Dan Farber is one of the first tech industry journalists and in his thirty year career he has helped create many top publications and he has led many editorial teams. He "retired" from his senior executive position at CBS News in the summer and posted photos of his idyllic life in Sonoma County.

But I never believed he would be gone for long. After all, how can a dyed-in-the-wool newsman stay away when the world is changing so fast, and this small part of the world on his doorstep has so much to do with it?

This week he joined Salesforce.com as Senior Vice President Strategic Communications.

He'll be working closely with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who is starting to take on more of a leadership position on local and regional matters, a much needed role given his history of philanthropy and his potential to inspire a tech community that seems a little lost.

I'm looking forward to seeing Dan more often and I congratulate him on this next phase of his career. It also gives me a chance to repost my interview with Dan from January this year:

CBS/CNET's Dan Farber: One Of The First Tech Journalists

I caught up with Dan Farber last week at CBS/CNET offices on 2nd Street. He’s been back in San Francisco for about a year after working as Editor-in-Chief at CBSNews.com in New York for several years.

Dan was one of the very first tech journalists, and with more than three decades in this business, he’s also one of the most successful tech journalists around.

He has led large editorial teams at many news magazines and he never missed a stride when the blogging explosion began to push journalists to work harder, faster, and better, by learning new skills in audio, video, and photography.

When I was at the Financial Times I often ran into Dan, and then when I left in 2004 to become what I later learned was the first journalist to leave a major newspaper to become a professional “blogger journalist,” I saw Dan even more — at all the evening events that the daytime journalists would rarely cover.

I would see Dan everywhere, everywhere I was looking for stories: at conferences, press events, media salons, and parties.

On the bus…

One of my favorite times with Dan was when we were on John Furrier’s Bloghous Bus, careening through the rain and the Salinas hills, headed towards Las Vegas and the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. It was a very surreal experience.

Marc Canter is standing next to me, singing beautiful opera; Robert Scoble has his baby on one arm while he mugs for Rocky Barbanica’s video camera, with Loic Le Meur. The other bloggers are running around simultaneously interviewing each other for each other’s podcasts, and blog sites — it’s all media, all of the time.

Our only Internet connection is my Verizon modem, which somehow, amidst all the hills, is holding its signal more reliably than our bus is holding the rain-slicked curves.

Amid all this swaying tumult and G-force, I catch Dan’s eye and I realize we both have the same smile of bemusement and pleasure at seeing all this blogger media mayhem going on around us. Unadorned, unabashed, and unpretentious.

A spiritual ride…

After nearly as much time in the media business as Dan, the emergence of blogging and its open formats, was a tremendously welcome and refreshing development. Like Dan, I’ve greatly enjoyed the “blogger” addition to my journalistic endeavors, and the new skills I needed to learn in video production and photography.

I love the creative freedom, the instant publishing, and the chance to innovate within a fresh medium. Although I feel very self-conscious when I say this, blogging has also been an incredible spiritual journey.

Always a newsman…

To survive this long as a journalist and editor, in this careening media industry, you need have as strong a news instinct and drive as Dan’s. He says he really likes the dynamic aspect of news, being always-on, always ready to file, always hot on the story whatever time it happens.

The demands of the modern newsroom has burned out many journalists but working faster, better, and harder never seemed to be a problem for Dan. From what I could see of his prodigious output, he did it all without breaking a sweat, as if he was now finally free to use all his newsman superpowers.

There is no longer any technical or production barrier to stand in the way of a newsman’s most treasured first principle: Be first. Then own the story as it develops through the day and into the next, through your expertise and industry contacts.

Original reporting is key to building the best news organizations. ”You can only get it here” — is the credo that drives original reporting. And it’s what many of today’s news sites should rediscover before it’s too late.

Choices…

“I’m not as fast as I used to be,” Dan says with a smile that says he’s still pretty damn fast. His seniority at CBS gives him the freedom to work on whatever he wants, longer articles, and a book project.

Even though he doesn’t have to be involved in the rush of the newsroom there’s a restless pacing in his eyes when he talks about the CNET News.com team, and the need to be on top of the news, and all that follows: The first sharp hit of breaking news, multiple updates, news analysis, maybe a feature, plus producing all the photographs, video, and audio that’s required.

A troubled industry…

I’ve been writing about the media industry being in trouble ever since I left the Financial Times in 2004 — before even the media industry knew it was in trouble. The troubles haven’t gone away and they are accelerating.

I’ve spoken with Dan about this topic many times because I’ve become obsessed with it and I find it endlessly fascinating.

Dan says that he’s confident that media companies will survive by focusing on expertise, that people are drawn to media created by trusted experts. But he agrees that the great challenge of how to pay for it hasn’t been solved.

I’ve called it the biggest failure of the Internet. And I thought it would be solved long before now — 10 years after I first started reporting on this issue.

The lure…

We talked a lot about what keeps us both doing what we do, when so many in our profession have chosen to leave for gentler, and certainly more generous pastures.

I told Dan that I’ve been tempted lately to do the same, to escape the financial pressures of publishing SVW. My landlord has an unhealthy obsession with money, especially my money. I’m trying to help the poor guy and that might mean joining a larger organization, with larger resources. Maybe even changing jobs completely.

I love to do what I do, which is going out and talking to people, then coming back and writing stories of significance and worth. I want to publish as much original reporting, original analysis, original insights — as I can muster and express.

It often feels as if I don’t have a job because it doesn’t feel like work.

Being a journalist is very satisfying and difficult to leave. I understand completely why Dan is still at CBS and still doing what he does.

Dave Winer is a serial innovator and father of the Blogosphere, if such a thing exists anymore. His recent post is one of his best. It's worth reading because he's a long-time Silicon Valley watcher and he brings his long experience with the tech industry to the article.

Stuck in the middle

The latest Uber "scandal" makes a few things clear, to me at least.

The tech industry needs to change, to adjust to the reality that it's no longer a startup industry. Our products are used everywhere. They are infrastructure, culture, part of our work and family lives, our intellectual, financial and emotional lives. 

Tech products are utilities, not miracles. ...Tech is the fabric of our civilization. It's not a mystery

I agree. In my writing and speaking I often remind people that we are in a post-technology world. Our technologies are disappearing from view, into the woodwork, into the everyday framework of our lives.  

Tech reporting, with its dreary focus on products, is an anachronism, the true tech stories will come soon, they are the people stories, stories about the transformation of people and communities.  

Dave Winer writes:

Sources now have the power of the press. There is nothing surprising or wrong with the idea of a tech company investigating reporters. The idea that only reporters have the ability to publish is a 20th century idea. Now anyone who wants to speak can start a blog or a podcast and get up and speak.

...What an embarrassment for the industry. That the tech press is willing to go to war over Pando, just shows how ridiculous the whole thing has gotten.

Dave is right: anyone can start a blog and publish but the Uber scandal is not about that. And it is not about Pando's coverage of Uber. The press is not defending Pando it is attacking clueless Uber execs.

It is about Uber trying to intimidate critics in the media as it preps for an IPO. And that's unacceptable. Everyone has a right to publish but everyone does not have the right to threaten and intimidate.

[True, there's nothing much to find out, most journalists live lives of shocking normality — private investigators would die of boredom.]

Dave Winer ends,

Our work is important for the future of our civilization. Let's get serious about what we're doing. It's important. We should have fun, but let's behave like what we do matters, because it does.

The work does matter and clueless tech execs will come and go.  Meanwhile, time marches us onwards, into a common future where our technologies create a blended world of analog and digital experiences that will help us to better understand ourselves.

The progress of technology will gradually distill and discover the essence of what makes us human, and what's not, what's replicable and machinable. It's an exciting and scary journey.

[Stanislaw Lem brings us stories directly from that future. I recommend, "The Cyberiad" (illustration above) "Tireless themes of absurdity, satire and philosophy."]

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News Is Not Free: Uber Exec's Threat Against Reporters Reflects Ugly Amoral Culture -SVW

The Future Of Tech Journalism In A Post-Technology World -SVW

A massive metal cast of a sailfish seems to soar out of the desk of Ray Zinn, Silicon Valley's longest serving CEO, founder of Micrel [MCRL:NASDAQ GS], a leading chip company that produces essential components for smartphones, consumer electronics and enterprise networks. 

At 76, he's been running Micrel since its creation in 1978. In 2014 Micrel celebrates 20 years as a public company and a highly profitable one for its long-term shareholders.

Ray Zinn's business success in today's tough chip markets merits attention; what is much more impressive is his ability to lead his company through many tough chip markets during Micrel's 36 years.

He's consistently succeeded in emerging through eight major downturns in global chip markets. Many chip companies weren't able to make it through one downturn and very few, such as Intel, have survived through all the major downturns. It's an impressive achievement.

Zinn credits his success to disciplined work habits and an uncanny business intuition that enables him to make the right decisions at the right time. 

His long history of consistent success has led to many invitations to speak at conferences and meetings of professional associations. Earlier this year he addressed a large group of surgeons. 

It is not surprising that surgeons, or anyone wouldn't find Zinn interesting. He's self-made from a poor, large family in Southern California, raised a Mormon and raised tenacious. His company culture is supportive and generous and highly ethical, a reflection of his own values.

Zinn's family culture didn't encourage individuals speaking about themselves so it takes a while to coax out some his stories. He's uncomfortable talking about himself yet he recognizes that there's value in the stories for others, and that there's a certain satisfaction in their telling.

Zinn's stories are fabulous creations, they are simultaneously personal and universal. They are stories of stubborn perseverance and inspired creativity, such as how he raised financing when there were no VC firms and banks didn't lend to tech companies; his upbringing on a cattle ranch in a large family of eleven kids; his early days at Fairchild and the "Traitorous Eight;" how he went blind in one eye then years later on the eve of Micrel's IPO he went blind in the other eye — and was pressured to cancel the floatation; how as a young salesman he sold a huge order for a chip manufacturing product that didn't exist... There's many more.

He also has many maxims that he uses to help define his company's culture and his approach to life. His favorite is: "Do the hard things first." 

"Why did your mother tell you to get your homework done first before you went out to play?" he asks. I nod because he's right,  and so were our mothers. 

I sat with Ray Zinn for more than four hours until we both noticed that it had been more than four hours and we had better stop, for now.

I'll be back and there will be more about Ray Zinn, his extraordinary life and personal philosophies, coming up in SVW. 

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Raymond Zinn: Executive Profile & Biography - Businessweek

School principals at Deloitte University.

Deloitte, the giant audit and consulting group, is planning to send as many as 100 principals of San Francisco public schools to its Deloitte University in early June, for a three-day leadership program in a bid to help struggling public schools create a generation of highly motivated and college-bound students.

