Me on Stage at a Strip Club. (Sadly, I'm Serious)

Here's some clips from my London book launch event, which in Robert Loch's infinite politically correct wisdom was held at the second oldest strip club in London. It sounds shadier than it was. It was actually an amazing venue and the proper business-y crowd and Fidelity Ventures sponsorship poshed it up more than my Minnie Mouse hairbow ever could have. If you've heard me speak, you've probably heard half of this before. If not, enjoy! Thanks again to Loch, Washy and Carr for an amazing event. Let's do, say, Germany next?

Um, Do You Know What Business We're In?

So, I better write this post now because after tomorrow it might violate David Hornik's sacrosanct "What Happens at the Lobby Stays at the Lobby" rule. Some people-- cough, cough ValleyWag-- take that rule to mean the Lobby is about partying and the attendees don't want that to get out. In actuality, the Lobby is about business and the attendees don't want THAT to get out. "Who's shameless enough to go to the Lobby this year?" Hmm... off hand, I'd say people doing their jobs.

Bad News for the Valley and Media (Ok, Worse News)

Henry Blodget has a frightening-- but I think right on-- post about display advertising online. His take: Wake up! It's going down. Why? The economy, yes. But more important, I don't think display advertising has yet managed to make itself an indispensable part of the ad mix the way paid search has.

There's a debate subtly raging about whether we've really nailed display advertising on the Web to date. Some people, Henry included, say "Duh, it works." But "it works" isn't the same thing as having nailed a new and unique method of advertising consummate with the uniqueness of content and audience on the Web. Online should be something different, the same way print publications should be doing more than just putting the same words on a digital page. Floating ads? Pop-up? Pop-unders? Roll overs? Isn't it all just a quick gimmick until we find ways to block it? I can't remember a time I clicked on a banner ad and those automatically loading video and audio ads just enrage me to the point I don't have a positive brand-association.

Anecdotally, I keep hearing about no-brainer opportunities for brand advertising online to unique, highly desirable, mass demographics that are not selling. Not even at comparatively cheap rates! (It's all been off the record, so I can't cite examples. It's off the record for obvious reasons as blabbing about it doesn't exactly help the selling process.) This says one of three things to me:

• There is a lack of qualified ad sales people working in the online space
• Advertisers don't yet value this market
• To quote LOLcats: UR DOING IT WRONG INTERNETZ!

Yes, I realize display advertising is a multi-billion industry and it's sustained sites like Yahoo-- my part-time employer-- not to mention offered a new revenue stream for dying print media (albeit an apparently anemic one). But if you consider the demographics and time spent on a lot of these sites there's clearly money being left on the table.

It's not too crazy to draw an analogy to Facebook's situation. (Bear with me, here.) Facebook is generating hundreds of millions in revenue this year. Clearly Facebook has ad inventory people want. But Facebook considers itself in the first inning of figuring out a must-have revenue answer for its unique inventory.

In short, for years now proponents of display advertising have been saying-- and blindly believing-- it's all growth until the percentage of time spent online catches up to the percentage of the ad budget spent online. Maybe we need to assume there's a deeper problem and the hungry company that wants to survive needs to work harder to fix it.

October Is "Sarah Is a Sucky Blogger Month"

OK, here's the thing. I have about five or six things per day I want to blog about. I have never, ever sat down and thought, "I really want to blog, but what about?" I keep a running list of posts I want to write everyday. So why don't I write six posts a day? Little things called time, husband, sleep, Yahoo and BusinessWeek.

Lately, I've even gotten a few emails from readers asking me to blog about certain topics. That hurts about as much as when I came back from the September leg of my book tour and my poor cat, Mr. Vinnie (pictured here), greeted me with a bald spot on his back. (He'd started to rip out his fur from loneliness. It's grown back since, with much petting and about a bag of Greenies.)

I hate to tell you, but October isn't going to be much better. Last week, I felt like anything I had to say just paled in comparison to the urgency of the election and the crisis of the stock market. It all felt so trivial. This week--and going forward--I have a better excuse. I am writing again. For reals. None of this quippy blog post, video script writing. Chapter writing, bitches!

Once You're Lucy, Twice You're Good is not only debuting in the UK in November under the far more commercial-- and yet equally long-- title, The Stories of Facebook, YouTube and MySpace: The People, the Hype and the Deals Behind the Giants of Web 2.0. (Londoners: Come party with me and buy a signed copy!) But the paperback of the good old U.S. version hits in March 2009. That means a new chapter. A new chapter due, ahem, October 31.

Now, normally I am very deadline-oriented. I'm one of those few dorky authors who actually turned her book in early. But that was when all I was doing was the book. This time, I'm having to squeeze in intensive reporting and writing around an already crammed schedule. Yesterday, that meant a work day that spanned 5 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. and another 5 a.m. wake up today. Since I can't actually mint more hours in the day, this means I won't be able to blog as much as I'd like for the next few weeks.

