business

I think that the market should reward good work and I believe that has happened with the Big Omaha conference for technologists, creative types, and entrepreneurs.  The conference organizers have certainly been rewarded with brisk ticket sales, selling all available tickets on the second day they were on the market.  If you haven’t attended and you mark yourself as belonging to one of these groups (tech, creative, entrepreneur), you owe it to yourself to check it out next year.  This is one of the hidden gems of the “Silicon Prairie” and it won’t remain hidden much longer.

This year’s Big Omaha experience was filled with great speakers, good friends, great food, interesting stories, fun interactions, emotional stimulation and a boat load of inspiration.  I have listed five examples here.

Thing # 1:  The first wonderful thing that happened to me was that my old college friend Chris Rouw showed up along with his partners at Far Reach Technologies, located in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  Chris was one of the first people I ran into on opening day.  I got to meet the team and he demonstrated an app that they had built for Dwolla which helps you to locate merchants in your area who accept payment via Dwolla.  Pretty neat – these guys are blazing a trail in the mobile payments world, and that is just one example of Far Reach’s, well, far reach.  Sorry (had to be done).  Far Reach is a neat company, just celebrating their fourth “birthday” and it is run by some outstandingly smart and extremely nice people.  You should check them out.

Thing # 2:  Another really neat thing that happened this year was that Big Omaha provided us all with two books to take home – both authors were speakers at this year’s event.  The first was Sarah Lacy (senior editor at Tech Crunch).  Her book, Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky:  How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos (affiliate link) discusses her forty-week excursion into a host of developing markets around the world and what she observed while there.  Her talk gave brief synopses of a few examples.  You will be inspired by her study of how real-life entrepreneurs in little-heard-of places are making their hustle pay off for both themselves and the customers they serve.  The second was Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, The Thank You Economy (affiliate link). If you don’t know Gary already by reputation, then just look back on any of his previous speeches and you’ll feel the genuine, engaged enthusiasm that he seems to have for every task that he undertakes.  The basic message is to pay attention to how we are being marketed to and to ride the wave as this shifts.  We can all have serious advantage in marketing today because now “the ears are more important than the mouth.”  His talk was encouraging and his book has been, too, so far.

Thing # 3:  For those who know me, all three of you know that I am a huge train nut.  While eating lunch on the last day of the conference, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with John Henry Muller of What Cheer.  Turns out he was the creator of the wildly popular (can we actually say ‘viral’ or did it not meet the definition?) web contest to select the route of the Union Pacific steam excursion this year.  The Union Pacific Railroad runs their Heritage Fleet and their steam excursion program to demonstrate the history of railroading in America.  These are always popular with all the rail fans, but I think even John Henry was surprised at the response that his creation generated for the UP.  It was a pleasure for me to visit with him.

Thing # 4:  The reason I went to the first Big Omaha was simply for the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and see if he is as good and nice in person as he seems on video (he is).  The reason I decided to attend again at the second, and now third, event was that this serves as a wake-up call to the spirit.  If you listen to your inner voice, you will begin to hear a set of “New Year’s Resolutions” that we start on in May.  For me this year, the new year’s resolution came with a corollary.  The resolution is “This will be my year to begin a side business that I can develop into a marketable property at some point.”  The corollary:  ”It doesn’t HAVE to be in the technology field.”

Thing # 5:  Finally, the last example I will share here is that I ran into my old programming TA from college.  He was a monitor in the computer lab and would help out with any questions we had while attempting to produce functional Pascal programs.  Tej Dhawan is well established in the tech world and worked for a long time in a specialized  software company.  His new gig is at a tech incubator in Des Moines, called Startup City Des Moines.  It is designed to assist fledgling companies get their wings and fly strong.  Though I didn’t get enough time to talk, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I did have with Tej and I will be following along with the progress at SCDM.  You should too.

Well, there you have it.  Five pretty cool things that happened to me at Big Omaha.  There were more, to be sure, but that’s it for now.  What I hope you take away is that although the event is organized with an eye to even the smallest detail, and while everything is in its place and well-planned, you just never know what serendipitous little moments are going to happen at Big Omaha.  That’s where the memories get made.  Thanks for reading!

Some of the most respected people I know are business people. People who make the world turn, in my opinion.

