We still have the scars… (Jeremy wins award for killer business card)
Donna Bogatin, over on ZDNet asks what’s wrong with a little party? Or even a big one?
It’s cause we still have the scars from when we all partied in 1999 and then got laid off in 2000-02. So, we deal with those scars by being snarky about the 2006 series of parties.
It’s a defense mechanism so that if we get laid off again we can say “well, at least we saw it coming this time.” Of course, we’re working our behinds off trying to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Greg goes further and asks why are party mentions on top of TechMeme and isn’t there something more important to cover? He, too, makes it sound like TechMeme is done by human beings. It’s not. It’s done by the linking behavior of bloggers. If bloggers link to something it gets on TechMeme. It’s that simple.
And, of course when you have a party with 700 of the world’s best-known geeks it’s going to cause discussion on blogs. Duh.
I did want to point out that Jeremy Wright’s business card was custom done just for the TechCrunch party. That’s killer. He ordered them from Printing for Less (the ePrinting company we visited in Livingston, MT — I predict that PFL will be in BusinessWeek within six months, it’s a remarkable business, but I’m holding out what I learned from its CEO for my first show — Andrew is now my business hero, you’ll find out why on that show). I’ll have to add that tip from Jeremy onto my business card best practices. I’ll never forget where I got this card from Jeremy. He says it only costs $20 to do a set of cards for a big event. I also like that on the back he has some attitude and puts “kickass bloggers” to describe B5’s network. I’m gonna get some of my own cards done (hey, Hugh, wanna do me a PodTech card?)
Thanks to Irina Slutsky for keeping the Flickr stream for me so that I know what she’s doing without having to bug her — hey, I wonder if she will get hazard pay for dealing with Zombies? Can’t wait to see the interview with Linden Labs’ founder!
Powered By 
August 20th, 2006 at 11:36 am
so, techmeme isn’t done by humans… it’s done by bloggers? Who are, what? sub-human, super-human, extra-terrestrial? trolls? ;)
August 20th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
So a little snark, wipes away Securities Fraud and all tears? Wonder if the SEC will buy that. Pour on the drinks, forget about that greatest loss of human wealth in history, why that was so last year. Who needs negativity, cynicism, or business plans, gotta have hope, it springs eternal — all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.
The “linking behavior of bloggers”, while slightly human, is more correctly classified as a psychosis, so an algorithm ranking delusional hallucinations. Just keep that in mind, it explains all results, and things like the Dean phenom…
And snark, that people don’t half demand your head, John the Baptist style, isn’t worthy of the name. What passes for such snark, are insider-baseball jokes with a slight self-deprecation, but not too acidic, wouldn’t want to offend, you see…
August 20th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Christopher: I must bow my head in deference to the king of snark: you! :-)
August 20th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Michael: good point. But talking a blogger into doing anything for the improvement of something else is pretty darn tough!
August 20th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Robert:
Great seeing you at the party. On the business card/event idea, I’ve been ordering cards with Hugh’s designs on them from StreetCards for shows and conferences for a few years now. I select a different design each time (my current fave is the sheep and wolf design). They always elicit a lot of intersting reactions.
Jeremy is remarkable guy - he’s doing some great work and is growing his network at a very nice pace. But he never forgets why he’s doing what he’s doing and is utterly lacking in some of the less attractive traits that were on dsiplay at the TC party.
August 20th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Thank god (or the great turtle whatever is your preference) — Christopher and Robert sparring again. Apocalypse avoided this time it seems. ;-)
August 20th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
From what I see, PFL has a $50 minimum for business cards. (?)
August 20th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Ervin: hmmm, I’ll have to ask Jeremy what he ordered. If you order a bunch of different ones, can you get them all printed at the same time?
August 20th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
They are probably great. For somebody in the US. :)
August 20th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Robert, where’s the link to an image of Jeremy’s card? :-)
August 20th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Heh. Glad to see someone liked the card. I tried to talk Jeremy out of both the @techcrunch and the “kickass bloggers” on the back because, oh I don’t know, was trying to be a little more conservative. :) Silly me.
August 20th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
hgrgrgpigew\
August 21st, 2006 at 3:57 am
I’d be glad to, Robert. E-mail something kinda sorta what you haev in mind [just words will do, I don't need pictures]…
August 21st, 2006 at 7:55 am
Maybe my Hugh cards were 20$… I ordered 2 sets, the TC ones and the general Hugh ones. Plus, you *did* ask me after Mojitos ;-)
Either way, business cards for events rock and I’ll keep on doing them!
August 21st, 2006 at 10:31 am
so is there a picture of the “killer business card” that we can oogle? always great to see examples of ones that impess the crowds…
August 21st, 2006 at 11:08 am
Scoble posted a quick shot here: http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/19/the-mojito-show-next-saturday-at-2-pm-is-next-taping/
I’m writing a post on them now, but my key bits for my cards were:
- “@” event bit under the b5media logo
- easy contact info
- something snazzy about the company on the back
In the end, it worked really well. Lots of folk loved the “kickass bloggers” bit on the back, as well as the @techcrunch on the front.
August 21st, 2006 at 11:53 am
thanks jeremy. seeing that pic in the other post motivated my request since it is relatively blurry but the essence of the card looked pretty interesting.
I like the ‘best practices’ in general and have followed them, in spirit at least, in the past. for example, at the RSA conf in 2004 I had cards made up for our team that had recruiting information on the back and it really got people’s attention - if they flipped the card…
seeing good examples always gets my inspirational juices flowing. unfortunately I don’t have any really amazing examples of my own to post.
August 21st, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Ryan, I’ve posted the actual pics from the cards here, in case that does help: http://www.ensight.org/archives/2006/08/21/my-business-cards/.
Overall, I’m really happy with them as “event cards”. And, yeah, I’m always on the lookout for really, really great cards too. There are a few Flickr groups for it too, I think.
August 21st, 2006 at 9:16 pm
[...] Apparently this unnamed senior vice president of Blogmedia doesn’t realize that what starts with Scoble stays with Scoble. [...]
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:29 pm
I’ll try to beat Jeremy’s cards on the next set of cards I order…I’ll add custom LEDs to them. How’s that for coolness….I feel a run of “Please PIMP my Business Cards” coming on soon.