Christine

Getting Started for Burning Man (and Open Kitchen Camp Announcement)

We're just five weeks away from heading to Black Rock City, and we've decided to be mildly daring. We're sharing our plan for an Open Kitchen Camp on the playa with our ether friends and followers. Specifically, we are planning something for 'Friends of Open Kitchen' on the playa, so comment on this post if you'd like to be on our guest list.

My husband (who is joining the Rangers this year) has been nagging me to share a Getting Started checklist, and I finally did so tonight. I've reposted it below in case other folks would also find it useful.

The Man burns in 37 days. See you there!

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GETTING STARTED CHECKLIST

Since many folks are first-timers, we thought some basic information might be helpful. For vets, this will be a good refresher.

A checklist of things to get done this week:

1. Buy a ticket (http://tickets.burningman.com/, craigslist, or Sports Basement)
2. Secure time off work
3. Read the First-Timer's Guide ( http://www.burningman.com/first_timers/ ) and the Survival Guide ( http://www.burningman.com/preparation/event_survival/ )
4. Buy a cheap mountain bike to ride in BRC
5. Shop thrift stores for (or make) fun costumes to wear, "if that's your thing"

Things to note:

• A big change this year: NO TICKET SALES AT THE GATE. Purchase by July 31 if you want to avoid the will call lines and get your ticket by mail. Tickets purchased after July 31 will be available at will call. Last day to buy a ticket - period - is August 22.
• Don't come down for just the weekend, if you are able to come earlier. The best days in BRC are Weds, Thurs and Fri - these days are filled with artsy/creative encounters. By Friday evening, the crowd gets more touristy and the the college kids start to party.
• Entry into BRC is permitted starting at midnight on Sunday, August 24th.
• Exodus from Black Rock tends to be on Sunday or Monday. The Man burns on Saturday night, the Temple burns on Sunday night. I'm planning to leave on Sunday, since my husband and I NEED a day at home doing nothing before heading back to work...but we are missing the Temple burn. If you want to suck in everything, then plan to leave on Monday instead.
• Burning Man organizers have put together a resource listing to help you with playa prep.

Overheard at the BlogHer '08 Morning Keynote

A couple of snippets worth sharing from this morning's BlogHer '08 keynote panel....paraphrased, of course:

Essence Communications Director of Digital Development, Lesley Pinckney, in response to a question on if Time Warner supports use of social media tools: Time Warner doesn't support use of twitter because it wants to own twitter - when we make a service big, we like to either own it, incubate it, or have an equity stake. Moving into a large media company does change something about your passion and energy, and that's why it's important to bring in new initiatives from outside.

Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison: Big media companies want to find the answer and keep it, but the best answers come with working openly. Hearst has been trying to be more open, partnering with and acquiring companies such as Kaboodle in the new media space...Internally, I always want to make the best mistakes, and I feels lucky that I work somewhere that encourages making mistakes that we can learn from.

Redbook editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison: It's important to be genuine in your blogging, but personally I've found that I only share 75% of who I am in order to preserve the relationship with our audience - if I didn't take the time to be respectful and 'curate' what parts of myself are shared, it would break something that's very important.

Audience member: "Even though it doesn't bother me that the newspapers are dying, it pisses me off when they try to commit suicide."

Blog Monetization Redux: Dump Google AdWords, and Sell Product

This afternoon's lesson from BlogHer '08: Monetization happens, but you have to be strategic, and you probably need to sell directly. Take a look at these blog mavens for concrete examples:

The e-commerce on Kristen Hammond's blog is a natural fit to her blogging. Hammond's Mommy Needs a Cocktail t-shirts are funny, relevant even to non-blog readers, and happends to be the name of the blog. Other tees came about organically. Hammond has also found that she gets an instant reaction when she uses Twitter. But don't spam your audience, or folks will unfollow you. Use it properly - and sparingly - and you'll get attention when you release a new product or publish a new post. Notably, even name brand retailers like Zappos and Whole Foods are actively pursuing Twitter strategies.

Dana Loesch approached monetization by creating her own ad network. The local St. Louis blogger community realized that a lot of businesses were interested in reaching out to local readers, so they set up their own blog network and are now getting a $2 CPM. This is better than the generic CPMs that Loesch was seeing elsewhere, and is evidence that bloggers need to be very targeted when joining an ad network. Not every blog will make money with Google AdWords, or every ad network is different. When you do choose (or create!) an ad network, these are the models you're likely to consider. Think about which would work best with your audience:

• CPM = Cost per thousand page impressions
• CPC = Cost per click
• CPA = Cost per action such as a form, purchase, etc.

Stephanie Agresta recommends working with affiliate programs such as LinkShare, Commission Junction, and Performics (bought by Google). Amazon, of course, has its own Amazon Associates program. It's free to log into these programs, so an easy way to start is to register and select your five favorite products. There's a good chance that your loyal audience members also has an affinity for those products. Get your own coupon codes issued if you can, since your audience is more likely to go through you for a purchase if they feel special about it.

