It’s Over – SXSW Interactive Day 5
Mar 15 2011

Today was the last day and apparently this was the highest attended SXSW Interactive ever with 19,364 attendees up from 14,251 last year.  I made it for Reid Hoffman‘s keynote.  Reid is the founder of LinkedIn.  He had a lot to say and I wish he a few slides for us to look at because it was hard to keep up, but here are my notes.  I missed the first two “rules for entrepreneurs,” but here they are:

1. Zoned out, was checking email or twitter. UPDATE from Jeffrey in comments below: Pay attention to your customers.

2. Zoned out, was checking email or twitter. UPDATE from Jeffrey in comments below: Stay focused.

3. Aim big. It’s the same effort to do a small businesses as it is a big business so it’s better to try to change the world.

4. Plan for good luck.

5. Maintain flexible persistence.

6. Launch early enough that you are embarrassed by your 1.0 product release.

7. Always keep your aspirations and aim high but dont drink your own kool-aid.

8. Having great product important but good distribution more important.

9. Pay attention to the culture and how you hire from the beginning.

10. These rules are not laws of nature. You can break them.

Then I headed to the Austin Technology Incubator’s Entrepreneur’s Lounge for some networking and then to the Game Salad (an ATI company that is doing very well) party, which I left a bit early from.  I’m too old for loud music and late nights.  And so concludes another SXSW Interactive, but wait, I still have one more post to do about SWAG that I’ll hopefully have time to write later.

Good bye tens of thousands of out of town visitors.  We love having you here each year, but we don’t want you to all move here and clog up our roads anymore than they are! 🙂

Going With The Flow – SXSW Interactive Days 3 and 4
Mar 14 2011

Following up on my Day 1 and 2 post on SXSW Interactive, I continued days 3 and 4 following my zen-like strategy.  On Day 3 (Sunday), I went to the Girl + Guy party hosted by Guy Kawasaki (well known in the tech start-up world and a big supporter of women entrepreneurs) and companies like Culture Map.  Last year, I got a picture with Guy at the party they hosted at Allen Boots which I think was why I was wearing a pink cowboy hat.  Afterwards, I went to eat Indian food with some new friends that I met at the party and one of them emailed me the picture of her friend wearing the t-shirt that I put in this post because it’s pretty funny.

Today, I caught a panel led by my friend Thom Singer called You Can Impact Charity Without Being Rich.  Eugene Sepulveda (also a friend), who runs the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (where our company’s at ATI donate a portion of their equity) was on the panel.  I caught most of the keynote with Felica Day, a former World of Warcraft gamer who created an online TV series called The Guild, and although I had no idea who she was before I walked into the room, I was impressed with her youth and energy.

I walked the Trade Show (a whole separate blog post to come about that experience) before going to a panel run by another friend, Enrique Ortiz, on mobile development and applications.  He had the founder of Rovio Mobile, which makes Angry Birds on the panel.  My kids love playing Angry Birds so I asked him if he had a couple of those stuffed animals he could give away.  He didn’t have the big ones, but he gave me two small ones.  He was also giving away t-shirts that said “Chillin’ Like A Villian” with a St. Patrick’s Day theme.  My kids thought I was awesome for a few short moments.  He said they have surpassed $100 million in revenue, Angry Birds was the 52nd game they made, and it had 1.2 billion hours of played time last year.  Amazing!

Then it was off to the ATI co-hosted Entrepreneur’s Lounge to network with a bunch of folks and I got a Fandor (facebook fan page) video/flip book done with one of my co-workers that is supposed to be uploaded to their facebook fan page sometime tomorrow.  Then a few of us headed over to the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)/NEA party which was pretty rockin’.  The CEO of Groupon was there playing the keyboards for one song that apparently had to do with some lost bet.  I’m not sure who the singer was, but it wasn’t his best voice night.

Overall, this year’s SXSW has been pretty low-key for me.  I think I tweeted (@aruni) more these past few days than I have all of last year.  I’ve been home by 10:30 pm each night despite the lure to stay at the parties longer and go to yet another party afterward.

One more day to go…

SXSW Interactive – 2011
Mar 11 2011

It’s that time of year again.  The time in Austin, Texas where South by Southwest and Spring Break combine.  Thousands of people descend on Austin for SXSW Interactive, Film, & Music.  I think the attendees for Interactive surpassed that for music last year.

I’m approaching the experience in a more zen like fashion this year and seeing where the tides pull me.  I know I’ll be at the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, co-hosted by The Austin Technology Incubator (where I work) a few times this week and a few other events including Ignite Austin this evening thanks to the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas.  I plan to attend some panels and meet up with people I haven’t seen since last year.

Some of you may remember that I coordinated a panel a couple of years ago called Building A Web Business After Hours.  My advice is don’t do it unless you have a clear path to get out of your day job, don’t have young kids, and aren’t going through personal turmoil.  So this year I’m going to float and see what happens.  I haven’t even uploaded my picture online for my badge so I’ll get an on site picture if I can find parking this afternoon.

Thankfully, the weather is gorgeous with high’s in the upper 70’s predicted for most of the week.  I hope to see some of you (my readers) during my floating around…

Timing Is Everything – Babble Soft Update
Mar 7 2011

It’s taken me quite some time to write about this because of a crazy busy schedule and I wasn’t really sure how to write about it.  In addition to my day job, I’ve also taken on a side consulting job in order to learn about a different industry and to bring in some additional income.  The last 20+ months seem like a blur to me with all the changes I’ve had to absorb and process in my life personally and professionally.  A few months ago my partner at Babble Soft, Nicole Johnson, who has been running the company for over a year, told me she needed to put the company on hiatus so she could better manage her life.

Nicole also has a day job as well as another side job (baby sleep advice), and as I and a few others on the panel I coordinated called Building A Web Business After Hours at SXSW Interactive (starting here in Austin later this week) a couple of years ago have subsequently realized: it’s very hard to do.  We had to pass the baton to someone else who could spend more time on our respective companies.  Since I had been in her shoes juggling kids, family, day job, oh and just a handful of personal transitions not too long ago, I told her to do what she felt was best for her and her family.

They say timing is everything and it is so true and especially with businesses.  So many things have to go right for an endeavor to be successful.  There has to be the right balance of personal situation, market acceptance, technology working, right people, etc. that sometimes it’s a wonder any businesses survive!

So it was a bitter sweet transition that happened a few months ago and maybe someone will be interested in buying our intellectual property, the domain name, or Nicole will be able to reduce hours at one of her other jobs to re-launch fresh in a year or so!  A few months ago, we moved everything (including my blog) off of a dedicated Rackspace server to a much lower cost alternative.

So goes life.  If things aren’t working out, it’s better to recognize that something is about to break (whether it’s you or your business) to make changes earlier rather than later.  Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and I’m so glad I live in the US where we can learn from every business success or failure and still be respected and get another job.  As an example, check out the interview by Fareed Zakaria, CNN news/TIME editor, did of the Foursquare founders.

A Song To Sing
Mar 3 2011

I hired someone recently to update (way overdue) my blog design.  His name is Brian Hurdle (photographer extraordinaire), and I think it’s going to look very nice, clean, and professional…oh and cool.  He’s going to add a musical element to it since my current entrepreneurial endeavor is songwriting related.  He’s going to remove the clip art girl on the phone, change the font, put a nice graphic, move it to a 2 column theme, etc.  I can’t wait for it to be ready as I’m hoping it will inspire a new wave and direction of blog writing for me.

Speaking of songwriting, I forwarded a quote from Jeffrey Fry’s quotables to my songwriting partner, Brett Jason Wintermeyer that said:

“A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.” –Chinese Proverb

To me it meant that a bird sings because she is born to…because the bird cannot be herself without singing her song.  Or maybe it’s boy birds that sing…well, it doesn’t matter.  He replied by saying “Reminds me of someone I know who has a song to sing  🙂”  I was not expecting that response as I had not connected that saying to one of the songs we are working on based on my lyrics.  The title of the song is called “I Have A Song To Sing.”  I don’t know why I didn’t connect the two, but the second line in the song after “I have a song to sing” is “But you won’t let me sing it.”  That lyric is (c) copyright 2010-2011 Aruni S. Gunasegaram by the way!

I guess that’s why it’s important to have a songwriting partner or talented people in your life…to help you connect the dots…

5 Solid Tips for Marketing Your Small Business Now
Feb 20 2011

Following is a guest post by Maria Rainier.  Maria is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online universities, and what an online degree means in an increasingly technological world. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

As the only employee of an entrepreneur who has recently started renting space for her growing business, I know how important marketing can be. She’s still at the small business stage and wants to keep it that way, but her increased sales can be traced directly to recently implemented marketing strategies that every small business can use. I have been responsible for the majority of the marketing ploys we’ve been using and would like to share the top five with you. Even with a low (or nonexistent) marketing budget, you can still use these tips to generate more sales for your small business.

