One would think that after spending a week in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest, I’d be a bit burnt out with all things geek and tech. On the contrary, the fire is burning even stronger within! I am looking to continue to evangelize our newest feature, MyAlltop; gain readership for Hawaii Tech 5.0 and Hawaii Traditions; promote my internet marketing company Pono Media; and most importantly network with others. How will I do this? First, by learning and then by harnessing my passion and grinding it out.
Kahala Mall Center Tweet & Greet
Saturday, March 21, 2009
11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Entertainment by Tempo Valley
Follow @kahalamallctr and @jlieu on Twitter
All of the events require RSVP, so please make sure you click on the links and follow the instructions. I look forward to learning more, won’t you join me?
In a few hours, Lilinoe and I will be on board Continental Airlines flight #72 en route to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Over the past few days, chrysalises have been hatching flocks of butterflies in both of our stomachs. The excitement of attending the South by Southwest conference for the first time, the anticipation of celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the official launch of Alltop, spending time with Guy Kawasaki, and most importantly meeting up and networking with the thousands of other attendees.
We’re looking forward to experiencing the sites and sounds of the capitol of the Lone Star state, and of course dining on the local cuisine.
I’ve packed enough gear and gadgets to bring everyone along. Here’s how to keep up:
Earlier this year I attended a Wordpress Bootcamp that was hosted by the Hawai’i Macintosh & Apple Users Society (HMAUS). I had such a good time with the attendees and felt very comfortable with the teaching of Eugene Villaluz that I became a member. Yes, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t an actual Mac user.
This month HMAUS and the Professional Photographers of Hawai’i presents its annual Mactoberfest on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at 8:30 a.m. at the University of Hawai’i Art Building. I’m excited about being on campus, it’s been over a decade since I tagged the stairwell of the art building with my childhood friend Jan. I would like to introduce the tradition to my children.
I am honored and humbled to be a part of the afternoon Panel Discussion and amongst the talent of Bytemarks Cafe’s Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa, Bob Lew and the Queen of Wordpress Lorelle VanFossen. I’ll be sharing my whirlwind experience and how technology, social and new media changed my life, as well as being the Chief Evangelist for Alltop and my new company, Pono Media.
The event, sponsored by Pacific New Media will also feature exhibits, fix it clinics, door prizes and more! The event is FREE and for better planning, registration is requested. Let me know if you’ll be there, I’d be happy to meet you.
Even if I were not the Chief Evangelist for Alltop, I’d still share it’s value with my readers. The Alltop team is excited to announce the launch of Alltop Version 2.0. The minds at Electric Pulp designed a homepage that allows readers three options to navigate the site: by category, alphabetically by alltopic or by search. Our CEO and my daimyo Guy Kawasaki explains the v2 launch here, but Atelier Transfert produced an extraordinary tutorial video that explains Alltop with such class.
At the time of the official press release we had 213 alltopics, approximately 4-days later there are 231, and this number will increase soon after this blog post. We’re going to cover the earth, so if you have an alltopic suggestion or if you have a site suggestion for an existing alltopic, please send me an email.
In other fantastic news, Alltop inspired a Twitterfeed Social Cause mashup. It wasn’t on purpose and our entire team is grateful to the 176 users from the Twitter community that support Alltop. If you’re one of the 176, please email me your snail mail and I’ll send you some Alltop stickers.
Speaking of Alltop stickers, earlier this month we conducted a sticker survey, but the voting was so close we printed them all. If declaring your “kick ass-ness” on your laptop is not enough, Stickergiant will magnetize the designs so anyone rummaging through your refrigerator will also know that you kick ass!
Finally, we’re taking it back to the old school, and a having some fun in the Alltop chat room hosted by Xat. One of the conveniences is having more than 140-characters, but what I love and I know Guy does as well is that adorable hippo. If you want to know why we love the shiitake out of the hippo, join us in the chatroom.
In exactly 18 days I will be landing in Las Vegas, Nevada to attend the BlogWorld & New Media Expo. According to the current schedule, there are over 200 speakers sharing their knowledge across almost 15 tracks in nearly 100 sessions in about 72 hours. Additionally, there will be five keynotes with three networking receptions and an opening night party, not to mention nearly 60 exhibitors in the showroom. Organization is important, but so is flexibility.
Alltop is one of the sponsors of the expo and Guy Kawasaki will be the afternoon keynote on Friday, September 19th at 12:45 p.m. in Room 223 during the Executive and Entrepreneur conference with Steve Rubel.
Alltop currently has 150 categories with several more being built and launched daily. I am looking forward to connecting with the site owners, authors and bloggers that are listed on Alltop. I mean, for almost six months we’ve been in email and Twitter conversations — it’s a great opportunity to not only put a face to the content, but network to improving both Alltop and their own websites.
For the site owners and bloggers not yet listed on Alltop — I want to meet you! We scour the internet, follow-up on suggestions and referrals to provide our readers with “all of the top” content in a respective category, let’s get you listed!
