Thanks, Greg, for pointing me to this post from Murthy Nukala, CEO of Adchemy, about company values. Murthy is one of the savvier minds in online advertising, and I always enjoy immensely our conversations. Building a company is about so much more than just getting the products right or even getting the smartest people on board, it’s about motivation, culture and being able to really act and think like a team without falling into the “groupthink” trap. There are many examples out there of getting it horribly wrong, or getting it right and then letting it fall apart. Taking some time to think about what your personal and professional values are is well worth it. In my opinion, weaving those into the framework of the organization you are building is essential.

Some people I’ve chatted to already know about this, but in two weeks I’ll be leaving Consorte Media to start my own company. It was a very difficult decision since I love (and have helped build) the Consorte team, and the company is executing well and continuing to build a great deal of value. It’s ultimately the right decision for me, though. I will remain as an advisor to the firm, providing assistance whenever I can. I am and have always been an entrepreneur, and while my roles over the past several years have had an increasingly entrepreneurial flavor to them, I need to be out starting something totally from scratch with my own vision. I’ll be reaching out to a lot of people over the coming months to share ideas and bounce things around, might blog a bit more than before and will probably take a couple of consulting gigs here and there while I get things spun up.

Keep in touch with me via LinkedIn or Facebook — and I’ll share news of the New Thing when I can here.

Voicemail systems suck. If you are calling someone at a different company, never ever leave a business voicemail without also sending an email. It just makes sense. Also always leave your phone number in the voicemail even if you think they have it. Likewise you should put your phone number in your email… especially notice if you are replying without your normal signature file.

Well I started working again last week but this is the first full week I’m back from a wonderful vacation (from the picture below yes- we went to Mexico and it was great!) and of course ironically I’ve been working on Martin Luther King, Jr. day here in the US which is a public holiday but for which many companies don’t give their workers the day off — I of course am one of those unsympathetic bosses!

I don’t know about predictions for 2007 - it seems to be an obvious way to start off the blog in the New Year but I used to be in the predictions business and would rather talk about some themes I think we’ll see for this year, and perhaps I’ll also throw in some personal themes. But if you are interested in a good thread on this, check out Reid Hoffman’s version of this question on the new LinkedIn Answers. The LA feature is fun, though it needs a few tweaks including being able to search for questions and answers… but hey that’s Web 2.0 right? Throw it up there and see how it goes (funny it doesn’t have a “beta” sticker on it thank goodness).

Here are my themes, buckets that I’ll be looking for things to fall into this year, some are very specific and some are more general and they certainly interact with one another:

• Consumer-friendly lead generation: Less bait-and-switch, more real value being provided, better contextual qualification of direct marketing/advertising prospects

• Video “and one”: You’ve seen the video, but what’s the one other thing (at least) that makes this video or this site more than just a video on a website?
• Health, fitness and wellness: Trend has been understated online, I’m looking to see where we start seeing more of this happening online
• The New Company: Smart talented people and entrepreneurs evollving more flexible working arrangements, new concepts of how corporations and people interact with one another at various levels
• Right-sourcing: Related to the above; people get smarter about what teams work on what from where and when. A bit of an outsourcing backlash since it’s not all roses out there.
• Instant Markets: Advertising, gaming, lead generation, the lunch line, your company’s options, whatever — new markets that may have a very short lifespan indeed
• The Short Loop: Online consumer-fuelled backlashes that threaten the established order. What I believe will be the acceleration of an incredible trend that is 10 years in the making and which will change everything we take for granted.

From the NY Times, about envy in Silicon Valley. Yes, it is like that very often here in the Valley, just as it is with investment bankers and traders in New York when they figure out their bonuses. The difference here is the risk and timing dynamics, because after all, being a banker in New York is a much more risk-averse vocation with lots of hours and work but a pretty narrow (high) range of compensation. But it’s all about those around you — happiness is relative, which is an inevitable but unfortunate state of affairs sometimes to be sure.