1. Get a Professional Logo & Letterhead

You might already have a logo in mind, but consulting with a graphic artist is the best way to ensure that you start things off well. You don’t want to use a half-baked logo that ends up being changed a year or two down the road. Commit time and energy to getting the perfect logo and letterhead designs because this decision will pay off for years to come. If you don’t have enough of a marketing budget to hire a graphic designer, try bartering. Talk to friends to see if they know any graphic artists who could use your services in return for theirs. You can even post an ad on Craigslist to see if you get any takers. No matter how you make it happen, having a professional logo and letterhead is an important priority.

2. Start and Regularly Update a Business Blog

A blog is one of the best marketing tools a small business can have, but like most online marketing strategies, it requires regular attention if it’s going to be truly successful. It’s pretty tough to update a blog too often, but many people make the mistake of updating too infrequently. Let your readers know about you, your staff, your business, and even your life philosophy. With small businesses, it’s all about being personable and putting a face (or several faces) on your products and services. Include regular photo updates, write a few survey posts to find out how customers are reacting to your products and services, and request topics from readers so you can write about what they want to know. You’ll be surprised at how well your membership starts to grow.

3. Use Social Media Consistently

Get a Facebook page, start using Twitter, and add yourself to LinkedIn. Spend a few minutes every day on each of these so you can connect with users, let them know that you’re available to answer questions, and update your status or send a quick Tweet to get some attention. Increasing your visibility on these sites can encourage existing customers to interact with you, purchase more products and services, and recommend you to others. It can also attract new customers who search for you on these sites or see your activity on friends’ pages.

4. Send a Monthly Newsletter with Discounts & Special Offers

You can use any email marketing site to do this, but in my experience with Constant Contact, I’ve been impressed with the quantity and quality of newsletters and other emails I can send to customers for a low membership rate. You can try it free of charge for 60 days to see if you think you would use it on a regular basis. If not, there’s no commitment. The most inexpensive plan, which is the one I use, costs $15 per month and lets you send emails to a maximum of 500 contacts. Simply put together a monthly newsletter, preferably with at least one photo and a special offer or coupon code along with an interesting bit of news about your business, then send it to your contacts. To build your contact list, collect email addresses and permission to send a newsletter when customers place orders with you.

5. Synthesize and Brand

Now, connect the dots. Use that logo and letterhead to brand the banner of your blog and website along with the top section of your newsletter. Use the free ColorCop tool to pull the exact colors from your logo so you can use them in HTML for your blog, website, and newsletters. These details really do matter and will increase the likelihood of recognition for your business based on a certain color palette and logo. You should also link to your social media pages from your blog, website, and newsletter so current customers can easily find and “follow” or “like” your business. Finally, create an email signature with links to your social media sites, your website, and your blog. It’s also a good idea to insert a link that takes customers to a sign-up page for your newsletter. These strategies will generate new revenue as well as increased profit from existing customers, so get started today and do something great for your small business.

Race To Nowhere
Feb 14 2011

This past weekend, I saw the documentary called Race To Nowhere.  It was screened by the school my kids go to called Magellan International School.  It was a fascinating documentary about the pressures put on kids in the public school system and in school in general.  They interviewed many parents and teens about the amount of homework, studying, extra curricular activities, etc. that they all felt compelled to do in order to be able to get into a “good” college.  It depicted the stress levels of these kids, and highlighted one really smart kid who committed suicide because of the fear of doing badly in school.

Honestly, it was crazy the amount of homework these kids had to do.  I don’t remember having 2 to 3 hours of homework every night of the week when I was in middle or high school!  I also don’t remember requiring a parent to help me with my homework.  I agree with their premise that less homework is better and kids should spend their time learning in school and after school they should have downtime.  I don’t think you should eliminate homework all together as some experts suggested in the movie, but I think expecting elementary school kids to have homework every night is excessive.  They need time to be kids and have unstructured play with their friends or siblings.

