commbasics

As we are getting ready to put Vitalcom's remains to rest, I'm entering into a technical world where I have never got before.  Just to keep you apprised, I have a BUNCH of URLs I use for various things.  The one's you may be familiar with are this one (commbasics.typepad.com) the Vitalcom one (vitalcompr.com) and Footwasher Media (footwashermedia.com which has nothing on it right now) My technical challenge is moving all the content from this site to the footwashermedia.com url, as well as the pertinent information about VitalCom so people who look for me there won't wonder what happened.  How this is all done I have no idea, but someone does and soon I will have that knowledge...as soon as I find them. All suggestions are welcome.  Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Plaxo, and here are all available to contact me.  Let the grand adventure begin!

Last year I wrote that I'm totally committed to the concept of social media  especially as it relates to technology startups.  I said then that I had not taken a traditional PR client in a year and could not recommend anyone hire anyone else to do traditional PR anymore.  Some readers gave me a thumbs up and others asked if I was feverish.  It is a significant step forward for a former traditional journalist turned PR pro to take, especially one who can smell the social security checks coming over the hill, but I meant it. Sometimes you have to be careful what you say because you will often be asked to back it up at some point. That happened to me and my little PR firm, VitalCom, this week.  As of 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, VitalCom's vital signs ceased after a lengthy illness.  One client has changed it's commitment to traditional PR and is considering a social media platform at a significantly lower cost, and the one client we had that was ...

A big problem the VC community has right now is that they don't know what they don't know.  The VComm Venture Faire was developed, using a large dose of social media, to give them a little bit more information they didn't have.  Like what? Conventional wisdom:  With the media dying, the best way for them to find potential companies is to go to the venture meat-market events with dozens of companies presenting information that the VCs know is useless and presented poorly.  Why do they believe that?  Because everyone believes that.  It's not the greatest process, but it's the only one we got.  Right? What they don't know:   There is always another way to get the job done.   Someone just has to do it.  Doing the job like everyone else doesn't make it any better.  Going another way may not make it better, but there's a chance it might. VComm didn't bring a ton of companies in front of the ...

Brian says now is the time . John says everything is changing not dying. My two cents...they are both right.  Call me if you need help figuring it out.

The cornerstone of the VComm program was the understanding that most companies looking for VC financing really have no idea what a VC wants to hear.   Two years ago I sat with a group of investors at a major conference and listened to them complain about the quality of the material and, in the end, how useless it was. Understand this:   There are, at any given time according to Dow Jones, 5000 tech startups in the US alone that are seeking funding.   But less than half of those companies have any credible research into their technology market.   The press covering those markets has shrunk almost to the point of non-existence.   The VC's are flying blind nowadays, which explains why so many are having poor returns.   What they need is real information about market potential. But most companies pitching VC's spend 90 percent of their time in front of them explaining how great their technology is.   Get a clue!   They know you are do...

One of the companies that presented at VComm last week was ICEPhone, who bill themselves with the unimaginative descriptor of "the Swiss Army Knife" of mobile phones.  It is really a neat gadget--a cross between a microlaptop, mobile phone, and portable game console.  I want this phone even though it runs Microsoft CE (and anyone who knows me knows that is a BIG admission). Among the benefits of being in VComm was getting a New Tech Press video interview and ICEPhone was the big winner in views on the New Tech Press site--more than 200 in the first couple of days after posting. "Only 200?!?" I hear you exclaim.  Ah, but who was among that 200?  The answer demonstrates the power of the internet, sponsored content, and highly targeted audiences. The guy running PR for ICEPhone in the UK is a young college student who has been playing around with viral internet applications.  He took that NTP video and sent it to a few key media people. ...

Vindication. I've been writing and posting for a long time that media and marketing as we know it will come to and end for a LOOOONG time.  Like about 10 years.  Bit by bit more and more people have come to agree that what I predicted has come to pass.  The big question was: What are we going to do about it? I've proposed a lot of ideas but the ideas -- including sponsored content, highly targeted audience, abandoning traditional public relations and advertising for an organized social media approach -- received about as much early support as my predictions. Wednesday, however, everything talked about in this blog was justified with the conclusion of the VComm Venture Faire.  A project 2 years in the making last only 8 hours, but brought together a dozen established and newly funded investment firms with nine innovative technology companies out of Scotland.   You can see some of the reaction to the event here, but the reaction does not indicate ful...