Brokekid.net

is downstairs having dinner at the Camino Real in Mexico City. I just walked past him going to and from the bathroom.

If you plan on going to the 15th Annual 2007 National Capital Barbecue Battle, you might want to reconsider. Though I’m a vegetarian, I went last year with a number of meat-eaters and we all agreed that it was a huge waste of money. It flat out sucked.

The tickets were costly for what little was offered, buying beer was a pain in the ass and consuming any sort of food consisted of long lines and spending even more money. The event was saturated with in-your-face corporatism and crappy samples and give-aways.

If you want to spend lots of money, time and energy to stand around in the sun in a heavily trash strewn corporate event, this is for you.

This guy is truly amazing.

Reprinted in its entirety with permission by GuyFROG (me, I wrote it).

In the past, organizations just about had to physically meet on a regular basis in order for most of the heavy lifting to be accomplished and for the start-ups to get off the ground. Much of the coordination was local/hyperlocal or very well funded, allowing for travel. From the onset, the effect limited immediate participation and hamstrung progress.

Before the interweb, telephones, faxes and cells alleviated some of the bottleneck of ideas, but the crossflow of information remained hampered. The exponential growth of web technology has streamlined the idea sharing process, making it easier than ever to establish and cultivate a start-up.

Guy Kawasaki, an early tech evangelist, describes the steps involved with his newest project, Truemors.

0. I wrote 0 business plans for it. The plan is simple: Get a site launched in a few months, see if people like it, and sell ads and sponsorships (or not).

0. I pitched 0 venture capitalists to fund it. Life is simple when you can launch a company with a credit-card level debt.

7.5 weeks went by from the time I registered the domain truemors.com to the site going live. Life is also good because of open source and Word Press.

$4,500. The total software development cost was $4,500. The guys at Electric Pulp did the work. Honestly, I wasn’t a believer in remote teams trying to work together on version 1 of a product, but Electric Pulp changed my mind.

$4,824.14. The total cost of the legal fees was $4,824.14. I could have used my uncle the divorce lawyer and saved a few bucks, but that would have been short sighted if Truemors ever becomes worth something.

$12,107.09. In total, I spent $12,107.09 to launch Truemors. During the dotcom days, entrepreneurs had to raise $5 million to try stupid ideas. Now I’ve proven that you can do it for $12,107.09.

1.5. There are 1.5 full-time equivalent employees at Truemors. For me, it’s a labor of love.

$0. I spend $0 on marketing to launch Truemors.

$29.96. Our monthly break-even point was $29.96 with Yahoo!

$150. Because Yahoo! evicted us, our monthly break-even point quintupled to $150. If you’re interested in buying a monthly sponsorship for $151, you’d make Truemors profitable.

From the beginning of FROG, we knew the operation was going to be bootstrapped. A number of returned volunteers invovled in the project were right out of the program and we were spread across the east coast with one member in Africa. It wasn’t possible to meet in person, so we turned to the web.

How did we do it? What tools did we use? We started out with using only a handful of apps and moved on to others as our needs changed, it has grown into quite the list. Here’s the breakdown:

Communications

PBWiki – we started off here, throwing ideas against the wall and waiting to see what would stick. The wiki still has great potential for our organization, but for the moment we’ve moved beyond this.

Gmail and Google Apps – we had to communicate yet keep a record of our progress, personal email wouldn’t quite work. The apps that come with this work just fine; with spreadsheet, word processor, calendar and now slideshow applications, this was a natural choice. It’s all integrated and free.

YouSendIt – very large files come through here, it’s not always practical to send and host chunky files on Gmail.

LiveMeeting – this has enabled us to meet and collaborate regularly and is used in conjuncture with Freeconference.com, which we used as our conferencing software. I’ve had some thoughts of holding meeting in SecondLife, for the sake of transparency and open participation.

Skype – still trying to get the rest of the group to adopt this. It’s free, you can record your calls and have group sessions. Perfect.

Publicizing

GoDaddy – we registered our domain, GuyFROG.org, appended it to our gmail accounts and it’s been love ever since. You can’t beat the price and their customer support has been solid. I spent a little less than $10 for the domain for a year, we were hoping to land FROG.org, but that didn’t happen.

Blogger – a service of Google, worked well initially as our main website but we have moved passed this and on to a more robust service.

WordPress – we (the web guys of FROG) decided to move to the hosted WordPress.com service, thinking it would be a great way to expand the site, add modules and tailor it to our needs. It’s turned out to be a very expensive and impractical idea. A number of core features are only accessible by paying for them, for a group with no money, we’re going to have to bail. After our launch event in July, we’re moving WordPress to our own servers. Between another board member and myself, we spent less than $40.

FormAssembly – this free tool allows us to build ad-sponsored forms for whatever purposes until we’re able to get on our own server.

Craigslist, Upcoming.org, & Eventful are web-based calendar apps we used to publicly post our launch event and spread the word quickly. They each have unique and common features and I wanted to take advantage where I could.

Idealist – we registered with Idealist, a no-brainer, as a non-proft to take advantage of their services but also to post our event.

Reactee – this shirt printing service allows you to choose a slogan and a keyword that is then placed on our shirt. Anyone can text the included number with our keyword, which is FROG naturally. When someone sees this shirt and texts the keyword (and whatever else they want to write) to the number, a pre-set message written by FROG, is sent back to the texter. A novel way to interact with a passive audience. The shirt costs about $25 including shipping and handling.

Flickr – we can go a lot of routes with Flickr, since they have a robust API. For now the service exists for archival reasons but eventually we’ll be able to do a number of things like print photo albums and posters, build videos and slideshows, share content and so on. Web services like Qoop make printing a painless process. I bought the Flickr Pro account for under $30.

