Creative Think

The Alltop Aggregator

Serial entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki has a brand new venture. It's called Alltop, a blog aggregator currently following selected blogs (and sites) around fifteen categories such as Science, Oddities, Egos*, and Small Business.

I like the clean layout of this site; it's very easy to grasp what's going on.

A nifty feature is that when you put your cursor over a particular blog post, the first three or four sentences of that post pop up, and you're able to get the gist of what that author is thinking about without going to his/her site. Quite a time-saver. This allows you to cover a lot of ground. For example, if you go to the Mac category, you can imagine that you're Robert Scoble "reading a river of information" and get over 200 Mac-related articles in just minutes.

I've found Alltop to be a good place to go when my mind is stale and I'm tired of going to the places I typically go to.

Alltop is especially rewarding if you go to a category you don't spend a lot of time thinking about. For me, that's Fashion. There I can follow Almost Dressed, Style Hive, and Go Fug Yourself, among others. Delving into these is a wonderfully delicious way to get a fresh perspective. The Science category is also a useful place to go.

I asked Guy how he planned to "monetize the site," and he said, "We'd love to get a million eyeballs, and then we'll see what happens." It pays to think big!

Check it out!

*You can find me there right under Rosie O'Donnell (serving as a protective buffer for David Armano).

Note to CMO: Check out Stephen Denny

Today I had the pleasure of spending an hour in Palo Alto with one of my favorite marketing bloggers, Stephen Denny (shown at left).

Stephen writes the always perceptive Note to CMO (Tagline: "If you could send a memo to the marketing community and straighten everything out, what would you say? This is my "Note to the Chief Marketing Officer"). One of the delights of his blog is his wide diversity of examples: Seneca here, Kurosawa there, Goya to make this point, and Jet Blue to make a different one. Plus, he turns a phrase quite well.

If you haven't visited this site before, check out his series of marketing advice to a smaller company wishing to take out a larger competitor:

Killing Giants (Part I), Killing Giants (Part II), Killing Giants (Part III)

Stephen's got a lot of interesting marketing stories garnered from real-life experiences (good, bad, and crazy) with companies such as Sony, Iomega, and other channel favorites.

Who are Stephen's favorite blogs?

• Grant McCraken (This Blog Sits at the): "He's just about the best marketing writer out there."
• Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent): "I like the way she writes about people."
• Lewis Green (Business Solution Plus): "I like his friendly, social manner, and especially his Friday columns."
• Ann Handley (Marketing Profs): "She's good."

Currently, Stephen spends his time doing marketing consulting. He's also thinking about getting into the seminar business. In addition, he's carving out time to write his book ("Killing Giants"). I wish him success with the book endeavor: I think the market would respond well to his ideas!

The Next Big Thing . . . from 25 Years Ago

This month represents the 25th anniversary of the first of my five "Success in Software" conferences that I created and produced from 1982-1984 in Palo Alto, California. These were wonderful events that explored, as their name suggests, what it took to be successful in the newly-emerging industry of micro-computer software.

Let me take you back to 1982. We were in the midst of a deep recession (Reagan's tax cuts hadn't gained traction quite yet). The then-current watchword of the Cold War was "Nuclear Winter." And the Japanese were the economic superstars.

And yet hope sprang from an unlikely quarter: people who hoped to make a buck developing and selling microcomputer software. This was because there was something new going on: a new tool — the personal computer — was becoming available to more and more people. The Apple II was selling well, the IBM PC was less than a year old, and Steve Jobs was on the cover of Time (back when it was an important magazine). Something was going on: opportunity. It was the "Gold Rush of the 80s."

My speakers included: Bill Gates (back when he was only worth $100 million), John Doerr (before he became a "Master of the Universe"), Trip Hawkins (Founder of Electronic Arts), Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus), Alan Kay (Apple Visionary), Nolan Bushnell (Founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese), Robert Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com), Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Software), Tom Perkins (VC), Esther Dyson, William Randolph Hearst III, and John Dvorak (industry pundits), Ted Leonsis (later to be AOL Vice Chairman), Fred Gibbons (Founder of Software Publishing), and many others.

