To NDA or Not to NDA? That is the question.
Oct 3 2007

When I taught entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin business school many students asked about the importance of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) which are also known as Confidentiality Agreements.

I have observed a shift in their importance since the late 90’s (when I was starting my first high-tech company) to now.  In my experience, they don’t seem to be waved around as much as they were in the past.  I think this is because more tech businesses are Internet based and really don’t have that much proprietary information to protect.

Also, there seem to be fewer patentable Internet ideas and it’s much harder to claim exclusive ownership of a piece of technology with so many open source software applications available like WordPress, Linux, Bugzilla, etc.   [UPDATE: I just saw on Scobelizer — Scoble is a big .NET idiot — that Microsoft’s .NET development environment is being shared sourced, which is one step closer to open sourced.  Wow!]  Only a few Internet giants like Google and Amazon have patent protected algorithms for search and product optimization that are actually protectable if someone tried to violate them.

I have now begun to see business related discussions occurring prior to signing an NDA.  Maybe this means we are trending back to our “word” being as important as a written agreement stating we won’t divulge the other party’s trade secrets or other information?  I certainly hope so because I know those NDAs can sometimes be pretty worthless depending on what you are discussing.  Especially in medium to large sized business whose employees often have no idea what confidentially agreements have been signed with whom and about what!

If you are a high-tech entrepreneur here are some occasions where you will most likely have to sign their NDA:

• When discussing a partnership relationship with a large corporation such as Microsoft®.
• If a customer wants to buy a gazillion of your widgets, licenses, products, etc. A good problem to have!

Here are some occasions where you will want to have someone sign your NDA or a mutual (a.k.a. two-way) NDA of your approving:

• Hiring employees or consultants
• Execution of a large business deal that will require a lot of interaction between your company and another
• If you’ve actually invented the time/space transporter in Star Trek then you should get everyone to sign one! 😀 Beam me up Scotty!

Finally, here are some occasions where you should not ask to have someone sign your NDA (unless you’ve invented the transporter mentioned above):

• When seeking money and/or advice.  Most reputable Angel or Venture Capital investors will not sign an NDA because they see so many deals.  It would not make sense for them to put themselves at risk for any potential lawsuits.  If you are pitching some great XYZ Internet deal and you are in Texas you can bet someone else is pitching them a variation of XYZ Internet deal in California. If you want their money badly enough and the investor has a good reputation, then you will just have to play by their rules.
• When you are negotiating with a large company such as Microsoft. You will most likely have to sign theirs or just choose not do business with them.

There are many great ideas out there so don’t make the mistake of thinking that your idea has not been thought up by someone somewhere in the world.  In my opinion, the difference between an idea and a company is execution (blood, sweat, tears, right decisions, wrong decisions, hiring, firing, bringing the right people together, etc.)!  If someone can steal your idea and create a profitable, successful company in 6 months then see if you can get a cut up front and let them do it.  It’s always better to have a small piece of a huge pie than 100% of a non-existent pie!   If you can’t get a cut, then just come to terms with the fact that they deserved the success because they orchestrated the variables to make it happen and just don’t tell them your next big idea!

Since it’s important that my student’s learned this concept, I often brought in Gary Hoover, founder of Hoovers, BookStop, and TravelFest as well as author of Hoover’s Vision as a guest speaker.  He says he talks to so many businesses and students that when someone asks him to sign an NDA he proceeds to ask them ‘Why?’ and immediately wonders about the viability of the concept.  Talk about a serial entrepreneur!

IMPORTANT:  Just because you sign an NDA you do NOT HAVE TO disclose your confidential information.  You can choose not to share certain pieces of information.  Often people think that if they’ve signed an NDA they have to put all of their confidential information on the table.  If you sign something with Microsoft, they are not all of a sudden going to give you the software designs of their operating systems so in the same vein you as a small business owner do not have to tell them about your secreat weapons.  Believe me…sometimes I wish I had just kept my mouth shut….

However, the above is just my opinion so despite what I’ve written it’s always best to consult with an attorney.  Just a forewarning, they will most likely tell you to have everyone and their dog sign an NDA.  They are after all lawyers.  🙂

If any of you are lawyers, pretend to be one in your spare time, and/or have anything interesting/funny to share on this topic, I’d love to read your comments.

UPDATE on Oct 8, 2007: After reading my post, Gary Hoover had the following to share:

On my reference to NDA’s, my points are these:

1) If you have an idea that is easy to grasp and easy to copy, one that everyone says “I wish I had thought of that,” you may not have a very good idea; the best ideas usually are not so easy to grasp

2) Anyone who would steal an idea and copy it likely does not have what it takes to carry it out; real entrepreneurs have more than enough ideas to last a lifetime and don’t need anyone else’s ideas to the pile!

