I'm debating with myself... should I go to the South by Southwest conferece (and parties) or go to school? If I decide to go, I'll have to fork over about $1200 in hotel/airfare/etc and cut two days of school. My dad says no, but I'm confident that if all of my blog readers emailed him, he would change his mind. Just kidding!

Just a year ago, I cut three days of school to go to the Oreilly Web 2.0 conference. It was a crappy conference and I learned absolutely nothing, but the friends I made were priceless. Matter of fact, if I hadn't cut those three days of school to go to the Web 2.0 conference, you probably wouldn't be reading my blog.

Which brings me to the question: SXSW or school? Will I meet awesome people or will I just get bounced out of every party because I'm underage? I'll let you guys vote on this one.

PS - I gave you an "other" option in case you have something better to suggest.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Best. Class. Discussion. Ever. It was our last "sophomore seminar" class of the semester, and we discussed the definition of modern. And with the definition of modern meant greater access to information via the internet. We're dependent on the internet and our Facebooks, and if anything happened to take away our individualism, we'd be screwed.

I'd say about half of the class would agree with the following statement:

Facebook and other social utilities create a false sense of community.

Putting that quote in context, my peers are having trouble accepting Facebook, social networks, blogs, and other constructs of the internet. Why? Because there's apparently the suspicion that all of these communities are created by capitalism. Entrepreneurs who seek wealth from children who have nothing better to do with their lives than click through Facebook profiles and what not. Even though it's free for the consumer, it doesn't matter - my peers have a distrust for these internet companies because they have a profit motive behind these "modern" inventions.

So what do these entrepreneurs' profit motive have to do with anything? I don't know, maybe my peers are scared for their privacy. Maybe they think that social networks are preventing people from meeting and hanging out in person. Maybe they're annoyed by the dozens of app requests they get every day.

Bottom line, entrepreneurs and random folk in San Francisco don't give this stuff as much thought. We embrace and accept web 2.0 for what it is and have no problem with new innovations flooding the market. We encourage open and free access to information, whereas my colleagues in college (all in sophomore seminar) are hesitant about accepting the change in status quo. The only exception was this one girl named Faine, but she's one of us west coasters :)

Just keep these ideas in mind. The way we embrace technology so easily is unique to us. If you're reading my blog right now, I'll consider you part of "us." I helped start a company around building Facebook apps, and it's somewhat disconcerting to hear that most college kids absolutely despise Facebook apps. But yet again, screw them. There's still demand and there's still money out there, no matter what these non-embracing kids say.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

Interacting with people and building relationships makes me tick. Running a company requires great communication skills and requires that the partners are able to make amazing connections with people they need to meet. I've found myself meeting shy tech engineers at random events, and those are the ones very likely to fail. On the other hand, I've met so many non-geeky San Francisco engineers who need to get out of the office and socialize. Who said nerd stereotypes had to be true?

Brings me to my next point... I was looking for a technical co-founder for my company, and I met some really nerdy guys in the process. They might have been amazing coders, but their lame personalities drove me insane. I finally found this guy, Alex. He's probably reading this blog post, but whatever: On our first meeting, I could tell that we'd click. He was by no means a stereotypical nerd. If the guy enjoys going out and having fun sometimes, he meets my social criteria for a co-founder.

All of the co-founders represent the company, and when it comes time to making business deals and raising venture capital, it really helps to be sociable. I can't see anything more embarrassing than having to bring my super nerdy, boring, shy co-founder to a lunch with the people who can make and break our company.

Fact is, you'll be spending a good part of your work life and possibly personal life with this co-founder. It's a marriage, and once you propose and s/he agrees, you're committed until the very end. How it ends depends heavily on the relationship. The end may be an acquisition by Google for a bagillion dollars or just a divorce that was inevitable.

So what should I say to the geeks who are reading this? Hmm... get yourself a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

I'm proud to say that last week, I canceled my Blockbuster subscription in favor of Netflix. Just a few years ago, I remember all of my friends dumping their Blockbuster cards in favor of the "no late fee" rival Netflix.

Blockbuster came back into the competitive race for DVD rentals against Netflix when they decided to offer no late fee accounts as well. I was living in Berkeley this summer and noticed a Blockbuster across the street. I felt like it would be convenient to just get a Blockbuster subscription because the store was close by, but I wasn't 100% happy.

Ends up that Blockbuster charged me slightly more for a supposed convenience. I was led to believe that if I wanted a movie instantly, I could just walk over and pickup a movie from Blockbuster instead of having to wait at least 24 hours for it to be mailed to me. Wrong! The brick and mortar stores are kept "separate from the online accounts" for some silly reason, as the man behind the cash register told me.

So I looked into Netflix and noticed the instant video watching capabilities they had. Not only that, but Netflix seems very web 2.0. The consumer tells the website what s/he likes and the website makes some smart suggestions. There's a community section. There's instant streaming. $2/month less. So I ditched my Blockbuster account and went over to Netflix. Only that a week after my cancellation, Blockbuster decides to send me the next two movies in my queue. Yikes!

As amazing as Netflix is, I don't see them doing too well in the coming years. First it was the rise of file sharing networks. Then came competition from Blockbuster. Now we have sites like Walmart.com and Amazon.com that have instant streaming capabilities.

If I was the CEO of Netflix, I'd start looking into other blue oceans to conquer. If I was the CEO of Blockbuster, I'd be worried about losing money on every customer and also look at other blue oceans to potentially conquer.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.