Jackson Miller

Oops. I let this site crash as a result of a hard drive on my co-located server.

This raised the question, did I want to keep jaxn.org anymore?

After contemplating it for a week or two (i.e. procrastinating), I decided that I did want to keep this site. I moved it to Media Temple and used their SiteMover service to restore from an old backup that I had laying around. I mean, where else on the internet can people try to sell their worthless ideas or share their fear of the grim reaper.

So, now that I have committed to keep this site going, I should probably write more

Things have gotten so bad that I have to admit defeat and start over completely from scratch.

Somehow in the course of running the Snow Leopard betas and then Snow Leopard followed by the Lion betas and then Lion, my computer has become incredibly inefficient and almost unusable. (The developer betas of mobile platforms doesn’t help either)
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I have an idea I would like to throw out there. I think it would be a fun side-project or StartupWeekend project. Granted, it is a feature, not a product (and definitely not a company), but I think there are some verticals that would find it very useful.

IndexCloud Elevator Pitch:
IndexCloud scans a piece of content (say, a semester’s worth of chapters in a text book) and identifies the key topics (not just words). It then creates a clickable “tag cloud” of the topics. When a user clicks on a topic, IndexCloud presents them with links and passages to that topic in the content. IndexCloud would be used by students studying for exams or doing research, publishers looking to give readers a new way to explore their publication (think magazine issues on a tablet), and even large corporations doing analysis on their customer service interactions.

The dotcom is owned by a squatter.

I am not doing any side projects since all my time goes to Bizen, but I think this would be a fun one and I would love to see someone do it.

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a “conference person”.

My first couple of salaried jobs were organizing national conferences. There is a certain conference euphoria that tends to surround these events. Now I typically avoid conferences and their bubbles.

I say that to express that I do not take the decision to attend a conference lightly. Especially when it costs me a few thousand dollars. (Yes I do enjoy presenting and participating on panels. Yes I see that as a contradiction.)

So why did I decide to come to Defrag this year? Two reasons:

1. The topics are highly relevant to what I am doing with Bizen. (Big data, analytics, business intelligence, social media, semantic web, etc)
2. There is no bull shit

As you might be able to guess, #2 is the bigger deciding factor for me. How did I know that before attending? I attended Gluecon (organized by the same team) as a presenter.

I went to Defrag to learn. I wanted to learn from people who know way more about my areas of expertise than I do.

What I found is that the presenters are not only ridiculously smart and insightful, they are also really good an displaying and sharing information. It is like a firehose of big ideas straight into my brain. Like, really big ideas.

It is going to take me a while to process all of this information, and I know that what I have heard at Defrag this week will influence my ideas for the next couple of years.  I didn’t gain new customers for Bizen (though I did meet someone who was already following the progress). I didn’t meet a ton of people; that is not why I was here.

Nice work Kim and Eric Norlin!

Wow.

I expected this book to be good. I expected Brad Feld and David Cohen to pack a ton of insights into a book. What I didn’t expect is that those insights would come in the form of stories from entrepreneurs. It makes total sense considering that Tech Stars is about mentors, not professors.

Do More Faster is organized into topic (they call them themes) like Idea and Vision, Execution, Fundraising, Legal, etc.  Each theme has around 15 stories / anecdotes / lessons. Most of the lessons seem to be from founders of TechStars companies (or from Brad Feld or David Cohen, the founders of TechStars itself).  I devoured the sections on Execution and Fundraising. I am sure there will be times when I go back and review the lessons on Legal or People. It would probably do me good to read the section on Work Life Balance at least once a month :-/

I am sure part of my love for this book has to do with where I am right now with Bizen. Though it might be the kind of book that has something for you no matter where you are in the process (at least for tech entrepreneurs).

The bottom line is, if you are a tech entrepreneur read this book. You might want to do it fast so you don’t have to hear me drone on about it the next time I see you.

I have felt for some time that the “geek” culture of our generation is similar to the hippie culture of the 1960s.

The “rockstars” today are the geeks. People who make geeky things are the leaders of culture. Startup founders are on the cover of magazines. Designers are the trendsetters in their communities. iPhone developers are the acid dealers who are changing everyone’s perception of reality. The older generation (Dave Winer et al) are like Muddy Waters – the root of where elements of the popular culture came from, but not recognized as a part of the culture.

The epicenter of the 1960s subculture was obviously Haight-Ashbury. In 1967 there was a big parade in Haight-Ashbury to mark the “death of hippie”. It was an acknowledgement that something had changed – the purity was gone.

It seems now like a really prescient acknowledgement that “hippie” had moved from subculture to pop culture. It wasn’t the same any more. There wasn’t something new to replace it, rather just a slow spiral downward as the authenticity was flushed down the toilet. It seems the death of hippie started at the end of the summer of ’67 and probably culminated in crap like the Bee Gees.

Well, geek is dead. Or at least it is dying. Instead of a parade we have a blog post.

Note: I have been thinking about this for a while, but decided to write a post about it after seeing Scott Gordon’s link to The Evolution of Geek

I am going to be participating in a panel discussion at BarCamp Nashville on Technology in the Classroom. (For more info see Dave Delaney’s post We Need Technology in the Classroom)

I am the lightweight on the panel and am really looking forward to the discussion. That also means that I should probably gather my thoughts ahead of time. This is like my rough draft

The crux of my feeling is that the media, parents, and educators focus too much on the risks of technology and as a result overlook many of the subtle benefits. This is due to a gap in the generations that is exacerbated by the educators lack of familiarity with the technology that kids are using.

