The Purpose of the SPM ResumeBlog:

• Learn to blog in a quick and painless way
  
  
• Get some experience blogging so that SPMers can speak intelligently if the issue comes up in an interview (web collaboration is hot now)
  
  
• Use the ResumeBlog blog as the "professional home" for the SPMer's bio or resume -- this is especially useful for the majority of members that do not have a web site. Even those who do have a website may also want to have a ResumeBlog (and a also regular blog) because it is free and much easier to maintain than a website. The format of a blog is quite different than that of a website so it is useful for posting on-going progress updates and opinions and ideas. The blog also easily allows the blogger to capture information from other bloggers value and give credit, and link to others.
  
  
• Provides additional mechanisms for a hiring mgr, recruiter etc. to find the SPM member on the web: a Google search on the member's name would bring up his/her ResumeBlog, a Google search on keywords that are in the member's ResumeBlog could bring up his/her ResumeBlog, once someone has brought up one SPM member's Resume blog he/she can traverse the links to other SPM members' ResumeBlogs, links to the ResumeBlogs will also be placed on the SPM website. Note that we do bios for the SPM Volunteers on the SPM website now, the ResumeBlog is a way of giving all members that service, without the overhead of a volunteer having to maintain the website.
  
  
• Most importantly, the ResumeBlog gives the SPM member enough experience blogging so that s/he he can contribute to the SPM Knowledge Center (which is also a blog). Originally I started the SPM KC first but quickly discovered there was not enough experience by most of the members of the SPM KC team in blogging so get any momentum. Once a member has created his/her ResumeBlog (or any type of blog), s/he will be in a great position to add his/her content to the SPM KC. The SPM Knowledge Center will not only be a source of information for software marketing subjects, but will also be a place for the SPM member to "show off' his/her work.

Since the ResumeBlog only takes 10 minutes to create, why not try it out for a few weeks and see if it provides value?

When doing new things on the web I've found that it is better to experiment than intellectualize, because you get new insights by doing that you can never have imagined.

Directions on how to create your ResumeBlog.

Rise of the Blogeoisie

The whole article is interesting -- a fresh look at the blogging world and the bloggers who inhabit it. Note how Google's PageRank reputation algorithm has been turned into a tool for the blogeoisie to exploit. Below are my favorite paragraphs but go to the link to read the whole article.

15 May 2003 - Spiked-Online


Blog eats blog


by Bill Thompson

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

"The O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference (ETCON) has established itself as the highlight of the geek calendar after only three years - the place where technology meets the street.

"Every talk, keynote, informal session, water-cooler conversation, party and failed sexual encounter was extensively covered, in real time, by bloggers who would rather write 'I am sitting here' than sit there, and note that 'the audience is not paying attention' rather than consider that they aren't paying attention either.

"Sadly, hours spent with my head down the wirelessly-enabled toilet that is today's blogosphere revealed only that these many and varied comments form such a complex tapestry of overlapping meanings, that they make the reports from embedded journalists in Iraq seem like models of clarity.

"Reading the blog coverage may not tell us much about what actually happened, but it does reveal something of interest. Within the blogosphere, we can identify some that belong to a new intellectual elite - a small influential group of people, who have managed to turn their self-publication obsession into a power base. It will come as no surprise that many of them either organised or spoke at the conference.

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

"Howard Rheingold, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, Dave Winer and Ben Hammersley (no, I'm not going to promote them even more by linking to them) are all what Register reporter Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', the people whose regular musings on their personal websites can shape debate and make reputations.

"If this was just a random collection of people with more time than sense - a self-referential group of average intellects sharing their views on the internet - then it would not be worrying. But these discussions do not take place in a vacuum. Despite the findings of the Pew Internet and America Life Project - that the number of regular visitors to even the highest-profile blog is too low to be statistically significant - blogs exert real influence over how many others think about the internet and its future.

"Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history. Who needs a memory hole when the world's favourite search engine does the job so effectively?

"These people are not quite an aristocracy. Perhaps they are simply the blogeoisie (pronounced bloj-wah-zee), a dominant class in network society. Or it may be simpler to think of blogs as a feudal system, with respect and links acting as the chief currency. The peasants toil in the low-rank blogs, paying their tithe in LazyWeb projects to the lords of the link in return for an occasional mention from Hammersley or Searls."

NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My term for what Bill Thomson calls the 'blogeoisie' and Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', is the '20 guys blogging each other'. Less elegant but perhaps more descriptive.

Garden photos.

Bloggers add Babble to Google

Google hogged by blogs
Spiked Journal
July 15, 2003
by Sandy Starr
'Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value.'

Best paragraphs are here but the whole article is good.

