09/09/97 RMIUG Meeting Minutes - City Sites

Dan Murray called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm and introduced the other Executive Committee members in attendance (Art Smoot, Tom Bresnahan).

Dan then opened the meeting to announcements from the floor.

• Alexia Parks alexia@votelink.com announced a couple of web sites for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) set up through VoteLink to encourage public participation in the planning process regarding commuter rail (http://www.votelink.com/railfest97) and commuting along the northern Front Range http://www.votelink.com/nfr).

• Todd Tyrrell ttyrrell@zip2.com emailed an announcement. The Rocky Mountain News, in conjunction with Internet technology leader Zip2, has launched InfoPages. InfoPages includes comprehensive business listings with award winning door-to-door directions for the greater Denver / Boulder area, as well as access to the most state-of-the-art mapping technology on the web for businesses across the entire United States. You can find InfoPages at www.denver-rmn.com (Go to "InfoPages" link at top left hand portion of Rocky Mountain News home page.)

• RMIUG is pleased to announce that NDA will be our new sponsor for refreshments at our meetings. NDA (http://www.nda.com) provides outsourced computer network and system administration solutions. NDA is based in Woburn, MA, and has offices in the Silicon Valley, Boulder, CO, and Salt Lake City, UT. RMIUG is also grateful to XOR Network Engineering for their continuing support in administration of our electronic discussion lists & WWW site.

• Brad Feld brad@feld.com has founded a new group called the Colorado Internet Keiretsu, a group of the founders of Internet companies in Colorado. The mission of the group is to create synergy between Colorado's Internet companies, and position and sustain Colorado as a center for Internet commerce. Contact Brad for more information.

• The next RMIUG meeting on Colorado Internet company startups, IPO's, venture capital and financing was scheduled for November 11, but this date presents a conflict with the Rockies Venture Club Meeting focusing on financing. Stay tuned to the RMIUG announcement list for a possible change in the date of the November RMIUG meeting.

• Thanks to XOR for web site and mailing list sponsorship.

• Jeff G jobs, startup, licensing wireless high speed Internet access company. (Anyone have more info about this announcement?)

Featured Presentations

• Two cancellations (Digital City, Zip2) at the night's meeting lead to some changes in the speaker lineup. The final lineup included:
• Brad Struss (bradstr@microsoft.com), General Manager of the Microsoft's soon-to-launch Denver Sidewalk.
• Meredith Flynn-Ripley (mflynnr@uswest.com), General Manager of US West's DiveIn Denver.
• Ted Pinkowitz (tap@ecentral.com), President of E.Central with the Big City - Small Planet site.
• John Sturman, Pocket Protector Productions, Denver (SturmanJH@aol.com) (Biographies are listed at the end of the minutes.) (note: Q & A indicates questions from the audience.)

Microsoft Sidewalk - Brad Struss

Brad started his presentation with an overview of Microsoft's general Internet philosophy, which is to learn the right business models, then partner with other companies. Examples included MSNBC for news and CarPoint for car buyers. Denver Sidewalk is one of several local guides to entertainment and recreation. Other guides include Twin Cities, New York, Seattle, and Boston. It is targeted to the resident who feels overloaded with family and work commitments, without the time to keep up with city events. Sidewalk will help the user who is stuck in an entertainment and recreation rut, going to the same restaurants all the time, but who wants to try something new.

The Sidewalk solution is to provide a comprehensive listing in key categories, providing restaurant reviews, thousands of event listings early enough to plan ahead for the weekend. The site can be personalized to the user's interests, with integrated information, so you can find which restaurants are near the movie theater, for example. Street maps will show the locations with a consistent presentation.

Q. What are the policies of Microsoft Sidewalk towards personal information and privacy? Will you sell this information?
A. Policies are posted on the Sidewalk site. There are no plans to sell this information.

Local experts will be providing the content. The Sidewalk staff includes:

• Executive Producer: Joe Rassenfoss - Rocky Mountain News
• Restaurant Producer: Bill St. John - Rocky Mountain News, KCNC Channel 4.
• Sport and Recreation Producer: Seth Masia - Times Mirror SKINET, Ski Magazine
• Arts and Entertainment Producer: Mark Brown - Orange County Register, Rocky Mountain News
• Events Producer: Greg Hartman - Denver's _Heart of Jazz_ plus many well-known freelancers.

Q. What, no women?
A. Many of the freelancers are women.

Q. Will I be able to look up restaurants in just South Boulder?
A. Yes.

Example pages from Twin Cities Site: The Today page is the main home page.

• Series of articles of what's going on.
• Fast Finder search for events, like "Cirque de Soleil".
• Customize pages in left column. Let you know when new restaurant opens in Boulder.
• Left side has navigation to movies, restaurants, arts & music
• Scroll down page to see more headlines. What to do today, this weekend.
• Click on Sneaker Pimps, get more detail on band, venue, pricing, bar hours, type of club, phone, fax numbers.
• Complete list of ALL events.
• Direct link to street map of venue.
• Enhanced venue for club, history, additional details, insider tips, dress code, vinyl or T-shirt, drink cost.
• Link to nearby restaurants name, address, rating, type of food, price. More details on each rest. Best appetizers.

Q. All the restaurants or only the ones that advertise?
A. Keeping that separate from the tiled ads (banner ads along right).

Q. All content by staff?
A. Freelance and staff.

Q. Restaurants upload their own content?
A. Keeping that separate.

Q. Ad rates?
A. See me later.

Q. Why not posted?
A. It's industry practice not to post ad rates.

Q. Ad rates based on click thru? or monthly?
A. Varies.

Q. Are you selling content or ads?
A. Ads can have links to distant web, or develop their own page.

Q. Demographic info from visitors, sell mailing lists, stated policy privacy issues?
A. Haven't released it yet. Privacy issues are tough, can sell it.

Q. Will Sidewalk use cookies?
A. Yes, they will be stored on local machine.

We expect to launch Denver Sidewalk this fall. After Brad's presentation, Dan asked a trivia question: What was Sidewalk originally called? The answer is: CityScape.

Next Dan introduced Meredith Flynn-Ripley of US West DiveIn. (See the end of the minutes for biographies.)

Meredith defined DiveIn Denver is "an online city guide for newcomers to the web". Version 1.0 was launched March 1997, with version 2.0 in July, with 3.0 coming in October. Its focus is the non-technical user, like those that just got a computer and don't know their modem speed. Consumer research has indicated a need for a service to help them find all the stuff that's out on the web. "Useful information" is the mantra of DiveIn. It's a complement to traditional media, not a war with TV or newspapers.

• Embrace openness of Internet find the hard to find info and provide links
• Multiple links to news, aggregate by category, link to Rocky Mountain News, Westword, restaurants.
• DiveIn is actively seeking local partners like Rocky Mountain Sports, Colorado Parenting.
• DiveIn has a family orientation toward school, health, gardening.
• Original writers from Denver Post, Howie Movishovitz - movies, restaurant reviews, Colorado Guide authors Bruce Caughey & Dean Winstanley - getaways, Tom Green - KUSA daily sports.
• DiveIn allows and solicits user content to contribute to the community. Member contributions are increasing. Coming events, favorite restaurants.

Technology

• Web pages are dynamically generated. Advanced personalization. MapQuest driving directions and street maps.
• Where's the money in this? Several revenue streams will emerge over time. Newspapers are limited to local advertising. DiveIn will attract national & local advertising, local yellow pages, sponsorships, syndication fees, transaction fees.

In the long term, DiveIn Denver will be continually evolving and shaped by the community.

Screen shots show several features of the DiveIn Denver site, including key word searches, personalization provided by answering twenty questions, deals with local and national advertisers and content providers (like the Weather Channel). The left side of the screen shows the eight main categories: entertainment, sports, news, living, business (soho), weekend driving getaways, education and schools online, health. Other parts of the screen show headlines from Reuters, a poll regarding a new Broncos Stadium, content partners like 5280 magazine, winning lottery numbers for the past five years, local coupons for Burger King and dry cleaning.

Personalization is accomplished in the My Categories section (specify only five of the eight categories to be displayed when you log in), and My Content (bring pages of interest up to the home page level). Examples of My Content subjects are Westword dining reviews and the Rocky Mountain News movie reviews. The My Calendar section lets the user filter the 1200 events per month to just the ones of interest.

Q. Why all the plain vanilla content, and not more "out there" content like Mr. Cranky movie reviews and my zine?
A. Focus is on family and newbie, not the experienced web surfer who can already find that stuff.

Q. Is there editorial objectiveness when mixing ads and content?
A. Yes.

Examples of collaboration with other content providers include the partnership with 5280 magazine. DiveIn picks content from 5280's web site and displays it with a return to DiveIn bar or button.

Another collaboration example is the sponsorship of Garden Escape. They get a banner and a tile ad on the DiveIn page. Their content must pass editorial judgment by DiveIn as to what is an advertisement and what is content. Some of this content includes current articles, an archive of past articles and author biographies.

An example of collaboration with a local partner without their own web site is Rocky Mountain Sports. Content includes a calendar of sporting events, links to their own web address on DiveIn's site. Articles are rotated weekly.

Women's Wire is an example of collaboration with a national content provider.

To sum up, DiveIn Denver is committed to the long term. Research confirms that their audience should be the family and newcomer to the web. The goals of DiveIn Denver are to provide local content, create an online forum, drive traffic to your site, and advertise to the local community. If you can't find the paper with the movie section, look up a movie at DiveIn Denver.

Ted Pinkowicz of E-Central lead off the third company presentation.

His local content site is named "Big City, Small Planet". This site differs from Sidewalk and DiveIn business models by aiming for short term profitability, adding Internet Provider Service and web hosting to the local content site. These services feed off each other. In addition, local content consists of more than just entertainment, adding neighborhood communications and political content.

The Big City Small Planet page features an events calendar where you can pick a day from the calendar, a group, or a venue (e.g. Herman's Hideaway) to filter events.

The Bright Lights Big City has a hot list (events with web pages), Very Useful Things, and a place to vote on topics (e.g. Did the press kill Princess Di?).

The Insight page highlights people in Denver, politicians, and bookstores.

The Find a Restaurant page has hundreds of listings, and lets you pick a restaurant by cuisine, atmosphere and location. E-Central solicits information from restaurants. Information includes phone numbers, web page, map, dinner menus.

News and Weather for Denver is updated hourly, with forecasts, radar, mountain pass conditions, traffic, today's headlines from Denver and national sites like CNN and Wall Street Journal.

The Big City page has classified ads, chat, discussion, and Extremely Useful Things. The Interactive Neighborhoods lets you create your own neighborhood page for free. Each neighborhood page can have interaction with neighbors and politicians, live meetings, an email for a contact person, web site link, and a map. The page is created by filling out a form online.

Q. Who decides who does each neighborhood?
A. Neighborhood associations.

Q. Is discussion area chat or archive?
A. Live chat and bulletin board discussion.

Each site can post neighborhood events, school events, church events with a list of all schools and links to their web sites. In addition, their should be links to law enforcement (police, sheriff) with contact information including fax, pager and email addresses. You can also send a fax to the district station by filling out an online form. Neighbors can discuss local issues (e.g. vicious dog vs. love that puppy).

John Sturman of Pocket Protector Productions shared some of his past experiences "building a community online".

He has done work with Rocky Mountain News Online, Genius, TogetherNet, and Digital City Denver.

Some people think you can build it and they will come to your web site, but that doesn't work. Web sites are like elbows; everyone has one, but once you've seen it, you don't need to see it again. When he's going online, he's not planning to go to a restaurant that night, because he'll end up online all night. He argues that we don't need newspapers and magazines online, because people want to interact online. He predicts that for kids, the web will be like the phone and TV are to us now, and it will be used just to talk and express opinions. It's still early in the history, but it will become a part of our lives. Diversity and community involvement are what's needed to build community online.

Next, the speakers sat down together to accept questions from the audience. Q. Dan asked - Do any of the sites have email web services? How about the ability to send me an email message if something happens?
A. None of the sites have this ability yet, though the speakers gave examples of ways to personalize your view of their sites.

• DiveIn - TV grid personalized TV guide, new Seinfeld, any thing with George Clooney. Phasing into other areas.
• Sidewalk - Categories that you choose. Can get weekly email. Also key work searching. Cirque de Soleil or the Samples.
• E.Central - Subscription newsletters in the works.

• DiveIn - we want to work with them.
• E.Central Call me at the office.
• Sidewalk - call me

Q. Why hasn't their been any attempt by any of there companies to reach BCN? We've already done so much.
A. It's a matter of focus.

Q. What about building on what's already on the web instead of imposing structure that doesn't fit?

A.

• DiveIn categories came from current web content.
• E.Central - premature to say what will and not work. - business has to start somewhere, can't connect to everyone at once. We'll get it under control and then expand. No one has been up for a year yet.

Q. Advertising, radio TV print, have demographics to determine the cost of ads. What's the price of a banner? Are there standards?
A. DiveIn -Also based on 1. circulation cost per thousand page views, 2. time basis per month. 3. What the audience is. E.Central - Click through, have to go to your site.

Q. What technologies are in use, and what cool technology is behind scenes?
A.

• Sidewalk - activeX scripting, SQL
• E.Central Informix database
• DiveIn Informix Netscape live wire.

Q. Net vs. traditional media - For Christmas publication in print, we must submit in July. What is the lead time?
A.

• DiveIn 5-day turnaround
• Sidewalk - we go out to get the information from the web.

Q. Submit events from user?
A. There is verification check. same day to 1 week. E.Central - events and restaurants, 24 - 48 hour turnaround.

Q. Track user interest, targeted banner ads?
A. DiveIn - contextual category ads, not user targeted. User data is confidential. Sidewalk - no targets

Q. Text based features for my handheld computer.
A. Sidewalk can be text only mode. Can send a URL. Will still get text ad.

Q.Turn off graphics on site?
A. Use browser to turn off graphics.

Q. What is reliability of each site? How long will it be up? What is the underlying operating system and servers?
A. DiveIn 24x7, live backup server. Sun server Live Wire 3.0. Sidewalk 24x7, backups, Windows NT IIS. E.Central 98% up guarantee.

Q. What is your staff, freelancers?

• E.Central Staff 15
• DiveIn, operates centrally (combines staff from several city sites) 50 staff, 10-15 per city.

Q. What is coolest site with smallest number of people.
A. One person can build a cool site. Like cable used to be. Movies, home made. We've been to a lot of sites that suck, but don't know why they suck, need interface design, specialists that talk to each other, 3 - 4 minimum.

Dan finished the meeting with a few closing notes. Open Linux lite CD ROM available for free at the podium (while supplies last). The next meeting in November is on Internet financing, stay tuned for details.

Speaker biographies:

Brad Struss of Microsoft Sidewalk has been with Microsoft for six years. Before joining Sidewalk last fall, he ran the Developer Relations Group working with leading third party content and application developers. This work involved working closely with companies ranging from traditional software development companies such as Lotus, Micrografx, and Adobe to content/media companies such as Disney and Starwave. Prior to working for Microsoft, Grad worked for a startup software company designing and developing an educational game for children with diabetes.

Meredith Flynn-Ripley is Vice President of Product Development, DiveIn, a service of US West Interactive, The US West Media Group. She is responsible for DiveIn's product design, development, editorial and local content and brings over 11 years of experience in developing and launching interactive products. Prior to joining the company, she was Vice President, Account Director for Ogilvy & Mather Direct's Interactive Marketing Group, which pioneered the field of interactive marketing. She has a B.A. in journalism & Philosophy fro Lehigh University. She sits on the boards of the CASIE Coalition, New Technologies Committees for the Association of National Advertisers, the Ad Council and the Interactive Marketing Institute.

Ted Pinkowicz is the president and CEO of E.Central. He began his publishing career in 1987 when he created his own newspaper called ICON, a monthly arts and popular culture newspaper distributed throughout Denver and Boulder. He was also the editor of the state's arts newspaper, Colorado Arts, from 1989 through 1994. He founded E.Central in 1994. His vision for the "Big City - Small Planet" site is the culmination of ten years of experience bringing together Denver metro businesses, people, and ideas in an open forum of expression. Interactive Neighborhoods takes "local content" beyond the realm of entertainment to empower community policing, city government, and neighborhood associations.

John Sturman (sturmanjh@aol.com) has spent the last nine years creating and producing online multimedia. Products include: The Rocky Mountain News A LA CARTE Edition; TogetherNet; What On Earth; www.JAMZ.com; www.Yahooligans.com; www.ingenius.com; What On Earth 2 for MSN; and numerous sites for Digital City Denver, including Lost World Found...Colorado's Dinosaurs. He recently left Ingenius, where he was the Director of Online Products to start Pocket Protector Productions, an online consulting company. Considered an online industry visionary, strategist, and product management expert, he enjoys managing creative people and producing products for kids of all ages. He lives in Denver, Colorado and may be contacted at sturmanjh@aol.com.