Of course if you really have invented a cure for a disease or some other magical thing, or if you are talking to giant corporations about your idea, you should protect it. but that is rarely the case with the entrepreneurial ideas I usually hear about.

I pretty much refuse to sign NDA’s these days. They are a mark that bureaucrats and lawyers are making the decisions, not entrepreneurs, and that scares me. Too often I have bothered with NDA’s in the past only to find “is this all you were hiding?” no one would steal this!” Of course since I am not the entrepreneur with that particular vision, I could be wrong. But having people sign an NDA is so often just a distraction to the entrepreneur and the signer.

The outbreak of NDA’s over the last 10-15 years often reflects a paranoia, a sense that “I have this great idea and someone might steal it so I better keep it under a lid.” Venture Capitalists often think this way, entrepreneurs rarely do. When I develop a new idea, particularly one that is well outside “the box,” I find it useful to talk to many many different people about it, to strangers on planes, to people I meet socially, and so on. The more people who react and comment on it, the better my research. That does not mean they are all correct – I usually learn something whether they love the idea or hate it. You have to ask “why do you love it” and “why do you hate it?” And you have to take their lifestage, background, and preferences into account. I don’t know that my mother thought any of my ideas were particularly good, and Hoover’s probably seemed particularly silly to her.

Gary E. Hoover
Chief Storyteller, RoadStoryUSA
CEO, Story Stores, LLC

Elise’s Family
Oct 2 2007

To help illustrate how different people use Babble Soft web and mobile applications, we have worked with some of our users to create some amazing user stories. I am grateful to the families who are willing to share their time, pictures, and energy to write/edit these case studies with us! To see our other user stories please check out our Testimonial page or click on the user stories tag.

Elise’s Family: (pdf)

Mother:   Kristen Walsh (Web Program Manager)
Father:    Ken Pfeiffer (Engineering Executive)
Baby:       Elise
Born:       June 2007
Location:  Austin, Texas

Web Browser:   Internet Explorer 7.0

Situation

Ken and Kristen recently had their first baby together.  Kristen’s older child is in first grade and keeping up with a kid who is six years older than her newborn, means she has to switch between newborn mommy-brain to elementary school kid mommy-brain often.

When Elise was about 2 weeks old, Kristen started using Baby Manager to keep track of when Elise was eating and for how long. As the weeks went on, they realized that Elise had acid reflux. The pediatrician asked them to keep track of when and how often she got sick to help determine whether she needed to go on medication to reduce the pain and occurrence of the reflux.

The days were full of worry and lack of sleep for both Ken and Kristen as they tried to figure out why Elise kept spitting and throwing up.  Using the breastfeeding log and comments section in Baby Manager, they were able to track each time she fed and log whether or not she had a reaction. They quickly saw a trend that her reflux always occurred during the early evening hours. This knowledge allowed them to be prepared and not shocked by all of the vomit!  It also allowed them to warn anyone who watched Elise during those hours, such as a sitter or her grandmother, of a potential reflux occurrence.

When their pediatrician asked them to keep track of whether the reflux increased or decreased over time, a quick skim of the breastfeeding report, allowed them to see that the reflux was getting worse.  This information helped them make the hard decision of whether to put her on Zantac®. They continue to log her success on the medication by tracking any occurrence of the reflux. So far, so good!

Kristen and Ken’s Experience

The information we gleaned from using Baby Manager has been amazing!  We found Baby Manager to be extremely useful because it helps us remember what occurred last week, yesterday or even one hour ago. These early days with the baby are definitely hazy and we felt very fortunate to have Baby Manager step in and help us with our memories.  We were able to:

• Easily note information on when Elise fed and if she experienced reflux soon after a feeding
• Run reports and see trends in feeding and reflux occurrences throughout the day
• Use the information on her reflux occurrences to help make the decision to give her medicine

—End—

If you are interested in participating in your very own user story, please activate a FREE Babble Soft Account. If you find that Babble Soft applications work for you, you want to tell the world about your great experience, and you are interested in being a part of our media campaign, please email us at blogger at babblesoft dot com for more information and a hook-up.  🙂

$54,000 ProBlogger Birthday Bash Competitions
Oct 1 2007

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame is running a competition for his 3 year birthday blogiversary.  He solicited prizes from his readers to give away in a series of competitions.  Fortunately, I found his blog a few weeks ago and donated gift subscriptions to Babble Soft Web and Mobile applications.  In exchange, he will post links to contributors sites and/or blogs.  It seems that he will be running a series of competitions and the participants will have to do a variety of things from writing posts to ??? to win the prizes!  So far he has amassed $54,000 worth of prizes!

