I got to judge this weeks social media blog carnival submissions. And the winner is… Diane Guercio, with her submission: Keeping Twitter Alive. There are plenty of articles out there explaining how to get more followers, how to increase your traffic, and how to get a top listing on one ranking site or another. But very few posts address the importance of making connections that have real substance.

Diane noticed many of her new followers lacked the human element, and dug a little deeper. She found followers whose Tweets were populated exclusively by Twitterfeed. There was no human element there — every single post was automated, completely eliminating the possibility for connection and interaction.

There are plenty of companies out there ready to help you automate your Twitter stream, promising to bring you thousands of followers, and offering to help you fake your way to Twitter fame. I think of them as the get-rich-quick schemers of social media.

Diane’s post reminds us that there can be true value in the connections we make on Twitter. She now screens all her followers, as we all should. And she says it best:

… I feel like if we don’t screen like this, the medium will become a mass of autoresponders autofollowing each other, with little oases of interaction. And I love the heartbeat of twitter.

Congratulations, Diane, on winning this week’s Blog Carnival :)

Coming to the Coworking Meetup Friday evening? We’re getting lots of “yes” RSVPs — enough that we have to think about capacity issues. It’s a Friday, it’s the ultra-cool San Jose, and it’s not a private party. So get there early! You can still RSVP here.

About the weather

You probably all think we’re a bunch of weather wusses down here in Texas. Well, you’re right. We are. So we’re quite happy to know that the San Jose has lots of outdoor heaters and a firepit to keep us toasty. You’ll be able to spot the locals — we’ll all be in parkas. Don’t laugh! It’s only 50 degrees out there!

I’m also happy to announce that FreshBooks will be a sponsor of the event — thanks to them we’ll have a fabulous assortment of delectable snacks. Thanks, FreshBooks — you rock!

Last Friday, as I mentioned in the last post, I gave a presentation on how small businesses can use social media to compete with big businesses. I explained that there’s no need for small businesses to pretend to be big, or to even look big. What’s important is that they know how to compete with big businesses. I talked about the value of sharing information and offering advice as a way to put yourself out there as an expert in your field.

Naturally, I uploaded my slides to SlideShare. I posted it on Sunday. Monday, someone added them to the “Social Media” and “Enterprise 2.0″ groups. This morning I got the following email from Slideshare:

You are a Presentation SuperStar on SlideShare!

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday.

Within a few hours, hundreds of people had viewed the presentation, several had favorited it, and 3 people have embedded it into their own sites.

I quickly went to SlideShare and updated my profile to let people know I’m available for speaking engagements and consulting. I’m already seeing more traffic on the blog. And if you Google “small business social media compete big business”, my slideshow is the #1 result.

I noticed there’s an option on SlideShare to add mp3 sound to the presentation — if it’s not overly time consuming, I may do that. I’m thinking this may really have some legs :)

Thanks Susan Price for the feedback, Mike Brown for the late-night Twitter brainstorming, and Ann Taylor for getting me the AWTA speaking gig!

Last Friday I attended the Association of Women in Technology Austin’s Women in Business conference. It was a really invigorating day — I made some great contacts and met some wonderful new people. I was also on a panel and gave a presentation on Using Social Media to Compete with Big Business. The presentation is below — enjoy!

Last year’s Coworking meetup was a great success, so we’re doing it again. Same venue — the lovely courtyard of the fabulous San Jose Hotel. And once again, it’ll be on the first evening of SXSWi — March 13 — so you won’t be all partied out :) Be sure to RSVP on the Meetup site so the good folks at the San Jose can staff appropriately.

Last year over 150 people attended. Given the spectacular growth and success of the coworking movement, I expect an even bigger turnout this year.

You can help us promote the meetup by putting this badge on your blog — it looks just like the one you see to the right, complete with the countdown.

We’ll get started at 7:30. There’s no cost to attend, and it’s not an official SXSW event, so you don’t even need a badge to get in.

See you on the 13th!

Okay, early adopters — here’s your chance to help us get LaunchPad Coworking open and thriving as a new hub for business in Austin.

