English clergyman, John Donne once said, “No man is an island…” He may have been right then, but today, this one man (yes, that little construction worker above) is an island unto himself, rebuilding all of my web properties under my Netmix Media umbrella brick by brick. This entails converting all of my WordPress enabled web sites in a single, WordPress multisite network consisting of all the domains I operate. And, it involves exporting databases for each site and importing them into the multisite instance, moving all themes and plug-ins from each site into the new system, and then making sure all the media assets that are pulled over in the database transfer are properly linked.

I noticed that with my Netmix.com web site, a lot of the text content came over, but multimedia assets outside of the WordPress wp-content/uploads folder need to be fixed, as the links to these assets are broken. I also noticed that for every site that I employ NextGen Gallery, I’ve had to download the “gallery” folder from “wp-content” for each blog, and then recreate galleries in the new network. Unfortunately, no available plug-in exists to export NexGen galleries from a single site instance to a multi-site network. It has to be done manually. This, my friends, is a lot of work!

Many of the plug-ins I use for social media, like Twitter Tools or Intense Debate, need to be connected up correctly to each system. While multisite allows for a plug-in to be used across all the blogs in your network, each one has to be enabled with its own API key or login, to work correctly for each site. Nothing like publishing something here on TonyZeoli.com, and then have it appear on DigitalStrategyWorks, my digital strategy consulting company’s site.

Given my day job as Lead Developer at UNC Chapel Hill, this work has to take place nights and weekends. While I could put all the sites in maintenance mode to hide their various states, where some haven’t been updated with new content and others have layout issues, they don’t garner enough attention to justify shutting them down while I bring each one back to life.

At this point, I’m extremely busy with ensuring that we wind down Reese News web operations for a skeleton publishing staff, who will be contributing to the site for the summer. It will afford me the opportunity to migrate our media assets to a CDN, which should increase site performance and speed.

If you’re looking at this blog and wondering what the heck happened to my TonyZeoli.com publishing schedule, well, as you can see not much. My goal right now is not to publish to the blog, as much as it is to fix everything and get them all ready for the future. As each blog/site is updated, I’ll talk about those updates here. We can measure the progress together.

With that in mind, I’m working on revamping Netmix.com into a blog focused on web and mobile application design and development in the music industry. Other categories included education and careers, video, and the business of music as seen through the eyes of the individuals doing the work. It wont’ be so much a music news site, as it will be a blog with contributions from various players in most aspects of the music industry.

Thanks for stopping by and for cutting me some slack. I certainly need it!

On Thursday night (June 3), I made my way up to Columbia University for the Hatch Match event sponsored by The Hatchery. I’d never been to a Hatch Match, but wanted to get the experience of pitching to investors in 5-minutes. Bell rings and times up.

After the first two 5-minute pitches, I quickly was able to hone my message down to the bare essentials. I realized while I had my deck with all the bells and whistles, the slides quickly became secondary to greeting and the verbal pitch. What rolls of your tongue in the first 30-seconds sets the stage for the next 4-minutes and 30-seconds.

I arrived late after taking the wrong train uptown. I keep forgetting the 2/3 doesn’t travel up Broadway. That little mistake cost me meetings with AOL and Fremantle Media, but that’s okay, I hadn’t expected them to be there anyway and I’m so early, they wouldn’t come into play until later anyway. This was my first event and I was really just there to get the experience.

When I entered the hall, I was given a list of investors with their target industries, bios, and list of companies they’d invested in. I quickly tried to read through the list of over 40 investors, but it was made difficult because while there target industries were listed next to their names, the list wasn’t categorized by vertical, for example Media & Entertainment or Health Care. I think they could do better by listing investors under specific categories.

Because I’d never been to a Hatch Match, I didn’t realize that I should have taken the list with me to the sign-up area, where appointment stickers were flying off the table. By the time I read through the list and approached the tables to make my appointments, many were already sold out. So, I tried my best to pick one angel, one institution, and one company with some local NYC media & entertainment experience. It was a bit of a scramble, with everyone jostling to see what was still available.

The first two selections were more to get my feet wet. The third selection paid off in spades. We all actually know this person, because he is a vocal participant on this list. I wasn’t sure it was the same person, but I quickly went back through some posts on my iPhone and was excited to actually meet him in person. Really nice guy.

At the end of the day, this was my first Hatch Match. I didn’t expect it to be a big win, but I did meet a lot of people and gained some very, very valuable experience. It’s exciting to get in the game and run off your pitch to investors. What I can say is that you should be ready and be early. Throw out your one paragraph description of what you’re trying to do, then when the questions start coming, jump to the pages in your deck to support your answers. I realized that with my deck, it’s best to actually use a sticky or tab (between pages) so that you can quickly flip to the section you want to refer to. I hadn’t though of that before, but I know to do that next time.

I’ve also learned over the years that it’s best to pitch strategically to investors in your area of expertise. It’s really a waste of time to try and grab just any investor. Sure, you never know—but, it’s probably better to be strategic. If you do just “go fish,” you’re kind of taking away someones opportunity. I’m sure people took meetings out from under me that they had no business meeting with, but they chose them because of the name brand.

My takeaway was that it was very well worth it for the learning experience. I met some amazing people, like Selene Kepila from Care Data. You can feel the drive, passion, and motivation when she speaks about her products and services. I also met Matt Mankins from InAMoon.com, a service to “fair trade” content. It was good to catch up with Kwasi Asare (formerly of Bad Boy Entertainment) who’s working on a next-gen web app service called Fighter. Gotta look into that one and get a handle on what they’re doing.

On the periphery of the main hall were tables from sponsor companies. Columbia had a table to support their students. MTV Mobile had a table. And, Gigapixel Creative, a local NYC web development house, had a table too.

The end result for me is that my last meeting resulted in a follow-up. People with Northern European experience completely get the dance music thing. I can’t say that for most Americans. It’s really a sad state of affairs in this country, but that’s why I’m setting out (again) to change it. Hey, when Randy Jackson can starts a dance music label, that must mean that the market is shifting. Hip-Hop is over. The golden age has come and gone. Times are shifting to Lady Gaga and David Guetta, and I’m going to be there to service that niche.

Hope this helps some folks who are considering pitching at these types of events. I learned so much and feel like I’m really ready now to move forward with my plans. It gave me a lot of confidence to get in there and just do it. You just gotta get into the pit and make things happen. No matter how far you are along, it’s good to get the experience under your belt. You’ll get valuable feedback and it will help you in the long run.