Posts from June 2006

I started hearing about podcasting in the fall of 2004 and started listening in early 2005.

It’s been almost 18 months into my personal experience with podcasting and I thought I’d return to the subject with some recent experiences and thoughts.

I went on a long bike ride this morning and decided to listen to podcasts. To be honest, I haven’t been listening to many podcasts recently. I have been really into a bunch of new music, most of which is on my "heavy rotation" list, and that has been taking up all my listening time.

I started with Mass Hysteria’s June 11th show. It’s been at least a month and a half since I caught up with my friends Paul and Janine, whom I’ve never met. But I feel like I know them and their kids well because I’ve listened to every show they’ve done since discovering Mass Hysteria in the spring of 2005. It was great to catch up with them and I was really touched by Charlotte’s wish for "freedom for everyone". I share her wish.

Paul and Janine always play great music and they ended with a song from a band I’ve not heard called Mogwai. I really dug it.

Then I put on Raj Bala’s Loudspeakers #24 from mid May.  Raj has been in India working on his startup and I believe he just got back in the US yesterday.  Welcome back Raj. I’ve also never met Raj but he is another really good friend I’ve met via podcasting and blogging. It was fun listening to a show he did in India while riding up the west side of Manhattan. That’s one of the many things that is so great about podcasting. It’s a flat world when it comes to podcasting. It doesn’t matter where the show is created, and where you listen to it.

In a complete coincidence, Raj started his show with a song from, you guessed it, Mogwai. This one is called Acid Food. I dug it too. So Mogwai’s Mr Beast is in our Amazon shopping cart as I post this.

These two podcasts made me realize that the Gotham Gal and I need to get back to podcasting on a regular basis. We’ve only done seven shows this year and haven’t done a music show since April. With the summer here and our kids at camp, I think we can get back on the program.

Last night, I read Bob Lefsetz’ XM Playlist post. What a great show he put on for XM. So I shot Bob an email asking him to make it available as a podcast. He shot back a reply within minutes saying:

I would, but can’t do it, rights issues!

That’s the funny thing about podcasts. Raj, Paul and Janine, and the Gotham Gal and I can and do podcast music for our friends and listeners. I don’t know about their podcasts, but ours has about 200-300 listeners on average. The RIAA isn’t coming after us, at least yet. But Bob can’t podcast because he’s a big name and they’d come after him. That sucks.

Because it doesnt’ matter if its Paul, Janine, and Raj turning me onto Mogwai or Bob turning me onto a Todd Rundgren record I’ve never heard, podcasting is like radio. It promotes music. And if you aren’t monetizing it with ads, then its not commercial and the music industry should let anyone do it without subjecting them to rights issues.

But we all know that the music industry and the rights holders and lawyers aren’t going to see these things right. They never have.

Parand made this comment to my I’m Not Notable post from yesterday.

Fred, are you protesting the that you are notable enough to be
included but were unfairly excluded, that the notoriety standard is
applied inconsistently and cluelessly, or that wikipedia should lower
its standard to include less notable people?

Or simply shedding light on Wikipedia’s process? I had the
impression you were interested in exploring the inner workings and
edges of the process. Perhaps this post is not a protest after all, but
simply a statement of fact.

(It was hard to resist making a snide comment about VC egos on this one, but I managed it)

Posted by: Parand | Jun 20, 2006 10:28:40 PM

Good question Parand. I was mostly shedding light on the process. If I am not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia, so be it. But I do think that the one Fred Wilson they include is hardly notable, particularly when compared to the artist, the chessmaster, the rockband, and me (probably in that order).

I’ve been getting some suggestions for cliches via email and I am going to start using them every now and then. We’ll start with one sent in from a guy I’ve known since college who is also in the VC business. He told me about being in a meeting and blurting out "that vacation didn’t match the brochure".

I smiled when I saw that email because I know the feeling. You go for something; a hire, a partnership, or a new investment, based on a certain set of facts and promises. And then it doesn’t work out. You feel like you were sold a bill of goods. But when the vacation doesn’t match the brochure, you only have yourself to blame. It means you didn’t do your homework.

My wife (nineteen years yesterday!), the Gotham Gal, does all of our vacation planning. She looks at the fancy websites, but then she does blog searches, talks to people who have been there. She does her "diligence". It’s a ton of work, but it pays off because we have never gone on a vacation that didn’t match the brochure.

