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Dec 13

Provo Labs, Blastyx, podcasts and more

A lot has been going on the last week and I haven’t taken the time to slow down and blog lately. Last week I attended the When 2.0 Conference which was an incredible wealth of information! It is rare that you attend a conference and feel like every minute was value packed. Everyone I was chatting with at the conference agreed that the panels were full of great information. I ended up spending pretty much all of last week in California. We had a Geek Meetup on Tuesday and I had dinner with a few awesome guys – Niall Kennedy of Technorati, Scott Beale of Laughin Squid, Kevin Burton of TailRank, Noam (I can’t remember Noam’s last name!) of Skeebo, and Johnathon (again with the last name) of mosuki.com. We had a great chat about micro-funding and how Provo Labs can best build a micro-fund that will help out a bunch of Web 2.0 companies.

While I was in California, we planned the next Geek Dinner for December 20th.

Yesterday we had several meetings all day at Provo Labs. Throughout our meetings we were focussed on sticking to our immediate action plan and had some immediate successes from that. It’s very simple, but most companies don’t focus like that. A meeting is apparently only for following an agenda, not for getting things done. We’re using our meetings to get things done instantly as they come up. Whether it’s call someone (get on a cell phone or skype and call them right then!) email someone (get typing right then) scheduling someone (if it’s corporate, we use Trumba.com for all our calendaring, otherwise send a meeting request) and if it’s something to follow up, create a task right then. It is extremely more productive to act on something right when you’re talking about it (during the meeting) instead of walking out of the meeting with a huge list of things to do. Yes, there’s some interuption to the ‘meeting’, but what’s the point of meeting if not to coordinate and get things done? In a normal setting you would have to have a follow up meeting to re-strategize based on what was learned. It’s so much simpler to just pause a minute or two and get results right then!

We officially launched Blastyx yesterday! Some of you will know what that is, others will learn about it in a couple days when we make an official announcement about it. But Blastyx is now funded, has a working CXO (Chief Experience Officer) and is working on prototypes. We’re hoping to see some good cash flow out of this company and I’m sure that it will happen!

There’s a lot going on in Utah right now. We’re a little behind Silicon Valley (by a year or so) but the focus of DevUtah is to help accelerate Utah to being a contender again. There is no reason why Utah can’t be one of the key places for Web 2.0 businesses. We have a lot going for us here, but SO many people seem to have their heads down! We really need to create a wake up call for Executives and Geeks to help them realize that there is a whole new world opening up on the internet! I think the best way to do this is for them to see money start flowing in Web 2.0 companies that are based in Utah. The other great way is to create a large, vocal community that gets together regularly to network, stay up on things, and share ideas. We need to see a LOT more small startups coming out of Utah. I can feel it happening, but it’s only just begining.

There has been a lot of traction lately around here with Podcasting and Video casting. Blastyx will be focussing on a lot of that and so is Infobase Media, but there is a lot of room for people who are really into it. I’m working with a few people to get a lot more podcasting going on around here, you should see that start happening in the next month or so. To those who have contacted me about it already, I’ve been swamped but yes, we’re going to make this happen! To those who are extremely interested in it, contact me and we’ll make some waves together.

We’re also working on creating a much easier method of creating ad hoc get togethers. We all take lunch around here, but how many of us eat alone or with one person? We want lunch to become an incredible brainstorming and networking opportunity. We’ve registered www.adhocutah.com to help facilitate this – there’s nothing there yet, but we plan to put a site together very soon for it. I’ve been discussin this a lot with Scott Lemon and he has some really awesome ideas about it. Together we should be able to create a great meet-up place for the community.

Things are definately happening! This is a very exciting time!

1 comment

1 ping

  1. AndyF

    Congrats on the Blastyx launch, and please keep us updated!

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