Today’s Austin American Statemen has an article honoring the contribution that Betty Sue Flowers has been making to Austin and the world– especially as she takes on her next adventure- moving from Austin after 45 years of being here, to be with her love, former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley.

Betty Sue Flowers had a fundamental impact on my life. Many of you have heard the story of my trip to Chile, and how it was fundamental to the path that I was taking in devoting my life to supporting entrepreneurs.  Because of her connection to Joseph Campbell, and my awareness that I was about to take on a hero’s journey, I contacted her to see if she would give me advice on what I should do in preparing and creating a model for supporting entrepreneurs.  I still remember her saying to me… “If you are serious about this, you should go to Chile. You should meet Senator Fernando Flores.”  I don’t think that I was ready to hear those words… but she said them, I think three times…. “If you are serious about this….”.

What is amazing is that those words and my year spent in Chile in 2003 opened up doors of awareness that I can not imagine any other way that I might have found.  Thank you Dr. Flowers. And only after years do I feel comfortable in saying “Thank you Betty Sue”.

The following letter is somewhat personal, but in in honoring her, I repost it here, for she has had a fundamental impact in my life, and I want the world to know of my gratitude for her:

Betty Sue,
I’ve been meaning to write you as soon as I heard on the radio and today in the newspaper that you are moving to NYC. I want to say thank you from the deepest part of my heart for the doors that you have opened for me.  Our conversation in 2003 has sparked adventure after adventure as I follow my bliss.  I am sorry that I have not told you over the years about how the door that you opened as fundamentally shifted my life.  Going to Chile continues to pay dividends through the awareness that I gained by being there- an awareness I can not imagine having happen any other way.

Let me share some of the openings that you have created through me.

We’ve launched Tech Ranch Austin, a technology venture accelerator, where we support entrepreneurs in launching their ventures.  Since November 15, 2008, over 100 entrepreneurs have gone through our “office hour” program. We’ve engaged 12 startups in their earliest steps of growth. Two weeks ago we launched the “Employee to Entrepreneur” Program, with our first class of 12 students- (many of these guys were laid off, and now are starting ventures).  One of our companies is proceeding to the third level of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. Another of our companies was funded $4.2 million in Series A funding.  We held an Entrepreneur Town Hall Meeting of 80 entrepreneurs from across the City of Austin in March, and now the Economic Development Office of the City of Cedar Park is paying us to launch an Entrepreneur Town Hall Meeting there. Also for Cedar Park we will be forming an “Enterprise Tribe”.  (Enterprise Tribe is what I now call the model that has developed out of what I originally took to Chile).

Its been a remarkable six years since our meeting.  The first years were hard as I stumbled around trying to understand what life was telling me to do.  I now feel a clarity, and have an ease of movement towards the vision that we talked about so many years ago- its funny what time and practice, and helpers along the path have opened up to my eyes now.

I’ve often times held back in telling you how much I greatly appreciate the spark that you shared with me- the opening of the door to Chile- which, by the way, I still stay in contact with several of the four guys that Fernando put me in contact with.  Thank you for the gift you have given me.

I am excited in reading that you are about to open yourself up to the next adventure with your move to New York City.  Please let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.  I do hope to get to connect with you again before you leave… or at some point in the future.  Is there any way that I can be of assistance?  Also, let me know if there is time that you have for a coffee or lunch.  I understand that with the move, you will be very busy- but please know that I would greatly enjoy connecting with you as the time permits.

Also, do let me know if you change your email address- I would like to stay in contact if at all possible.

Thank you very much.

Take care,
Kevin

I am back from a three week blogging hiatus- during which I traveled to five different cities across Mexico and the US.  Part of this time was for catching up with friends and family, part of this time was for professional opportunity in connecting other groups into the tribe, and part of this time was for finishing the next draft of my book, which is very close to completion.  Upon entering to my office here at the Bootstrap Incubator I ran into a long term friend and publishing expert Matt Cohen, who asked about the status of my book. The power of being in an incubator environment (and not just having an office) is for chance conversations like the one that I had with Matt.  Matt, who has always been very supportive of the direction that Enterprise Teaming is going and the writing of my book and the growing Enterprise Tribe told me about Robert Heinlein’s rules for writing.  They are valuable, and I know several of my readers are writing as well, so I share them below.  If you want to read more about these, you can find more analysis of Heinlein’s statements here.

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Update on my book:  one section of 10 or so pages remains to be done.  It is a major section- about how the Enterprise Tribe and social networking will effect the Individual.  I am looking forward to getting your feedback about this, and please do continue to share your stories with me- they have been extremely effective in helping flesh out the book and the concepts that we are developing…. Now back to Rule #2, finishing what I write.