If you ever wanted to win a gift subscription to Babble Soft products for yourself or to give to a friend, check out his blog!

Do Not Plan Your Career!
Oct 1 2007

According to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and now Ning (a social networking site) you should NOT plan your career.  I wholeheartedly agree.  We are living in different times where there are too many variables to plan for a life-long career at say IBM, GM, Dupont, etc.  He then says focus on developing your skills and pursuing opportunities.  I agree with this too because you may just stumble upon your, shall we say, happiest LIFE.  This doesn’t mean don’t have goals.  If you want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, then pick opportunities to help you develop those skills so that when the opportunity presents itself, you are ready.

Check out his lengthy but interesting blog post where he describes in depth his following rules of career planning:

The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.

The second rule of career planning: Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.

His thoughts reminded me of the thoughts shared by one of my interviewees (available on the Succes Means… tab of this blog).  His name is Jimmy Treybig, and he happens to be the founder of Tandem Computers, which is now part of Hewlett-Packard.  Oh and Jimmy also happens to be one of my Babble Soft business Advisors.

One of the things I notice most prominently about Marc’s blog posts is that he often uses the feminine gender (i.e., she, her) in his writing when he gives illustrations.  I think that’s great and it’s a small step to help adjust all of our minds and remind us that women comprise at least 50% of the world population!

Are We There Yet? When Will We Get there?!
Sep 30 2007

Above image is from AllPosters.com.

The kids and I just got back from visiting my best friend and her family in a town 2 ½ hours drive Southeast (I think) of Austin.  Those who know me probably know  that I’m directionally challenged.  🙂

For the first time in the history of driving to her house, my 5 year old son did not take even the briefest of naps.  He is a non-stop talker.  If you’ve ever seen that car commercial where the girl is talking when her dad puts her in his seat and is still talking after he closes the door and opens his door and starts putting on his seatbelt…that’s our son.

However, on this trip he did spend some time observing the landscape and listening to songs on my new iPod nano (via the car stereo) that I got because Erin recently purchased a new Mac and it came with it.  Consequently, I only heard the phrases “Are we there yet?”  and “When will we get there?” and “Man, that’s a long time!” oh maybe a dozen or so times.  My younger daughter slept through most of the trip.  I eventually told him if he asked me one more time that I wouldn’t let him do XXX.  I can’t even remember what it was that I told him that he couldn’t do.  That helped him bite his tongue for the last say 30 minutes of the ride.  Overall, however, I enjoyed the relative pleasantness of the drive.  

It got me to wondering why we are all so impatient about getting to where it is we are going.  As adults we don’t usually freak out about how long it will take to get to a physical destination because we have a better sense of time than a 5 year old does.  But often we say things like: 

• When will my company be profitable?
• When will my daughter be potty trained?
• When will I close my first big sale?
• When will I be able to hire someone to help me with this task?
• When will I get an uninterrupted night of sleep? (a.k.a., when will my son sleep through the night without waking up and/or stay in his own bed?)
• Are we there (at goal x, y, or z) yet?  Why aren’t we there yet?

The big difference I’ve seen between kids and adults is that when kids do get there they are genuinely excited to have gotten there.  When we arrived at my friend’s house my kids jumped out of the car and immediately wanted to play, swim, swing, etc. with my friend’s son.  Many adults and business people I’ve seen (including myself) get to where they were going, don’t spend enough time excited about getting there, and then start the list of questions over and this time they might be: 

• When will my company be more profitable than Company X?
• When will my daughter quit talking back to me?
• When will I close a multi-million dollar sale?
• When can I fire this person who really can’t help me with any tasks?
• When will I get an uninterrupted night of sleep? (a.k.a., when will my son return from that party so I can quit worrying that he’s lying dead in some ditch somewhere?)
• Are we going to make it to retirement?  Why aren’t we able to retire yet?  Should we retire yet?

Then I think about National Geographic documentaries that show native, aboriginal tribes in certain places around the world.  I always feel that those people seem truly content and if I look into their eyes through the TV glass, I’m 100% sure they don’t have similar questions going through their minds.   Of course they might wonder where they will find their next meal, but they just don’t look stressed about it.  Funny, isn’t it? 💡


p.s. My son was so worn out with all the fun he had that he ended up sleeping about 3/4 of the way on the drive back home!

Entrepreneur Feedburner Ad Network
Sep 29 2007

Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home is at it again.  She just created a Home Business & Entreprenuer Feedburner Ad Network and invited little ‘ole me and my entrepreMusings blog to join!  It looks like it will be really cool.  So now people who subscribe to my RSS feed will see links to relevant information about home business and entrepreneurship at the bottom of some of my posts and hopefully I’ll make a little extra cash to help fund R&D for Babble Soft along the way.  Wendy is just so innovative and most importantly inclusive.

