daryn's blog

I just posted a Depeche Mode song, in memory of the first real concert I ever attended. By real, I mean without my parents, and at an actual venue. An older child of a friend of the family had an extra ticket, so my parents let me tag along.

I think my very first concert was The Beach Boys, in Atlantic City with my parents, probably around 1985.

Other early concert memories that come to mind:

• 2nd real concert: Squeeze (who I still love)
• Going to a huge hip-hop show in downtown Baltimore in Jr. High with a same-aged friend by ourselves. (3rd Base, Digital Underground, and a bunch of other equally dated acts)
• Guns N' Roses and Skid Row, which was actually an amazing show.
• Choosing to see Michael Bolton at the Taj Mahal with my parents (such good food to be had!), rather than go to the first Lollapalooza
• Skipping my one chance to see Nirvana (American University, 11/93), "I'll go next time"
• Sitting outside a Pearl Jam concert with my brother at the Patriot Center the night they found Kurt's body. We drove down from Baltimore, but couldn't get tickets to get inside.
  
• Crowd surfing at the HFStival my senior year of high school (1994) and being dropped on a glass bottle. Ouch!
  

There were also lots of underground shows in high school (I've got to find some of those bands' tapes!), and a couple Jimmy Buffett concerts, but for some reason my memories of all those are a bit fuzzy...

For the past couple of months, I've been posting over on tumblr. It's a really simple (fun?) interface, and good for posting links, pictures, music, and other short content. It also pulls data from various feeds, like my del.icio.us links, flickr photos, last.fm, and this very blog, so if you head over there, you'll have more daryn than you've ever wanted!

Vox will still be my home for long-form blog posts, when/if the urge and energy magically strike me simultaneously.

My tumblelog can be found at blog.daryn.net  

... Or at least that's how I'm feeling after Brooke and I have nearly polished off 20+ pounds of turkey since Thursday.

Along with two turkeys (one smoked and one roasted), we had a tasty spread of sides: brussel sprouts with bacon, celeriac soup, wild mushroom and sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, fresh baked rolls, and an apple pie to top it all off.

As you can imagine, with all that food and only two people eating it, we had a good bit of leftovers, and the resulting remixes may very well be the best dishes so far. #1 was this morning's breakfast, a strata made from the stuffing, with this evening's turkey noodle soup a close second.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring :)

We'd been planning to wallpaper our dining room since the remodel, but hadn't ever gotten around to it. Then, last week, Brooke had a new idea: Stripes. 

A few days of masking and painting later, voila! I think it looks pretty awesome.

A few days ago there was a thread going on the Seattle Tech Startups mailing list, about whether DEMO was worth participating in. Having been there twice, I chimed in with a list of 7 key points that should be considered when deciding if DEMO is right for you. I received a lot of positive responses from the list, so thought I'd share it here as well.

 

    From:       daryn@eyejot.com
    Subject:     Re: DEMO conference
    Date:     October 22, 2007 11:05:22 AM PDT
    To:       organize@seattletechstartups.com

Like most things, DEMO is not one size fits all. Here are some of my observations from launching at DEMO twice: one being a dud, and one being quite a success.

Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat, assuming I could handle each of the following points.

1. Have a consumer-friendly product that people can touch or play with immediately
    -  unless it is really sexy or honestly revolutionary, I wouldn't bother launching an enterprise or b2b product there.

2. Hire PR assistance
    - if you're going to spend the $25k+ on the conference, spend another 5k on an experienced PR person who has done DEMO before. Have them wrangle the press and bring them by your table as well as setup interviews.

3. Be prepared
    - have the product ready, have the pitch down, and be ready to answer all the hard questions.
    - I agree with Clay from Yodio. Too much emphasis is put on the 6-minutes on stage. Truth be told, half the crowd isn't paying attention, and if they are interested, they'll come followup with you during your pavilion time.  The pavillion is where you man a table, demo your product, and talk to attendees 1-to-1.

4. Know the audience
    - the crowd is primarily investors, press, and other presenters. When talking to someone, check out their badge and structure the conversation accordingly.

5. Be involved
    - this isn't just another conference for you. It's a big deal. Be prepared to spend 3 days, the full 72 hours, ON.  Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Late night. Don't hide up in your room working, this is in-person, buzz-building, and networking time.  The other 71 hours and 54 minutes are WAY more important than the 6 on stage.

