As part of my ongoing work with Cabulous, John Wolpert (Founder and CEO) and I had great fun doing a radio interview about the Cabulous app on San Francisco’s KPOO 89.5 FM. Harrison Chastang was our host.
It was great to see the KPOO studios, comfortably nested in a nice office near Geary and Divis.
Listen to the interview here:
Cabulous Interview on 89.5 FM KPOO San Francisco
I’ve been advising the team working on Cabulous, a new mobile location-enabled app that makes it easier for cabbies to advertise their locations — and for passengers to find them.
I drove last Saturday and helped with an early beta test. John taped the first successful Cabulous hail:
A few weeks back, Cabulous had nice coverage on the old fashioned TV tubes:
Link – more info on Cabulous including a live demo of the app in use.
San Francisco Taxi with Photoshopped Blue Angels in Sky
It’s been a long time since I’ve taxi blogged.
I drove last Saturday for the first time in a few weeks. I’ve been working dispatch phones and doing VidSF work instead of driving over the past few weeks.
Novel-length post after the break.
Continue reading
I happened to be driving past City Hall a few minutes ago and caught sight of the MV-1 manufactured by Vehicle Production Group.
I was able to speak with John Gaydash a former GM executive.
Here are the important details:
Thanks John and the VPG crew for stopping by SF!
My mother’s father, Boris Drucker, passed away last week in Philadelphia.
My Aunt sent me a link to a nice obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I’m sad over his passing, but I’m happy that over Christmas vacation I was able to see him along with my immediate family. We had a great visit and together enjoyed our family company and the Philadelphia center city.
San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency absorbs the Taxi Commission in March, but SFMTA Chief Nathaniel Ford says progress will be slow.
When the Chronicle ran a story about Mayor Gavin Newsom’s idea for “Sunday Streets” I was a bit skeptical.
I wasn’t so sure that we needed another street closure, especially on a Sunday when so many tourists rely on the Embarcadero to come downtown or to the piers to spend money in our City.
So I’ll admit I was surprised to find so many people participating in the second iteration of the Mayor’s “Sunday Streets” program when I went out yesterday to shoot this quick story. I wasn’t surprised, however, to find folks in their cars a bit peeved about the closure.
As I concluded in the piece, it’s a tough balance to meet the needs of all transportation modes in a shared City.
I’m happy that the City was able to pull this off without too many problems. I’ll be interested to see what happens next year — will they do it again? Will they extend the hours? Will they perhaps have better signage warning incoming visitors and regulars to avoid the Embarcadero?
Another video, this one was a bit more fun and easier than the taxi story…
I’m still new at this whole ‘reporting’ thing. This was my attempt at figuring out what was going on with Yellow’s contract change.
It’s rather long, and it’s rather boring unless you’re involved with the industry, but my goal was to be as objective as possible in presenting everyone’s viewpoints.
Good news! Steve and I finally released our website, VidSF.com, to the public.
More good news! We had a great initial meeting with content producers. We recruited them via craigslist and we made absolutely clear that a) we are unfunded and can’t pay, and b) we can’t provide equipment.
But, after this great meeting I am left with a tough puzzle. Given that we’re unfunded and can’t yet pay content producers a cut of ads that we don’t have, how can we treat them fairly? How can we encourage the vital sense of ownership that drives projects like these to succeed?
When I started a student TV station at Indiana University Bloomington, the idea of ownership was very, very different. The IUSTV entity was never intended to be for-profit. And, the IUSTV entity was a natural extension of the university system.
IUSTV’s non-profit and university affiliation gave each and every member a strong level of inherent ownership. An important fact to note, however, is that nobody, not even me — the founder, had any real ownership of IUSTV. Instead, this ownership was perceived given the organizational entity’s association with the University.
So, how can we achieve that degree of perceived or actual ownership with VidSF? Although VidSF isn’t an incorporated entity, Steve and I have personal intellectual property ownership of the platform code and design. The team members retain IP ownership of their video content.
But, how can we mix this together to achieve the nirvana of collective perceived entity ownership achieved with IUSTV? Could we offer partial ownership of a yet-to-be-formed for-profit incorporated VidSF entity? Perhaps, but it’s difficult to offer ownership when the yet-to-be-formed entity has no agreed upon valuation. Even if we know the value of a member’s hourly contribution, how can we convert that into a percent of a company with no real valuation?
What are other ways that real and perceived member ownership can be established in an organization?
Thoughts?
