BoomTown » Nicki Dugan

Yahoo's Yodel Anecdotal Blogger Will Not Be Yodeling Anymore

Kara Swisher — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:49:03 +0000

While Nicki Dugan (pictured here) was not one of the top execs at Yahoo, she certainly is typical of many at the company who stuck with it through many ups and downs.

No longer, according to a memo BoomTown obtained from several sources, since the longtime PR staffer–who has been at Yahoo (YHOO) for almost a decade and who was previously with an outside public relations firm that worked for Yahoo–will leave the company Monday.

Dugan has a high-profile role at Yahoo, running its Yodel Anecdotal corporate blog and penning most of the pieces on it.

It’s not clear from the memo where Dugan is headed, though the memo is full of interesting “moments” she had while at Yahoo and includes some nice historical details (including a scoop I had from Web 1.0 that I had long forgotten).

Here’s the email she sent to colleagues:

From: Nicki Dugan
To: XXX
Cc: Nicki Dugan
Sent: Thu Oct 29 16:35:22 2009
Subject: Fare thee well

Hiya:

After almost exactly 9.5 years, 10 Oktoberfest mugs, 9 founder holiday gifts, 4 cube moves, and 76 daily miles, I’ve decided to hang up my purple badge. Saying goodbye to Yahoo!–and all of you–is no easy task. It’s a rare place that can capture your heart and soul and hang onto it for about a quarter of your life. What’s made Yahoo! so special? I thought I’d rattle off some of my favorite moments:

* Jerry asking me (on my first day) if the PR team really needed another person

* Filo’s all-worldwide “get back to work” Yahoo! Greeting during my first week

* Yahoo! Surfers. Full stop.

* Risking life and limb to cross the street for a meeting when our HQ was on Kifer Road in Santa Clara

* My first earthquake, experienced working on a Saturday in Building D

* When our various business units were called “pods” (communications, communities, commerce, content)

* Our former general counsel propping his cowboy boots up on the conference table during a USA Today interview

* When Jerry and David taught Madeleine Albright how to surf the Web

* When In & Out Burger trucks provided meals during summer picnics

* Launching the world’s first Internet taxi

* When NASDAQ halted YHOO trading after Jim Hu and Kara Swisher caught wind of our Broadcast.com acquisition

* “Sleeping” under my desk the night before Analyst Day 2001 as lawyers and the deal team haggled sentence structure with SBC in our joint release

* When the cow from our lobby attracted Mennonites at NYC’s South Street Seaport

* Terry Semel doing earnings calls in his socks

* Being the stage photographer for Beck at Open Hack Day 2006

* Getting Jerry & David to sumo wrestle in the name of fighting climate change (http://bit.ly/2NIjkO)

* Tom Cruise recreating the Oprah coach moment during his Yahoo! Influentials visit

* Convincing Matt Dillon that our contract trumped his hangover at the Greenest City in America press conference in Times Square

* Flying to Burbank via a NetJet with every C-level Yahoo! executive for the Overture acquisition

* When Sue Decker rode into an all-hands at URLs on a Harley Davidson

* Meeting Al Gore at a private “An Inconvenient Truth” screening with the Yahoo! For Good team

* Breaking the world record for largest simultaneous yodel…and getting ordinary Americans to yodel their hearts out in NYC, SF and Seattle for the Yodel Challenge and Yodel Studio

* Watching mobs of Yahoo! users line up outside Baskin-Robbins stores across the country for free ice cream on our 10th anniversary

* Having Michael Arrington leave the third comment on Yodel Anecdotal when we launched (and a positive one at that!) (http://bit.ly/1Lvzrx)

* The emotional weekend spent at Skadden as we prepared to announce Terry’s resignation

* Learning how to play Faceball at Flickr HQ (http://bit.ly/4mdJ24)

* Getting Blake Jorgensen to pull off the best April Fool’s video… Evar

* Stuffing cotton into Filo’s cheeks for his cinematic debut as Don Corleone in Ari’s tech team video

* Asking Ash to dress in an orange jumpsuit to pick up trash in Filo’s cube (I’ve clearly abused Filo extensively)