Thanks Wendy for letting me ride on your coattails. 🙂

She Went to School in a Pull-Up and Came Home Wearing Underwear
Sep 27 2007

We are in the midst of potty training our almost 2 ½ year old girl. Just last week, I sent her to pre-school wearing a Huggies Pull-Up (yes she likes the Cars ones) and 3 pairs of Happy Feet underwear that I got at Target. She came back wearing underwear and had no accidents that day. I was impressed. Unlike our son, who mastered the poo poo part first, she seems to be going for the pee pee part first, which makes for not-fun underwear clean-up. 🙁

Erin was stressed that we missed her sweet spot for training a while back because we tried a few weeks ago and she didn’t seem phased at all about soiling her underwear so we went quickly back to diapers for a little while, but I wasn’t worried. I knew she’d eventually get it…definitely before she was 13!  🙂

Some of the techniques we used on our son didn’t work for her.  Apparently we really lucked out with our son. I heard horror stories about how hard it was to train boys. Thankfully, our non-sleeping son (he’s 5 and he still wakes up at night) made the potty training part of his life fairly easy for us. He started going poo poo in the potty a few months after his 2nd birthday…which I’ve been told is unusual. I’ve heard that most kids get the pee pee part down before the poo poo part.

When he was 2 ½, I was about 8 months pregnant. He was going to pre-school so the teachers had a system of lining up all the kids against the wall and having them take turns going potty. The teachers then said “He’s ready. Send about 5 pairs of underwear and we’ll work with him.” I was thinking to myself “Well OK, I don’t know. I want to wait until after our daughter arrives to start training him because there’s no way I can make a mad dash to the bathroom while carrying him being 9 months pregnant!”

So I reluctantly agreed and took him to school in a diaper (because I didn’t want to be cleaning a car seat mess) and gave them some Spiderman underwear. He had a few accidents and then within days they even took off the Pull-Up during nap. I would pick him up and put a diaper on him for the 25-30 minute ride home because there was no-way I was going to clean up a car seat!  Erin dropped him off one day and the teacher asked him if we were putting our son in a diaper when we got home and he said “Well my wife is 9 months pregnant and she can’t…” and the teacher, who has helped train hundreds of kids, interrupted him and looked at him with a no BS look on her face and said “If you don’t go all the way right now, you will live to regret it.” You have to know the teacher…if she says something, you do it no questions asked, and I’m so glad we did.

It was a bit inconvenient at first but we muddled through it and he was trained before our daughter was born. Phew. It made life much easier for us. I think he had day-time one accident after she was born which was understandable given all the changes going on.

Important: When someone says their kid is potty-trained they usually mean during the day hours when they are awake. Before starting the process I kept thinking “Wow that kid is only 2 and she’s potty trained…even when she naps and sleeps?” In 90% (unscientific generalization on my part) they still wear a diaper or Pull-Up at night and/or nap. Our son was not night potty trained until just after he turned 4.  We put him in underwear the night of his 4th birthday.  A couple of accidents later, he was done and we haven’t looked back!

So our daughter looks like she might figure out the whole pee pee thing in a few weeks but we’re still working on the poo poo part. She just won’t tell us when it’s happening. You have to be right there and see the look on her face and rush her to the potty just in time. She’ll go when she’s there but she won’t tell us before hand. If she’s quiet for too long, I ran frantically around the house to find her to see if she’s in progress. 🙂

Also, she will just sit on the toilet to sit there, laugh, and pull the toilet paper out. Our son would sit there (and pull the toilet paper out) but 95% of the time something came out!  I actually purchased one potty book when we were training him and found the techniques the author presented to be very useful. In particular, we picked a book he liked to be his potty book (which happened to be Who Lives in the Pond – baby einstein book), and we read it when he sat on the toilet.  However, she wasn’t too into that book or others.  Although we bought one of those small potties, we barely used it because it’s not pleasant cleaning it up.  See link to the toilet training book below:

I hope our luck holds out with our daughter with regards to potty training. The process further goes to show that every child is different. If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to leave a comment.

What’s In A Name? A Blog Name That Is…
Sep 25 2007

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

But the same doesn’t go for blog names!  (Sorry Shakespeare) My new blog design is finally ready to announce to the world.  It was tough picking a new name and design.  I wanted to capture who I am (a South Asian, high-tech woman entrepreneur) and what I’m trying to do (i.e., shift the definition of entrepreneurship to one that I outline on my About page) while at the same time including the biggest parts of my life as mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, neice, aunt, and friend.  So I set out to come up with a name and design that I thought would allow me write about all of these things.  

