FlyingChaz.com

This morning, Natalie (one of our 2 label managers) and one of our artists went to London for a 3day session of songwriting. At the same time, I’m going through some of our week-end stats, and I’m liking some of the trends:

1. Tom Dice entered the TOP50 again in France, and even TOP20 in airplay. Reactions in France are really great. Looking at the French charts, we Belgians should be proud! Stromae, Selah Sue and Tom Dice are all in the top50. 3 very different styles of music, but all of them examples of ‘where amazing talent meets hard work’. And I expect milow in that group soon too. Bravo to all!!
2. A trend that I LOVE! We’ve started to go international with SonicAngel over the last weeks. We’ve signed up with 8 international artists so far, but capturing the heart of the fans should take some time, although the reactions in the US are kindof overwhelming. Looking at the latest 10 sales on our site yesterday, I noticed the following:
   40% Flanders
   10% Wallonia
   10% France
   10% Netherlands
   20% Switserland
   10% USA
   That’s really great news, and today we’re finalizing 2 more projects to further expand internationally
3. Over the next 2 months, we have 8 releases lined up, and planning looks amazing. Most of them are in Flanders and Wallonia but our first French, Suisse and US releases are also being lined up. Going through the productions, I cannot help but think: WOW. What amazing talents.

Great feeling to start the week! Time to accelerate our actions and plans.

bart

About 2 months ago, I was honoured to be asked to become next Chairman of the Board of directors of the IBBT. I accepted, because I believe there is a unique momentum, and that I can contribute to it’s ambition. More about that later.

Yesterday we had the 3rd boardmeeting of the IBBT already this year. It’s a fairly large team around the board table, but the competencies assembled are quite impressive. ‘The Board of Directors of IBBT consists of 16 representatives from both the private and public sector and ensures all research programs meet current social and economic needs’. You can find the entire board composition here.

Since many congratulated me for becoming the chairman of IWT, BIPT and other, it’s probably useful to share the mission of the IBBT here:)
I quote from the site:

The mission of IBBT is the creation of highly competent human capital in different aspects of ICT through multi-disciplinary demand-driven research. BBT carries out this multi-disciplinary research for the Flemish business community and the Flemish government. This includes all technological, legal and social dimensions of the development and exploitation of broadband services. The Flemish government invests in multi-disciplinary broadband research, in order to make Flanders a leading and internationally recognized player, in the information society of the future.

IBBT is a driving factor in basic research and demand (industry) driven research, and is becoming an important player for entrepreneurs who are starting companies or who are scaling/accelerating their ventures. Additionally, the innovation and research in collaboration with large enterprises such as Alcatel Lucent, Telenet, Siemens or Belgacom and many others is important and creating a lot of industry initiatives.

We are at a crucial moment, that will define the competitive situation in ict for a lot of years. Much is being discussed about the competitive situation of Belgium and its regions, and I strongly believe there is a unique momentum. A unique momentum to foster the growing entrepreneurial ambitions for starters and growers in ICT and Media, a unique momentum to leverage success cases like Interactive television to other domains, A unique momentum to create industry value from academic research.

I’ll share what’s shareable in the coming weeks, and maybe hope to involve you in the debate. And yes, that makes my California-Brussels habitat switches no easier, but it creates in interesting perspective indeed.

bart

Most interesting article today @ techcrunch: Why Women rule the internet

So, if you’re at a consumer web company, how can this insight help you.  Would you like to lower your cost of customer acquisition?  Or grow revenue faster?  Take a look at your product, your marketing, your customer base.  Maybe you would benefit from having a larger base of female customers.  If so, what would you change to make your product/service more attractive to female customers?  Do you do enough product and user interface testing with female users?  Have you figured out how to truly unleash the shopping and social power of women?

You could also take a look at your team.  Do you have women in key positions? If you’re planning on targeting female customers, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to have great women on your team.

If you are already targeting female customers, have great women working in your company, and are seeing strong commerce and social network effects, congratulations.  You are likely trying to figure out how to handle hypergrowth right now.  Plus your office probably smells pretty good.

Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web.  And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce.  The ongoing debate about women in tech has been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world.” (from techcrunch)

Truth being told, also at SonicAngel the divisions managed by women excel compared to those ran by men. Better insights, much better customer and fan understanding, far far better management skills, both financial, strategic and operational. Maybe there lies the key in shifting our company from growth to hypergrowth ?

Fascinating story, and I agree with nearly all of it!

bart

……     “From March 3 tot April 1, I will post every day ideas or thoughts about life, company or my personal trivialities”     ……

2011 and 2012, we’ll know who will own the digital distribution of the tv-series. TV-series will be crucial, since the on-demand rights of tv-series will be the main interactive services of IDTV.