6. Bring a team
    - your 18k includes 3 attendees. That's the minimum number of educated people, who can pitch the product, that should be there (Someone who cannot pitch and field questions, or at least carry conversation until someone else is free, is useless)
    - An extra one or two people can make a big difference in letting you not get burnt out, and being the most effective (walking the room, doing interviews, breaks, etc., while not neglecting your station)

7. Know your post-DEMO plan
    - why are you there? to build buzz? to forge partnerships? to raise money? DEMO is not the end-game.

Why DEMO was a failure for MyPW:
I didn't follow any of the 7 rules listed above. Leading up to, and during, the conference I was scrambling to finish building the service, juggling meetings, stuffing envelopes, and doing kinko's runs.  There were only two of us there who knew the product, and I was exhausted the entire time.

Why DEMO was a success for Eyejot:
We followed 6 of the 7 rules ( all except #7 ).  We got great press (WSJ, USA Today, CNET, ...), and lots of interest from attendees.  I'd say at least half of the people at the conference stopped by, and recorded an eyejot to send to their family or colleagues back home.  Our one flaw was that we had so much momentum leading up to DEMO, that we hadn't spent much time focused on the post-launch, besides a development-roadmap. We definitely had the post-DEMO glow, but weren't quite ready to follow-through with many of the leads we formed, primarily in regards to partnerships and fundraising, and the wave passes quickly.

That said, I still get "You guys were at DEMO weren't you?" and it's definitely a credibility builder. It has more broad reach and lasting power than a techcrunch post, but you need to give it serious thought, and make sure you're committed if you want to get the most out of it.

Hope that helps!

Daryn

It's hard to believe it has been two and a half months since I've written here. None of my usual topics seemed fitting to write about after all this time, so instead, here's a little roundup of what I've been up to since then:

Traveling

• Spain (Barcelona, San Sebastian, Burgos, and Madrid)
• Bay Area
  

Personal

• My 31st Birthday
• A visit from Gary, Ben, George and Michelle
• A visit from my friend Adam Meister (including too much time spent here)
  

Conferences

• 360Flex Seattle
• CommunityNext: Platform
• Graphing Social Patterns

Misc

• Going to the gym with surprising regularity (thanks Dave!)
• An _awesome_ Rilo Kiley concert
• A bunch of fun bands at Bumbershoot (minus this annoyance)
  
• Started playing tennis
• A frozen yogurt kick (BTW, YoBerry is by far the greatest)
• Working on some cool stuff, and some old stuff
  

That's all I can think of (that's fit to blog) as I write this at midnight, but hopefully breaking this mental barrier will lead to more frequent updates again.  I've been thinking about checking out tumblr too, but I'll let you know.

Posing with the eyejot "paper pirillo" kiosk.

Frank Bruni had a hilarious column this week entitled Fine Diner to Riffraff: Tipsy Tales of 4-Star Benders, in which he talks about people who go out to elaborate, multi-course meals, and end up completely trashed (and trashy) by the end of the night.

“Happens all the time,” said Joseph Bastianich, one of the principal owners of the Italian restaurants Del Posto, Babbo and Felidia, among others. His voice had the bored, blasé tone of someone stating the patently obvious.

It happens even outside the confines and privacy of the restrooms?

“Oh, yeah, in the dining room, all over the table, on their dinner companions,” Mr. Bastianich said. “You’ve never seen that?”

Um, no.

“Well, you go out to restaurants a lot,” he said. “Maybe you’ll run into it before you’re done. Hopefully, you won’t get splashed.”

Hopefully.

lovely... And of course I keep seeing the new Subway commercial, where people are walking out of the restaurant drenched, and that's all i can think of..

I just saw a shiny new refrigerated truck going down the street with "Amazon Fresh" painted on it. (too slow to whip out the camera though)

I hadn't heard of that, and neither had google (well, i finally found something a few pages in...), but amazonfresh.com took me to fresh.amazon.com , and sure enough, it's "a new online grocery founded by Amazon, serving customers in the Seattle area".  It's a invite-beta right now.

Check out the new promo video Kent, our Design Director, created for Eyejot.