Rob Grady

Great Presentation: "The Lean Startup"

5 Interesting Things

1. Interesting starter article "15 Roles Every Startup Needs" makes you take inventory on what ya got and what you need
2. Collection of screen shots of major os interface design between 1981-2009 (via @andrew_chen)
3. How White Am I,
4. "How to build companies that matter" @ericries on O'Reilly Radar
5. Quote: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." JK Galbraith via @NYTimes Weeek (via @timoreilly)

Acadamic Quote from "Business Dynamics"

"People have a strong tendency to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional rather than situational factors, that is, tribute the behavior of others to character and especially character flaws rather than the system in which these people are acting."

SXSW 2009

SXSW Interactive 2009 is coming up next month and it looks promising. Here are a few of the panels that look interesting:

The 7 Rules for Great Web Application Design

How Not To FAIL At Web Services

More Secrets of JavaScript Libraries

Microformats: A Quiet Revolution

Emerging Trends of Mobile Technology

Designing the Future of The New York Times

Version Control: No More Save As...

OpenID, OAuth, Data Portability and the Enterprise

Designing Our Way Through Web Forms

New Think for Old Publishing

What Can We Learn From Games

Evolving Digital Technologies and Profitable Green Building

Wireframes for the Wicked

Cloud Computing: Defending the Undefinable

Building Strong Online Communities

Tuesday Keynote Interview

Good business reality check

Great post: When Talking About Business Models, Remember That Profits Equal Revenues Minus Costs

Quote: Implementing Lean Software Development

From Implementing Lean Software Development, "Development is the process of transforming ideas into products. There are two schools of thought about how to go about this transformation. We might call one the deterministic school of thought and the second the empirical school of thought. The deterministic school starts by creating a complete product definition, and then creates a realization of that definition. The empirical school starts with a high-level concept and then establishes a well-defined feedback loop that adjusts activities so as to create an optimal interpretation of the concept." What school of thought does your organization follow?

Quote: Lean Software Development

From Lean Software Development: "Traditional project management approaches often consider feedback loops to be threatening because there is concern that the learning involved in feedback might modify the predetermined plan"

Giving City Magazine

Check out the latest issue of Giving City Magazine. It is a great example of a talented start-up team making the most of the PDF as a magazine format. Two very talented people Monica Maldonado Williams and Torquil Dewar have put together a great magazine around philanthropy and community participation. Check it out here.

Facscinating paper: Spamalytics: An Emperical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion

Thanks to High Scalability for publicizing a very cool paper on Spamalytics. The paper Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion is a fascinating (academic) read about spam conversion. I've always assumed that spamming must be profitable at least for the anti-spam industry. This paper not only outlines the underlying economics but the Storm Netbot spam system as well. In fact these guys actually hacked the spam system to carry out their experiments. Highlights:

• It took 12.5 million emails to generate 1 sale
• After 26 days the botnet had sent out over 350 million emails and 28 generate a transaction
• Extrapolating the figures, they believe the network generated $3.5 million a year in revenue
• Researchers gained control of 75,869 hijacked computers
• One in 10 people clicked on links that normally download malware to turn their computer into a bot
• Between 3500 and 8500 bots are created daily

ProductCamp Austin Winter 2009!

It's back and just in time for the post-holiday doldrums. "ProductCamp is a collaborative, user organized unconference, focused on Product Marketing and Management topics. At ProductCamp everyone participates: by presenting, leading a roundtable discussion, helping with logistics, securing sponsorship, setting up wifi, or volunteering. ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in the Product Management, Marketing, and Development process from the Austin area!  The first ProductCamp had over 130 people sign up, and over 90 participate!  Learn more at ProductCamp Austin." Sign-up, it's FREE!