1 AM. He has no exercise program: what little he does is hit-and-miss.

All true, I’m not going to deny that. I should be healthier! Everyone should be healthier though, right? My problem with the meeting was that Larry seemed unable to relate his knowledge to someone my age.

The rest of Larry’s section explains that I’ve agreed to keep a journal to improve my nutrition, and that I’ll start a regular exercise program. Funny, I don’t recall agreeing to those things. For whatever reason, Larry decided to speak on my behalf. Not good.

Final Thoughts

I got my parents to read the article, and they weren’t impressed either. My Mom said “that doesn’t sound like you and Dickson at all!” Many friends who have read the article have said the same thing. I don’t think it’s possible to read the article and come away with either an accurate or positive impression of Dickson or I. That’s my biggest problem with the article.

The Transformers told us they didn’t want to make us look bad, but that’s what they’ve done. They told us they could help us improve our chances of landing some sort of investment, but I fail to see how anyone could be interested in investing in us after reading the article.

We haven’t yet spoken to any of the Transformers since the article was published, except for an email to schedule another meeting. They are supposed to write a follow-up article, but I’m not sure how well that’s going to go. I don’t think the Transformers themselves deserve all the blame though. I know we could probably learn a lot from them, if only we had the time to do so. Unfortunately, getting an article to print imposes time restrictions for everyone involved, and the simple fact is we haven’t spent enough time with any of the Transformers. You simply can’t accomplish much in a few hours.

The way I see it, there’s no way they are going to make themselves look bad, so they have two options. Either they write an article that is even more negative than this one, explaining how they were unable to help us, or they write that the Transformers are gods and we’ve been successfully transformed. I am not particularly interested in either option.

I am disappointed with the Transformers thus far. I’m also morbidly curious about what’s going to happen next.

We recently purchased some digital voice recorders and they arrived just yesterday afternoon. They are Olympus WS-100’s, and last night we tested them for the first time by recording my presentation. In general I’m pretty happy with them. We had one at the back of the room and one on the table in front of me. The far away recording isn’t so great, but the close range recording is quite good.

So if you’re interested, you can listen to my presentation here. The only editing I did was to remove the questions (as I didn’t have permission to post them). Otherwise it’s a straightforward recording. You can look in the show notes to see the time codes for the major topics I covered. I don’t know why, but it sounds like I was sniffling quite a bit - apologies for that!

If you have questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. I’m not going to post the slides here, but if you’re interested in them, feel free to email me.

Read: MasterMaq’s Podcast

You can watch the video at Neo-Fight.tv, or at Podcast Spot.

Overall I am pretty happy with the interview, aside from one little blooper. The quality is surprisingly good considering it was done over Skype too. We don’t get into the details too much, but I think the interview provides a good introduction to our service. Thanks to Ben and Tiffany for having me on the show.

Ben posted this episode to Digg, so if you want to help us out, digg it

Read: Neo-Fight.tv

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown which is in the midst of major renovations. The lobby and common areas look excellent, as do the recently upgraded guest rooms. Especially sweet was the flat screen TV! And I love the lighting design too. It’s hard to get the same effect from pictures, but you can try! Here’s the photos I took. The dated hallways clearly do not match the rooms, but a little sign by the elevator says that they will be renovated too.

Here are some interesting facts (or maybe not) about the trip:

# of liquids confiscated at security: 1 for me, many for Dickson
Minutes until we missed our departure: less than 10 (we were the second last people to get on…we had to run after the final boarding call)
Total time in Vancouver: ~25 hours, 40 minutes
Number of blocks walked: ~24
Number of “random” security checks: 1 (Dickson was pulled aside again …it’s because he’s Chinese…the airport screeners have a very loose definition of “random”)
Number of Starbucks coffees I consumed: 2
Number of investors I didn’t like: 1 (the only reason I didn’t like him is that he sat in my presentation laughing to himself…very disrespectful and rude…you don’t have to agree with me, but show some respect!)
Hours of studying accomplished: 0 (but I studied today, I think the midterm went fairly well)

• I have to agree with Dickson, the weather in Ontario was really hot. It mattered less on Saturday when I had a bad case of the chills, but still.
• I am amazed that I met people who were happy to “do it on their own” when it came to podcast hosting. Perhaps this is because podcasting is so new? Heck, I don’t even host my own photo gallery anymore. Why not? Because Flickr does it better than I ever could. I offload all the work to them. That’s what we are trying to do with Podcast Spot too. You as the podcaster can focus on creating great content, because we take care of the rest.
• Speaking of pictures, you can see the ones I took here.
• I think we’re going to have to do something more interesting with the booth next year. Our “low-key, low-information-on-the-wall” style worked to an extent, but I think we can do better.
• We need to do a better job explaining how we charge. We charge based on upload, which is the amount of stuff you send to our servers in any given month. This is in contrast to charging by storage, which is the amount of stuff you have put on the servers since you became a customer. If we charged by storage, you’d eventually hit a limit, after which you wouldn’t be able to add anything new without first removing something old. Fortunately for you, we charge by upload so you never run out of space!
• I just re-read that, and perhaps it still isn’t clear. I’ll record something soon that should explain it a little better. Visuals always help!
• Generally speaking, I have the feeling that the Expo is missing something that would take it to the next level. What that something is, I don’t know. I do have a small wish-list though: wireless Internet throughout the convention center, expanded awards (say a “best podcast hosting service”), and more free food/drinks!

Thanks to Tim and the rest of the team at TNC New Media for another great Expo! I’m looking forward to next year already

We finished setting up our booth in about ten minutes. Like last year, we opted not to do anything fancy, though unlike last year we have a banner this time. You can see what I mean in the pictures. We also decided to sponsor the conference notepads this year, and I am really happy with the way they turned out.

More later!