Vote for Your Next American Admin! Winner Receives a $250 prize.

Admininstrative Professional Day or "R E S P E C T" day for folks keeping the engine of businesses running is coming. Wednesday, April 25th to be exact.

We at GetQuik are looking for the next American Admin (actually Bay Area Admin). If you or someone you know is deserving of this recognition, please submit your "audition" or "nomination" here. Your "audition" or "nomination" needs to include the candidate's full name, company name, and the reason they should be "the Next American Admin". We will take auditions through Tuesday, April 17th. We will provide a list of the top candidates and conduct an audience-based vote to determine the winner. You can vote for your favorite American Admin from Wednesday, April 18th - Tuesday, April 24th. The winner will be announced, April 25th.

The winner will receive a $250 bonus from GetQuik. GetQuik provides on-line ordering to restaurants - http://www.getquik.com/. May the best "Admin" win.

Contest rules:
- Candidates must reside in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- One vote per person.
- The winning "admin" must have a valid business email address.

To Register: Click the "comments" button at the bottom of the posting. Then leave your "comment" with your audition or your nomination.

If you have any questions regarding this contest, please email support@GetQuik.com.

The Next Guy Kawasaki?

Noah Kagen spoke at the Startup Epicenter workshop today. Noah is a marketing/promotions genius. Although I am not an authority on Facebook, I am going to guess that Noah is one of the few former Facebook employees. This hypotheses is based on the fact that Facebook hasn't been around for long, and isn't doing too shabby. Yes, he choose to leave.

Noah, who is 25 years old, proudly announced that he has a new gig at MyMint and has finally moved out of his mother's house (I couldn't tell if he was serious about that or not).

This is my first time seeing Noah speak, but I have seen Guy Kawasaki speak a few times. In fact Noah and Guy are friends. The best way I could describe Noah is that he is the young, Jewish version of Guy (not sure if he or Guy would take offense to this comparison).

Noah demonstrated a very interesting 2-D analytical tool by CrazyEgg. CrazyEgg allows you to see exactly where people are clicking on a page. www.crazyegg.com. This is an awesome tool for usability research. Definitely something that GetQuik could benefit from.

I expect folks in Silicon Valley will be hearing and talking about Noah for some time to come. I thought there was only one Guy (Kawasaki), but now I am not so sure. Noah's personal blog is www.OKDork.com.

Plan Now for m-commerce. Gem-commerce.

If you are doing or plan on doing business via e-commerce, you need to think about a mobile-commerce strategy. In the US, we are at the early stages of mobile or m-commerce, but the growth if and when it does begin to take off will be dramatic. I'll leave the prognostications for m-commerce to smarter people with better research budgets than myself. One figure reported by Red Herring has global m-commerce growing to $55 Billion US in 2008. http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15728&hed=US+Warms+to+Mobile+Commerce+§or=Industries&subsector=Computing

A strategy and a plan will prepare you to "mobilize" as the growth curve begins to ramp.

Barriers to m-commerce are falling:

There are tens of Billions of dollars being spent by US carriers on Wi-Max (primarily by Sprint in WiMax), 3G and 4G technologies. These infrastructure build-outs will allow carriers to get more aggressive with their data offerings. As these data rate costs drop and performance increases, expect a huge increase in data usage from US customers.

The second barrier that is being removed is the limitations of the handsets themselves. Handsets are more powerful, have better screens, enhhanced security (https standard in the MIDP2 - Mobile Information Device Profile - specification), and more memory. This trend will continue as people want more process and memory intensive tools such as surfing the web; downloading e-mail; playing games; exchanging photos, music and video; watching TV; and YES conducting m-commerce transactions.

So once most power users have a powerful enough mobile device and an affordable data plan, then will m-commerce take off?

Yes. However, it will require leadership from e-commerce and m-commerce companies to provide goods and service that people would like to have on the go. Also, do not simply repackage your e-commerce and call it m-commerce. Realize that the user experience is both enhanced by mobility, but also impacted by inherent limitations (small screens, small or no keyboards, etc.). Rethink the process and see if you can come up with a buying experience your customers will use and love. This is where the planning comes in. Know your market, know your customer, and see if mobile fits for you.

GetQuik is a Gem-commerce company providing streamlined restaurant ordering.

G: Group-commerce
e: e-commerce
m: mobile-commerce

We are completing the "m" in our Gem. Should have a roll-out in a couple of months. As we complete our "Gem", we will provide details in this blog. Hopefully our approach to m-commerce and group-commerce will help some of you out there formulate an m-commerce strategy that works for your customers and markets.

Networking Group for Startups - Bay Area

For any budding enterpreuners in the Bay Area, you should check out the Startup Epicenter networking group - http://www.startupepicenter.com/.

This is Scott Lane's brain child. Just got out of an all day hands on workshop. The day began with Vinod Khosla giving his tips on running a successful startup. Ended the day with demo pitches from the participants.

One of the best speakers in today's session was listing to Sramana Mitra. She is an former CEO and experienced consultant. My favorite quote from her was when someone asked her if she does consulting for startups. Answer: "No, they can't afford my rates." If you meet her, you will see why. Quite a dynamic lady.