Facebook – we’ve set up a profile on Facebook and with the viral tendencies of the site, we’ve been able to spread the idea of FROG and the upcoming fundraiser quickly. The reach and impact of Facebook for whatever organization is tremendous. Facebook took the bold step of opening up their backend and API to third parties, allowing various sites and services access to its 20 million user base. From HotorNot to Last.fm to Flickr to Digg, you name the service, it’s either on Facebook or will be shortly.

Technorati & Feedburner – these services can push and pull our data much more effectively than a simple RSS feed. If you add services like Yahoo Pipes, Dapper and Popfly to the equation, future mash-ups of our data and media may have greater impact than we can currently anticipate.

Fundraising

Change.org – this is a fairly new website dedicated to connecting movements and people. They have a number of tools at our disposal that will help us raise money, organize people and spread our message. (should be in the Publicizing category also)

PayPal – we’re working on registering with PayPal, eventually we’ll use it to collect dues, fundraise, sell items and so on. It’s cheap, it’s easy and for now it fits our needs.

Future

Future apps? I’m sure I’m missing a few but the obvious are MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. Mash-ups using the sites mentioned above (Yahoo Pipes, Dapper and Popfly) will eventually play a bigger role in data manipulation. Oh, and Rentacoder. Offering jobs to the lowest/bestest bidder will help us tweak our site, develop our ideas and move forward…on the cheap.

UPDATE: We got a little love from Mr. Kawasaki, thanks!

My friend Melissa is the third one on the right, behind Tim. Sweet. When I was ill last August and rotting at GW for about a week, Melissa was about to leave on tour. I spoke with Ryan, her bf (he was in Peace Corps with me) and asked if I could get an autographed CD. I received this EP with the signatures of everyone on tour. Pretty awesome of them.

(via youaintnopicasso.com)

The new Polyphonic Spree album The Fragile Army is one of the year’s best albums, and one of the most cohesive to come out in a long time. The single, “Running Away,” is probably going to be my favorite song of 2007, and this one’s almost as great. And be sure to check GvB for Chris’ take on it!

The Polyphonic Spree – Light to Follow (mp3)

This is one of the most sparsely instrumented Polyphonic Spree songs that I can think of, yet it’s also one of the ones with the most punch to it. Lest you forget that Tim’s orgins aren’t in orchestral pop, “Light to Follow” combines crashing drums with one of the best bass lines of 2007 to create a song that’s spectacular in a way that only the Polyphonic Spree can be.

To hear more from them if you’re unfamiliar, check out their Last.fm page.

Upcoming tour dates:

06-23 Dallas, TX – Granada Theatre
06-24 Austin, TX – Stubbs BBQ
06-25 Houston, TX – Warehouse Live
06-26 New Orleans, LA – House of Blues
06-27 Atlanta, GA – Roxy Theatre
06-29 Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
06-30 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
07-01 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw
07-02 Boston, MA – Avalon
07-03 Montreal, Quebec – Metropolis
07-05 Toronto Ontario – Phoenix Concert Theatre
07-06 Detroit, MI – The Majestic
07-07 Cleveland, OH – House Of Blues
07-08 Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue
07-09 Milwaukee, WI – The Rave II
07-10 Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line Music Cafe
07-13 Vancouver, British Columbia – Commodore Ballroom
07-14 Portland, OR – Aladdin Theatre
07-15 Seattle, WA – The Showbox
07-17 San Francisco CA – Great American Music Hall
07-18 Los Angeles CA – El Rey Theatre
07-20 San Diego CA – Canes Bar & Grill
07-22 Denver CO – Gothic Theatre
07-23 Aspen CO – The Belly Up
08-04 Chicago, IL – Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-11 Osaka, Japan – Summersonic Festival
08-12 Tokyo, Japan – Summersonic Festival
09-01 Stradbally, Ireland – Stradbally Estate (Electric Picnic Festival)
09-02 Argyll, Scotland – Inveraray Castle (Connect Festival)

Rocking out the YouTube crowd, sweet video.

Thoughts from YouTube views:

ADVIZR

Nice work to the one who thought this up. It’s brilliant.

- Mainstream media trying to silence him
- Strength, fearlessness, not even having to speak to stand his ground
- Honesty, willingness to actually look fellow human beings eye to eye
- Able, with ease, to make a big impact/ripple in the political waters that just want business as usual
- And it’s just plain serene. It gets attention and a major point across without having to say a word… too cool.

Gravel 2008!

Epyon42

Oh God, I think he just fucking won my vote.

incendiarycat

HE’S STARING INTO MY SOUL! MAKE IT STOP!

I kind of want to vote for him, now. This is fantastic.

Byrd found this on Craigslist:

One exceptionally large mounted beast. Approximately 4.5′ by 5′. Camel-like in appearance. Reminiscent of a Ton-Ton from Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back. Constructed with a styrofoam skeletal structure and paper mache hide. Mounts on wall. Very realistic. Won at auction in 1997. An unfortunate accident in which the “beast” plummeted to the floor resulted in a broken neck. Tastefully repaired with duct tape. Fun at parties. Intimidates would be intruders.

Please contact if interested. Serious inquiries only.

Update: From a friend who desperately wanted this beast:

Hi,

Is this still available? I am willing to pick it up today or tommorow.

Thanks.

—

Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:59:25 -0400
From: “J. L.”
To: “xxxxx”
Subject: Re: Free Mounted Beast

Sorry, the beast is gone!

—

On 6/14/07, xxxxx wrote:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

funding-raising using Change.org. So far we’ve raised $220, if you can afford to donate, please do. If not, sign up for a Change.org account and add FROG to your network. We need all the help we can get.

Still have a long way to go. If you can help out, please do. Here’s a link.