It's Moving Day--I just found my contacts from 1999

Today I moved my office. I'm in the same basic building, just a few doors away from the day to day craziness of the technical divisions.

As CEO, my responsibilities have changed and it's now afforded me a larger office without the foot traffic I usually get.

I have a phone, my computer and my IPod with 3,000 songs (an eclectic mix) but that's another story entirely so I'm basically ready to go.

As I unpack boxes and sort thru things, I have found all sorts of interesting things, one of which is all my contacts from when I was President of PCDJ. What a hoot. I can't believe it's been six years.

Now, don't think all my contacts got lost somewhere and my organizational skill is so bad that I just lost the information. I actually, at the time, bought a business card reader and had all my contacts stored in my MS Outlook program. In fact, I tried to get in touch with some of these guys a few weeks ago and believe it or not, one of these guys complained. In an era where communication is the lifeblood of any activity, and in America of all places, someone I knew and met and hadn't talked to in a while complained that I was communicating. Unbelievable. I don't want to be in a world where you can get in trouble for saying hello and asking what's up---but that's another story for another day.

Back to the point. Since these were the physical business cards I got from my contacts, looking at them brought back memories of a day long gone, when "eyeballs" were all that counted, where spending was free, where the most outrageous business models that never had a shot of making money were brazen enough to say, we don't care, give us money and we'll "brand the concept."

I remember going to trade shows like "Webnoize" and the "MP3.com" summit and going from booth to booth asking what is it that you do, getting a response, and then asking the dreaded, "How does it make money?" I wish now in retrospect that I had a camera crew. Can you imagine what funny reality tv this would make? Some answered in doublespeak--the agregate consumption of the traffic in a linear space will equate to revenue in 2006--HUH??? I didn't get it then and still don't. Some just stuttered, others reminded me of the movie Spinal Tap. In the movie, the question was asked when one of the musicians showed his revolutionary amplifier that went louder then ten.. "why don't you just make ten louder?"...the response, "but ours go to eleven."

Anyway, for me the lesson of the day is that if you're going to start a company, the model must make sense and at least have some hope of profitability.

Till next time.