Traditional media firms may be moving at a glacial pace, timidly trying to find their way in the Internet age, but not www.revision3.com. In this episode of Entrepreneurs Northwest Jim Louderback explains how his startup is already profitably offering internet TV, producing it's own content and developing sponsors from companies big and small. Better still, Revision3 is able to offer sponsors actual viewership guarantees.

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NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

Software engineering experts Grant BlahaErath and Richard Minerich join me to share their thoughts on the state of the .NET development platform today and where it is headed. Do the added costs of licensing proprietary technology still make sense in a world with increasingly mature open source internet platforms?

You can check out Grant's latest venture here:
http://fizzik.com/

You can also take a look at Richard's blog:
http://richardminerich.com/

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NOTE: Practical Software is the official podcast for the Software Engineering Productivity group on Linked:In. You can listen to other episodes of Practical Software.

In this episode, Michael Vax shares his strategy of keeping his software under continual use in a production environment to keep a agile engineering environment. It takes a re-thinking of software development, but by doing work in a series of very short, modular, sprints it is possible to improve quality and get direct customer feedback to avoid wasted effort building the wrong thing.

You can check out Michael's blog on efficient software development here: http://www.getelastic.com/

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NOTE: Practical Software is the official podcast for the Software Engineering Productivity group on Linked:In. You can listen to other episodes of Practical Software.

In this episode, Richard Minerich tells why the language developers use can have a huge impact on their productivity. New high level languages, like F# (one of Richard's favourite languages), free engineers from much of the traditional drudgery leading to faster development cycles and better quality.

You can read more of Richard's ideas here: http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/RickM/

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NOTE: Practical Software is the official podcast for the Software Engineering Productivity group on Linked:In. You can listen to other episodes of Practical Software.

In this episode, Timothy Fong explains how measuring software engineering productivity is not just a matter of counting lines of code. What good is it to release a bloated piece of software on schedule that is never used? Before you can even talk about productivity you have to first define your business goals.

You can write timothy at tim.fong@opshub.com to ask for a white paper on 3 principals to using metrics for large scale agile.

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NOTE: Practical Software is the official podcast for the Software Engineering Productivity group on Linked:In. You can listen to other episodes of Practical Software.

Listen to ex-Microsoft employees discuss how the company is addressing the challenges and opportunities before it today, and what lies in store. Is Microsoft headed to genteel decline, or is it about to embark on a new era of growth and technological development? Be sure to check out the Linked:Seattle community at http://bit.ly/LinkedSeattle.

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NOTE: Click here for a list of all the Linked:Seattle radio show recordings. You can also check out my own "Entrepreneurs Northwest" podcast shows (http://bit.ly/epnwfeed).

In this episode Paul Scarpa tells us about the challenges his startup is facing and Jennifer Cabala (of Seattle 2.0) tells us the attributes of successful entrepreneurs. We discuss the pros and cons of self-funding new ventures and the need to have a balanced approach that covers not only engineering but marketing and sales too. Be sure to visit the Linked:Seattle entrepreneurs group.

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NOTE: Click here for a list of all the Linked:Seattle radio show recordings. You can also check out my own "Entrepreneurs Northwest" podcast shows (http://bit.ly/epnwfeed).

The key to any successful business, or career, is building useful (and productive) relationships. Unfortunately, building these relationships is no walk in the park, and takes time and dedication. You can attend networking events, ask for introductions, cold call, or any number of other strategies for meeting people.

All of these relationship and networking techniques have merit, but each person has to find the ones that fit best with our own personalities and needs. Building relationships in the entertainment industry might require different strategies than in petro-chemicals. Whole forests have been consumed to print books to offer advice.

To that end, I would like to add yet one more relationship building technique, tailored to the internet age, which I have slowly developed over the years. It is based on one simple idea: people like to know people who do something nice for them.

Admittedly, my strategy for building relationships requires considerable effort, but then there are no short-cuts when it comes to building productive, lasting, friendships. What I can say is that following these techniques will almost guarantee success in building the business relationships you need.

Blogging for friends

My strategy for building relationships start off with a blog. You have to create a blog focused around whatever industry, or field, in which you want to build relationships. If you want to get to know bankers, then start a blog about finance and banking. If you want to get to know people working in the consumer software space, create a blog about the software industry and consumer software trends.

There are lots of free blogging sites, and your blog articles don’t have to be lengthy treatise. The whole point of a blog is to give you a reason for contacting people. You can also expand to do podcasts, which is something I do quite a lot.

Make a list of topics

Create a list of potential blog topics for the next month. You can easily find topics by just browsing through articles on IT or engineering web sites. You can even watch the topics being discussed on LinkedIn groups, or social communities, to get ideas. For each idea, identify one or two articles that you can use as links for more information in a post.

Interview prospective customers

Find some good people to interview for the blog article you decide to write about. Simply write a message to several people you see on software engineering LinkedIn groups, who you think could be good customers (or useful contacts) and ask if they would allow you to interview them for a few minutes for a blog article you are writing.

Look at the people starting, and participating, in discussions on LinkedIn. These people are almost always willing to chat. Look at their profiles to see which ones might be particularly useful to have a relationship with. It’s absolutely fine if more than one person responds to your interview request. You can always quote more than one person in an article. Make sure the person you are going to interview sends you their direct e-mail address so you can communicate easier outside of LinkedIn. This is critical for being able to write them a recommendation later on.

All you have to do is schedule some time to talk with your new contact (i.e. the person who agrees to be interviewed) on the phone, and have a discussion with them around the subject you are writing your article on. Ask them for their thoughts and ideas. Do not start telling them how you think everything should be done. Keep the interview relatively short (15 or 20 minutes at most). It is fine to introduce yourself, mentioning that you work for a company that helps with software engineering projects, but DO NOT make a sales pitch. This interview is all about asking the contact for their ideas.

Make sure you write down what your guest says. Don’t forget to ask them for permission to quote them in your article.

Write the blog post

Once the interview is over, write the blog article. Keep it short and on point. Use quote from the people you interviewed, and put their names in the article. Place a hyper-link on the name (of the person you are quoting) to their LinkedIn profile. You can also add some small text at the very bottom of the article saying how readers can get more information from the people you interviewed by going to their web site (i.e. and include the link to their business web site).

You should have a signature at the bottom of every post that has a link to your personal LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed.

Get approval for article

Send the text of your article to the people you are quoting for approval before you post it. Just send them an e-mail with a copy of the text, and ask them to confirm that what you are saying accurately reflects the discussion you had.

Post and promote

Once you get approval for the article, post it on the your blog and start promoting it. You should Tweet the article and place it on your Facebook page (if you don’t already have a Twitter or Facebook page, create them). In fact, you can setup an automatic feed that will Tweet and Facebook every article you post.

Post the link to the article (and a 2 sentence description) in the News section of all the LinkedIn groups you identify as being related to IT and software development.

You can keep re-Tweeting and re-posting the News links to the same articles. This keeps you articles in people’s minds. For example, once you have 5 or 6 blog posts, you can have someone keep cycling through the articles re-posting links to a different one on Twitter and LinkedIn groups every day. Today you would post the link to the article you wrote a month ago. Tomorrow you post the link to the second article you wrote, the day after that you post the link to the third article, and so on.

If you get really ambitious you can write an Internet press release for every article you write and post them to Help a Reporter Out or Pitchrate (which are free).

Give thanks

As soon as you post a new blog article, send an e-mail to the people you interviewed for the story, thanking them for their help. Send them the link to the story, and tell them they are welcome to use the link if they wish.

Make a recommendation

Write a LinkedIn recommendation for the people you interviewed for the blog article. Just write 2 or 3 sentences saying that you were impressed with how helpful the individual was in writing your blog article (include a shortened link to the article in your recommendation), and that this person’s deep knowledge on the subject was invaluable.

In order to accept your invitation, the recipient will first have to agree to connect with you on LinkedIn. It is virtually guaranteed that anyone you write a recommendation for will link with you.

Meet for coffee

At this stage, you now have built a relationship with the people you interviewed, and they have very positive feelings towards you. You can now leverage that goodwill to develop the relationship, ask for help, or whatever. Ask if you could take them out for a coffee. Ask for introductions to people you see in their contact list on LinkedIn.

Make your friends rich

One of the absolute best ways you can solidify your relationships is to actually make your friends rich by bringing them business. As your contacts grow, you should really think about ways to introduce the people you know to one another. If you know a small software firm that specializes in accounting software for oil companies, then introduce the IT manager of an oil company to him. If you are able to help a small find new business, you have an amazingly good chance of helping out in fulfilling the contract by taking on work they can’t handle.

In this episde, Bhavesh Ved explains how to manage geographically disperse software teams with a distributed Agile process. When teams are spread out some of the traditional approaches to Agile break down.

You can check out Bhavesh's engineering firm at http://www.xoriant.com/.

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NOTE: Practical Software is the official podcast for the Software Engineering Productivity group on Linked:In. You can listen to other episodes of Practical Software.

In this episode of Linked:Seattle Radio, professional recruiter John Polhill guest hosts a discussion about "How to get your Successful Job Search & Interview Mojo back & get hired tomorrow." HR expert, and Linked:Seattle Career Center manager, Lesa Keller also joins the show with Matt Youngquist, a career coach in the Seattle area to offer their advice on job searches as well.

If you are wondering whether employers are only interesting in candidates who already have jobs, or if it is career limiting to take jobs beneath your qualifications, or just want to hear about how to keep your energy up as a job seeker, this is the show you need to hear.

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NOTE: The Linked:Seattle Career Center is the best place on LinkedIn to find jobs in Seattle and participate in discussions with area recruiters, career coaches, and job candidates. You can also check out Michael Surkan’s "Tales from the job search trenches" podcasts.

This information from a bank insider does a great job illustrating how much flexibility banks have in avoiding write-downs on their books with non-performing loans. It goes a long way to explaining why many lenders have been so incredibly tardy in foreclosing, and taking possession, of properties with delinquent loans.

Many people don't understand the magnitude within the banking industry to "Kick the Can" or "Extend and Pretend". We see a lot of this within the industry.

Banks with existing balance sheet issues (nonperforming loans) really don't want to recognize more loan issues because it could force the FDIC to close them down.

In that light, a bank can take a commercial real estate loan or a business line of credit having issues and do a 3 month extension at loan maturity or change loan payments to interest in an attempt to give the borrower with more time to work things out or bring more capital to the table.

It's not uncommon for a bank to do multiple extensions in the mode of working out a loan with principal reductions over time. I've been in the situation where extensions have lasted 1-2 years. In normal recessions, extensions have worked quite well because borrowers could take equity out of their house or sell stock market assets to cure the loan.

In my estimation, if every bank had the collateral of all loans accurately appraised and each loan’s loan grading was finely tuned for an expected loss based on financial performance and collateral values, the number of essentially bankrupt banks in this county would increase by a factor of 4-5 from the current level.

In other words, there is a potential pool of 2000-3000 banks that would be on the FDIC radar's for getting closed.

In this episode we discuss the attributes of bear market politicians and identify the MOST successful bear market leaders of all times. It takes a different message and personality type to thrive in politics during challenging economic times.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode the Optimistic Bear rants about how the public sector employees are now paid MORE than private sector counterparts and that there is no way to save the unfunded civil service pensions.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we discuss how markets are following an eerily similar path to 1987. In addition, we talk about whether the rally in treasuries is going to crack as well as the growth in the barter economy and private currencies like Bitcoin.

You can check out more about the new private currency, Bitcoin, here:
http://www.bitcoin.org/

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode Steve tells how his strategy of trading trends allows him to make money in both bull and bear markets. The trick is to have the discipline to stay with a system. Stop listening to the pundits, just follow the trend and adhere to a system.

You can check out Steve's trading ideas here:
http://brooklynborntraders.com/

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we discuss how changing consumer preferences, and product substitution play a key role in the deflationary process. Already we see people downsizing their expectations, taking in boarders to their homes, and switching to lower priced substitutes for all kinds of things. It’s starting to look at lot like the Kit Kitredge movie, set in the 1930s. We also talk about how surprising it is to see how long the process of de-leveraging and mal-investment purge is taking.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode Doug Eberhardt explains how gold should be a part of every portfolio, providing safety in both inflation and deflation. Additionally, Doug compares the deflationary experience in Japan to what is happening in the US. Our panelists also discuss how there is no economic theory that adequately explains why nations with increasing money supplies (like Japan) can experience deflation.

