I somehow bumped into the new Synch Magazine site today. They had created some imaginary IT products for gangsta's.

I think I know enough about Photoshop to start creating my own similar photo inventions. That is what I have been doing with trying to build an OEM channel at work. The work is mainly taking the existing product, other products, and photoshop to show how they would work together. It is a fun activity and is generally received well because people are able to appreciate the visual prototype more than the conceptual one. They can look at it and go... "oh that is exactly what we need to have." once they see it.

I personally want the gun remote control or the low-rider laptop. My only problem with the gun remote control is that it didn't appear to have the universal remote buttons that I need.

On the entrepreneurship side I was talking to Bijoy Goswami who started a group called Austin Bootstrap that has been steadily growing. The bootstrap mantra at some level is one that most people don't intuitively trust but is very important. It is sell, build, market. You have to find some customers willing to pay for the product and then build it for the ones who pay for it. You can then market the success to other folks with the same needs. At least that is among the solution to the problem of getting out of the cycle of needing capital.

Bijoy wrote a book that he self-published and talked me into being the leader of Bootstrap Boston, the wing of his organization. He also had made a keen observation about the differece between east coast entrepreneurial culture and west coast culture. The west coast culture provides a greater degree of respect and importance to the entrepreneurial activity of evangelism while the east coast is still focused on the technologist who can build the solution.

As a convert to the religion that the problem with technology is that people try to make products but don't know why anyone needs the technology or how to convert a generic tool into an actual business solution I was happy to hear about it. It filled my head with crazy ideas including that schools teaching technology (ahem MIT) should also teach courses in evangelism to give the students a real edge. Evangelism is different from marketing and even the generic entrepreneurship although they go hand in hand. Maybe I can mention this to folks around MIT like Ken Morse and see what they think.