Category Archives: Goby

Goby, Music

Boston music this weekend

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(cross posted from the goby blog)

Some good stuff this weekend. Yours truly is going to hit up Eddie from Ohio, playing at the Somerville Theater. They play a great rock/folk mix. Nobody as small as lead singer Julie should have a voice as big as she does, she can fill a stadium without a mike. Great tunes, great lyrics, good fun.

You can Experience Hendrix at the Orpheum, Sunday at 8PM. A pretty astounding lineup will be there. According to the Experience Hendrix site, the lineup features “Billy Cox of The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band Of Gypsys, Steve Vai, Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Eric Johnson, Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, Living Colour, Chris Layton of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, Ernie Isley, Mato Nanji of Indigenous, Susan Tedeschi, and The Slide Brothers”. Holy cow. That’s a lineup.

If you are into modern classical music, or things experimental, Kronos Quartet will be playing at Northeastern. If you think you know what a classical string quartet sounds like and it’s boring, you’re wrong. These guys are amazing.

For some happy-sounding ska, kind of in the vein of Pepper, then check out Bedouin Sound Clash at the Middle East in Cambridge. Musician and DJ Bonobo will be the Paradise on Sunday night, turning out some tasty club music.

Please drive safely, and as always, information on all this and more can be found at boston music this weekend.

Goby, Startups

When to hire a designer (hint: now!)

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I’ve been to a few startup events recently, in particular the Future M Startup Bootcamp and NEVCA office hours at Venture Cafe. Thanks in particular to Venture Cafe for hosting the event – it was a great time and lots of good discussion.

A subject came up repeatedly at both events that I think is worth commenting on. The question is, “When should I hire a designer to work on my application/startup”?

Especially for consumer web companies, my answer is, “you should have already hired one”. A strong designer should be one of the first people you hire into a company, for a few reasons. We did this at goby and the company would not be the same if we had not. But before we go into the reasons, let’s talk about what I mean by a designer.

The word “designer” can mean a lot of different things to different people. There are graphic designers, web designers, product designers, and a number of other variations in skill-sets and perspectives. Product design is not about having a cute logo (although that helps). It’s not about having good fonts & colors (although this is a good idea and harder than it looks). It’s not about having a clean and elegant user interface (although that’s becoming an expectation if not a requirement in today’s consumer web environment). It’s fundamentally about understanding your customer – a good designer is always thinking about who your user is, why they’re coming to your site, what they think they are seeing when they see your site for the first time, what your information architecture is, and how they are going to react to all of it. They will also be well versed in what’s going in the outside world, what trends exist in design, and why those trends are happening. They’ll also be out talking to customers, getting feedback, and incorporating that into their designs.

Expectations are insanely high in the consumer web. People make instant, instinctive judgments about the value and trustworthiness of your site. This isn’t just about good graphics, it is deeper than that. And if you don’t get it right, you’ll struggle to find and keep visitors.

Ideally, you would find someone who can also do web/graphic design and wireframes as well, but if all you want is a nicer looking site, you can find a contractor to help with that on an as-needed basis. But this misses the point. There’s a natural tendency for product developers & engineers to design the product (and they should be intimately involved of course!), but there is deep benefit in having someone who is outside the coding process thinking about users from their perspective, and without being too tied to the engineering process.

Goby, Startups

goby announces new funding!

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(cross-posted to the goby blog)

It has been an amazing year for us. A year ago nobody had heard of goby. Today, half a million people a month use our service, in the process finding great new experiences to enrich their lives. That’s what it’s all about. We love it when you’re out there doing fun things you never would have found without goby (and we love hearing about the adventures!).

Today’s another big milestone for us. We are very pleased to announce that we’ve received additional funding from our partners Kepha Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners. We’re grateful for the trust and counsel they have given us, and excited about the opportunity that is ahead of us.

We have lots of great things left to build for you, lots of exciting ideas on the drawing board that have yet to be realized, and are looking forward to bringing them to you in the coming months and years.

the goby team

PS: Details here – http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20101021005636/en/goby-Secures-2.5-Million-Extension-Series-Funding

Goby, Music

Boston music this weekend

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(cross-posted from the goby blog)

If you’ve read any of the background on goby, you probably know we started the company after I missed seeing Jack Johnson play a gig in Hawaii. In the spirit of trying to help you not miss great shows, we’ve decided to start a tradition of a Thursday morning post letting you know about some of the great gigs going on every weekend (we’re starting in Boston). Without further commercial interruption, here’s some of our favorite bets for this weekend:

If you’re into old school, Blood, Sweat and Tears are playing at the Berklee Performance center.

A little closer to the current century, if you want some indie goodness, check out Deerhunter at the Royale.

Home town folkie girl Lori McKenna is at the Natick Center for the Arts.

Perennial classic acoustic jazz team Acoustic Alchemy is at the Scullers Jazz club.

Finally, Yoko Miwa Trio is playing some great jazz at goby’s home base restaurant, Les Zygomates.

Details of all of these can be found on my weekend music list.

And of course, to see all the Boston concerts this weekend, hit up this link.

Goby, Music

The 60s are back, but this time they’re just Carbon Neutral.

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On the lawn at the Jack Johnson concert
As some of you may have heard, one of the inspirations for Goby was me missing Jack Johnson playing a concert on Oahu one time when I was there. The lack of a single place to go to find out “what’s going on” is one of the reasons why people miss great events, and missing Jack Johnson playing in his native Hawaii would have been so cool! (Aside: we feel a special bond because my wife is part Hawaiian and her aunt actually taught at Jack’s high school).

So, it was great to finally close the loop and see Jack play this weekend (albeit at the Comcast center in Marshfield, MA, not in Hawaii). It was a great show – he played pretty much all his well-known tunes (“Taylor”, “Flake” , “Breakdown”) plus a bunch of songs from his new album To The Sea. Some bands are rough when they perform live, and some bands are so tight they sound like their recordings. Jack, for all his loose-and-free Hawaii surfer-dude attitude, is tight. His live performances are almost indistinguishable from his recordings.

G-Love opened for him, and was strong in both the warm-up set as well as when he returned for a few songs with Jack later in the evening.

The 60s were in full swing as the crowd took full advantage of the recent Massachusetts law making marijuana a civil violation; tie-dye, tiaras and headbands, biblical beards and other vestiges of the 60s seemed to be everywhere – you would have thought you were at a Led Zeppelin concert. The social element of the 60s was also visible in the form of Carbon Offsets being sold by the tour to cover the tour’s carbon footprint. Jack’s admirable work starting up his own social action network was in evidence in the booths at the concert for the All At Once (allatonce.org) Foundation. But the real atmosphere was the spirit of Aloha and friendliness of the crowd as well as the performers (including other Hawaiian musicians like Paula Fuga who joined Jack on stage). A little bit of Hawaii in Massachusetts!