Archive for July, 2008

The headlines of which are in my RSS reader, which are certainly not reflective of the actual newsworthy headlines from today’s “reputable” news sources.  Any who, like I was saying; I have a bunch of random thoughts around some of the things I have read today, so I thought what better way to make sense of them than to get them down on paper (well, not actually paper, but that is how the saying goes right?).

In no particular order or with no known logical rationale, here are my thoughts:

• From Stuff White People Like - Unpaid internships.  This is something I should have considered while in college (unpaid internship that is), but oh that’s right, I could not go without making money since I was footing the bill myself (sound the violins now, poor me).
• From TechCrunch - Propeller 2.0 Launches.  First thought was actually who gives a shit, but upon actually reading the article, I found some humor in their new mascot.  Reminded me of the propeller heads from the 50’s (that would be the geeks of the time).  Other than that, eh.
• From Valleywag - Yang paves the way for ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller to join Yahoo board.  AOL ousts Miller less than two years ago because he was not the future for the company (although he did turn it around and got it on the path of being an ad based business).  Reported yesterday was the fact that their Q2 ad revenue was down to 1% growth.  You reap what you sow.  Looks like Yahoo recognizes him as someone who can make things happen and it seems like they are in desperate need of some help.
• From Mixx - Husband wins divorce from angry wife in YouTube video. HA HA, I just laughed.  Nothing like airing your dirty laundry for the whole world to see.
• From /Message (Stowe Boyd’s blog for those of you who were like WTF?) - Google Page Rank Patent Invalidated?  Could this be?  Could the mighty Google be in the wrong?  I thought their slogan (informal of course) was “don’t be evil”……. sounds kinda evil to me (if true of course).
• From Andrew Hyde - When a dinner is more than a dinner. How come I was not invited?  Oh, I see, because it was in San Fran and I am in DC right now.  OK, I forgive you, but next time I better get an invite .
• From Jessica Mah Meets World - It’s so easy to fake being good at biz dev that even my baby brother can do it.  Hold your horses now.  I am sure your brother is smart and all, but I am willing to bet he would not last 5 minutes on a biz dev call with a major partner.  I mean, lots of things are easy to fake, but if you are faking it, you will be called out on the carpet really quickly.  It is one thing to fake it, it is entirely something different to be good at it, and from my experiences, great biz dev folks are hard to come by (just like great engineers are hard to come by).

OK, enough random thoughts for the day (well at least enough that I am going to include in this post.  My head is constantly filled with random thoughts, but that is a subject for another time my friend).

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting post today on how to change someone’ s mind through the power of persuasion. It got me thinking, are there varying levels of persuasion, and do some people have them by virtue by who they are?

Take Guy for example. He is an accomplished author, speaker, venture capitalist. One could argue that he is a very influential individual at least in the technology industry, right? I tend to think so, and because of that, I was compelled to read this post, even though he did not have to do anything out of the ordinary to get me to read it. That is some pretty powerful persuasion. I asked myself, would I have read this post if it was writing by someone that I did not follow? I am not sure, perhaps I would have, but it would have taken a very compelling stance to get me to click on any links within the post.

So then, is it safe to say that the less influential you are in your respective industry the harder you have to work on your power of persuasion? Or is it your power of persuasion that has made you so influential in your respective industry? I know that there are people out there that have perhaps gained their influence somewhat undeservedly, and have a following of people that would believe whatever they say. So do these individuals really have that much power of persuasion, or are the people that follow them so blinded by their enamor of said individual that they cannot see the truth? I do not know, but it is an interesting study nonetheless.

So how is my power of persuasion? Did you click on the link to Guy’s post?