.KEYWORD ppeditorial0499
.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE Some days it’s just so good to be me
.DEPT
.SUMMARY Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz has been taking his megalomania pills again. They’re big pills. Big, important pills. He’s got a new, exciting magazine, a company with a new, exciting name, and he just won an award for Best Sales and Marketing Strategy from the New Jersey Technology Council. In other words, he’s being insufferable again. He’s also, vocally — very vocally — demanding a foot massage. It’s just another month on that roller-coaster column we call "From the Editor-in-Chief".
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
My feet are no longer killing me. There’s still a slight, residual discomfort that indicates that a serious foot massage might be in order, but otherwise I’m fine. Likewise, my bones and muscles no longer feel like they’ve aged a hundred years in a day. I’m back to feeling like my good, old, hearty self. Of course, a nice massage and a few hours in the hot tub would be a big win.
I’m writing this on Wednesday, and on Monday we did a trade show. This wasn’t like normal trade shows. It was the New Jersey Technology Council’s Venture Fair, where entrepreneurial companies and investors get together to learn about each other. The neat thing about this year’s Venture Fair was that it was held at the Liberty Science Center, with a spectacular view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. The rough part about the Venture Fair was, unlike most trade shows where you set up the day before, we had to be up at 4 a.m. to get to the show and build our booth before the judging began at nine and the investors and camp followers arrived at eleven. Needless to say, by the time the five of us from ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing arrived home that night, we were tired. Tired but feeling really good about ourselves.
Did I say "the five of us from ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing"? Of course I did. ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing is the new name of our company. Component Enterprises stood us in good stead for a very long time. The period where I spent my waking hours at a place called Component represents a very special time of my life. It was a time of great transition for both me personally and the world at large. We’re now a totally, irrevocably, completely connected world and this company is now completely and totally dedicated to the Internet.
As an Internet company, the name Component doesn’t provide the right kind of brand impression we want. We want our name to inspire in others what we feel every day. When we say the name ZATZ (which isn’t an acronym and doesn’t mean anything — it just sounds cool and looks cooler), we smile. When we say the name ZATZ with feeling, it’s like a war cry or a cheer. Try it. Say "ZATZ" with feeling and see if you don’t feel just a bit better about yourself and see if you don’t notice yourself smiling just a bit more. ZATZ. It’s fun to say. It has spirit and life and warmth and just a bit of challenge. ZATZ.
Of course, the Pure Internet Publishing part is what we do. We publish magazines on the net. We’re not a mixed media company, shoveling the same old content from our world-weary paper publications onto the Internet. No way. Our publications are designed from the ground up, proud to be online only, proud to be Pure Internet Publishing. ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing.
Back to our story. On Monday, we were at the New Jersey Technology Council’s Venture Fair. We were showing off. We’re so darned thrilled with this new name and our oh-so-sexy double-Z logo with the at-sign floating above. You can ogle our logo, shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Check out our hot, new ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing logo.
Our three-foot square, black, white, and yellow sign stood out like a beacon among a sea of corporate look-alikes. And so did we. All five of us (Denise, Heather, Meggan, Donna, and I) were wearing our brand-new black ZATZ T-shirts and black jeans. I had on a black leather vest and Denise was wearing a black velvet, shortened version of a top hat. With everyone else, thousands of people — attendees and exhibitors alike — clad in standard-issue, indistinguishable corporate suits, we stood out like a powerful lighthouse in a pea-soup fog.
Not only did we look good (and we looked GOOD!), but we also have a great story to tell. We made it through three passes of judges. The judges were members of the investment community and their job was to evaluate each exhibiting company based on their potential for success. At the end of the day, plaques were awarded to the few companies that managed to stand out.
Guess who stood out?
We were in an auditorium with five hundred of New York and New Jersey’s investment elite. A speaker would go to the podium, the audience would politely try to stay awake, and then the speaker would sit down. Five minutes later, try as you might, there’d be no way to tell the latest speaker from everyone else in the room.
And then, a guy got up to announce the one entrepreneurial technology company in New Jersey that was judged to have the Best Sales and Marketing Strategy. He mumbled a few words about the importance of strategy and marketing and then said "The award for Best Sales and Marketing Strategy goes to ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing".
Har. Har. Har.
We stood up. The five of us marched down to the stage. All eyes were on us. You couldn’t miss us. Denise Amrich and Heather McDaniel were on one side of me. Donna Rose and Meggan Durst were on the other. All were wearing the ZATZ T-shirts and black jeans. We were different. We were audacious. We had it together. And no one, not one person in that huge auditorium, could possibly mistake any of us for someone from another company.