I like the homework schedule at my kid’s school.  They usually get homework on Friday and it’s not due until the following Thursday so you can help them learn to pace working on their homework during the week.  Apparently, the country who has the highest amount of homework is Turkey and they perform the worst in tests when compared to Finland which has the least amount of homework and their kids out perform the kids in most of the rest of the world.  But then again, the social structure in Finland is different than most places.  They have liberal parenting leave, flexible work schedules, etc.

Since my kids aren’t yet in middle or high school, I can’t really say from first hand experience how stressed out those kids are these days.  However, if they are taking lessons from their overworked, stressed out parents who are trying to do everything without much of a family support system, then really we should look at the entire social system in the US.  Many of us are so used to working all the time, that we sometimes miss the forest for the trees.

The movie was a good reminder to pay attention to our kids and their signals about what’s going on in their life.  We all still need to live in the existing academic infrastructure so we need to make sure our kids know how to navigate that system but at the same time make efforts to begin changing the system by looking at different ways of educating our kids like they do at the Magellan International School.

Happy Valentine’s Day! <3

Signal to Noise
Jan 30 2011

A couple of years ago someone I know mentioned the term ‘signal to noise’ when talking about social media and my tweet stream in particular.  His comment indicated that he thought I was putting out more noise than signal, which was probably true.  I used to tweet a lot more than I do now and he said this during South by Southwest Interactive when everyone was tweeting.  Currently, most of my tweets are just links to my blog posts.  I had already been using twitter for some time and he was new to twitter. I had close to 2,000 followers and was following maybe 700 people at the time and he was probably following 50 people so, in proportion, my tweets appeared more often in his twitter stream than most people’s appear in mine.

It’s true that social media tools have provided a platform for noisiness.  People put out a lot of noise and seemingly irrelevant information about themselves and others.  But people are noisy in person whether they are talking a lot, writing a lot, or paradoxically not saying anything at all.  There can be a lot of ‘noise’ in silence.  When I say ‘noise,’ I mean information.  Some people can decide that what a person is saying or not saying is irrelevant and dismiss it as mere noise, but, in my opinion, there is always ‘signal’ in there somewhere.  Whether we want to spend time or care to understand the signal and what it’s telling us is another thing.

Interestingly, a company called Mass Relevance (Austin Startup blog post), recently launched and funded here in Austin, seems to me to be trying to separate signal from noise based on one of the executives answers to a question in the blog post:

Q: Only a small fraction of social status messages (like tweets) get viewed. Is there real value in that data?

That’s exactly the point. More user generated and social content is being created than we can consume. The future is in finding relevance, curating for context, and syndicating this to the right audience at the right place. A good analogy of the value of all this data is like web analytics. If there’s only two web analytics report you view about your web site, is there value in the rest of the log data? Of course there is, you’re just not getting at it. We know that there’s tremendous untapped value in data, as there is in social content. The value is in how to aggregate, curate, display relevant content, create participation around the conversation, and analyze how it drives real business metrics. And it’s more than just technology. We have the expertise, service and support to make this work for large companies.

I wish them luck in finding relevant, poignant signals for their clients.  I just hope people don’t stop looking at and listening to people directly instead of just sifting through their words on a social media platform.  If you pay attention, you can pick up very strong signals directly from a “noisy” person that can help you work with and manage people and even understand your customer better than just what they write down in 140 characters or less.  As they say, close to 80% of human communication is non-verbal and never gets put on a computer screen or paper.

Bootstrapping Your Start-Up Business with Little or No Money
Jan 26 2011

The following is a guest post by Bill Hazelton, Managing Director of Credit Card Assist, a leading credit card resource site for consumers and small business owners and Sell It! On The Web, an e-commerce and online marketing blog. For other local bootstrapping resources here in Austin, check out the Bootstrap Austin site.

In periods of high unemployment, many of those having a hard time finding a job consider starting their own business as an alternative.  The thought of being your own boss could never be more appealing when you’ve been unemployed for awhile.

Typically, the biggest challenge for most new business start-ups is capital, or more specifically, the lack of capital.  The reality is that traditional sources of financing a new business are a long shot at best, especially in the new economy.

That’s the bad news.  The good news, however, is that many new start-ups are launched with very little money at all.  Michael Dell started his company, Dell Computer, out of his college dorm room for less than $1,000.

