I can't relate to this post about Mondays that everyone seems excited about. I fricken LOVE Mondays. It's the start of the week. You get to see what ideas that were so important on Friday stayed important until Monday. Sometimes a couple of days brings everyone to their senses and we can leave bad ideas in the past week.
Mondays are a fresh start. They're like a reset button for the doldrums of your Wednesday afternoon meetings where two people are going on about something the other eight people in the room don't even understand.
Sundays, specifically Sunday nights, are the worst. I hate them. The last day to get stuff done and you can't even stay up late working on anything. Anything you didn't have time to do now sits around until the next weekend.
Today is my third anniversary at Federated Media. Saying "three years" sounds so short, I almost feel a little silly mentioning it, but it also nearly marks the date FM was born (June 1, 2005) so I figured it's worth pointing out.
I highly recommend everyone do this at some point. Quit your stupid job and spend a couple of years not just working someplace but working on something you really care about. Why not be someplace you want to be every day? Life's too short to wonder if it's worth the risk.
Of course, the other bonus is I get to yell at people "I've been here longer than you!" and it's always true!
We just announced a product I am really excited about. We're doing something that builds off our three years of experience and knowledge, and gives advertisers, publishers, and readers more than just a typical web campaign. That's something FM has always tried to do. Don't just run banner ads, pay attention, listen, and you'll make a better product or service.
Oh and we're hiring. Come work in San Francisco and you get to own projects like the CM Toolbox, our forecasting engine, publishing tools, you get to help our publishers, BBQ, attend outdoor hula hoop meetings (no laptops allowed!), jump in the bay, and best of all work with a lot of really caring people who work really fucking hard to make everyone happy. That's what I love most about this place: everyone here cares a lot about FM and those who work with us.
This is exactly the place I want to be every day.
Here's John and Robert Scoble talking about John's predictions, Federated Media, the biz, and our crappy mobile reception here in Sausalito.
There is not usually four bottles of wine on John's desk.
A good observation by Alex on the multitude of processes and systems that seem to bubble up every couple of months, and how one should approach them. I love to keep track of processes and distill the common sense out of them, but never follow them to the letter simply because I know myself better than someone inventing a scheme for me.
Taking laptops to meetings. I rarely take my laptop to meetings. If I do it's because of the possibility of following along with something online, or being the presenter. I used to take it when there was a crisis and I was waiting on an email from someone, but now I have an iPhone for that so people can call if it's that important.
During some meetings I'm the least needed person there, but I like to sit and listen to people because most of the time I'm learning a lot about worlds outside of my own. Things I've never dealt with but know are pretty important and worth hearing. If I had a laptop I wouldn't get all that free insight from some smart people.
I like how Michael ends this piece, it's really good advice for any standing meeting.
I am so completely proud that FM had a hand in the relaunch of BoingBoing and the launch of BoingBoing gadgets. I'll also be the first to admit I had nothing to do with it at all, which makes it even cooler to see the final product.
This is something I think people miss about FM, and I find myself explaining a bit, we're not just an ad network—we troubleshoot page loads, offer advice, do late night fixes, help with templates, can share our experiences with MT, Wordpress, and Blogger, and of course do bigger stuff like help the Boingers get their new sites up.
Every once in a while I get a chance to demo the platform to someone not familiar with what we're doing. And it ends up being like a shot in the arm to me when I see how excited they get as I take them to interfaces that connect advertisers to sales to publishers and to author services.
Sound like fun? We're hiring.
The clever sales people here at FM do some really cool things. I'll let Adrants explain it: Adrants » Ask, Ask a Ninja Get Together for Algo.
Also, Castfire is pretty cool tech. Of all the video delivery systems we looked at, Castfire was perfect for the job, and Brian went out of his way to make sure the project went smoothly. If you're looking for a full featured video player for your podcast, check out Castfire. (also http://newteevee.com/2007/05/18/ask-a-ninja-now-powered-by-castfire/)
Someone needs to help Ask with their print campaigns, though. Aiyeeee!
Why I love working at and with the people of FM can be summed up in this one post.
Link: Techno//Marketer: More great environmental, interactive advertising.
Our sales people get it and work really hard to give advertisers that kind of custom touch for the authors so everyone wins. It's why I think I've been involved with advertising and marketing for ten years now, I know people can do it right and I always wanted to help them do it right with what I'm good at.
Also, this weekend someone at FM (I have a Yahoo pipe of all FM employee blogs) posted about a parenting blog (I can't find it right now because Google Reader doesn't have search--WTF?) who said the income from their blog was equivalent to a part-time job that they would have had to take and be away from their child. As soon as I find the link I'll update. That was a really neat thing to read. (Update: Pamela gave me the link.)
I've been tooling with a sentence in my head this morning, but I haven't been able to come up with the right wording.
Right now, it's: Solving a problem never feels as proportionally good as the bad feeling of experiencing it.
I'll take a crack at it later, but it looks like I'm ending this week on a higher note—though other problems still exist and require a lot more work to figure out. There is still next week.