The whole New York trip was definitely meant to be all about work, but of course on the flip side work must be balanced with play.  Thursday night the whole team decided to head out to PS450 near downtown Manhattan.   A lot of folks from college we invited out showed up to have a good time, but without doubt we were bound to run into people we hadn’t seen in years.  That’s just the way New York works, you’re walking down the street and all of sudden its someone you haven’t seen since school.   One of the people that showed up was an old friend of mine, Vinnie.

Educated at Univ of Michigan’s B-school (and the streets of New York haha), Vinnie has cultivated himself into quite the number man.   I remembered he was doing financial work for PriceWaterHouse Coopers, so we chatted about that for a second, however it turned out he no longer worked there.  He is now actively working on his own financial consulting firm, Four Corners.  He has been working with a couple of other starts-up, helping them to develop pitch decks, financial forecasts and relationships with investors.  Now how lucky is that?   One of the last missing links to the Motown Initiative is team member with an accounting and revenue strategy background.  I just had to invite Vinnie down to the office for a sit down.

The next day, we had about a four hour conversation.  It was a mixture of catching up on the past and discussing opportunities of the future.  All said and done, Four Corners is now going to be working with Motown Initiative to ensure that we remain adequately funded and inline with our revenue goals post website launch.

Over the past week, the entire Motown team has been extremely productive, meeting with potential partners and pushing the initiative forward to meet milestones.   With everything that has been going on, its been hard for us to keep up on blog duty but I think the experiences we’ve had will make for good stories in the coming weeks.   One thing that NY has, that I haven’t found many of in other places, is motivated young visionaries.

Of course these people exist everywhere, its not just a city thing. You could be from the country and still be a thought leader, but considering we brought three new valuable members into the Motown Initiative within one week, I’m gonna tip my hat off to New York.  With that said, none of these people are actually from New York.  In fact, two of them are from Michigan (the other is from Dubai).   While they are all very motivated and experienced, most importantly I see potential for them to be true visionaries.  This is the primary requirement to be apart of our team.

To have vision is to essentially see the future.  Furthermore, it is the ability to actively work towards creating the future. In the business we’re in, we can ill afford to have people that confine their thought process to what exists today.  When we sit down to talk with team candidates about the MI project and how they can be involved, we look for a few key characteristics in conversation.

-Firstly, does the person add value to conversations. I’m not a fan of uneducated questions, and stories about what a person has done and what their friends do.  If I sit down and talk to a person for 2 hours and I remained engaged as a result of relevant questions and new ideas, then I know the person is onto something.

-Secondly, can the person create without bounds. To be a visionary constraints have to be the last thing on your mind.  If i tell you we’re creating a revolutionary way to target consumers with ads, then it should be clear that no framework exists that can help you complete the final product.  Everything is a work in progress.  You have to understand the targeting models of today but you have to then take that knowledge and create the tomorrow.

This is a really brief explaination of my point of view on vision, but these are the key characteristics I look at, the rest is just gut feeling.  This is where the phrase “Game recognizes game” originated.  Its the understanding that everyone on our team ads value and is capable of creating a better tommorow.

I caught the subway down to wall st. today to meet with an up and coming niche content site, DramaFever.com.  I arrived a little early to this fancy coffee shop called the “financier”.  It was like Starbucks with a french twist.  I didn’t really want anything they had on their menu, but it seemed i had a few minutes to wait, and I didn’t want to just appear like some bum taking a breather in their sitting area, so I got an ice coffee.  For some reason i thought it was going to taste like the iced coffee or thai tea I used to have back in my Univ of Michigan days, but i was quite wrong.  It tasted terrible, its apparent I’m not a coffee drinker on any level.  Just as I was going for another gut wrenching sip, I was in luck, the Drama fever crew had arrived and I could just let the cup sit as decoration.

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As the trip to New York get closer, there is a lot of planning needed to ensure that everything goes to plan.  We have meetings, events and much more to juggle so its a good thing I got my “get organized” wake up call. This week I was reminded of how key organization is to progress.

Monday we had a conference call with Entitled Entertainment regarding an upcoming show with Krazy Bone.  The plan was to connect Entitled with the management of Mitsue and Boola (artists our production group works with).  Then we’d plan out their trip, video opportunities and support the party/performance.  I had everything scheduled, a conference call number setup through instant conference.com and the time/agency for the the call.  When the call came, I was no where to be found.  Moreover, my NY counterparts also weren’t on the call because I didn’t put a specific date in my invitation e-mail, I simply said “tomorrow”.  As we all know, the word tomorrow is subject to interpretation, especially when someone gets the e-mail the day after it’s written haha.

Now this wasn’t a major slip, we pulled the call together 20mins late and got everything accomplishment in a concise timeframe.  However, it was a little bit of a wake up call, because as things continue to ramp up, the schedules will only become more complicated and time contingent.  So this weeks lesson?  Might be time for a blackberry or some sort of desktop based scheduling system that can txt my phone.  If I am able to find such a program for the team, I’ll let you guys know.

June 10th, 2009….Got my ticket to NYC today from Virgin Air, my favorite airlines hands down. If you haven’t been on one of those planes yet, you’re really missing out. Even when you’re not in first class, the ambiance and accommodations are second to none.  Now that they have wifi on all their planes too, I’m quite sure this going to be the best cross country flight ever.

My trips are always for business and pleasure, so I’ll be catching up with some of the parties involved with the Motown Initiative, as well as some family and friends. Should be good times. Our production partner group, 4th Deck Productions, has setup shop and is rolling right along, so that will definitely be my first stop.  We’ll be starting some work on pre-production work and some company strategy task.  It’ll be nice to working with a team and be amongst what’s happening now. I also hope to officially confirm our first strategic alliance during this trip. If there are any good industry events or parties during my stay in NY? I’ll post them up here, so you can look out for that.