Clunky Flow

Pat Phelan should win the current Techcrunch prize because of his imminent achievement in making allfreecalls.net the first company to ever make it back out of the Techcrunch Deadpool:

• Today, Pat Phelan announces the imminent return of allfreecalls.net.   And Pat advises Mike Arrington to get ready to remove his allfreecalls.net company out of the Techcrunch ‘Deadpool’.
• Also today, in a unrelated matter Mike Arrington announces that he will pass on free tickets to the upcoming Web2.0 Expo for a post that best captures a moment when techcrunch was wrong. 

 

Pat deserves to win that prize because;

•  Pat’s action, reported in this very short post, answers that call with the elegance of action instead of the huffery and puffery of explanation.  This short post belies the fact that Pat has had to cope with being shut down by the actions of a very pissed off AT&T who were using all their corporate might to destroy his efforts to stay in operation.

And, Pat deserves to win that prize because;

• Pat’s action defines the essence of a true entrepreneur as consistently celebrated by Techcrunch.  Techcrunch consistently highlights actions over huffery and puffery and this approach has gained it much respect and in turn has done much to does much to help prevent the Web2.0 industry from overinflating itself into dangerous bubble territory.  I can think of no better way to reaffirm what is best about techcrunch than to reaffirm these principles by celebrating Pat’s actions in a public way and by taking the action of simply presenting him one of those prize tickets :-)

In a personal aside, the pleasure I felt this morning at hearing that allfreecalls.net would soon be back up and running immediately put me in mind of this classic snippet of sporting commentary by Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, an Irish sports commentator much loved for his style of delivery and his unique turns of phrase. 

The following snippet of Mícheál’s commentary was delivered while watching the great Cork footballer, Colin Corkery. 

Colin Corkery on the 45 lets go with the right boot. Its over the bar. This man shouldn’t be playing football. He’s made an almost Lazarus-like recovery from a heart condition. Lazarus was a great man but he couldn’t kick points like Colin Corkery.

And here’s to Pat Phelan, the Lazarus of the new telecoms industry. 

1 Comment »