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Content Tagged kaufman
Come to beCamp 2008
I’m going to be at beCamp 2008, the followup to the first beCamp, which I sadly missed.
beCamp is a BarCamp un-conference. Tonight was about meeting, greeting, and throwing ideas at the wall to see which ones stick. Literally. We stuck pieces of paper on the wall with our ideas — things we can either talk about or want to hear about — and then scratched our votes on them to see which are popular.
I live and breathe MySQL for a decent part of the day, so I hesitated, but then stuck “MySQL Performance” on the wall. It got quite a few votes, so I assume will be giving a talk on MySQL performance basics at some point during the conference. (The exact schedule is probably being determined right now, in my absence, but I’m so tired right now that I’ll just take my chances on it not being at 8:00 AM tomorrow.) [edit: I just checked the website and there won’t be anything before 9:00, and the schedule is determined tomorrow. I did say I’m tired, right?]
See you there!
PS: if you want to meet some of my colleagues from my former employer, the Rimm-Kaufman Group, they’ll be there too, wearing the “We’re Hiring” t-shirts. They’re hiring, by the way.
BarCamp, beCamp, beCamp2008, mysql, Rimm Kaufman GroupI have joined Percona
Effective April 1, I will join Percona full-time as a consultant. I'll be helping people build high-performance applications with MySQL, but I'll also be continuing to develop and improve tools such as Maatkit.
This career change has been a long time in progress. I'm really looking forward to it, but at the same time it's hard to leave my current employer, The Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG). Working with them has been the best job I've ever had. But ultimately, my dream job is to help as many people as I can, and consulting will be a better way to do that.
At a time like this, I like to reflect on the trail that has led here. It's a good opportunity to realize how fortunate I really am and fill up my gratitude tank. So I'd like to thank everyone who has helped me reach this point. All the people who have encouraged me, sponsored me, suggested new options... all kinds of help. A special thanks to my wife, Alan Rimm-Kaufman and all my colleagues at RKG, the many fine people at MySQL, and the MySQL community as a whole. My deep gratitude to all of you. I look forward to working with you even more in the future.
Jango and Seeqpod Hope to Monetize Music
Online music discovery and sharing sites are a dime a dozen, but they still continue to launch. For those watching this phenomenon and wondering why new startups keep entering a crowded — and relatively unprofitable — market, look no further than Kasian Franks, CEO of Seeqpod, and Dan Kaufman, CEO of Jango.
Each CEO sees music as the killer application that will lead their users into more lucrative enterprises. With Jango, which is a cross between an Internet radio station and social network, the business proposition is to license the ability to stream the music as an online radio station (as opposed to striking deals with individual recording companies), build a social network around that streaming music, and then sell targeted ads.
Jango, which launched its beta in December and has raised about $2 million from angels, allows users to type in the name of an artist and immediately hear their songs. A list of additional recommended artists is also provided. The user clicks on each band or singer to create one or several personalized radio stations, and those radio stations are shared among Jango’s users.
Kaufman, who points to services such as Imeem, Last.fm and iLike as places where people can go to find music online, says Jango is more social, and notes that the social component leads to more page views and a targeted space for advertisers. Advertisers on the big social networks don’t know where their ads may appear, he claims, so it’s worth it for certain advertisers — especially those promoting artists — to sign up with Jango. In addition to ad revenue, Jango plans to make money on transaction fees for selling music on the site, and like Internet radio stations Pandora and Slacker, will charge subscription fees for those who want to avoid ads or get access to more features.
Jango’s model is fairly conventional, in that it relies on music to build an ad-supported social network that uses ads to monetize its users. Seeqpod is different — it’s using music as a way to sell its search technology and recommendation engine. The startup, which has raised close to $4.5 million from angels, has exclusively licensed search technology from the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.
Taking a cue from Chinese search giant, Baidu, which has a popular MP3 search function, Franks decided that music was indeed something universal enough to get users to try out the search engine. Visitors to the Seeqpod site see a search box similar to the one at the top of the Google homepage, but also get a list of currently searched-for music that scrolls underneath that box. After the user types in the song for which he is looking, Seeqpod searches for it on the Internet and begins playing it (but not hosting it, so as to avoid legal issues).
Songs related to the search inquiry are also shown as part of Seeqpod’s recommendation capabilities. Franks says Seeqpod plans to add video search and discovery in the future, and to advertise against its results, much like Google does. In a program similar to Google’s AdWords, Seeqpod plans to work with individual artists to show ads on their sites based on music searches and split the revenue from showing the ads. Franks maintains that music is the best way to get user adoption and for Seeqpod to garner the ad revenue associated with a successful search engine. A similar music recommendation site with an eye on larger markets is MyStrands.
“Music is a suberb strategic platform for rolling out services and promotion,” Franks says. “There’s no Powerset or Kosmix here. Consumers don’t care about the search engine; [search engines] are a transition point that enables them to get to another place on the web.”
Both startups are using music as a differentiator to get market share in a crowded space that is dominated by giants: In Jango’s case, music will have to push it past Facebook and MySpace, while Seeqpod has set itself against Google. Consumers may love their tunes, but hitting the right notes with enough of them will be a challenge.
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Four companies to sponsor Maatkit development
A while ago I asked for people and/or organizations to sponsor development on Maatkit (formerly MySQL Toolkit) so I could take a week off work and improve the Table Sync tool. I asked for $2500 USD, but several companies have graciously offered to cover that and then some.
