Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 13 of 48)

Congrats to a Few Biz Plan Competitors

April 9, 2012 /

Since I graduated from the UW’s MBA Program back in 2006, I’ve been proud that I continue to have the opportunity to be a judge in the annual Business Plan Competition.  It’s truly inspiring to me to see what comes out of the minds of young entrepreneurs, especially those whose excitement has not yet been polluted.

This year is especially exciting though.  For the 1st time, I knew a little about three of the companies that made it through to the round of 32 before they received their Golden ticket.  (No, I was not allowed to judge these companies.)

So, before they prepare for their Investment Round battle in a few weeks, I want to congratulate the three teams that I’ve been able to get to know a little bit.

  1. Flash Volunteer offers a set of mobile and social tools to create, discover, track and easily share volunteer service events via a variety of integrated channels.
  2. GroBox aims to make it super easy to grow your own fruits and vegetables in a small amount of space.
  3. Splitpen is a creative online outlet for ordinary people of all abilities to come together and co-write stories with multiple plot lines, sub-plots and endings.

Good luck to all three teams (and the other 29 of course), and we’ll see you in a few weeks.

So, What’s With All the Silence

April 5, 2012 /

If I was Alannis Morisette, I’d use the word “ironic” to describe the lonely state of poor AndyBoyer.com.  But since I actually understand the definition of the word irony, we’ll won’t give another English major a bloody forehead.

After all, I work for social media firm, am part of a start-up developing a product that makes it EASIER for people to blog, just taught a UW class where I forced students to turn in their assignments on a blog, and now teach a UW class where groups are building socialmedia campaigns for causes – and blog about them.

If there is anyone on the planet who should have an active blog, it’s me.

And yet, here we have what we have.  A lonely, neglected outpost, where 622 former blog posts sit patiently on an island, waiting for the next boat of posts to arrive.  Waiting for anything that will bring more visitors, more people who missed reading them when they were originally published 1, 2, 5 years ago.  Just sitting here…waiting.

I mean, there was activity here.  We used to rail on Clay Bennett here.  We had goals of coming up on search engines for the term “Nick Licata.”  The blog may not have had aim, or a real direction, or heck, even a long-term goal.  But at least we had consistent content.  And every once in a while, it was funny.

So what’s the deal?

Well I have new respect for all the professional bloggers out there publishing non-stop.  How do you guys do it? I write all day, and then I get home and see more stuff I have to write, and then I finally look at my notes of stuff I want to blog about, sit down at my laptop ready to hack away, and ask myself, “I DVR’d Mad Men didn’t I?”

I’m going to partially blame Twitter for this.  Before, if someone like the Mariners wanted to do something incredibly stupid that I wanted to take issue with, I needed to come over to my little .com outpost here and raise my tin cup disguised as a bull horn and start shouting.  Now, I can condense that thought into 140 characters and shoot it out via the FailWhale Telegraph and get immediate gratification with a Retweet or response.

So yes, I’m blaming my blogging drought on a combination of lack of time, excess writing, and Twitter.  And Yuniesky Betancourt.  I’m not sure why, but I think it’s his fault somehow.

But fear not.  I still have had plenty of issues that I want to vent about, including but not limited to:

  • The Washington State Republican Party selling my email address to Rick Santorum’s campaign.
  • The U.S. not qualifying for the Olympics in soccer.
  • The real meaning of Lost (the TV show). (I finally watched it on Netflix – another reason I didn’t have time to blog.)
  • Yahoo’s ridiculous patent suits and why that desperate attempt at maintaining relevance could have screwed a lot of people not responsible for Yahoo’s gross business negligence.
  • The Maloof (Malouf?) Brothers.
  • And more.

Soon, this little piece of online real estate will become interesting again.  Hang tight.

Join Me at MarketMix 2012 Today

March 20, 2012 /

It’s been a busy month over here as I share time on the UW, Social3i and the upcoming Private Beta of Relaborate.  Now, it may seem like I haven’t been writing anything.  But actually I’ve been producing more content.  It’s just hidden over at the unpublished Relaborate blog as we work on getting the product ready for prime time.

But I’ll be at MarketMix 2012 today, showing a little sneak peek at what Relaborate has to offer – and more importantly – how we decided to go forth with the product in the first place.  So come say hi if you are at the event.

And thanks to the folks from NWEN for the invite to join their panel.  If you have an idea that you want to pursue, there’s no better organization than NWEN to help you get it off the ground.

U-District Food Bank Fundraiser

February 1, 2012 /

Wanted to pass this along this email from the U-District Food Bank.