I spoke with Teresa Briggs, vice chair of Deloitte and head of its Western Region, about the venture and what it hopes to achieve. Here are some notes from our conversation:

- Deloitte wanted to help public schools create a college-bound culture as part of its philanthropic activities in giving back to communities. There are studies that show student performance is influenced and connected to the leadership abilities of school principals. Deloitte knew that its leadership courses were very effective for business leaders, why not offer the same to public school principals.

- In early June about 100 San Francisco public school principals will be flown to Deloitte University, a beautiful $350m campus outside Dallas, to go through the leadership program called "Courageous Principals." It will be partly tailored to their needs but leadership in public schools requires pretty much the same leadership qualities that business executives need and the curriculum will remain largely the same.

- There are about 230,000 school principals, 3.8 million teachers and 50 million students.

- Last year Deloitte tested out the program on about 50 public school principals from around the country. Because of the diverse number of locations it wasn't possible to measure or evaluate the effect on school districts. With 100 principals from San Francisco's unified school district it will be easier to see if, and how such a program can improve student results. A year from now Deloitte will be able to judge the success of the venture.

- Principals that took part in the program last year appreciated that someone was investing in their careers and they also greatly appreciated being with other principals and sharing their knowledge and experiences.

- Deloitte University teaches people key aspects of leadership and how to motivate and work best with others. A key part of the program is its Business Chemistry training that classifies people into a combination of four qualities: pioneer, driver, guardian, and integrator. Knowing your own classification and those of others, provides practical strategies for motivating and working well with others. 

- Deloitte will also find mentors within the business community and match them up with school principals for ongoing aid and education.

- If the program shows promise Deloitte will invite other Bay Area companies to also work with public schools and encourage them to offer their internal training and mentoring programs to teachers and principals, not just from public schools. Salesforce.com, HP, and others would be invited to join in the work in making public schools more effective at  producing college graduates.

Foremski's Take: It's great to see Deloitte trying something new in the public education space especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our public schools are terrible, they are basket cases with 50% drop out rates; yet  they should be showcases given that we have so many tech companies here that are working so hard to change the world. It's difficult to see what, if anything, has been changed by the tech companies.

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco told me eight years ago, when I was on a panel with him, that there was nothing that can be done to help San Francisco Bay Area public schools. He said, Tom, we tried and it can't be done.

Our business leaders often boast about solving hard problems and how they relish such challenges so I was shocked that he gave up so quickly and so easily. 

Chambers and many others, are often discouraged because it seems to be such a very hard problem: how to improve public schools. It is hard but it's not an unsolvable problem. There is a lot that can be done for very little money which would have huge positive effects on public schools. 

Deloitte hasn't given up on public schools and is thinking about the problem and coming up with ideas based on what it knows to be effective. Deloitte has seen how powerful it's leadership training can be for business leaders. Why not teach the same skills to our hard working public school principals? It makes good sense.

Many CEOs will gladly fly to Washington to complain to the government about the poor state of education in the US but they won't walk down the street to their local public school and address an assembly of students. We have all these rock star CEOs and genius visionaries in our midst and they walk past our public schools every day, unable, or unwilling to get involved.

Silicon Valley can't claim to the world that it is inventing a better future for all, when its own schools and communities are broken, and facing the same problems as anyplace else. It's a halitosis of hypocrisy. But Deloitte is a breath of fresh air.

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Deloitte University: 

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Please see: 

Courageous Principals

Honoring the Leaders in our School Systems

I had the pleasure of moderating a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell at a breakfast for top tech executives attending Gainsight's  Pulse 2014 conference in San Francisco.

Gladwell said that over the years he has come to appreciate the importance of Geoffrey Moore's classic marketing book "Crossing the Chasm." 

His latest book retells the story of David and Goliath and I think there is indeed a sea change in the works and that the Goliaths of the world are in trouble. The large incumbents are vulnerable to a new breed of very able competitors that I've labelled "new rules enterprises."

The first rule of a new rules enterprise is that it is new — there's no reason to convince colleagues or bosses of the right strategy — you work with a team where everyone is on the same page. (I have nine additional rules that define a new rules enterprise — drop me a line if you are interested in finding out more.)

Pivots are very rare and only with young companies. Large organizations can't change at all. IBM is an exception but it took CEO Lou Gerstner nearly 10 years to transform it from the world's largest computer company to the world's largest computer services company and it barely survived intact.

These are the new "dotcoms"

A new rules enterprise is a very serious challenger to large corporations. It doesn't yet have the same brand value or distribution networks as a large company but it is extremely agile and extremely focused.

In his most recent book, "David and Goliath" Gladwell tells the familiar biblical story in a new way, pointing out that David managed to kill Goliath because he was not the underdog by any means: he was extremely well armed and he disregarded the accepted rules of combat. Goliath was at a tremendous disadvantage.

A new rules enterprise is very much like "David" — it fights very differently and isn't bound by the accepted ways of doing business. Large companies are stuck in their ways and are very vulnerable.  

I'll make a prediction that we'll see some spectacular business success stories as competition moves into a new realm, and a new format for the David and Goliath story.

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Gainsight, now with its second Pulse conference, is doing a good job educating the marketing world about "Customer Success" technologies. More than 5300 companies employ Customer Success Managers — a new position. It's an education for me, too.

Customer Success technologies can be described as helping businesses track their customers' use of their services and flag the ones that are ripe for upsells, or might be leaving. Gainsight estimates that a lost customer means lost revenues of as much as six times the customer acquisition costs. 

Time’s Harry McCracken has written a wonderful column remembering Patrick McGovern, one of the most successful publishers of the past 50 years, and a huge proponent of tech when it was a far smaller world. He died this week at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto.

I met him in 2009 (above) and was incredibly flattered when he sought me out to talk about how his publishing group IDG was successfully managing its digital transformation. It was just the two of us talking for a couple of hours in his hotel room at the Fairmont. I was very impressed by his intelligence and his gentle manner.  He invited me to visit him and also tour his medical research center.

Harry often interacted with McGovern because he worked at IDG for 16 years.

It’s standard practice when someone passes away to describe that person as an unforgettable character, but trust me on this: Pat was unforgettable…his overarching goal really was the noble pursuit of helping the world be smarter about technology. Working for him as an editor felt like a calling as much as a job.

 [He was] an old-school gentleman. For years, he trekked to IDG offices to personally give holiday cards (and bonus checks) to hundreds of employees at their desks, complimenting each person on a recent achievement, usually drawn from a crib sheet he had memorized. When you’d been with IDG for 10 years, he took you out for dinner at the Ritz Carlton, where he greeted you with a corsage and snapped your photo with his own point-and-shoot camera.

I don’t think he did these things because he was naturally outgoing — if anything, he seemed to be on the reserved side — but because he believed that one of his responsibilities as IDG chairman was to make other staff members feel good about their work. Even when I was a low-level editor, I got occasional complimentary notes from him — always written on the same ultra-cheery letterhead, with GOOD NEWS! and a rainbow at the top.

Please read: IDG’s Pat McGovern, 1937-2014: Computer Publishing’s Man of Many Worlds | TIME.com

ThoughtLeader Interview: IDG Media Mogul Patrick McGovern -SVW

The recent SF Creators Salon focused on the topic of trust and content marketing and as usual, it was a lively evening hosted at InPowered’s community space in San Francisco.

I Interviewed the two  founders, the brothers Peyman Nilforoush and Pirouz Nilforoush (above), who are very much on top of this topic of trust and content marketing through the services of InPowered. The company helps client identify trusted media written about them and their products, and then it amplifies its distribution.

Stories written about a product from a trusted, independent source such as a magazine or newspaper, are by far the most effective means of influencing buyers.

InPowered’s research shows four times the effectiveness of trusted content over company produced content. It’s a huge difference that I can never tire of emphasizing this fact because it strikes at the heart of the current crisis in the media industry. The continuing loss of trusted, independent media brands is bad for society and its very bad for commerce.

Bill Ziff made billions of dollars building trusted publications….

Prior to the main interview with the brothers, I interviewed Fred Davis, (above) a former senior executive at Ziff Davis when it was run by the legendary William Ziff. Fred worked very closely with Ziff as he built the largest privately held publishing group. His success, Fred said, was his absolute insistence on editorial quality untainted by any commercial influence. Readers trusted Ziff’s magazines and he made sure nothing eroded that trust.

Ziff’s success has some important lessons for content marketers today. For example, Fred says that Ziff always insisted that content had to be completely led by the editorial team and there could be no fraternization with marketing and advertising sides of the business. Yet in today’s world, content marketing is nearly always led by the sales and advertising departments, which probably explains the poor quality of much of it.

The metrics of trust…

Also, Ziff spent millions of dollars on research showing the effectiveness of his magazine’s high quality, independent editorial in driving sales for advertisers. His near fanatical insistence on producing editorial of the highest quality, free of any commercial taint, resulted in terrific returns for advertisers.

Ziff made a tremendous amount of money. And advertisers made money because they had a highly effective, independent trusted media platform to reach customers.

 The disruption of the media industry’s economics means that there are fewer, independent trusted sources of news and information.  Many publications have closed or have been forced to accept promotional programs that call into question their independence — such as with native advertising.

With fewer journalists to talk to, companies are forced to try to tell their own stories. (I’ve advised Intel on the development of Intel Free Press — a good example of content marketing by a large brand.)

Every company now has to be a media company — whether they like it or not — and most would rather not. 

At the salon I said that, unfortunately, we will have to tear down the old order and we will have to relearn many of the basic truths about media publishing  — the immense value of trusted and independent media publications.

But the destructive nature of the disruption will create a nasty period of confusion and opportunities for special interest groups with nefarious agenda.

We will eventually figure out the economics of the new media and we will again, have trusted, independent media companies with sustainable business models; so that every company no longer has to be a media company. 

Native advertising is bad for advertisers…

It is a huge mistake for trusted publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the few remaining trusted media brands, to accept native advertising. Native advertising is specifically designed to look and feel similar to independently produced stories.

Anything that causes readers to question their trust in a publication, as native advertising does — is absolute madness. 

The lessons of Bill Ziff, and InPowered’s discovery that trusted content is four times more effective than paid content — is proof that native advertising is absolutely wrong for both the publisher and advertisers. Anything that erodes trust in the publication also erodes trust in the advertiser. It’s a loss for both parties.

[Please see: Native Ads Are The Worst Idea In The World - NYTimes Is Clueless]

Advice from SF Creators members…

The first interview of the evening was with Carla Schlemminger (above), a long time member of the salon. It’s part of a regular series of interviews focusing on salon members (coming up Jane Evans Ryan and Heidi Groshelle).

Carla is a San Francisco native and has worked in PR and marketing for many years, and has helped more than three dozen startups and larger companies, with product launches, strategic positioning, and media strategies. She shared some of the common mistakes she’s seen and gave a great presentation on how to avoid them. 

