Bizosphere

Archive for February, 2007

The second Carnival of the Capitalists Q&A question with James Pethokoukis of the U.S. News & World Report blog Capital Commerce is up, as part of a post that considers whether the Drudge Report helped tank the stock market. It features a question from cehwiedel on internet regulation prospects.

Welcome to the first edition of Carnival of the Capitalists 2.0, the reboot of CotC in which inclusion will not be so automatic and the emphasis will be on quality and substance, as well as remaining on-topic, which hasn’t always been the case.

Before I go on, I’d like to note that we are holding a special Q&A event between CotC and Capital Commerce, a blog by James Pethokoukis at U.S. News & World Report. It’s in the form of a Q&A with some bloggers who have participated in CotC over time. I’ll update this post to include a direct link when it’s published, but meanwhile you can check out Capital Commerce and watch for it.

Note: The intro and first part of the Q&A is up. Due to constraints beyond his control, it is located within a post that also covers the evil alternative minimum tax. The first question was submitted by Anita Campbell.

Bizosphere.com is the new home of Carnival of the Capitalists, still under construction, but rapidly superceding thecotc.com. This is the go-to place for information and announcements. If you are a CotC host past or future, you should be permalinking this site on yours. If you host in the future, you should absolutely be linking it in your edition of CotC. If you are a participant in CotC, you should be permalinking this site on yours, as well as posting the link to the edition of CotC you are in when it’s up.

I read the entries in batches as they arrived, labeling them yes or no, or holding them for reconsideration. Some otherwise superior writing was excluded for being off-topic. Frankly, I ruled out half the entries with limited attention to the elusive “quality” factor, mainly for ordinary reasons: More than one entry from the same blog, off-topic, not substantive, excess proportion of quoted text or links or reference elsewhere that made the post little more than a pointer, that sort of thing.

As I compose this, I may reconsider the “yes” entries further; sort of a “Hollywood Round,” you could say.

And now, the entries…

Disorganizational Behavior brings us Limited Engagement, which is a good example of about the most quoted to original text I would expect to see, barring exceptions a host is always free to make.

This post struck a particular nerve with me, as I have seen and experienced it so many times. It’s about the tendency of employees to become disengaged after about six months on the job. It’s an HR and management challenge to prevent that. One that all too often is not met, or even on management’s radar.

Small Business Buzz has some Ideas to Help Generate Business on Valentine’s Day. I let this one through because it is on-topic, has entertaining bits and might be of interest to some, and even apply in part to other holiday or event days. You could complain about the holiday being too artificial or commercial, or you could incorporate it into your marketing. Mmmm… revenue.

Lead Optimize takes us back to employee management issues, specifically as impacts sales generation, but also applicable more generally, with Bad Salespeople Kill Sales Leads. Sometimes people just have to go and everyone is better for it, even them.

Forty Media presents an excellent, extensive post on marketing and associated design considerations in Attention Mapping: The 10-Point Exercise. Advice relevant to me, and perhaps to you as well, well presented; that’s quality.

Acton Institute PowerBlog talks the importance of trade, centered on The Tale of an Englishman and a Swede by VeggieTales, of all things. I definitely know the feeling of watching things on account of kids you would never watch otherwise.

Reflections of a BizDrivenLife reflects on pricing in Profits Straight to the Bottom Line, with an emphasis on profitable price as distinguished from low price. This is another entry that meant something to me personally, reminding me of something I knew but find easy to overlook.

The Digerati Life presents a fun post that I excepted from the excessive quoted text guideline, which it violates handily. Top 20 Business Ideas That Made Millions… Or Not! It’s enough to make you think again about that crazy business idea you immediately dismissed.

Coyote Blog considers the Cost of Centralization, noting that management should take it into account and consider carefully when to centralize, or decentralize, aspects of a wide-flung organization. It’s a lesson from his company’s experience, centered on human resources and purchasing. This is a post I particularly liked and entered myself as a meaty example.

Political Calculations explores Presidential Pretensions in a post that only sounds political on the surface, but regards minimum wage, and thus economics and business. Included is a tool for calculating the impact of minimum wage changes based on various inputs, discussed in the post.

Trusted Advisor asks “Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?” In looking at a flawed glass ceiling study, points out the value of building connections, and how that is not synonymous with luck.

Matt Inglot offers 5 Tips for Staying on Top of Your Books for Small Business Owners, excellent and timely advice, yet another post of current relevance for me. I’ll spare the true confessions, but suffice to say I’d like to do it right in my next business.

Breaking the Shackles of the 9 to 5 blogs a path to your door, Building a Better BRIC-Trap. BRIC? That’s Brazil, Russia, India and China, up and coming economic power group, as you’ll learn with interest, even if you’re not into the analysis of selected, targeted stocks at the end.

Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Blog takes a look at Kraft CEO Irene B. Rosenfeld and the job she’s doing Krafting a New Company.

Econbrowser is concerned about the San Diego County Pension Fund, and the deeper implications of hedge fund investment flows.

Sox First tells us about DaimlerChrysler: Another Merger Disaster Waiting to Happen, in which I learned for the first time that they are breaking up. It has at least a borderline amount of quoted source text, but was too interesting to leave out.

Queercents talks about how and why to Build a Business While Keeping Your Day Job, at least for a while. There’s a reason this is a classic way to get established if possible.

The MineThatData Blog discusses and analyzes the benefits and dangers to businesses using them of rewards programs generally, jumping off from the question “Orvis Rewards — Is It Rewarding For Orvis?”

Sophispundit talks about the concept of opportunity cost in economics, the cost of information, and Science as the Division of Labor.

Blog Business World manages to tell us about the importance of time management for managers and entrepreneurs and provide some tips in Work Overload: Solving the Time Problem.

