No one knew we needed a better way of searching the web in the late ’90s when we had Yahoo and Alta Vista dominating the web.

No one knew Hotmail with its 2MB limit sucked so much.

And what happened? Google had the balls to say “We can do these things so much better”.

This isn’t a Google “love in”. In fact, as functionally advanced as Gmail was when it first appeared, it still didn’t give me the thrill that I got when I first opened a Hotmail account. Hotmail was the first example of a Web App that I ever saw, and it made me dizzy as I realised what the Web was capable of.

Photo owned by www.butkaj.com (cc)

This was the buzz my Uncle had when he first saw,  in 1950’s Ireland, an Electric Kettle boiling, while sitting on a wooden orange box. From then on, for him, the world was different.

But of course, amazing innovation doesn’t guarantee first place. You can improve your chances of retaining first place through Constant and Aggressive Innovation. Such as Google Search and Gmail has done. But what about the other brilliant ideas on the web that have sat on their arses when they should have been regenerating?

For my money, that one ripe couch potatoe is Ebay. In my opinion, its an ugly, hard to search, hard to use, dissatisfying experience. It may have been impressive one time, not now. But that’s just my opinion.

What do you think?

And are there any other examples?

Its not necessarily about massive budgets. It can be about using our imagination and cooperating with others for an amazing result.

1. BIZCAMP

The first Bizcamp took place yesterday in Dublin. I was lucky enough to be among the 200 attendees. The quality of the speakers was extremely high and I have not found a better explanation of Branding any why it is so relevant to small business on a day-to-day operations than that given by Gerard Tannam.

Outside of speeches, I met Emily Tully face-to-face for the first time. Emily, it turns out, is an extremely knowledgeable and generous person when it comes to her field of PR. This was the essence of Bizcamp – Meeting people, learning from them, and sharing our own experience. Did I share enough… probably not, still there will be plenty opportunities to correct that. Maybe at BizCamp Limerick on March 21st. I urge you to sign up.

Bizcamp was free to attend, and there was even some grub thrown in.

What do you expect for nothing? Well in this case, I came away extremely enthusiastic about my involvement in my own businesses and Irish business in general. Small business people, even tall ones, need to feel like this occasionally.

2. THE TUESDAY PUSH

Another free initiative that only exists and thrives thanks to the co-operation of 15 to 20 small Irish businesses. Our own product MyMunster.com will be the subject of this weeks Tuesday Push. We should see around 15 blog posts written by established bloggers all about our “baby”.

I can’t wait.

And how much does this cost? All this publicity, constructive criticism… it costs NOTHING.

This recession doesn’t stand a chance.

Its trying to hit us in our pockets, but the game has moved on.

Another Unconference, by far my favourite type of conference. Its fully booked up. If you are not signed up,  but nearby and want to meet me, Just tweet me @antgalvin

The more people I know, The better prepared I am.

That is a quote form Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the USA. I love this quote because it sums up why the seemingly pointless task of generating Business Plans is worth while.

Business Plans are bullshit.

• As soon as they are printed, they are out of date.
• They are founded on endless assumptions.

Those two unavoidable facts render them pointless.

But the exercise of writing a business plan means that

• You have thoroughly assessed your business, your market, your service/product.

• When reality does kick in, veering off from your planned trajectory, you will have put in enough dedicated brain hours to be able to adapt to the changing circumstances. (You may even be able to bring things back on to your track by being knowledgeable enough and fast enough).

So when it comes to actually writing a business plan. Don’t treat it like a sculpture that will stand for eternity. The goal of the exercise is not to produce a book, the goal is to produce a strategy.

Photo owned by tanais (cc)

Don’t ever print off a copy for yourself. This may indicate that you think you have finished strategising for your business. By all means, print copies for investors, banks and so on. But keep your Business Plan alive as long as your business is alive, revisit it every chance you get, honing and improving.

One last tip – Don’t get bogged down in the perfect format/template for a business plan – There’s no such thing. The best template for your business plan will be written by you.

I don’t buy or read newspapers. Too much opinion, not enough news.

I have recently given up on Wired, Techcrunch and the Guardian tech section. Too much news, not enough quality.

Here is what I am left with.

My Google Reader usage for January 2009.