There are a countless number of creative ways that you can finance a start-up.  Here are just a few tips on bootstrapping your new startup that I have found particularly beneficial from my own experience:

Outsourcing

Many start-ups don’t have the financial means to hire full-time employees early on so business owners are left no choice but to bootstrap their operations by outsourcing.  Three primary areas in any business that you can effectively outsource are computer programming, web design and software development.  Eventually, my business grew to the point where I needed to hire several full-time employees, but outsourcing was the keystone that provided that opportunity.

Barter and Trade

Instead of paying cash for products and services, bartering can be an extremely effective bootstrapping tool.  Bartering involves trading products and services between complimentary businesses, which is probably more suitable for service-oriented businesses but if you are selling tangible products, there are still opportunities to barter creatively as well.

Partnering with a Complimentary Business

Another effective bootstrapping technique you can use is partnering with a complementary business. Any business in a non-competitive but complementary industry would qualify where you can share costs on facilities, equipment, employees, rent, and advertising.

Internships

Local colleges in your area are a great place to find internship programs that are loaded with students looking for opportunities to earn school credit and gain experience in their field of choice.  Interns are highly motivated laborers and they’re willing to work for next to nothing but they can do more than just save you money.  Internship programs have started to play a much bigger role in transforming smaller businesses.

SCORE Business Counseling

SCORE, also known as “Counselors to America’s Small Business” is a nonprofit association partnered with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) whose mission is to educate entrepreneurs and small business owners, helping them start and grow their companies.

SCORE has 350 offices nationwide that are staffed with more than 13,000 mentor volunteers with extensive business experience and a wide range of business skills.  The mentors are retired business owners and corporate leaders who share their experience and lessons they have learned in their careers.  The advice offered by SCORE’s mentors is free and confidential and has provided guidance for more than 8.5 million small businesses.  You can choose your own mentor, attend free online workshops and get advice online or in-person.

Posts In Progress
Jan 17 2011

I know it’s been a little while since I’ve posted. I have a few mulling around in my head and a guest post waiting to be published that I haven’t had time to review. In case you are interested, here are the potential titles of those posts: “Signal to Noise – What Really Is Noise?” and “Everything In Moderation – What Really Is Moderation?” and “Helping Young Moms Go To School” and “Something About Entrepreneurship (well, that’s not really the title but I guess it could be!).”

Austin, Texas Rocks!!
Jan 8 2011

Check out the CBS evening news last night, January 7, 2011 on how Austin is growing jobs.  The video is embedded below.  They interviewed people from BazaarVoice, a really hot start-up in town.  I know the CEO and he’s really great and focused on building a company with a strong culture with big value.  They also interviewed my boss, Isaac Barchas, at the Austin Technology Incubator and featured how we help companies grow and create jobs.  Check it out here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7224282n or below in the embedded video.

Happy New Year – It’s Gonna Be Grand!
Jan 1 2011

2011 will be a great year.  It will be.  It has to be.  I say it proudly and loudly, so it must be so!  The economy seems to be getting a bit better (at least here in Texas) and many people are excited about the new year of the Rabbit (starting Feb 3, 2011 to Jan 22, 2012) and us leaving the hard Chinese year of the Tiger behind us.

My resolutions this year are to believe/trust in myself, believe in my kids, believe in the kindness and beauty in others, smile/laugh more, make others smile/laugh more, create songs and sing a song (Carpenter’s lyrics link).

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud, sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple to last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song .

Oh and LOVE more!  As Hugh McLeod (@gapingvoid) cartoons Love, regardless of cost.  For those curious folks, here is what I wrote for Resolutions Past:

Once In A Blue Moon – It’s Complicated – 2010
Resolutions Anyone? – 2009
One Entrepreneur’s 2008 Goals – 2008

Happy New Year to all of you my loyal readers and everyone else who happens upon my blog when searching for something to help them with their life, their posts, their kids, or their businesses.  May you find the courage to follow your dreams…in other words your heart! <3  <— that’s a heart symbol for those of you who didn’t know that.

We’ve all heard the saying “You only live once,” so may you conquer your fear just a little bit at a time to live life (at least next year) grandly and to it’s fullest.  It’s not easy but it’s worth it…even if you get what “it” means for a few short minutes…you will never forget, can never go back, and will never compromise to the point that you lose yourself again.