But here's the good news: I really, really love book writing. I've always described the year I wrote OYLYG as the best year of my life, but really forgot the rush that came along with it until yesterday. Spending hours in deep, substantive conversation with entrepreneurs, seeing the chronology and scenes arrange themselves in my head as they spoke, witnessing the common threads and themes leap out in front of me, and of course, the sleepless night of sentences and paragraphs and structure working itself out in my half-awake dreams like some sort of alternate personality that won't shut up. As I told my husband, I've enjoyed sleeping over the past year, but the intensity? Well, I didn't realize how much I missed that until yesterday.

So even though I'm not quite sure how I'm going to find time to get this chapter done, (on the plane to Kona or on the beach at the Lobby might be necessary options!) I'm thrilled to be writing it and I think conceptually it completes the book in a very profound way. This is what I'm good at. Everything else, I'm just pretending.

(BTW: Yes, book two is in the works. More news when I have it. Meantime, wish me luck...)

Um, Gym Time Anyone?

I went on Flickr to find a picture of me giving a keynote for the speaker tab I'm about to add to the blog. (Yes, having conquered all that keynote angst, I am for hire!) Apparently, I've never searched my name on Flickr and was stunned to see so many pictures from the book tour that I'd never seen. It was actually a nice walk down memory lane. We're so nostalgic, Olivia is going to pull a few for a post later today.

I also came across this one by Thomas Hawk and suddenly, viscerally remembered how much MORE I worked and stressed out when I was on staff at BusinessWeek. This was right after my Digg cover that sucked up six grueling months of my life--including weekends and evenings-- and almost didn't even run. When it did run, it was my first big controversy, and I had no idea how to handle it. All I wanted to do was hide under a bed. It was just before the book deal that changed my life. It was a period when I wasn't eating (clearly!) or sleeping and actually started running to stay sane. I was barely in my 30s, depressed about the state of magazines and trying to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of my career. I honestly didn't know if I could even be a reporter still and be happy or if all those jobs were just gone.

It reminded me of Jason's now much written about (and somewhat mocked) Startup Depression post. This was my period where my ass was getting kicked-- the point when it was, as he says and the awful cliche goes, darkest before the dawn. It was the time I could have just given up and, I don't know, gone into PR or had some babies. (Stop laughing, Olivia.) There was no way for me to know how much my life would change in just two years. I should remember this time every time I feel overworked, because I'm really amazingly lucky. (Or maybe good...? Groan, sorry.) I don't know many reporters who have as great of a life as I do right now.

Also, um, I know it's a wide angle lens and an artsy shot, but I don't remember ever being that skinny!
I'm going to the gym now. (Such a girl, I know.) After the gym, less sap. Really.

More Evidence Our Educational System Is Killing Tech

Recently I did a reading at Google and had lunch with one of the guys who helps recruit college kids to Google. Given the general Google mania among investors, users and Valley folks who hear the lore of the free lobster dinners and massage chairs, I would have assumed his job consisted of saying, "Hey, young genius, want to come work at Google?"

Apparently, it's a good deal harder than that. It seems a whole mini-generation of smart would-be engineers read all those business stories about their jobs being outsourced wholesale to India and pursued other careers. Bill Gates weighed in on this in front of congress earlier this year, too, in his argument for more H1-B visas and was asked by a numskull senator if this was really about taking more high-wage jobs from Americans. I was listening to the hearing on NPR, but even over the radio you could almost hear Gates's disdain for the ignorant question. After all, PhD level engineers are hardly equivalent to migrant workers. He calmly replied that Microsoft wasn't trying to hire foreign engineers on the cheap, these were six figure jobs that Microsoft physically couldn't find enough Americans with the requisite education to hire.

That's bad enough for innovation, tech and the Valley and has been a hot button issue for many local CEOs. But in a recent interview with Tom Foremski, entrepreneur Judy Estrin points out a surprising double whammy in the education system's de-valuing of more artistic and creative endeavors via No Child Left Behind. This may seem like a crazy leap, so bear with me.

Tech is a broad category, but as I've argued before so much of consumer Web innovation (and maybe mobile too, with easy to use platforms like the iPhone) isn't really so techy anymore. There's a very strong creative element to it, building on top of a pretty standard hardware and software stack, with increasingly easy-to-design tools. The best "visionaries" of the Web today are people who appreciate design, usability, name, brand and marketing. Marketing in that grassroots sense, not slimy business sense, but still, its marketing. So what happens to the future of the US tech economy if colleges aren't producing enough computer scientists and elementary and highschools aren't training people to think creatively? It's not good.

The clip is below; her point on this is towards the end. (Thanks to Jeff Slobotski for sending me the link!)

Is this the Recession's Other Shoe?

As I say in the video below, there's an uneasy feeling in much of the Valley these days. We're watching the economy crater all around us, but....well, we're not really seeing any direct impact. Just like watching a pitcher throw a no-hitter, I almost feel like I should whisper that.