I about fell out of my seat laughing when I saw the following billboard, as I was surfing across the net, checking out John Erik Metcalf’s blog.  As Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads predicted back in 2003, older generations just don’t get this younger generation, the Millennials, just yet.  Roy states:

And here is the oh-so-laughable billboard that some out of touch boomer must have been responsible for:

As I mentioned in a recent post about the  the book that I am writing… tectonic shift #3:  An Attitudinal Shift…  The Millennials have shifted attitudes… both to marketing and ways of work.  Trying to placate Millennials and shift their attitudes, especially with messages like this Pullem Up billboard is not going to work.  The same is true about the ways Millennials work.  They are showing the rest of us the future… and leading the way that things will become.  No, I am not going to start wearing baggy pants anytime soon… but I do embrace Millennial attitudes on rejecting pretense, and I do embrace their focus of choosing work that supports their values, versus just working to get a paycheck.  This fundamental shift is echoing through the way work is, and is going to be done in the future. Employers (and billboard advertisers!!!) need to stop trying to placate or change Millennials’ attitudes… Instead, I suggest looking to what Roy Williams says:

The way work gets done is changing.  Figure out how to work with these changes- and your business will benefit.

Tags: millennials, business, marketing

Dee Copland recently posted a question on the Bootstrap-Austin mailing list asking about the implications of Google’s OpenSocial to social networking and small and medium size business. Following is my reply to her and the network.

The implication for small and medium (and large!) business of platforms like Google’s OpenSocial are going to be quite profound.  We are starting to see the beginnings of a whole new method of business and work based around social networking technology.  The biggest present example of this was built by Facebook when they opened up their APIs so that third party software developers could build applications that leveraged off of a user’s “social graph”. Social graph is a fancy term for saying the people that you are connected to through a social network… but the implications are profound for this method of organizing people…  Anytime a technology has been introduced throughout the millennia that helps organize people or helps solve resource constraint problems (that is, helps get resources (people and stuff) to where they are needed) major shifts in wealth production have happened. I expect that this is the very same thing that is happening now… first led by Facebook.

Facebook opened up their platform to get many more innovative applications built around their social networking site.  Although many of the applications were of the type where “my vampire bites your mummie” some of the apps have been truly innovative- one of my favorites was an application that helps a user manage his  resources- you have to be his “friend” through Facebook to get access to his resources.  This frees up this guy from having to turn on and off access to his resources… if you are listed as his friend, you are in.  If you are not listed as his friend, you have no access… Even if this entrepreneur only saves a few hours a month by not having to update who has access to his stuff, imagine- that is time and money saved by him.

Facebook is being likened to the early stages of what AOL did with its set of services– people used AOL in the yester-years of the Internet mainly because it gave them one place to “start” on the net.  AOL essentially packaged some of the best of the net and users benefited because of this.  The implied problem here is that just like in the AOL situation, many companies could be locked out by AOL- for AOL had control of the network.  Facebook has not shown that it wants to lock out anyone… but the fact of the matter is that Facebook, like AOL has control.  This is much like the debate of having toll roads versus public roads- who has control of thoroughfares.

So what is the implication of Google’s strategy?  There are two moves that I think are particularly interesting- one from a strategic business perspective on who you might look to align your application strategy with, and also what this move represents to you in a long term business perspective.

First, why did Google do this?  Many people found the fact that they had to keep all of their information stored on Facebook as a problem- only one network holder the key to the whole network.  Google is disrupting Facebook’s closed strategy with an open strategy- so that social networking innovation is not stuck on one vendor.  Google has shown is prowess in effectively competing in open networks (namely the Internet).  This move allows consolidation among many of the social networks out there, and also keeps networks into the future more open. Facebook today still has the dominate position.  What this move by Google represents- is Google’s flattening of the playing field for the future.

So what does this mean for your business?  Two things- one of them is strategic, the other is tactical.  First strategically, this means that there should be no particular vendor lock in on one social network (namely Facebook) if you participate in the OpenSocial platform.  No particular vendor lock in to me means that there is a better chance at much, much, much more innovation in the social networking space than what has already happened to date on top of Facebook alone- although I predict that we don’t see this till many more regular users start using these other social networks.  Secondly on a tactical level, this means that software developers won’t have to learn proprietary programming languages (like Facebook’s) for every social network that they are working with.  Essentially this means that less code will have to be written, and software developers will have less languages to learn to build applications.

But the real implication of this move to you and all of us as entrepreneurs is a clarion call from the future telling us how we will be working together in the future.  Waves of applications are going to arise and new types of organizations will form around entrepreneurs finding each other and working together.  This is the part where it gets exciting.  Social networking is not for sharing your photos online.  Businesses (and entrepreneurs) that ignore social networking as just a fad are going to get marginalized, while those of us that use this technology as a way to organize our work will find new levels of success.  Google’s strategy of “opening up” these networks will ensure that much greater innovation happens in a shorter timeframe, without the limiting effects of just one vendor (e.g. Facebook) getting in the way.

Yeah… I am thinking about this space a lot these days.  I would really like to hear your input on this. I am going to post this email on my blog here… Please anyone that would like to give me personal feedback (or debate it with me), post it back to my blog (or email me privately).  Or given that we have some really kick ass examples of these apps emerging, make sure to keep your eye on the entrepreneurs of our local tribe Bootstrap Austin.  Oh… and if you have examples of your kick-ass app that you would like to share with the readership of my blog on this subject, please make sure that you post a comment on the blog post as well.