Everyone seems to have a Blog these days (if not several), resulting in significantly more noise than signal in pretty much everything out there. Everyone and their brother seems to be jockying for position to be the next big name in… in what? Internet Celebritydom is a fickle and hard-to-reach goal, and more often than not is reached by pure luck than anything else. So in order to pare down this article I’m going to restrict myself to skill-based celebrities. Individuals who through their contribution to a particular field have achieved recognition and celebritydom on a level beyond the average Blogger. Chances are that you know some of these individuals in your own industry or field of expertise, and your own company would do well to be affiliated with them. They might be constantly out of the office speaking at various locations, however the fact that your company name is attached to their expertise marks you as the leader in the field. This article presents some guidelines on how to choose, contact, engage and retain such celebrities.

So, the idea of Micropayment Startup Funding turned out not to be viable…. correction- we have no idea whether it was viable, because we simply didn’t have the expertise necessary to refine the business plan. Why? Well, read on.

This weekend is Startup Weekend Columbus, a three day skunkworks convention where 150 people walk into a building for a weekend and do their best to get a few companies started. I registered for it a few months ago with the thought that it’d be cool to really dig into something new and shiny for a short amount of time, and have some good fun networking with others. Unfortunately, three things happened that I wasn’t expecting at that time.

As a bit of an information sponge, I’ve carefully developed the ability to cross reference different knowledge domains and apply solutions from one to another. The upside of this is that many see me as a very creative individual, when I’m really just a very complex comparison algorithm. The far more problematic downside is that my mind generates so many awesome things to pursue, implement, investigate or create that I’m frequently crippled trying to pursue them all.

This spits in the face of my own personal philosophies: “Inspiration, no matter how trivial, should be pursued and encouraged”. I just don’t have enough energy, time, or brain capacity to pursue all this crap, whether substantial or whimsical, so I figured I’d start posting some of the ones I really love (but don’t have the capacity to pursue) here, just in case someone else wants to pick something up. I’ll be labeling them with the project names I used when I first started investigating them, so if you see a blog post come through called “Project [something or other]” you’ll know that it’s an idea open for grabs.

More blog neglect, but this time I actually have some interesting things to report.

First of all, in an effort to deal with blog neglect I’ve shifted my usual authoring time to before work rather than after. Afterwards there are simply too many distractions- mental, physical and… ahem… social for me to really get focused on my thoughts and get them down. Whether I can keep it up is anyone’s guess, but for now I’ve got a nice cool morning, a full battery and a patch of sunshine to write in. What else could you want?

Set the scene: It’s a corporate boardroom, four or five years ago. The newly hired CEO is holding his first strategic meeting, and everyone’s just a little on edge. None of them know what to expect, and some of them were worried. Were there going to be cuts? Downsizings? The company performance had been utterly dismal- their major competitor had beaten them out of every market segment over the last few years, and the only thing left was a niche segment of crazy loyalists that never blinked at the exorbitant pricetags and substandard performance of their product line.

Their major competitive advantage is not that they’re organic- United Natural Foods is organic, but they’re really just a distributor with exclusive supply contracts. No, they’re branded. In a world where organic foods are the new yuppie fad and via that fad organic produce is slowly turning into just another commodity (albeit a premium commodity), Natural Selection Foods has managed to build a strong organic brand and, unlike UNF’s deals that make their produce sell under the Whole Foods label, have managed to significantly penetrate the organic isles of more mainstream retail outlets (Costco, for instance- Go Soccer Moms!).

The European organic market is significantly more mature than the US market, with 3.4% of its farmland certified organic. Top country on that list? Austria, with 9.7%. After that it’s Sweden, Greece, and Denmark. In contrast the US has… get this… 0.2% organic farmland. Mind you, it’s growing at 20+% a year, and there’s significant consolidation going on in the sector (actual acerage is three times as much as austria, with half as many actual operators). From trends I see in Europe and some analyst reports, it seems like we’re going to see that growth rate in America increase for at least another 5 years, and then eventually settle do a more respectable 7% annual….

A bit of background first: The presentation I delivered yesterday was on Confluence, a Mortgage Regulation Compliance Solution provider (I can see you falling asleep) that’s competing in the space with Charles River Development who dominates their market. Essentially we had to write a paper and give a presentation on it, and since my teammate Brian (who actually works at Confluence) wasn’t going to be there for the presentation, he was kind enough to write the paper so I could base the presentation on it.

So, apparently, in China there’s a new tradition called tuangou. Collaborative Haggling. What happens is that consumers who all want to buy the same or similar products walk into a store en masse to negotiate a rebate better than that of individual purchasers. Of course, there’s a price horizon- chances are you can’t haggle for anything less expensive than, say, $200. But the idea is somewhat ingenious, especially since it’s applicable here in the United States.So, I’ve been thinking. When I buy my next car, if I, say, find 5 to 10 individuals who all want to buy that or a similar car at the same time, and we all walk onto a lot……or, alternatively, start a car dealership entirely based on the “lot order” concept.