Will it be the cable or telecom operatons, who own the distribution networks and IDTV platforms?
Will it be the broadcasters, because they own some of the other windows of distribution, like the ‘live’ broadcasting and could set up Production house Channels ?
Will it be the producers, because they own the final rights of the tv-serie productions, and can stream directly to the end-user.

In Flanders, it’s pretty interesting, because 1 player is tangled in all areas.
1. Woestijnvis is a crucial partner for the telecom operator, because they produce the live football matches (all of them)
2. Woestijnvis is a crucial partner for the public broadcaster as main production house, made an offer to buy the 2nd largest commercial broadcaster, and is flirting with the leading commercial tv channel
3. Woestijnvis (probably) owns their rights, and could start WoestijnvisTV.

The same interwoven situation is occurring all over Europe. Interesting situation. Also an incredible opportunity for the Flemish and Walloon tv channels and producers to form a pact and collaborate on joint programs, since this will determine the future of distribution. And on themselves. Click here for examples from another industry.

That said, my favourite series of the moment are:
1. Californication
2. Entourage
3. The office (us version)
4. The mentalist
5. Desperate Housewives
6. NCIS
7. Private Practice
8. Mad Men
9. The Defenders
and my all time favourite: The West Wing

I actually feel like watching a couple of episodes right now (on-demand ofcourse) …

G’night
bart

This week-end I read Clo Willaerts‘ book named ‘The Conversity model (making money w social media)‘. Especially the last part I found very interesting. It’s about the Innovation part of the conversity model. The preliminary stages in the book are Observation, Conversation and Conversion.

Inside SonicAngel, we’re struggling to find the right way to have a transparant project management tool, an internal social network (of a social intranet), and a more efficient way to share information on ongoing projects. It’s a typical sign when you pass 10 employees. Below ’10′, most information passes informally. You kind of know everything of everybody. Sharing happens via talking. It’s fairly simple to organise the flow. Plus the interaction and dialogue happens a lot via talking.

However, we’re in a phase of pretty steep growth. To give you an example: yesterday we had 3 people in Los Angeles, 1 in Paris, 1 in Chicago and the others in Belgium.
In a few months, this will be our operational overview:
- we’ll have operations in 5 countries
- we’ll have over 30 artists or bands that are part of the SonicAngel roster
- we’ll have to manage thousands of new or returning fans that invested in artists
- we have to optimise the 5 ranges of activities
- we’ll have an additional agency focussing on the brand and music opportunities
- we’ll have hundres of concerts and festivals across 8 countries
and so on …

That creates a lot of interdependency.

We initially tried Yammer as a tool. Although the tool is great, it didn’t work a lot for us. Actually, I don’t think we’re ready for it. There was some updating and information sharing, but the tool did not really ‘live’ inside the company. It was used sporadically. It didn’t serve the organisatonal needs. And that is the requirement number 1 that we need in our company right now!

I’m pretty impressed by what Zoho offers. But I tend to lean to basecamp as a default operational management tool. More about that in the coming days.

But what I wanted to say about Clo’s book. It’s has one ‘overview’ part, which talks about the SWOT’s of the different social networks, and how they related to social media. Then she talks about the 4 stages of conversity. I don’t think there is ever 1 book that gives an answer, but this one framed my needs and questions better. Especially related to innovating, on social CRM, on lead generation and on waving the streams of social media inside the company.

bart

Today I spent most of the day in Liège, where we launched the partnership of SonicAngel with BASE and Standard to find the first ever official Standard artist. Really cool action, allowing everyone to show their talents, gather a fanbase and showcase their music during the Royal Standard de Liège fanday. The winner will be the official artist 2011-2012, including a lot of performances, events and a full album recording according to the principles of SonicAngel.

Sporza just posted an article.

This also mean the ‘official’ launch of SonicAngel in Wallonia. You can find it all out at http://standard.sonicangel.com

That said, I have spent a year studying at the Université de Liège (Sart Tilmant) for a year and spent some time at FNAC in Paris and Liège. I even wanted to move there, because once you get to know the city it’s about the most vibrant, passionate and ‘warm’ you can imagine. Always felt at home here!

Next up for the day: study financials until end Feb, finalize biz deal and listen to some demo’s in the studio.

Update1: we took Charlie, my 3y old boy, with us to the press conference at Standard. He looked amazed at Steven Defour & Axel Witsel. But after 30 mins, he came running to me. ‘Papa, dat vind ik niet leuk. Ze lopen veel te snel en shotten veel te hard. En ik mag niet meedoen.’