From around the twittersphere, blogosphere, etc  this weekend:

Loren Feldman: "People like the puppet more than you because he is more real than you are. More honest than you are, smarter than you are. More human than you are. People want the Shel puppet to win. The same can't be said for you my friend."

Dave Winer: "They let Shel Israel off the hook. He gets his name back, the puppet is retired. The mock trial they were planning for the TechCrunch summer party, that I learned of this morning, is cancelled."

Dave Winer: "All I could think about is how mean this community had become."

Susan sez: Mean, indeed.

So, this is the last night in Michigan, heading back to Boulder tomorrow.  It's been a interesting two  weeks--I spent more than hald of it working, mostly from a little cafe and on stolen, faint wi-fi on the porch of the cottage, the rest of the time trying to have the vacation we had so long planned.

Thanks go to the team at PSCO for their support through all this--and the work they've done so well--as well as to A, who was supportive of turning time off into remote work. In many ways, choosing to work remotely during a summer program this intense seemed like madness. On the other hand, as someone whose been around dot com frenzy a number of times, I knew this stint of time would not be a make or break for our success if we all agreed to it and handled it well.

Or, to be more blunt, what I really mean is:

• In some ways it was audacious to leave the team at this moment.
• But not going away would have meant canceling the whole trip.
•  I've made those kinds of personal sacrifices before and they helped scuttle an important relationship..and turned out not to be as make or break as I'd thought.
• So this time I wanted to balance the work commitment and the family commitment
• And I think I did.

So now I've had this great trip, I've observed a few things:

• I am both compulsively connected to the net and an obsessive worker
• I have to have vacations where I balance work and fun or there are no vacations (this may be sad but true right now)
• Technology makes it easy to be this way now, hallelujah!

Lots more posting to come as I get back to a decent net connection.

Are you someone passionate about social media--and an online marketing and/or relationship management person? 
The Knight Foundation is looking for someone to help the team (which includes me and some very cool Knight staffers) manage and evangelize the upcoming series of grants, which start with new proposals (which means starting with promoting that we need and want proposals).

Here's the job description:

For the 2009 round of the Knight News Challenge, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is looking to contract with a highly networked Web 2.0 marketing and account management freelancer to:

• Manage programs designed to increase the visibility for the Knight News Challenge,
• Traffic, coordinate, and measure deliverables for third party relationships that will help build on the established audiences (journalists and bloggers) and increase the number of high-quality applications from the following "growth area target groups"
• Run email and blogging marketing and outreach campaigns
• Assist in event planning for town halls and awards programs
• Support community growth

Scope:

• 25 hours per week for $30 / hr
• On monthly basis, from July 1 -September 30, 2008
• Contract-basis only. This is not an employed position.

Profile:

The ideal candidate will be able to:

• Understand Web 2.0 and have relationships in the community to draw on
• Take direction to organize stakeholders (Knight staff, grantees, KNC winners, etc) to carry out email campaigns promoting the KNC
• Manage email campaigns, media partnerships and online marketing for the KNC.
• Support engaging the Web 2.0 community in innovative ways, through meet-ups and other events and documenting results
• Work with Knight Foundation's Program Manager, Program Association and online community manager to deliver on goals
• Manage data and analytics for marketing and PR campaigns and report on effectiveness.

Goals:

The marketing goals for the 2009 Knight News Challenge:

• Receive a higher percentage of Knight News Challenge applications from:
  • Young people (<26)
  • Non-traditional journalists
  • Non-students
  • Web 2.0 and social media developers and strategists, including those working with new platforms and mobile platforms
• Generate 3,000+ high quality applications
• Have at least 500 applicants from the "growth area target groups"

nterested?

Please contact Marc Fest,
href="mailto:knc-marketing@abcdelta.com">knc-marketing@abcdelta.com, with your resume and proposal.

About the Knight News Challenge

The Knight News Challenge (KNC) funds ideas that use digital media to deliver news and information to geographically defined communities. The 2007 Knight News Challenge attracted 1,600 applicants. The 2008 contest drew more than 3,000, with a significant increase in the percentage of young and non-US participants. For more visit www.newschallenge.org

About Knight Foundation

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

Andrew Hyde snuck up and took this at some odd hour when we'd both been work for, uh, days.

So we're heading to week three at TechStars, and while the problems we want to solve have changed, the products wer're building have shifted 180 degrees.On one hand, this is marvelous--we're going to get real products into the market and used by customers sooner than we thought; on the other hand. 