A key point was that companies wait too long before hiring PR and marketing specialists and there isn’t much time to do the things they want to achieve. They have a launch coming up in two weeks but the product isn’t ready and they have no social media footprint, and they want their CEO to be seen as a thought leader.

Carla polled many of her colleagues for her presentation and it was packed with practical advice. Here’s a recap of her five main points:

- Trust your agent not to drink the corporate Kool-Aid.
- Treat Marketing with the same import as you do Finance and Legal.
- Consider your agent an extension of your team and not your “vendor.”
- Align expectations with resources.
- Retrench quarterly similar to what a pro athlete would do.

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My thanks to Robb Henshaw from InPowered for helping to make the event possible and the generous hospitality of the company. It was great to see Matt Greeley, CEO of BrightIdea; Dave Richardson, head of Impress Labs SF; and Tom Zimberoff, one of the world’s best photographers and now at the helm of a potentially revolutionary photo startup; plus many new people and new conversations. I can’t wait to do it all again.

Stewart Brand speaking about Doug Engelbart - at Computer History Museum.

This week marked the anniversary of a groundbreaking 1968 lecture by computer pioneer Doug Engelbart and colleagues at SRI International, that changed the lives of those that were there, and even changed the lives of those that heard about it from others that were there.

Several hundred people gathered at the Computer History Museum for an evening program of tributes and discussion of Engelbart’s genius, and to raise money for the continuation of his work. He was born in 1925 and died earlier this year.

Speakers included Ted Nelson, a computer pioneer who is credited with inventing the hyperlink, and much more; Stewart Brand, president of Long Now Foundation and Whole Earth Catalog publisher; futurist Paul Saffo, Guerrino De Luca, chairman, of Logitech; Curt Carlson, CEO of SRI International; Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri; and John Markoff senior writer at The New York Times.

The audience was as impressive as those on the podium, and filled with computer pioneers and successful entrepreneurs, who had worked with Engelbart or had been influenced by his work.

The final address was given by his daughter, Christina Engelbart, (below) who made the poignant observation o that her father was widely celebrated for his least important achievement (inventing the computer “mouse”) while his most important work is still largely unknown.

It was an extraordinary event and I stayed late talking with many that knew him and were changed by his work. I was surprised how many people had read my work and my prior articles about Doug Engelbart. Ted Nelson, (below, middle) who I revere tremendously, (he realized in the early 1960s that the commuter is a media machine), said he instructs his students to read my articles about Doug Engelbart. 

The “Mother of all Demos” is how people refer to the 1968 lecture and demonstration of how computers in the future will interface with people. The graphical user interface with a “mouse” pointing device was shown, along with video-conferencing, email, spreadsheets, word processors, etc essentially all the aspects of computing that we take for granted today.

At the time, computer interfaces were simple terminals using command lines and programs were stored on punch cards or magnetic tape. 

But Engelbart’s great insight was that easier to use computers would result in a flowering of humanity. He foresaw computer technologies as augmenting people’s abilities and intellect rather than replacing them. This humanistic approach to technology has yet to be realized which is why his work is unfinished. 

There are 50 years worth of archives split between Stanford University and the Computer History Museum. If you know of any materials connected with Engelbart please contact Marc Weber, Founding Curator at the Computer History Museum (marc at webhistory.org). You can also send money to support the Engelbart Memorial Fund at computerhistory.org/contribute. You can also help fund the Doug Engelbart Institute, which continues his work. 

I was fortunate to meet Doug Engelbart in June 2005 at a dinner promoting John Markoff’s book, "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry."

I was late getting to the restaurant and I saw that most people were crammed onto Markoff’s big round table, but off to the side was another large table, half- empty but there was Doug Engelbart. I couldn’t believe my good fortune at coming late because I was able to sit next to him!

We talked for several hours and I was fascinated. I’ve always been a keen history buff and the stories I was hearing were amazing.

Doug Engelbart was very generous towards Markoff’s book, which chronicled the development, and the rise of the “Personal Computer,” which was described as a revolutionary break with the big, centralized computer systems of their time that were time-shared among users. The PC became an allegory for personal freedom and rebellion against “the man” amid the horrors of the Vietnam war, and the violence domestically, and internationally during the Cold War.

I was shocked when Doug Engelbart told me that he and his colleagues had developed working graphical user interfaces, spreadsheets, video-conferencing, email, personal workstations that looked just like PCs, etc — all the commonplace features of computing that we would recognize today, but this was nearly 40 years ago! Yet when the microcomputer emerged in the late 1970s all of his funding dried up because it was based on a central computer.  For the next nearly forty years he wandered around as if in a desert where no one would fund his work. 

His technologies were built around personal workstations, which looked very much like a PC workstation, but they shared time on a central large computer. With the microcomputer or PC, all that work was scrapped and we had to reinvent everything, from the compilers, to the apps, and the communications, over the next two decades or so.

It was as if Pol Pot, the ruler of Cambodia, who’s tyranny murdered millions as he tried to rest the country to year zero, had taken over the mindset of the computer research and rest all that work to year zero.

[Interestingly, Pol Pot was born in the same year as Doug Engelbart, 1925 and his devastation of Cambodia spanned 1975 to 1979, roughly the same period as nearly all computer research work shifted to the microcomputer.]

Today our computing infrastructure is based on a very large central computer system (server farm) connected to thousands of clients. Back to the past. Think how far along we would have been as a society if we hadn’t had to reinvent all those wheels…

It seems extraordinary that in Silicon Valley, who’s chief currency is ideas and not revenues, allowed Doug Engelbart to spend decades without funding, and without the full means to pursue his groundbreaking work. Ted Nelson is another computer industry visionary who was, and still is, in the same position.  

To be fair, the scope of Engelbart’s vision is not an easy one to grasp. Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri, worked with Doug Engelbart when he was younger. He says he was attracted to his ideas and started to try to implement them in some coding over a spare weekend or two, but as he found out more and more, he saw how daunting the task would be.

His daughter Christina Engelbart, executive director of the Doug Engelbart Institution, tells me that within the 50 years of archives, there’s a tremendous amount of his work that still needs to be cataloged and interpreted within a much larger context that looks at how computers and humans can meet the extreme challenge of a future filled with an exponentially growing number of problems. It can only be done through collective intelligence and collaboration in execution. He believed that the power of computers can augment and amplify human abilities. 

Doug Engelbart believed that human potential needs to grow exponentially to meet the challenges to our survival. It’s a human centric vision. However, our society rarely recognizes the work of those that foresee and preempt problems before they become disasters.

Doug Engelbart failure to win funding should not be confused with a failure of his ideas. And his work is not at an end. Etan Ayalon, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, told me he asked Doug Engelbart a couple of years ago, how much of his work has been realized so far? He thought about it and answered: 2.5 per cent.

I’m in no doubt that Doug Engelbart will be widely recognized by future generations as a true visionary amid a lackluster group of tech leaders who think their business acumen is a proxy for sharp insights into the world of tomorrow.

People will listen to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Mark Zuckerberg, John Doerr, etc, when they talk about the future because of their success in building personal wealth and not because of their intellect.

Bill Gates, for example, didn’t see the impact of the Internet at all in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead.” These people are not futurists because their view of the future is quarterly based.

There is as yet, no road ahead, to Doug Engelbart’s future. That road still needs to be built and there’s a lot of work to be done.

Doug Engelbart was not good at business and he was not worth billions or millions.  The several hundred people that crammed into the Computer History Museum were there to pay tribute to his life’s work, ideas, and his character — these are the values that matter and they cannot be bought — they can only be earned.

- - -

Superb interview here with Neil Postman about technology and the Faustian bargain we make with it. He manages to predict the issues that we face today with social networks, online education, and who benefits from technology.

For example, he says that schools help socialize people and how to learn in a group environment, which is essential if people are to become effective in business and in society as a whole.

He also says that with every technology we should ask the question, what problem is this solving? Whose problem is it solving? Which is especially apt with all the web services from Google to Facebook, that are solving a problem for marketers wanting to know more about us. 

There's lots more in this nearly 20 year old interview.(Hat tip Adam Thierer.)

Neil Postman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University. Postman was a humanist, who believed that "new technology can never substitute for human values."

Neil Postman, 72, Mass Media Critic, Dies - NYTimes.com

"Delicate, subtle, kind, intelligent, gracious, inspired, luminous. He was afraid of nothing, was at the forefront, waited for us there."

“Sometimes it felt like talking to someone who lives five years in the future."

Those are some of the quotes from an excellent article by Andy Atkins-Krüger, writing on Search Engine Land, about Ilya Segalovich, co-founder of Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine. He passed away recently following treatment for cancer.

He writes about his first meeting:

 I was nervous. I walked into the seventh floor meeting room of Yandex on Leo Tolstoy Street in Moscow and set my notebook down on the meeting table. Ilya followed me just a few moments later, and I was instantly taken with his warmth and grateful for his great command of English.

…

The conversation did not stop and was rapidly taking over the day…After more than two hours of discussion, we simply had to move on though we could’ve continued all day if we’d been allowed…Ilya looked years ahead and predicted that search engine technologies will be available as open source programming code.

. . .

"He would get completely immersed in an idea and shared it with us so generously, dragged us along, showed us the beautiful new worlds in his head, and was happy to argue and debate for hours, persuade, relate, exclaim, flail arms, draw pictures and make everyone laugh until we all managed to finally catch a reflection of the wonderful and wondrous.”

He was involved in his wife's children's charity and other philanthropic projects. I wish I'd had a chance to meet him.

Here's the whole of the article: In Memoriam: Ilya Segalovich Of Yandex, Search Engine Pioneer, Leader & Visionary

Also, from:Yandex Co-Founder Ilya Segalovich Dies | Waves PR

Yandex allows people to collect all of their data in a single zip file. Segalovich encompassed some of that innocent hopefulness that startups have – a determination to be on the side of the user.  He was calling for other search engines to do the same, and to allow people to port this information across search engines – perhaps at a browser level. The searcher he claimed, should own their own data.

Jeff Bezos is by far the most interesting of the tech industry CEOs. He's the new "Steve Jobs" in terms of being able to attract the same type of attention to his every move. 

Will he be able to guide society into a welcoming, bright digital future in the same way Steve Jobs was able to educate and show how things could become?

Mr. Bezos is a much more humanitarian version of Steve Jobs, who was an uptight hippie despite his ashram and alternate lifestyle experiences. Mr. Bezos' style is much gentler and better suited to our times.

He's a very impressive chief executive, a serial innovator with a strong sense of the future and the discipline to do what's needed to get there. And he can inspire and lead a large organization.

Like Apple, he has his fanboys but they are his shareholders, a stoic bunch that's unfazed by his stewardship of Amazon on a knife-edge of profitability, but continually reinvesting into infrastructure and customers.

