Steve Ball Diary
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guitar craft diaries
dgm diaries
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Tuesday April 10
Wednesday April 11
Thursday April 12
Friday April 13
Saturday April 14
Sunday April 15
Read the archive
Tuesday April 17
Wednesday April 18
Thursday April 19
Friday April 20
Saturday April 21
Sunday April 22
Monday April 09
A bleak week. I have virtually nothing to share of any value. Last
week, I said, "this diary has been useless lately."
What I meant was, "I have been useless lately."
* * *
caught a lite sneeze caught a lite breeze
caught a light weight lightning seed
boys on my left side
boys on my right side
boys in the middle
and you're not here
* * *
"A work of art cannot contain itself. Once he has completed his work, the creator necessarily feels the need to share his joy. He quite naturally seeks to establish contact with his fellow man, who in this case becomes the listener. The listener reacts and becomes a partner in the game, initiated by the creator. Nothing less, nothing more. The fact that the partner is free to accept or to refuse participation in the game does not automatically invest him with the authority of a judge.
The judicial function presupposes of code of sanctions which mere opinion does not have at its disposal. And it is quite illicit, to my way of thinking, to set the public up as jury by entrusting to it the task of rendering a verdict on he value of a work. It is already quite enough that the public is called upon to decide its ultimate fate.
The fate of a work, of course, depends in the final analysis on the public's taste, on the variations of its humors and habits; in a word, on its preferences. But the fate of a work does not depend upon the public's judgment as if it were a sentence without appeal.
I call your attention to this all-important point: consider on the one hand the conscious effort and patient organization that the composing of a work of art requires, and on the other hand the judgment - which is at least hasty and of necessity improvised - that follows the presentation of the work. The disproportion between the duties of the person who composes and the rights of those who judge him is glaring, since the work offered to the public, what ever its value may be, is always the fruit of study, reasoning, and calculation that may imply exactly the converse of improvisation."
- Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music
There is more. This is a great essay, #6 The Performance of Music.
* * *
Sunday April 15
Easter.
* * *
home
Monday April 16
SGC rehearsal at Dean's sans Bob (who is picking up Jax at the airport
tonight.) Welcome home.
* * *
Tuesday April 17
Late afternoon flight to LA for meetings with two influential industry leaders
tomorrow. New opportunities on the horizon. GuyW continues to be a
very bright star in his field. His star may be coming up over the horizon
in the next year.
* * *
Wednesday April 18
Day in LA. Received some new PS2 games from our hosts today.
Clearly, standards are rising in the game industry.
* * *
Reading: Peer-to-Peer : Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies,
by Andrew Oram, Nelson Minar, Clay Shirky
A bleak morning for me personally, followed by a strategic lunch with SteveE who remains one of my favorite entrepreneurs on the planet. We are both suffering from post-start-up depression. Looking to find a way to transform a year of huge efforts, now apparently down the drain, into something of sustainable, long-term value.
* * *
Friday April 20
Meeting at MS this afternoon regarding a new opportunity. Independently
ran into BillS and LisaA in the hallway of building 25. This is a
very small town.
* * *
SGC show at Soapbox, an improv comedy theatre on Capital Hill. Our first show in months and our first show without Jax, with ChrisG. Chris was excellent, but I miss Jax. There was a significant lack of female energy both back and onstage.
Lisa brought some back stage after the short set, but I'm looking forward to being a sextet again when Jax gets bax. I was really happy that Lisa (and Greg and Ilyse) got to see the show tonight.
Set list:
King for a Day
Where it Goes
Bloed Spoed
Cheeseballs
Bicycling to Afghanistan
Thinking this would be a 'throw-away' warm-up show, we failed to bring CDs to sell. Duh. Dean, fortunately, had some SGC postcards with him which came in handy for the kind person from the Redmond Town Center who wishes to book us for a show there over the summer.
Looking forward to more shows over the summer. SBRS with a short set at Mr. Spots next weekend, opening for the Sunhenson trio.
* * *
When leading companies shoot past the ability of their customers to keep up, he said, they create the potential for a disrupter to take hold: to fill a ready niche and quietly, over time, expand and invade the market.
And as each company gets big and successful, it loses its ability to pursue small opportunities, he added. A company that has $40 million in revenues, for example, that needs to grow at 25 percent next year, has to reach out and find another $10 million in revenue. A company that's $40 billion in size, in order to grow 25 percent, has to find $10 billion in new revenue, Christensen said.
And there just aren't any small, emerging, high-growth or high-potential markets that are $10 billion in size in any given year.
* * *
There was financial protection in their business plan, that in the first year it would generate $10 million in revenue, in the second year $20 million, in the third year, $30 to $50 million.
"And it was such a piddly small business that management killed the idea," Christensen continued. "The entrepreneurs were so convinced that there was a market for this, however, that they sharpened their pencils and came up with new projections. The new projections were to generate $100 million in the first year, $200 million in the second year..." Preferring these new projections, management approved the plan.
The entrepreneurial team was stuck, though, because in order to even try to generate huge revenues, the team had to forget about "all the little emerging applications" that had once seemed so interesting. In fact, he said, their mandate to get big fast forced them to "cram" the technology into existing markets that didn't particularly care for it. And so it failed.
"Ironically, the revenues the venture did turn in were $10 million in the first year...(but) management killed it because it had fallen so short of where the expectations were.
* * *
As new investors begin to evaluate business plans, he said, they should rely on certain litmus tests. One is that the right strategy is unknowable in advance. "Have a strategy to learn, rather than a strategy to implement," he advised. If a technology enables "the larger population of less skilled and less wealthy people to do something that historically they could not do or that only specialists could do," it also has high potential for success, he said.
And if a business model appears unattractive to the established players, and clearly isn't a sustaining technology to anyone else, go all out."
I have spent over one year being evasive, quiet, and downright absent in reporting significant events in the life of BootlegTV and Bootleg Networks in this diary. It has been such a whirlwind experience, with so many personalities, risks, and dynamics involved, that taste, fear, and a wish for privacy have kept me from explicitly sharing what otherwise might be interesting reading, or at least useful documentation.
Over the next few weeks, I hope to revisiting some of the unpublished writing I did in the background to help myself, and perhaps others, sort through some of the landmines that we danced around during an 18 month run as a formerly-funded media technology company during the tail end of the internet bubble.
* * *
Sunday April 22
still
in the works:
I need a big loan
from the girl zone
building
tumbling down
didn't know our love was so small
couldn't stand at all
Mr St. John just bring your son
* * *
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