

Blogging Fogbeam: Episode 2: The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins... - mindcrime
http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-episode-2-journey-of.html

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mgkimsal
Sponsoring splatspace/trifunc - do you think your target audience is there?

re: FFC - you mentioned "get out of the building" - has your experience been
that physical "face to face" is inherently better than email/irc/im/phone?

Would be curious to know what "Friendly First Contacts" I could/should be
making with virusade.com :)

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mindcrime
_Sponsoring splatspace/trifunc - do you think your target audience is there?_

"Target market" as far as customers? Nope, not really. That bit truly is about
giving back to the community and being true to our values. Yeah, we get a link
from <http://www.trifunc.org> and a link from <http://www.splatspace.org>,
which maybe helps our pagerank or something... but it's really not about that.

That said, there is some value, I believe, in keeping (or building) "geek
cred." When the day comes that we can start hiring employees, etc., I think
it'll be valuable for people to see Fogbeam Labs as a company that is a
genuine member of the hacking community and not just a money-grubbing,
$EVILCORP.

 _re: FFC - you mentioned "get out of the building" - has your experience been
that physical "face to face" is inherently better than email/irc/im/phone?_

Yes. So far, of the 15 or so Customer Discovery interviews I've done, all but
2 have been face to face, in person. The other two were by telephone.
Telephone is better than nothing, but there's just something about sitting
down together with somebody (preferably over lunch or drinks or something)
where you can draw pictures, let the other person doodle on the picture, and
just have that high-bandwidth, back and forth that includes body language,
voice tone, facial expression, etc.

That said, keep in mind that I'm pretty old-fashioned in my beliefs about
"doing business." Technology aside, I will still always prefer face to face
communication, a firm handshake, eye contact, and all that "old skool" stuff
__when possible __. No, I'm not enough of a luddite not to acknowledge the
value of technological tooling for remote communication... but nothing beats
face to face in my book.

 _Would be curious to know what "Friendly First Contacts" I could/should be
making with virusade.com :)_

I think you're doing the right things so far. I signed up for your beta
already. I'll email you when I have some thoughts. Better yet, let's get
together for a beer again sometime soon. :-)

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mgkimsal
Thanks - your meetup today - probably a bit too far for me today - brier creek
area would be much more conducive (that's only a 40 minute drive!)

~~~
mindcrime
Understood. The meetup today is really kind of a one-off... I often go to that
Barnes & Noble to work anyway, so I decided to just make today a small, casual
H&F meeting. But, point taken, and I'll see about trying to do something more
on the Raleigh side of the Triangle again, sometime soon. Durham really does
seem to be emerging as the "hub" for startup activity in the area though, so
there's a lot of allure to doing events there. :-)