Conference calls are a daily part of business life for most of us these days (both intercompany and intracompany calls), as is the abundant use of email (both regular and the blackberry-ized versions) and the attendant consequences. The problems with conveying the correct tone in an email is often discussed with a great summary of some recent research here.

…e-mailers might inevitably “hear” the tone they intend their e-mail to convey, while forgetting that receivers don’t have access to that extra information.

So yes, pick up the phone and actually talk through the issue if there is any emotional content involved and for many businesspeople, when it comes to comments about their work or ideas, it can certainly get emotional. Other issues that I think are under-discussed are the dynamics of what one might call a “split-group” meeting. When a set of people or the majority are in one location, with other people joining by phone, the phone attendees are at a distinct disadvantage. Not only is it difficult or impossible to see or use body language when you are remote, but the remote persons also have a difficult time knowing when they can speak or when they should stop speaking if someone in the room wants to make a comment. What is helpful sometimes is, if this is a regular type of meeting and for some reason there some of these folks are visiting or vice versa the regular in-person attendees are traveling, making them call in separately can be a good way to experience some of the issues first-hand.

Effectively managing regular calls like these is hard — things like not speaking loud enough or close enough to the microphone are common — and so it takes some real effort to get them to be effective. It also requires employees to have a large degree of trust in one another - remote employees may come across as crabby or different because any contentious comments they make often come “unmodulated” by any body language and may be done in an interruptive way. The remote folks are at a disadvantage and some TLC is required to get things to run smoothely.

Email of course is something about which reams and reams can be written, but I enjoyed this story a friend told me and I found the article on CNN. Often responding to emails with more emails that “CYA” or add little value to the conversation is a big time waster in many organizations. John Caudwell, the wealthy owner of UK-based Phones 4u banned email at the company. “The quality and efficiency of communication have been increased tremendously in one fell swoop — things are getting done and people aren’t tied to their PCs.” Worth considering perhaps?

Thanks to Jared (Online Travel Review) for this one: Northwest Airlines telling its workers to dive into the trash to find things they might like to use, and other helpful tips for saving money and “preparing for a financial setback”. Yikes, sometimes you can be a little too helpful, you know?

Saw this article about Google’s office/workspace redesign (via Niall Kennedy) and found it fascinating. Not only the insight it provides into their storied corporate culture but also emphasizing how important conditions in the work environment can be — considering you spend 8-12 hours a day there, five days a week at least. Even small things can make a big difference. Like where team members sit in relation to one another, what happens when a new person arrives (rearrange everyone, or put the new person where they can fit…. tempting to do the latter unfortunately but might be a mistake). I’d say give it a few extra beats before deciding.

My colleague Josh Reich has started blogging with a post about spot lead pricing. Welcome to the world of whacky blog posts and scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours-linking (hint hint). Since I just changed my blog around nobody links to me yet, which is too bad. Also, this change of timezones thing has me all messed around right now so I’m not writing coherently it must be said. Anyhow, I don’t think that Josh’s current address of “http://jdigittl.blogspot.com/” is as catchy as it could be, so I’m thinking we should help him get himself a URL he can own and direct to his blog. Are there any suggestions? I think Josh is from Melbourne, Australia and last I checked melbournesuperstar.com is still available. We should all put our heads together and help Josh come up with a name. Then read his blog; I’m guessing with how busy he is, he won’t blog *that* often but when he does, it will be well worth reading!

A long week has come to an end (kind of). I spent some time here at the Inman News “SF Connect” show (the theme: “Is Real Estate Ready for Honesty?” - a question to ponder indeed!), mostly networking and having meetings with companies we have/will/want to do deals with. It was a productive event - not least of which (and part of the tiring bit) is that at the Palace hotel, it is a 5 minute walk from Root Markets’ San Francisco offices.

It always strikes me just how small and relatively tightly-knit the online marketing and advertising community is. There really are just one or two degrees of separation between everyone and they are generally a fairly cordial bunch.