In our last post, we explored the idea of VIP memberships and some kind of profit-sharing program. We got a lot of good feedback via email, Twitter, and in the comments. A bunch of you sent us some really good, thoughtful ideas, too. We learned that:

• The VIP concept sounds too stuffy.
• Profit-sharing doesn’t appeal to many of you.
• You really like the idea of pre-purchasing time.
• Cafe discounts are a great idea.

Thanks for all the ideas! We’ve come up with a great pre-launch deal for you. LaunchPad is now pre-selling time at a huge discount and including cafe discounts. The deal will only be good through March 17 (after SXSWi), so please spread the word!

A few specifics on the deal:

• Buy as many months or bulk hour packages as you want.
• If you buy a monthly membership and go over the number of hours, additional hours are charged at the same rate as your package’s hourly rate.
• Cafe discount includes all cafe food and drink, i.e., everything but coffee beans and swag.
• Membership starts when you actually use the space (no earlier!).
• NO RISK. All purchases subject to FULL REFUND in the unlikely event LaunchPad Coworking doesn’t open.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out other unique ways you can be involved in the opening of LaunchPad Coworking. If you have questions you can send an email to EarlyAdopter@launchpadcoworking.com.

Let us know what you think!

LaunchPad Coworking entrance. Left 2 panels slide to open.

Wow, what great response we’ve received from our last post! Your comments, emails, tweets, and calls have been so encouraging. And your ideas are fantastic.

As you know, we’re trying to raise the rest of the money we need — fast. We are still looking for investors, of course, but now we’re considering going down a parallel path.

Several of you suggested pre-selling VIP memberships of some sort. The more we talked it through, the more viable it became. Here’s what we’re thinking:

• VIP memberships available in $1K units — you can buy as many as you like.
• Each unit gets you x% of cash flow for x period of time. We have to run the numbers to define the variables, but the goal would be for you to make some money on this.
• All members would get recognition — as much as we can manage. A plaque, a poster, web site presence…
• We wouldn’t spend any of your money until we’ve raised enough to open, via memberships and investments (after a slash and burn budgets session, that number is approximately $600K). If we never raise enough, we’ll refund it.

Other possible perks:

• cafe discount for x period of time
• x amount of free space for x period of time

We’re also thinking that at some threshold (5 units? 10?) we’d offer some additional benefits, such as:

• use of the whole space x times for private events
• use of partial space (all the meeting rooms, all the coworking space) x times
• free conference room space

I have a lot of work to do to make this happen. We have to run the numbers on it, and put together a legal document. If you happen to know of the perfect person to help me put this together (like today or tomorrow) please let me know. I have experts, but would love to find an individual who can help me get this together quickly.

We need your feedback!

• Which of these perks would you find most valuable?
• If you’re not likely to use space in Austin, is there any other perk you’d find valuable?
• What’s most compelling to you? The profit-sharing? Recognition? Discounts on space/food?
• What kind of recognition would help you or your business most?
• Is this something you’d consider?

Ceiling over the cafe

Being transparent is relatively easy when things are going well. When times are hard — not so much.

It was so much fun to post updates here — photos of the latest new wonderfulness to appear at LaunchPad Coworking. I was pretty active on Twitter, keeping up with the blog, and generally letting everyone know how things were going.

This past month or so has been really hard, though. And rather than sharing everything with the world, I’ve grown quiet, afraid that posting bad news would just make things worse.

I worried that if potential investors learned we were struggling, they’d be reluctant to invest. That’s a legitimate concern. But mostly I was worried about my own embarrassment. After all, I’m a successful serial investor, right? And this is an awesome idea and a great model. It’s innovative, well thought out, and in demand. How could I be struggling to get it open?

Well, we are indeed struggling.

Investors have backed out, banks are keeping their fiscal fists tightly clenched, and we owe lots of people money.

Individual coworking area

We are so, so close to opening. If we had the money we need today, we could be open in 6-8 weeks. But construction has stopped. We continue to move forward on many fronts. The reservations software is being tested, the equipment is sourced — so many things are ready to go. And our incredible team is intact. Believe it or not, we sometimes even manage to laugh and have fun as we work our asses off to figure out how to fix this.