It's a brilliant strategy. How can companies, with much larger profit margins to protect, compete against Amazon's shareholders? They'd be killed in the stock market if they fail to maintain their high margins. That means they can't take the same risks. But they create a price umbrella for products and services that Amazon can exploit.

I once asked him, "Shouldn't you focus on succeeding in one business instead of so many different businesses?" He answered, "Why? Why can't we succeed in all of them?" 

Amazon is a tech company but it's not a product company, it's a collection of many businesses. Here's his challenge:

Predicting the future of technology is easy, it's much harder to figure out how to be a business in that future. 

So far, so good for Mr. Bezos. His successes haven't come easily and he deserves the recognition for a hard job done well.

Reinventing the newspaper business might be a stride too far but it's worth a try and I'm glad it's not my money experimenting with business models. Who knows, he might come up with a winning formula that everyone can use. If not, then not much harm done - the $250m is only 1% of his fortune.

Steve Jobs didn't win all the time.

It runs alongside a two-day conference with many top speakers such as:

Peter Auditore
SNCR Senior Fellow and Principal Researcher of Asterias Research

Paul Gillin
SNCR Senior Fellow and Awards & Best Practice Chair and Principal of Paul Gillin Communications

Mark Hannah
SNCR 2008 Fellow and Annenberg Fellow, Ph.D. Student at the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication

Shel Holtz
SNCR Founding Fellow and Principal of Holtz Communication + Technology

Dr. David Larcker
Professor of Accounting at the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University

Geoff Livingston
SNCR 2009 Fellow and Co-Author of Marketing of the Round: How to Develop an Integrated Marketing Campaign in the Digital Era

Ed Moran

Partner and Co-President of Human 1.0

Katie Paine
SNCR Senior Fellow & Industry Standards Chair and CMO of News Group International

Giovanni Rodriguez
CEO and Co-Founder of SocialxDesign

Ingrid Sturgis
2011-2012 SNCR Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism of Howard University

And more. . .

Salesforce.com recently held its Cloudforce conference. I caught up with its Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami, who's based in the UK.

I first met Mr Rangaswami several years ago when he was Chief Scientist at British Telecom. And I've been an avid reader for many years of his blog confused of calcutta where you can find insights into the nature of enterprise technologies, food, copyright, and music in equal measures.

When he joined Salesforce in late 2010 I wrote that the company had made an important and astute hire.

I asked why he joined Salesforce?

"Salesforce's Chatter is what convinced me that the company understood what is going on in the enterprise, this was the biggest attraction for me. I saw that Salesforce understands social."

Chatter is sometimes described as Twitter for the enterprise and it competes against Tibco's Tibber, and Yammer. The effects of social media on business has long been a prime focus for Mr Rangaswami.

At British Telecom (BT) he was responsible for many initiatives and strategies that helped the organization transform into a telecom platform, hosting many innovative services. The Salesforce platform and its large business ecosystem is a very similar and familiar environment. And like BT it's an acquisitive organization, more than 14 deals since late 2009.

A key acquisition for Mr Rangaswami when he was at BT was Ribbit, a fast growing Silicon Valley startup that had huge ambitions to disrupt the Telco industry, describing itself as "Silicon Valley's first phone company."

It was acquired by BT for $108 million in July 2008. Mr Rangaswami said, "It was a good deal for BT and it would have been even better if it had a mobile business. It's still a very good business for BT."

These days his attention is on something much larger than the disruption of the telcos, large as that opportunity is, there's one much larger. As Chief Scientist at Salesforce he is focused on figuring out how to deal with an incredibly disruptive trend, one that will rewrite fundamental rules of business itself -- social media and the creation of social business.

I firmly believe that the drive to create social businesses will become the largest business reengineering project ever undertaken in our short capitalist history. It will disrupt many companies, most to the point of failure.

Transforming one of today's large corporations into a social business will be hard, nearly impossible in many cases. Only some will be able to make the transition leaving room for a new generation of winners, what I call "new rules enterprises," for which I have ten rules for success. But it's the first rule that's the most important: It's new. In a new business there's no legacy culture and processes to hinder growth.

Salesforce sees massive revenue opportunities in this transformation of companies into social businesses. In November 2009, I was in a meeting with Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder, along with ZDNet colleagues Dennis Howlett, Mike Krigsman, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Vinnie Mirchandani. He spoke about a problem facing Salesforce, how to move from $1 billion in annual revenues to $10 billion? The CRM market wasn't large enough to meet those ambitious revenue targets.

Salesforce made a big bet more than two years ago that the answer to its problem was 'social': the tip of the arrow for new business would be in providing the myriad number of business services required by social business, or as Salesforce calls it: the social enterprise.

Shortly after Mr Parker's revelation of Salesforce's ambitions, it raised $500 million in a private debt placement that helped it make 14 acquisitions, compared with just five previously, laying the foundation for its future $10 billion revenue business. The most recent acquisition was Rypple, a management app using social software to motivate teams of workers.

Helping companies become a social business is a big business and also a tough business because of the considerable education that needs to take place. Mr Rangaswami said he spends 80% of his time traveling, talking with customers, especially European companies.

Educating businesses about the need to become social businesses is easier if it's done by someone with direct experience in social media and business. Which is what Mr Rangaswami has, and one that he continues with, blogging regularly and with as much enthusiasm as in his early days.

I'm a firm believer that to really understand something new you have to experience it, you have to be in it to know it -- reading about social media doesn't work if you aren't involved in it, consistently and continually, because (like all culture) - it changes constantly.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce understands this important distinction and has consistently hired people with deep social media experience, such as my former colleague Steve Gillmor, and many others.

(Mr Benioff is extremely media savvy. I'm always amazed that he hires a PR firm because he has no trouble getting attention whenever he needs it. On Twitter he's @Benioff.)

Mr Rangaswami believes that the future of enterprise software will be defined by four functions: publishing, search, fulfillment, and conversation.

I totally agree, especially about the "publishing" function. For many years I've pointed out that every company is a media company. Even if they make diapers, they need to publish to many different audiences, and now with the evolution of the Internet into a two-way Internet, they need to listen and analyze what those audiences are publishing back to them.

Which is why I would add a fifth function of enterprise software: real-time analytics.

Every company is a media company ... but most aren't good at it. Most are terrible at it. Which is why there's lots of money in helping companies become better at being media companies.

For example, Salesforce just launched Site.com, a cloud-based service for quickly creating web sites for desktop and mobile users, and integrating social media streams. This, and other services such social media analytics from Salesforce's Radian6 acquisition, are the types of business utilities that every social business needs.

It's easy to see why Mr Rangaswami, with his deep interest in social media and its transformative effects on business and society, would be attracted to Salesforce. The company has a plan, a focused leadership, and the means to make a significant global impact in the development of a radically new business model for the enterprise.

Although it's tough convincing businesses that they need to change it's made easier if you can articulate it well. That's why the recruitment of Mr Rangaswami, and others such as Kevin Marks, also from BT, shows that Salesforce understands what's needed to make the most of the opportunities ahead.

Social business is also where Salesforce can break free of its CRM past, and its "cloud versus enterprise apps" pigeon hole. The cloud won, what's next?

The next big enterprise market is in creating the many different types of services needed by a social business. This will be great for startups because it'll be a very creative and innovative space.

I asked Mr Rangaswami if he would consider moving to the Silicon Valley area, since he has spent so much time here in recent years. He said he wouldn't. "I've got too much work to do in Europe, talking with European companies."

European businesses are nearly always slower in adopting new types of enterprise technologies than their US counterparts. Mr Rangaswami will need all of his powers as a communicator to convey an important message, that in regard to social business, prompt action is the best strategy.

The danger facing nearly every company is from a competitor that has managed to transform itself into a social business before them. The speed of transformation will become the measure of competitiveness.

...

Please see:

About confused of calcutta

I believe that it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfilment and conversation. I believe that weaknesses and corruptions in our own thinking about digital rights and intellectual property rights will have the effect of slowing down or sometimes even blocking this from happening.

I believe we keep building layers of lock-in that prevent information from flowing freely, and that we have a lot to learn about the right thing to do in this respect. I believe identity and presence and authentication and permissioning are in some ways the new battlegrounds, where the freedom of information flow will be fought for, and bitterly at that.

I believe that we do live in an age of information overload, and that we have to find ways of simplifying our access to the information; of assessing the quality of the information; of having better tools to visualise the information, to enrich and improve it, of passing the information on.

I believe that Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law and Gilder's Law have created an environment where it is finally possible to demonstrate the value of information technology in simple terms rather than by complex inferences and abstract arguments.

I believe that simplicity and convenience are important, and that we have to learn to respect human time.

I believe we need to discuss these things and find ways of getting them right. And I have a fervent hope that through this blog, I can keep the conversations going and learn from them.

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/about/

(Peter Dengate-Thrush, far right, outside an ICANN meeting in Paris. Source: ICANN)

ICANN, the California non-profit organization responsible for setting the name of all domains, will soon allow a vast array of new names to be created. Beginning next year, for the right amount of money ($185,000) you'll be able to create the right to use almost any word as a top level domain name (TLD) instead of generic TLDs .com, org, etc.

Canon, for example, could create and buy the exclusive rights to .Canon. Or a city could create its own TLD, such as .SanJose.

There will be huge numbers of new domain names possible, adding to the current 22 generic names and about 250 country names. The new naming system will also allow non-western script for the first time.

This seemingly simple change was far from simple in execution. It has taken more than ten years of work by ICANN, huge numbers of meetings around the world, input from over 85 countries, and consultations with hundreds of industry trade groups and corporations.

A decade spent navigating the multitude of special interest agendas is probably ICANN's biggest achievement.

Yet just weeks before the new naming policy is to be implemented there is yet another hurdle -- the US based Association of National Advertisers (ANA) announced its strong opposition to the new plan and it is actively encouraging others to oppose ICANN.

The ANA said that the new policy would be "introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the ICANN top-level domain program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace."

The ANA recently persuaded 87 business associations and large companies to back its opposition to the ICANN policy.

Opposition has also come from adult video makers who have sued to stop the .XXX TLD because of trademark concerns.

A common belief is that the new names will force companies to register large numbers of domains to keep them out of the hands of competitors, or others that might be engaged in nefarious schemes, which might damage their brands.

I spoke with Peter Dengate-Thrush, who spent 12 years at ICANN, seven years as chairman, before stepping down in June. He is now chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd, a publicly traded company that invests in TLD related businesses and services.

Here are some notes from our conversation:

- The ANA had plenty of time to voice any concerns during the multi-year process of defining the new policy.

- We've worked hard to make ICANN become an international organization rather than be seen as a US organization. If ANA succeeds it will make it seem as if ICANN is controlled by US special interests. We have worked hard to make ICANN into an international organization that has nothing to do with the US or any other country. We managed to remove US government oversight in key areas.