Agresta notes that text links are the highest-converting creative, so if you're comfortable selling links (I won't judge you if that's your thing), she suggests that you check out Social Spark. She also recommends SEOMOZ, Search Marketing Gurus, and the Google Webmaster Guidelines as go-to resources for getting the basics of SEO/SEM down.

Dr. Carlos Brown Provides Raw View Into Iraq War

Former US Navy Commander (and trauma surgeon) Dr. Carlos Brown was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in 2006, and at the urging of his tech-savvy brother, chronicled his experience on a video blog, Trapper Los MD. It provides a close, raw view behind the scenes of a MASH unit in the war. As a comparison, the typical trauma center input in the US is 15 patients over 24 hours, but in Iraq you may get 50 patients in 15 minutes.

Midnight Ride in the Great White Snake at SXSW

Our EFF/Plutopia party posse came across a gorgeous piece of Burning Man-type movable art tonight at SXSW 2008: a giant and sinuously elegant snake cycle. The core multi-cycle structure appears to be constructed of welded bike parts, beach tires, and PVC. Strips of white, corrugated plastic; 2-liter bottles spray-painted white; and riveted tin plates make up the snake body around it, with stitched nylon over the head form. Take a closer look, and get the inside view of Brad Templeton and I pedaling furiously away inside:

I googled a bit, but wasn't able to discover the story and makers behind this project. If someone knows the details, please comment!

Testing Seesmic Embedding

Just a quick post as I try out the embed code from the Seesmic alpha...presuming this works, enjoy seeing what I look like when I'm sick and swaddled in fleece.

Sobering, Joyful Life Lessons: Last Lecture of Prof. Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." So speaks Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, who delivered his final lecture in anticipation of dying next month from pancreatic cancer. "I'm in excellent health right now -- It's the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance that we will ever see...I'm in better shape than most of you." Prof. Pausch, who is the 46-year-old director of the Alice Software Project, co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a husband, and a father of three, has lived life both richly and well.

Art? Maybe. Childlike Wonder? Definitely.

My friend Quentin Stafford-Fraser recently posted this phenomenal YouTube video, showing a performance by 'unusualist' Raymond Crowe at the HelpMan Awards. If you enjoy quirky performance art, you have to watch this, and wait for the singing rabbit. You'll be smiling all afternoon.

Mashups go Mainstream: Online Content Tools Stretch Offline

For the past two years, it's been common practice for Web 2.0 mashups to enable users to mash personal content into customizable templates. Recently, however, there's been a noticeable evolution of this space: 1. integrated marketing campaigns are more and more frequently using online or mobile interaction tools; and 2. online content is reaching offline mainstream media.

Burning Man Goes Green: Call for Pavilion Participation

Last year's Burning Man community spoke loudly about starting efforts to make the event more eco-friendly. How can we reduce the playa's carbon footprint? How can we recycle or reuse  building materials, food supplies, bottles and cans, or other discards?  Should there be requirements imposed upon art cars? And so on.

Michael Arrington's Four Keys to the Future of Media

Michael Arrington visited Toronto today for mesh, Canada's web conference, and shared his perspective on the future of media. Through the free-flowing dialogue, these four keys stood out as essential in media's evolution from traditional to social:

Four Recommendations Paradigms to Watch

What's the best logic model to use for a recommendations engine? Builders of popular music recommendations services shared the pros and cons of their own - and each other's - approaches to matching people to the music that they'll love. These four paradigms for recommendations engines came out of the conversation. Most recommendation services will fall into one of these models, but the 'best approach' would undoubtedly vary based upon the subject matter.ight expect, MusicIP licenses its technology for pushbutton playlists on many consumer devices.

Joost Moves the Needle for Internet TV

Joost is a free, full-screen television application that you download to your PC. The programming guide and on-demand controls behave much the same as does a cable set-top box. An embedded web browser can be brought up for more detail on a particular program.

Dan Rather Calls on Journalists to Get Spine Transplants

Icon journalist Dan Rather was welcomed by a standing ovation at today's SXSW Interactive. (Flickr photo originally uploaded by beeez.) Once folks settled down, blogger Jane Hamsher posed some key framing questions. Rather used the opportunity to share his concerns about the recent demise of investigative journalism. Given his colorful storytelling, I've decided to 'paraquote' (some paraphrasing, some quoting) here rather than boiling things down:

How to Make Money Like a Porn Star

For the sake of argument, let's assume that you are able to create content that people want to consume. How do you monetize it? The adult content industry continues to lead the way in monetizing content, adopting new technologies, and testing distribution models. At SXSW Interactive, porn publishers gathered to share best business practices with the next generation of mainstream media. (Disclosure note: Panelist links undoubtedly go directly to adult content - but I'm not sure, since I was too chicken to click through myself!)

Web 2.0 Goal-Setting at The New York Times

How does a established news institution transform itself into a sleek Web 2.0 business? Martin Nisenholtz, SVP of Digital for the New York Times Company, is having a great deal of fun discovering what it takes to get people to pay for content:

Develop circulation, not traffic

To start with, Nisenholtz has drawn a line between Web metrics and online circulation metrics. For example, millions of people will visit NYTimes.com to just read one article, or will quickly blink over a page in response to a search result or a blog link. This highly ephemeral Web traffic can add up to 2.5 million unique visitors per day. Online circulation, however, is measured at 570,000 TimesSelect subscribers.

