In many ways,  Rick was incredibly smart and did his best to raise a dragon. He gave me and the b5media team space, let us eat whatever we wanted, let us roam in the backyard til we were ready for the big bad world, taught us to fly and occasionally fed us pigs and chickens whenever we got tired or sick.

When you’re just starting your first VC-backed company, there is just so much  you don’t know, are  afraid of, don’t think to be afraid of, etc. Rick was amazing at always choosing his companies first, always choosing his CEOs first, always giving you his straight up opinion and always, always, always going to bat for you when you needed him to.

So it’s with a bit of sadness, but mostly excitement that I’m welcoming Rick back to the startup world after his announcement that he’s leaving JLA. Most folk either don’t know or have forgotten that Rick was a startup guy long before he was a VC. Dunno why, it’s probably becuase his polo shirts totally make him  look like a VC and not like a startup guy

If there’s a type of VC Canada needs more of, it’s the type that Rick was (minus the polo shirts, please?).

Either way, Rick was fantastic for me personally, amazing for b5 and I know he’ll do great things for the startup community now that he’s back on the more glamorous side  of the fence, lol.

So Rick, thanks for teaching me what to eat, what not to eat, how to fly and where to take a dump.  I’d be a much poorer and sicklier dragon if you hadn’t helped raise me

Image by Matthew Burpee via Flickr

A few weeks ago, over lunch with Jay Goldman he mentioned his 10×10 rule, which is basically: write out 10 ish big areas you’re interested in blogging about, and 10 ish ideas for each. That is your first 100 ish posts (though realistically you’ll have other ideas along the way), so it’s 2-4 months of blogging.

As you might expect, I decided to do the exercise just to see what happened. I’ve wanted to blog more for the last year, but lacked more than a post at a time. This would hopefully provide fodder for many posts over the coming months.

But I ran into a conundrum, because the topics were more diverse than I expected (at least the ones that excited me). Now the fitness/health stuff I’ve already decided to break off into a separate site, so it’s not on this list, but here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Top entrepreneurs in canada interviews/profiles
• Canadian company profiles
• Running a blog network
• Canadian VC firm profiles
• Online advertising
• Scaling a blog / media company
• How to raise funding
• Technical challenges of running a blog network / online media company
• Ideas for thriving in a down  economy
• Social media / new media tools we use at b5media
• Interviews with bloggers I admire

I’ve put these into 2 big buckets: b5media CEO blog, and more of a journalism/startup kind of blog. Part of this is a deep desire to see Canadians gain more profile. As a country, we suck at tooting our own horns, so I’d like to take time to toot our collective horns for us. Part of it is also looking to help folk who were like me 4 years ago: knowing there were ways to scale their company but having no idea how or who to talk to or what the options were or who the people in the industry even were.

So I’m looking for some feedback, on a few specific questions (but feel free to give feedback overall):

1. Should I keep Ensight a personal blog?
2. Should I retire Ensight, cause it has so much history and just start fresh?
3. Should the CEO stuff live here, if I am keeping it a personal blog, or somewhere else?
4. Should I split the “media” stuff off?
5. Should I split the “startup” stuff off?
6. Should I split the Canadian journalism/entrepreneur stuff off?
7. Would splitting the Canadian stuff off seem weird, given TechVibes/StartupNorth are already doing some of this (to varying degrees)?

And finally: are there other topic areas you’d like to hear me blog about?

I’m opening this up mostly because I could be happy going multiple ways, but I am a big believer in splitting topics up so that you feel less like a monolithic subject staring you in the face when you want to blog.

So, thoughts, questions, comments, concerns?