Cleaning House – Purging
Dec 30 2010

Today I spent most of the day just getting rid of stuff.  Shipping clothes to relatives with younger kids, giving toys and other sundries to Goodwill, and moving things around.  I took bags of stuff to Goodwill.  I have boxes of stuff to take to the kids’ school.  I threw bags of (ugh) plastic little useless toys away that can’t be recycled, and I dread the thought of them being in a landfill like in Toy Story 3, but it had to be done.  The house feels lighter.  I feel lighter.  The kids were about 25% helpful but mostly got caught up playing with toys they didn’t want to get rid of.  They were good helpers when I gave them instructions and didn’t argue too much when I told them to throw certain things away or put something in a certain pile, but they would find excuses to play hide and seek, scream and laugh up a storm, work on puzzles, try to play the iPhone, etc. which made me frustrated but smile at the same time.  I’m so glad they get along so well.  I know the day is coming when they won’t get along so I’m savoring it now.  I was too exhausted to cook anything for dinner after a busy day of cleaning so we went to Kerbey Lane Cafe for dinner and the waitress even commented on how well they got along.  [I’m knocking on wood right now!]  My son even encouraged my daughter to play Mario Kart (that he got for Christmas from Grandma) on the Wii with him and made sure she was making enough progress to keep her interested in continuing to play with him.  He’s smart like that…anything to play the Wii!  She’s not much into playing video games but there are a few sports games and things like Mario Kart she likes.

I like an organized house and my house hasn’t been as organized as I’d like in the past couple of years, but I just decided I had to give in to the “lived in” look and the chaos of two kids for my sanity.  Some things are just not worth getting that upset about (i.e., clothes/jackets hanging on chairs/sofas, toys in various places in the house, etc.).  As long as I’m not tripping on something, it’s all good and the kids are pretty good about keeping things out of the way.  My daughter seems to enjoy helping me or being next to me most of the time, but my son would rather play the Wii or the iPhone and it’s hit or miss on his attitude about taking his socks he left on the floor to his dirty clothes bin.  But if it’s night time, then mom has to be close by so he can go to sleep!

I still have the garage, my office, my bathroom, and the kitchen drawers to get through.  Sigh! 

Zhu Zhu pet

It’s good to get rid of stuff, baggage, old ways of doing things even in an entrepreneurial endeavor.  If you don’t get rid of the old ways of thinking and doing things, you can’t make room for the new and I’ve seen many a start-up fail because they get stuck in the ‘well, it’s always been like this‘ attitude and they don’t take time to make room for some fresh thinking and of course new gadgets.  Who couldn’t use a room full of new Zhu Zhu or Kung Zhu pets and their paraphernalia to get the entrepreneurial juices flowing! 😀

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence
Dec 21 2010

I mentioned I had a post brewing in my head about this fortune cookie “statement” (i.e., not a fortune) in a prior post.  I actually did see a real fortune the other day that said something like “The love of your life is just around the corner,” but sadly I did not open that cookie, our office manager (who has been married almost 20 years) at work did, so maybe she is re-discovering the love of her life. 🙂

Love is a strange emotion or thing or state of being.  It can be like a drug just like in the movie Love and Other Drugs I just saw.  It doesn’t often make sense.  People love Apple’s iPhone but if you did the practical analysis, the Google Android phone might be better.  In other words people’s imagination of the iPhone triumphs over hard data (i.e., intelligence).  Or there might even be a better phone option than that.  But people fall in love seemingly all of a sudden and sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why but some people like Steve Jobs seem to know how to push the buttons of a significant enough portion of the population and get them to fall in love with his ideas/products.  Selling to consumers is a tough job because we are fickle.  We can fall in and out of love (or is that “like”) of products pretty easily.   Probably because society doesn’t look kindly on us falling in and out of love with people, so we project that piece of our humanity onto objects.  No one will judge you or make you feel guilty for falling in and out of love with certain products.  I just came up with that piece of philosophy/wisdom so take it for what it’s worth!

Hugh McLeod (@gapingvoid) loves to cartoon about LOVE and I love the poignancy of his love cartoons.  Jeffrey Fry sent out a quote recently: “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” –Mother Teresa.

When people fall in love (infatuation), they certainly overlook the practical/potentially annoying things about something or someone (e.g., you have to keep re-booting the phone, but it looks pretty, it gives you good info on how to get places, and it gives you games to play or if it’s a person for some period of time you don’t see their flaws because he or she makes you feel special/noticed or it seems like they really see or understand you.).