Last week I attended a meeting where Gail Evans, former VP at CNN and author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, spoke (more about that later), and she said she can’t understand why people always talk about work/life balance.  She said we have one life and our work and our personal stuff are all part of that life so why make it sound as if work and life are opposing factors?  My work is part of my life and my family/kids/friends are part of my life.  So when the name entrepreMusings was quietly said during a discussion on the topic by our brilliant volunteer, college student Marketing Intern who we pay with the un-spendable but highly leveragable currency of experience, it just seemed to fit. 🙂

Prior to that eureka moment, we threw around: 

• entrepreMuse – which I refer to myself on this blog, but we didn’t feel it was the right name for the blog
• entrepreMusing – didn’t sound quite right until the s was added to the end.
• Entrepreneuse (a female entrepreneur)– I  almost went with that one but several friends said it sounded like entrepre ‘noose’ to which I replied well being an entrepreneur does sometimes feel like you have a noose around your neck! Plus there were some others around using the term (e.g., Entrepreneuse Live)
• A bunch of others that were in jest and not appropriate to note on the blog.  Name creation is a crazy, unscientific process…at least in this house.

As I mentioned in my How to Create a New Website post, I found Swank Web Style and Karen (who blogs at Vodkarella) from a link on Mocha Momma’s site.  I picked the image at iStockphoto of the woman babbling on the phone, and Karen modified it to something that I liked.  The woman had some blush on that made her look like she had a skin disease and some other features that I requested to be changed.  After some back and forth (and my design fits, last second changes, and design seizures), late nights and both of us having to deal with sick kids and her having to deal not only with sick kids but also a sick dog, a broken toe, and moving houses it was finished and it was COOL! 

She then turned the original design over to Vicki (who did our new corporate site) and Vicki did everything in her power to make it work! After this new theme design process, I have a huge amount of appreciation and respect for those designers who create free WordPress themes.   (Check out Randa’s cool new Pink for October Free WordPress Theme.)  The browser compatibility issues, the widget alignment issues, the blog stats integration issues all surfaced when you least expected them, but Vicki patiently, meticulously, and kindly addressed them all!  

Now I can (hopefully) blog all of the post ideas that have been swimming around in my head, and oh yeah actually get some other work done such as selling, marketing, public relations, calling people, setting up partnerships, etc. 🙂

I hope all of you all like the new direction.  Please help me change the world view of entrepreneurship and parenthood by entrepreMusing with me one blog post and one comment at a time!

WordPress 2.3 Upgrade complete
Sep 24 2007

We just updated to WordPress 2.3. So far so good. We’ve only noticed some image storage issues but for the most part the images are displaying correctly on the blog. I’ve updated Feedburner, Technorati, and MyBlogLog. Now we are off to watch the season premiere of Heroes! Thank goodness for DVR technology!!!

WordPress 2.3 – Bring It On!
Sep 23 2007

Bloggers everywhere seem to be writing about the much anticipated WordPress 2.3.   We will be upgrading as soon as possible as well as making several other blog related changes such as:  migrating our URL from www.babblesoft.com/blog to www.entrepremusings.com, finalizing the new blog theme (it’s pretty much ready), updating all of our feed information on FeedBurner, Technorati, MyBlogLog, etc., etc. 

Based on the following nice note from Technorati, my blog will unfortunately lose its ranking and authority when we change the URL, but I figured it was better to bite the bullet now rather than later…mostly because I don’t like bullets. 

Hello Aruni, 

Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you.  We’ve been experiencing a backlog in support and are working hard to address everyone.  I’m afraid that since the URL of your blog is changing, we currently are unable to combine or transfer links or authority from one to another.  This is because authority and links in our system are URL based.  Once the URL does change, it is suggested to contact bloggers who have linked to you and inform them of the URL change.  If they update the URL in their blogrolls these changes should be picked up and applied to your new URL as new links.  Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. Thank you for using Technorati! 

Best Regards,
Janice Myint
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati 


As of 9:00 p.m. on September 23, 2007, our ranking is 210,401 with an Authority of 30.  Soon we will be kissing those stats good-bye and starting over from scratch, which I guess would put me at a bazillion (not a Brazilian) or something.  If you link to our site, I’d really appreciate it if you could update your link when you have a chance to www.entrepremusings.com.  Thank you in advance.   

If you are looking for some great info on WordPress 2.3, check out these posts:

Preparing for 2.3 by WordPress

Heads Up News on WordPress 2.3 by Lorelle on WordPress

WordPress 2.3 – What You Need to Know… by Problogger which refers to 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3 by Technosailer.