I am putting more emphasis on people over media organisations. Especially as these days the Irish media seem hell bent on depressing us.

Special mentions: Mulley and his FTR mantra. Seth Godin and his practicality.

But the blogger who did most to keep me going this month is Keith Bohanna and his continued optimism for small businesses in Ireland.

Thanks Keith.

But I want more visual hits. My favourite at the moment is Who Killed Bambi?

Who else should I be subscribed to? Let me know.

]]> http://antgalvin.com/2009/02/01/these-are-the-people-i-look-to-january-2009/feed/ 1 antgalvin jan09_reader_trends1 http://antgalvin.com/2009/01/31/laura-ingalls-and-the-phone/ http://antgalvin.com/2009/01/31/laura-ingalls-and-the-phone/#comments Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:53:47 +0000 antgalvin http://antgalvin.com/?p=247 ]]>

The little house on the prairie got a phone installed. One of the first in rural America. Laura went nuts for it and could often been seen evangelising outside the old school-house. The wider population of Walnut-grove were quiet happy to listen to Laura going on about her “Phone Calls”. Some were delighted that their little settlement of farmers and small merchants were in some way associated with this craze that was sweeping the nation. Others thought it was a load of old shit.

Laura didn’t mind – She knew the Telephone was the future.

One Tuesday, Laura had left the school house, collecting the weekly newspaper from the general store on her way home. She was ecstatic to find a mention of Telephones on the front page. It seems the author Herman Melville had installed a phone in his own home  and was quoted “Well, its a new way of communicating”.

Laura was thrilled and rushed home to Telephone her childhood friend (sometime foe) Nellie who was had married extremely well and was living in a fine house in Independence. Nellie (obviously) had a phone too. Laura was breathless and took quite a while to get her story of the latest celebrity endorsement for telephones out.

“Herman… Melville… has telephone…. new way of… communicating… he says” to which Nellie replied: “Laura, Stop fucking ringing me to talk about telephones, you daft bitch”.

Please stop tweeting about twitter.

Photo owned by photogirl7 (cc)

Go here to get your own Twitter Follower Mosaic.
More magic from Walter Higgins and Sxoop Technologies.

Lots of beautiful people here eh? (Ok, a few mingers too).

I don’t usually do new years resolutions. Usually I spend the first week of every year drugged and sneezing. This year was no different. Now that the whole fuss about the new year has cleared, I can put down my own marker for myself.

I want to be good to myself.

I am no Mother Theresa, but I put others before me way too much – Family, Friends, Businesses.  I also suffer from the ridiculous habit of putting off current comforts for the promise of greater future comforts.

I want to change that this year. I want to treat myself. ( – In a wholesome way).

I do not intend to neglect my family, friends or businesses. But if I don’t change my attitude, I’ll be a bitter old bastard in no time. (Some might say bitter-er!)

I have a measurement for this new self-indulgence.  – No point in setting a task for myself unless I can measure its success or failure in someway. So I have picked an object that I would never normally allow myself to have. I have decided that I do, in fact, want it, and so I shall, in fact, have it.

Its the Linley Aston Chair.

Its just an armchair. But its a beautiful armchair. I already have an armchair, two in fact, at home – But I have wanted this since I first saw it in 2003.

If I can afford the two thousand odd that it costs and I can bring myself to spend that money on something I don’t need – That will be the mark of a great 2009.Looking forward from the first week in January, there is every reason to believe that this won’t be the year that I can afford to start treating myself. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Thanks to a @patphelan tweet, I came across this excellent blog post.

Its  written by Morten Lund and concerns a failed venture and the fall out for him and his colleagues.

He made mistakes and owns up. I feel better for reading it.

We all make mistakes – Its a mandatory part of business. We don’t all handle the fall out well.

These days, a lot more mistakes are being made because the margin for error has disappeared. A small screw up can have an exaggerated impact. How do we handle it?

They will happen. You can’t eliminate risk, just minimise it. So be careful, (especially with cash flow!). And when the screw ups do happen, take a deep breath before you lose your head.

Or you might lose your business.

Photo owned by pshutterbug (cc)

No two ways about it.

Especially if you are involved in small business.

No sitting on portfolios; property, shares or other.

No sitting around.

Creativity will lead to Value which will lead to Money.

Be aggressive about it.