Utah Symphony Marketing Ambassador

I'm really excited this weekend because I'll get my first assignments as a student marketing ambassador for the Utah Symphony. They say I'll even have a chance to help develop their marketing strategy to the college crowd. I've always loved classical music, and I love going on dates to hear the Utah Symphony. When my parents got married, their first major purchase wasn't a car, entertainment system, or nice cutlery: they bought a top-of-the-line Yamaha upright piano. I began playing it when I was five, and going to my parents' home on Sunday afternoons to play while my sister sings is still one of my favorite forms of relaxation.

Though I was never tempted to make performing into a career, I've immensely enjoyed being able to play for friends at social gatherings and church functions. I even learned how to play the organ and was the first organist for my church in Bulgaria when I was a missionary (the first organ our church owned in the country was installed in the beautiful ancient Thracian city of Plovdiv in while I serving there.)

So I'm glad I have this chance to introduce the Utah Symphony to the twenty-somethings. If anyone has any great ideas about why they like the symphony or how to market it to college students, feel free to share them!

Mentoring

I spent my lunch today enjoying a delicious spinach enchilada at Bajio's with Erik Hughes, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at the SCO Group. I contacted Erik through a great program at my college called Take a Cougar to Lunch. This program helps students network with local professionals who are willing to mentor students and, benevolently:-), even pay for the lunch. I got the feeling that this program isn't utilized as much as it could be, since Eric said I was the first student to contact him in two years. I had a delightful time with Erik, and he let his own food get cold as he shared answers to my questions about how his career unfolded and gave me ideas about how to run my own company better. We discovered we had some common interests, including that we both spoke Russian.

I would highly encourage students to take advantage of programs like these at their colleges. Too often we get buried in our studies and don't take time out for singular experiences that help us get the big picture. I'm a big fan of mentoring. The Young Entrepreneur Journey blog recently compiled a list of top reasons to be involved in mentoring, I'd like to add a few of my own.

Why Mentor
--Give back. We've all been blessed more than we deserve. One of my colleagues references giving back as an essential part of maintaining good karma; others call it the Golden Rule. The bottom line is that it feels good to help others.

--Gain perspective. It's easy to get stuck in a rut of your own little world. Mentoring others helps you realize that others have challenges, too, and can help you look at your own situation in life with new eyes.

Why receive Mentoring

--Lose Fear. Perhaps I'm unique, but I love talking with people who are on the next stage of life. Someone once said that he felt like a giant oak, growing in stature in one area of responsibility until he was uprooted and fell like an acorn to start anew in another stage of life. Talking with people who are flourishing one step ahead of me helps take away some of my fear of becoming an acorn again.

--Get real-life instruction. Mentors can give incredible practical advice. If they've been down your road before, they've likely discovered through trial and error what works. Mentors are usually quite generous in sharing that experience.

Backcountry.com founder: Beware Penflation!

Notes from a presentation I sat in on this week from John Bresee, co-founder of backcountry.com. Backcountry.com is the #2 outdoor retailer on the web (next to REI), does tens of million of dollars of revenue per year, and has an Alexa ranking of 7,281. If you're unfamiliar with Alexa rankings, they're a biased but often-used popularity ranking of web pages. This means there are 7,280 sites that are visited more often than backcountry.com. To put this in perspective, my site, tsplines.com, has an Alexa ranking of 624,223 and we average about 500 unique visitors a day in our niche market. BYU's Alexa ranking is 4,048.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that John's company is a major player, and he's not hurting financially himself. So I was somewhat surprised when in his opening remarks, he pulled out a plastic pen from his pocket, held it up, and said, "This right here is what is wrong with my company." I was a bit startled to hear that coming out of the mouth of a power player, but he went on to explain that the pens his purchasers had bought were not the cheapest pens, since they weren't connected with the most efficient way of running a business. He said he didn't need a pen like that--he could use the cheapest pen. He called paying more than you need to for something "penflation" and warned to watch for it at every level of your company.

I could go on, but in the spirit of brevity, I will only leave you with that one thought: no matter how many resources you have, beware penflation!

Phil Windley--How to start a blog

I sat through one of the most entertaining and informative powerpoint presentations I've seen in a while this week when I learned how to start a blog from Phil Windley. Now I can't say that Phil wrote the book on blogging, but he achieved something with even more credibility for us Internet geeks: he was listed #1 on Google under "how to start a blog" (until this week when Blogger bumped him down :-(). Before I pass on Phil's great nuggets, I do want to say a word on his Powerpoint presentation: it was amazing. He rarely had more that three words on a slide, and many slides just contained pictures or photographs or comics that he wove masterfully into his script. I'm always tempted to make lists of information on my powerpoint slides, even though I know I shouldn't, but Phil inspired me to really believe the adage that a picture is worth 1000 words.

Blogs

Why blog? Well, you can learn things by writing about them, use your blog as your own personal soap box, or use your blog to teach people things. Phil mentioned that he heard about blogs a few times before he could figure out why he should blog himself. Then he realized he could write about technology. He used his weblog to communicate with the people he was in charge of when he was the CIO of the State of Utah, and has since created a name for himself in the tech blogging community. Below are some of my observations and notes from his presentation:


When you read blogs, you are creating your own panel of experts

Phil mentioned a few names of bloggers whom he trusts and whose opinions he reads regularly. In the information age, there is so much news going everywhere, and Phil said reading trusted blogs allows you to position yourself where you would like to in the stream of information--bloggers become the information routers, a position previously held by major news networks. I'm still trying to figure out how much of my information I am going to get from blogs and how much I will continue to rely on sources like MyYahoo! and the Economist. You may have noticed that my blog role only has two links on it so far--Paul Allen's blog (an excellent source for keeping up on the Internet marketing landscape) and the Young Entrepreneur Journey, which I read mainly because I enjoy Michael's thoughts on being a young entrepreneur. I would be interested to hear which bloggers you, my readers, turn to for business news, Utah news, or animation news.


Keep your blog on your own site--not the site of your employer.

He views his blog as part of his career, not part of his job. He's changed jobs a few times lately (including being the CIO of the State of Utah), but his blog has stayed on the same page. When I heard this, I went out and bought mattsederberg.com and sederberg.org (Yahoo! is having a domain name sale for $4/year right now). I suppose I might move by blog to one of those sites in the future; however, hosting my blog at tsplines.com (my company) seems all right to me for now.


You need to have some sort of focus

His topic is computing with a little politics thrown in. If the topic is too broad, it will be hard to attract a base of like-minded readers. Phil also advocates blogging about what is interesting to you. If you try to guess what your readers would like, you will soon get tired and lose motivation if you're not writing about something you love.


Practice the virtuous cycle—read a lot of other blogs and comment on them

Phil says this is the best way to drive traffic to your own blog--by commenting on others'. I think that is true, but I also think that commenting on other people's blogs is a good exercise in general because it helps you "get to know your neighborhood." It's always fun to meet people who blog on a similar topic as you (you could find them using Google's new blog search engine at blogsearch.google.com) Everyone's always excited to see a comment posted on their blog (I am) and it's good to participate in the community. As Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s chief blogger, said, ”I have found no other way to meet as many geeks, see as much technology, have as many interesting covnversations with interesting people, and make things happen for so many people, as my blog."