You can check out Doug’s web site for more insights on deflation and advice in gold investing.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we discuss the strange way stocks behave on options expiry weeks and whether real action in the market will have to wait till the fall and the end of the summer doldrums. For good measure, we also talk about how recent finance reform legislation does nothing to prevent future financial panics.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

When most people think of bear markets they tend to imagine a relatively short-term affair that reaches a bottom, over a year or two, and then recovers for many years (or even decades) in the future. Bear markets, in short, are just temporary blips as stock markets (and economies) move on to ever greater heights. Japan’s experience with a bear market that is over 20 years old shows that these simplistic assumptions regarding bear markets don’t always hold true.


A close examination of the Nikkei stock index for the last 30 years is a harrowing study in how pernicious, and grinding, bear markets can be. What is perhaps the most shocking is to see that this multi-decade bear market was punctuated by periods of considerable recovery, and growth, which would last anywhere from 1 to 5 years. There were numerous times where the Nikkei rallied 50%, or even more than 100% over a span of several years, only to lose all those gains and fall into a deeper pit.

The persistent trend downward is unmistakable, standing some 75% lower than its 1989 height as of June 2010, but this masks the times where it looked quite convincingly as if Japan was finally turning the corner.

As the United States embarks on its own deflationary journey it is important not to lose sight of what has happened in places like Japan. It is quite probable that America will also see strong rallies, and periods of apparent recovery (lasting for years, in fact), only to see all those hopes dashed as the economy goes into yet a deeper funk to lower lows. Deflation is a slow process and does not go in a straight line.

In this episode a caller from North Carolina tells us that the economy hasn't hit bottom there, and that from his perspective as a bank loan officer (with national exposure) a double-dip recession is already baked into the cards. We also delve into the profits and pitfalls of tax lien investing.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode veteran Wall Street Banker, Bruce Krasting, joins us to talk about how the recent congressional legislation to extend unemployment benefits by borrowing even more money is the final straw. According to Bruce, unemployment insurance is small potatoes compared to the trillions in stimulus an bailouts that have been spent so far, but the insanity has to stop somewhere. Bruce also shares his view on how deflation is likely to win out in the short term, and his views on how emotion can irrationally drive individual stock prices high or low.

You can check out Bruce’s blog on finance at http://brucekrasting.blogspot.com/.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we discuss which, if any, techniques are useful for predicting market directions. We talk about everything from cosmology and technical analysis to tea leaves. We also talk about growing problems with underfunded private and public pension plans.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we discuss stimulus, and whether government spending can jump-start moribund economies. We also explore whether the fact that significant technological advances have resulted from government funding demonstrate a role for the state in economic development.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

On June 19th the Financial Sense News Hour published a great interview with Robert Prechter, which goes in-depth into the reasons Prechter still feel that massive deflation lies in store for the economy.

This is another great resource for anyone who wants to understand the forces behind deflation, and why policy makers can't do anything about it.

In this episode we discuss what role governments play in bubbles and whether diversified investment portfolios make sense when all asset classes rise and fall at the same time. We also investigate what growing disparities between the wealth of the rich and middle classes say about the economy.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In the court of public opinion, the verdict for British Petroleum is already in: guilty. The vitriol, and polemics, spewing out against British Petroleum over the Gulf coast oil spill has reached epic proportions. Politicians, pundits, and even individuals, are frothing at the mouth with anger at the evil corporation that ruining both the economy and environment.

Policy makers are threatening to fine, and tax, BP into oblivion. The general public is aghast that a big corporation could take such liberties with the public trust.

It's about time that someone stood up for poor, beleaguered, BP!

I wouldn't want to give the impression that I think BP is a well managed company, or that their poor decisions didn't contribute to the Gulf disaster. However, it's important that we don't lose perspective in the rush to castigate BP, and vent our spleens.

For one thing, the impacts from oil spills are rarely as long lasting, or disruptive, as they first appear. The oil that first washes up on shore, and kills thousands of fish, birds and sea mammals, is very dramatic. Ten, or even five, years later things look differently.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska proved to be less harmful on the environment, and the local economies, than many people had predicted during the time of the initial accident. In fact, some reports show that more damage may have been caused by the clean-up than the spill itself. Ironically, many of the loudest complaints about the Valdez spill were from local businesses who saw the cost of labour skyrocket as many locals opted to work in high-paying clean-up crews rather than toil for the lower local wages.