We need help. We need investors. Or a loan. I can’t put deal details out there, because anything construed as advertising will get me in hot water with the SEC (as you can imagine this is extra infuriating given the SEC managed to look the other way at the Bernard Madoff $50 billion fiasco).

Everyone we’re working with wants us to open. And clearly Austin wants us to open. I have been getting more requests for space this past month than ever before. This economic debacle has actually made the demand for a place like LaunchPad Coworking even greater.

We’re looking for leads. Contacts who can help us make this happen.

And thanks for listening. This was a hard post to write, but it really does feel better to put it all out there.

2 of 22 wireframe pages for the Reservation Management application

It seems appropriate to sum up the last year with what I can only call the Understatement Of The Year: We sure have learned a lot. Which, admittedly, is a euphemism for: Holy crapola, we have encountered more obstacles and challenges than we ever imagined.

There was the location dance that cost us several months. There were the numerous gotchas as we did demolition in our space that is actually the epicenter of 5 old buildings. There were new city regulations, and periodic construction glitches. And of course there continue to be funding issues.

But perhaps our biggest challenge, has been bringing to life software of a whole new breed — something that could handle our unique reservations needs and our café side requirements. Not only that, but we wanted the solution to be gorgeous and seamless and … okay, call us over ambitious … joyful.

We hit some big walls — sometimes we joke that we’ve actually created a new kind of hardware — as in difficult-ware. Not for lack of brilliance on the inside. We employed a very mature design process. We developed personas, created use case scenarios and mapped out user flows. Tori Breitling and Marie Hwang created some of the most stunning, detailed wireframes I’ve ever seen. More than one development team has been blown away by their user interface documents, commenting that they’ve never had the opportunity to start out with such well though-out design documents.

But finding the right team that knows how to make all that work right — well, it’s been a long road, more than a little frustrating. And then, sigh of relief, enter the geniuses at Integral Concepts. We asked them to buy into this complex new model and they signed on eagerly. They totally get what we’re aiming for — not just technically but Big Picture-wise. They know how to integrate a high-touch design into all the backend functionality and they dig the concept. And right now, as you’re reading this, they’re working on something we can expand and evolve as we grow.

Oh, and did we mention they’re most excellent communicators? They check in daily, offer suggestions for improvements, and are totally, constantly on top of the game. So a big shout out to our Integral Concepts team: Scott Riggins, Chuck Guo, Sebastian Leks, and Harry Teunissen — I actually met Scott back in the 90s at Go Media when we hosted WebEdge, a Mac web developers conference. Fun to be working with him again. We can’t wait for the big launch :)

John Robb has an interesting short post over at Global Guerrillas talking about “highly decentralized hot spots of local innovation.” Say what? Allow us to translate: that’s apparently geek speak for “cool restaurant that acts as a magnet for forward thinkers who wish to gather and exchange ideas.” Robb is talking about how, in the “old days” of Silicon Valley startups, innovators and VCs could often be found congregating at one place — namely an eatery called Buck’s of Woodside. Now, he says, you can find places like this scattered all over. And he offers the example of Claire’s, a Vermont restaurant, to make his point.

But it’s the conversation the post inspires — dare we call this collaboration? — that really gets things going. In particular, commenter Duncan Kinder takes the time to school Robb on the history of innovators swapping creative juices over a plateful and a cuppa over the past umpteen centuries. He even includes helpful source links.

Kinder cites Plato’s Symposium, a philosophical dialogue written about the nature of love, which was set (as were real life symposiums) over supper and wine. And he notes the Florentine Camerata, a sort of coworking model for Renaissance musicians. And then there’s the Mermaid Club — a bunch of Elizabethan poets who gathered at a tavern regularly to throw back brew and couplets spew.

Do note Kinder has more than a passing interest in the history of folks gathering to swap ideas. As he himself points out — also with a link — he’s compiled a list on Amazon called Philosophically Correct Entertainment offering up other examples of the predecessors to that smart group thinking that informs the success of coworking.

Photo by kino-eye