- We've worked hard at ICANN to ensure that we have a single global Internet. There were many times when the Internet could have fractured into several distinct Internets, which would have been very bad news for the development of the Internet. We prevented that from happening by showing that ICANN is not controlled by the US and serves everyone.

- We have essentially been creating the operating system for the Internet.

- Internet users will benefit greatly from the new naming policy because it gives them easier navigation and safety in that they will be better able to trust the domain names they see.

- Some of the members of the ANA group opposing ICANN are companies that have expressed strong interest in buying TLDs around their brands. It's puzzling.

- Google and other search engines sent representatives but they did not try to influence the new policy.

- I asked how will navigation of dotcom names be improved when Google has huge influence on where its users go, such as through its "Instant" search suggestions, and through a single type-in box in its Chrome browser that doubles as a search box and address. Plus, Google rankings are based on how long a site has been active. He said it might take a short while for the new domains to build in search rankings but that the names would help search engines better determine the authenticity of sites. There will be less cyber squatting not more.

- The new domains will be liberating for many Internet users in many countries because it will allow for non-western alphabets, and for regional domain names.

- There will be a cap of 1,000 new TLDs per year. Each applicant will go through a rigorous approval process by ICANN.

- Not all the new TLDs will succeed. Some will fail.

- The new naming policy will create new jobs in consulting and other services areas.

- The extra cost of registering domain names by major brands will be very small.

- Small businesses will be able to buy names such as .plumber.SanFrancisco, which will help in marketing.

- The new policy is essential if the Internet is to reach billions of new users. It took a long time to reach 1 billion users because the Internet is based on decisions made in the mid-1980s, it wasn't designed to scale to billions of users. The introduction of the new TLD policy plus the adoption of IPv6, will accelerate the time needed to add the next 1 billion users.

- One of the remaining challenges for ICANN is to remove US Department of Commerce control over the root zone file, a small but critical file that determines the entire address system of the Internet. The US oversight is simply to make sure that the file conforms to ICANN policy but many countries want to remove that connection because it looks as if the Internet is controlled by the US.

- Did he take the job at TLDHL to take advantage of the new ICANN policy? No, he left at the scheduled end of his term as chairman.

But the bottom of the cone is crowded, its very stressful as everyone competes to become one of the big companies. You are expected to work long hours; you can't cash in your options for years; and you live in a roller coaster world of manic passions that seem to be changing the world, and then deep depths of dark despair as everything appears to be falling apart.

It's a great life (some of the time). Yet it doesn't have to be so stressful and so difficult. There are well established practices that can help people deal with the tough life of surviving Silicon Valley, and to become more effective entrepreneurs.

I spoke with Michael Fischman, president of Art of Living - a 30 year old organization that teaches people a 20-minute daily exercise that greatly reduces their stress while improving their productivity.

Mr Fischman is a former ad executive at Ogilvy & Mather on Madison Avenue, and has devoted the past 20 years to helping millions of people learn better techniques in coping with life.

"At Art of Living we teach a breath technique called Sudarshan Kriya developed by our founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar," said Mr Fischman. "We have 21 programs per month in the Bay Area but we are also in more than 151 countries."

The practitioners of Sudarshan Kriya believe that the breath links the mind with the body. For example, different breathing patterns are associated with specific emotions - short and quick breaths when you are angry; sad feelings are often marked by long and deep breaths (sighs); and so on. By focusing a daily practice on your breath you can quiet the mind and improve your experience of life.

"It's not meditation but it does facilitate mediation because it calms your mind," explains Mr Fischman. "It's difficult to meditate if your mind is constantly active, engaged in a distracting dialogue. With Sudarshan Kriya you calm your mind and reduce the unnecessary chatter and then the meditation comes naturally."

Dealing with the constant distractions of our digital lifestyle -- in addition to the distracting internal dialogue -- is a big challenge for me and for many others. I can imagine the benefits from a life that is more focused, more productive, and more peaceful.

The technique is simple and doesn't require people to give up anything, adopt special diets, or make any life style changes. But people generally do, says Mr Fischman, as they experience the benefits of the daily practice.

Art of Living has trained tends of thousands of people in the Bay Area, many of them are startup entrepreneurs.

"We have taught prominent Silicon Valley business leaders, startup founders, students, people in prison -- they come from all walks of life. We teach people how to focus on the present."

The geek/nerd life is infamous for obsessing one moment about the past, and then the future. The present seems absent, which is ironic given the fashion for "real-time" in web and IT services.

The present always seems to flash by while the past is dissected constantly, while thoughts about the future pile on anxiety after anxiety.

Chris Hardwick, the founder of The Nerdist, has a great description of this state in the current issue of Wired Magazine - "Self Help For Nerds":

Nerds get caught up in minutiae, because there is a tremendous and fulfilling sense of control in understanding every single detail of a thing more than any other living creature. But we also tend to have a very active internal monologue (in some cases, dialog).

...

Whether it's games, alcohol, painted figurines, film continuity, or conversations where we're convinced someone doesn't like us because of something we said, nerds obsess.

We zealously deconstruct. We have that very active internal monologue. I think many of the things we undertake are, in part, attempts to drown out that monologue. We are hyper-self-aware. We have difficulty "chilling out."

We tend to suffer from depression and anxiety. Sometimes it can get really bad. If you've never had a panic attack, for example, I'll describe it thusly: Imagine being fucked in the heart.

The practice of Sudarshan Kriya offers a way out of this cycle.

"Daily practice makes people more centered, calm, and inspired. That makes it easier to lead others, it makes it easier to achieve your goals. You can have unshakable clarity in the midst of a crisis. That's a great tool to have," says Mr Fischman.

The practice of Sudarshan Kriya helps make people more confident, more capable.

"Venture capitalists invest in people that can handles the stresses of a business, that don't get stuck, that can inspire others."

So before you go into that VC pitch meeting maybe you should consider a 20-minute Sudarshan Kriya session -- it might help a lot.

---
Please see:

Sudarshan Kriya Technique | The Art of Living

FAQs on Sudarshan Kriya | The Art of Living

Course Enquiry Form | The Art of Living

Stumbling Into Infinity » Author

Vivek's Blog: Michael Fischman - First meeting with His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

By Matthew Buckland

Matthew Buckland: A while back you made some startling pronouncements on Der Spiegel Online about journalism and media, implying that journalism in the future would be a mere "hobby". Do you still hold these views... is journalism as a craft dead and dying?

CA: Did I say that?

MB: I think you did, I think you said there was no such word as a journalist... you didn't understand what the word was anymore. You thought journalism would become more of a hobby than a craft. Did they misquote you or am I paraphrasing it wrong?

CA: I don't remember saying that; I don't know whether you're paraphrasing wrong... I don't have a problem with journalism. I have a problem with our vocabulary. I think the vocabulary of media, news and journalism was created over a hundred years ago and it hasn't evolved. I think we need new words, I don't think we need new professions. My issue is entirely semantic. I think these words are losing the crispness of their definitions, I don't know what the new words are. This is a question that is dear to the hearts of journalists. Obviously I run a media organization as it is traditionally defined. I employ journalists as traditionally defined. I don't have a problem with the profession, but I do think that if we are to restrict ourselves to the 20th century definitions of these words we will limit our success and our range.

MB: Does the word "citizen journalist" make any sense in today's society?

CA: No that doesn't work for me at all. The word "citizen" is only meaningful within a political context. What does "news" mean? Right now on Facebook I am hearing that my son's ultimate Frisbee team is going to be playing next weekend and who they are playing against... that's important news to me. If my daughter skins her knee on the playground or was pushed, that's important news to me. It's not going to be reported by the New York Times and it doesn't count as news in the traditional definition, but it's more relevant to me than an earthquake in Siberia. So social media is a way of putting small-end news in the same medium, that is the internet, as big end news. This has challenged the definition of what news is.

MB: But don't the old words still hold? What you're describing is what has been happening for years. We have always communicated our news to each other; we've been doing that even before the arrival of social networks. Journalists had a specific function in society and that was to communicate news on a macro or national level...

CA: Really? That's news to me. So you don't have local newspapers that cover PTAs or parent meetings? I think what you're not acknowledging here is that hyper-local, the news of your neighborhood, has always been news. It's always been of interest. There is no reason someone can't use journalistic principles to address it. We just haven't had a business model for it.

The only business model is obviously local news at town level. But the only business model for news, which is a privileged model, is news that reaches the largest possible audience, which tends to be national news. The reason newspapers only cover national news is not that it's the only thing we're interested in, but it's the only thing we can make money out of.

The rise of the internet means you don't need an expensive publishing operation to distribute local news or even hyper-local news -- and furthermore the fact that even person-to-person communication is happening in exactly the same medium as broadcast communications, which is to say the web, means the two now compete with each other in a way they never did before.

So I run a website focused on robotics where there is a lot of news. None of it is written by journalists, but just written by members of the community. We have a global audience, we do a million plus page views a month, we compete with media not for money but for people's time, and yet none of it is written by journalists -- so what are we doing?

MB: Do you not think there is a place for journalists? Journalists undergo training, there is a strong subscription to ethics, and there is professionalization of a craft. So I guess when a "journalist" reports the news there is a high degree of credibility and trust?

CA: ...sure. I'm not sure why you are asking the question. I have already told you that I employ journalists and that I believe strongly in it and I have never said otherwise. Can you please explain question better? What about what I said tells you that "I don't believe in everything you just said"?

MB: I am trying to understand the environment you're sketching... obviously we know the traditional notion of a "journalist". I am trying to understand how the craft or profession of journalism would change to mirror the new world you are describing?

CA: I do think the craft of journalism will evolve. I don't think the old model is broken but I do think there is an opportunity for a new model. I do think that all the qualities you describe: accuracy, style, coherence, editing, the pyramid structure... all that stuff is really good and universal. It reflects centuries of understanding of how people like to receive their information.

My suspicion is that the ranks of people creating news is going to grow hugely, including many people who are doing it for non-commercial reasons, the local example I gave earlier being one. As we shift from a traditional "we publish, you read" model to a more "community-social" model, one of the roles of journalists may be to be community managers or editors, or even coaches to help communities do a better job of telling their own stories. Our skill is as important as ever, but we're not the only ones capable of deploying them.

MB: Should media companies offer their online content for free or paywall it, or opt for a paywall where there is free content that lures users into paying for more in-depth content?

CA: Yes, all the paywalls I know are using freemium -- which is to say there is a free tier. Certain stories are free, others aren't. Sometimes there are a number of stories per month that are free. Sometimes sections are free; sometimes the first half is free. So everybody I know of uses freemium, which is to say a carefully calculated balance between free and paid by which people can engage at no cost, but the most appropriate consumers are encouraged to upgrade to a superior paid experience.