I'm very happy about this, as it will allow me to dedicate a solid week to fixing bugs and adding features. There's a lot of demand for the tools, and there are a dozen or so bug reports unresolved for the table-sync tool, which I personally want to fix as much as anyone. So I'm very grateful for the support.
Here are the companies who have promised their financial support:
MySQL AB
MySQL AB have offered $3000 USD in support. I had an email conversation with Mårten Mickos, MySQL's CEO, and he expressed his happiness about the project's success, and his pleasure in supporting the project:
We have seen you operate in the community and you always have constructive and good ideas. That's why we want to support you. Our goal with this is to stimulate innovation in the MySQL ecosystem.
I don't know how the idea to support the project started at MySQL AB, but that quote really tells me "we get it: we have a symbiotic relationship with our community of users." In a follow-up email, Jay Pipes wrote,
... MySQL wants to make it clear that we very much support and appreciate the work you've done on the toolkit. It has proven to be one of, if not the, most popular and successful open source ecosystem projects surrounding MySQL and for good reason. So, for your work and commitment to the project, a big thank you from MySQL. :)
Secondly, we would like to encourage you to be open and public about our support of you. The community team is always looking for opportunities such as the one which presented itself with your toolkit, and we want the outside community to know about our support and encouragement. Therefore, you have our blessing and encouragement to blog about the sponsorship of your development work. Please do let us know if and when you decide to blog about it. Remember also that this sponsorship is no strings attached. There is no expectation of specific work on our end.
Blue Ridge Internetworks
Blue Ridge Internetworks have offered $1000 USD in support. BRIworks, as they're known locally, is headquartered in the town where I live, Charlottesville, Virginia. They offer networking consulting and services. Jeff Cornejo, who offered the support to me, is a friend and used to work where I used to work, and several other highly respected friends and ex-co-workers work at BRIworks too. BRIworks provides Internet service and hosting for my employer.
Percona
Percona have offered $500 USD in support. Percona does high-performance website consulting, and are perhaps best known for having some of the world's top MySQL experts, including Peter Zaitsev and Vadim Tkachenko, two of the co-authors on High Performance MySQL, second edition.
The Rimm-Kaufman Group
Last, but absolutely not least, my employer, The Rimm-Kaufman Group, who do paid search marketing and website effectiveness consulting. They have let me spend a significant amount of time writing these tools for use on our own systems, and instead of keeping them in our own Subversion repository, allowed the code to be released as Free Software. The time I've spent on the tools has gone well above and beyond what we needed to get our work done. Finally, RKG has blessed my unpaid week off to work on the tools.
A big thanks is due to all of these companies and individuals, as well as other people who have contributed financially and otherwise.
Closing thoughts
I'm grateful for the sponsorship, but I think the real winners are the MySQL community, who have benefited a lot from Maatkit. It has made a lot of hard things easier and impossible things possible. If you're one of those who benefits from Free Software, I encourage you to patronize the businesses that believe in and support it. Four fine examples are listed above! Not coincidentally, all of them are the creme de la creme in their respective fields.
Finally, a quick journalistic note: I pre-approved this post with representatives from the companies I mentioned, because I respect their right to represent themselves as they wish, but the words are mine, not theirs.
BarCamp Boston 2 - Saturday
Last summer I went to the first BarCamp Boston. I had a great time there and did not want to miss BarCamp Boston 2 this past weekend.
BarCamp Boston 2 was held at MIT Stata Center, the famous building by architect Frank O. Gehry.
The rules for a BarCamp an unconference of geeks are simple. Every participant can chair a session, discussion or provide a lightning talk. The organizers have set aside a few appropriate meeting rooms and a schedule on a blackboard where one can read the program and add one self to the offering. In addition the organizers and sponsors did provide us with food and refreshments.
The first session I attended was “JavaScript Encryption” by Alan Taylor. Alan presented a self contained HTML document that included encrypted content which could only be revealed with the correct password. He calls his project Message Vault. His experience with making the application secure was very interesting. His biggest challenge was to embed an encrypted form of the password that was hard to decipher.
Next, I attended “Open/Collaborative/Green Mapping” by Jerrad Pierce. I had met Jerrad earlier in the hall where he presented his maps and had talked him into presenting his experience with this project in a session. He has created a Green Map of Cambridge, as part of the GreenMaps initiative. He also wrote his thesis on the subject of a better index to points on the map. Jerrad had 45+ interested listeners and a lot of questions where asked. How did he get the data from public sources? What tools did he use? What other tools he could recommend, especially those that where available at no cost?
Amanda Watlington presented before the afternoon break about “Video - How to Make It Found in Search Engines”. She stressed that video and audio files become more important to search as people use the web increasingly to consume media. So she told webmasters that it is important to annotate the media assets with internal and external keyword tags and to write, if possible, a transcript from the media and post it on a page that contains the file. In addition she recommended to submit the media file to specialty search engines, in order to make it available to the searching public.
My last session for the day was “Financing your Startup” by David Kaufman. It wasn’t all new, but certainly a comprehensive overview of how to finance your startup. I took away the following tidbits of wisdom: “Revenue or advanced financing by your (future) customers is the best way to survive the first phase” and “VC financing is only appropriate if you can show a very fast adoption curve and a large market.” Typically VCs want to invest X Millions and have that returned 10 fold within 3 to 5 years. If your business model does not show a plausible case for this kind of development, do not spend (waste) your time with talking to VCs. In addition, think about who the VC would potentially sell his share in the company? It helps to know who would be a potential buyer, especially as the default exit strategy of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) is not as available as it used to be.
Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the socializing in the evening, as I had prior commitments.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time