Ramblings
Twitter Porn!!
That is all.
Just joining the Sunday night insanity.
Who You Surround Yourself With
I am sitting in my hotel room over in Scottsdale, Arizona at the moment. I am here attending a Launch Masters Retreat at Harris Fellman’s pad. We’re talking internet marketing, chowing on food, working the open bar he has set up, riding around in a Hummer stretch limo and basically hanging out.
Yesterday was the first day here and one thing jumped out at me. There is SO much value in surrounding yourself with success-minded people.
Everybody here is working on a new product that they are going to sell on the Internet. We are all students of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula and some of the guys here have had great success with product launches in the past. While I am a successful blogger and do make a living doing so, I’m a relative newbie to the business of marketing – at least properly. Any pro blogger out there who is reading this – being able to apply this type of information in conjunction with a blog is just KILLER. The model of getting paid by putting ads on a popular blog – it works, but it will only get you so far. Using your blog to market your own products is where it is at.
The number of ideas I am getting per minute here so far is stellar and it is because I am talking with a group of people who are all doing the same thing (minus the pro blogger gig, of course). This is the main reason I made the flight out here. I wanted to mastermind with some like-minded people and that is something I don’t have a chance to do super often.
Anyway, I know this is a bit of a rambling, but I wanted to share a thought. I’m working on less sleep than I usually get so I apologize if this post seems disconnected. 
The Secret To Production
Here is the big secret. Ready for it?
Go out of town.
Seriously. I am flying to Phoenix early Friday morning. I am losing a regular working day this week (Friday). I have a lot of irons in the fire which means I have a lot to get done before I leave. So, this means I just bust ass to get everything done by the end of Thursday.
Going out of town raises my necessity level and, in some weird, unconscious way, drives me to actually be more efficient. Because I HAVE to.
Two other things that work for me:
- Use a todo list. I use Remember The Milk integrated with Gmail. I’d prefer to have a Google way of doing it, but they’re taking their sweet time.
- Stop monitoring Twitter and FriendFeed. Sure, I’ve checked up on them a few times this week, but both of those services are HUGE suckers of mental energy. Turn ‘em off to get work done. Both are there when you get back.
I should go out of town more often.
Google Just Won’t Launch What Matters – To Do List
I saw the story about Google launching Friend Connect. Cool. Yeah, whatever. My question is when are they going to finally plug the gaping hole in their Google Apps package: the to do list.
I am a Google whore. I love the company’s products. They are generally well executed. But, it just floors me that they haven’t yet released a todo list application to integrate with Gmail and Calendar. To me, this is just one of those “DUH” things.
There has been talk about it. According to a story on ZDNet several months ago, Google has even addressed it:
Hey everyone – thanks for the loud and very clear feedback on your desire for a to-do/task list feature. We’re pretty passionate about to- do lists here as well, and we’ve got something in the works. Of course, we’re working to add our special Google secret sauce to the to- do lists space (which can take some time to get right,) so we don’t have something to announce just yet, but the entire team is listening to these threads closely.
Please be patient – we’ll have more to talk about soon.
Google secret sauce? They don’t need to rule the world with this thing. Just put something up there. Right now, I am using Remember The Milk and using their Firefox plug-in to embed it into Gmail. It works, but it sucks that I have to use another service. And if I’m on another computer, my todo list is no longer embedded into Gmail because I don’t have the extension.
I know this has been talked about before, but that proves my point. What is taking so long?
Perhaps I shouldn’t bitch about not getting something I’m not paying for. At the same time, though, it shouldn’t take this long to create a todo list app – special sauce or not.
R&R From Weirsdale, Florida
I have been doing some things on the laptop today. Posted three blog posts to PCMech (along with a Youtube video) and am now posting this photo from where I’m sitting right now in Weirsdale, FL.
There is always something cool about being able to “work” while sitting outside in a place like this. And it is no different than sitting right in my office. Technology is cool like that.
Calamari with Dave
We had a great time last night at the Tampa Blogger Meetup. I got an opportunity to meet up with:
- Josh (@SIGEPJEDI) who just bought TampaBloggers.com (be interested to see what he does with the domain)
- Robert Nelson (@robertnelson)
- Robert Payne (@rpayne)
- Tony Katz (@tonykatz) who is moving out to L.A.
- Tara who writes Marketing Artfully (@TARAdactyl)
- Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa) who writes for ReadWriteWeb as well as Microsoft’s Channel 10.
- Real estate blogger Cyndee Haydon (@cyndeehaydon)
- Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) who works for Forrester Research and actually was the impetus for putting this meetup together.
- Rich Menga (@frostedside). Rich works for me over at PCMech and came along.
- Norman Dalager (works for the New York Times)
* Jeremiah, I ripped off your list of attendees. Sorry, was lazy.
It is nice to meet up in real life with some folks that do the same thing I do for a living. We have a nice community and too often bloggers stay too alienated in real life despite being connected online. So, I welcomed the chance to take some online relationships into real life and share some food and drink with them. There is another blogger meetup coming up toward the end of May I may try to hit, too. Let’s get all these people connected up!