* Dressing in black and leaving rubber duckies all over Google’s campus at dawn (10K+ photo views! http://bit.ly/vX8hA)

* Convincing 33 Yahoo! teams to dance with Matt “Where the Hell is Matt?” Harding all over our HQ during the Summer of Microsoft (http://bit.ly/929hT)

* Getting the Food Network to produce a “Dinner: Impossible” episode for Yahoo!’s Search’s anniversary and watching Chef Robert Irvine abuse Tuoc and Raj in the kitchen (http://bit.ly/291zsB)

* Carol’s first all-hands F-bomb

We played hard, worked harder, and drank copious amounts of purple Koolaid. And I’ll probably never quite get it out of my system. Working here through so many of Yahoo!’s phases has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m so grateful for the memories and friendships built over these many years. I look forward to watching the ‘hoo from afar.

If we don’t connect on Monday for a final farewell, please keep in touch. Employee #370 (adjusted hire), over and out.

–Nicki

Here’s a link to one of my favorite blogs by Dugan, which she referenced above, on dancer Matt Harding, with a video below she did by dragging him to do jigs all over Yahoo:

[ See post to watch video ]

Scratch Jerry Yang for Post-CEO "Dancing With the Stars" Gig

Kara Swisher — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:43:32 +0000

“Is that all there is, is that all there is.
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball,
If that’s all there is.”

Peggy Lee sang it best about troubled times in the classic song “Is That All There Is?”

But, dancing and making a video about dancing is obviously something that elevates Yahoo (YHOO), which is no small thing in this tough period for the iconic Internet company.

In the video below, Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal Blog Editor Nicki Dugan (whom BoomTown is immediately offering a job as AllThingsD.com video chief) takes the well-known dancing-fool Internet celeb Matt Harding of the Where the Hell Is Matt? Web site and places him all over Yahoo for 33 dancing sessions.

The video was recently shown at the company’s all-hands meeting, and it is simply delightful to see Yahoos looking happy simply by tripping the light fantastic.

I think activist shareholder Carl Icahn should make Harding one of his picks for the Yahoo board. (Icahn was officially appointed to the board yesterday, and his two board picks will be revealed Aug. 15.)

Highlights of the video of Harding dancing at Yahoo include Co-Founder David Filo’s infamous mess of a cube, a video conference jig with the team in Burbank, doing a sitting-down boogie with President Sue Decker, having a tango with Yahoo’s Purple Cow and a hip-shaking visit to “Frenemy Territory” at Google.

Best of all, of course, is a do-si-do with Yahoo Co-Founder and CEO Jerry Yang, who seems to be channeling an odd combination of Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever” and Barney the purple–how perfect!–dinosaur in his dance stylings. (Enter a caption contest here related to the picture above.)

Happily, this is the kind of dancing it is enjoyable to see Yang doing, because the two-stepping, shuffling and tap-dancing he is going to have to do to stay in power–after the much less sanguine shareholder vote this past week–is going to be much less fun to watch.

Here’s the video from Yahoo (all credit to Dugan and Yahoo) and the wonderful “Dancing 2008″ video that Harding did all over the world (I dare you not to smile):

[ See post to watch video ]

Kara Visits the OutCast Communications Annual Party

Kara Swisher — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:00:02 +0000

Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0’s fight for their right to party.

Last night, it was quite a festive mood, as a mess o’ tech press and a bunch of digital movers and shakers showed up at OutCast Communications’ Seventh Annual CEO Dinner, held in the Grand Hall of San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building.

Big clients of OutCast include Facebook and Yahoo, as well as a lot of hyper-trendy start-ups.

Here is a lovely video I did, featuring OutCast’s T.J. Snyder and Margit Wennmachers, investor Ron “Sister Woman” Conway, Yahoo (YHOO) communications czar Brad Garlinghouse and PR’s Nicki Dugan, Facebook’s Brandee Barker, VC Stewart Alsop and the incomprehensibly iPhone-addled Robert Scoble:

[ See post to watch video ]