Gary Vaynerchuk is the host of Wine Library TV (with over 80,000 viewers a day) and Director of Operations at his family’s company, Wine Library, in Springfield, NJ. He grew that business from $4 million to $60 million in only five years, and is now the co-founder of VaynerMedia and a consultant for Fortune 100 companies. An in-demand public speaker, Vaynerchuk has keynoted at events such as FOWA and South by Southwest, and also appeared on many television shows such as “Ellen DeGeneres”, “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”, “The Today Show”, and CNBC’s “Mad Money With Jim Cramer”. Vaynerchuk’s second book, “Crush It!“, came out earlier this month.
Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks. I caught up with him at the recent LessConf event in Jacksonville, Fla, to chat about Freshbooks’ focus, whether you can trust web apps with your data, and working with family members.
Do you work with family members? How does it work out for you?
Speaking at Izeafest, influential blogger Liz Strauss (@lizstrauss) of Successful Blog said that she considers authenticity her “extreme strategy,” both online and off. Strauss, who is a social media and web strategist based in Chicago and CEO and founder of SOBCon, thinks authenticity is key to being successful online. So, how can you improve your authenticity?
“Be there, be behind the screen,” says Strauss, meaning that you need to be present, you need to be engaged yourself, and you need to care. “Who you are is who you are, all the way down to the cells of your body.”
According to Strauss, some ways to enhance your authenticity — beyond simply being yourself — include: Read the rest of this entry »
Aaron Brazell, aka @technosailor and founder and lead editor of Technosailor.com, when he spoke at Izeafest 2009, shared his thoughts on what makes someone an “influencer.” The difference between being a celebrity and an influencer, he said, is that, “Being a celebrity gets you attention now; being an influencer gets you attention over the long term.”
I like Twitter, and I embrace it for both personal and private use. Until recently, though, I’ve been hesitant to take the next logical step and attend a tweetup, despite their popularity here in Toronto. (A tweetup is a gathering of Twitter users, and is something our own Aliza Sherman has much more experience with.) But I did finally bite the bullet and give it a try. Actually, two tries, to be more precise, which resulted in two very different experiences. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been at SXSW attending sessions, seeing product demos and interviewing tech company founders. I’ve also been asking anyone who identifies themselves as a web worker about their favorite web app and how it helps them with their work.
Here is the first of a series of short interviews with a variety of web working types, starting with venture capitalist and co-founder of Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, who reveals his favorite web app: the “ultimate marketing tool for Twitter.”
South by Southwest 2009, one of the largest and most widely-covered technology and Internet conferences of the year (and that’s to say nothing of the music and film portions!) is fast approaching. While many industry insiders will attend in person, SXSW will also be widely covered across a wide swath of mainstream media news web sites, blogs, YouTube, Qik, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Tumblr, posterous and just about every other social media publishing platform that you can think of!
My Boss Doesn’t Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man — A major and ongoing challenge/opportunity for web workers is to prove-by-example the power of social media.GameChangers – Improvisation for Business in the Networked World — This panel covers improving “teamwork, creativity, flexibility and problem-solving skills”: essential for every web worker!
One of the more uplifting experiences for a blogger-writer on a general-interest news website like myself occurs when I ask readers in a column to tell me what they think of allowing cell phone calls on an airline flight.
This the third time in about three years I’ve asked, and the response each time has been rapid and vociferous, generating at least eight to 10 times more responses than I usually get to a column.
And what do the people – or at least my people – say? They are horrified at the very mention of the idea, with some vowing to stop flying or get into physical confrontations at 30,000 feet if they are subjected to the ill-mannered around them chattering away on the phone in a cramped airline cabin. Out of 58 e-mails and phone calls so far, 56 said they’re vigorously opposed.
Here’s a typical response, this one from a business owner in Chester, Pa:
I can think of nothing that would make travel more unbearable than cell phone use on airplanes. People are loud, rude and inconsiderate in the terminal. It would be even worse on a plane.
If you feel the same way, don’t worry. The prohibition about voice calls is not about to change. But the ability to access the Internet for e-mail and texting in flight is changing, and we want to know what web workers who have to fly on business think about all of it.
Gary Vaynerchuk is the host of Wine Library TV (with over 80,000 viewers a day) and Director of Operations at his family’s company, Wine Library, in Springfield, NJ. He grew that business from $4 million to $60 million in only five years, and is now the co-founder of VaynerMedia and a consultant for Fortune 100 companies. An in-demand public speaker, Vaynerchuk has keynoted at events such as FOWA and South by Southwest, and also appeared on many television shows such as “Ellen DeGeneres”, “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”, “The Today Show”, and CNBC’s “Mad Money With Jim Cramer”. Vaynerchuk’s second book, “Crush It!“, came out earlier this month.
Speaking at 
Aaron Brazell, aka
I like Twitter, and I embrace it for both personal and private use. Until recently, though, I’ve been hesitant to take the next logical step and attend a tweetup, despite their popularity here in Toronto. (A tweetup is a gathering of Twitter users, and is something our own Aliza Sherman has 
South by Southwest 2009
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