How To Create A New Website
Sep 21 2007

We just went live with our new corporate website and since we did it in an unusual way, I thought the bootstrapping entrepreneurs would be interested in how we went about it. In my previous tech start-up when the task of creating a new website surfaced, we usually started with a blank slate which meant lots of discussion and meetings around color schemes, second guessing, back and forth arguments, feature/requirement changes and lots of time and money.   

I have a bad eye for colors.  I have a very hard time envisioning how things will look when they show up on the page (or on the walls of our house).  I’m lucky if my or my kids’ clothes match.  So this time we started with a template.  Yes, a template.  One we found at Template Monster.  It was a flash template, but we decided not to use the flash piece because after the first two times you see it and hear it, it’s no longer very cool.  

Erin and I attempted to transfer our previous corporate site information to the new site and modify the design and realized it was going to take much more time and skill than we had.  So while I was looking for someone to design a new blog theme, I happened upon Swank Web Style by clicking on a link on Mocha Momma’s blog.  I filled out their contact form, and was put in touch with Karen who designed our new blog theme (post about that to come).  She introduced me to her partner, Vicki, for the corporate site work. 

Vicki did an amazing job pulling our new corporate site together in a couple of weeks.  It wasn’t as easy as any of us thought because of cascading style sheet (css) issues, alignment issues, tables vs. layers issues, etc.  I didn’t know this but apparently most people design their websites now using WordPress so they can easily add/modify pages.  Since we are used to the old-school way of designing web pages, neither Erin nor I were comfortable with using WordPress for this particular site…maybe the next one.  I can only take on so much risk at one time. 🙂

Here’s the recipe: 

• Find a template with the color scheme you like on a place like Template Monster 
• Find a fabulous designer/coder/developer who will work until it’s done right (e.g., Vicki)
• Pick some of the most adorable pictures you can find on iStockphoto.  iStockphoto is the greatest, most cost-effective site that I’ve come across for illustrations/pictures from anything from babies to lawnmowers.  They now also do iStockvideo.  The pictures are submitted by amateur and professional photographers and cost anywhere from $2 to $8 each.  The pictures of babies and families were so cute/adorable that for about 2 seconds I thought about having another baby but then reality struck and I was reminded that all babies tend to look cute in pictures. 🙂
• Go back and forth a bit on layout and pictures. 
• Experience a few late nights and Voila! You now have a great new website at a very reasonable cost in a reasonable amount of time!

Reducing the Amount of Spit-Up: Baby Tip by Babble Soft
Sep 20 2007

So now that I’ve changed the name of the blog to entrepreMusings, how do I fit in baby tips?  I have a lot of readers who search for baby tips and kid stuff so it will be interesting to see if that changes over time.  I’m still shocked that my top viewed posts are on planning my son’s Transformer themed birthday party having close to 1,000 combined views already!  There has been only one post that had more views in a single day than those two posts and that was the one I did on Oprah and Obama, but it was only the top post for one day.  Go figure!

Since I am babbling about business, babies, and parenthood, those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship/business but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies.  For those who have babies and are in business, these tips might be right up your alley.  If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know in business and encourage them to have a baby. As you know, it will change their lives! 🙂

We were blessed with two kids who were pretty good spitter uppers…our son more so than our daughter.  If scary, eerie music had started playing in our house when they spit up, I would have been looking for a nearby exorcist. 🙂

Both of our kids also had ear infections and our daughter more so than our son (or maybe she just got them back-to-back…my memory is starting to fade on that particular torture).  Of course our parents swore we never had ear infections growing up yet the doctor’s told us ear infections had a strong genetic tie.  Anyhoo, I digress.  I’ll do a tip on ear infections in the future.  Here are some ideas that we tried that may help you bring down the amount of new baby spit-up a notch in your house:

1. I’m sure you have all heard this before but try very hard to get baby to BURP after each feeding and even during a feeding.  If you are breastfeeding, feed on one side then burp him, then feed on the other.  If you are bottle feeding feed them a little, burp them, feed them some more, burp them, etc., etc.  The biggest cause of spitting up is a gas bubble in your baby’s tummy.
2. Feed your baby while he is sitting upright.  Keep him upright for 20 or so minutes after feeding as well.  This will help keep his stomach elongated and reduce the amount of potential gas bubbles.
3. Sometimes baby just has a mild digestive issue (warning: consult your doctor please) and if so putting some acidophilus (the stuff that’s in yogurt) in her bottle or on the breast might ease a bit of her issues.
4. You can try gas drops like Mylicon (generic brands at Target, Walgreen’s, etc. are significantly cheaper and have the exact same ingredients) but we found that we gave the drops to them more because the action of doing so made us feel useful, but honestly it didn’t seem to do much other than that.  It just gave us another discussion item regarding ‘why just spent money on something that didn’t work but at the same time made us feel useful.‘
5. Check out the information at Medline Plus (they have pictures) and kellymom for more detailed information and other ideas on how to address spitting up and reflux in a baby.