>>

Hey Food Bank Supporters,

I’m pleased to let you know that the 10th annual Neighborhood Grills benefit dinner for the University District Food Bank is happening, Wednesday, February 8th from 5 PM to 10 PM at Eastlake Bar & Grill and Greenlake Bar & Grill.

It’s the same format as previous years. Go out to dinner at either Greenlake Bar & Grill orEastlake Bar & Grill on the 8th of February and at the minimum 50% of the cost of your bill will be donated to the Food Bank. Order off the special menu and 66% of your meal cost will be donated to the Food Bank!

Our monetary goal for the evening is to raise $6,000. That’s essentially 50% of our food purchasing budget for the month of February.

If you are unable to attend the benefit dinner please consider making a donation of at least $10 towards our February food purchases. You can make a donation to the Food Bank from our web page – http://www.udistrictfoodbank.org/donate.php.

2011 was our busiest year on record – 55,000 customer visits and 2.3 million pounds of food distributed. Thanks to our community of support we continue to meet the increased demand for our services. It’s truly appreciated!

Please feel free to contact me for a tour of the Food Bank. I’m always happy to show donors their donation dollars at work.

What: 10th annual Neighborhood Grills Benefit Dinner for the University District Food Bank.
Where: Eastlake Bar & Grill (2947 Eastlake Avenue East Seattle) or Greenlake Bar & Grill (7200 E. Greenlake Drive North).
When: Wednesday, February 8th, 5PM to 10 PM.
Why: Raise $6,000 towards our February food purchases.
How: At least 50% of meal cost (66% if you order off special menu) will be donated to the University District Food Bank

All the best.

Sincerely,

Paul Yunker
Development Director
University District Food Bank

>>

Where to get Startup Content

January 29, 2012 /

So I’ll admit, content generation on AndyBoyer.com has been a little less than satisfactory lately.  One reason for this is the time I am enjoying being back at school.

No, I’m not back for a new degree, but instead I’m teaching Marketing 555 at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.  And while I haven’t been able to post too much content here lately, I’m excited to point you to a resource that should please anyone who likes marketing and startups.

I encourage you to take a quick peek over at the MKTG 555 Blog, where 60 of the brightest minds in Seattle are contributing their thoughts on startups, entrepreneurship and marketing, on a regular basis.  The blog boasts about 150 pieces of content now, so there’s surely something there to pique your interest.

Not to fear, I’ll ramp back up the volume here soon, mostly thanks to Relaborate – which is almost ready for it’s public debut. But until then, feel free to check out the thoughts and ideas of Seattle’s future entrepreneurs.

Teen Feed

January 19, 2012 /

Catherine has been volunteering for a little while with a group called Teen Feed.

Now, for a little while there, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about what Catherine was up to. But I have had the great opportunity to volunteer with her a few times in the last few weeks, and want to relay a thought or two.

It’s hard to find something much more disturbing than a room full of 18-25 year olds with no home, no food and a pretty hopeless outlook. If someone is 40, you can put some level of blame on them for being in the spot they are in. But it’s kind of hard to fault an 18 year old.

For about $100-$150, a Teen Feed organizer puts together a menu and buys all the groceries for about 50-60 people. Anywhere between 4 and 8 volunteers take over a kitchen of a neighborhood church, and prepare the meal. The kids arrive at 7pm, and dinner ends promptly at 8pm.

The kids who show up for the free food have no place to go, and in some cases no other food to eat. Some just spend the entire hour taking advantage of the heat and chairs they are allowed to rest in. But they are all polite, thankful, and just happy someone cares.

I’m going to write more about this over the next few weeks. But I really want to commend the volunteers of Teen Feed, and urge you guys to consider Teen Feed when you are considering where to donate some of your time or money. In my mind, 18-25 year olds are still save-able. We should be working on ways to do that.

Posada and Pine Tar

January 7, 2012 /

Interesting quote at the bottom of this article about Jorge Posada’s retirement:

“Swinging with pine tar on his hands, and without batting gloves, he was a five-time All-Star, caught David Wells’ perfect game in 1998, and played in 125 games in October. He is a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, but his legacy as a Yankee probably means more to him.”

I wonder if he did that so he could keep a little pine tar on his hands and load up the ball for his pitcher.  I’m not calling him a cheater by any means, but it is kind of a coincidence that a catcher would rely so heavily on pine tar.

Looking at the Opposite Side of Statistics

January 3, 2012 /

Digital Buzz Blog is one of my favorite reads.  And they recently posted some stats which I believe came from Media Bistro.  Now, after you read the stats below, I’m going to give them to you in the exact opposite way.  Tell me if any of the story seems any different.

