Brian Breslin — Essays

My hometown is hosting World Cup matches right now.

This site has run on WordPress in one form or another since the mid-2000s.

From 2006 to 2015 I published tech predictions almost every January, then graded myself the following year.

So I had some hits and some misses this year.

July 1 was when I started on the Four Hour Body or Slow Carb Diet.

Most of you who know me in real life, know how I champion Coconut Grove as my favorite place to live in South Florida.

Five years ago, a movement of sorts was born in Miami.

My sister was in town this week and we were talking about how she is interested in trying out the slow carb diet, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and post my simple tips for keeping with it.

So on June 30th I decided I was going to make a change in my life.

The rise of artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on product development and the general zeitgeist of the internet economy lately.

Let me preface this by saying that this is going to piss a few people off, however that’s not my intention.

It’s been quite some time since I made predictions on this blog (8+ years).

Woah, you must be thinking “what the hell does Brian know about winning startup weekend?”

So every year I try and throw my hat in the ring of amateur prognosticators and posit what is going to happen in tech in the upcoming year.

Everything changes in the “Coronaconomy”.

As seems to be my annual tradition, I’m doing a recap of all my predictions I made a year ago.

The grand challenges, on a micro level.

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by my buddy Tim for the Miami Hustle Series Podcast (which if you haven't checked it out, it has tons of great interviews with Miami entrepreneurs).

Two years ago I embarked on a journey to get my MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Last week I had the pleasure of judging one of the University of Miami entrepreneurship center, aka theLaunchPad, elevator pitch contests.

I was skimming through Hacker News (it’s recently become one of my daily must reads) the other day and a comment caught my eye, someone said something along the lines of “that would require the creator to have been truly self-aware.”

Smart watches are already a commodity.

I'm an avid soccer fan and student of the game (20 years of playing + 3 years coaching), and just like millions of other people around the world have been watching way more soccer than I normally would recently.

How to price freelance web development services (this applies to any knowledge based services business really).

I read through HackerNews and tons of other blogs, am also incredibly fascinated by the proliferation of tech communities outside of silicon valley, but I keep seeing a common thread amongst all the naysayers.

In the spirit of creating a lively discourse about the South Florida Tech Community, I figure I should revisit where my involvement began.

So continuing my yearly habit of making wild guesses of what I think we will see in the market, here goes the 2015 predictions.

Continuing in this 4 or 5 year tradition now, I am going to put out my list of top ten things I think or hope will happen in 2010.

So my buddy Theo asked me yesterday if I was going to do a follow up predictions post this year.

So we have a few days left in 2009, but really, I doubt my results change much between now and then.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who used to live in Miami (for about a year) suggested that I should promote Miami as a place for burnt out Valley types to come and recharge.

In case you are joining us now, and missed the previous posts.

So I’ve done it, I’ve taken the plunge and decided to get an MBA.

Perhaps this post would have been better titled "The role of groups in South Florida's tech Community future."

A few of the startups I work with have been telling me they keep running into the same issue: the sales team is selling the product differently than the development team expected.

A few months ago when the heartbleed bug spread across the internet like wildfire I texted my friend Peter and asked him “Hey how hard is it to fix this heartbleed stuff?”

In this seemingly interminable series, which has covered everything, then shifted to the government, then local business, most recently the individuals, and now we’re taking a look at the role of the money men in relation to the future of tech in south fl…

So I recenty decided to start interviewing companies in South Florida or south (all of latin america, etc).

I have a theory, that every first version of a product should be treated as disposable.

So far I've covered a general overview of tech in South Florida, the government's role, and how local businesses can help; now we need to talk about how you, the individual technologists of South Florida can participate.

Step 2: Support from local businesses The last few days I've been talking to a lot of people and thinking a lot about how local businesses can support the community.

Step 1 government support Earlier in the week I wrote about the key steps we needed to take in order to build a vibrant community down here.

One of the cautionary tales Steve Blank discusses in The Four Steps to the Epiphany is that of Webvan.

More and more American companies are sitting on piles of cash overseas.

OR What to do when Google fails you The other day I was brainstorming an idea for a web business I'm doing this summer with a few friends, and we were stuck on a critical piece of data.

For the last year I’ve been slacking when it comes to my personal business, it runs itself by and large, and my awesome team has been taking care of most of the day to day.

Almost religiously for the last few years I’ve been posting predictions, until the last one, I had a pretty good track record of getting them right.

For the last 8 years I’ve been in the trenches here in Miami trying to foster the growth of a tech community.

Yeehaw Junction, FL had a population of 240 as of the last census in 2010.

The year was 2007, I was ahead of the curve on this whole social media hubaloo, at least several conference organizers thought so.