True, there are disagreements as to the real long term impacts of the Valdeez spill (i.e. you can't prove what the population of salmon would have been without the spill when there are so many other factors at play). But these disagreements in the impact assessments of the Valdeez spill actually prove my point: if the damage was truly catastrophic there wouldn't be any argument.

Unfortunately, we are on the cusp of a major over-reaction to the spill. If oil exploration is curtailed by newly empowered (and zealous) regulators, we will see energy prices remain higher than they otherwise would for decades. Killing BP out of spite will also send a chill down the spine of every oil company, causing them to reduce exploration. Why drill for new wells when the consequence of a failure is death?

In this episode special guest Matt Stiles fills us in on the asset bubble and bullish fever that is raging in Canada. We also talk how Isaac Asimov's fictional idea of scientifically controlling human behaviour is symptomatic of broader desires to manage the economy.

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NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

Even as oil spouts unceasingly into the gulf of Mexico, in one of the worst spills ever, prices are falling. This is quite a change from the behaviour we've seen in the last several years, where even the hint of an oil spill would cause prices to spike, as investors fretted the loss of precious supplies.

If anything, one would think that the backlash against oil that is being stirred up by this environmental catastrophe would be driving prices through the roof, since all the new tough government regulatory changes are going to greatly restrict new exploration and future supply.

This calls into question the whole hypthesis that it was dwindling supplies which were driving oil prices up in the first place. To all those peak oil adherents out there, I regret to inform you that it is speculation which has been the main force in rising prices in recent years, not a fall in supply. Just look at the vast fleets of tankers being used to store oil on the hope that prices will rise even more.

When you add in the drop in demand that is occuring due to a slowing global economy, there is more than enough potential for oil prices to drop significantly more.

In the 1970s many people thought oil prices would just keep rising forever only to see them crash, and stay suppressed for 20 years. It looks like history may be repeating.

In this episode we talk about the inevitable failure of any trading system and explore the definition of the "money supply". Panelists give their take on why the money supply is shrinking despite massive government printing of cash.

NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

In this episode we talk about unions, and what responsibility they bear for pushing governments into insolvency. There is also in-depth discussion on market technical indicators, and what they portend for trends in the near term.

NOTE: Remember to tune into the Optimistic Bear weekly financial round-up every Tuesday at 9:00pm, Pacific Time.

I have long been an advocate of drug legalization, believing that it not only wastes huge amounts of resources on something that can’t be stopped as well as having a corrosive impact on society, driving otherwise law-abiding people into a world of illegality.

My views on this haven’t changed, but hearing the outcry over the suicide of a youthful Canadian drug smuggler, Samuel Brown, has made me want to distance myself from the broader legalization movements. For one thing, I don’t believe this young man deserves our sympathy. He was a willing participant in an illegal trade, and while I believe in legalization, I have never supported the people who are in this business. If anything, the whole reason I believe in legalization is so that these unscrupulous characters will lose the ability to make as much money as they do, which makes them such menaces to society.

When reading over the numerous internet comments around Mr Brown’s death, I can’t help but notice that a great many of these people (particularly those from Canada), just want to be able to pursue the drug trade, and get rich without the risk of getting caught by those evil American lawmen. All the righteous indignation in Nelson over Samuel’s death makes my blood boil. After all, it is the uncouth monsters who run grow-ops, and ancillary drug-trade industries in BC who are responsible for creating such a brutal environment where young men and women risk their lives in the pursuit of an easy buck.

This just makes me wish all the more fervently for true drug legalization. Then all those holier-than-thou drug-operators in BC (and wherever else they may reside) will find themselves out of business overnight. If the US really wants to have its revenge on the foreign drug producers, filling it’s streets with crime, they should just legalize the goods. Not only would such a move utterly destroy communities like Nelson overnight, but it would likewise undermine demagogues like Evo Morales (the president of Bolivia) without so much as firing a gun.

I don’t believe in legalization because I like drugs. I stand for legalization because I despise the entire drug sub-culture, and the people who pervert society through making easy money off of the illicit trade.