Each of these events drew more than 600 people (room capacity): about a third venture capitalists, a third engineers, and a third marketers. They were like a "Rock Concert for Entrepreneurs." Some companies were born at these events. A lot of contacts were made. Many ideas were shared.

There was a lot of excitement in the air then. And it reminds me of the current enthusiasm for Web 2.0 and social networking applications. How wonderful to witness this frenzy once again.

Indeed, there is a kind of "Wild West" feel to "Web 2.0 World." If you're participating in it, thank your lucky stars! And enjoy it! (Because it won't last forever.)

Question: How would you compare the "micro-computer software" era of the early 80s with the current Web 2.0 era?

[Bonus question: compare that 64K PC in young Bill's photo to an iPhone.]

Ning Receives $44MM; Andreesen Blogs

21 months ago, my daughter Athena von Oech went to work as one of the very early employees at Ning, a full-suite social networking company based in Palo Alto. Athena is currently a Sr. Product Manager. Ning was founded by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen and Gina Bianchini. Ning is doing well (go to their site and check them out): they currently have 75,000 networks using their platform.

Last week was a good one for Ning: they received $44 million from Legg Mason (and others) and orchestrated by Allen & Company. That puts a value of nearly $250 million on the company. Shades of 1999 or proof positive that the investment community thinks social networking is here to stay? Time will tell. The folks over at TechCrunch certainly have their opinions (see here).

What do you think? Social networking: 1999-redux or a sound business investment, or depends on the company?

Which brings me to Marc Andreesen. Five weeks ago, he started blogging at the site http://blog.pmarca.com/. And he's thrilled about it! Check him out. He writes well-thought-out posts on a variety of subjects, but especially dealing with the business of startups and their financing. In that short period, his Technorati Authority rating has soared to 1,780. Not bad for a newbie.

Marc has a recent post called  "Eleven Lessons Learned About Blogging, So Far." It's well worth reading. I only wish that Marc still allowed comments; his early posts did and it was fun seeing what his readers thought of his "takes." (Also, check out his top posts.) Interesting insights, wouldn't you agree?

Thinking Creatively . . . About Mirrors

(On July 3rd, Valeria Maltoni, gracious hostess at Conversation Agent made the 1,000th comment to this blog. So I asked her to do a guest post. Here it is. I think it's delightful and provocative. — Roger von Oech)

"Thinking Creatively . . . About Mirrors" by Valeria Maltoni

Roger has this fantastic series about "What ifs", so I thought I would pitch in with my own story and question back to you. We often seem to connect the dots after a spell — we see clearly when we look back.

Many years ago, in fact I was about 6 years old, I made a statement that my mother would forever slap me for in retrospect. You know when you ask your kids or a kid, "What would you like to be when you grow up?" And I must pause here, the "to be" vs. "to do" is being typically Italian here.

My answer was: "I want to be a translator in the United States." Huh? Where did that come from? There, there, a pat on the back and the conversation was over.

Yet… here I am, many years later (it's not polite to ask a woman her age, you know?) connecting the dots of all the things I always wanted to do and was able to express here. I would make a good ambassador, I'm sure -– I had a good work and fun life here so far. Much more opportunity than I would have had in Europe at the time, many more friends.

So here's are my questions for you. Take a few moments to "reflect" on them. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

• What if you looked in the mirror and saw the "you" from back then (you know — back when you started on your quest, journey, or mission)?

• What would you see?

• Looking at that younger person, would you be able to see something of what you've become? Are you able to connect the dots from now to then? If you knew then what you know now, what would you change? How would you go about it?

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Update: What a fun "what if" question! It certainly made me and a lot of other people think!

Valeria: Thanks for creating such a provative post, and also for being a gracious hostess. We may have to do this again!

Scoble Awaits iPhone, Plays with Ball of Whacks

Carnival atmosphere at the Palo Alto Apple store. Eminent blogger Robert Scoble (April profile) and his 13 year old son Patrick arrived early Thursday morning to be the first and second in line to get their hands on a new iPhone.