The very few times I’ve fallen in romantic love in my life, I’ve been completely blind sided by it.  Knocked over like a ton of bricks.  Silly and stupid.  And on some occasions, I never even had a relationship with the guy – guess I’m just a romantic at heart and they somehow happened to connect with the combination of my mind/heart, which is very hard to do.  When I’ve fallen out of love, it seems to have happened over time and not suddenly after disappointment, disconnection, pain, and just the exhaustion that comes along with daily living.  I’m not trying to say I believe in ‘love at first site’ because I don’t, but that moment when you realize you love someone or ‘something’ seems to just happen without any warning.  One day you don’t have much feeling toward someone or you don’t know what you feel and the next you find you are in love with them.  Which has led me to the conclusion that we are not meant to love just one person (romantically) our entire lives.  I can see Jeffrey Fry reading this and thinking that I don’t know what true love is yet because he has studied it and apparently knows what it is.  He’s probably right, I don’t know.

There are people in ‘arranged marriages’ who grow to love each other and there are people who had ‘love marriages’ that didn’t work out.  It’s all that stuff that happens (and doesn’t happen) in between the years, the kids, the jobs, behind closed doors, etc. that I guess makes some marriages “work” and others don’t.  The same is true for business start-ups but currently the odds of a marriage making it to “death do us part” is higher (4o to 50%) than a small business making it 50 years (< 10%).  Plus, more people change their jobs and companies they work for now than they did 30+ years ago.  Go figure.

But the closest I’ve come to experiencing true love is the love I feel for my children, and yes the intensity of my love for them did surprise me at first.  And although they sometimes annoy the heck out of me (any parent who says their kids have not annoyed them at some point is a liar), I cannot even imagine a day where I would fall out of love with them.  I can see a day I may not like them sometimes, especially if they do something naughty or talk back to me, but I believe that I will always love them and do my best to support them.

I wonder if it’s harder to fall in or out of love?  That is the question.

Planting Trees
Dec 19 2010

broken tree

The good folks at Tree Folks decided that we (the neighborhood) could benefit from planting more trees in our front yard.  I’m fortunate enough to live in an older neighborhood with great big trees everywhere but there is an effort to add more shade to the street area for energy conservation and other environmental reasons.  So, I got to select up to two trees (Elm and an Oak) for the front yard for “free” which doesn’t have as many trees in it as other houses in our neighborhood.  I have to plan them between 3 and 12 feet from the street.  Our back yard has 5 really big trees.  I thought I only selected one but out of the blue the other day 2 trees in pots showed up laying down in my yard.  I didn’t expect them until the spring time, but there they were and now I have to deal with getting them planted during the Holidays.  Guess it’s a good a time as any.

Long time readers of my blog may remember (won’t blame you if you didn’t because I just remembered I blogged about it) we lost a tree back in July 2008 that was near the front of the house because it decided to fall on our roof.  It was rotting from the inside and if you click that previous link you’ll see the pictures.  I miss that tree and we never got around to planting another one in that location and unfortunately it’s too far back from the street to put one of the Tree Folks trees there.  I just re-read the post and saw that I wrote “What I found really interesting is that although on the outside we noticed one dead limb the other trunks/limbs (even the one leaning on our roof) was full of leaves and looked healthy.  I guess it goes to show you that something can look healthy on the outside but be sick, diseased, and dying on the inside.  That’s really kind of a sad, yet eye-opening thing to think about.”  The same is true of people and animals…you just never know, but that’s a topic of another post or probably PhD research thesis.  Sigh.

I’ve never planted trees before so my neighbor, who is good in the garden, has kindly agreed to help me plant them.  I think it’s a great program these Tree Folks, Austin Energy and Austin Parks and Recreation are sponsoring, but it’s proving to be more of an effort than I thought.  I had to notify them so they could call all the organizations (e.g., cable, electricity, etc.) who might have put some wire down anywhere near where we are considering planting the trees to come mark up the place.  I have a bag of mulch, soil, liquid transplant solution, and tree stakes ready to go.

I have pretty good luck with the plants inside my house but I’m not sure if my green thumb extends to outside of the house, so we’ll see what happens.  Special thanks to my generous neighbor who is going to help me and the kids plant these trees!

If any of you have any tree planting advice for an Elm and an Oak tree (which are sitting out in pots in my front yard right now), please let me know.  I probably won’t be living in this house when they are nice and big, but some future resident will benefit from their beauty and shade.