PageRank is a wonderful innovation, which has been of considerable benefit to web users over the past few years, regardless of what Google's more irrational critics say. The ideal behind PageRank, of combining a faith in the judgement of others with a desire to make high-quality content easily and publicly available, is a laudable one. But this ideal has been shot down by blogs.

The self-obsessed nature of many blogs, the incestuous relationships between them, the frenetic rate at which they are updated, and their obsessive use of links, have distorted the snapshots of the web that Google gives us. Blog culture has made links and idle comment into ends in themselves, irrespective of the merit or relevance of the content being linked to or commented upon. It is this failing of blogs, not any failing of PageRank, that has meant that the assumptions which made PageRank work so effectively are no longer tenable.

I sent an email to the author:

Dear Sandy Starr,

Great article. I wrote a brief note about this on May 27, 2003 and sent it to several lists that I belong to.

I got a huge amount of responses that were so interesting that I put up a web page with them.

I also wrote a note about this topic to your colleague Martyn Perks on July, 6, 2002, and I posted it in my blog: http://typaldos.blogspot.com/.


Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.


-- Cynthia

I'm so busy working on my other blogs that I don't have time to update my main blog.

We've kicked off three new projects in SPM.

SPM-Bio-Blog Project
Goal is that every SPM member has their bio on the web (using a blog). Here are the instructions. My Bio-Blog.

SPM Knowledge Center
SPM Knowledge Center eGroup
SPM Knowledge Center Prototype

New Software Guilds

-----Original Message-----
From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:15 AM
To: SW Prod Mkting eGroup
Subject: [spmjobs] !! new SW eGroups !!


Hi everyone,

We (SPM management/volunteers) are opening up new egroups covering the entire software industry to complement SPM (which is focused on software marketing and business development).

Our not-so-modest goal is to capture all of the job postings for software industry professionals.

The software industry includes internet, embedded software, software that is part of a hardware offering, social software, web-based software, networking software, telecom software, enterprise software, application software, etc.

Here is the list of the software job functions that will have each have its own focused egroup:
marketing and business development (i.e. SPM)

• sales
  
• engineering
  
• QA, technical writing, project management
  
• finance & venture capital
  
• human resources
  
• system administration
  
• customer support
  
• international
  
• entrepreneur
  
• legal
  
• everything else (kitchen sink)
  

We are looking for entrepreneurial leaders to head up each of these new egroups and build a small team to run them. We (SPM) will train the egroup leader and provide the management tools. We will together form a software industry professional keiretsu.

Please forward this note to people you believe would be interested in being one of "professional guild" leaders. While these "professional guilds" will be not-for-profit organizations, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity to challenge the big job boards (e.g. Monster.com, HotJobs) and turn these endeavors into member-owned organizations that put our careers under our control. Our goal is that these professional guilds are the tool for white collar professionals to manage their own destiny and maximize our independence from employers and recruiters.

To apply to be the leader of one of these new software professional guilds, please respond as follows:

Send an email to the appropriate egroup below

• softwaresalesprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareengineeringprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareqatechwritingprojectmgmtprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarefinanceprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarehrprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwaresysadminprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarecustomersupportprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareinternationalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwareentrepreneurprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarelegalprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  
• softwarekitchensinkprofguild@yahoogroups.com
  

Provide relevant information about why you want to do this and why you will be successful. Since I don't beleive in resumes, please use other tools (e.g. your personal website, googlization factor, short bio, etc.) to validate your claim.

• Be prepared to commit 20 hours a week getting the new professional guild launched, then as you build a small team, you will be able to scale back to 10-15 hours/week.
  
• Be prepared to be an aggressive leader and spokesperson for your professional guild in meetings with company executive management, recruiters, reporters, investors, and government officials.
  
• We are international and virtual, so your location is NOT important.
  

We welcome all general feedback, suggestions, comments, etc. You can email me directly or send to the SPM Management Team at spmdirectors2@yahoogroups.com.

Thanks very much.

Cynthia

Here's an article about a panel discussion in the U.K. where the panel members presented their views on how social software will manipulate people into being better citizens.


Article17 June 2003, Spiked Online magazine
Computing Communities
by Martyn Perks

Here are the last two paragraphs:

The beef of the social software evangelists, perhaps, is democracy itself - because they refuse to trust individuals to make the right choices. All we are left with, then, is a belief in participation for its own sake, devoid of any content or realised goal. How could anyone hope such a model will change society for the better?

It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers.

I just sent this email to Martyn Perks:


Dear Martyn,

I read with interest your article about the panel discussion. Your last comment is excellent: "It is unfortunate that the more we grasp of the potential of technology to solve problems, the more technology geeks want to play social engineers."

I see much of what is being done and called social software right now as "20 guys blogging each other". The technology industry is well-known to be exclusionist, elitist, and women-unfriendly, but the frenzy these 20 guys have worked themselves up to, and gotten to the head of the class thru blogging each other, is unprecedented.

