thoughtsignals

Yesterday my copy of Justin Catanoso’s “My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family and Miracles” arrived from Amazon. Normally, this is not the kind of book I would read. I happily left the Catholic Church a long time ago. But Justin is a former editor of mine, and I’ve read many of his previous pieces on his cousin, and more importantly heard stories first hand about the Saint and about how he wrote the book. I’ve only had time to read the very beginning, a miracle story that opens the book, but I found myself touched by the story and the writing.

Since my earlier post (written at 11:27 a.m. but not posted ’til 11:41 a.m.; guess I don’t need to say when I actually write these things), I’ve also met these folks, who I hadn’t met before: Fec Stench, Diane Davis, David Allen, Billy Ingram, Mathew Gross and others whose names I’ve forgotten (I’m very sorry; if you know who you are, please feel free to leave comments).
What struck me most about this whole event (this is the second conference of this type) is how smart the conversations can be when you get folks together in a room. Everybody gets smarter when they’re talking together.

That said, I left the afternoon session on “NORGS” (please find another term; this is an abominable abuse of the English language :-)) feeling that the surface had barely been scratched. I also felt there wasn’t really enough time for the journalists and nonjournalists in the room to meet together on some kind of common intellectual ground. It just seemed like the group never got far enough into the issues so that the newspaper people could see where some folks, particular the blogger/activists in the room, were coming from, and those folks never quite understood what the newspaper folks face. If everybody left the conference wanting more, though, that’s a good thing.

I could be wrong; I’m open to alternative interpretations. Anyone care to comment?

It’s 11:27 a.m., I’m sitting in the Robert and Maryam Scoble session on “10 ways to a killer blog.” Nice thing about these sorts of meetings is I get to catch up with people I don’t see (especially in the real world) very often.

So far, I’ve had a chance to catch up, at least briefly, with Ed Cone, Anton Zuiker, Herb and Susan Everett, Mark Binker, Jon Ham (my boss from the late ’90s when I was at The Herald-Sun), Lex Alexander (am I forgetting anyone?). I also got a chance to meet Sue Polinsky, who I’ve talked to on the phone several times but had never met in person.

I’m also following Robert and Maryam’s tip No. 4: “Link to other blogs.”

I’ll be at ConvergeSouth today. I wasn’t at the famous Dave Hoggard barbecue last night, but there’s a set of photos up on Flickr.

As a quick followup to my aside (scroll down to the bottom of the post) on Greensboro’s blogging/online biz startup community, a few folks have said they/we are working on it, over at Greensboroing and Billy in comments. Glad to hear it. I can’t wait to see (and maybe report on) some news out of this.

(And Beth, I’ve never said Greensboro is not a serious blogging community.)
FWIW, the folks at The Deal have a few insights from venture capitalist James Slavet on what he looks for in social networking startups.

He said he looks for an authentic vision from the founder. He also takes into account the early growth rate. And he isn’t deterred from investing in a company that is only popular with the early-adopter crowd. This was the case when Greylock originally invested in Digg and LinkedIn.

Link.

It’s probably good to note here, too, that despite all the media attention venture capital gets, that’s not the only way to start and grow a significant business.