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Pina Bausch: a glimpse into passionate movement

Published November 20, 2007 by cgerrish

Just a note about Pina Bausch’s “Ten Chi.” I attended the performance in Berkeley last night. Sitting in the second row I was drawn into the performance when the great Dominique Mercy asked me (and other audience members) if I knew how to snore. And then asked me to do so. The video above is of Dominique.

The audience was filled with Bay area choreographers coming to find inspiration, and the evening delivered. Bausch’s company is filled with every ethnic group, all ages, every body type and real individual dancers. The performance contains hundreds of small dances, poetry recitals, jokes, skits, visual puns. Often several going on at once, a lyrical dance upstaged by a comic turn or a sexually charged moment. The dancers don’t have that abstract blank stare you see so often in modern dance. These are real people filled with emotion and passion. The dancers talk, tell jokes and scream. It’s rare experience.

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Disrupting the book: What if Kindle was free?

Published November 20, 2007 by cgerrish

Books

Can the book be disrupted? It seems like piling on to write about Amazon’s new e-book device “Kindle.” Universally hated, except for the free EVDO. In general I’m in favor of single purpose network attached devices. For instance, I crave a Chumby. But the Kindle seems doomed to failure. How many attempts have been made in the e-book space? Of course, it’s not really an e-book, it’s an electronic text reader. A book is an entirely different experience.

Would I spend $400 to buy a device that would allow me to spend $10 more to download the text of a book? I think I’d prefer to read news and features on a device like that. If that’s true, how is it better than an iPhone? Perhaps Kindle should be like a razor. Give it away and charge for the razor blades. I don’t know if that model would work, but it’s the only way it could gain wide acceptance.

Although we’re trained not to buy content, we ascribe the emotion of “wanting to be free” to it. Perhaps both the reader and text are free and supported by advertising. Macbeth, brought to you by Dawn dishwashing liquid. It’s tough on dirt, but gentle on your hands.

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Sometimes I dream of a digital Chautauqua

Published November 18, 2007 by cgerrish

Chautauqua Tent

Sometimes I dream of a digital Chautauqua that crosses over and travels in a tent show around the land. I think about Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble, or the Willoz’s Chautauqua. I haven’t quite figured out how the Chautauqua on the network connects to the Chautauqua in the tent or the barn— but the two should be deeply intertwingled.

Enjoy Chautautqua

As I think about what the next big thing on the Web will be, I can’t help thinking about the next small thing. I imagine it will look like a digital Chautauqua, a unique performance that will exist for just a moment in time. It’s participants will be witnesses. Can I get a witness?

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Bill Hambrecht, Google & pricing an IPO with a social network

Published November 18, 2007 by cgerrish

The Google offering happened a while after I left WR Hambrecht + Co, but I can’t believe I never saw this Charlie Rose interview with Bill Hambrecht. It seems like ancient history viewing it now. Looking at the offering price and today’s price one might think the deal was underpriced by the modified dutch auction. As I recall, at the time, many thought the IPO offering price of $85 per share was too high.

Hambrecht’s modified Dutch auction method of pricing IPOs still isn’t understood very well. Basically it’s the idea of the wisdom of crowds (or markets) applied to determining the appropriate offering price for a company’s initial public offering. Think of it like Digg for pricing the initial stock price for a company. It’s a like asking the community of investors what the right price should be— a radical use for a social network.

The method works best when a broad range of people have an opinion on the proper initial price for a company’s stock (a high bid to cover ratio). It doesn’t work very well when the company isn’t well known. In cases like this investors (bidders in the auction) actually have to read the prospectus and attempt to determine a reasonable price. This, of course, is nearly impossible. It would be like trying to rate a new album from a band you’d never heard based on the tax returns of the musicians.

For those in the tech community looking for liquidity events through an IPO (as opposed to acquisition), you’d do well to at least take the time to understand how the Dutch auction works. Back in the day Joe Tennis and I put together a flash animation explaning how Hambrecht’s OpenIPO works. Check it out, it still holds up pretty well.

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