I would appreciate it you would look at a couple things on my website www.typaldos.com: The "12 Principles of Civilization" which are based solely on sociological principles, and my presention titled "The Future of Professional Guilds".

The the latter presentation I rate a number of the social networking websites against the 12 Principles and they come up woefully inadequate.

The internet is just another tool for us to use, not a tool to change or manipulate us. It is powerful, as are the alphabet and the telephone, but it will not change our basic behaviors and instincts which have served us well for millions of years.

By the way, the very top Principle (they are formed in a pyramid) is Purpose.

Sunflowers and California Fuscia photos taken with my $40 StyleCam Blink Digital Camera:


StyleCam Blink Camera

I posted this to the SOCNET list:

Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 2:50 PM
To: SOCNET
Subject: more on Networking as a Business

Several of us gathered up a list of all the the sites/software that are attempting to commercialize on networking. I thought the rest of you might also be interested in the list. No doubt there is already one, or more likely, many lists of these sites/sw in someone's blog. It's hard to do anything original anymore :-)

List generated by input from Doug Rush, Sean Murphy, Debi Jones and myself. I will also post this on my blog http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

websites:
www.ryze.com
www.friendster.com
http://www.livejournal.com
www.ecademy.com
www.meetup.com
www.classmates.com
www.reunion.com
www.Huminity.com
www.Ringo.com
www.PayDemocracy.com
www.linkedin.com

software:
www0Degrees.com
www.Spoke.com
the one that is being done at Stanford but I can't remember the name
www.Accolo.com
www.Plaxo.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.GoodContacts.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)
www.Accucard.com (contact update sw, but headed in the same direction)

I am planning on launching a site myself as soon as I have some seed funding. It would be quite different than the existing sites/software in that it uses networking as a tool to accomplish a purpose, rather than just being a networking tool all by its lonesome. Some of these sites are the equivalent of trying to turn a communication tool into a purpose, which is the equivalent of having a network built around the phone system. The phone is a tool for all kinds of purposeful activities, but not a goal in and of itself.

On my website I have a presentation on "The Future of Professional Guilds" and I welcome any feedback. Also, there are a few slides which compare many of the sites/software listed below against each other and against my "12 Principles of Civilization" http://www.typaldos.com/12principles.htm.

"The Future of Professional Guilds" presentation can be found by going to this webpage and selecting it from the table:
http://www.typaldos.com/events.htm
or by going directly to
The presentation.

The slides that do the comparisons are slides 37-40.

I'm considering setting up another blog, for personal blogging. Of course, how personal can it be since it's public and anyone can read it! The biggest downside is that I will then have two blogs to maintain, rather than just one, and just the one is a pain in the ***. Once I get into the rhythm of publishing on this blog, I will reconsider having two blogs. I define "rhythm of blogging" is making at least two posts/week.

When I re-read my blog (and I'm probably the only person that reads it at all!) I keep finding grammatical errors. I can't decide if I should fix them or not. If I become a perfectionist about blogging then the time-sink of maintaining it will become unreasonable.

SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup formed to create the SPM Knowledge Center

Here's some news about SPM (Software Product Marketing eGroup). We have formed a sub-egroup called SPM Knowledge Sharing to figure out the requirements, and then mechanism, to allow all SPM members to post their works: presentations, whitepapers, working documents, etc. The goal is to share knowledge amongst each other, and also give the now nearly 4,000 SPM members a public place to publish their best works. By doing so the member's Googlization factor will increase. I currently publish my works on my website Typaldos.com but creating and maintaining a website is even more trouble than blogging. So many SPM members don't have a website. Of course, they can start a blog too, and we will be encouraging that, but a directory where all the quality (I hope) works of SPM members can be found would raise the visibility of all members, and of SPM. We are going to call it the SPM Knowledge Center. Anyone is welcome to join the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup as long as you are also a member of SPM itself. Since it is free to become a member of SPM, that isn't much of a barrier, but it helps to weed out the riff-raff. To join SPM go to to the SPM website and follow the links for "job seekers".

Right now we are working on the requirements for the Knowledge Sharing technology. Here's what I have posted to the egroup as a straw person
___________________________________________________________

From: "Cynthia Typaldos"
Date: Wed Jul 2, 2003 12:07 pm
Subject: SPM Knowledge Sharing Group Kickoff

Hi Everyone,

25 people have signed up for the SPM Knowledge Sharing eGroup. [note - there are now 29 people.]

To kick things off, I have included my original email about the purpose of this endeavor below. Please re-read it to refresh your memory.

