Silicon Valley Watcher - conversations and observations at the intersection of technology and media

I spent much of July in the UK with the "Traveling Geeks" a group of journalists and bloggers meeting with leading European startups.

JD Lasica, the tireless organizer of the trip, recently put together a list of our favorite tools and apps: Coolest power tools of some top geeks.

With so many choices out there, I'm always fascinated by what others are using. Personally, I try to use as many cloud based apps as I can so that I can work from any computer, mine or maybe yours. Here's some favorite Traveling Geek apps, please see the original post for full list:

My recent trip with the Traveling Geeks to the UK was an intense week consisting of many events and meetings with European startups, government agencies, conferences, panels, and some remarkable experiences.

My son Matt joined me part of the way through. In this video you'll see my fellow Traveling Geeks and friends: Robert Scoble, Rocky Barbanica, Renee Blodgett, Ayelet Noff, Sarah Lacy, JD Lasica, Meghan Asha, Craig Newmark, Susan Bratton, Jeff Saperstein, Howard Rheingold, Sky Schuyler, Mitzi Szereto, Heddi Cundle, Mark Adams, Paul Carr, Hermione Way, Mike Butcher, Mathys van Abbe . . . and many more.

[BTW, the Facebook video embed is so much better quality than YouTube and many other video sites.]

I just got back from the UK spending much of my time with the Traveling Geeks, a group of leading Silicon Valley bloggers and journalists meeting with UK government agencies, UK tech companies, and startups.

It was a very good trip. Here are some notes:

- There are some well established UK startups with good business models and they are profitable. One example is Seatwave.com, which trades show tickets between fans. Spotify and Spinvox are also doing very well. Are they still startups if they have a business model and are profitable?

- Startups face the same problems as those here - funding. There are very UK VC firms and few angels. One estimate I was given was that in the Cambridge area there was just 5 million pounds ($8.26m) available for VC investments. A puny amount. Some startups are seriously considering relocating to the US for better access to investment capital.

- Successful European entrepreneurs have a tendency to go sailing and not come back. But that's not always true. I met some serial entrepreneurs in Cambridge: Stuart Evans, chairman of Novacem, a developer of a unique type of "green" concrete; Richard Green (photo), CEO of Ubisense; the very impressive Sherry Coutu, (photo)a rare woman serial entrepreneur and one of the hosts of our Cambridge tour; also Steve Kennedy from Nettek.

- Cambridge Innovation. The area around Cambridge University is known as Silicon Fen and represents the European innovation capital. There is more money invested in innovation in this region than anywhere else in Europe. A key part of this infrastructure is the organization Cambridge Angels. I met a couple of the Cambridge Angels (Stuart Evans and Richard Green.) It's an impressive organization with an interesting portfolio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3hro-BsQc

Friday afternoon the Traveling Geeks visit Cambridge Consultants and visit the William Gates III building for meetings with researchers from Nokia Labs and Microsoft Research Labs (MRL).

Cambridge Consultants has helped bring to market products such as:

- Virtually waterless washing machine

- The "connected patient

Low cost cellular base stations.

The Microsoft Research Labs are part of the academic community at Cambridge university and the work is open and peer-reviewed. In the video our guide is Cambridge university lecturer and successful entrepreneur Jack Lang, also Ken Wood, deputy director of MRL, Tim Regan, Research SDE at MRL, and presentations from their colleagues. The video also shows some of Microsoft's research projects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo_aUaJlAFA

Friday and the Traveling Geeks are in Cambridge, the innovation capital of Europe.

After presentations by Cambridge university representatives and also from government agencies helping startups, the Traveling Geeks take part in a panel and also hear presentations from local startups:

- Alert Me

- Broadersheet

- Hot Prints

- Magic Solver

- Movie Storm

- Pocket Places

- Trueknowledge

- Taptu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8z7odjIZdw

After a hard-packed day of visiting with Cambridge startups, government agency representatives, Cambridge tech incubator, meeting with Nokia research labs, meeting with Microsoft Research Labs - and punting on the river Cam, the Traveling Geeks are invited to dinner at Peterhouse College.

According to my excellent guidebook "Cambridge Colleges" by Janet Jeacock, Peterhouse College features one of the finest collections of Pre-Raphaelite stained glass, by Morris, Burne-Jones, and Madox Browne. It is the oldest of all 31 Cambridge University colleges, founded in 1284.

As the rest of the TGers are shmoozing on the lawn, my son Matt and I explore the building. We're hoping to find some ghosts. Please see the short video above.