Here’s a list of sessions I will make a point of attending either for the subject or that I admire the speakers:
In addition to those I’ve already listed, I look forward to lunch with Mike McAllen, CEO of Grass Shack Events and Media, laughing in real life as hearty as we do on Twitter with Tawny Press of Innoventions and any of the nearly 1,100 those following me on Twitter. Also, if you haven’t already mapped out a strategy I recommend Deborah Micek and Roxanne Darling during the Executing and Entrepreneur conference, both ladies also reside in Hawai’i.
Guy Kawasaki surrounded by the Hawai'i Twitter community
It’s been almost a year since I first met, internationally known author, speaker and venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki at the S.T.E.M. conference at Honolulu Community College. Well, let me back track we first virtually met on Twitter, and when I read that he was speaking at the conference I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet someone I follow.
If you get the impression that I looked at the opportunity as meeting someone from Twitter rather than meeting Guy Kawasaki, you’re right. I had no idea the enormity of his celebrity status in the tech world, and being a lifelong PC user and from the Punahou family; our worlds seemed polar opposites.
Both Guy and I will be guests on the next Bytemarks Cafe show this Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. Hawai’i Standard Time to talk about Alltop as well as Guy’s upcoming book “Reality Check.” I’ll also share how my path led to Guy’s and how he changed my world.
1. Truemors was your first Web2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site; what was the one challenge that you encountered and overcame that your experience and instinct didn’t expect?
I didn’t expect the bitter negativity and hostility of the TechCrunch readers. Those folks really need to move out of their mothers’ homes and start dating.
2. In past conversations you’ve described your work with your second project Alltop as one of the most fulfilling since leaving Apple talk about the moments that create these types of realizations.
The most satisfying topics are ones like Autism.alltop, ADHD.alltop, Adoption.alltop, and Moms.alltop. We help both the publishers to get some respect, attention, and positive feedback, and we help readers who are lost in a mass of 18,000,000 Google hits. It can’t get much more rewarding than this.
3. “Two guys and a gal in a garage” have been working together for many years, each in your respective roles according to your strengths. What’s the secret ingredient?
We each have very different roles and abilities. Will is the tech guy–but not a “floating in the heap” type of engineer. He’s good at UI and systems. Kathryn is the “adult supervision” that cleans up the deals and messes that I create. I am the mouth. Electric Pulp designed and created both Truemors and Alltop. Those guys are sensational at implementing ideas.
4. No, no, ni, and na; do they realize that you’re the Jackie Chan of the Tech Industry?
Nope, not at all. I am no more or less than simply “daddy.”
5. You registered 55 domains for Truemors, in retrospect would you apply some bootstrapping here or disappointed that you had missed some?
I registered too many. Really, the .com one is 90% of the action. What I did was overkill, but the order of magnitude of this mistake was $1,100. This is roughly one Herman Miller chair for a venture-capital funded Web 2.0 company.
6. Chapter 6 of your book “The Art of the Start” you talk about “The Art of Recruiting” and just before the official launch of Truemors you blogged Help Wanted. Talk about the process of finding your A players via an email?
One can get a sense of a person from email–at least when I’m right, I believe this. There are some emails that just stand out–you can tell the person knows his or her stuff. I’m white on rice when I see this.
7. In October 2007 you wrote “How Twitter Made My Website Better” could you have fathomed the usefulness of Twitter as it relates to your endeavors today?
No, not at all. I get more value out of Twitter than anyone in the world. From start to finish: topic suggestions, feeds, corrections, and announcements, Twitter plays a role in Alltop. Alltop would not be nearly what it is without Twitter.
8. Truemor has it that NowPublic purchased Truemors for $80K . Truth, rumor or dare?
Rumor.
9. It was 362 days from launching Truemors to being sold is the process similar to selling more tangible products like Macs?
No, not really. Selling something physical is very different from selling an “intellectual property.” They do share one quality: the “dream” of what a Macintosh or a site can do.
10. Has your journey with Truemors made you a more critical or empathetic VC?
Both. I’m empathetic about how hard it is to generate and sustain traffic. I’m more critical of entrepreneurs who tell me that they need a large marketing budget to succeed. I realize this sounds contradictory. Much of entrepreneurship is contradictory. There’s only what works and what doesn’t work. There’s no wrong or right.
Disclaimer: In case you didn’t know, I am the Chief Evangelist for Alltop.
The Green Girls are a real movement, “green girl power” if you will, and they’re stalking me. It’s a community worth getting involved with, and did I mention that they’re stalking me? They’re also stalking Guy Kawasaki, but I wonder if they realize they have to get past The Bloggess – why can’t I have that type of protection?
