One of the biggest issue that every entrepreneur must face is dealing with the “down” times… times when something (possibly) negative has happened, that distracts him/her from the key objective that they were focused on, to dealing with the unexpected. The recent Tech Ranch Move, which was unexpected, is exactly that. Yes, we had a [...]

This is Kevin- I am doing ok. By now, you might have heard that I was attacked on Friday night. All is good. I was able to walk to the emergency room after the attack, and for the most part I have been in really good spirits since. The attack was senseless, and I don’t [...]

Its interesting to see how knowledge from our past experience prepares us for the future.  Over a year ago I wrote about a complementary currency system coming together to create greater opportunity between entrepreneurs. I never envisioned at the time of that writing that the economic conditions might just present themselves where such a system [...]

There are two important events happening in the Austin startup ecosystem this week and next: Austin Business District’s Open4Business Conference- November 11- with five high impact tracks including Sales & Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Business Law, Sustainability UT Austin’s Ready to Commercialize event November 17th and 18th- reviewing technologies that are coming out of the [...]

Lawrence Lessig has produced an informative, short video in which he compares McCain’s and Obama’s technology policy. In the spirit of full disclosure- historically I have not made any political statements on this blog, but this year for the first time I have actively gotten into supporting the Obama Campaign, including being a State of [...]

As I have been writing a section of my book over the last few days, I thought that the following insight was too valuable to hold for the book… and wanted to share it here with an immediate wider audience. The Four Conceptual Shifts that social networks are bringing are going to have profound effects [...]

Tuesday’s blog post has created a number of questions around Austin saying essentially “O.K., but how are loosely organized workers going to replace and compete with companies like Dell? Can hundreds of I-build/support-PCs-in-my-bedroom companies make it in Austin? What other things are these people going to do?” This is a good question, and there is [...]

Today’s news in Austin bemoans the restructuring of the American economy… The following clipping from today’s Austin American Statesman tries to put a happy face on a cold hard fact: 900 people just lost their jobs at Dell. Furthermore, I have heard an early rumor that more jobs are being cut today across a number [...]

We will be holding an Entrepreneur Town Hall Meeting in Austin on March 3rd at 6 pm as part of RiseAustin‘s entrepreneurship week. More details can be found about the event at this link. To take advantage of the conceptual shifts that I have written about my forthcoming book, a number of Austin entrepreneur support [...]

Recently there has been a bunch of press about the growing threat of recession coming to the US.  Today’s front page article of the New York Times tells a story that all of us as entrepreneurs need to start preparing for called “As Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit, Growth at Risk“ From the article there [...]

Today is Blog Action Day- where thousands of bloggers unite in blitzing green tips across the Internet. What is happening is a small group of bloggers have started a veritable movement of social action asking the question What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day? Today’s issue: [...]

The following is an email that I sent out to a number of friends and collegues, some of whom I know through Bootstrap Austin’s Web Group.  Given that there are a number of people that I would like input on this, (many that are not in Austin, much less not in the web group) I [...]

As many of you know I am in the process of writing a book- a field manual of how social networks can be used to facilitate getting real work done, with my personal focus being about how to support fields of entrepreneurs build their businesses together. Well… the great thing from having y’all help me [...]

In memory of September 11, I thought I would share some quotes about making peace.  These were assembled together in a book called The Right Moment p. 146.  It just did not seem like I could let this day pass without doing some small token gesture.  If you have other quotes to share about peace, [...]

Lest there be any question about the potential power of the Internet, the One Laptop Per Child Project , and the work that we are doing coordinating entrepreneurs through Enterprise Teaming, see this video. At 14 years old, Malawian inventor WIlliam Kamkwamba built an electrical generator out of some wood, plastic pipe, wire, and a [...]

My friend and colleague Leonardo Maldonado recently pointed out a great problem in the way that most of the social networking websites look at connections among people online. I believe that Leonardo sees this as a viewpoint from the USA, and after my travels, I can understand why. Leonardo says: No somos Gringos!!!! (“We aren’t [...]

Out of the research that I have previously done on different economic development models, one of my favorite comes from the Sirolli Institute. In fact, as I have talked with some of you about- the notion of building an Aikido style network of entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs, part of my grounding in these ideas came from [...]