The first topic we will discuss is the REQUIREMENTS of the SPM Knowledge Center. I will create a straw proposal right now, and let's have a dialogue. I plan to post the highlights of our discussion on my blog at http://typaldos.blogspot.com.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE SPM KNOWLEDGE CENTER - REV 1
no central authority (e.g. no bottlenecks)
peer review for contribution reputation (does NOT have to be very sophisticated)
member can update/replace/remove/manage all of his/her contributions easily
and without needing help from anyone else
must start with a good structure
search capability
members receive full credit for their contribution(s)
uses free or sponsored software/website tools

Goal is to agree on the requirements by Friday July 11th. Then we will discuss possible implementations.

To read the rest of this email please go to the message in the egroup. Anyone can read the messages but only members can post.
___________________________________________________________

I had bronchitis from my trip, probably due to the 30 hours being in a plane. I'm fine now.

I'm home now (in Silicon Valley) from Bs. Aires. Arrived yesterday late morning. Getting to and from Argentina is truly the travel trip from hell. It takes 22 hours door-to-door. Most people don't realize it but Bs. Aires is 2 time zones further east than New York City, in fact South America is not even under North America.

Coming back involved an hour + drive out to the Ezieza Airport, hanging around for 3 hours, a 9 1/2 hour flight to Miami that arrives at 5am Miami time (4am Bs. Aires time). 2+ hours of passport control, customs exams, and security procedures, then finally a 5 1/2 hour flight from Miami to SF. [During daylight savings time Bs. Aires is 4 hours ahead of SF, during standard time they are 5 hours ahead]. For the first time in my life I had a little argument with he random person sitting next to me. He insisted on sticking his feet on my side under the chair in front of me. This of course left me no place to put my own feet unless I wanted to intertwine them with his, which I did not. I asked him to please keep his feet on his side and he started to argue with me. I just told him I was not going to argue and we both shut up and endured each other's silence for 5 hours.

Unfortunately I caught a cold, a sinus infection, pneumonia or SARS (I'm not sure which) in Bs. Aires and I couldn't even visit my ill friend for the last 3 days. As explained below, I idled away my time in internet cafes and made international phone calls. Everything is dirt cheap for Americans in Argentina -- even I, jobless for 20 months, felt quite comfortable spending money. For example, a dinner at a very nice restaurant for 3, no wine but with dessert, cost $33 TOTAL including tip.

The Argentines make beautiful clothes and there are thousands of shops all over Bs. Aires. Given their terrible economy, I'm not sure who the heck is buying the stuff though. When I first started going to Argentina 20 years ago I was obviously "the American visitor" because all of the women wore dresses or skirts, even to do grocery shopping! It was like the 50s were here. I was wearing casual clothes and comfortable shoes and really stood out. Now, I was mistaken many times as an Argentine. For a day I had laryngitis and couldn't speak so I was able to keep up the charade (my Spanish is awful but it gets me by).

Update on my friend -- I went to Argentina urgently to be with my friend of 25 years before she went in for brain surgery, and to visit with her afterwards in the hospital. She is recovering well, but for those of you who have had a friend or family member of colleague with a brain tumor, you know that this is a very, very serious problem. Her diagnosis is the same as that of Dan Case, former CEO of Hambrecht and Quist and the brother of Steve Case, founder of AOL and Chairman of AOL Time Warner. I remember very clearly when Dan announced he had a malignant brain tumor as it seemed so senseless and uncommon. I now know a lot about brain tumors, and the kind that my friend has in particular -- Glioblastoma. Dan and Steve set up a fund called ABC2 and today I spoke with the Executive Director John Reher. He was very kind and helpful. John mentioned that although glioblastomas are not a common disease, there seem to be more of them in middle-aged Silicon Valley male executives but they don't know why. Actually, from my studies, doctors don't know what causes any of the brain tumors. Along with helping my friend plot and execute a treatment path I am also hoping to find another Latin American person with this disease so she has someone to talk to (in Spanish) who is going through the same process.

Here's a wonderful quote from Dan Case "If there's one lesson I got from this,'' he said, "it's much more than we have to fix brain cancer, it's that people are amazing if you just give them a chance to be kind.''

I'm in an Internet Cafe in Bs. Aires, Argentina. I've been trying to blog for several hours but the Blogger site was out of commission. I just read on their homepage that new software will be available soon. I sure hope it is more robust than the current software. I know some of the other blogging sites/tools are better than Blogger but this seems like the least painful way to keep track of what Google is doing with blogging.

I've been in Argentina almost one week, will be returning home (Silicon Valley) in a couple days. Unfortunately I had to miss the Planetwork Conference due to this emergency trip. I was scheduled to give a talk yesterday, Saturday, titled Professional Guilds on the Web (note: the title of my talk changed but due to this emergency I was not able to notify the conference organizers, that´s why the title on the conference site is "Web Communities and Social Software"). I wish I could have been at the conference -- there are (it is still in session thru Sunday then a special software meeting tomorrow) many interesting presentations, people, and ideas. Jan Hauser, one of the authors of the Augmented Social Networks [ASN] whitepaper, gave my presentation for me. I know he did a good job because he and I have been in continuous discussion over the last year about the concepts.

