If you’re not freaking out a bit right now with the current economic crisis then you must have ice in your veins.  With the meltdown on Wall Street, a lot of us are thinking about how this is going to affect our own businesses.  In the web world, some have felt insulated from the downturn, but warning signs are coming in from VC’s loud and clear.

Our business was affected by the credit crisis starting about a year and a half ago.  It has been challenging, but actually has led to a refocusing on low-cost services model through Flatsourcing which I believe is poised to thrive in the current enviroment.  We got credit when we didn’t need it, which I’m glad we have now, and we have trimmed our cost structure to weather the storm.

This is what other start-ups clearly need to be doing.  Launching a product in this market is going to be tough, if you don’t have cash for a long runway, you better have a revenue model that gets you to cash-flow positive quickly.  If you are solely dependent on advertising revenue, buckle up, its going to be a wild ride.

The embedded presentation that TechCrunch posted is what Sequoia Capital made to the CEO’s of its startups is interesting for its clear and (relatively) consise explanation of where we are, and how we got here.  It’s one of the most comprehensive analyses of the current crisis that I’ve seen and I recommend you take time to understand it and the impact the current enviroment is going to have on your business.

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Campfiber is going on in Lafayette today.  If you weren’t able to make it, they are streaming live and the quality if very good.  Check it out.

Woohoo!  I got some great news on Wednesday that the panel I submitted called Outsourcing 2.0 - Is the World Flat or Not? was approved and will be a session at SXSW Interactive 2009 in Austin.

I’m so excited about this. It will be my first time speaking at SXSW. I’ve been as an attendee the last three years and it is a great conference.  I always learn a ton and have a lot of fun.

Ben Reece, Brian Oberkirch and I had lunch together yesterday and talked about the positive reinforcement and encouragement that our social networks provide us.  Lifting up the community is something we all try to do, and we all have benefited from greatly.  I felt this yesterday firsthand when I tweeted out my excitement and within an hour was flooded by warm emails, plenty of congratulatory tweets and a great blog post.  It is powerful and was personally very touching to have a community that supports each other this way, as Brian said at lunch, “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that is exactly what we are doing with the NOLA tech scene.

So, thank you to all who voted for the panel, the feedback I received from SXSW really considered this highly.  I strongly encourage anyone who is interested to make the trip to SXSW Interactive March 13-18, 2009.  It is a great conference.