When I took this photo Thursday afternoon, there were about 20 or so people camping out. As you can see, the young ladies behind Scoble are really pumped up.

While he's waiting to get his hands on an iPhone, Scoble got his hands on the new Blue Ball of Whacks. The Ball of Whacks brought a big smile to his face (and should give him something to play with tonight as he sleeps in front of the store).

Lots of buzz. Local entrepreneurs and VCs. Zooomr TV was there, and CNBC will be there later. I got to spend 2 minutes telling their audience about the Ball of Whacks. Does the iPhone's Halo extend that far? Lots of fun!

Meet Tim Siedell, the Bad Banana

Those of you who follow this blog know that I'm "on the fence" about the value of Twitter. But so far, at least one good thing has come from my dabbling in it: I've met Tim Siedell, who is also known as the Bad Banana. (Interesting side note: Tim's Twitter avatar is ad legend David Ogilvy.)

If you like ideas about advertising, design, and off-beat creativity, I highly recommend that you check out Tim's blog which is called Bad Banana ("ideas, inspiration, ephemera. Put 'em in the freezer and bake some bread later.") Tim had been publishing on the Vox platform, but just recently moved over to TypePad. You can see that he has a lot of interesting stuff.

One of my favorites of Tim's recent posts is about Ernie Kovacs. Go here to see it: make sure you watch the two "Dutch Masters" ads at the bottom. Priceless! I loved watching Kovacs as a kid, and I was delighted that Tim put his spotlight on him.

Tim is the Creative Director/Co-founder of Fusebox, a brand communications studio in Lincoln, Nebraska which he started in 2000. His studio was featured in the July, 2005 edition of Communication Arts. As Tim puts it, "We won the Financial Times of London's World's Toughest Briefs competition in January of 2006. I've won a bunch of other creative awards, but not since 2000 (Fusebox does not enter creative award shows). Mostly, we try to stay focused on doing great work for our clients." Not a bad philosophy.

I called Tim up last week and had a great chat with him. To me, he seemed like a "plain folks guy" with a really creative head on his shoulders. Check him out!

An Evening with John Maeda

Last night I went to see and hear MIT Professor John Maeda speak at Stanford.

Last September, I had read and enjoyed his book, The Laws of Simplicity, and last November John was kind enough to review my Ball of Whacks in his blog. It was the first time I had met him. I was able to chat with him before his presentation and take this photo. You can see that he looks confident and ready-to-go! (John's lecture was part of the David Lu Memorial Series and was SRO.)

I was impressed with John's presentation: he was funny, entertaining, and full of insights about life, design, and the creative process.

Here are just a few notes of some of the topics he covered.

I never knew how tofu was made, but I do now! John's father ran a family-owned tofu making business in Seattle, and John gave a step-by-step description of what's involved. Fascinating stuff.

Mentors have played an important role in John's development as a designer and artist. He described working with three of them: Muriel Cooper, Paul Rand, and Ikko Tanaka. John made the point: "Great mentors, by their good example, teach humanness."

One of his main early points was: "Vacation is the key to life." The implication was that our thinking gets boxed in doing our day-to-day stuff, but in vacation we're free to explore and try a lot of different things.

He showed a slide comparing the size of his car and his camera. He then asked this puzzling question: "How come my car is so much larger than my camera, but my camera's manual is thicker than my car's manual. There's a lot of opportunity to simplify things there."

John showed slides from a number of his art works including his current exhibit which is running at the Riflemaker Gallery in London. The image (at left) is a "Fish" he made out of iPods. Click here to see a short video from this exhibit.

On where he turns for inspiration: "Museums are boring, the world is exciting." And he proceeded to show some fun examples of some amazingly simple things that are happening right outside our doors.

One thing, in particular, I found amusing: when he was a "little down," he scanned a bunch of French fries into his computer, and then created a fun art image called "Amber Waves of Grain." Playful and off-beat.

John's closing thought was: We live in a diverse world of creative people." And he shared his motto: "Think, Create,  Educate, Enjoy." It was an evening well spent!

Here's to the Graduates!

Here's to all the graduates of the class of '07!