It occurred to me one night, at about this time, that of the business people I know, very few are involved in any way with blogging. Some of these folks are responsible for some major revenue streams. Some are influencing opinion at very lofty levels. Some are simply feeding their family from their businesses. But of the entire cross-section, I imagine only a small percentage are doing any blogging.

I could spend hours (well, OK, actually I could spend MINUTES) debating why more business people aren’t into blogging. My hunch is that they just haven’t made time yet for this activity. Rather than debate the “why”, though, I thought it might be more interesting to ask “Does it matter?”  For our discussion here, I will introduce a hypothetical business, a small manufacturer of widgets.

To the small manufacturer, who sells her entire production run of widgets to the east coast widget wholesaler, does it really matter whether or not she has a blog that is updated periodically?  The east coast wholesaler is certainly not going to buy more than her production run, and he probably won’t be influenced by her blogging anyway.  So what possible benefit might she hope for?  Could she even get a logical return on the time she spent writing posts?

The answers to these questions, and other questions about the efficacy of blogging, can be found by learning how the blog is targetted.  Who will the usual reader be?  Will they come back again and again in order to get the freshest information?  Are they mostly current customers or are they mainly potential customers?   What age are they?  These and other questions need to be considered.

By working on a targetting strategy that focuses on the demand engine for the product, blogging can certainly play a pivotal role in the marketing of both products and ideas.  If, for instance, our small widget factory publishes a weekly post on widgets, the history of widgets, alternative uses for widgets, the state of the widget industry, and so forth, all about widgets, then eventually someone will notice this and begin sharing it across the web.  If the information is very practical, it will take off even more quickly.  This generally leads to a later purchase, due to the the Widget company’s “top of mind” position.  This strategy focuses on the retail customer – a.k.a. the demand engine for the product.  Although the wholesaler is already buying every unit of widget produced, he or she will likely continue to do so if it appears that demand remains strong.

Other benefits include the ability to ‘crowdsource’ work in creative areas, the ability to drive blog traffic to the corporate site, the ability to constantly provide up to the minute news about the business, the ability to maintain a 24 hour billboard for the business, the ability to quickly promote new products / services / ideas via social networking, and the list goes on.

So yes, I believe blogging can matter greatly to a business, no matter the size of the business.

It has become one of my favorite annual activities and it is just a little over a week away. The annual spring ritual reminds me that, like the farmers living all around me, I am responsible for how my little part of the world will look in the future. Figuring prominently in that equation is my financial responsibility for myself. And so with that responsibility, I again eagerly await this yearly spring fling for folks like myself.

What is this event? It is the annual shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway. Several years ago, I started purchasing “Baby B” shares (a class B share of Berkshire Hathaway) for a retirement account that I own. Each B share is valued at 1/30th the price of the class A shares.

With the shareholder meeting taking place just an hour’s drive from my home, I decided to attend one year. After attending my first shareholder meeting, I was hooked. The environment is one that helps to educate the investor, celebrate the consumer, and update the owner on the company’s progress over the last year. For anyone who is interested, the stock symbols for Berkshire shares are BRK.A and BRK.B and plenty of good information, including the annual report and Mr. Buffett’s instructive annual letters to shareholders, can be found at the company website.

The format of the meeting is very simple – you arrive at the Qwest Center Omaha by 6:30 AM and rush to a seat in the auditorium, you watch the annual company movie which generally includes numerous skits by Buffett, and has included guest appearances by any number of celebrities. Once that is over, a Question and Answer session begins, generally at about 9 AM and proceeds until around 3 PM. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger take shareholder questions all day long.

For those who get antsy when they sit too long, there is also an exhibition hall with booths from many of the companies owned by Berkshire. Companies like See’s Candy, Dairy Queen, Justin Boots, and many others have displays and for the bargain shopper, this is the place to be. My favorite vendor in this area is the “Berky Bookseller”, a moniker adopted by a favorite local bookstore while they set up a huge booth to sell books focused on this magnificent company and its maestro. Generally two or three authors are available to autograph books as well. Combined with the Q&A with Buffett and Munger, the book store provides an excellent value for the self-taught student of business.

I will be sure to report in with my impression of the meeting and any highlights I think you might find interesting.