Conference of Suckers...

The following list of conference attendees will be needing a lobotomy before they need any more startup capital...

Approver | Big Contacts |  Blogtronix | Brainkeeper | Cogenz | ConceptShare | ConnectBeam | Diigo | EditGrid | Firestoker | InvisibleCRM | Koral | Longjump | Mashery | My Payment Network | Proto Software | Scrybe |  Sitekreator | Slideaware | Smartsheet | Spresent | Stikkit | System One | Terapad | Teqlo | TimeSearch Inc. (Calgoo) | Tungle | Vyew | WorkLight | Wrike | Wufoo | Xcellery 

I should say the VC participating should also have their heads examined. Or they could use a history lesson.

Microsoft is hosting this little cocktail party for Office 2.0/3.0 players called "Under the Radar". That's right. Microsoft gets so vet your business plans, borrow a few novel ideas for their Groove or Office Live products, allow you to define the space and then in two or three years you will be frozen out of business by nothing more than a press release (and the announced Microsoft product or features won't need to appear for another 2 or 3 years, if ever).

Here's a little ditty for you...

I was hell-bent on destroying my powers of concentration
While you were living like a saint
And all the time the very one you trusted was washing off
somebody else's paint
Now you've got yourself a brand new occupation
Every fleeting thought is a pearl
And beautiful people stampede to the doorway
of the funniest fucker in the world

They're here to help you
Satisfy your desire
There's a bright future for all you professional liars

[Chorus]

Now you know how to be dumb
Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?
Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse earthquakes

They emptied out all the asylums, they emptied out all the gaols
The "New Bruise" was the name of a dance craze
By "Jesus Cross and the Cruel Nails"
Followed up by "Torturing Little Beaver"
With their contraption of barbed wire
Between the fear and the fever lies all the rejection they require
They'll be howling by midnight, they'll be drooling by dawn
Skulls shrunk down to the size of their brains
Heads shaven and shorn

[Chorus]

Trapped in the House of the Perpetual Sucker
Where bitterness always ends so pitifully
You always had to dress up your envy in some half-remembered
philosophy

Now you're masquerading as pale powdered genius
Whose ever bad intention has been purged
You could've walked out any time you wanted but face it you
didn't have the courage
I guess that makes you a full time hypocrite or some kind of
twisted dilettante
Funny though people don't usually get so ugly till they think
they know what they want
Scratch your own head stupid
Count up to three
Roll over on your back
Repeat after me

Don't you know how to be dumb?
Are you ready to take your place in the modern museum of mistakes?
Don't you know how to be dumb?
Like a building thrown up overnight in one of those reverse earthquakes

Free iPod for the first with the Title & Artist. (Extra iTunes credit for the bril who can tell us who this song was written for and in what context.)

Comments

[Hans]

Elvis Costello.
"How to be Dumb"

Bruce Thomas's book The Big Wheel

But no iTunes please.

[Sam]

Hans-

That took a half an hour. What took you so long, people!?

[Hans]

I have to work sometime during the day.

Smiles.