Four years ago I wrote this in response to a CBS series on Teens and Technology:

“My experience working with teens and technology is that it can be an incredibly positive tool to help teens learn. I agree that technology is disruptive to the educational system, but I think that is a good thing. Many people (myself included) think that “education” for teens is mostly about keeping them contained until they can enter the workforce. I wish that CBS would focus instead on the positive effects of technology and teens and what adults can do to stay relevant in a world that is changing with increasing velocity. That would be a story that is much closer to reality.”

That viewpoint has shaped how I have approached technology with my own kids. As soon as they can read and write they get email accounts. They are private email addresses on a network I control, but it allows them to email family. This means that as soon as they are learning to communicate with the written word they are also learning to communicate electronically. I tried giving them blogs, but they were a little young for long form writing. Maybe we will try again in 4th grade.

The kids all know how to use the iPad, iPhone and Android phone (the iPad is their favorite). The bigger ones use a netbook to play semi-social online games like Club Penguin and have restricted Facebook accounts for playing some games and keeping up with family.

The traditional view is that “computer games are bad.” That is just not true though. Especially for elementary kids, games really are educational. Online games require reading (unlike games on the Wii or Nintendo DS). It gives them an opportunity to practice what they are learning in a way that is useful in the “real world.” (We all remember learning things in school and thinking we would never need to know them).

The key is helping to guide them in a positive direction. It is like mentored self-directed learning. As the kids get older I will help them find things more interesting than the games they are playing now. I am sure we will at least experiment with computer programming and see who is interested. We may have chores that involve getting things done on the computer (compiling a monthly report on the family budget would not only provide meaningful computer experience but would also help them learn about managing money).

Granted, not everyone can follow my lead since not everyone can provide kids with iPads and iPhones and netbooks. There is still a meaningful number of kids without broadband in the home. I had early access to networked computers (pre-internet even). The “digital divide” is one of access and my kids are fortunate that we are able to have are really high level of access. That is a good thing though.

I think it is more important to give a kid access to technology throughout their life than it is to send them to college.

I am sick and tired of hearing how technology is ruining our kids. It is the same thing as when my teachers told me that I couldn’t use a calculator to calculate the square root of a number because I wouldn’t always have a calculator with me. They were dead wrong. We all have calculators with us almost all the time. I not only have a calculator with me all the time, I even have a scientific calculator and an RPN financial calculator in my pocket every day. Want to know the lifetime value of a loan with interest compounded daily? No problem. Sure, I might not have that formula memorized, but I have the biggest library in the history of the world in my pocket too.

If only my teachers had taught me how to use a calculator better instead of trying to fit my education into their outdated view of the world.

Let’s not keep making the same mistake.

This is the third post in a row I have written that was titled “Quick Thoughts…” It is almost like a series. See: Quick Thoughts on Angel Investing and Quick Thoughts on Paying for Artistic Endeavors

If you follow the Silicon Valley soap opera stuff, then you have definitely heard about this super-duper-secret meeting of so-called super angels that took place the other night. It is impossible to cut through the noise and know what really transpired, but it was some sort of power-grab. You may have also seen Ron Conway’s email. I have never met Ron Conway and never had the balls to try to pitch him when I have seen him at events, but what he writes sure sounds good as an entrepreneur. Then again, it was supposed to. I think Conway’s email has to be taken as marketing, where he is trying to gain the favor of entrepreneurs so that he can get the best deals.

Which brings me to my recent experience.

My new venture is being funded by Jumpstart Foundry.

The terms are really favorable. It is my company. I own the vast majority. I can do anything I want. I can spend money however I see fit. The board members are helpful in my industry. There just isn’t risk for me other than the risk of spending my time on a venture that statistically speaking will probably fail. (This one won’t fail though. I am about to knock it out of the park).

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect this is because Vic Gatto and Townes Duncan at Solidus genuinely want to help entrepreneurs.

I am really grateful for how much more startup-friendly Nashville has become in the past year. The opening of the Entrepreneur Center and Jumpstart Foundry are huge. They are actually doing deals and helping entrepreneurs get off the ground. This is a huge improvement from the previous empty lip-service that was given to seed-stage investing in Nashville.

I am really grateful for all the hard work people like Vic Gatto and Tod Fetherling have been doing from a leadership position to raise the bar in Nashville. I am also glad that we don’t have to deal with the same kinds of bullshit that is going on in “the valley”.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, watch this:

I try to use my mouse / trackpad as little as possible. The key to this is keyboard shortcuts.  Here are some of my recent favorites.

Most people know that [cmd]+

On a Mac, windows are grouped by applications. So how do you switch between application windows?  If you are anything like me, you have 5 Safari windows open (each with 9 tabs).  [cmd]+` will allow you to cycle through those windows.  As an added bonus, [cmd]+[shift]+] will move you to the next tab. You could probably guess that means [cmd]+[shift]+[ will move you to the previous tab.

Now here is my favorite gem. You are going to love this one.

Let’s say you are sending an email and you need to attach a document. Unfortunately you can’t remember which one is the right version. You can use Quicklook right from the file dialog!

Click to add the attachment. Highlight the file you think you want to attach. Hit the spacebar. It will give you a quicklook of that file and if it is the right one then just click ok and attach it. (This works from any file dialog on a Mac).

I know everyone has their faves. I would love to learn your’s.

For the past couple of days the world has been abuzz about a new iPad app called Flipboard. Ok, maybe not the world, but enough people that it became the #1 free iPad app overnight (and it might not even have taken that long).

What is Flipboard and why is it so cool?

It is being billed as a “social magazine”. It is “The stuff you care about, all in one place.” (more…)