When I return home I will put my presentation on my website. By the way, I have now finally updated my website to contain many of my presentations, whitepapers, etc. I will soon add a lot more information about the products developed by my previous company, RealCommunities. Unfortunately, due to the economic meltdown, I had to sell RealCommunities prematurely to another software company called Mongoose Technology.

Full title and link to the ASN whitepaper:
THE AUGMENTED SOCIAL NETWORK:
BUILDING IDENTITY AND TRUST INTO THE NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET
A Link Tank Report
by Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, and Steven Foster

One big problem with these Internet Cafes in Argentina is everyone smokes. The air inside is oppressive. In fact both the indoor and outdoor air is so polluted that yesterday when I woke up I could not speak at all! I had laryngitis for the very first time in my life. I´m better today and hope tomorrow to be fully recovered. This Cafe is in the center of the city, open 24 hours, and very active. There are 40 or so workstations, good performance, and lots of people here. About half or more are all kids playing multi-user games. Actually right now I think I am the only adult in the whole cafe! The kids are all about 12-16 years old, all boys. It's 4pm Bs. Aires time -- 4 hours ahead of CA time during PDT, 5 hours ahead during PST.

On a personal note - I came to Argentina urgently as my very best friend for the last 25 years was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I got here just a few hours before the operation. I've seen her every day since as the hospital. She is doing extremely well -- she was in intensive care for only 2 days and is now in a regular hospital room. On Tuesday she will go home. Unfortunately I have to leave on Monday -- I was able to get a pretty good last minute e-fare from United for $670 but the dates are very rigid when I can travel. Also, I need to return home to continue my quest for revenue-producing activities.

Dang this stupid Blogger tool. I see now it has decided to ignore all of the paragraph and new line feed control characters. They are still here in the edit area, but the display is just one big blobby blog.

I can't take the smoke in here anymore, or the horrible TV noise where they must be watching a sports event, hard to say what since I can only hear it not see it. Lots of announcer frenzy and loud noises.

Just one last point -- go here to see Jay Fienberg's blog of "my" talk as given by Jan.
The Future of Professional Guilds Part I
The Future of Professional Guilds Part II
my comments (at the bottom of this page)

My response to a comment in SPM Discussion about bell curve vs power law.

I'm the one that posted the article about the bell curve. The article did not say that the bell curve doesn't apply, it just said that it doesn't apply in some situations, in networks in particular. It's very clear that the bell curve does NOT apply to internet traffic at nodes, not only by analysis, which has been done ad naseum, but even just thinking about it rationally. The internet consists of a few very, very large nodes and gazillions of small nodes, such as my blog (typaldos.blogspot.com). [Please excuse the use of technical terms e.g. "gazillions" and the blatant self-promotion of my blog.]

Here is more info: http://www.tjm.org/articles/msg00018.html

The most interesting thing about this topic is when I searched for a credible source of info most of the stuff that came up at the top in a Google search were blogs! Something has gone terribly wrong with Google's reputation system when what an individual says, and a bunch of his/her friends point to, ends up at the top of the stack over a research paper from an academic institution. I finally gave up trying to find one, although I know they exist because I took a class on Networks at Stanford in the winter and this was one of the covered topics.

Google is in trouble...now wonder they bought Blogger...they need to separate out the riff-raff from the raff-riff.

I'm finally returning to my blog. It's just one more darn thing to keep updated.

I've been working on my website...it was pathetically out-of-date. Now it's nearly up-to-date but my design skills are terrible. Especially my choice of colors. However, it's still better than Bud Uglly Design. My favorite Uglly Design on their site is Rev 2.0.

Anyway, I've actually got something to say. But first I'd better save what I already wrote since this darn Blogger software isn't very stable.

OK, save complete.

So here's tonight's story on the Typaldos Blog --
Topic: Senior Management Women in Venture-Backed Startups.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Jennifer Pittman for an article in the Silicon Valley Business Journal titled "Women-led startups get smaller share of shrinking funds". The SV Business Journal decided to write a story around the latest numbers from "Alternative Investor, an umbrella data and analysis organization of San Francisco-based VentureOne Corp. and Wellesley, Mass.-based Asset Alternatives. The group tabulates venture capital deals with women-led companies every six months."

The numbers for women founders and members of the senior management team have gone down in the last few years, not just in quantity which of course is too be expected given the economic downturn, but also in percentages. The calculation is kind of dumb anyway...if there is just one woman on the senior management that counts. Of course the one lone woman is typically the VP of HR -- certainly a very important position in any company, the employees make or break a company's success, but not a line position. Sometimes the lone woman is the CFO. Anyway, the study shows the following statistics for women founders:

Amount of Money Raised by Companies with a woman founder (as a percentage of the total amount of money raised that year), in the IT industry.
1997 3.48%
1998 5.56%
1999 6.36%
2000 7.58%
2001 7.36%
2002 4.69%

A downward trend to be sure.