Version 1:

It was a huge year for Social Media and here is a great infographic that rounds up the key Social Media Statistics to kickoff 2012. It’s pretty impressive to see that Facebook has grown to more than 800 million active users, adding more than 200 million in a single year. Twitter now has 100 million active users and LinkedIn has over 64 million users in North America alone.

A few interesting take outs for social media statistics in 2012:

Facebook Statistics 2012:

  • An average Facebook user has 130 friends and likes 80 pages
  • 56% of consumer say that they are more likely recommend a brand after becoming a fan
  • Each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared

Twitter Statistics 2012:

  • 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter
  • 55% of Twitter users access the platform via their mobile

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

  • 30% of B2B marketers are spending million of dollars each year on social media marketing
  • Nearly 30% of these users are not tracking the impact of this marketing
  • 20% of Google searches each day have never been searched for before
  • Out of the 6 billion people on the planet 4.8 billion have a mobile and only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush
Version 2: Just for a Devil’s Argument Sake

Facebook Statistics 2012:

  • An average Facebook user is only connected to 130 of the people in their rolodex, address book, company phone tree and email database, and are only fans of 80 of the brands which they purchase or evaluate
  • 44% of consumers say that they are NOT more likely recommend a brand after becoming a Facebook fan
  • There are roughly 800 Million Facebook users, and each week on Facebook more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared, meaning the average person shares just 4 pieces of content per week.  With 1 out of every 7 online minutes spent on Facebook, lots of people are lurking but not sharing. 

Twitter Statistics 2012:

  • 66% of marketers have NOT generated leads using Twitter
  • Almost half  (45%) of Twitter users cannot access the platform via their mobile, and are limited to using it on their personal computer.

General Social Media Statistics 2012:

  • 70% of B2B marketers are spending LESS THAN a million dollars each year on social media marketing
  • 80% of Google searches each day are repeat searches

Occupy Seattle Described as a Poker Game

December 26, 2011 /

You won’t see this analysis written anywhere else – this content comes from part of an email chain where a bunch of people were discussing the differences between the original Occupy Wall Street and the local spin-off versions such as Occupy LA and Occupy Seattle.  It all stemmed from an LA Times article that explained it would cost Los Angeles $2.3 Million to clean up the park which had been Occupied.  I’ll keep the whole email from this anonymous person for context, but the paragraph with the poker analogy is the one I found most compelling.

Note: At this point the discussion had moved to talk about whether the movement, or the offshoots of the movement, would be successful on getting student-debts absolved.  (And no offense to puppetry and history majors.)

People take risks and develop new and improved goods and services because they believe that they will profit from it. That is at the root of our free market economic system. That is exactly what Adam Smith wrote about all those years ago. Plus, where do you think all that money comes from to pay off people’s debts (whether student loans or mortgages or bank bail outs or whatever)? Government takes in revenue through taxes. The inhabitants of a country pay the taxes. So, if one group of people want money from the government (and that is exactly what asking to have your debts payed off is- getting money from the government), in essence those people are asking other people to pay for their choices. Why should I have to pay for the choices that another person made (that is the root of the whole social contract and the obligations of citizenship)?

For example, I am OK with helping to pay for education in general- most people are. That is why we have free public K-12 education. It is an investment in the future. I am also OK with student grants for college kids who can not afford college. That also helps society and is an investment in the future. But if some guy takes out a massive loan from a private business (i.e. a bank) to fund his two years in college to get a masters degree in literature or history or puppetry or what have you, and then the guy can’t get a job with his worthless degree, why should I have to pay to get his loan written off? That guy is in essence begging money from me. He better be able to explain why and persuade me to pay off his loan, or I will not want to pay it off for him. And if his first attempt to persuade me to pay off his loan is to “occupy” the park down the street from my house and threaten to stay there until I pay for his loan, then frankly he has failed at making his case from the get go.

To put it in poker terms,  imagine if some guy at the table made big risky bets over and over, chasing long odds on flush draws hand after hand, borrowed money repeatedly from other players to buy in on more hands, and when he finally craps out and has no more money, he demands that everybody else pony up money to pay off his debts. How would you feel about that? How would you react to that? How would the other players react to that? Now imagine if that guy- rather than to try to logically explain why you should pay off his debt- decides to go sit in the bathroom and “occupy” it for several weeks. He messes the place up, refuses to clean it up, disturbs other people who are just trying to use the bathroom, refuses to leave even though he is on private property and the owners ask him nicely to leave, and becomes belligerent when the police to evict him. How would you react to that?

 

 

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