First and foremost, this comment was not made by me. Anyone who knows me or has seen me comment would clearly know this for a few simple reasons:

1. I always comment as me. Even when I later end up sticking my foot in my mouth or saying something stupid, I put my name beside it. I happily sign in with FaceBook Connect or similar services when possible so that folk know it’s me.  I don’t use psuedonyms, I don’t comment anonymously. And, hell, let’s be honest: if I did, I wouldn’t use a weird version of me to do it.
2. Come on, CEOs don’t get their own company’s names wrong. While Word sometimes capitalizes “b5″ as “B5″ at the start of a sentence, I’m religious about getting it right. Hell, at b5 we actually have a plugin that rewrites all references and all misspellings we could think of to the right name (feel free to try it on an official blog, not sure I have the plugin running here). It’s “b5media” or “b5″. Not “b5Media”, “b5 media”, “B5Media”, “B5 Media” or any other variation. And, as my team  knows, if I’m going to combine “b5″ and “Jeremy”, I’ll do it as “b5jeremy”. Lowercase everything. I’ve, in the past, used terminology like b5ads, b5shirts, b5gear, b5ranch, b5tweetup, etc.
3. The biggest reason is that this clearly isn’t how I think about the current situation or about Brightspark.

Mark and the team at Brightspark are completely professionals and, with their operational experience, some of the best VCs in the country. Not only do I believe Mark’s story that the reason they didn’t raise a fund was so they could focus on their internally incubated projects (probably not how he’d describe it, but y’know), I’ve heard from several LPs that they would have happily invested again (in case you’re wondering about ass kissing, several of these LPs have told me funds they wouldn’t invest in again – and then didn’t, so I believe them).

Brightspark no longer actively investing (they continue to support their portfolio companies, actively, including b5… and that support has been invaluable during these tough times because their operational background is critical to our success) is bad for Canada.

But, I’m excited for the future of what they’re doing, as them gaining more operational experience, especially online and media experience, will help dozens of companies should they return to VC (and I sincerely hope they do).

In short, the comment wasn’t made by me, doesn’t represent my views and and is completely unhelpful to the growth of startups in Canada.

The Backstory

Over the fall we restructured blogger pay as well as over the winter restructured our back office team Through it all we’ve worked hard to keep costs down, people focused and b5 growing.

Thankfully, these efforts, as well as our recent reorganization of our blogs into larger content sites (Bizzia for business, Splendicity for beauty & style, EveryJoe for men and Blisstree for Lifestyles) have resulted in growth on all fronts and by all measurements.  The team has been fantastic and the results speak for themselves. Our bloggers are great, the content is great, advertisers love it and, most importantly, our readers have responded with more page views, friend referrals, and some great complimentary emails, tweets, and blog posts of their own.

When we’d done the cost-cutting, we’d originally projected (in Q3 of 2008) the economy recovering late 2009, early 2010. We have a variety of trigger points, forecasts, and other tools we’ve been using to track all of this.  Armed with all this data, we no longer see our original plan as being a safe bet.  Given that there is nothing more important than b5’s long term growth, the management team decided to act now while we had plenty of cash, controllable costs, and (most importantly) time.

We decided to do what is rarely done; start at the top and protect the bloggers and the team as much as possible. It made no sense for the management team to sit around and cut bloggers, blogger pay, or the working team until every other penny was squeezed out of the system to extend the cash, keep the operational team rolling, and avoid harming the bloggers.

What’s Happening

Effective Tuesday, March 31st (no, this is not an early April Fools joke), there will be a significant restructuring of the b5media team, starting at the top.

First, I’ve cut my own salary to somewhat above minimum wage (by about 60%).  Salim Teja, our COO, and Jon Prosser, our VP Finance are both coming off the payroll. They are top talent and they worked the budgets and supported the right things for the company knowing that it meant bad results for them.  They have been amazing to work with and I’ve learned many things about true professionalism from these guys.  I know that both will find fantastic positions elsewhere because both are absolute rock stars.

In addition, this also involves laying off three of the non-management team. Each of these people has our full support in their journey going forward.

What This Means

Clearly this is a significant change. But the biggest part of this is that the investors, the team, and I continue to believe in the value of the network, the quality of our writers, and the value of the assets we have created over nearly 4 years of working on b5media.

By taking this path, we have extended b5’s runway to the point where we can ride out this economic storm with no capital requirements, headcount adjustments, etc. Providing our bloggers and our team with this protection and confidence was one of the central goals behind this change.

To reiterate, b5media continues to remain a healthy, growing and valuable business. We continue to retain the confidence and excitement of our investors, advertisers, team and partners. And while this is a significant change, we believe that by starting the change at the top we will be able to continue to serve our bloggers, advertisers, partners and investors for many years to come.

What This Means for Me

I’m still involved in b5media. I’m not leaving, nor have I quit, I’ve reduced my salary.  My first love, passion, and responsibility are to ensure the b5 family remains on the right track, continues to grow, while continuing to serve our bloggers, partners and advertisers.

Given the pay cut, though, I am considering writing a follow-up to Blog Marketing (which has sold incredibly well, and been translated into an amazing array of languages and resources over the last 4 years), since it’s become more than a little dated.  I’m also available for Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and the occasional car washing opportunity.

If anyone has any comments, questions, concerns, etc, feel free to leave a comment, drop me an email (jeremy@b5media.com) or give me a call (details on contact page).

Well, it’s now the start of Week  2 of #10morepounds! How’d you do?

If you answered this question with “I sucked, I binged, I didn’t work out enough, etc” then let me reboot your perspective. Did you do better last week than you would have done otherwise? Did you make healthier choices? Did you drinnk less pop? Did you get into the mindset of “healthy is better than giving into my urges”?

If so, then you’ve made huge progress this week, and you deserve a big pat on the back. I’d mail you one, but that’d be creepy

Week 1 Recap

To recap, the goals for week 1 were pretty simple:

• Get started
• Drink more water, eat smaller more frequent meals
• Start some form of regular exercise, but nothing that’ll burn you out
• Eat better, especially grapefruit, drink better (especially no pop)

Did you do these? How many? How often? Every step counts. Celebrate your victories!

How We’re Doing

Well, personally,  I’ve gone from 232 to 226, so 6 pounds in a week. I know most of that was water and that the real work starts NOW though!

Only a handful of people have reported in so far today (come on, report in y’all!), but weight loss so far is: 32 pounds!

New Participants

Here is a list of new participants (if I’m missing you or you want to join, let me know!):

• @merlene
• @erin_bury
• @robynmcmaster
• @zaneology
• @suzemuse
• @ciaraj13

Week 2 Goals

For week 2, we really just want to build on week 1. You probably weren’t perfect (not that perfect is the goal), so stepping up your food, spacing of meals, water, pop intake is all critical. Your eating habits are the ones you need to change most because they’ll have the biggest impact on your heart, health, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.

But, since our goal is weight loss, adding in some exercise will only accelerate that.

If you don’t have a regular exercise program, my recommendation is to build a “tiered” approach. The problem with doing something big like “go to the gym 3 times per week” is that it’s easy to feel like you’ve failed. By building a 3-tiered program, you’re able to feel like you’ve done 2/3 things or 1/3 things, instead of “pass/fail”.

The way I do this is the following:

• Foundation: easy, regular, quick workouts 3x/week like 100pushup challenge, 200situps challenge, etc (Google if you don’t know what these are). I’ve recently added stretches to my mix. This takes 5-10 minutes per workout, so is easy to fit into your day.
• Cardio: Cardio = life. It’s great for your heart. It’s HARD to start (ask @acowboyswife!), but so worth it. 20-30 minutes twice a week is huge, will increase your energy and make you feel great.
• Sculpting: Some kind of toning, whether it’s yoga, weights, resistance training, etc. Getting this in 1-2 times per week is ideal.

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re doing nothing now, start with the foundational stuff. Next week, add cardio. The week after, add some kind of sculpting.

By varying stuff, and doing multiple things, you’ll keep your body guessing, work different muscle groups and generally feel like you failed less.

Talk Back

Have thoughts, tips, etc? Comment so other #10morepounds folk can learn along with you!

Interested in Joining In?

Use the #10morepounds tag on twitter, comment or email me (jeremy@b5media.com)!

Some Useful Articles

• The Most Effective Alternative Medicine Weight Loss Recommendations (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• Exercise Programs (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• How Goal Setting Leads to Losing Weight (mariaslastdiet.typepad.com)
• Tweak of the Week: Boost Your Metabolism (via Diet & Fitness Blog) (healthnews.ediets.com)
• Ask the Trainer: How to Lose Love Handles (via Diet & Fitness Blog) (via eDiets Weight-Loss – FriendFeed) (via eDiets Weight-Loss – FriendFeed) (healthnews.ediets.com)
• Reliable Weight Loss Keys (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• Calorie Shifting or Calorie Counting? (fitnesstipsforlife.com)
• What Is Pilates Exercise? And How It Works (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• Physical Activity, Weight Loss, and Fun! (womenandweight.com)

Over the last couple of months, my weight loss has stalled in the 225 pound range, down from 255 pounds ish. This morning the scale hit 229, and I decided it was time to step it up again. And what better way than to get a bunch of others involved, get some motivation and accountability going, and share tips/tricks/successes/failures?

So last night I started a new Twitter tag: #10morepounds for folk to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

I wanted to kick this off with some simple tips, tricks and thoughts for those who haven’t been in weight loss mode for the last year, or who just need a bit of an extra kick.

The Participants

Before I do, though, here are the participants (comment/tweet at me if you’re not on the list, or if you want your name to link to somewhere else like your webpage!):

• @jeremywright
• @vcmike
• @pensieverobin
• @erikalehmann
• @L3N
• @zaneology
• @jleray
• @mybiziz
• @garyhilson
• @csmillie
• @thekarin
• @michellechilds
• @sydneyowen
• @sarahprevette
• @terryjsmith
• @acowboyswife
• @ellenpeters

How It Works

Alright, this is pretty darn simple:

• 10 weeks
• Lose 10 pounds
• Every Monday take your weight, and state on twitter how much you lost (note for girls: not your actual weight, unless you went to)
• Every Monday, I’ll post my tips and such. If you have any of your own, comment on one of the series posts!

Week 1 Tips

I’ve written a bunch about my weight loss tips, but since that’s old and there’s a lot of it and its overwhelming, here are some thoughts for simple things you can do now to kickstart your metabolism, drop some bad habits and start the hard stuff (like EXERCISING).

First, though, some basics:

• The more water you drink, the more weight you lose
• The more you split your meals up, and eat smaller portions throughout the day, the more weight you lose
• The less grease and fast food you eat, the more weight you lose
• The less pop you drink, the more weight you lose
• The more grapefruit specifically, but fruit/veg generically, you eat, the more you lose
• The more you keep your heart rate up for more than 10 minutes a day, the more weight you lose

If you do these things, you’ll lose weight. But more importantly, doing these things will probably break most of your bad habits, get your body processing food more efficiently and set you up for success over the next 10 weeks!

If you aren’t doing moost of the above, don’t even worry about the rest of the stuff below. It’ll just make it harder to remember everything. If you’re already most of the above, here are some more specific things I used to do, and now need to get back into the habit of doing!

• Use programs such as 100pushups and 200situps to lay a foundation of daily exercise (I swap out between each program each day, as it works a different part of your body). Since we have 10 weeks, it’s perfect to get both programs done (since you’ll undoubtedly miss some weeks, do some weeks over, etc). Start today! Do them in the morning.

• 

  Image by Getty Images via Daylife

  Do 20-30 minutes of cardio. Goal here is to sweat for 10 minutes. Walk if you’re out of shape, jog if you can, run with the dog, play frisbee, play football with your kids, play basketball… Just get out and do something. You can even just run up and down 2 steps in your house if you want. Just get the heart rate up for 5 minutes, then do something slightly more leisurely for a minute or two, then back at it again. Do this a couple of times a week.

• Weigh yourself at the same point every day. Early morning, pre eating, post… erm, release is best.
• Eat half a grapefruit every morning. Grapefruit covers a multitude of sins!
• Do other kinds of workouts. Don’t have a gym? Use one of the hotel workout regimens out there.

Now Get To It!

You signed up to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. It is TOTALLY doable. In fact, you’ll probably lose 2-4 pounds this week alone if you hit this. But you’ve got to keep it up for the whole 10 weeks.

And here’s the dirty little secret… If you do, you’ll be in the habit of all of this, and you’ll keep losing weight afterwards!

Talk Back

Have thoughts, tips, etc? Comment so other #10morepounds folk can learn along with you!

Interested in Joining In?

Use the #10morepounds tag on twitter, comment or email me (jeremy@b5media.com)!

Some extra articles that MIGHT help (haven’t read them all, so I dunno!)

• A Quick Weight Loss Diet Recommendation (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• Jazz It Off – Week #1 (petroville.com)
• Pre-Wedding Weight Loss (weight-loss-methods.suite101.com)
• Easy Weight Loss Plan (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• Weight loss: cut more calories or do more exercises (weightlossnutrition.org)
• Reliable Weight Loss Keys (healthlifestyleforever.com)
• End of Week 1 Followup (ensight.org)

So it comes as no surprise that Aaron’s contemplating the costs/benefits of “going dark”. His post, which I recommend you read before reading the rest of mine, really struck a chord with me. Having gone dark for a week in January, I can attest to its benefits and the social costs that Aaron mentions. But, I can also testify that it is oh so worth it!

I can see the benefits of going dark for 5-7 days to a whole slew of people, even ones who aren’t introverted. Things like just having space to contemplate, think deep thoughts, find yourself, plot your next steps in life, etc.

Could you unplug for a week? Why not? What would it take to make you able to do this?

If you could, would you unplug for a week? No cellphone, no internet outside of a “private” email address that your assistant/wife/etc has?

If you would unplug for a week, what’s stopping you?

Aaron and I have been bouncing around a few ideas about this, and I think we’ll  continue to. But I know I’d be interested in folks’ thoughts on going dark. The comments on Aaron’s post got bogged down on his celebrity or whether he should, and kinda missed the point.

Going dark is hard, but necessary for most folk (introverted or not). And while I’m not currently feeling the need, I bet by summer/early fall I will.

So if you could, if you would, what would it take for you to want to go totally offline for a week?

Let me know in the comments.

Merlene Paynter is a SxSW n00b. She’s blogging her experiences to help you out, entertain you and make you seem smarter than you are when you chill @ southby. Say thanks in the comments.

Yesterday was my first day of my first SXSW. I’d been told by the seasoned SXSW pros not schedule myself for too many things. To remain flexible and go with the flow.

My day began with an early meeting and progressed from there into lunch with a few friends, which transitioned into a Tweet-up hosted by Jeremy Wright, then on to a party thrown by the Blue Sky Factory people. After an hour or so of mingling there we headed off to the Mix at Six party – by the time we got there the party was at capacity so rather than stand around in the rain waiting to get in we decided food might be a good idea before heading to the TechSet party a little later.  A nice dinner with some friends (both old and new) then on to the TechSet party which was fun but was so packed it was hard to talk to anyone.

My lesson after Day 1 – eating is good. Every party, every lunch, every dinner – seemed to involve a lot of alcohol and not a tonne of food. I’ve now learned it’s important to eat whenever and wherever you can. And an interesting thing happens when you do go to find lunch or dinner. You always wind up finding a bunch of friends who either got to the same place first or came in just after you. If you don’t see anyone you know? Just tweet your location and how good the food or cold the beer is. You’ll be surrounded by friends in no time.

And the sessions? Rumour has it there were sessions happening yesterday but I never made it to any. When you go with the flow – you usually just flow from party to party to party. Maybe I’ll make it to a sesson or two today but I wouldn’t count on it.

This post is part 7 of a series, head over to the SxSW Interactive Tips page to read all of the posts in this series (in intended order).

From Aaron Brazell, AKA Technosailor

In 2007, Jeremy and I attended our first SXSW Interactive conference. At the time, we were both new b5media employees – as in, the company had just been funded, I had quit my “day job”, and we were both on an intense amount of business travel. For me, it was the first time in my life that I had done so much travel. Seriously, I flew maybe once a year if that. It certainly was a new world, attending conferences, meeting people. And certainly, it was before I achieved coveted rockstar status.

At SXSW, everyone is encouraged to drink. Serious, no one except rookies go for sessions. Pfffftt. No, it’s all about getting your drink on and meeting people. In fact, it can be sad at times. Socially awkward geeks trying to be sociable – not all of them, of course. Many don’t try to be sociable at all.

In 2007, Jeremy and I spent a significant amount of time with another blogger who was in town, and who we both knew. We had never spent any time with the guy – in fact, we only met him in person for the first time.

We started our ad hoc pub crawl down 6th street, stopping in several bars that had live music, downing rum and cokes and Shiner Bocks all the way. It was clear, within a few hours of drinking (moderately, by my standards, but excessively by others), that our blogger friend was having a hard time holding his alcohol. Before too long, he was stumbling down the sidewalk and we had to shoulder him to make sure he didn’t faceplant on the sidewalk.

Good times.

We managed to get the guy into a rickshaw cab (common in those parts of Austin) and paid the cabbie $100 to get him back to his hotel. Of course, the hotel was only two blocks away so the cabbie made some nice coin.

The moral of the story is: Pace yourself when drinking. You really don’t have to be drunk to have a good time and you could end up getting sick, hurting yourself or feeling like an idiot the next morning.

Other than that, enjoy yourself at SXSW!

Aaron is the founder and lead editor of Technosailor.com. He is a business and social media consultant and loves to see people reach their potential through the use of social media. There is an overlap between useful social media and personal and corporate outreach and brand. His writing seeks to highlight those areas where the two overlap and eliminate the noise that is present in covering the news and buzz surrounding web startups and social media.

Aaron has been involved in the web since early 2000 and has most recently served as the Director of Technology for b5media, a blog network. His background is in technology – web development, scalability and WordPress development.

This post is part 6 of a series, head over to the SxSW Interactive Tips page to read all of the posts in this series (in intended order).

From Eric Berto AKA GeekGiant

Right now, a bunch of geeks are packing cords, cables and some extra socks before heading down to Austin for Geek Spring Break, also known as South by Southwest.

But one thing you can’t pack is a way to handle the overload of networking, parties, panels and new people you will encounter once you land. Sure, you can read about how to Hack SXSW or even an article to teach you how to network at SXSW, but you need to find out what will work best for you.

My advice is to treat it like summer camp. When we were kids, we went to summer camp to make new friends and learn stuff. But we didn’t have Twitter, iPhones or “tweetups.” Meet people new every day and cement those relationships while you’re out at night having a great time.

Smile and Say Hi

Treat every day at SXSW as a different adventure. Strive to meet new people each day. Spend the day learning about neat concepts and ideas. Spend the day walking the hallways of the convention center and smiling at people and saying hello. I have a natural advantage when it comes to meeting people since I’m of slightly above average height (OK, I’m 6′8″). So, when I walk down the hallway, people notice. For the rest of the world, a simple smile and hello go a long ways.

Take it Offline

Us über nerds are conditioned to shake hands, introduce ourselves and then ask what the other person’s Twitter handle is. Conversely, we have many relationships with avatars that become real at events such as SXSW. So, spend some time over morning coffee to have a chat with those contacts. Catch up and connect on a different level than a 140-character reply. Mornings are a great time for true, genuine networking. No loud music, smaller groups and fewer distractions. Capitalize on that focus to actually accomplish something.

Rinse, Lather Repeat

Last year’s SXSW was my first. I found out I was going about three weeks before and had no clue what I was getting into. I essentially closed my eyes and started talking to people. But something I learned was that it was OK to start the cycle over each day. Make new friends every day. Attend a party with a different group of people each night. Buy somebody different a coffee every day. Real-world networking is a lot like the online social networks. You only get out of it what you put in.

So, what are you going to put into SXSW this year? What are you going to take away from it? What merit badges will you earn?

For the past few years, Eric has been guiding corporate communications and public relations for a publicly traded company. Eric has guided successful product launches, secured numerous speaking opportunities and created a blogging strategy that was named as one of Inside CRM’s top 25 corporate blogs.

Eric utilizes his background in journalism and sociology to bring a people-powered approach to community engagement. As an award-winning former journalist, he brings an honest and in-depth approach to Public Relations and marketing.