James S. Logan reveals The Secret to Attracting B2B Sales Leads. Hint: It’s not all about you.

Anita Campbell describes the Startup Stages of Growth and Venture Capital. One size does not fit all, nor will it happen in one fell swoop.

Fat Pitch Financials teaches us a Hustler Lesson: Importance of Measuring, noting how easily we can be misled or misperceive things in matters of investment. It’s of modest length and relies somewhat on an external video, but I thought it interesting enough to include.

That does it for this edition; 22 entries, in the order received, out of 44 total. I felt like Simon Cowell, yet I fear that I may not have been tough enough. I did keep all the entries I flagged yes as they arrived, rather than eliminating further as I suggested I might up at the top.

If an entry was not included, it would have been for some combination of:

We’re looking for the best business and economics posts each week. Submit excellence. Or, as Yoda might say to an American Idol contestant in the audition rounds, “there is no ‘try’.” When people sang about as badly as I’m making cultural cross-references, over and over many of them would whine about how hard they worked, or how hard they tried.

I haven’t decided for sure, but I believe I will host again for the next edition, as I try to get a handle on how it will work with the changes, and try to reduce the spam hosts have to contend with in Gmail. I may be tougher next week, to ensure the point is made and the right balance is struck. Fair warning. The one entry for the next edition so far wasn’t even in the same universe as “on-topic,” so there’s one easy elimination.

See the (subject to change) hosting info page and consider whether you might want to volunteer to host and channel Simon too in the near future. E-mail jay at this domain if you’d like to offer to host. You will not automatically be accepted, and you are agreeing to the hosting guidelines when you do.

I hope to have CotC posted by noon. Kids.

To those of you who are worried about your entry getting through, please don’t. Enter it once. It is surprisingly irritating to see one from Gongol and one from Blog Carnival. Or worse, two from Gongol and one from Blog Carnival. The same applies to e-mailing and using a form; don’t.

It’s not going to earn you any points with the host. Both forms send entries the same place in similar fashion, and that amounts to the same as if you e-mailed it yourself. Pick one. You’re not going to be excluded because of it. For now. But it is annoying.

You know the mantra “it’s not personal, it’s business”?

CotC is business, it’s not personal. Not personal finance, generally. Not personal advice.

On a related note, I have looked at 14 entries so far. I have flagged six as no and only four as yes. One of those I saw on a blog and put in myself as an example of what’s excellent and appropriate. The rest are unflagged, to go back and ponder them again, as I was torn, which should probably mean a no.

Every page (see the list on the right) is done except links, which will be ongoing anyway, and the all-important page for people who are interested in entering posts into CotC. That is, for “subject to change” values of “done.”

The main point on the page about entering is going to be not to count on your entry being included, that if you enter a post nearly every week they are likely not to be great posts as a matter of course, and to pay attention to both what can be summarily excluded, and the quest for the best. Add some stuff about the mechanics of it, yada yada, and you have that page. I’ll try not to take too long getting to it, but I’m about done for today.

One of the pages I did is the list of niche carnivals of potential interest to CotC readers. As I explained at the top of that page, excluded are any that don’t rotate hosts, that seem to have gone fallow, that are brand new, or that don’t have a home page of their own. I’d be inclined also to leave out ones that have the odd five entry limit, or that don’t take submissions and are really just link roundups. I had expected there to be more. Feel free to let me know if I missed any, bearing in mind I left out several for the aforementioned reasons. You can e-mail jay at this domain.

SimplifyThis presents the February 19 edition of CotC.

Note that it was edited for quality of content, even though the official reboot of CotC begins with the next edition, hosted right here.

I updated the CotC description and homepage over at Blog Carnival, and in the process I added keywords for the first time. Sadly, the length allowed for the keywords is severely limited. In honor of search engine spiders everywhere, I will reproduce here both the description and the full keyword list I tentatively wrote over there.

I also changed the carnival’s category to “business.” It was always strange that they’d placed it under “politics,” but when I originally tried to change it, “business” wasn’t an available option. Since it was the original carnival of business, and blatently not politics, the lack of appropriate category was odd.

The new description:

Pioneer and foremost among niche carnivals in general and business carnivals in particular, CotC is a “Best Of the Blogosphere” destination for posts covering anything in the wide realm of business, economics, and philosophy regarding capitalism.

The keywords I attempted to enter, based largely on the extended description of what’s on-topic:

Business, Economics, Capitalism, Management, Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Entrepreneurship, Human Resources, Stocks, Investing, Commerce, Taxes, Regulation, Fiscal Policy, Money, Industry, Public Relations, Employment, Unions, Personnel, Recruiting, Operations, Products, Corporations, Venture Capital, Executives, Entrepreneurs, Trade, Insurance, Theory, Free Markets, Compliance, Law, Liability, Intellectual Property, Bonds, Commodities, Real Estate, IPO, Advertising, Promotion, Economic Growth, Recession, Market, SEC, Corporations, Securities, Fiduciary, FASB, GAAP, GAAS, SOX, Sarbanes-Oxley, MBA

The past hosts 1.0 and future hosts pages are done. Past CotC 1.0 will include everything through this week’s edition, and then the list will start fresh under Past CotC 2.0, which also makes for easier editing and management of the list.

The hosting page is next. I have to step away from this for a while, so I haven’t gotten past a prospective first paragraph:

The quality and reputation of Carnival of the Capitalists depends as much on hosts as on entrants. It is imperative that you go into it aware that it is a serious commitment of time and effort, starting with reading and considering every entry.

Stay tuned for more.

I’ve completed a first pass at the About CotC page, which covers both some history, and a cursory bit about the changes we are undergoing.