Read the original article at The Problem with Startup Bootcamps
Scanning Crains NY Business recently, I saw an article on 'starting up' in 54 hours. It's the brainchild of Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen and Franck Nouyrigat called Startup Weekend. Startup bootcamps seem to be the current extra-curricular activity of choice these days. Wharton is also getting in on it with their Innovation Tournament. Then there is the …
[Read more]Read the original article at The Mythical MySQL DBA
I’ve been getting more than my fair share of calls from recruiters of late. Even in this depressed economic climate where jobs are rarer than a cab at rush-hour, it’s heartening to know that tech engineers are in great demand. And it’s even more heartening to think that demand for MySQL DBAs has never been better.
My reckoning was confirmed by a Bloomberg news report about stalwart retailers suffering from a dearth of talented engineers. Bloomberg cited Target’s outage-prone e-commerce site as a symptom of, among other things the market’s shortage. One of the challenges old-timers like Target face is having to compete with Silicon Valley startups as a …
[Read more]Read the original article at Great Interactive Map of NYC Startups
Business Insider posted this spectacular interactive google map of our amazing Startup Ecosystem here in New York City. Wow!
Check out the full list of NYC Startups in the original article.
View NYC Startups in a larger map
For more articles like these go to MySQL Expert, Linux, EC2 …
[Read more]Read the original article at Book review – Trust Agents by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith
Stumbling onto 800-CEO-Read, and their top books feature, I found Brogan and Smith's work. Brogan's blog intrigued me enough so I walked down to the Strand here in NYC to pick up a copy.
What I found was an excellent introduction to the nebulous world of social media marketing, where you find all sorts of advice and suggestions on how to engage your target audience. If you're feeling like an ignoramus on matters of social media, Trust Agents is a great place to start and will give you ideas of how to 'humanize' your digital connections.
The authors illustrate the Trust Agent idea with Comcast Cares for example and how they engaged customers, and …
[Read more]Read the original article at Book Review – The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
What do you do after founding not one, but two companies and watching them fail miserably all by the time you were barely out of college?
Move to the Valley, make shrewd investments in other startups and become insanely rich like Sean Parker? A Bit lofty perhaps. How about try, try again and succeed. Then reinvent yourself as a guru dishing out startup wisdom through your blog and publishing a book that ends up the top of the New York Times Bestseller's list. That's essentially what Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup did.
True entrepreneurs fail many times before they succeed and continuously find opportunities to reinvent …
[Read more]Recently at Surge 2011, the annual conference on scalability and performance, Google's CIO Ben Fried gave an illuminating keynote address. His main insight was that generalists are the people that will lead engineering teams in successfully scaling the web.
In a world where the badge of Specialist or Expert is prized, this was refreshing perspective from an industry bigwig. As tech professionals, or any professional for that matter, we don't welcome the label of generalist. The word suggests a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. But the generalist is no less an expert than the specialist. Generalists can get their hands greasy with the tools to fix bugs in the machine but they are especially good at mobilizing the …
[Read more]Read the original article at Book Review – Help! by Oliver Burkeman
Help! How To Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done
I've long overcome that sheepish feeling when browsing the Self-help section at the bookstore. Sure, How to Make Friends and Influence People or the Seven Steps to World Domination in your bookcase aren't exactly the sort of titles to suggest a deep intellect but I like to keep an open mind when checking out the latest hardcover secret to happiness and prosperity. Basically I try not to diss a book just because it's got "soup" on the cover.
I will concede that publishers have …
[Read more]Could pro-waitering serve up some lessons on web scalability? Observing peak hour dining at a New York restaurant gave us some insight.
I was dining at a restaurant the other day with friends. It was a warm and cozy place, nicely decorated with a long, narrow dining room. The food was scrumptious, yet we were getting increasingly frustrated by the service as the night went along.
With some waiting experience behind me, I could immediately see the problem. The waiters, probably through lack of experience, were making the mistake of doing one thing at a time. They would go to a table, respond to one customer's request, and go and fetch that item. Back and forth, back and forth they would dart, but always dealing with …
[Read more]Oracle starts charging for MySQL Add-ons
Exciting news, Oracle just announced commercial MySQL extensions that they'll be offering paid extensions to the core MySQL free product.
To be sure, this has raised waves of concern among the community, but on the whole I suspect it will be a good thing for MySQL. This brings more commercial addons to the table, which only increases the options for customers. Many will continue to use the core database product only, and avoid license hassles while others will surely embark on a hybrid approach if it solves their everyday business problems.
Speaking of licensing, back in May, Amazon announced that it's RDS or Relational Database Service would now offer Oracle as an option. …
[Read more]Read the original article at Scale Quickly Like Birchbox – Startup Scalability 101
One of the great things about the Internet is how it has made it easier to put great ideas into practice. Whether the ideas are about improving people’s lives or a new way to sell and old-fashioned product, there’s nothing like a good little startup tale of creative disruption to deliver us from something old and tired.
We work with a lot of startup firms and we love being part of the atmosphere of optimism and ingenuity, peppered with a bit of youthful zeal - something very indie-rock-and-roll about it. But whether they are just starting out or already picking up pace every startup faces the same challenges to scale a business. Recently, we were reminded of this when we watched …
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