Keeping this distinction in mind, Nisenholtz has set these goals across all digital properties:

• Attract more users, period.
• Keep users coming back, and staying longer. Increase not only the average number of visits per reader, but also the average number of page views per visit.  
• Convert casual visitors into serious readers. Even if only a fraction of the site's 20 million casual visitors each month joined the pool of 1.5 million loyal readers, it would make a significant impact on the business model.
  

The rising importance of 'circulation' numbers has driven a major shift in online advertising. Unlike a typical Web company, the Times and other news publishers don't have restrictions on the number of ad impressions per visitor. While most Web advertisers restrict the number of paid daily ad impressions to 3 or 4 per visitor, Times advertisers actually seek higher frequencies.

Transform the established culture

I visited Martin in the New York Times offices last week, and it felt like being backstage at Phantom. The New York Times has always been the real newspaper, and its impressive archive dates back to 1851. Like a tourist, I greedily enjoyed the view whenever the elevator paused to open its doors, and wondered what dastardly plans had been exposed by the innocuous-looking journalists passing by. Behind this bustling news scene, however, the organization is changing. Cross-platform sales training has become the norm, as the digital business scales. The sales team is challenged to get digital salespeople working with the advertising department, while the print staff must educate itself to become more Web-savvy.

Cultural transformation also takes place via acquisition and investment. The Times organization acquired About.com 18 months ago, and local search is being rolled out and tested in the Boston area via Boston.com. They've also made investments into Web 2.0 companies such as indeed, Federated Media Publishing, and daylife. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Federated Media.)

I suspect that core Times content will always follow an authoritative model, where information is both edited and vetted for accuracy, and there are twice as many editors as reporters. At About.com, however, each editor supports an entire classroom of guides. The publisher's next challenge is a big one: How can it leverage user-generated content? How can it become more distributed and less edited? If the Times can figure out how to edit both the 100th and the 10,000th guide profitably - or how to achieve consistent quality without editing - then the business will be well-placed to become an established institution online as well as in print.

Best VC Holiday Card: Blueprint Ventures

I picked this up from Matt Marshall's post over at VentureBeat - apparently, Blueprint Ventures had their web site taken over by Russian pornographers this week. As it happens, the home page of their site was hosting a very popular Christmas video. It's ridiculously funny if you are in VC, and so it gets my vote as the Best 2006 Holiday Card. Enjoy!

Digital Music Startups Pit Traditional Publishers vs. Independent Creators

At the first day of DEMMX, Antony Bruno of Billboard gamely herded a gaggle of digital music startups. Amidst the many conversation threads, one theme stood out: despite their renegade personas, these guys don't agree on who benefits most from the next generation of music distribution.

Fox, Bravo, and Tribune Agree: Years of Investment Ahead for Mobile Content

Mobile media has begun to appear within the broader media strategies of established content providers. While this work has been innovative, it was clear from expert discussion at today's Mobile Marketing Forum that years of investment lie ahead before mobile media's promise can be delivered upon. Here's a quick look at how name brands are investing to develop mobile as a content platform:

What's Interesting About Participatory Content

While at Startup Camp yesterday, I was stopped for a hallway interview with ZDNet's James Hilliard. One of the concepts that survived the cutting room floor was a quick overview of my interest in participatory content and information, including both the content value chain and its supporting infrastructures. Since this has been the subject of much recent discussion (and I'm busy around the topic given the current investments that I manage), I thought it worth posting the link: just visit David Berlind's blog post to see the brief video interview, which accompanies David's "report from the field."

Technology at Burning Man, Part II (With Fire!)

(Reposted from VentureBeat) A second, more risk-taking demographic at Burning Man took technology to the next level - fire. Hackers created brilliant shows in the desert night, combining elements such as Linux-based processors or infrared controllers with propane solenoids and flamethrowers. Here are my four favorite creations.

Geeks Make Their Mark at Burning Man

(Reposted from VentureBeat) Some of the best art at this year's Burning Man came from extremely cool, creative applications of basic engineering. Circuit boards, hydraulic motors, solar panels, and motion sensors powered my three favorite pieces of non-fiery art:

Want to be a "Vlogger in Residence?"

The artist in residence...the writer in residence...the vlogger in residence? My old pal Freeman Murray has an interesting new creative proposition. Freeman is purchasing an eco-friendly residence in San Mateo, and creating a Video Blogger in Residency program. The basic idea:

R&D Technologies for Data Visualization

Researchers Maneesh Agrawala and Fernanda Viegas walked through some amazing technologies that they've been cooking up in their labs for data visualization. As a data junkie, I was totally mesmerized. The Wikipedia analysis was an particularly fascinating visual interpretation of living content. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Wikia, a related entity.)

Five Do's and Don'ts for the New News Media

Going through my FOO notes, I noticed that many conversations sparked ideas that were relevant  to participatory media. Here's a quirky list of do's and don'ts that reveal some of the best practices being used by others in the New News Media: