Vaultstock Wrap
Back from Root.net’s Vaultstock, MoMa, and a mini-whirlwind tour of NYC that included some great dinners, some interesting people, amazing views of the city skyline, the Pakistani Prime Minister, a bright green t-shirt, and a cab ride that was longer and more expensive than my flight. The impetus for the trip was the aforementioned Vaultstock, which was an open house of sorts put on by Root Markets and it’s non-profit step-sisterAttentionTrust. In what was to be part round-table focus group, and part open house presentation, the two headed monster on 26th street was going to try and answer some of the burning questions about attention data, and just what the hell Root markets is all about. Along the way, this movement has attracted both doubters and hangers-on, each equally passionate about their stances, and there seemed to be a good representation of each camp amongst the 40 or so attendees. Personally, I have been squarely positioned in the doubters camp (as Seth pointed out to the crowd during the presentation)…and not being one to simply yell expletives at the new kid, only and then run inside the house and lock the door, I figured it made sense to head down to New York city and meet the people who were creating the products that I had so boldly called out as being nearly fraudulent. Now, for the record (and this isn’t backtracking) I never thought that Seth and his team were just a bunch of nitwits with a half baked idea and too much time to read each other’s blogs. Quite the opposite. I knew they were smart, I knew they were on to something, and I knew that I was interested. I was just grossly put off by the relative wordiness of the message, abstractness of the idea, and the fact that everyone in the Technorati/Web 2.0/blog crowd was just blindly hitching their nerd horses to the Root wagon without ever stopping for even one second to ask what it was they were trying to do. I dislike buzz words, I hate blindly following things, and I want things to be fairly straightforward. Therefore, I was irritated about the whole thing, and used this little nickel and dime site of mine to spout off about it. Now that I have been inside of the Root mother-ship and inhaled some of the vapors, I can now admit that things are getting a wee bit clearer, and that I am starting to see how all of the pieces are going to come together. But as Noah points out, there is still a ways to go, and I still firmly believe that they need to lower the barrier of entry on the consumer side in order to make this scale up the way that they would like it to. They seem to have a Chief of everything at this place, and going forward, I am suggesting that they hire a “Chief of ‘Splaining Things”. Trust me Seth, this will be a good addition to the team. But seriously folks, it was great to meet some of the core members of the Root team along with some other non-Root folks who’s writing I have followed and enjoyed for some time. It was terrific to finally meet people like Greg Yardley and Seth Goldstein, as well as Ed Batista and Noah Brier (two great guys with great musical tastes by the way), and also a couple of guys who I could listen to all day, Robert (R0ml) Lefkowitz and Andreas Weigend. If nothing else, if Root Markets falls flat on it’s face and never makes a dime, they still have the coolest offices in the best location, that I have ever been to and they could easily adjust the business model to include $5 terrace deck tours, complete with panoramic views of the city.
