If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Madoff would make bad pavement material. He's a bad guy. I think he should spend all that time working out the accounting to get the money back. Since it won't work, it's like Tantalus pushing the rock up hill. That would be justice, if he had to do it forever.

Craig: http://twitter.com/DavidSaranga/statuses/2193462009 This person works with the Israeli Consulate. Just met him at the 140 Characters conference. He can be useful on this topic. --Howard

HJÖRTUR, I look forward to meeting you at the 140 Characters Conference! Thanks for mentioning me.

Damon could easily stand in for Katie Couric anytime.

Seriously, the strengths of the Alley are that we have exposure to top content creators in publishing, music, financial markets, and TV/Radio. We get our programmers out of Wall St trading firms, so many of them are biased towards real-time and high reliability. NYC is concentrated, and yet even with all the events, it is sometimes tough for developers, entrepreneurs and resources to get connected. In NYC it is *very* tough to find firms that are willing to take equity in new ventures in exchange for services - much more likely to happen in the valley. Also in the Valley, it seems somehow easier to assemble a team and start a company, though I don't think there's any barrier in NY - just cultural. More thoughts as I have them.

Why does it have to be "Versus?" Can't we all just get along? Just tell them shut up about content and that they aren't the only ones who know how to program Ruby on Rails. :-) And in NYC we lose more money on mortgage-backed securities in a week than they raise in all the C rounds of a year.

Steve, Thanks for starting a blog. Great to see your ideas out here. So, where's the listening? Similar to what Michael Harad says above, what part of your marketing strategy is the channel for customers to tell you what they think? This speaks to fleshing out your statement above "what do they want?" Any company today going out without a social media component, even something as simple as 'tell us what you think' in a form on the website, is missing out on knowledge that can influence their product/service for the better.

Well, Deb, how do you really feel about it?

Let me know how Social Media Club can help and what I can do personally. I live about 1 hour south of Woodstock and love the town. I've done my share of un-conference work at this point, and can potentially help you avoid some of the pitfalls while benefiting from the energy.

How about TIVO? I have a broken, 2.5 year old Tivo. I can send it back and for $149 get a reconditioning on it. OR, the rep told me softly, I can look on their site and get a new reconditioned one for $179 - 150 rebate when I activate it. Now, should they just send me one for 29 and not make me do the rebate? - YES. But, they did save me 130 dollars for calling. That respects me.