MB: Is Wired considering a paywall?

CA: Over time we would like to offer a premium experience. I certainly don't think we want to take anything that's currently free and put it behind a paywall. We offer a freemium experience on tablets and we obviously offer a paid experience in print. We'd like to be able to offer a premium experience for advertisers that's a superior experience across all platforms but that isn't to say we will take what is currently free and close it down. It will be more that we would add.

MB: What will the media company of future look like?

CA: Well, when you say media company, it's hard to know where to draw the line. Is Facebook a media company? Is Google a media company? I don't know. I think media companies won't define themselves as solely a "media company". I think they will think of themselves as a brand company, they have brands and those brands have many manifestations: There will be traditional media, there will community, there may be e-commerce, there may be events, there could be product development. I think the media company of the future won't constrain itself by thinking of itself only as a "media company".

MB: So a company like Facebook will practice activities similar to that of New York Times or Wired for example?

CA: Obviously they come from a different place -- I don't think Facebook wants to be creating original content. But there are some similarities as well. Facebook realizes that a social graph is important and creating a place for people to talk to each other, a platform for communication is core to their strategy.

Traditional media companies are recognizing that social is important to what they do as well. So I think there is a lot of overlap. Some companies are basically technology development companies... Google and Facebook are clearly that. Other companies are largely content-creation companies, but at the end of the day we are serving the same customers.

Customers want social and we should all be able to integrate that well. I think again to my earlier point of semantics, I think the lines are really blurring... that's why if you constrain yourself to the old words of the 20th century markets, you'll miss a trick.

I am a media company I don't do "X". If "X" is seen as software development or apps then you may find that you don't offer consumers what they want. So broadly we think moving out to say we're brands, we represent brands which have clear meaning in media context but meaning outside a media context as well is a more liberating way to think about where we should go and what we are good at.

MB: Do you foresee a range of super brands or super companies that play on all aspects of the internet, producing hardware, running social networks? Is that where you are going with this?

CA: No. I think at a certain point you have to understand the limits of your competency. We think of ourselves at Conde Nast as a brands company, but I don't see us making hardware. We're not going to try to compete with Apple with our own tablets. So sometimes you partner for those things, sometimes you do have competency in-house and you do it yourself.

I don't think everyone is going to follow the Apple model; very few companies can execute it professionally across those domains as Apple can. At a certain point you have to know your strengths and weaknesses and execute where you have strength and partner where you don't have strength. I think the number of companies who can do it all is incredibly limited.

Even Google has partnered with hardware, with Motorola being a question mark. I think you may have super brands, but you're not going to have end-to-end vertically integrated conglomerates who make everything... you just cannot manage a company successfully like that, unless you're called Apple.

MB: If social networks are diverting and competing for our attention in that they are producing content that's attracting our attention, what does that mean for journalism as a craft of profession? In 10 or 20 years times will it be as viable as it is now?

CA: I think there will be more people practicing journalism than fewer ...but I think the proportion of people paid for doing journalism will shrink as total of the whole. Don't misread that, I am saying more people will be paid for doing journalism but because the overall pool of that will rise so much more than that, the professional journalist may be a shrinking fraction of the whole. That's been true for a decade. If you define journalism as simply "passing along news," ever since discussion boards this has been true.

So there's nothing new here, this is all a semantic debate. I have often said that if one of my children were to follow in my footsteps... my business card says "editor"; I suspect that their business card would say "community manager". I manage a community but my community is a team of professional editors and writers. We set guidelines and set some directions to help them express themselves better... it's a relatively closed set.

A community manager does all that in an open set. This is not to say members of the community can't get paid and certainly not to say community managers can't get paid -- they should be paid. But they are operating with an open-ended set of contributors who gain access to your attention, not by being a credentialed journalist, but by just having something to say and being skilled at saying it. So that's the shift I think you will see over next few generations.

MB: A question on the blogosphere. Five or six years ago the blogosphere was an exciting place, there was great content be found. And then something seemed to happen. It seemed like a less compelling place, and that seemed to coincide with a greater quantity of bloggers coming onboard. It seemed harder to find good content in that space. Do you think the blogosphere has lost its shine?

CA: Well, we were the first people to write the "Kill your blog" story a few years ago and we've certainly, in a cheeky, semi-serious way, have claimed as much. I discontinued my own blog a few years ago, the Longtail. I continue to blog everyday in another format on DIY Drones -- much more narrow, shorter posts. I write a lot on things like Google+. You may not call that a blog, but it feels like a blog to me.

I think that on some level we're trying to figure out what is the natural unit of communication. Twitter says the natural unit is a 140 characters, Google+ says to me it's closer to a hundred words, Facebook says maybe the natural unit is a status update. I think we're just groping our way towards what feels right in the end, and maybe it's not the same thing for everybody.

My problem with the blog is that there was quite a high barrier to entry. I needed to write 400 smart words, I couldn't feed that beast that on a regular enough basis... just too hard. So I gravitated toward easier mediums because they weren't as intimidating. Other people felt that the problem with blogs was that they didn't aggregate conversation. They fragmented conversation. You had to go on a blog and have a conversation on that blog rather than a common platform like Facebook or Twitter. Other people felt it didn't integrate well enough with mobile as well as Twitter did. There are all sorts of arguments about this.

...I would say the word "blog" is a little constraining. It does suggest a model built around the 400-word post with a picture and comments at the bottom on a standalone site. But the idea of posting your thoughts in public is alive and well, only it's just migrating to platforms that fit in with our lives and needs better.

So the blog is dead, long live the blog.

MB: So who is going to come up with these new words that define our future?

CA: Not my job... it probably is my job and I am just failing at it. I don't know. Typically, in the history of technology, it's taken a century. The horseless carriage took decades before it turned into automobile and then turned into a car... so it does take decades for society to settle on the right language. So this is normal.

MB: Have you any suggestion for the new word for "journalist"?

CA: None at all. I am sorry.

MB: Take a stand... you must have some thoughts?

CA: I am at loss for words; I try to navigate conversations so that I don't have to come up with a noun.

If you don't know who Chris Anderson is, you don't really understand the internet. He's one of the great technology thinkers of our time who has given us new ways of understanding how the medium has influenced business and society, and where it is all going.

Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine, an authority on tech culture, trends and innovation. Time Magazine called Anderson one of the world's 100 most influential thinkers.

The Wired editor is best known for popularizing two key ideas that have helped shape internet thinking today: The Long Tail and Freemium. Companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix are long-tail companies, using the internet's ability to reach a wide, varied and niched audience at fractional costs. Freemium is the idea that if you offer basic products or services for free, and charge for advanced features, you'll be more successful.

These ideas have been espoused in his two best-selling books, Free: The Future of a Radical Price and The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More .

Anderson is due to speak at Discovery's Leadership Summit in the coming weeks with other luminaries such as former US vice-president and environmentalist Al Gore.

In this interview, part one of a two-part series, Anderson speaks about how our internet experience is moving from open to closed platforms, and how this presents challenges for consumers and opportunities for producers. He also touches on how HTML5 could be the web's savior -- creating a future high-fidelity, application-like web.

Anderson gives us his thoughts on Google's latest attempt at social, Google+, and how it's making up for Twitter's shortcomings, and shares some insights about his third book.

Matthew Buckland: You speak about the new "App Economy" -- do you get the feeling that the web is decidedly out of fashion these days and that people are opting for controlled platforms (such as Apple's app store)?

Chris Anderson: You're referring to my "web is dead" article of last year?

MB: Yes

CA: I love the web, I hope the web isn't dead, but there is a demonstrable shift in user behavior towards mobile. And mobile brings with it two things: First of all there is a shift towards apps. Mobiles tend to be optimized for apps because of smaller screens ... The other aspect of the web, which was implicit in your question, is the notion of "openness" which is built into the web. And increasingly we see closed platforms that happen to use the web as their transport and display -- sites like Facebook -- which are not open.

In the definition we chose, Facebook does not count as the "open web". Your iPad does not count as the "open web," Xbox Live does not count as the "open web". They use the internet as transport and sometimes they use HTML as the display technology and sometimes they render in a browser. By and large, they are not open ecosystems and therefore don't fall into Tim Berners-Lee's original definition of "the web".

So I would say there is very much a shift away from the wide-open web to closed platforms. Some of those closed platforms are on mobile, some of them are closed platforms within browsers, but we're definitely seeing a shift -- and frankly it worries me as a consumer but it's a huge opportunity as a producer. So I am conflicted in that respect.

I love closed platforms as a way to build a business, but as a consumer I prefer open platforms. That's not hypocrisy, it's wave particle duality if you will, but that's where we are.

MB: Why do you think people are opting for these closed, controlled platforms?

CA: Well, do you have any Apple products yourself?

MB: Yes I do...

CA: Well do you now need to ask that question? Apple has proven that a controlled experience can be a very good experience -- that with control comes some certainty over the consumer experience. They can dictate how to get stuff, how to use it. And that can be a really smooth experience. Openness tends to bring with it chaos. I happen to like chaos myself, I quite like the web, but every now and then you just want something simple that works. For all that one may object to closed platforms, they tend to be quite a smooth experience.

MB: We live in controlled societies... is this a case of the internet catching up with reality?

CA: Yes that's a good question. I suppose you're probably right in some respects, that we do need rules and policies and constraints to make life bearable. I can tell you as a father of children that if it weren't for rules it'll be Lord of the Flies. As humans we like freedom, but we also like predictability and some boundaries within which to work. Any designer will tell you that constraints are liberating. Tell me where the walls are and I will innovate within those walls. So I think there is something to that.

Clearly if you look at the app economy, half a million apps or something out there, there are very controlled sets of rules about how to write an app and how to get it in, but once those rules are set there is a huge opportunity for innovation between those walls as we've seen. So yes, I think that there is a place for rules and constraints and there is a place for unbridled innovation... you need both.

MB: Will there be a web in 10, 20 years time?

CA: Absolutely. In my article I made that very clear. Right now we're seeing a shift. Commercial content is tending to shift toward these more closed platforms. Other content such as community, amateur content or content that doesn't intend to have a business model tends to seek openness for the sake of the largest possible audience.

So you could imagine a bi-polar world where there is a completely free world that isn't intended for business. This is the world of human-to-human communication and that exists in the open web. Then there is the commercial web which is increasingly closed. That again leans to your point that the "web reflects human society". You have your job, and you have your life. Your interactions at work are paid interactions. Your interactions with your friends and family are unpaid. The two worlds coincide and superimpose, but the notion of commercial and non-commercial existing in the same domain is completely in line with our civilization, so I don't see any problem there.

MB: One of the big problems about the world of mobile applications is that you have to develop multiple apps for multiple devices. Do you think we will in the future see a universal application standard, so you can develop once for all devices?

