Defrag Keynote: Alex Wright
The opening keynote at Defrag will be given by Alex Wright. I’ve been emailing back and forth with Alex a bit about the topic, title, etc — and thought I’d share The Deep History of Oral Culture and Social Networks As the Internet continues to evolve into a global real-time conversation, we are witnessing the [...]
The Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur Scholarship
I’m overjoyed to be able to finally announce something we’ve been working on for a while: The Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur Scholarship for Defrag. If you’re not familiar with the Kauffman Foundation, this blurb might help: “The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation was established in the mid-1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman. Based [...]
Steel Horses, Thorny Roses and Long, Winding Roads
As anyone who knows me knows, I have a borderline obsession with 1980’s hair metal and heavy metal. It was the music of my teenage years: I grew up listening to everyone from Iron Maiden to Bon Jovi, and I watched in absolute horror as my beloved form of music mutated into some kind of [...]
Defrag: Summit or Conference?
I had a really interesting phone call with Sameer Patel yesterday. The last couple of times that we spoke Sameer had taken to describing Defrag as a “summit-y feel” or “more of a summit than a conference.” Yesterday, when he said that again, I asked him exactly what he meant by that (and now I’m [...]
Lowering Risk at Decision Points
I’ve actually got the chance to catch up on a little blog reading this morning, and I just got to digest Sameer Patel’s wonderful post entitled, “Innovation 1.0, served here.” The bit that really hit home was this (emphasis mine): “By organizations embracing and encouraging innovation, that really doesn’t equate to every factory worker walking [...]
Selling modern software
Some conversational threads are converging today: 1. In a discussion this morning, I talked through two sales models in the “e2.0″ space — one, wherein non-IT people sign up for accounts, and the vendor then approaches IT about signing up for a comprehensive license; one wherein, the vendor uses more traditional enterprise sales methods to [...]
The Enterprise Irregulars and Defrag
I’ve long been a fan of the Enterprise Irregulars – and if you aren’t, you should be. The “EI’s” (as they’re often called) are a loosely joined group of practitioners, consultants, and analysts that collectively blog about enterprise software (and building the “smart” enterprise). Their group includes such well-known folks as Michael Krigsman, Susan Scrupski, [...]
Monkeys and Typewriters and Data (oh my!)
That’s the title of Paul Kedrosky’s keynote (Monkeys and Typewriters and Data — I added the “oh my!”). And it sits at the convergence of some conversation threads I’ve got going today… I asked Paul to shoot me a paragraph about his keynote at Defrag. He sent over this: === Monkeys and Typewriters and Data [...]
The Sponge Bob Economy
If you’ve been reading along with the defrag blog for any period of time, you’ve probably figured out that I like to have a macro-economic view inform how I approach things. For over a year now, I’ve been pounding on the theme of a “productivity boom” as an economic meta-theme — one that was driven [...]
All About Entrepreneurism
Brad’s got a post up about entrepreneurial density in Boulder, and I’m back from a little morning exercise, having spent the time thinking about (oddly enough) entrepreneurism. As I’ve said before, I’m a startup guy. I have two business mantras that I live by: 1) always be starting; and 2) always be closing. I take [...]
A Special Offer
For reasons completely unbeknownst to me, last night while I was catching up on Mad Men, I had this inspiration — so I’m putting this out there (I haven’t yet decided if I’m stupid for doing this). Prior to running conferences, I ran marketing for a startup (Ping Identity). Ping was very successful while I [...]
How to Make the Defrag Agenda
It seems like I’ve been getting a TON of PR firms contacting me about getting “their speakers” on the defrag agenda, so I thought it might be useful to put down on virtual paper some guidelines/insight into how you can work your way on to the agenda (in no particular order): 1. Don’t open with [...]
Defrag Goals
I have tons of goals for Defrag. Being an OCD sales-freak, I track my revenue on nearly a minute by minute basis (and have corresponding goals). But those “hard numbers” goals aren’t my big, meta-goals for Defrag. My “meta-goals” are actually non-numerical in nature; derived from two conference experiences that set the bar for me [...]
One Hot Mess: Social CRM and E2.0
There’s been a pretty far-ranging discussion on the blogs as of late around Social CRM. Don’t ask me to define “social CRM” – that in and of itself is a blog argument that’s been raging. What you need to know is this: Traditional CRM is about “managing customers”; Social CRM seeks to move the “management” [...]
Age, Technology and Defrag
I’m just off the phone with Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords. I’ve known Buzz for some time (he’s one of those ultra-connected guys that always seems to be thinking about edgy things), and I’m very glad to be getting Buzz involved in a discussion topic for Defrag. A few months back, Buzz approached me with this [...]