I mentioned some other related issues during the interview, most of which didn't get into the article. Here are my follow-up emails to the reporter:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding the Forum for Women Entreprenuers
I originally sent this email to the FWE CEO.

From: Cynthia Typaldos [mailto:cynthia@typaldos.com]
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 1:09 PM
To: Susan Hailey
Subject: has FWE been successful?

Now is the time to do a very honest appraisal on whether FWE has been successful.

The purpose of this appraisal would be to figure out if the approaches tried in the past are the ones to keep doing in the future. It's all been a big experiment, and like any experiment, it needs a quantitative analysis of the results.

Running programs is not a measure of success. It's a tool for creating success. Measurements of success could be (over the time frame that FWE has been active):
% improvement in funding to women entrepreneurs
% improvement in viable public companies where a woman was one of the founders
% improvement in number of women on viable VC-backed companies
% of women in management in VC-backed companies

I run a very large job board for hi-tech marketing professionals, and I still see start-up company after company where the entire management team is ALL MEN (OK, maybe the token women is the HR VP). And the same seems to be true in hi-tech public companies despite the tired PR recycling of Carly Fiorina, Carol Bartz, and Judy Estrin.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email dialogue with Margaret Heffernan

From: Margaret Heffernan [mailto:margaret_heffernan@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 8:17 AM
To: cynthia@typaldos.com
Subject: Re: your article in Fast Company

Dear Cynthia,

You are absolutely right - women do not need to be "fixed"; the world in which they are forced to operate is what is broken. And many men know it, as well as women.

Thanks for taking the time to write.

Best wishes

Margaret

******************************
Margaret Heffernan


From: "Cynthia Typaldos"
Reply-To:
To:
Subject: your article in Fast Company
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 08:59:13 -0700

Dear Margaret,

I was just at a FWE (Forum for Women Entrepreneurs www.fwe.org) event last night here in Silicon Valley. FWE has a new CEO, Susan Hailey. and the meeting was held to introduce Susan to some of the members. Susan gave a short talk, and then asked for input and questions. My input to Susan was to
change FWE from an organization that tries to "fix us" to an organization that tries to "fix the system". I'm tired of being told how to speak, dress, act, etc. I'm a 51-year old confident women, with science and business degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT. What I need is for the barriers be recognized, challenged and destroyed, not new underground tunneling methods. If I have to tunnel I can't be myself.

Thanks so much for writing that article. The men won't like it, and the "let's just get along" women won't like it either. But you're right and it's time that someone had the ovaries to say so.

Cynthia
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Study on discrimination at MIT against women faculty members
This is the complete study along with MIT's reaction and action to address the issue of discrimination against female faculty members. I was very impressed at the honest and candor and seriousness that MIT took toward the study.

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On the same topic, but a completely different situation, I just got invited to a "private" meeting to discuss social software and its implications to society. (In case you've been under a rock, web communities/collaboration have been reinvented by the people that didn't get it a couple years ago, and annointed a new name so that they can all claim to be pioneers.) I'll post the people invited to this event if I get permission from the organizer, and if I update my blog again this year :-) There are 47 people invited, 2 of them being women. That's a lousy 4.2%. When I asked the organizer about the nearly complete absence of women, his response was "I thought about that, but its tough in a geeks' world." I'm not faulting the organizer at all, he picked the people he thought would be appropriate, and that's how the cookie crumbled.



Well, enough whining, at least for tonight.

Wait, one last whine. This blogging thing coupled with keeping my dang website updated coupled with running SPM, is an enormous time sink. Am I better off by doing this? Is the world better off?

The article about SPM eGroup was published in the New York Times on Sunday 3/9/03. Best place to find it is on our homepage.

I also put together an essay on "Strength of Weak Ties" and how SPM has implemented the theory in a very practical manner. See also the "About" section of SPM for more context.

I am now researching the best way for SPM to become a legal entity. We seem to be a combination of not-for-profit (the verticals), for-profit (the corporate that creates the software and processes and either francises them to the verticals or sells these services directly, and limited liability partnership (for the consulting practice). I been looking into Daniel Pink's "Free Agent Nation" to get ideas.

Blogger sure isn't very robust software. I just wrote a few paragraphs, tried to "post and publish" and it crashed. I should learn to save my work more often, maybe even type it somewhere else and cut and paste.

Just a couple interesting notes today.

Got an introduction to Valdis Krebs by Jan Hauser. Valdes has written some terrific articles about social networks on the web. We've exchanged emails and may meet at the upcoming March 23rd conference in SF called "Culture and KM".