The same approach has to be used if you are in business. If you are a VC, you don’t need to read the business plan (the brochure) cover to cover, but you do need to do your diligence. If you an entrepreneur making a key hire, you don’t need to spend a ton of time on the resume and prepared references. Even the interviews will only tell you so much. You need to pick up the phone and talk to people who’ve worked with and for the person in question to truly get a feel for them.

The bottom line is you can’t rely on the brochure in whatever form it may take. Because if you do, the vacation will surely not live up to it.

All the talk will about Dwyane Wade and it should be. NBA Finals MVP at age 24. The first of that amazing draft of 2003 to get a ring. He’s the player who made the shots in crunch time and the Heat could not have won it without him.

But the guy I am pumped about is Alonzo Mourning, the best defensive player in the league for so many years, who refused to let kidney disease stop his quest for a ring. And unlike his friend Patrick Ewing (my all-time favorite NBA player), Zo got his ring.

And as this piece by John Hollinger explains, Miami may not have won last night without some huge plays by Zo that got them back in the game and kept them there.

Way to go Zo and the entire Miami team. I knew they could do it.

We (Josh and me and some friends) saw Bruce’s Seeger Sessions show last night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

It’s quite a show. Very fun. Josh was dancing with his hands above his head all night long and so was I.

Bruce had a 13 piece band and three backup singers.  Tuba, Accordian, Banjo, Standup Bass, Pedal Steel, two fiddles, trombone, trumpet, sax. And a host of other instruments came out.

If you like bluegrass, folk, gospel, cajun, or any other form of roots american music, you really must see this show. It’s a rompin’ stompin’ good time. I am going again with the Gotham Gal on thursday night at Madison Square Garden and I can’t wait.

Don’t go searching for the Wikipedia page on Fred Wilson the venture capitalist (ie me) because it won’t be there. It was deleted for "non notability".

You’ll find a guy named Fred Wilson who was a politician in Ontario Canada briefly from 1990 to 1995. But you won’t find Fred Wilson, the well known artist. Or Fred Wilson, the rock band from LA. Or Fred Wilson, the chessmaster. Or me.

It was a good entry, but now it’s gone.

I am taking a couple days off in the mountains upsate with Josh and some friends

Don’t know how much blogging and email I’ll get to, but we are having fun

As I posted last week, M Ward’s new record, Post-War, which comes out in mid August, is terrific.

This song from Post-War, Requeim, reminds me of my friend Steve’s father Irv who passed away earlier this month.

Requiem

I was talking to my dad yesterday morning, father’s day, and he brought up a the subject of bullies, specifically me getting bullied during high school. Blogging is the reason the subject came up at all.

You see, my brother got an email via his blog from a person that used to live in the same town as us in high school. He replied to the email and the original sender dropped a bunch of names.

My brother sent that second email around to my family to see if we knew any of them. One of them was a guy who had the locker next to me in high school and as my brother put it, "was unkind to me". I saw his name and shot some sort of strong worded email back to everyone on who was copied (all four of five of us).

My mom replied and asked what prompted such a response. I sent her the following email:

He had the locker next to me for 4 years in high school

He loved to taunt me, hit me, and generally make me feel bad which he accomplished on a regular basis

So that email has been bothering my folks for the past week. They never knew about this situation because I never told them. I never told my brothers either. It was my thing, I dealt with it as best I could. That’s the way I always did things back then.

My Dad told me yesterday, father’s day, that he was sorry that he didn’t know and didn’t help me. We talked about it for a bit and I assured him that it wasn’t something he should feel bad about.

I’ve been in the same boat as a parent. Last summer at camp, Josh got pushed around by another kid in his bunk. When we came up for visiting day, we found out and it really made me upset (maybe because of my own experiences). But we didn’t do anything about it other than coach him on how to handle it. To Josh’s credit, he got the kids on his bunk on his side and they ostracized the bully. I wish I could have pulled that off in high school but I couldn’t.

There’s a postcript to this story. My brother got an email from the very guy who caused me problems in high school and he asked to be remembered to me. My brother, always the comic, replied:

… So, if you aren’t interested in beating Fred up, I’d be happy to send him your regards.

And the guy replied back that "he understands my memory" of him. He’s with the marines in Alaska now. And I’ve got nothing against him anymore. Time passes, we all grow up, and move on.