Monday, May 24, 2010

Job Search


I came across a job opening with Union Square Ventures as a regular reader of Fred Wilson's blog. (Who Is Andrew Parker?) I went ahead and applied. (Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying, Managing Al, Brad, Fred: An Opportunity To Jump For, Fred Wilson: A DJ) Fred emailed me saying I was "overqualified." (Not Union Square Ventures) I did not get the job, but I got a huge compliment. I took it.

Maybe I am just right for FourSquare, I thought, the tech company with the most buzz in town right now. (4:16 PM @ FourSquare, FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology, The FourSquare Appeal For Me) They said to talk to "Evan." I like Twitter fine, more than fine, but I kinda would like to stay put in New York City.

Then I got interested in Venmo, briefly, as perhaps the FourSquare for 2011. (Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?, Venmo And Frictionless Payments, Venmo Could Make Moves) I sent a tweet expressing interest to the two founders. I think they like me better as a fan blogger.

Then I started looking at some old economy jobs online. In the process I came across some Yahoo New York jobs. I applied. All you had to do was press a button. Easy in, easy out. If Yahoo, then why not Google? So I found myself getting really interested in Google. (Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?, Chrome Operating System, Google Is Having A TechCrunch Day, Google New York) You apply at their site, and the process is a lot of fun. But that was a week ago. Fred, thanks for that email, really. (Not Union Square Ventures
In my cover letters to Google, I tried to impress upon them that I was a smart person. I made sure I mentioned the butterfly effect, the biggest thing going on for me right now. Paul Orlando got into the picture. He has a friend - Anant Singh - at Google. But so far it has been all quiet on the western front. It has been over a week. (Chatfe: Audio, Interest Based Random Connections On Skype?)
http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/05/has-google-been-able-to-scale-well.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8941937340106225163
http://www.linkedin.com/in/paramendra

I'd love to join Google on the business side of its advertising business out of its NYC offices.

I was the number one student in my class at the top school in Nepal for the seven out of 10 years I was there. I was selected to the University of Chicago but the money part did not work out so I went to the school that has the best financial aid program in all of America, Berea College in Kentucky, the number one liberal arts college in the South. I got myself elected student body president at Berea within six months of landing as an international student. In 1999 I was one of the founding members of Chaitime.com that raised 25 million dollars round two before it succumbed to the nuclear winter. We were trying to be the premier South Asian online community.

There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon forest could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. In April 2006, over a period of 19 days, about eight million people out of the country's 27 million came out into the streets to shut the country down completely to force a dictator out. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City.
A few days back I got an email from Alex Cybriwsky. I got just the job for you, he said, Scott is hiring. There was an opening for a Community Specialist at MeetUp.com. I promptly applied. It felt like a great fit. I am a people person in the tech sector. Years ago I described MeetUp as a 5.0 company; 5.0 is face time. I wrote a great cover letter.
I like it that this job will bring MeetUp and me together. MeetUp has
huge global potential. And I am so glad it is profitable already.
MeetUp is what I call a 5.0 company. 5.0 is face time. I blogged about
that concept years ago.

MeetUp has an imbalance. It pours too much of its resources into tech,
and not enough into all the MeetUp action that takes place during face
time. I'd like to help MeetUp strike a better balance.

I am a people person. I got myself elected student body president at
my college - the number one liberal arts school in the South - within
six months of landing as an international student: about eight SGA
veterans had run against me. That was a lot of talking to a lot of
people. Only five months before I had lost the race for Freshman Class
President. Everyone else got more votes than me.

It is also about NYC, this capital city of the world. I absolutely
love this city, and I love the outer boroughs as much as Manhattan.
MeetUp has had a tendency to do well in the big cities of the world,
and so NYC is a great place to build templates and experiment with
them to take across the world.

Group dynamics is just like coding. Group dynamics is beyond common
sense. It is sophistication, it is skill, it is knowledge, it is
talent, it is a specialty.

The job of Community Specialist seems to be custom made for me. I like
the idea of being able to work any five days of the week, and do some
of the work from home. I like that flexibility. I look forward to
attending even more MeetUps than I already do, have done for years.

A friend of mine once said several months back, Scott has organized
more people than lesser people running for president. I thought that
was a remarkable thing to say.

I would like to work at least one day every weekend, some times both days
of the weekend, but I'd like it to be flex each week, some weeks I'd
like to work Monday to Friday, some weeks Tuesday to Saturday. Some
weeks I'd like to take Tuesday and Thursday off. I don't do well with
structure. Some randomness helps me stay creative.

I'd want to organize my work week around attending as many MeetUps as
possible. We have to be out there among the star Organizers. We have
to be where the action is.

Please check my blogs for my writing samples. Besides being naturally
a people person, I am a great, great writer. And I am addicted to
communication. I thrive on emails and message boards. I love to meet
people. I love to call them up. I like to party. I dance to sweat.

As for salary requirements, I am aware there is a bias that says
coders make more than people with soft skills. But I encourage you to
value both equally. This has to be extra true for MeetUp. This company
was born valuing face time.

