Flight of the Conchords rock the Paramount

I was lucky to see FOTC last night at the Paramount in Seattle. They were great! Funny, energetic, original, authentic... just rockin'. Here is the playlist, which I was fortunate to get;





















Go see them if you have a chance. http://www.flightoftheconchords.com/tour/tour.php

The best tools to save me time... GTD

I was at a leading law firm this morning talking about Gist and other tools we are using to make use more efficient at gathering and/or processing information. I started this list;

All the time;
www.gist.com – gives me all the email messages, tweets, news, blogs… about the people and companies I care about (automatically)
www.tweetdeck.com – my twitter reader
www.activewords.com – to save time doing repeat tasks, especially responding to email
reader.google.com – my RSS reader
tamccann.blogspot.com (blogspot) – my personal blog
blog.gist.com (wordpress) – corporate blog
www.getanagram.com - quickly grab signature files and create Outlook contacts


Sometimes or passively;
www.disqus.com – tracks my blog comments across multiple sites and blogs
www.gravatar.com – allows me to manage my profile photo in many places
www.evri.com (new entrant, I also worked on this worked on this at Vulcan) – I have created “collections” for key topics and competitors
www.clearcontext.com – outlook add-in that organizes email into projects
www.friendfeed.com – tracks posts and stuff from my friends across lots of different sites and services
www.tripit.com – makes my travel more efficient and somewhat social (I can see when my friends are in town or I am near them)

I am sure there are lots of other tools listed on sites like www.lifehacker.com, but what tools are you using that you really like. Leave me a good comment and I can hook you up with a www.gist.com beta account.

Keynote speech - Lessons learned #2

Thanks to the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce for having me keynote the 2009 Eastside Business Awards.

I have provided a copy of my slides here.T.a. McCann_ East Side Business Awards Keynote

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Technology Business & Law entrepreneurship bellevue chamber of

I also made reference to a few other key people;

www.stoweboyd.com - the master of "flow" and the man responsible for the "juggling with technology" anecdote

www.chrisjordan.com - extremely cool artist, always looking at the world in a new way

Congrats to all the winners!

A VC

I found this good quote today from Fred Wilson:

My first piece of advice is to share the news as soon as you have it. There is never a good reason to have information about your business that your board and major investors would want to know and not share it. You could argue that it's time consuming to communicate with investors and that it's more efficient to wait for the regular board meetings to do that. But whatever you gain in efficiency with that approach, you lose in trust and confidence building with an important group of stakeholders in the business. It's not worth it. There are efficient ways to communicate with the board and major investors. A quick email will normally do the trick.A VC, Apr 2009

I have had very good luck with my investors by communicating good and bad news frequently.  The key is to do it consistently, which I try to do every 2 weeks and in a format where you can keep the good and the bad in balance.

A VC

I found this fascinating quote today:

I got a Kindle just over a week ago. It has changed the way I think about reading. I have a couple dozen books on it and I go back and forth between them in a way that I have never done with books. I am in the process of reading about six books in parallel and I love the way the Kindle allows me to read what I am in the mood for at that moment in time. This is what I am currently reading on my Kindle:A VC, Mar 2009

You should read the whole article.

The interesting thing about this post to me, is that Fred is reading 6 books at the same time.  I find this super multi-tasking is a big trend of highly connected people and that they can have 5 converstaions, 4 companies, 10 friends, 5 apps... all going at the same time and the Kindle finally lets this happen with books in a very portable way.

NWEN presentation - 0-25mph for startups

Early this morning, I presented at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network breakfast . NWEN (www.nwen.org) helps people start companies by giving them tools, connecting them with service providers and making connections to other people, advisors... and I love that. This was a chance for me to summarize my thoughts and experiences (to date) and connect with other entrepreneurs. I always learn something when I do these kinds of events, both about what I have done right/wrong in the past and how I can be better in the future.

Here is a link to the PPT that I presented, a continual work in progress.



I also met a bunch of really interesting people working on cool ideas. Thanks to Jared and Peter for setting up the event and to everyone who asked me such good questions after the talk. I look forward to the future discussions and coffee meetings.

If you have questions or follow-ups you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or send plain old email (tam@gist.com) and I will do what I can to help.

is twitter the new inbox

I have been using Twitter alot lately. I find it helpful to broadcast my message to a large group of "followers" as well as keep tabs on my friends and what is on their minds. But, Outlook and email are by far my primary means of communication.

I have also been getting more Facebook messages lately, which I hate. I usually reply with "send me an email instead" so I can factor in my reponse with all my other stuff I need to do.

Yesterday, I met Cameron Reilly for the first time. He runs www.thepodcastnetwork.com and came in to interview me abot Gist (www.gist.com). He told me he has stopped using email as he has over 600 unread messages in his inbox. He now uses Twitter to communicte with his close friends using "DMs" or direct messages. This is really interesting to me.

Is it that only his close friends are on twitter, therefore he only gets "important" messages? Is it the blend of broadcast and direct messages which is appealing?

Last night, I also got some DMs from my friends Kathy Gill, who is a very Web 2.0 person. She also chose to send me messages on Twitter instead of email. In her case, I think my tweets sparked a memory that she wanted to get back to me, which caused the action.

I am not sure how this is trending, but since I am a messaging guy (email, IM, Twitter, FB, SMS...) I think this is something to watch.

register your mobile for do-not-call

Just a reminder --

REMEMBER: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public today
REMINDER.... all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies tomorrow and you will start to receive sale calls.

.... YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS

To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone:
888-382-1222.
It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.. It takes about 20 seconds.
or go to www.donotcall.gov