Next: More Cambridge innovation. . .

It's Friday Morning and it's an early 7.30 am start for the Traveling Geeks...

JD Lasica is the unsung hero of the Traveling Geeks. He has invested hundreds of hours in organizing this trip.

By Friday morning, his normal patience-of-a-saint is evaporating as he attempts to herd the TG cats into a coach that is far smaller than expected.

Plus, my son is with me this morning so space is even tighter. And on top of everything, last night was a late night and we are all still a little groggy from the grog and the good times at the Europa Awards (please see: ).

Soon, however, we are on our way to Cambridge and the start of another jam packed day. It's a gorgeous day, not too hot, as we drive through the English countryside, the yellow and green fields and billowing clouds set against an azure sky.

It doesn't take long before we are in the Pitt Building in Cambridge, the site of Britain's oldest publisher. And the very impressive Sherry Coutu is running a very tight meeting with presentations from several government agencies and university representatives.

Next: Another panel and we meet Cambridge startups...

Next on UK Diary: The Traveling Geeks become the Punting Geeks as Cambridge, the innovation capital of Europe, hosts with great style and class.

UK Diary so far:

• - SVW Goes To The Europas . . .
• - Ecoconsultancy At Shakespeare's Globe - Why Innovate?
• - A Visit To Accel Partners - UK Is Tough On Startups
• - Time-Off For Good Bad Behavior
• - Humpday - Lunch With Skype
• - Dinner With Agency.com
• - Guardian Newspaper Media Panel . . .
• - It Never Rains But It Pours . . . More BT Innovation
• - Seed Camp's Highflyers
• - The Geeks Eat Dinner At The Top Of The World
• - Reboot Britain - The Traveling Geeks Help Out
• - A Meeting With Intel's Government Guy
• - Arrival and Tweetup in Chelsea
• - Cambridge And Professor Stephen Hawking
• - UK Startups Look For Funding And Escape From Echo Chamber

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyIlECwWlDA

It's Thursday evening and the Traveling Geeks are at the Europa Awards to celebrate European startups.

The place is already filling up when I get to the venue for the Europa awards in south London. Things don't look good because I have just one invite and I have my son Matt with me and my friend Heddi Cundle. And security is very tight -- they are turning away everyone without a ticket (it's a $100 entry).

Thursday afternoon the Traveling Geeks are at The Swan, which is attached to the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe theatre on the Southbank.

The event is organized by Econsultancy , a digital marketing firm, and led by Ashley Friedlein, CEO and Co-Founder (See my photo above.)

There are about a hundred people gathered in a large room. I'm sitting at one of several tables, crowded with people and bottles of water, and we're talking about innovation.

Thursday morning the Traveling Geeks head to Accel Partners, one of the top European VC firms, to hear presentations from:

Following lunch with Skype, the Traveling Geeks have the rest of the day off.

I spend a good chunk of my free time posting and catching up with my online persona. Then I'm off to the Southbank Centre for a cup of tea and a couple of glasses of wine with some friends from my university days.

In the evening Renee Blodgett invites me to "Calendar Girls" at the Noel Coward theatre just off Piccadilly Circus. Robert Scoble and his sidekick, producer Rocky Barbanica, join us part of the way through the play.

Afterwards, Renee complains of a scratchy throat and heads back to the hotel. (We learn later that one of the panelists at the Guardian media event the prior night came down with swine flu. Renee and fellow Geekettes were sitting in the front row.)

Robert and Rocky head off for a taste of the old country (McDonald's) then come back and join me for late night drinks with an old pal from San Francisco now living in London, Heddi Cundle (@HeddiCundle).

I like to say that Heddi makes you dizzy. After the initial shock of contact it doesn't take long before they are big fans of the Cundle experience.

After closing down one pub we walk the cobbled streets over to Covent Garden where we find another one that's still open.

The next morning, a rather slower moving Robert says to me "I'm blaming you!"

---

Don't miss Thursday on UK Diary: The absolutely mental experience of the "Europas Awards." All hail Mike Butcher!

It's Wednesday and all we have on the Traveling Geeks schedule today is lunch with Skype then we get the rest of the day off. Phew!

That's a welcome break after our hit-the-ground-running start to our trip since Sunday.

Even better, lunch with Skype is in our own hotel.

I wander down into the basement dinning room of the Malmaison hotel and sit next to Sky. Already, he has accumulated several of our laptops and wireless comms dongles, and is trying to figure out some of our connection problems.