Then it was my turn to give a speech. I’ve always wanted to say one thing at an awards presentation and this time I did. I said, "This is so cool!" I went on to say a few nice things about New Jersey and the people involved. After all, this was sponsored by the New Jersey Technology Council and we really appreciated the work they’d done to give us a venue to strut our stuff.
Part of what I was supposed to do, as an award winner, was tell the assembled crowd about the money we are trying to raise. So I did. Picture that sea of suits. Spotlights were shining down on the five of us standing side-by-side. We were a complete break from everything anyone had expected. And I began:
.QUOTE We are ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing. We have the leading publication in the Palm market with PalmPower. The leading publication in the corporate Lotus Notes market with DominoPower. And we’ve just launched the first publication for Microsoft’s hot new small-computer operating system, Windows CE Power. We have trademark licenses from Palm Computing and Microsoft. And we have hundreds of thousands of readers. If we can do this with the five people who are in front of you now, imagine what we can do with an investment of five million dollars.
It actually is true. We’re entirely self-funded and profitable, with amazing Internet technology (it’s how we generate these publications every month), a large base of readers, and powerful brands. And we’ve done that on our own. It seems, in this Internet-hot market, that we’d be foolish not to try to grow it big. So while we would be a fine company continuing to bootstrap our growth, we also have the opportunity to be the next Amazon, the next eBay, the next Broadcast.com. And we’re going for it.
One way we’re going for it is by expanding our relationships and base of publications. Clearly, as a growing technology publisher, we can’t ignore Microsoft products. So, on Thursday March 25th, we launched Windows CE Power Magazine. You can visit it at http://www.windowscepower.com.
It’s very much like PalmPower in that it’s completely independent and completely objective. Obviously, there’s some degree of cross-over since Windows CE runs on Palm-sized PCs and PalmPower is all about Palm devices. But there’s a lot more to that. Windows CE is a modular operating system and it runs on everything from milk analyzers to mini-laptops, from gaming consoles to set-top boxes. Our goal with Windows CE Power is to cover everything about Windows CE, from embedded AutoPCs to the new, handheld color devices and everything in between (although I suspect our coverage of milk analyzers will be somewhat sparse).
.H1 Can’t we all just get along?
Now, I know some of you feel very strongly about Microsoft. Some of you — at 3Com especially, but also many of our readers — aren’t big fans of the Big M. Rest assured, many users we’ve met on the Windows CE side of the fence feel pretty much the same way. The best parallel I’ve found has been the old Mac vs. PC religious debates. The weird thing is that people I’ve spoken to on each side (Windows CE and Palm) have accused the other of being "Mac-like zealots". Then again, some of them have proudly claimed to be Mac-like zealots. Go figure.
The fact is, they’re very different markets. The other fact is, we have no vested interest in either community. Our job is to create great content for readers. That applies to both publications. Our job is to create a great return on investment for our advertisers. That applies to both publications. The no-favoritism reality even applies to our relationships with each company. We have a trademark license from Palm and a very similar trademark license from Microsoft.
Although I really don’t like the "channel" metaphor as it’s been used in Internet hype, it serves well here. Think of both publications as two separate channels. If you don’t like Windows CE, you don’t have to switch to that channel to watch it. The same goes for PalmPower. But if you happen to be interested in both, they’re available to you with equal objectivity.
That said, I will suggest something to you. And this applies as much to Palm’s own marketing people and executives (as well as the execs at the Palm OEMs) as to our rank and file readers. After you read this issue of PalmPower, you probably should go over to check out Windows CE Power. As part of our Premiere issue "over there", we did an interview with Jonathan Roberts, Microsoft’s general manager for Windows CE. It’s a long interview, reprinted in its entirety. The reason you should read this article is that you’ll get better insights into Microsoft’s Windows CE strategy than you’ll see just about anywhere else. Jonathan was extremely forthcoming and I learned a whole lot about Windows CE, Microsoft’s positioning of it internally as well as externally, and where it’s going into the future. It’s a fascinating read and should be interesting to anyone enamored of handheld computers.
A few months ago, I told you there were a lot of changes in store for us. Now you’re seeing some of them. We’ve changed our name to ZATZ:Pure Internet Publishing, we’re on the investment trail, we’ve got a brand-new Microsoft publication, we have very cool T-shirts, and we just happen to be the technology company with the best sales and marketing strategy in New Jersey.
Some days, it’s just so damned good to be me. The only thing that would make it better would be that foot massage. Hmmm — it is my company. I’ll be back in an hour or so
