Alec Saunders SquawkBox

One of the coolest new sessions at VON this year is the VONCamp Unconference.  Borrowing heavily from the successes of the BarCamp movement, this is a whole day affair that will be part of the Innovators track at the show.  The idea is that   topics which aren't necessarily covered in the main sessions can be proposed, presented and discussed here. Think of it as constructive anarchy.  Amazing things can come out of these sessions.

My good friend Tom Howe will kick the day off with an "agenda bashing" session, where all attendees will decide on the agenda for the day.  After that, 12 sessions of 25 minutes each area available. Anyone can present and everyone is expected to participate in some way.

Go check out the wiki.  Sign yourself up, and decide if you'd like to speak or participate in some other way.

There's a growing community of people on Facebook who are proactively looking for ways to promote their goods and services using the Facebook social network.  It goes to the heart of why many small business people get onto Facebook, which is finding new ways to reach an audience for their goods and services. In the last few days I've spoken with limousine companies, multi-level marketing organizations, and educational groups.

One of the common themes is simply "how do I get started?".  Yesterday I chatted with Mari Smith, who is developing a series of classes, offered through the PodClass network, on how to use Facebook in a business context.  She's offering the introductory seminar in the series for free.  Check it out, if you're interested in the potential of Facebook in your business. 

I snorted my coffee out my nose this morning at Rogers Cadenhead's Exclusive: Techbloggers have sold their souls.  I know a few serious journos that won't take an embargo, like my friend Om Malik.  That's his business, and I respect his position.  But me?  If you've got news and are trying to coordinate a launch, I'll take the embargo.  I don't publish press releases.  Most of what I write is opinion. Dropping a press release in my inbox the day the announcement is being made isn't going to do it for me, since I write between 6 AM and 9 AM (that's the reality of writing a blog as a sideline to running a startup).  Unless you've given me a couple of days to muddle over the news, I'm not likely to write about it the day of, and perhaps not at all. 

Sold my soul?  Hardly.  Trying to give readers who honor me with a spot in their clogged RSS feed some value?  Sign me up.

If software were food, then Facebook would be a pot of chile. 

Chile cooks will tell you that the every pot is a work in progress.  From the moment that you add the meat, the peppers themselves, whatever vegetables you choose (and purists will insist on none but the tomatoes!), and the various herbs, flavours can change pretty dramatically.  It's the nature of chile that it tastes different from one hour to the next, and one day to another.

So it is with Facebook.  In the last few days:

• The Facebook team has rolled out a number of items, rolled them back, and then rolled them out again.  The new developers forums are a case in point — they were available two days ago, gone for part of yesterday, and back this morning.  We've seen the same with platform elements, including one that broke our application yesterday morning for a few hours… right before an investor presentation. Facebook added the peppers, and then had to adjust the flavouring.
• The mix of people trying to use Facebook is also shifting. In the past few weeks there seems to have been a dramatic acceleration in the number of groups being created for business related networking purposes.  They're moving beyond meat and tomatoes chile, to cactus pads, beans and perhaps a little corn to sweeten.
• The Facebook user community is changing dramatically as well.  For instance, on Monday, a conservative and married Christian gentleman complained in one group I read that salacious dating flyers offended him.  Some Facebooker's told him to take his viewpoint elsewhere, but a significant number of others sympathized.  A suggestion was even made that Facebook themselves might allow individuals to opt-out of this kind of advertising.  That's a good suggestion.  If Facebook is to continue to grow beyond the college crowd, it will have to accomodate people of many viewpoints and sensibilities. Would you like your chile with beans, rice, corn bread or perhaps all three?

From 30 million users in June to 43 million by end of August meant dramatic changes to Facebook, but this pot of chile is still pretty young. 

Two quick news items from yesterday:

• Mobivox continues to add free calling countries.  The addition of Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia and El Salvador brings the number of countries where free calling between Mobivox users is available to 40. 
• TalkPlus adds iPhone to it's list of supported handsets. Some of the TalkPlus feature set overlaps with iPhone, but TalkPlus' unique ability to set the outbound caller ID differentiates it nicely.