For those of you who don’t have babies or have not had kids yet, just be glad I did not include any pictures of babies spitting up…it’s not a pretty sight. 🙂  

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Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!

Who is on the Technorati A-List?
Sep 19 2007

Earlier today, I read a post on Wendy Piersall’s eMoms at Home blog about the Technorati A-List.  As of September 19, 2007 Wendy has a Technorati rank of 2,115.  Yes, her blog is in the top 5K at Technorati.  Awesome Wendy!  Interestingly, Technorati is not reflecting her last several posts yet so her rank is probably even better than that.

One of her goals is to make it into the top 100 blogs list.   She ponders that goal and highlights some interesting facts in her post (see below)…

“Before I begin, here are some fast facts:

• 11% of blogs on the current Technorati Top 100 blogs are led by or singly authored by women (maybe 12%, because I am unsure of the gender of the author of ICanHasCheesburger). They are:
  • Ariana Huffington
  • Michelle Malkin (twice)
  • Kathy Sierra (now retired)
  • Sina
  • Megan Frost
  • Peety Passion
  • Ilker Yoldas (my bad for the initial omission!)
  • Heather Onnen
  • Dooce
  • Xiaxue

• Yet, more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14 % of men (Synovate.com).

Before you guys get your tightie whities in a knot, this isn’t an accusation. Here’s a few more stats for you:

According to ComScore, the most visited blog topics break down as follows:

• 43% of people visited a political or news blog
• 17% of people visited a “Hipster” blog
• 15% of people visited a tech blog
• 8% of people visited a women’s blog
• 8% of people visited a media blog
• 6% of people visited a personal blog
• 3% of people visited a business blog

And keeping in mind that blogs in general are in the tech industry, overall for every one woman employed in high-tech, there are 4 men alongside her.”

Her post was prompted by a post made by Pearl at Interesting Observations called Male-Female Ratios of 50 Influential Blogs and more.  Fascinating information!  I wonder how they determine the gender of their readers.  I don’t know how many of my readers are men and how many are women.  Is that a new Feedburner Flare that I’m unaware of? 🙂

BTW, I love Pearl’s avatar.  I’m guessing it’s an elf but it also brings to mind a Vulcan.  (I’m a sci-fi gal)!

I am not trying to get entrepreMusings in the top 100 because I know I don’t have the time to invest in making that happen right now, but I do want to support these women (and men whose blogs I read often) who do want to achieve that goal…just let me know how!

Working Mother Multicultural Conference Summary
Sep 18 2007

I have finally finished my posts on my experience attending the Working Mother Multicultural Conference (POWER: OWN IT. — USE IT. SHARE IT.)  Since the posts have been stretched out over the last couple of months, I thought it might be helpful to do a summary post for new readers.

I was given the great opportunity to receive a scholarship to attend the conference that was sponsored by JP Morgan Chase.  Thank you!  Thank You!  THANK YOU! JP Morgan.  Since we are bootstrapping Babble Soft, any money we can use to help our company grow is truly appreciated.  It was one of the best (dare I say best!) conferences I have ever attended in my life, and I’ve been to many of them. 

The picture (taken by Rohanna Mertens of Doug Goodman Photography) shows Carol Evans (in the fabulous pink suit), founder/CEO of Working Mother Media shaking hands with conference attendees and speakers.  Thanks to Carol for envisioning and implementing such a great conference and helping create such a fabulous experience for all of us! 

I recently got notice that Working Mother’s Media 3rd Annual Multicultural Women’s Town Hall meeting will be in Houston, Texas on October 18, 2007.  Unfortunately, I can’t make it because that is the same week my husband, Erin, who is chair of the Austin Wireless Alliance, is coordinating the Texas Wireless Summit here in Austin and boy has he helped to get some amazing speakers for that event!  The Who’s Who of Wireless is scheduled to be there.

Now for the good stuff.  Here’s a summary of all the posts I wrote about my trip to New York and the conference experience:

Musings of a Texas Gal in NYC

Planes, Trains, and Subways

Working Mother Conference Opening – POWER

Dr. Bertice Berry, author of When Love Calls, You Better Answer and I’m On My Way, But Your Foot is On My Head

Instant Polling, sponsored by Ford Motor Company a downright fascinating summary of how the 700 attendees identified themselves and their thoughts about Power.

