Tomorrow I am starting what I hope to be a continuing series here at The Hot Iron called 6 Questions. The basic concept is where via an online conversation I ask someone 6 questions with my own twist to it.

One consistency in the questions will be the first and last ones. The first will always be, "who are you and what are you doing here?" borrowing liberally the famous line from Admiral James Stockdale. This will be followed by 4 questions. The last question will always be, "what question did I not ask and what is its answer?" and this can be anything.

Look for it tomorrow, and I look forward to your feedback on this concept.

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6 Questions • Announcements • (0) Comments • Permalink

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Diversions • (3) Comments • Permalink

As someone asked me for a list of the domain name blogs I read, I thought it best to post it here on The Hot Iron, as others may be interested in them as well.

Here they are, in domain name alphabetic order:

CircleID - Very thorough discussion on Internet infrastructure including domain names
Conceptualist.com - By Sahar Sarid, a great blog by a domainer and founder of Bido.com, as well as great insight into business and entrepreneurship
Daily Domainer - Good domain news and accompanying mailing list for domain news and alerts
Direct Navigation - Good domain name news, including “taken or not” contests
Dominik Mueller’s Blog - Good news and insight from an experienced domainer
DN Cartoons - Domainers laugh at themselves
DN Hour - The Digg for domain name content
DNXpert - Good domain name news from the author of the Domaining Manifesto
DNZoom - Blog for an excellent domain name management tool
Domain Bits - Good news and information from Jeff Behrendt
Domainer's Gazette - Good news and information from Peter
Domain Name News - One of the best news sources from Frank Michlick and Illinois’ own Adam Strong
Domain News Wire - A good news and information source
Domain Name Industry News - A good domain name and Internet news source
DomainTools Blog - Updates on the DomainTools service and industry information
Dot Sauce - The blog is just part of the information offered on this fast-growing domain name resource
Elliot’s Blog - Domain name developer Elliot Silver’s blog provides insight into his own business and the industry
What’s Your Name.com - News and insights from inside a domain register by Kellie Peterson at name.com
Rick’s Blog - “Domain King” Rick Schwartz’s blog, with frank domain name and business news and opinion
Seven Mile - Domainer guru Frank Schilling’s blog, though it hasn’t been updated in months
SuccessClick - Stephen Douglas’s blog with good domain name news
The Domains - Good industry and news source
Whizzbang’s Blog - Domainer Michael Gilmour’s blog is part of the information sharing, including an archive and forum

A final note – while this list is extensive, I have to admit I don’t always read every post in its entirety, and this also applies to blogs and feeds I read in general. Many of these blogs have links to others.

Please let me know your thoughts on any of these, as well as any others I may want to read.

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Business • Domain Names • (0) Comments • Permalink

This past weekend I was bound and determined to clean out the 2 inboxes on my desk – a magazine rack where I would put incoming magazines until I read them, and a standard inbox where everything else went until I process it. As they were piling up and I really didn’t know the true extent of what was in them, I did not rest until everything was removed and processed. I am happy to report this was done, and the accompanying photo is my proof.

My inboxes became a literal dead zone in my office. A combination of personal and business items was piled up in the inbox, and back issues of everything from Inc. to the Red Eye going back farther than they should. So I sorted them, shredded the few things I couldn’t think of how they got in there, and took them on 1 by 1. At the end of the night, they were picture-perfect empty (the Omniture scarf under them is made by my client, SportsScarf).

To prevent this from repeating, I am eliminating the newspaper rack and just keeping the inbox. It already has made a difference in the appearance and feel of my desk, possibly even improving its feng shui? As magazines come in, I will read them. I will only keep items in it if they can not be processed right away for whatever reason.

This type of continual improvement once again reminds me productivity is a journey and not a destination.

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Business • (3) Comments • Permalink

In my takeaways on the book The Venture Cafe I said in business you cannot truly go it alone. But what if you took it to the extreme, where the ideas for what your business does came from other people, namely the same people you are trying to sell to? This is the premise of the book e-Preneur, subtitled “From Wall Street to Wiki: Succeeding as a Crowdpreneur in the New Virtual Marketplace.”

A crowdpreneur, as defined by the author Richard Goossen, is, “an individual or organization that uses the strategy of online crowd empowerment in its various forms (collective intelligence, mass collaboration, crowdsourcing & others) in the pursuit of an entrepreneurial venture.” In other words, your business is solely about the ideas from others. Crowdsourcing, as I have digested it, is making an open call for ideas. An example of a crowdpreneur often cited is Chicago’s Threadless, a t-shirt company where ideas are submitted by the community through their Web site, who vote on what shirt designs will eventually be sold.

To many this is not only a new idea but one they probably would never consider. How can you give control over what your business does to others? However if you have some curiosity on the topic, this may be a read for you. Even though my own business Dunkirk Systems, LLC would be considered traditional in comparison to a crowdpreneurial business, I did have takeaways from this book.

My greatest take away is to keep in close contact with your customers. Business owners of all sizes can easily lose focus of their business and the service they offer to their customers. As a small businessperson, the input and ideas from my partners and clients are critical to the success of my business. On the other extreme is the airline industry, who plainly doesn’t give a damn about their customers. Input can sometimes be a distraction, but managed properly it can be a vital source for ideas and as a result increased business.

Another take away is that there is no shortage of ideas for running a business. Advances in technology, including Internet technologies labeled as “Web 2.0,” have enabled companies to do many great things, including crowdsourcing and being crowdpreneurial. Just think back a few years for many of the services and Web sites (e.g. YouTube) were merely good ideas in someone’s head. By keeping an open mind and being able to adapt and change as needed, companies can either stay ahead of the game, or survive in tough economic times.

E-Preneur takes the reader through 5 steps to create a crowdpreneurial venture, from the original concept to funding it. Throughout the book there are many lists, though if they were broken out more as tabular lists would have been more helpful in organizing your thoughts as you read it. The book closes with some basic business start-up concepts that, if you are already at this point, you may already have down. Where many books have a type or two, a glaring error was in citing name of the chairman of Cisco Systems as John Cisco instead of John Chambers! All things considered, if you are looking for ideas or a different perspective on business, e-Preneur is a good and encouraging read.

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Book Take-Aways • Business • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink