So what have we been up to?  When we last talked to you we were struggling to bring our newest venture to market.  Mired in another long development cycle, our partnership began weakening as each of us were bombarded by life in general and our day jobs or other businesses.

At work, my boss resigned and I took the interim-CIO position which demanded quite a bit of my time.  Shouldering a whole new realm of responsibility, I held the position for nearly six months before we hired my successor.  During that period I was set on seeing our venture launch.  "Live or die" was my mantra.  I would accept either to see closure on the project.

We informally launched InkOutLoud.com back in February with the agreement that we would test the market for about a month before throwing in the towel.  We felt the market had passed us by and the podcast/web audio trend was quickly dying as video was where our target market was moving.  We made a few phone calls, entertained a potential client, but in the end we gave up and moved on with our lives.  Personally, I was so burned out on the entire thing I was relieved to see it put to rest.

Matt, in particular, has had almost as many life-changing events as possible in the span of one year.  He bought a new house, got a new job, got another new job, had a baby and moved to Tallahassee.  Free of the University and a stint at a horrible job, Matt settled in with his new family in the rolling hills of Tallahassee with his wife, Lindsey, and beautiful baby girl, Lillian.  Matt now holds the title of Director of Marketing and oversees interactive marketing projects.

Bert continued to focus on his growing design business.  He made the leap from home office to office office, hired an assistant and now has a couple freelance designers picking up the slack.  Bert struggles with being the "manager" (E-Myth anyone?), but it's the natural evolution of being a business owner.

Our fourth partner began focusing on his other startup -- a real estate marketing company.  I took a very small ownership stake in his company to help bring his idea to market.  After a few months of development, we launched his business back in July.  It is doing fairly well and he has expansion plans already in the works.  Unfortunately, his business requires more of my time than I'm able to give so I'll be fading myself out while he redevelops his website on a new platform.

As for me, shortly after my new boss took the helm I was promoted to Director and Chief Architect of a new Enterprise Architecture group.  My new mandate involves managing three Domain Architects (Software, Data and Network), building new hardware and software platforms to drive the business for the next 5-10 years.  It was a much welcomed promotion as I was able to distance myself from the day-to-day tactical issues of keeping the company running to a more strategic position where I can do what I do best -- play with new technology and find ways to solve business problems with the new technology.

Here and there Bert and I have collaborated on a few small website-based efforts which will probably not see the light of day.  Other than that I've been mending my broken entrepreneurial heart and clearing my mind for the next round, which may come very soon.

As for the show, Bert and I kicked around the idea of 3.0, but it has been only talk thus far.  While we both want to continue the show, we just don't know where the time will come from.  If any of you are still out there, perhaps you can convince us to give it a shot.

In the meantime, I have no idea what I'm going to do with the website and all of the material.  According to our Feedburner account, we still have about 350 people subscribed to the public feed and another 32 on the Modcast feed.  I will leave the site up as is for now until I figure it all out.

Until next time, thank you all for your ear over the last two years.  In its day, TCEP was one of the most gratifying projects I've taken on.  I felt we had a really great little community and I'm sorry we couldn't keep it going.  If you're interested in seeing what I'm up to, you can check my blog at jonathansthoughts.com.

Take care!

Jon

• 100 callers
• 3 hours maximum time
  
• Email invites
• Call mode options (conference, presentation, Q&A)

The first call was tonight, but the quality was much better than I expected from a free service.  There were a few moments of breaking up sound, but it's hard to tell if it was my cell phone or one of the other callers' cell phone.

The web interface is really nice.  Scheduling a call was about a 5 or 6 step process, but along the way offered many cool options.  A few were email invitations w/ iCal attachment, contact lists, contact groups and call options such as mode and bells and whistles -- literally -- when a caller enters and leaves the call.

If you've got the virtual office thing going on, this is definitely a service you need to check out.  You can't beat the price. 

In my estimation the iPhone is perhaps one of the most, if not the most, technically complicated consumer-grade devices ever to hit the market.  And yet it appears so simple to use.  That's the Apple touch.

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices as it will surely plug my final open loop in my Getting Things Done system.  Besides, ever since the Motorola iTunes-enabled ROKR, I've been hoping Apple would jump into the cell phone space on their own terms.

Anyway, have a good one and we'll talk to you in 2007.

SuiteTwo is a rich set of interconnected services that combine to improve productivity and enable high-engagement marketing. SuiteTwo includes the most trusted platforms for blogs, wikis, RSS feed reading, and RSS feed management, all under a single management interface.

Ross joined Matt and me back in July 2005 for Episode 1.030.  It was a great discussion about his company, his product and entrepreneurship and remains one of our most popular shows.

The Entrepreneurs Part 1

The Entrepreneurs Part 2

After six months, the experiment is over.  Within the first three days of owning the MacBook I had Windows installed and running my new Mac hardware.  And wouldn't you know it, I've not booted into Windows since.  So I've decided to reclaim my hard drive and opt for virtualization instead, in the rare event I need to boot Windows.

I've also decommissioned my Windows workstation which I previously used for the last four years.  I've not booted that machine since May.  So my lone remaining Windows machine is my media box hooked up to my home theater.  I don't have plans to replace that box right now, but I'll sure keep my eye out for Apple's "iTV."

As our focuses are shifting from talking about businesses to actively participating in our businesses, both Matt and I have reached the conclusion that in order for TCEP to exist, we need to forge some synergy with our new business.

Does this mean the death of TCEP?  No, it just means we'll be making some changes to how and when the show is produced, as well as how you will consume it.

In the coming episodes, we'll be disclosing intimate details about our new venture.  As we do this, we'll also begin implementing pieces of our new service as part of this website.  It's exciting times as we get closer to bringing our service to market.  We hope you'll join us and be our guinea pigs as we expose our service to you bit by bit.

Thanks for being a great audience.  I know from my own personal podcast listening habits, when a show I rely on suddenly goes on haitus, it's upsetting -- especially if you've built routines around your listening habits.  We're going to try to rectify this by forging synergy between TCEP and our business so that we can make it a goal to continue to produce new content. 

Part 1

Part 2  

Take care!