CA: That's what we all want. There is some hope that HTML5 could represent that... we'll see. We're pretty bullish on HTML5. We're certainly developing our apps with that in mind.

With universal standards comes the fear of the lowest common denominator. We love the web, but let's face it -- the web is not a high-resolution design platform. It's really difficult to create beautiful and predictable rendering designs on the web. You can do it with Flash but then you break all sorts of web conventions. You can do it with fancy HTML, but then it doesn't work in half the browsers -- there's lots of browsers out there, lots of platforms, different aspect ratios, pixel densities, operating system... some places support different versions of HTML, Javascript, Flash or not Flash, or Silverlight. We've been struggling with this for 20 years and it's not getting any better.

That's what happens when you have a completely open innovation environment. It's very hard to establish standards that are universal. I hope HTML 5 can advance on this, but I don't think it's going to be the silver bullet to solve all of our problems. Right now it's pretty simple: it's an Apple world. You develop for iOS and Android -- and you're done.

As there is more competition, it'll be more complex. We're going to bet on HTML5, we're going to accept that it is going to limit us somewhat in design fidelity -- but we will accept that for the sake of production efficiency and flexibility across platforms. We're going to continue to operate in an app environment because browsers just aren't there yet.

Maybe someday browsers will support standards that allow us the design scale that we want -- in which case we won't need to ship an app. That would be great but we are not there yet.

MB: So a future website could actually look pretty much like an application on an iPhone or iPad device?

CA: It could do. We're not wedded to executables, we're not wedded to applications. We are wedded to a high-fidelity consumer experience. Right now an application is the only way for us to achieve that. If tomorrow's browsers allow us to achieve the same thing, using the web model of content with the application being in the browser itself, that would be great -- but we haven't seen that yet.

MB: What would your advice be to Apple? Obviously HTML 5 threatens its turf. We've seen what some major media companies like the Financial Times have done in this space, with their web app versus the iOS app.

CA: I have learned long ago not to try and give advice to Apple. They don't need my advice, they are doing fine on their own. The great thing about Apple is that they have an extremely coherent vision of one way of doing things -- and again I love clear and coherent vision. I know how to navigate with it to accommodate them or navigate around them. Clarity is good.

But I don't think it's the only vision out there. It's good to see Android rising as a competing vision, but there will be others. My advice to Apple is "keep doing what you're doing" because that's really helpful in establishing a direction and executing well on that. I wouldn't want to live in a world where Apple was the only company, but I wouldn't want to live a world where Apple wasn't there at all.

MB: Do you think simplicity, the concept, is key to the successes of many of the large successful internet companies of today?

CA: Yes, I think that's well put. Simplicity is one way to put it. It's lowering the barrier to entry. It's clear what to do and it's clear how to do it. That's crucial. I think what we've learned from Apple is focusing on clear easy benefits. It's the key to their success. All companies have lessons to learn there.

Google has clearly made some mistakes in social by building products that were too complex to both use and understand. I think Google+ is an effort to make something simpler and more obvious. It's obviously more complex than Twitter.

One could argue that for all Twitter's success, its simplicity is also a constraint in that it's hard for the service to evolve to address secondary issues of true conversations without adding a whole layer of complexity that's contrary to their mission. I do take your point, and broadly, simplicity is something every successful product has -- but it can't be the only thing it has.

MB: We've see how Android has grown in numbers, so do you think that Apple should open source its platform like that of Google's Android?

CA: I am not going to go there. My tablet is an iPad, and my phone is Android... I live in both worlds. I am huge open-source evangelist. As you know my robotics company is 100 percent open source. I fully understand the advantages of open source, but that said, I love my tablet. I think that the Apple model, a closed system in the hands of a visionary genius, is a beautiful thing. So I am not really dogmatic about this, I think there is a place for both open and closed. I wouldn't want the world to be only one or only the other. I think Apple is doing just fine. They don't need to deviate from a successful model.

MB: Looking at the open ecosystems and the closed ecosystems that you've come across, what would you say are the strengths and weaknesses of either of these?

CA: There are books to be written on that. It's a big question. Broadly the strength of openness is that you get a breadth of participation and lots of new ideas come in. There's lots of energy, there are applications you wouldn't have thought of and you could do faster, cheaper and better in open.

The downside of open is that, in the absence of clear leadership and vision, it can become chaotic and over-burdened with things that are very interesting to software engineers but not very interesting to the rest of the world. We've definitely seen lots of open source software projects become over-complicated. And to your earlier point about simplicity, the genius of Firefox is that in the hands of strong leaders they've managed to make it a simple and easy to use product, despite all the bells and whistles that software engineers might want to put in. So I do think that openness is an incredibly powerful technique, but requires very a special class of strong leaders with clear visions to be successful.

The success of closed is that you have the traditional form of command-and-control organization, so that a clear vision can create a good product without having to jump through all sorts of hoops in inventing new organizational structures. In the open source world if you have a clear vision that's not enough, you also need to create an organizational structure that incentivises all these volunteers to follow your vision. In a company it's really easy, you pay them and you tell them what to do. So I would say that leadership and vision is easier to execute in a closed system than it is in an open system. But in those rare cases where you have leaders with both vision and organizational skills, an open system can get you there faster.

MB: What technologies do you think are defining our future in the web and the media world?

CA: Obviously the shift toward mobile and tablets and smartphones in particular is the biggest driver. I think what we're seeing here is an opportunity to rethink the user interface, rethink the experience of consuming media. It's rethinking pricing, rethinking how we get media, rethinking what social means as a form of marketing. So it's like the web was 20 years ago, it's a brand new domain. Nobody really knows anything and we're all groping in the dark. We've learned a lot from the web about what works and what doesn't work and I think that we have an opportunity to right some wrongs.

For example, on the tablet, this time these platforms have come out with an eCommerce model built in via the iTunes or Android stores. This means we have the capacity to try different pricing and economic models. Before we didn't have the physical ability so everything had to default toward banner ads as a business model.

But now we have the capacity to do everything from Freemium to micropayments to pure paid content. We have the capacity to integrate with social and really understand what people want, how they get content in a way we didn't have 20 years ago on the web.

Obviously we continue to do print and the web as well as we can and innovate there, but mobile is an opportunity for us to really come at these questions of what business are we in anew and through radical experiments in trying to figure out what consumer behavior is going to look like and how people want to interact with our products on tablets and smartphones. As Wired magazine it's our job to be a laboratory for these things. You'll see more and more experiments coming out in that.

MB: What's your take on Google+?

CA: I like it a lot. I think it's early days yet so I am still trying to figure out quite how to use it and get critical mass, but I think it solves one of the problems of Twitter which is a lack of a secondary engagement stream, and the notion of comment and of being able to engage in a conversation with people that doesn't have to be broadcast to all of your followers.

I like that a lot. I like the multimedia aspects of it. It's really easy to share pictures and videos and get a little preview of the links. I think that it's still harder to navigate than Twitter. There is still the feeling that it doesn't have the same critical mass of Twitter. It's coming out of the gate, because you can write longer which I like and you can include photographs.

It's become a more contemplative or thoughtful place than Twitter. Google+ feels less newsy and ideas are more fleshed out than condensed into snippets like Twitter, but by the same token it feels less urgent. Google+ is a more contemplative place and more incoherent. I haven't yet managed to create a stream that feels as focused as my Twitter stream, but these are early days yet.

I would rather post on Google+ than I would on Twitter mostly because I am just not funny enough or pithy enough to get my thoughts down to 140 characters. So I like having a little more room, I like having a comment stream. I like engaging in a proper back-and-forth with people that doesn't have to be broadcast to my followers.

That said, I am still on Twitter, I find it very useful for little broadcast messages where I want to point people to a link so I think [the answer is] somewhere between those...

I am pretty bullish on Google+. I do think that it's going to work this time. It's relatively well designed and it gets better by the day. I am a big fan of Google's overall efforts and integration across the products. I pretty much live on Google with Gmail, Calendar and Docs and all that. I want this to succeed. That said, I am not giving up on Twitter any time soon.

MB: Your third book... can you tell us a bit more about it and the ideas you're exploring there?

CA: This is based on an article I published in Wired last year called "The New Industrial Revolution". It's about the extension of the web's revolutionary innovation model into the new world. Basically it's about how the "Maker Movement," which is using democratized tools of production, is providing a new manufacturing model and can be a new way to make things -- real things that both allows more people to do it... a longtail of products that don't just necessarily fit the mass-production model and possibly the future of manufacturing the developed world where labour costs may be high, but innovation potential is higher yet.

See Part Two of this interview tomorrow, on the Future of Media and Journalism
Additional reporting by Michelle Atagana and Steven Norris.

She is interviewed by Pehong Chen, the CEO of BroadVision, which offers a business collaboration service called Clearvale. The event was video recorded by a crew from Sina.com, the Chinese Internet giant, on the second floor of BroadVision HQ in Redwood City.

This interview kicks off the first in the "SecondFloor" series of interviews with key thought leaders. I'll be conducting some of the future interviews.

Here are some notes from the evening:

- Charlene Li spoke about her latest book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead.

-She spoke about her upbringing in Detroit as the daughter of parents from Taiwan and Hong Kong. She said she felt very much an outsider, living in the heart of a working class community of Polish, Irish and Italian. This outsider feeling has proved useful to her career in being able to gain insights into companies and trends.

- Charlene Li worked for many years as a reporter. She joined the San Jose Mercury in 1993 and went to Boston where she helped run local newspapers. She has been passionate about communities for 14 years.

-Pehong Chen has a large following in China for his video interviews with CEOs and key thought leaders. He asked questions about Ms. Li's book and about the importance of being "open."

- Charlene Li said having an open leadership requires a change in culture and it can be done slowly and it can start small. Create a "sandbox" and then gradually expand that sandbox to include more and more of an organization.

- She said management has to give up the concept of control. It's not anarchic, it takes discipline to not try to control everything. She gave the example of the US navy allowing 8 bloggers to visit the USS Nimitz and freely wander around talking to anyone. The Navy wasn't trying to control the bloggers and the service men, it knew that its personnel had the discipline and the training to say and do the right things.

- Charlene Li said that middle management is often the most resistant to change because they are squeezed in the middle and they have trouble with the loss of control.

- She spoke about Facebook and the privacy issues and that within a few years we won't have the same concerns, we will get used to the fact that we are tracked and the data is shared. We are only 5 years into the Facebook "era." Caller ID caused a huge privacy storm when it was introduced, yet today caller ID is seen as helping to protect our privacy and we don't pick up the phone if it is an unknown caller ID.

- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) now has a chance to live up to its name and be what it says it is "relationship management" rather than transaction tracking.

- Business is about people. B to B is really about B to P and P to B. There are lots of Ps.

