As some of you may know, I am a co-founder of a conference here in Toronto that addresses the question, “What’s next online?”. We just started selling tickets this morning (and they are going much quicker than expected). Jeff (from FreshBooks) built the site.

Here is a post from my personal blog:

It is with great pleasure that Mathew, Stuart, Mark, Rob and I announce that the mesh conference 2007 is now open for business.

What’s mesh? It’s a two-day conference in Toronto that endeavors to answer the question “What’s next online?” This is our second year and we sold out last year to a crowd of 400.

We try to answer that question by talking about how the internet is disrupting four streams: media, society, marketing and business. Our way will be illuminated by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Robert Edelman of Edelman Public Relations, Jim Buckmaster of Craig’s List, Tom Williams of GiveMeaning and Austin Hill of Gifter, all of whom will be joining us for keynote conversations. We’ll be releasing more about our other speakers and the topics and panels over the coming weeks.

A number of people have asked me to fill them in when event goes live…so I’m telling you now. I’ll add this too, we want you to be there and given the interest we have received prior to today, I’m guessing we will sell out well before the event. So please buy your tickets now if you want to come.

So, there it is. Please visit the site and come join the conversation.

On a side note, I don’t think I could have possibly imagined how much I could learn or how much fun I could have by being a part of this group. Mathew, Rob, Stuart and Mark – thank you very much. I would also like to thank our sponsors who make it possible to bring in such wonderful speakers. I can’t wait for May 30/31.

With mesh just around the corner (full disclosure: I’m one of the conference founders), I’ve got conferences on the brain.

Most of the content you read about conferences is how to plan one. Here are some snippets from an excellent post with tips on “How to Attend a Conference“:

Know Your Questions. Seek Your Answers. Never attend a conference without at least three questions you want answered. Never leave until they have been.

The most important people at the conference are sitting next to you. Think Tom Peters gives a rat’s ass about your new business strategy? Is Seth Godin going to give you personalized marketing advice? Of course not. The people at any event who are most likely to have already faced your challenges (and maybe even solved them) aren’t the highly-paid keynoters, but rather your fellow attendees. They are like you. They can help you. Ignore them at your peril.

Read the whole post. Hat tip to the author, Matt Homann.

I’ll let you in on a little secret…here at FreshBooks HQ we ring a bell every time someone upgrades to a paying account. Inevitably it’s a race to “ring the bell” whenever one of those emails arrives. And while there are varying degrees of competition to actually ring it, everyone in the office loves the sound of that bell.

When you have a team, you need little ways like this to acknowledge your small successes. Maybe it’s a group lunch or something new for the office that benefits everyone, some form of public acknowledgement, but you need something. Little rewards like these build camaraderie and keep people focused.

Is there anything you do to keep you or your team motivated?

Sometimes I see things I just don’t believe in. Here’s an example.

A recent Fortune Magazine article describes how Dov Charney, the founder and CEO of American Apparel, raised money through a SPAC. SPACs are shell companies that raise hundreds of millions in equity and go public. Once public they wait for an opportunity and once they find one, they put their equity to work. Since going public is such a painful process with Sarbanes Oxley and all the other red tape, SPACs are attractive to entrepreneurs as a quick way to raise big capital.

Here’s my thing: I just don’t believe in SPACs. Time may prove me wrong, and if that’s the case, so be it.

American Apparel is an interesting company who has grown very quickly. They do untraditional things like manufacture all their garments in the US, which in these times of outsourcing, I applaud them for. That said, SPACs seem like soulless entities to me. What are the odds they share the business values of the people at American Apparel? Slim to none I’d say. What if the dark clouds come when you have an investor like that? Wouldn’t be pretty I suspect.

Time will tell. Let’s give it 5-10 years. Standing here today, American Apparel’s decision to take investment from a SPAC seems like folly to me.

SPACs remind me of something we recently went through up here in Canada - income trusts. Income trusts were all the rage in Canada in recent years, and with all due respect to those who believed that simply by converting to an income trust corporations could simply side-step income taxes, you were fools.

Things that sound too good to be true, usually are too good to be true. Other things like SPACs, they fall into the category of things I just don’t believe in.