Today as I climbed the stairs to our home, my children yelled, “Neenz, you’ve got mail!” There was a small cardboard box wedged between the screen and front entry door. The other night, I had this discussion with my Daimyo, Guy Kawasaki:
To be honest, I really didn’t think much of it except that we had fun conversation, until I received this message. I admit I had an instant rush of euphoria, even though I had just purchased an iTouch. I carefully tore open the box, and I could have sworn I could smell apple sauce as I unpacked my brand spanking new iTouch 16GB – a gift from the kind souls of Nononina, Inc.
The type of person that I am, I offered to keep the 8GB and give Lilinoe the new one, until I saw the personal inscription of the Alltop kick ass badge.
My gratitude for Guy Kawasaki, Kathryn Henkens and Will Mayall run deep.
Since its launch in April, we’ve added a variety of sites to the Hawai’i category on Alltop or as I like to refer to it as the Hawai’i shelf on the “online magazine rack.”
To some, the path that led to my life today is inspiring, amazing, and a geek’s fairy tale if you will. In a kilobyte, in less than a year I went from checking my email daily and maybe reading the Honolulu Advertiser online, to being mentored by the internationally known author, speaker and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. For him I am grateful.
Just before the alpha launch of Alltop, as a Truemorist I was privy to view and scroll through the site. The first word that came to mind was clean, and it’s not because white is my favorite color or that I have an affinity for white t-shirts. But, it is such a clean, uncluttered site.
After the official launch, the owners of “all of the top sites” featured in the categories began asking for badges. [Insert quote from Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles, "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!]. Well, actually most of the requests came from the Moms category, so how can one say no to over 300 hundred Moms? You don’t, you design some really cool badges and add to the offering the “kick ass” humor of The Bloggess.
But, by having “all the top” sites by categories, we also need to have the top badges. So, without further delay I announce “The Alltop Badge Faceoff.”
Kamehameha Schools is sponsoring Kukulu Kaiaulu 2.0, their annual Educational Tech Conference focused on utilizing Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Chris Gilding of Kamehameha Schools approached me in the most Web 2.0 way – a direct message via Twitter and asked if I would be willing to talk about Alltop. I was humbled by the request, and after receiving the official approval from the master of speaking, Guy Kawasaki I agreed.
With the help of the Alltop team; I have a solid outline and most importantly a kick ass product! I’ll be honest, anxiety almost got the best of me, but the possibility of disappointing anyone including myself would be worse than any sort of fear that I felt.
One line from NBC’s hit television series Heroes “Save the cheerleader, save the world” catapulted actress Hayden Panettiere into “paparazzi person-of-interest” status. Her accomplishments thus far have not garnered her any industry awards (yet), but her humanitarian efforts to Save the Whales Again! did snag a warrant for her arrest in Japan.
Everyday the inbox for info@alltop.com is bulging with site recommendations for existing categories, suggestions for new categories, suggestions to improve the site and very rarely a report of a problem with Alltop.
One of the overwhelming suggestions or requests are for an individual RSS feed for each category. While that would be convenient for someone who understands feed readers and building one, it may become an inconvenience when you realize that the feed will have the last five posts from 50 different sites updated every 10-minutes. Quick math calculations would estimate that over 1,000 posts would be fed into your reader – every hour! For my readers whom are wondering what I’m talking about, no worries – you’re the target audience for Alltop.
Another suggestion, almost as popular as the one above is to be able to customize an Alltop category page. Seems ideal to the ‘net savvy, even the ones on MySpace but still the majority of the users on MySpace use a page builder to customize their space because learning HTML requires a bit of thinking and – it takes a lot time. And, time, (I am still looking for more of it, leave me a comment if you know where it is!) – saving it that is, is one of the highlights of Alltop. Browsing the shelves of the online magazine rack, scanning the titles, reading a lead into the post saves you time.
But, one could argue that it takes time to scroll and scroll through a category that features a lot of sites, and it would be a great argument with respect to time saving, until now. About a week ago, the minds of Electric Pulp added a very subtle feature that even the sharpest eye could have missed. Did you miss it too?
In every category, next to the title of each site is a very demur “x” which allows you to “hide” a site, displaying only your very favorites. Don’t worry, there’s a “restore all feeds” button at the top.
celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the official launch of Alltop, spending time with Guy Kawasaki, and most importantly meeting up and networking with the thousands of other attendees.
Even if I were not the Chief Evangelist for Alltop, I’d still share it’s value with my readers. The Alltop team is excited to announce the launch of Alltop Version 2.0. The minds at 
In exactly 18 days I will be landing in Las Vegas, Nevada to attend the 
Since its launch in April, we’ve added a variety of sites to the 
To some, the path that led to my life today is inspiring, amazing, and a geek’s fairy tale if you will. In a kilobyte, in less than a year I went from checking my email daily and maybe reading the Honolulu Advertiser online, to being mentored by the internationally known author, speaker and venture capitalist 
Just before the alpha launch of 
Kamehameha Schools is sponsoring 
One line from NBC’s hit television series 
Everyday the inbox for info@alltop.com is bulging with site recommendations for existing categories, suggestions for new categories, suggestions to improve the site and very rarely a report of a problem with 