Exploring Power Dynamics in the Executive Suite, VP and C-level executives discuss their personal experiences on rising to the top

The Art of War for Women, written by Chin-Ning Chu

From the Mouths of Men, VP and C-level men discuss what it takes to put women in the corner office.

The Time Has Come for the Woman’s Century, a book review on The Art of War for Women

The Asians Shine, summarizes how the Asian attendees use or don’t use their Power in the workplace

The Hub Factor: Charisma, sharing Julia Hubbel’s thoughts on networking

Phew!  I want to thank all of the people I wrote about who helped me make these posts as accurate and informational as possible.  Your insights will help other people with decisions they may be making right now in their lives! 🙂

The Hub Factor: Charisma – Musings of a Texas Gal in NYC
Sep 17 2007

Now for the final workshop post on the Working Mother Multicultural Conference (POWER: OWN IT. — USE IT. SHARE IT.) I attended back in July.  It has taken me quite a while to get to it.  It’s a good thing I don’t have deadlines on blog posts because my other deadlines would get in the way.  🙂  

THIS IS THE CENTURY OF THE NETWORK.  ARE YOU READY? 

The last workshop I attended was called The Hub Factor: Capture Your Charisma and Make Your Connections Count!  It was led by none other than Julia Hubbel, President of The Hubbel Group, Inc. and creator of The Hub Factor.  I met some amazing people at this workshop including the two thought leaders who helped her lead the workshop:

• June Archer, VP Global Business Development and Licensing for GODIVA Chocolatier (Mmmm.  Chocolate. They provided the chocolate covered strawberries at one of the breaks)

• Patricia David, Managing Director and Global Head of Diversity and Talent for Citi Markets & Banking.  

Julia was a wonderful and engaging speaker.  She opened the workshop by asking those of us who enjoyed networking, meeting new people, mingling, etc. to raise our hands.  In a room of say 50+ people about 7-10 of us raised our hands (I was one of them).  She then said: “You are the crazy ones.  You are the weirdoes.  Most people are scared stiff of meeting new people and speaking in public!  So for the rest of us normal folks, here’s what we’re going to do…” 

She then had us do an exercise where we wrote down three things that people would never guess about us and instructed us to meet other people in the room and ask them questions about themselves.  It was a very interesting exercise and I learned a lot of neat things about people in the room. 

She emphasized the importance of creating a space where the people we are talking to feel valued and powerful.  People don’t want to hear your 30 second sales/elevator pitch…you first have to earn the right to give them the 30 second pitch by creating the right space.  Some people can do this easier than others but she felt anyone could do it if they are genuinely interested in getting to know the other person.   

I have seen this work first hand.  I know that if I’m in a rush and want to get results right away, I won’t get the results I need, but if I give it a reasonable amount of time and really listen to the person I’m communicating with, the chance for doing business together increases even though it might take longer for something to happen.  If nothing happens, at least we both made a postive connection in the world.  Sometimes I get impatient and don’t stop to think what might be going on in their lives and forget that “an emergency on my part doesn’t constitute an emergency on their part.” Live and learn.  Live and learn.  🙂

Julia had run out of business cards and had to rush out to catch a plane, but she asked for my card and promised to get in touch.  I knew I was going to do a post on her workshop so I figured I would find her contact information from her website, but before I could do that a beautifully handwritten note showed up in my mailbox with her business card inside.  I was pleasantly surprised and emailed her right away.  She must meet tons of people so I was flattered that she would take the time to write a personal note to me. 

I have also since communicated with both Pat and June.  When I met June and told her what I was doing she said she knew people and had worked in the baby marketing world in a prior life and that she would connect me to some people who might be able to help.  When  we make it big (thinking positively), I’ll definitely order some of their chocolate covered strawberries for one of our events…primarily because I met her!

Pat told everyone in the workshop that she regularly schedules time to talk to anyone who wanted to talk with her and get her advice.  She gave me her card and I left her a voice message soon after I returned to Austin half thinking I’d probably never hear from her again.  Shortly thereafter her assistant emailed me to set up a 30 minute phone meeting.  Amazing!  She has already passed information on Babble Soft to a few people in her company.  I’m not sure how I can help Pat, but if not her hopefully I can help someone else who will pass it on…

Needless to say I was impressed with this level of follow through by Julia, Pat, and June.  I try hard to keep my commitments and am often surprised when people say they will do one thing and then don’t do it or don’t let you know why they weren’t able to do it.  I’ve seen that happen so often that when people do follow through, I instantly know how they got to where they are today.   

If you are interested in the topic of networking, check out Julia’s site.  I’m a bit biased (he’s a friend) but you should also check out the blog of one of our local Austin networking gurus, Thom Singer, at Some Assembly Required. 🙂