This next week will be a double-header. I’ll be in lovely New York City tomorrow preparing for Sun’s Startup Camp2NYC Conference beginning Monday (Ironically its actually the third conference, but the second in NY). Also, technically its not a conference, its an unconference — if you aren’t familiar with the term its worth researching about. Essentially, the people who attend the conference determine the outcome — who presents, at what time, in which conference room. I may be giving a brief 45 minute presentation on grails, but haven’t quite decided yet. Anyway, like I said the unconference is a unique as you don’t know whats going to happen until you arrive, and its got some amazing guidelines such as “whatever happens is meant to happen,” “if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time… go elsewhere.” I attended the same startup focused “unconference” in May up in San Francisco and it was very informative. Ironically SF is the what makes next week a double-header. I’ll be heading up to the city by the bay after my return from New York. Wish me luck on either sleeping through the flight or watching a Law and Order marathon on JetBlue.

Paul, thanks for the shout out on newstoday.com. If you don’t know Paul “D5ive” Drohan you’ve seen his work on the web. He’s one of the most amazing Creative Director’s I know. Also, if you live in the San Diego area don’t miss his next art show — his print pieces are unreal.   Lastly, check out Paul’s posters for the band Transfer.

As a follow up to my previous post, I now have a definition for “Hard Launch.” A hard launch is what happens when water from a planter box leaks (or in this case floods) your central fire alarm box. In my case this shorted the alarm system and set off the 120 decibel fire alarm at 6am for about a half-hour.

Now of course I was awake due to a scheduled 5am conference call. However, the fire department would not turn off the alarm because then they would be responsible if a real fire were to occur. I’ll end this by saying its nice I live downtown, in a typical neighborhood there would have been some very unhappy campers.

Either I have lost my ability to navigate the Internet, or the Wikipedia is missing an worthwhile entry. Within the “Industry” the term “Soft Launch” generally means that you are attempting to launch a website or campaign prematurely. This is usually caused by scope or feature creep, lack of resources, a shift in deadlines, or mismanaged stakeholder expectations.

If I missed the boat, please drop a link to the Wikipedia’s definition of a soft launch.