I pay particular attention as he attempts to debug Susan Bratton's dongle because I have the same connection problem.

Renne Blodgett says that top executives from Skype were scheduled to join us but had to rush off at last notice for a board meeting. I wonder what's brewing.

Renne Blodgett has an interview between fellow TGer Robert Scoble and Skype's top blogger Peter Parkes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8-p_X8p-dQ&feature=player_embedded

Renee Blodgett interviews Peter Parkes and Neil Dodds, Windows Experience Manager at Skype:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yz8Bp774-s

[Being a Traveling Geek takes stamina. I challenge any traditional journalist to keep up with our daily agendas. Not only are we interviewing people and staying up late writing, editing video and posting but we are also being interviewed by others, taking part on panels, and reporting on the same panels, and taking part in lots of other inside-out media activities.]

Our fourth event for Tuesday was dinner with Agency.com and assorted clients and friends -- in Soho at Soho House. It was great to be back in this vibrant part of London because this is where I got my start in journalism in 1982.

It was a great place to work and a great time to be a young man around town, with plenty of small bars, restaurants, cafes, and after-hours clubs.

We sat at a very long table and we introduced ourselves and spoke briefly about what it was that attracted us to social/new media. I managed to get video of most of the replies, my apologies because I missed a couple of people.

http://www.blip.tv/file/2353961

Please also see Susan Bratton: DishyMix: Susan Bratton Podcasts & Blogs Executives

We left BT and managed to hail a few black cabs amid the rain and made our way over to the Guardian newspaper for a panel on the future of media.

I was thinking that maybe the death of newspapers is just nature's way of helping us all to reduce our carbon footprint.

Some of our fellow Traveling Geeks were on the panel, our Geeketes were at the front of the room, which must have had a distracting effect (see photo - by JD Lasica) while the rest of us were mostly at the back Twittering onto a big screen at the front of the room.

Tuesday afternoon with the Traveling Geeks and we are over at BT HQ seeing half-a-dozen presentations from its business units.

We were a little wet from dodging torrential rain bursts. But the afternoon sessions are interesting.

(Photo Susan Bratton.) Tuesday morning the Traveling Geeks were at Seed Camp. I couldn't make it but here are some of our reports:

I missed the first event of the day for the Traveling Geeks because I was hunting local shops for an Ethernet to USB converter as I, (and we collectively) struggled with Internet connectivity issues.

Sky Schuyler was our resident IT support guy and fellow Traveling Geek. He has the patience of a saint. Every morning we'd dump our laptops, BT dongles, and cell phones in his lap and beg him to perform his particular form of magic and get them working and connecting again. He has unlimited patience and good humor -- it's no wonder that he was chosen by the Dalai Lama Foundation to be its Chief Technology Officer.

(Photo by Susan Bratton from the post: "Communication is how we connect to others at a deeper level," Jim "Sky" Schuyler)

Please see: BT Openzone Wireless Broadband - Sky's Blog

Monday evening the Traveling Geeks were invited to dinner in the 384 ft BT Tower, which used to be known as the Post Office Tower when I lived in London. It has a revolving restaurant near the top and has been closed to the public since 1980.

It was a rare honor for us to be hosted by BT CEO Ian Livingston and his top team of managers. This giant European Telecom is quite a surprise, very innovative and very aggressive. You might expect the opposite. Yet it is the US telecoms companies that appear slow and Luddite in comparison.

The innovative energy is sparked by strict European Community regulations that ensure a level playing field for competitors. This is unlike the US system, which seems designed to prevent new competitors from entering markets and results in telecoms companies that turn-off mobile phone functions and control what applications and services can be offered.

Monday morning several Traveling Geeks take part in the Reboot Britain conference organized by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

Howard Rheingold:

The day starts with an exercise in cat-herding, with the whole crazy crew piling into three London taxis. Try putting any five of those rather strong individual personalities into an enclosed space and "intense" is the only word for it.

... It was the first time I had spoken publicly about a subject I've grown passionate about - 21st Century Literacies. You know you've hit the mark when people are still sitting at the end of the last session of the day. I finished speaking, acknowledged warm applause, sat down -- and people kept sitting. So I got back on stage and fielded questions for another 20 minutes. Thank you, London, for making my day!

http://www.smartmobs.com/2009/07/07/reboot-britain-first-stop-on-traveling-geeks-tour/

Monday morning the Traveling Geeks are off to the Reboot Britain conference organized by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

But first we have breakfast with Tristan Wilkinson, Intel's Director for Public Sector for EMEA.

