We're now in panel discussions, so there's no live streaming.
Thoughts...
I had the pleasure of recommending one of the EIR's, and in looking at the other 4 EIR's... Kick ass people. All from a broad range of the Tech industry.. Two from the Silicon Valley scene.
The people from USCIS they they've chosen to staff the program are really impressive. I've taken to walking up to a number of them and thanked them for their service. It truly is a thankless job. After this program we should all send them a thank you card. :)
The USCIS person that's heading up the program reports to the head of USCIS, so there's a good chance that changes can be instituted.
The mission is to change and revamp everything that can be changed and revamped without going to congress to change the law.
I've had a couple of talks with the White House staffers on point for this issue, and they are extremely impressive.
I've been impressed by what a hard job it must be to be an immigration official. If you're right and you process a visa application right... Who cares. I you're wrong... You face anger and rage.
Television is not about debate, it's about sound bites.
Television is not about facts, it's about communicating feelings and emotions. It's about painting an image of your opposition.
Memes we need to spread:
The moguls and their political puppets that support these bills are dinosaurs.
These bills were written by lawyers who don't understand that this will break the internet.
These bills are created by "media moguls" or "media elite" afraid of innovating.
SOPA / PIPA needs to be painted as radical and extremist.
Computers and the internet have been the backbone of innovation and economic growth the past 20 years.
The censorship meme (sadly) doesn't matter to Middle America. We need to drop it.
I'd suggest the following talking points and sound bites for the next debate:
-"Kauffman Foundation says that 2/3 of new jobs are created by high growth technology startups. This bill breaks the internet, and kills startups that could be the next Facebook, YouTube, Google or Ebay."
-When faced with the lying... "Are Google, Twitter, Facebook, Ebay, Yahoo all lying then?"
-"Media companies and their lobbyists tried to kill VHS, the cassette recorder, the phonograph, the MP3 player and now... now, they are trying to kill the internet. They were wrong then. They're wrong now."
-"The people who created this bill are lawyers not engineers. They don't understand how the internet works."
-"SOPA and PIPA are radical copyright protectionism"
-"SOPA and PIPA are corporate welfare of the worst kind, protecting industries that are afraid of innovation"
-"We are in the worst economic conditions in a century. This the the worst possible time to ram through radical legislation created to protect media moguls sitting on mountains of cash".
-"In this terrible economy, we need to do everything we can to support technology companies who are one of the few bright spots in this economy"
And... for what it's worth... after we beat SOPA / PIPA, we need a Startup PAC to take a proactive long view on educating legislators and their staffers on these issues, rather than constantly reacting to awful legislation like SOPA/PIPA.
And, in the spirit of full disclosure, the actual email I sent out to the members of our meetup:
Video of Rand Fishkin's presentation, Gaining Traction: Inbound Marketing for Startups is live. One of the best presentations I've been at in a long time. I'll be watching it a couple of times.
Slides of the presentation are here.
I'd love for the video to make it to the top of Hacker News.... I'm not active on that site any more. Could ya'll hook a brother up?
I'd love to give Rand and SEOMoz.org some press, to boost their sales. He's an amazing guy, and SEOMoz is killer.
Help H&F help you...
The more views we get on those videos, the BizSpark team prove to their bosses that's it's worth buying all of you pizza and beer and wine, and renting out the "Fancy Pants" auditorium for us. It costs them about $20k every time we host an event there. ( Laura and I don't get anything out of it. )
So, if you'd like us to host more of those presentations...
Facebookify, Tweetify, Quorify, social newsif-y, etc...
Thanks
And, for helping out with that, you get:
Two free months of SEOMoz.
Seriously, it kicks ass. Try it out on your site.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Poorly worded, and I apologize for the confusion. See my other reply...
"I'd love for the video to make it to the top of Hacker News.... I'm not active on that site any more. Could ya'll hook a brother up? ....
And, for helping out with that, you get:
Two free months of SEOMoz."
Sorry about that confusion. I misworded that email.
That's not at _all_ what I meant, and I didn't mean to game the system at all. I apologize about the confusion.
For various reasons, I'm not really active on this community any more. So, I asked H&F members if they would be kind enough to do if for me.
I asked H&F members to submit and upvote, tweet, like and Google Plus to give Rand some press.
Rand flew down to SV on his own dime to talk to our H&F members for free. He didn't ask us to promote SEOMoz, and never required anything out of us. He was truly one of the most delightful, genuine and kind speakers that we've had at H&F. I'm more than happy to do whatever I can to help him and his company out.
BizSpark sponsored the event by buying everyone pizza and beer. H&F doesn't get a dime out of this. Hackers & Founders is completely boot strapped ourselves, and do a lot of this for love of the game. And, we're pursuing becoming a for benefit corporation.
When Rand and I first started talking, about speaking to our people a few months ago. I arranged for SEOMoz to give H&F members two free months of SEOMoz for free. I emailed that offer to our people last month, but no one signed up. I figured that after Rand spoke, people would be a bit more interested in trying the SEOMoz service out.
I emailed the link to the free trial out with the link to the video to our Meetup, because I'd received about 20 emails asking for both the video as well as the free trial in the past 24 hours.
I apologize if people thought that I was trying to game the system. I'm not. I'm trying to give a friend, and a great entrepreneur a boost. He helped out community out a great deal. His writing has helped me out a great deal in the past.
And, for what it's worth, SEOMOz has an affiliate program. If people sign up for a one month trial, the referrers get $25. It's not really worth that effort for me, and that's not what H&F does. So, we chose to waive the affiliate fee and SEOMoz chipped in the extra month to help everybody out.
Clarification much appreciated. Original email (e.g. request for upvote) probably would have been fine if you hadn't presented the 2 months of SEOMoz as a prize for the upvote.
