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Connected Venture’s “Flagpole Sitta”

Here’s something that you might find entertaining: a video of various people from a company called Connected Ventures (“a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker“) lip-synching Harvey Danger’s 1998 hit Flagpole Sitta.

In the beginning, the video threatens to be just a slightly better-than-average YouTube lipsynch featuring a cute girl, but it gets better.

Some thoughts on the video:

  • Before finding out more about the people who made the video, I thought “Hmmm…either a web 2.0 company or some kind of creative agency.” Assuming that the video isn’t a professional piece with actors, that’s the only way you get an office with that high a concentration of good-looking hipsters.
  • I love that “SILF” shirt.
  • Once they move away from the initial shots, note the clever camera work. I looks as though it’s a continuous shot, without any cuts.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work at three companies with such a high concentration of the young and good looking:

  • My first job out of school, as a programmer at Mackerel Interactive Multimedia, Accordion City’s hardest-partying CD-ROM and web development company. We got even more good looking after a merger with Owl magazine, whose staff was mostly women in their 20s and early 30s. The best telling of the Mackerel story is Cory Doctorow’s piece Burying the Fish
  • At the start of OpenCola, which was originally a side project at an advertising agency, whose staff was mostly women in their 20s and early 30s.
  • His Own Bad Self, a software development consultancy consisting of just me.

8 replies on “Connected Venture’s “Flagpole Sitta””

Actually I shudder at the uniformininity of that company [if real] is… One could only assume the sales group was off at a conference that day. But, here’s a frightening thought; swap in our production managers voice over the last few lines of this video…
OHM: Ok everybody, Drop Dead, Stay Dead, achtung!
We were young, we were pretty, but the business choices we made were very very ______________, 🙂

Oddly enough, I was researching Connected Ventures yesterday.
I was also shocked by the concentrated coolness. Which, makes sense, when you look at their products. They weren’t cool, no one would like their products. I used to order from Defunker all the time when I was in NYC.
It makes me kind of jealous though. An office on 5th avenue, taking breaks to drink beer and shoot videos, and all the young hot people you want around you.
In my own mind, I’ve just raised the bar for what Unspace should be. 😉

Hey, Gord!

(By the way, folks, that’s the former president and co-founder of Mackerel).

Yeah, it’s possible that the sales and biz-dev people were away, but I also recall having worked with some sales types who would’ve fit in perfectly with the crowd in the video. Besides, there are an awful lot of good-lookin’ people in the Five Boroughs.

And yes, we were young, we were pretty, and the business choices were very shitty, but you have to say, we learned a helluva lot. I still get a lot of mileage out of the first client visit I ever did with Tim Raleigh at my side.

Hey, Hampton!

You’re right: companies like Busted Tees, Defunker and CollegeHumor.com are in the business of cool, so it only makes sense that the company’s demographic would have such a high cool factor (and remember, this is cool in the age of the Internet and geek chic — back in the 1980s, these guys would’ve been beaten up for their lunch money every day).

And, oh, how I’d love an office on 5th Avenue, but that’s me speaking as a guy a few months away from 40. In my 20’s and 30’s, I might’ve preferred a First Avenue office near Tompkins Square Park, or something in SoHo, and if I were in my 20’s or 30’s now, I might even opt for something Brooklyn-based (it’s been ages since I regularly flew to New York. American girls will be the death of me).

Keep raising that bar, Hampton, that’s what youth is for. And go ahead and commit “youthful indiscretions” on Pete’s desk. I did that to Cory Doctorow, and he ain’t found out yet.

I also feel the need to say; that although “Burying the Fish” is an appropriate telling of that story… It by no means portrays the nuances of my most wonderful crash and burn. BTW, this July will be the 10th anniversary; I’ll be sure to let you know where to get you commemorative spoon! 🙂

It’s hardly hijacking, Gord!

(One of these days, I’ll have to write the story of my first client visit — the one at Delrina with Tim.)

That could be a good 10th anni-project… A collection of remembererences; perhaps a poetry reading… maybe you could accompany me in a round of…

…Doris Days Sings

When I was just a start-up boy

I asked my buddies, what will we be

Will we be famous

Will we be smart

Here’s what they said to me

Hey get off the floor

Your not all that drunk yet Gord

There more beer in the fridge you see

Hey get off the floor

…I’ll get those last two stanza’s finished before July 1st

Que sera, sear

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