Christine

Board of Directors 101: How to Run a Meeting

Josh Kopelman recently pointed out an excellent post by Guy Kawasaki on the Art of the Board Meeting. Kawasaki's recommendations are to the point, and right on. These three recommendations in particular struck home, so I wanted to share them:

1. 360-degree views are too big for a board meeting. Focus on this 30-degree view:

• What's going right?
• What's going wrong?
• What do you want the board to do?

2. Don't surprise your board.

• If it's bad news, call everyone in advance to inform them 1:1 and let them vent/cool down privately.
• If it's a new idea or change in company direction, get a discussion going in advance so that you don't have to do a hard sell during the meeting.
• Don't ever assume that the board has read the 60-page document that you emailed them the night before.

3. Build a balanced board, and let your CEO lead its meetings. Kawasaki presents a handful of established archetypes, from the Customer to the Jerry Maguire, that together build a strong support team.

For more information, just head over to Kawasaki's original post. Thanks to Josh for the link!

Pimping the Chumby Bling

...OK, I couldn't resist sharing this one. Chumby is now selling the vintage-style tees that they handed out to us at FOO Camp. For twenty bucks, you can have one too:


Don't forget to check out the charms, too. My 15-year-old stepdaughter is mad for them. And no, I don't make any money from the chumby clan...I just happen to like them.

The Freeloader's Guide to Web 2.0 Expo

So, you want to go to Web 2.0 Expo, but your startup can't afford the $1,895 registration fee? Never fear. This year, conference organizers O'Reilly Media and TechWeb have embraced the proudly (or needfully) scrappy, and lobbycon energy is no longer restricted to the hallway salmon swim. Here's how to register for free, and a schedule of options accessible to free registration.

1. Register for Web 2.0 Expo. The $100 Expo Hall Pass can be had for free with one of the discount codes posted online. Here's one from the good folks at Web2Open: websf08opw . Since online registration is closed, you'll have to register onsite. Make sure to bring the discount code with you. Don't expect Moscone's booth staff to know it.

2. Plan your schedule. Once you've registered for the Expo Hall Pass, a world of free offerings opens up to you. Some events require advance registration to be free, so make sure to sign up online. I've culled a list here. (And if you know of other good sessions or events available to Expo Hall Pass holders, please share them...but only if they're still taking RSVPs. Promoting a sold-out party or conference badge-only event is not helpful. :)

Monday, April 21st

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM   Pownce Brunch, Daily Grill, 347 Geary Street
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM    Flickr-Moo MeetUp, Kate O'Brien's, 579 Howard Street
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM    Web Monday Silicon Valley, Citizen Space, 425 2nd Street, #300

Tuesday, April 22nd

6:00 PM - 11:00 PM   GAB/Blogtropol.us Launch Party, Gray Area Beacon, 1515 Folsom
6:30 PM - 11:30 PM   Digg MeetUp, Mighty, 119 Utah Street
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM     Ignite SF, DNA Lounge, 375 11th Street

Wednesday, April 23rd

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 3:30 PM     Web2Open, Moscone West
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM     Web 2.0 Wednesday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West

(Note: I'm not including the South Park Pub Crawl here, because the conference web site has it marked for conference badges only - no expo hall badges.)

Thursday, April 24th

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM   Web 2.0 Thursday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West
10:30 AM - 4:30 PM   Web2Open, Moscone West
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM     Web 2.0 Launch Pad
4:40 PM - 6:00 PM     Web 2.0 Booth Crawl, Moscone West
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM     Women 2.0 Networking Evening, Marriott View Lounge, 55 4th Street

Friday, April 25th

9:00 AM - 6:00 PM     Blogtropol.us Blogger Lounge, Moscone West
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM   Web 2.0 Friday Keynotes/Plenary Sessions, Moscone West

I'm sure there are more conference hacks and free events available this week, so post 'em up. One item that came to mind: sponsored sessions. Many conferences will open these up to expo hall badge holders. Access to these hasn't been offered on the Web 2.0 Expo site, but it's worth asking at the door.

Goodbye Google Reader, Hello NetVibes

Something strange crept up on me over the last several months: I slowly stopped reading blogs. Part of this was due to spending more of my limited social media budget on Seesmic, Twitter, and Facebook, which sites tend to expose a certain amount of blog content. (e.g., clicking through to new posts shared in Twitter streams.) And part of this behavioral change was driven by the incredible failings of Google Reader.

Mind you, I want to like Google products. Ubiquity is convenient. But poor interface design not only kept me from adding more feeds, but also prevented effective skimming and consumption of the content that I had added. I didn't even recognize that I had been driven away from blogs by the level of friction in the product. Or that I've been hanging on to My Yahoo! (the old, column-based version focused on large news sources) by my fingernails, because it gives me both the national and local information I'm looking for, and it gives it to me fast.

So today, I've started to move my RSS subscriptions over to NetVibes and suggest that other Google Reader users do the same. (As in a meatspace move, you'll end up weeding out the junk you don't need.) Rediscover the joy of community content! NetVibes is clean-looking, relatively frictionless for adding content, and easy to skim. Interestingly, NetVibes is not included in the default feed reader list on Firefox, but you can add by clicking on the link in this blog post. I did check out Bloglines, which also has rabid fans, but it has usability challenges similar to those of Google Reader. (Again, my focus is on efficient information organization and content consumption, not on tracking traffic trends.)

And if this thing with NetVibes works out, then I'll rethink my relationship with My Yahoo!...but not until then.

Do Women Care More About Social Networks?

Interesting snippet of the day: Auren Hoffman recently blogged about the growing imbalance between male and female participation in social networks. To boil it down, the most popular social networking sites - Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Plaxo, and Hi5 - are roughly 60:40 female:male. Auren theorizes that the sole exception, LinkedIn (61% male) has the reverse skew because it is highly transactional, unlike the other networks. I can see his point.

Rapleaf calculated the study based upon analysis of its (surprisingly large) user base of 13.2 million, so of course there's a large caveat here that we don't know what Rapleaf's own gender skew is. e.g., if women care more about reputation - and given social norms, it's entirely possible that they do - then these numbers will be off. Your thoughts?