Half-Year of the Dragon

We just wrapped up an intense three days at the Bonnier Publishing Program, and I am wiped. It is such a neat group to be involved with, and the energy was superhigh, but as soon as the last day ended I kind of collapsed.

The program members come from all corners of the Bonnier world, and all are involved with digital media. The main stated purpose of the program is to help us build leadership skills and develop a tool set that will allow us to successfully launch new Web businesses for our companies. This is hugely interesting to me because my focus at work has been shifting increasingly toward business development. I'm still technically an editor, but I'm finding that the most exciting thing about my job is solving the puzzle of how to execute successful project launches. In today's online media world, it's no longer true that "content is king." Great content has to come hand-in-hand with great technology and a solid revenue model.

So, after a day and a half of warm-and-fuzzy "getting to know our colleagues" activities, the Publishing Program participants were given a task: to divide into four groups that will each develop and pitch a new digital business plan to the top management. This isn't just an exercise, either—the management actually intends to select at least one of the four projects (provided at least one is good enough) to launch in 2009. The format is similar to The Dragon's Den, the popular BBC reality show in which hopeful entrepreneurs pitch ideas to a panel of ill-tempered venture capitalists (pictured above).

We broke into teams and kicked off our projects today, and each team member has quite a lot of homework to do before the next Publishing Program module in January. We'll gather for a total of four more learning modules between now and May, during which time we'll meet entrepreneurs and learn from their successes and failures, study up on the platforms and technologies shaping the online media landscape right now, and have seminars and workshops with top trend analysts, investors and developers. I couldn't be more excited to be involved. It's quite an honor, as this program is very expensive for our company to put on, and there will be a huge internal focus on the business plans we hatch this spring.

I also got a completely unrelated (but also honorific) invitation this week, which weirdly also relates to dragons. My friend Keira, who is becoming kind of famous in the fitness world, offered to train me to earn RKC certification, which will allow me to teach kettlebells classes part-time in her gym (something I'd love to do to keep my fitness-motivation high). The training for this certification is pretty grueling, as I'll have to prove my strength and knowledge of kettlebell technique with a series of difficult physical tests during the certification workshop, April 20-24. The official Web site for RKC Kettlebells is called dragondoor.com.... which means that within one month this spring, I'll be entering first the Dragon Door and then the Dragon's Den. Gulp.