I am hoping the salary approaches six figures, or maybe even is six
figures. But I am open to negotiation. I don't just want a job, I want
to build a team around me inside the company that will help MeetUp be
not just a great tech company but also a great group dynamics company.
Human interaction is just like coding. There is art and science
involved.

I look forward to formally joining the team that I have felt I have
been part of for years now.
I have had visions of ending up the Chief People Person at MeetUp.com, on par with the CTO: Hello Greg. I am a people person in the tech sector.

April 2010 NY Tech MeetUp
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology
NY Tech MeetUp: Europe Edition
December 2009 NY Tech MeetUp
November 3 NY Tech MeetUp
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp
Sitting Next To David Rose At The NY Tech MeetUp
MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
October 2009 NY Tech MeetUp
The Science House MeetUp
NY Tech MeetUp: 02/03/09
MeetUp.com 2.0
NY Tech Meetup: Gravitas
September 2009 NY Tech Meetup
Diller Country, Month 2
Open Coffee MeetUp: New Location
Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived
Nic Butterworth's Open Coffee MeetUp
July 2009 NY Tech Meetup
May 5 NY Tech MeetUp
Whuffie: Vamsi Sistla
Nic Is Back

My immigration nightmare might finally be over. I should get my work papers any time now. They said "four to six weeks, maybe eight weeks" on March 30. So. And hopefully the paper turns into a green card in a year. They decide on it in June 2011. Even if they do, it might take them another three months to get the paperwork through. The immigration bureaucracy runs at a fashionably sluggish pace.

June 3 Immigration Court Date

I am not someone who lost his job to the Great Recession. I am not someone whose startup did not take off. I am not someone whose startup fizzled out. I am someone who has been out of status. That is about to end.

Me @ BBC

My status puts me squarely in the job space.

A few days back the thought of going to work full time for the Reshma Saujani For Congress campaign for three and a half months did cross my mind. That might be a step down from my "Superstar Volunteer" status - what Reshma calls me - and it would be  a major pay cut from a possible tech sector job. So, Scott. (@heif)

Reshma Saujani, Haiti Earthquake, Harvard Yale, And 2016

When I presented at the Dot Com Hatchery in January, good thing they drove me out of the building. If an investor had become excited enough to want to put in the money into the venture, I would not have known what to do with the money. I prompted the Hatchery people to invent the Gong Rule. Ask them what that is.

Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery
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Thursday, May 20, 2010

ChatVille Is Live Now: "What ChatRoulette Should Have Been"

Image representing Digsby  as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase
http://apps.facebook.com/chatville/

A Make Use Of Interview with Digsby's Steve Shapiro


http://apps.facebook.com/chatville/

Chatroulette Clone ChatVille Launched For Facebook By Digsby Team
Twitter /ChatVille: Hello world!
Chatville is Facebook's answer to Chatroulette - News - THE DRUM
Chatroulette for Facebook = ChatVille

http://apps.facebook.com/chatville/





Chatfe: Audio, Interest Based Random Connections On Skype?
Venmo Could Make Moves
Adam Smith And The Inbox Space
Venmo And Frictionless Payments
Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way
The FourSquare Appeal For Me
FourSquare Must Cut A Deal With Yahoo
2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments
Chatroulette Is For Real
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The Far Future Of Databases At The Dropio Offices



I just received my third email in as many weeks asking me to show up for Sam Lessin's sci-fi MeetUp called Y+30. That is not spamming, that is bombardment. I was sold with the very first email though, even though I was not as impressed with the last event they had, the one on food. Most speakers at that event tried to venture out about five years at best; or I was not able to follow much of what they said. And food as a topic does not excite me. When I think food, I think hunger. I am a Third World guy. I consider myself a great cook, but I cook a very limited number of items. I have never used any recipe or cookbook for anything. The whole recipe talk is designed to make believe anyone can cook anything. I don't buy into that. On food my thought is I like to stay thin.

Databases: Past, Present, and Future
[PDF] Paralle Database Systems: The Future of High Performance Database
Database Doomed - Is the Relational Database Doomed?
The Future of Database Tuning and Database Administration | Remote...
The Scale-Out Blog: The Future of Database Clustering
Slashdot | The Future of Databases
The Future of Database: Beyond Search
Plants For A Future - 7000 useful plants
The True Future of Databases
The Future of Relational Database Management Systems

The next MeetUp in queue is called The Future Of Porn. Sam Lessin, visionary? Or a visual guy? There is a clip in the movie Minority Report that he might want to show at that one.

3D Porn - The future of masturbatory technology? • VideoSift..
The future of porn and cybersex is 3D : Shiny Shiny
The Future of Porn
Jobs envisions future 'free from porn'
The Death of Motion Capture, the Future of Porn and Personal...
The Future of Porn: Going Back to Its Roots - The Internet is the...
Sex, Toys, and Video Games:The Future of Porn
Microsoft 'Bang': The Future of Online Porn?
No future in porn downloads: adult industry
The Valley Exposed: The Future of Porn - LA Daily News

But the one tonight is called The Future Of Databases. Now this is really something.
Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:00 PM
Drop.io World HQ
68 Jay Street Suite # 413
Brooklyn NY 11201

Like most things, the long-term future of databases is best discussed over beer... With the help of our friends at Basho Technologies we've assembled a cutting edge panel of experts to tackle what databases will look like +30 years.