Renee Blodgett:

He tells us about a program called One Goal which will be launched in August and piggyback off the South African World Cup. The goal is to get 30 million online signatures in an effort to help make poverty history. Take note: 75 million children still don't have access to primary school education in the world.

down the avenue: Redefining Digital Inclusion

Mr Wilkinson said he wasn't much interested in technology but what technology could do for people and for countries in terms of improving the quality of life through better economic opportunities.

By Sunday all of the Traveling Geeks had arrived and checked into our hotel, Malmaison (Bad House?) in Charterhouse Square close to St Paul's cathedral.

Fellow TGer Craig Newmark had discovered that we were living above an old "plague pit" where tens of thousands of bodies had been buried in 1384. Maybe this was why we were all to suffer from terrible Internet connection problems throughout our stay?! It would be cool if our wifi were haunted, and ghostly pictures would be uploaded to our flickr accounts during the night.

I was running late to our first event of the trip, a Tweetup in the fashionable Chelsea district. By the time I got there, it had spilled into the street and I saw my colleagues chatting with people, interviewing or being interviewed.

http://www.blip.tv/file/2352740
I met a lot of entrepreneurs and had many excellent conversations. Funding was a common theme, the lack of it. Very similar to Silicon Valley.
(Photo by Craig Newmark.)
- - -
I was interviewed by Micha Benoliel from Digitrad which has a cool service offering one point of access for all your voice communications. Here is a discount code if you'd like to try it out: VIP69007.

Tom Foremski - Digitrad - Traveling Geeks from Micha Benoliel on Vimeo.

You can also see interviews with fellow TGers here: http://vimeo.com/channels/digitrad#5489395

Next up: Monday - Reboot Britain and dinner with BT at the top of the 381 ft tall Post Office Tower - a revolving restaurant closed to the public since 1980 and once blown up by the IRA.

Please see: UK Startups Look For Funding And Escape From Echo Chamber

It's been a fascinating and exhausting week on the Traveling Geeks tour. The best part has been our visit to Cambridge, the innovation capital of England. I've got lots of material to post from our trip, all this week, so please check back regularly.

One highlight of the trip was on Saturday night. My son Matt and I were looking for a place to eat. We just happened to choose one of the favorite spots for Professor Stephen Hawking. It was a huge honor to be in the same room as Britain's top scientist.

The photo shows his two blond assistants helping him with his high-tech wheelchair.

Tuesday evening our third event that day for the Traveling Geeks (but not the last) was to take part in a media debate at The Guardian newspaper's offices in north London.

The Guardian is one of the UK's largest newspapers and its media section is superb -- anyone that is anyone in the media industry reads it, and anyone that's interested in media -- reads The Guardian's media section.

It was a very good turnout for the event despite horrid downpours. Part of our TG gang (Robert Scoble, Sarah Lacy, and JD Lasica) were on the panel discussing the future of media with the Guardian's Emily Bell, and the BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones.

It was a good discussion but it felt very "2005" in terms of the subjects, which kept returning to blogger/social media versus mainstream media.

The Butcher of Fleet Street

I was sitting at the back of the room next to fellow TGer Craig Newmark of Craigslist. And inevitably, the panel's moderator couldn't resist asking him to stand up and explain himself for killing the newspaper industry.

Craig is mightily fed up with this question. And I agree. It is not his fault that the newspaper industry is in trouble. But Craig handled it all very well, throwing in a line "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," which drew laughs and distracted the panel from further pursuit of a tired line of questioning and drew the discussion back to the favorite subject of the day: Twitter.

From Back To Front

It was fun publishing from the back of the room and having our Tweets projected onto a big screen in the front of the room.

Here is the evening's Twitstream.

And here are my contributions:

I've been meeting a lot of UK entrepreneurs as part of the Traveling Geeks trip and I'm hearing a lot of the same things US startups tell me. They are looking for funding and also fed up with seeing the same people at their meetups.

Funding is a big problem in the UK because there are very few European VC funds actively investing. And very few angels. Many startups are looking to the US for funding but they tell me that most US VC firms have closed their UK offices.

One entrepreneur told me: "We're thinking of relocating some of our team to San Francisco so that we can be closer to the VC firms. Several VC firms have told us that they love our product but we are not over there. And so they wouldn't consider investing."

That was a common theme: that US VCs won't invest in startups unless they are in Silicon Valley.

