In the September 21, 2008 edition of the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine there is an article on Ace Tickets, a Boston-area sports and entertainment ticket broker. Towards the end of the story is a quote by me! I was contacted by the writer of the story, Dan McGinn, and asked questions about myself and my thoughts on ticket brokers. You can read the full article here.

In my very own paragraph, GoPats.com gets a link and my work and hobby are identified. I talked with McGinn for probably 15-20 minutes. The reference to paying a premium for Sox tickets was when my friend AJ visited from Australia and I wanted to take him to a game. The game I was shut out of was Super Bowl XXXVIII - I went to Houston, but the price of over US$2,000.00 per ticket was way out of our range. The ellipsis between the 2 lines in the end was my explanation to the author about how I, as an entrepreneur, understand the ticket broker business, but at the same time can't swallow the high ticket prices.

This "love and hate" relationship comes out throughout the article. Where brokers buy up tickets that may go unsold, teams don't reap the premiums themselves for the tickets. Many years ago I asked a question to the former president of the Boston Garden, Larry Moulter, about his thoughts on ticket scalpers on Garden property selling tickets. Needless to say, he did not directly answer my question. Though the business has come a long way with the likes of StubHub and Ace themselves being a Red Sox sponsor, there isn't even a consensus among Boston team owners.

McGinn's article is a good piece on the state of the tickets today, and it will be interesting to reread it a year or more in the future to see how it has evolved.

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The next likemind coffee will be this Friday, September 19, 2008 in dozens of cities around the world. In Chicago, it will be at Gallery 37 Cafe, 66 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash in the Loop in the Gallery 37 building. Note the cafe opens right at 8.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, et. al.

No RSVP is required but is always welcome, and you can by commenting to this post or at the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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The next likemind coffee will be Friday, August 15, 2008 in dozens of cities around the world. In Chicago, it will be at Gallery 37 Cafe, 66 E. Randolph, at the corner of Wabash in the Loop in the Gallery 37 building. Note the cafe opens right at 8.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, et. al.

No RSVP is required but is always welcome, and you can by commenting to this post or at the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.

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If you are a regular visitor to The Hot Iron you may have noticed a lull in posts for about a week. This was due to the arrival of my daughter, Margo. She is doing great and her Mom, my lovely wife, is doing awesome. Dad isn’t doing too bad either. Over the past couple of weeks we have been getting used to each other, and introducing each other into each other’s lives. As an entrepreneur whose corporate headquarters is at home, this means working all of our activities into each other’s schedules as well.

Where I am not driving Margo towards the computer, she is frequently in the office in some capacity, whether sitting in her papasan or on my shoulder (as she is as I write this). When I sat down to write this post, she for some unknown reason gravitated towards the keyboard and made motions similar to typing! I now present her first blog post:

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As you can see, she has a little work to do on her sentence structure. This will be a continuous process, and once she is ready, look for guest posts from her on occasion.

As bringing a baby into the world is a great learning experience for anyone, I know already there will be some resonance with what I do in my business as an Internet consultant. Where I don’t plan on filling posts here with cutesy stories about my bundle of joy, there will surely be some influence from her on thoughts I have in the theme of The Hot Iron around business and technology.

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Tomorrow I am starting what I hope to be a continuing series here at The Hot Iron called 6 Questions. The basic concept is where via an online conversation I ask someone 6 questions with my own twist to it.

One consistency in the questions will be the first and last ones. The first will always be, "who are you and what are you doing here?" borrowing liberally the famous line from Admiral James Stockdale. This will be followed by 4 questions. The last question will always be, "what question did I not ask and what is its answer?" and this can be anything.

Look for it tomorrow, and I look forward to your feedback on this concept.

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