But as we narrow and focus our ideas to deliver something small, I am also working to make sure our product strategy and our actual roadmap remain large, so that we don't narrow our business as we focus our releases.  Managing this process in myself makes me wonder if companies who are successful through TechStars will end up with very similar approaches to development and iteration, and that in turn, makes me think about the days when I thought of goiing to grad school to get an MFA in Poetry(which I never did.)  Back then, one of my concerns was that I'd lose my own voice and sound like an "Iowa" writer. Will this be a similar thing? I don't think so, but the comparison--and how influenced I am by the very smart, common sense feedback and great perspectives the mentors share--does make me smile.

On a similar note, I'm thinking about how the kind of meet up I am in the middle of right now, hanging with a bunch of programmers and their Apple machines, around a big table in the back of The Cup, is like a digital sewing circle (sorry, guys.) We're all working, focused on our machines, and yet there is an easy comraderie and some shared talk and chatter. It's good energy, lightening the load of the day with companionship and shared purpose, and a  change of scenery (some of these folks work together and this is the satellite office.)

So it's been two weeks in Boulder @techstars, and working with my co-founder Lisa Wiliams on Peoples Software. Twp weeks ago Friday, A & I were in a hotel in Sacramento, then in Salt Lake, and finally, here in Boulder. It's been 10 days since the TechStars program started, and we're running, hard.

Some observations of place:

• The Rockies are beautiful. You can see them from everywhere in Boulder. If I didn't live in the Bay area, I'd think this was the most beautiful place I could ever be (but I am obsessed with California, even more.)
• The body fat ratio is the lowest here, ever. The number of fit, trim, thin people who obviously spend portions of most days riding bikes up rocks, training for triathalons, or bounding to the tops of mountains to do stretches that put their legs over their heads is huge, higher than anywhere else I've lived.
• Boulder's nickname could be "Gluten Free."  All the healthy, fit people are obsessed with diet, so vegan (that's pronounced vey-gan) and gluten free foods are big here, both in grocery stores and restaurants/cafes.
• Trustafrarians are the ultra-skinny vegans with the skateboards and the dreads, smoking 420 at the Maceo Parker concert. Some of them have some gorgeous steampunk clothes and piercings that make you stare (they make me stare).
• It's a dog town. Labs and Goldens are the frisbee/ball-throwing standard for pups, but Big Daddy Winston (my American Bulldog) gets lots of puppy love. If you have a big dog, this is paradise, pretty much.
• Santa Cruz, CA should take a leaf from Boulder and replicate the moves that are turning this place into a super-desirable way station to incubate companies.Moving more and more high-tech into Boulder seems like a smart way both to boost the economy and attract a high number of "digital nomad" refugees, Bay area expats, and people who want to merge high tech development with keeping their body fat down (okay, with spending time outside in this glorious place.)

I wish I could tell you I've met alot of great people, and what the city is like, but truth is, I've been head down in a windowless room most of the time here, coming up for dog walks (the paths and trails are glorious and the mixed used spaces impressive), dinners, and some great bits of fun (Maceo Parker, hiking).

"....you define yourself by who you follow. If you only follow your family, that defines you. If you follow a crowd, like I do, that defines you too. One is not necessarily better than the other, you just gotta decide for yourself what kind of inputs you want.

--Robert Scoble, commenting on Friendfeed in a discussion of  to what extent social media can scale, especially with filters like FF, and to what extent plain old pickiness or decisions about how to use these tools will inevitably kick in (ie you can't really get that much out of following, aka scanning, 10,000 people.)

Susan sez: Side point: Each tool has a different purpose and can have different rules and roles for how you use it. I'm still tight with the tweets, open with the blog and FF.

"If I've learned anything from Spread Firefox, BarCamp, coworking and the like, it's that propaganda needs to be free to be effective. In other words, you're not going to convince people of your way of thinking if you lock down what you have, especially if what you have is culture, a mindset or some other philosophical approach that helps people narrow down what constitutes right and wrong."
and
"On the one hand, there's uncertainty about how to build a "national identity"-slash-business on top of lots of user data (that, oh yeah, I thought was supposed to be "owned" by the creators), and on the other, a model of the web, that embraces all its failings, nuances and spaghetti code, but that, more than likely, will stand the test of time as a durable provider of the kind of liberty and agency and free choice that wins out time and again throughout history."

-Chris Messina, writing at factory city about open standardsm data portability, and market competition, in this case for data, protocols and so called "open" code.