Fast forward three years…one failed venture, losing multiple partners and getting burn by a plethora of other things I didn’t know anything about; I now feel anxious and a certain amount of fear about launching my new company.

I get it now. I realize why people said I was brave and courageous to start my own business. (Although, I’d like to clarify that it’s easy to start your own business – what’s hard is turning it into a success.)

I clearly remember all my struggles, pains, disappointments, lessons learned, and heart breaks. I lost my house, went into the debt and isolated myself from many of my friends and family.

With all that being said, the truth is that the anxiety and fears are based on more than knowing what launching a business and trying to grow it is about – it’s mostly based on the fact that there is nothing else in the world I rather be doing. What happens now that I’ve found my calling if I can’t make things happen? This is the proverbial fear of failure. Many people never try or do the things they really love and are passionate about because they can’t face the possibility that once they try; they might fail.

Three years ago I didn’t realize how passionate and in love with business/entrepreneurship I was. I didn’t know that my world would come to revolve around it and that it would bring me such a high level of satisfaction and happiness. I never would have guessed that being in business would challenge me and push me to grow faster than anything else I had ever done before. I definitely didn’t have a clue of how free being an entrepreneur would make me feel. As a matter of fact, I didn’t actually realize the depth of those things until I took a billet back in the Marine Corps. But now I know.

Defining Moment – This Fear is a GOOD Thing

I will soon step back out from having steady income (from being back in the Marine Corps) to running my own business full time again. My hunger to succeed is greater than ever before. The anxiety and fear that exist is new and actually welcomed.

It’s not the absence of fear that makes us brave – it’s doing those very things we fear in the presence of fear. I’m glad I’m feeling this fear. It will keep me conscious of not repeating any past mistakes. It will keep me on my toes and make me think things thoroughly instead of my former “jumping into everything head first.” This new fear is making me a wiser entrepreneur and although, I have never in the past appreciated having fears – this time, it’s a good thing.

Yesterday I was at SocialDevCamp East in Baltimore – I was one of the organizers along with Keith Casey and Dave Troy. We gathered together the thought leaders down the Amtrak corridor (Boston, NYC, Philadelphia. MD, DC and VA) to discuss the future of the social web.

Understanding The Future of The Social Web

One of the sessions that didn’t make the list was – Where is Facebook Going Next?

Facebook is not the future of the social web

Facebook has become a staple amongst social networks and an end point where people view and receive information that isn’t likely to be replaced (much like MySpace)…and it isn’t likely to set any more trends – it’s overgrown the phase where the technology is fresh and kept at the edge of what’s happening.

Who cares about Facebook now? Their millions of basic users, advertisers and some folks in social media industry who still bother to entertain talking about Facebook. The people out to set new trends will always keep an eye on Facebook…but they’ve moved on.

This is nothing against Facebook – it has simply moved to another level. Innovation happens in systems that are small, adaptable, and at the initial stages of development or in smaller sections of bigger organizations…like Google. Facebook isn’t there yet. The sheer size of Facebook, the public status of Facebook, the players involved in Facebook, the monetization pressure on Facebook and the advance of Open Social has made Facebook irrelevant in this type of discussion.

What Were the Discussions About?

The sessions yesterday were about interesting topics:

1. The Semantic Web
2. Building a Social Hub – Integration of Social Networks
3. The Psychology and application behind micro-blogging (Twitter)
4. The Business of Monetizing Social Media Startups – Stepping away from the Free model based on advertisement.
5. iPhone Applications/Development
6. Location/Geo Based Application/Development
7. Google Engine Applications/Development
8. Persuasive Social Media
9. Amazon EC2 and S3 (Virtual Servers and Development within the ‘Cloud’)
10. Behavior Development with Rails, Merb, Ruby
11. Data Portability/Privacy
12. The Amtrak Corridor Start-up Business/Web Conversation

What This Means to You?

The reality is that you can’t start something on the web right now that is based on old web technology – no matter how good your business idea is. If you are entering the web space right now, you have to ensure you realize what the future trends are and work to implement those in what you’re doing. The advantage of working with an initial code base is being able to make the right implementations from the beginning.

I was impressed to find out from Bear what Seesmic has been up to – in the Semantic Web Session.

Our Community

SocialDevCamp was educational and thought provoking but the other major highlight of having such an event was bringing the community together. We had a fabulous turn out and people came from as far as Boston to attend.

It’s apparent we have a growing, energetic, talented and motivated web/tech/startup community. The more we come together and collaborate with each other the stronger we become.

I know I have many people to follow-up with!!

Links:

SocialDevCamp Twitter Stream

SocialDevCamp on Flick

SocialDevCamp on Viddler

SocialDevCamp on Qik

Jimmy’s Picture Video Collage

Blog post from Greg of Blue Sky Factory (one of the many fabulous sponsors)

Blog post from Harry Chen (Excellent presentation on Semantic Web)