My favorite use of the 12 Principles of Civilization

So far, this is my favorite use. Apparently the 12 Principles of Civilization are going to one of the key ingredients in making the Brazilian economy entrepreneurial.

My "12 Principles" along with the pyramid diagram (and my name) appear on one of the slides. It's a PDF and takes a bit of time to download.The 12 Principles are right in the middle of the presentation (not all slides have numbers). Whoever put this presentation together is truly enamored of every goofy little PowerPoint featurelet.

If anyone can figure out why the 12 Principles fit into this presentation, please let me know.

Translation of slides is below (done by Matt Perez).

Apresentacao do PowerPoint
... em "rede". e tudo de CLASSE MUNDIAL. Os 12 Principios da Civilizacao™
{Cynthia Typaldos}. Aplicacoes. Sistema Operacional Comunitario. ...

Translation and comments by Matt M Perez [mailto:mperez@dropby.com]

Sounds like a sales or investment pitch for something called c.e.s.a.r, a business that links Universities and researchers to businesses, particularly for IT and Communications solutions. They claim that with their process and their people (30 PhDs, gawd!) they can manufacture new businesses. This helps the local, regional, and national economy, and it makes people happy and motivated start new businesses.

How the 12 Principles fit in their pitch and how they use it is anybody's guess.

-- matt

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SAID ABOUT BRAZIL
The low salaries throughout the nation are due to low productivity of the Country. And not because the bosses are bigger vandals in Portugal than elsewhere ... Americans believe that jobs are an asset to be multiplied ... Europeans prefer to work for an enterprise, while subsidizing the unemployed ... the Portuguese will always protect those who are employed but don't want to work, ignoring those who look for work and can't find it.
-- Sergio Fiqueiredo, The Morning Mail, Nov 18, 2002
------------------------------------
chart
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CIN/UFPE: IN THE CONTEXT OF 1993
+ Global competition, Total
++ Where everything flows, including, and specially PEOPLE
++ Center of excelence ... done, but quickly going away
+ socio-economic demands by results ...
+ leading to the isolation of a qualified academy (intellect)
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The monumental problems that we face today cannot be solved by thinking at the same level that we did we when we were born -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
------------------------------------
And from that point?... how to tranform a "brain drain" into a "brain gain"?
++ it was necessary to revolutionize the relationship between Universities and Society and Business
++ developing models that are innovative, aggressive, professional, and self-sustaining
++ to increase the impact, relevance, and competitiveness of two products of the academic world...
------------------------------------
Result: a c.e.s.a.r, whose mission is to realize a
+ self-sustaining transfer of knowledge and information technologies between Society and Universities
------------------------------------
a c.e.s.a.r works as follows
+ from the top down
+ a guide to that which one c.e.s.a.r done, it's not what we know how to do...
+ but problems that the market fears, one pays to solve (if it hurts, it's worth paying to solve it?)
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our practice and our business is to make enterprises: and to make enterprises, it means...
+ to educate people in our practice (methodology)
+ to develop "valid" processes
+ to promote culture(s) on the net
+ and all this is WORLD CLASS
------------------------------------
The 12 principles of civilization {Cynthia Typaldos} chart
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How do we do our practice (methodology)
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a c.e.s.a.r is a innovation factory:
[two quotes in english]
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To genete businesses a c.e.s.a.r uses PEOPLE:
+ 300 professionals with diverse experience and profile
++ 150+ not engineers
++ 120+ software engineers
+++ 70% Sun-cerfified in Java
++ PMI, SPIN...
+ 10 PhD, 30 MSCs, 40 especialists and ...
+ 30+ in post-graduate (school)
------------------------------------
So what do these people do?
+ develop new IT and Communication innitiatives, from start to finish of projects for a market
+ such projects have been won from companies throughout Brazil [and not from overseas] and are related to solutions to business problems
+ many times we work of critical path projects for these businesses
+ a c.e.s.a.r is becoming one of the key providers of IT and Communication solutions in Brazil...
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Who benefits
+ the local and regional economy: a c.e.s.a.r already is one of the biggest IT businesses of the region
+ local and national entrepreneurs: more than 30 new businesses, including a mobile, already are one of the biggest TICs businesses in the region [R$10M,
2002]
+ local, national, and internatianal investors: a c.e.s.a.r develops innovative investment opportunities - developing structured groups that are linked to the nacional and international economies
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+ to foment hope in the possibility of starting local businesses as part of a process of regional development
+ to do that, we have to lead by example: we lear by doing
++ today's team members are the future leaders of the businesses generated
+ a basic principal is to develop a window of opportunities so large that everybody feels that they can do it because they can leave as soon as they decide to do it
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what is the consequence of that?
+ a c.e.s.a.r is not a normal incubator, much less an incubator:
++ a c.e.s.a.r manufactures entreprenurial businesses
+ to do so, a c.e.s.a.r has to invest in methodologies, processes, tools, environments, quality, qualification, certification, training, laboratories innovation, management... this investment is made by and for ...
+ our entrepreneurs, quo have a lot of experience in the management of projects and businesses in their own sectors, particularly when compared with the traditional members of classic incubators
-------------------------------------
why are we here?
+ because innovation is c.e.s.a.r's first name
+ innovation model for...
++ development of solutions
++ new business generation
++ relationships with entrepreneurs and researchers
++ relationships with universities
+ because a c.e.s.a.r is a school
++ in many ways, a c.e.s.a.r works to "lose" human capital for society... people
who go there ... to INNOVATE!
-------------------------------------
c.e.s.a.r: a place of happy people
+ there's only two ways to live live. one way is as if nothing were miraculous; the other as if everything is a miracle. -- albert einstein
+ without effort, there's no progress, but with effort, too, there's no progress
-- Ryotan Tokuda, Zen Master
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Just discovered a very interesting homepage for INSAA:

"This page contains information about the International Network for Social Network Analysis and related subjects. INSNA Here you will find Social Networks information, reference sources and links to related home pages". There is a lot to explore here, it will take time to find everything of interest. I did join their listserve SOCNET. They link to three different journals on their home page:
Connections An official journal of International Network for Social Network Analysis
Social Networks
Journal of Social Structure

Particularly interesting is this link off the INSAA homepage called Hot Topics. The two hot topics are: Social Capital and Scale-free / Power Law and Small-world networks. There are scores of interesting links under each of these hot topics.

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Debi Jones sent an email today to the SPM Management regarding the paper Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways by David Ronfeldt.

Debi writes (quoted with permission) -- "The author illustrates most of the concepts in the 12 Principles and the strength of weak ties*. It's a comprehensive treatment with an unexpected example. The great thing about his example is the 'real world' illustration of how we use identity and reputation and to make decisions about exchanges (transactions). The quote that caught my attention as related to SPM is: '...the way to out-compete is to out-cooperate.' The trick of knowing when to cooperate and when to complete is probably the distinction between being successful and just getting by. That's seems to be the point he's making when writing about Jeff Gordon's strategies and choices. An aside: I, also, was drawn to his distinction between the value of being a hub of the network versus being on the edge and connecting multiple networks. [Most people want to be a hub, however],I think the more desirable position is a connector between and/or across networks."

*Granovetter, M. (1973). Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, 1973
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Wow, I just Googled "strength of weak ties" and there are about 1,000 references. I'd did this about 6 months ago, when I was first researching how SPM might use the "strength of weak ties", and I sure don't remember so many links. Googling ["strength of weak ties" SPM] yields four relevant links. There was even an article in Fast Company in December 1996 that mentions this social theory -- "The Virus of Marketing", by Jeffrey Rayport, illustrations by Phillip Anderson, from FC issue 6, page 68:

Rule 5: Exploit the strength of weak ties
Sociologists have long noted that individuals with many casual social connections have a larger influence on communities than do individuals with fewer strong connections. Viruses thrive on weak ties. The movement of viruses over the Web -- a practically infinite collection of weak ties in countless virtual communities -- is a prime example."

Well, I'm exasperated. I just typed a tome on the SPM eGroup and its virtual structure, and Blogger got an error message and lost my work. Blogger is going down at 7pm, in less than an hour. This will have to be all for today.

I'm just starting my blog today, February 22, 2003. I've been using egroups extensively and expect that I will be doing more blogging than egroup publishing from now own. Here's some basic info about me:

My biography.

My websites: Software Product Marketing (SPM) eGroup and Typaldos Consulting.

My egroup on webcommunities/webcollaboration/social networking software.


My interests are web collaboration and communities, social networking software, software marketing, and "open organizations" [similar to "open source software"]. At SPM eGroup we are attempting to create an "open organization".

I just finished taking a fabulous 5 evening course at Stanford called "The Science of Networks" [Note...this link may break when Stanford moves on to the next semester's catalog.] The instructors, Stuart Gannes {Director, Reuters DigitalVision Fellowship Program, Stanford] and J. Christopher Ramming [Lecturer in Continuing Studies, Stanford] were outstanding. The reader for the class was excellent...I"ll see if I can get a Table of Contents to post here. The recommended book was Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, but I had already read a similar, but somewhat more technical (according to the instructors) book called Linked: The New Science of Networks, so I didn't read Nexus. There is a private egroup for the class members so that we can continue our dialogue. A second version of the class may be offered in the Fall of 2003.

I plan to blog mainly about my career interests and the day-to-day challenges, operations, and successes in running the SPM eGroup.