Last month I had the pleasure of talking with Ezra Butler, LuckyStartups’ Israel correspondent.  In our interview, Ezra and I discuss everything from my personal life and where I grew up to the services I provide as a “one-stop-shop” for startups, plus of course, let’s not forget, Ezra’s love for alcohol and chocolate. We also discuss the difference between American and Israeli mentality, the amazing Israeli tech scene and I offer my own 2 cents to startups:

1. If you don’t know social media, don’t do it on your own!  If you want to do social media on your own then read up first– if you try to do it without guidance, odds are your campaign won’t be a success.  If you want to learn more about how to use social media in the right manner, a few good bloggers to read are Chris Brogan, Chris Heuer, JD Lasica and my own blog.

2. Don’t rush things!  A lot of startups are being pressured by investors to launch, especially during these difficult economic times.  Don’t launch until your product is at its best or you may suffer an unwarranted flop!

Watch the video above to see my full interview.

Earlier this evening we wrapped up the kickoff meeting of the Public Media Collaborative (no website yet, private wiki coming, Facebook group here) at TechSoup in San Francisco. The idea, spawned by Susan Mernit, initially drew eight of us (folks like David Cohn, Margaret Rosas, Joyce Kim) to a restaurant last month to plan a gathering around collaboration to promote community building at the local level with social media and technology.

It reminded me in some ways of the citizens media summit I organized in 2005 that drew 40 people to the offices of the Internet Archive a couple of miles from here — with some important differences: Where the summit drew public-spirited citizen publishers from around the country who were running Web publications, this gathering represented a much broader slice of local participants: social media entrepreneurs, nonprofit employees, political activists, journalists, video producers, philanthropists and others.

Some 40 people turned out for this inaugural meeting. Amy Gahran live-tweeted the event on Twitter (hash tag: #PMC). Among those who turned out: David Siskin, Dave Toole, Chris Heuer, Julian Darley, Brian Shields, Austin Heap, Jen Myronuk, Marnie Webb, Amy Gahran, Joyce Kim, Kristy Graves, George Kelly, Raines Cohen, Heather Gold, Richard Landry, David Cohn, Adina Levin, Michael Stoll, Margaret Rosas and many others.

In short, we're a monthly meet-up and working group whose mission is to use media & technology to build democracy and educate and empower local and virtual communities. A few highlights:

Susan Mernit told the gathering she was "struck by how content and video have become more accessible" to users, and that the impetus to engage with media cuts across different communities, like journalists and advocates of public housing. Public Media Collaborative's goal is not to do one big thing but rather to support more "episodic and bursty" efforts based on efforts and interests that overlap.

Someone suggested that the group's purpose was to "create a solutions ecology," a shorthand description that I like a lot. I mentioned that it seemed that the group's purpose, in essence, was to connect the connectors, though Richard Landry pointed out that we can also serve a bridging function in reaching out to organizations that need guidance in the social media sphere.

After a lot of folks' input, I suggested that the organization seemed to be circling in on three main components:

• As a digital salon, with monthly meetings that center on a particular topic or cause, with smaller breakout groups to support each other's efforts.

• As a cross-disciplinary support group with a communication channel to clue in each other about timely efforts.

• As a resource center with a pooled knowledge base and ongoing workshops/bootcamps around social and public media. (More on this soon, as the launch of Socialbrite approaches.) Or, as Joyce Kim says, the Collaborative can serve "as a resource bank where we can build upon each other's expertise to help on our own community projects."

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in joining up, drop me a line or just pop into our next gathering.

I originally intended to ask my Twitter friends for a solution to this, but I don't want to inundate them with dozens of tweets, so here's the problem I'm having:

In early 2008 I created the TravelingGeeks site on WordPress in advance of our trip to Israel last April. After our return, I transfered the domain control on GoDaddy to Renee Blodgett, who hired a programmer to make some fixes. I believe, but am not certain, that they copied over my files and did their own installation and pointed their DNS servers for the domain to their WordPress installation.

Fast forward to January 2009. We're planning a new TravelingGeeks trip to London this June (more on that soon). I just downloaded the new WP 2.7 and uploaded it to my GoDaddy premium account to replace the original installation. The installation resides on jdlasica.com in the "travelinggeeks" folder at the same level as my index.html file for jdlasica.com.

Once I get this completely new blog set up, I know I'll need to get Renee to point the DNS servers to it. And I do know how to upload new themes and a revised CSS Stylesheet. But here are my two questions:

1. During development, how do I actually see the new site? (since jdlasica.com/travelinggeeks.index.php doesn't show it; http://jdlasica.com/wp-admin/install.php doesn't work; and http://jdlasica.com/travelinggeeks/wp-admin/install.php says: "WordPress already installed"; if i go to travelinggeeks/wp-admin/install.php, that's the installation on Renee's server)

2. How do I log into the administration panel? (url = yoursite.com/wp-login.php but I don't know what to put in for "yoursite" during development)

Happy winter solstice! The solstice arrived at 7:04 am Eastern time this morning. Finally, the days will start getting longer again. Infoplease.com and Wikipedia have details on the solstice. (Flickr photo taken at Stonehenge in 2004.)

After having an account at the WELL — the oldest continuing online community — since the early or mid-'90s, I closed my jd@well.com account today. (I'll reminisce some other time.) Too many spams and newsletters I no longer read for me to continue the account.

If you want to contact me, follow me at jdlasica.com/twitter and direct-message me, or contact me through the "CONTACT" or "Email me" links above.

Christopher Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto offers thanks to the incoming Obama administration's vision in opening up Change.gov
content with Creative Commons and says, "We have created iPhone and widget based
versions of Change.gov, and a new conduit for citizens and government
to connect.

Here's the story.

IPhone version (You can get the iPhone and other mobile versions here)

Widget version (You can get the widget here)

Happy Halloween! Photo republished from moaan on flickr. I'm taking Bobby trick-or-treating tonight.