Although this may bite me in the butt someday if it’s booked solid, I’d like to tell you about the Hyatt Place in Austin, Texas. I will at this hotel every time that I go to SXSW.

More “stock photos.” This time from the Social Media Marketing World conference in San Diego, California.

I’ve joined the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. This entity is the parent organization of all the “Wiki” projects such as Wikipedia and other free-knowledge projects.

Some aspiring entrepreneurs are already working for a big company. Like external entrepreneurs, they dream of creating innovative products. They, too, must prototype, position, pitch, bootstrap, recruit, fund, partner, sell, and support. The purpose of this minichapter is to explain how to do all this when you’re employed by a large business.

Entrepreneurs face hundreds of decisions when they start a company, and there’s often a temptation to optimize each one of them—sometimes by breaking new ground. However, it’s best to focus one’s energy and attention on milestone issues. My experience and expertise is with US companies, but these are generally accepted startup practices:

Awestruck by the Vince-Vaughn series of stock photos, I was inspired to try my hand at this at SXSW. I’m not sure they’re worth buying, but we sure had fun doing this–as the last few pictures show!

Since SXSW my first reaction when I see something worth sharing is to meercast it. I love Meerkat’s ease of use, immediacy, and visual feedback of seeing who’s watching and reading their comments. The gratification of meercasting is amazingly high.

When I started working at Apple in 1986 I was afraid of public speaking—for one thing, working for the division run by Steve Jobs was intimidating: “How could I possibly measure up to Steve?” But if you want to succeed as an evangelist and CEO, you must learn how to make speeches.

It took me twenty years to get comfortable with public speaking, and this chapter explains what I’ve learned. I am not content that you merely survive speeches. I want you to get standing ovations.

Forget “I think, therefore I am.” For entrepreneurs, the operative phrase is, “I pitch, therefore I am.” Pitching isn’t only for raising money—it’s for reaching agreement, and agreement can yield many good outcomes including sales, partnerships, and new hires. Here are the key elements of a great pitch.

I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.This rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.