Most everyone I know is making more money than they did last year. I only have one friend who has reported a substantial drop in his home price. And the only few people I know who've lost their jobs are journalists-- and that has little to do with the economy, and everything to do with a general industry's ineptitude. Sure we pay sky-high oil prices, but people seem to get around that by biking, taking the train, carpooling and of course driving hybrids. Making things more uneasy for those here in 2000: We didn't cause this one.

It's actually made my challenge at TechTicker harder, because we're supposed to be covering tech from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. On Wall Street, the "tech story" is the same story as every other market story: FINANCIAL MARKET ROLLER COASTER! But in the Valley, people only tangentially seem to care. This has left everyone wondering if we're truly getting a pass on this downturn or if there's a another shoe out there to drop.

Leave it to the new Mr. Sunshine, Paul Kedrosky, to find that shoe. Henry Blodget used to be called Mr. Sunshine around the Tech Ticker offices for his general bearishness of tech stocks earlier in the year, but Paul easily stole that title a few weeks ago in a hotly debated segment on whether falling oil prices are as bad for the economy as rising oil prices. (I agree with his point, btw. And come to think of it, that's one that hurts the Valley too, although more tangentially.)

Kedrosky is back today to argue why a strong dollar is bad for the economy, and it -- finally and unfortunately-- comes back to tech. Tech gets about 55% of its revenue from international sales and that is where a lot of the growth is for the large, publicly traded Valley companies. You know: The ones that would actually greatly affect our local economy if they stumbled, unlike the more written about Web 2.0 upstarts. Watch the video for his full point:

Plagiarism Isn't a Word You Throw Around

I've mostly tried to stay out of the whole Demo v. TechCrunch50 feud. I have friends on both sides and I think both events have done a lot for startups. But Demo needs to publicly weigh in on this immediately. I think anyone who knows Jason knows he wouldn't outright plagiarize something on a topic like this. Even people who loathe Calacanis will tell you he's a shrewd business man, and you'd have to be a dolt to truly lift almost every word from a piece. Other detractors will tell you Jason is an egomaniac. Would an egomaniac take thoughts from what he deems a lesser conference? No, he'd assume he had something better to say.

I happen to think -- behind his occasional performance art-like obnoxiousness-- Jason is a good person too. He and Michael Arrington genuinely want to help entrepreneurs and that's what TC50 is about, fireworks about taking down Demo aside.

The real egomaniac here appears to be Deb McAlister. I don't know her, but it's awfully haughty to think you're the only person who could have come up with things like "Show your product in the first 60 seconds." Not to take anything away from Jason or, I'm assuming Deb as I haven't seen the article she wrote, because these are great tips for an entrepreneur. But anyone who's had to sit through a large number of startup pitches would probably tell you some variation on a lot of this. It's hardly patentable material.

I recently heard Charlene Li speak at a Girls in Tech author chat and a lot of the advice she has for companies in monetizing Web 2.0 is very similar to what I've been saying in interviews and speaking gigs. I don't think either of us would shriek plagiarism, because some of it is just common sense if you've spent a lot of time on social media sites. You see what works and what doesn't. Also because Charlene and I are friends, and both genuinely want to help companies get better at this. Does it matter which one of us they hear it from? Not to me. We both had Web 2.0 books come out within a month of each other. I'll be the first to admit Charlene's is selling better than mine, and I couldn't be more happy for her. If you're truly coming from the point of view of doing something you believe in, (ie- helping entrepreneurs) these things aren't zero sum.

I think TechCrunch is right to demand an apology or the article. You don't toss out an accusation like this and then go radio silent. Even if the Demo side thinks the TC50 camp has been cutthroat in this feud before, now would be the time to take the high road.

YouNoodle Makes Me Feel Much Better about My Finances

Here at SarahLacy.com you could say we're investing in the growth of the business. Think the User Generated Book Tour makes money? HA! My credit cards are wheezing from overuse. And the very talented Olivia certainly isn't volunteering, nor should she be. Combined with a new mortgage and an upcoming $10,000 electrician bill, Mr. Lacy is getting a little antsy about all the money flowing out of our accounts. YouNoodle just made me feel a whole lot better.

The new startup boasts an algorithm that crunches all kinds of data to tell you what your company will be worth in three years. SarahLacy.com will be worth...click for it....

Facebook Shares! Get Your Red Hot Facebook Shares!

I wasn't planning to write about the story sweeping the tech blogosphere about Facebook reportedly allowing employees to sell shares, mostly because I thought others covered it well, and as Peter Kafka points out, we're talking about a small amount of money and a small amount of equity.

But I wound up doing a tech roundup post for TechTicker today and started to get into it, so I figured I'd post some thoughts here too. If you know my writing, you're probably not surprised that it's the larger cultural ramifications of the move that concern me.