I didn't have the heart to tell people that even if you are in Silicon Valley funding is really tough right now.

Traveling Geeks: Monday morning we met with Tristan Wilkinson, Intel's director for public sector, EMEA Region. His main interest is how technology can be used to improve countries' economies and improve the quality of life for people through work opportunities.

He posed an interesting question: Do the people that enjoy the benefits of the digital economy have an obligation to help those that don't have the same access and skill sets?

The way the question is phrased doesn't invite much debate because it shoots straight for the moral high ground.

This week I'll be in London and Cambridge as part of the Traveling Geeks tour. We'll be meeting with various UK companies and organizations.

I'm particularly interested in the startup culture here in the UK and how it differs from Silicon Valley. I'm always looking for what makes Silicon Valley different from anywhere else and why it is so difficult to create Silicon Valley-like regions around the world.

Clearly, to create a sustainable center of innovation it takes more than building a business park around a university and injecting some startup capital. The answer must lie in the culture of Silicon Valley. But can that culture be exported? Do regional innovation centers have unique cultures specific to their particular brand of innovation?

Maybe I can find out some answers during this trip.

Also, I'll be posting about some of the companies and personalities I meet during this trip. So please check back regularly. Also, you can follow my colleagues on the Traveling Geeks website and Twitter -- and if you get a chance, join us at some of the open evening events. Here is our agenda.

Here is a brief overview. We'll be at...

A NESTA-sponsored conference about moving forward in the new economy, a U.S./U.K. Speed Date with Seed Camp Winners and UK Leaders; eConsultancy Innovator's Open Discussion; the TechCrunch Europa Awards; University of Cambridge's Judge Business School Roundtable on Open Innovation; as well as meetings with Nokia Labs, Microsoft Labs, East of England International, Skype and others.

The blhttpoggers will also be speaking and participating at a Reboot Britain event and the Guardian's first Media Talk Live event, as well as organizing a TweetUp in central London on the evening of July 5, 2009, which is being sponsored by NESTA and The Conversation Group.

My Twitter is: http://twitter.com/tomforemski

My Friendfeed is:  http://friendfeed.com/tomforemski

Twitter hashtag for the trip is #tg2009

Fellow Traveling Geeks:

I'm looking forward to the Traveling Geeks trip to London. I'm leaving next week and we will spend a few days in London and then Cambridge, meeting with local startups and larger tech companies.

I'll be particularly interested in how the startup scene differs in the UK compared to here. I keep coming across companies that are moving here, or at least having co-HQs here. Over the next few months I'll be profiling these Silicon Valley debutantes in a special section. So please let me know if you, or a company you know has recently moved to the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. And also if you'd like to publish a guest post on why you moved here. More on this later...

In the meantime, here is our agenda for the London trip, come join us at one of the events.

Also on the trip is:

[Wrapping up the week in three dots . . .]

. . . Congratulations to Mike Arrington's TechCrunch on its four year anniversary. I went to the celebration at the TechCrunch offices in Palo Alto and had a really nice time, connecting with a whole bunch of people, some I hadn't seen in a while. There was Gabe Rivera from Techmeme, and I got to meet his "chief reporter," Atul Arora (@Atul) who seems to have become Gabe's human powered algorithm for choosing hot posts. (Some pics courtesy of the ubiquitous Brian Solis here.)

. . . Congratulations to Robert Scoble's Building 43 launch. It's a new online community sponsored by Robert's employer Rackspace. I went to the launch (combined Techcrunch birthday party) with and it was good to see Rocky Barbanica, Robert's long-time sidekick and camera operator-producer-editor. It turns out that Rocky was the one that introduced Robert to the Rackspace people. I'm looking forward to spending time with them both on the upcoming Traveling Geeks trip to London in early July.

. . . Uber-marketeer Guy Kawasaki seems puzzled why his Alltop automatic post aggregator isn't more popular in this post: The new economics of entrepreneurship. He goes on to point out that this is a great time to be an entrepreneur because nearly everything is nearly free, including talent.

Sorry, I'm not a warm and fuzzy guy, but the truth is that there are lots of talented people who are unemployed or under-employed right now. If there was ever a time to get great people for free or cheap, this is it.

Also, marketing is nearly free too:

Sucking up to bloggers takes effort and swallowing your pride, but it's not expensive.

Is that really all it takes? It sounds very 2005... Plus, Mr Kawasaki employs a couple of people to Twitter for him under his name which doesn't sound cheap.