Naked Cowboy and more

I decided to take my wife to NY City for our 17th anniversary this weekend. We were there last fall and both loved it so I thought it would be a good idea to go back again and I was right. Highlights include central park, including taking a rowboat for a spin, Hairspray (the musical) and dinner at "One If By Land, Two if by Sea" (highly highly recommended though we set a new record for $ spent on dinner for two). We finished off the trip by taking a short ride on "The Beast", a large speedboat that takes off from Pier 83 and heads to the Statue of Liberty. New York City is a truly amazing place and always gives me energy even though I always come back exhausted. I suspect business will bring me to NYC on a regular basis and I suspect I'll never get bored of it.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you might remember that I wrote a blog about NYC last October. The concept I wanted to build was at the very early stage in my brain and being in NYC gave me some courage. Funny enough, I was reading "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin on the trip down and there is no better place than NYC to see what Seth is talking about. "Purple Cow" speaks to the fact that traditional advertising just doesn't work anymore. You really need to focus on creating something that is truly remarkable and that people will want to tell their friends about (like I'm doing with NYC). It doesn't mean that you have to be flashy but you do have to quite different and provide something people want and will evangelize for you.

When you walk through Times Square, you are constantly bombarded with huge bright Billboards. To tell you the truth, I can't even remember one after walking through there a dozen times over the last few days. However, I do remember a promotion RIM did there last year for the Pearl. They have people in times square taking your picture and posting it up on one of the big screens. You can't avoid noticing that. You also can't miss the Naked Cowboy. If you google him on the net, you'll note that he is now a brand and is probably doing quite well. It is possible to stand out, even in Times Square. He is a picture with my wife as well as a video of some wacky guys in Central Park skating to the beat.



With that in mind, I have regained the courage to do some of the wacky things that have popped in my head over the last month. At first I thought I was a bit crazy, and I'm sure my partners did as well, but as Seth puts it, "Safe is Risky". So we're going to launch something on our own this fall and it will be a blast. I was originally thinking we should just do it as a closed, locked demo (i.e. friends only, password access ...) but screw that ... that's only fear talking. So if you are a S/W hacker type with experience in the web, AJAX, Flash and all that jazz and have the balls to jump in and start coding your brains out ... let me know ... we're looking for a few developers to get the show on the road!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
CEO, MYDYO
PS. If you are one of my friends on facebook, you can check out the pics from the trip
PPS. I'm launching a social network called "Friends of MYDYO" through the NING service. I'll let you know more soon.