This past weekend, our family assembled in Los Angeles to attend the graduation of my son, Alex von Oech, from the University of Southern California (USC). Here's a photo of the proud father and recent graduate.

Graduations are fun! Lots of pomp, celebration, speech-making, and pageantry.

Graduations are a wonderful family time! I saw family after family each prouder than the next of the newly-minted graduate in its midst. And ours was no exception!

Graduations are inspiring! There are times when it's easy to get overwhelmed by the problems and issues before us. But all you need to do to get over those feelings is to take a look at the incredibly talented and energetic graduates who are entering into society!

Good luck to all the grads — and their families!

Playing With Robert Scoble

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending an hour with Robert Scoble (author, tech evangelist, and blogger-extraordinaire) at his PodTech office in Palo Alto. Scoble's blog (Scobleizer) and video program (Scoble Show) are viewed by many, many tens of thousands of loyal fans.

The two things that struck me about Scoble are his accessibility and affability. I called him up out of the blue (his telephone number is on his web site), and said, "I'd like to meet you." "Fine," he responded, "how about tomorrow at three?" When I met him, I knew immediately that I'd like him — he's very down to earth and friendly.

We chatted about his work, my work, and then I gave him a Ball of Whacks. Here is a photo of Robert happily playing with it

Actually, this photo is not a bad metaphor of what a conversation with Scoble is like. He's playful. He puts ideas together in different ways. He tries different ways of looking at things — some of them brand new. He sees the obvious. And he has fun doing it.

I mentioned that I had been at Google the day before and that company had reminded me of Apple in the early 1980s: "Lots of young people, lots of energy, and no parking." I asked where he saw Google going, and if anything could stop them. "I'm not sure anything can stop them, not even a deep recession. They got a lot of smart people there." He paused a bit, and continued, "Maybe there is one thing: the Department of Justice." And he went on to give his theory that the Feds went after IBM for monopolistic practices after it had been in business for 50 (or so) years; they came after Microsoft after it had been in business for 25 (approximately) years; perhaps the Feds will go after Google when they're twelve. Interesting theory.

"What are your keys to success?" I asked. He mentioned that he works hard and "loves to talk with Geeks." But the key reason is that "I was in the right place at the right time." Scoble was a very early adopter of a disruptive technology, namely, blogging and other Web 2.0 social media tools. From there he built an audience, a great set of contacts, and a name for working hard and having "take-after-provocative-take" of what was really going on in the burgeoning blogosphere.

I then asked him, "Where was Microsoft in 2004-05 when this was happening? Why didn't they see the opportunities?" Scoble's response was revealing. He showed me a memo he had written to senior Microsoft execs more than two years ago. In it, he outlined the great future in store for the various social applications. Microsoft didn't buy Scoble's vision.

Scoble then gave the following metaphor: "Which would you rather have: a penny that doubles its value every day for thirty days, or $100,000?" On day 15 of this exercise (which is where the new web 2.0 apps were when Scoble made his proposal to Microsoft) that penny was now worth a little more than $300. But Microsoft felt that was insignificant compared to $100,000, and passed. But if you do the math, you find out that in 30 days that penny is worth more than $10,000,000. Interesting way of looking at things!

Scoble also has some interesting marketing ideas. And he used himself as an example. He is about to become a father for the second time (his wife Maryam is due in September).

"When someone gets married, they are inundated with offers of products and services before the actual marriage itself. But not so with having a new child. At five months [into Maryam's pregnancy], we've already made a lot of the purchases for our new child: newer sturdier car, more insurance, etc. But no one marketed 'new baby' related products and services to us. We took care of that ourselves.

I think it will happen in the near future that someone like Google or someone else will be able to look at my online behavior and see the sites I visit, and aggregate that information into a pattern that says 'new baby on the way' and then start marketing to me at three months and get my business."

Talk about killer apps! We also chatted about Twitter (he likes it), people (he likes them), creative thinking (it comes easily to him), and Apple (it mystifies him). It was a great hour — the kind in which I could feel new connections being made in my mind.

Thanks again, Robert. Look forward to seeing you again soon!