And now, my super video: Calamari with Dave. This was recorded by Norman (the New York Times guy) with my Flip Video. We’re actually doing an informal review of the Flip. Enjoy!
“The Simpsons” – Is The End Coming?
You can typically tell when a series is coming to an end on TV. How? It gets serious. The comedy is sucked out of it.
I watched Simpsons tonight and, sadly, I’m seeing it in the cards. In this episode (Papa Don’t Leech), the Simpsons take in a country singer who apparently once hit on Homer. They find out the singer was abandoned by her Dad, but he re-appears after Marge finds him. He plays nice for a bit, then leaves again. Yada yada.
Oh, and this episode started with Homer and his father driving and being purposely ran off the road by Marge’s sisters (attempted murder?). After the men roll down the hill in their car, the father is hurt and says he’ll need care (in so many words). Homer, not wanting to deal with it, smothers his father to death and kills him. Sure, this was a dream that Homer woke up from while sleeping at the wheel, but come on.
So, in one Simpsons episode, we have:
- Homer murdering his father.
- Marge’s sisters committing attempted murder.
- Country singer is homeless.
- Country singer getting abandoned by Dad. Twice.
- Country singer’s dad being an alcoholic and pumping heroine into his drink (I’m not kidding).
- Said father stealing daugher’s song and feeding it to the Dixie Chicks.
- Sad song sung by said country singer.
This is not what the Simpsons is all about. This is a series that has been good for 20 years and is now coming to it’s end. It is not comedic. It is downright depressing.
So, is this just another series following the pattern which brings it to it’s end?
Gnomedex: Yeah, I’m Going Again
After thinking about it a couple days, I decided to give Gnomedex another go this year. So, it is scheduled for August 21-23rd in Seattle. I think I might check into getting a room right there at Bay Harbour. Last year, I stayed inland from the conference. It was about a 20 minute walk. No big deal, but it would certainly be more convenient to be right there. I didn’t even attend the night party last year because I didn’t want to walk down there again.
Little bit of laziness, yes. But, seriously, Seattle is a hilly city. Walking around downtown feels too much like exercise.
I hope this Gnomedex has more tech and less fluff. If not, I won’t go again.
If you’re going, shoot me an email. I’d like to meet up with you in Seattle.
Open Suggestion to Chris Pirillo on Gnomedex 8.0
It looks like Chris Pirillo is starting to organize Gnomedex 8.0 in Seattle in August this year. I got an email from him yesterday where he is giving people who have attended in the past the chance to sign up early.
But, the question I have is this: should I even go?
I went to Gnomedex last year for the first time. While there were some highlights, I was left questioning whether it was worth crossing the country for (I live in Florida).
Here were my basic “beefs” with it:
- There were too many speakers talking about stuff I simply couldn’t care less about.
- On a related note, there just wasn’t as much stuff that would be interesting to bloggers.
- As a Gnomedex newbie, I found that some of the regulars had a bit of a good-ol’-boy thing going. I don’t fault anybody for this in the slightest, but it would have been nice to (if possible) have something that helps encourage mingling between the regulars and the newbies.
Aside from that is, of course, the fact that it is in Seattle and I’m in Florida. I happen to agree with Bwana who recently twittered that we should bring Gnomedex to Florida. Not gonna happen, but I can dream.
So, here are my suggestions to Chris for Gnomedex 8.0:
- This is going to be a room full of bloggers, so let’s make the topics talked about relevant to what we care about: blogging, tech, social media, etc. Not, I repeat NOT, things like new money and alternative energy. Get my drift? Chris, those speakers last year went over everybody’s head and nobody cared. The Gnomedex site says ” Influencers, Entrepreneurs, and Tech Enthusiasts!” and I think the topics should be things tech enthusiasts care about.
- Likewise, talks pertinent to Internet Business and entrepreneurship in the new media would be great topics. Again, the Gnomedex site says “Essential for the success of Internet businesses”. Well, last year was anything but that.
- The single track structure was good, but I think it would be more satisfying if the above points are noted when scheduling speakers.
Should I go to Gnomedex 8.0? I don’t know yet. Chances are I will do it. But, I will be watching to see who is scheduled to speak. Also, it would be great to see some creative networking opportunities be part of the schedule. After all, you are going to be streaming this whole thing on your live stream, so give us a reason to actually cross the country rather than just watching on Ustream.
WebbyOnline Now DavidRisley.com
It took only a few hours of time (thank you Wordpress), but I have gotten this blog set up from scratch to where it is now. This is a brand new blog, but you’ll notice I have a boatload of material here already. Well, the reason for that is that I have imported all of my posts from WebbyOnline.com over to this blog. WebbyOnline.com (which was my personal blog) is now being re-routed here.
Make sense?
So, now, I basically have two blogs: this one and PCMech.com.
Let the world rejoice at the launch of yet another blog. Don’t choke on your coffee.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