Our panelists represent the full range of high volume storage engines from the document store avant-garde to the RDBMS old guard and everything in between. You can expect thorough coverage of what "database" means today and what it will mean in the future.

Panelists:
- Ken Ross - Professor in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University
- Dwight Merriman - CEO, 10Gen (commercial sponsors of MongoDB)
- Jonathan Blessing - Managing Partner, 3Thirds Software (NYC-based DB consultancy)
- Justin Sheehy - CTO, Basho Technologies (commercial sponsors of Riak)

Moderator:
- Mark Uhrmacher - Founder, CTO of ideeli.com


In case you have not visited the site recently, Drop.io has gone through a major revamp. The main page is much more minimalist now. That is a good thing. Don't make people scroll. Every milli second counts. Fast is good.

ideeli, Inc.: Private Company Information - BusinessWeek
Luxury goods, 90% off - Ideeli (4) - Small Business

This is going to be my third time at the Dropio offices. The first time was during Social Media Week early in February, the second time was only a few weeks back at a Digital Dumbo party. Two days before that I got to meet Dropio Dude Jacob Robbins for the first time. At the party Jacob told me about the new look of Dropio. In this blog post - Digital Dumbo: Here I Come - I talk about Jacob and something hack. All Jacob ever did was he spoke to me the web address for the page that tells you how to get to the Dropio offices, fancifully called the Dropio World Headquarters.

Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?
Dropio's Indian Cofounder Darshan
What Are You Doing Monday? Come Meet Al Wenger
Reshma Saujani "Gets" Tech

And then, after porn, it is going to be gaming's turn.

Gaming the Future - PC Game Evolution
The Future of Gaming| Popular Science
The future of gaming is all in the mind - CNN.com
The Future of Gaming... - subsaint Blog - GameInformer.com
The Next 25 Years of Video Games | Cracked.com
LoadingReadyRun - Halo: The Future of Gaming
The Future of Gaming: 5 Social Predictions
The Video Game Revolution: "The Future of Video Gaming" by Michael...
The future IS gaming - Trends in the Living Networks
2020 Vision: The Future of Gaming - PC Feature at IGN





Having this event at the Dropio offices is a smart move on the part of Lessin. Dropio is one of the top 20 dot coms in town. It is a startup that has crossed that threshold of whether it will survive and do well or what. But even FourSquare, the dot com in town with the most buzz, is scheduled to lose most of its buzz by the year end when it will be in a much better shape as a company - measured by the fundamentals - than it is today. But it is good for team morale to have some buzz. And hosting a get together like this one gives you some buzz in the NY tech ecosystem. And it is not just Dropio, but Dumbo, that unique locale like none other in the city when it comes to tech. The mystique is fast building.






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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Google New York















Google New York Jobs
Can Google Come Out to Play? - New York Times
Google's New York Office Is a Glorious Catalog of Dot-Com Clichés...
InformationWeek | Galleries: Googleplex East: Inside Google's New...
Google Has Kangaroo At New York Office (VIDEO)
Video: Google Brings Kangaroo To NY Office- Gothamist
"The Search" - John Battelle speaks at Google NYC
Google New York: Scooters, Slides, And Legos -- Oh My!
YouTube - Baby Kangaroo at the Google NY office
Office 2010: A Tale of Decadence and Hand-to-Hand Combat - Bits
Office Snapshots » Google NYC Office - Video Tour
New Google Cafeteria Crushes Competitors' Cafeterias -- Grub...
Lego in NY Google Office
This is an office? - NYPOST.com
After search, Google finds snake in NY office| Reuters
Google: The New Port Authority - Page 1 - News -New York...
Google hiring 100 engineers for NY office
Google Gobbles 57K More Feet in Taconic's 111 Eighth | The New...
Facebook's NY Rent: $29k/Month
Google Opens Block-Long Office in N.Y.- Real Geek
A Quick Tour of Google NY- John Battelle's Searchblog
Google opens block-long office in N.Y.- USATODAY.com
A three-foot python the subject of Google's latest search - Apr. 3...
Official Google Blog: Snakes in a plain... old...office building!
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Google Is Having A TechCrunch Day

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase

Google is not a company TechCrunch talks about a whole lot. TechCrunch stays on the lookout for that hot new startup. So I was surprised to see so many Google related posts on TechCrunch today.

Watch Out Rivals, With Latitude API Google Starts Taking Location Very Seriously
Kiss My App Store
Now Open To Everyone, Google Believes Wave Is Finally Ready To Roll
Is Firefox Headed Towards A Massive Decline? Its Co-Founder Thinks So


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