- I asked if it is too late for some companies to change because they are vulnerable to what I call "new rules enterprises" new businesses unencumbered by legacy culture and legacy ways of doing business. These are faster moving, more agile organizations. Ms. Li said that businesses have 3 to 5 years to start changing their culture and way of doing business otherwise, yes, they will not survive, customers will flock to more open competitors.

- Mr. Chen said that in his experience, once people within an organization "get it" and the benefits of social media in enterprise 2.0, even a little, change happens quickly.

- - -

Please see my recent interview with Pehong Chen:

Broadvision Reboots Its Business As A Collaborative Enterprise Platform

Until fairly recently, the memristor, short for memory resistor, was a mythical electronic component. It had been predicted to exist by a mathematician, Leon Chua, a professor at UC Berkeley, in an 1971 paper. No one had made a memristor until Stan Williams and his team cracked it in 2008.

The memristor can:

- store data like DRAM or Flash but it doesn't require any energy to maintain the data storage.

- the memristor chips can be laid down in layer upon layer upon layer, creating three-dimensional structures that can store and process data.

- the memristor is easy to make and completely compatible with today's CMOS chip making processes.

- it can be scaled to very small geometries without losing its properties.

- the memristor can also perform logic, it can act as a microprocessor!

It's that quality of a memristor, that it can be used for both data storage and data processing that Mr WIlliams and his team recently discovered, and that potentially turns the world of computing on its head. This is a very big deal indeed.

Here are some notes from my conversation with Mr Williams:

- IT systems now take up 2 per cent of the world's electric power. We need IT systems that are 1,000 times more powerful, we need what is called exascale computing (The Need For A Radical New Type Of Computer Architecture). Yet to get there it would take too much electric power. The memristor makes exascale possible.

- My team first started looking at molecular electronics in 1997. We were seeing voltage curves that we couldn't understand, they had a signature figure of eight shape. One of our team came across a paper by Leon Chua that had a similar voltage curve. We had to scrap everything we were doing and focused on trying to create a memristor. We focused on titanium dioxide.

- We weren't getting very far so I decided to take the month of August off (8th month) and read everything I could about titanium dioxide, from geology, physics, chemistry, math. Titanium dioxide was studied separately by all these disciplines, it was known as a ceramic, a mineral, a dielectric, a semiconductor, even a sunscreen. By studying all of this separate research, on August 26, I finally figured it out, and brought all the pieces together.

- It will take us about 3 years before we have commercial memristors. The good news is that they are easy to make and completely compatible with standard CMOS chip manufacturing techniques. They also scale to small features very well. And standard chip design tools work very well for memristors.

- Memristors could save a lot of power in data processing because they don't require any power to maintain their data storage.

- HP is interested in memristors because we are the world's largest buyer of DRAMs.

- Memristors could be used to replace disk drives and DRAMs. They will initially be used in IT systems, in-between disk drives and DRAMs but then they can start to 'eat' into both sides -- disk drives and DRAMs.

- This gets interesting. We have now discovered that memristors can be used for logic -- they can be used as processors. This is very significant because instead of shuttling data to the processor and then back again, which takes time and energy, we could shuttle the processing code to the data -- which is smaller and quicker.

- I used to be worried that we are going to reach the limits of Moore's Law and the what do we do. But with memristors, we can easily lay down multiple layers of memristors, effectively extending Moore's Law by decades.

- Using memristors for processing brings other potential changes. Instead of just two states, on or off, as with transistors, memristors can represent many states. This means we can create new types of computing models, we can also create analog computers, which you don't program, but you let them learn. You can then replicate the learning to other memristor analog computers.

- We might be able to use memristors in a similar way to synapses in the human brain.

- We spoken to Intel about memristors many times. They seem to be more interested in other types of memory such as phase change memory.

- - -

Here is my PearlTree on memristors:

 ptInitTree('pt-pearl-1_806467-221',1,9745,1,806467,1); 

Is it possible to describe aspects of human behavior through algorithms? Hewlett-Packard's Bernardo Huberman believes you can and he has the studies to prove it.

Mr Huberman has one of the more interesting jobs in the computer industry. He heads up the Social Computing Lab within HP Laboratories. It's a team of about a dozen researchers studying how people behave on the Internet.

They look at fairly ordinary activities such as the number of YouTube downloads, the number of "Diggs" a web page receives, or the number of times people upload and share content.

From such mundane activities his team can derive algorithms that seem to uncover aspects of human nature and provide a glimpse into things about ourselves that could be universal, that could very well be possibly hard-wired into our very being.

The key to this research is that the studies are extremely large, the sample sizes are in the many tens of millions. The larger the samples, the clearer are the patterns of human behavior that emerge.

"We did a big study of 70 million YouTube video downloads and also millions of Digg stories. From that we can now tell which content is about to go viral," says Mr Huberman.

The study is part of the Social Computing Lab's work on what holds an Internet user's attention.

"Attention is a limited resource. We cannot produce more attention. It will be forever limited."

The study showed that attention is a function of novelty. And that attention will decay in a predictable pattern as novelty decreases.

"We see the same graph, time and again. All content has the same graph of attention and decay."

The shape of the graph is not a "Huberman distribution" it is one that has been familiar to statisticians since the mid-19th century, it is a lognormal distribution, also known as a Galton distribution.

Since the popularity of all Internet content always exhibits the same curve it is possible to make judgements about which content is rising in popularity and therefore promote it on a web page while removing content that is falling in attention.

Catching your eye...

HP has developed a tool it calls i-catcher that can be used to maximize attention for any web content. The tool is currently being tested at a large Danish publication where it helps determine the position of content on the page.

Although such algorithms work best when used against large amounts of content, Mr Huberman says that i-catcher has also proven effective within HP's internal blogs, which only have several thousand visitors.

Mr Huberman's team has also studied uploading of videos, numbers of comments, ratings, etc. Not surprisingly, the more of this type of this involvement and sharing activity the higher the quality of the content. But surprisingly, the more people uploaded the less successful was their content in terms of popularity.

Craving attention...

What is people's motivation when they upload content and share? Mr Huberman says it is based on a strong desire to gain attention.

"We are attention machines, we constantly crave attention."

But not everyone is a Paris Hilton or a Julia Allison. Clearly, many people are able to satisfy their relatively modest hunger for attention in moderate ways.

Still, this craving for attention is another insight that Mr Huberman's team has uncovered when it comes to predicting the mass behavior of Internet users.

Asymmetric attention...

Another interesting quality of attention is that it is asymmetric. I ask what this means.

"People will give attention to content regardless of the quality of the content. People are attracted to popularity. They are interested in what is popular and that is often independent of the quality of the content."

I ask how these findings are being used within HP. For example, the marketing department could use these algorithms in their efforts to gain attention for their marketing messages, and to sell more HP gear and services.

Mr Huberman smiles," Yes, marketing is very interested. It seems that for the first time, the work at HP Labs is relevant to the marketing department. Labs has never worked with marketing before."

- - -

Please see:

HP Labs pilots i-catcher, a service that automatically maximizes the viewership of media Web sites (July 2009)

Bernardo Huberman, Director, Social Computing Lab, HP Labs

Social Computing Lab

A Gold Mine Of Original Research Into Online Social Behavior

Video: Social Dynamics In The Age Of The Web

I recently met with Patrick McGovern, founder and chairman of the media giant IDG. I've long been an admirer of Mr McGovern and consider him one of the savviest media executives on the planet, alongside Rupert Murdoch at News Corp.

IDG is best known as a publisher of technology titles such as Computerworld, and many others. These days Mr McGovern is leading the changes in the media world and taking advantage of the Internet's media technologies to expand his publishing empire across the world.

Traditional media can learn important lessons from IDG. In 2002 about 86% of its revenues came from print. In 2008 print shrank to 37% of revenues, with online publishing generating more than half of all revenues, with the rest from events, for a total of $3.2 billion.

Here are some notes from our meeting.

- We have changed from being a classic publisher to becoming a web based publisher across all our titles.

- The key is great content and being able to maintain great communities online.

- Lead generation is a key part of our business these days.

- Building a database of contacts is critical to our business.

- We managed to increase our revenues last year. About one-half of that increase was by charging more for lead generation.

- We can make a good estimate from public data how much a lead is worth to a company. That allows us to increase our prices for lead gen.

- Regional conferences are important especially these days because of travel budget restrictions. Our attendance at regional conferences has gone up.

- We have increased revenues by 10 per cent. Our US and West European business is the worst, we've had about a 2 per cent staff reductions but East Europe is still doing relatively well, Brazil is good, and so is China, India, and Vietnam.

- Being a private company has a lot of benefits, there are fewer distractions. When IDG Books went public, the management was distracted by Wall Street and made some mistakes in acquisitions and in strategy.

- We have venture capital funds and we've been making investments in China, Vietnam, and Korea.

- We also invest in movies and we see this as a good business.

- We've also been expanding our IDG tech ad network that handles advertising on more than 150 sites.

- Our market research group is doing well. This is a counter cyclical business. Demand for information is higher when there is uncertainty. We're seeing a 50 per cent increase in demand.

- We have more than 100 operating companies. We're currently combining all of our databases to do better at lead generation.

- - About 30 per cent of web site visits come from other countries. Normally, we wouldn't get any credit for lead generation from that traffic, now, we are able to hand it over to clients in those countries because of integrating our databases.

Here is Forbe's interview with Patrick McGovern:

I caught up with Eva Chen, CEO of Trend Micro Tuesday morning just before her two appearances at the RSA security conference. She was in great form, enjoying a rare San Francisco heat wave, while we all melted into puddles.

Here are some notes from our conversation:

- I was on the plane recently and watching the movie Benjamin Buttons, which shows a man becoming younger over time. And this led me to think about the security industry and why it hasn't consolidated like other industries. Usually, an industry will go through a consolidation where companies are acquired or go out of business, and the industry matures over time then disappears. I've been in this industry for 20 years and it still hasn't consolidated. It seems to stay forever young. And it's because we are constantly challenged by young hackers, there are always new exploits and security threats to deal with, and that leads to new startups, it leads to innovation, and that's what keeps our industry young.

- People often say that security will be consolidated by the platform, but that hasn't happened because platforms change slowly. Security changes very quickly.

- Focus is really important at Trend Micro. We focus on security and that's what keeps us on our toes. For example, a competitor such as Symantec is also in data storage. But data storage doesn't change much, it pretty much stays the same, and that affects management. At Trend Micro we focus on security, an area of constant change. That keeps us fresh.

- At Trend Micro we have had to reorganize the company to deal with the new security challenges. We have our various groups such as anti-virus, spam, malware. We manage by objective, so we would give each group their objectives, and each group would build large databases to manage their security risk information to meet their objectives. We did away with that system, now each group shares all their information about vulnerabilities, and we give collective objectives to all three groups, which leads to a much better result.

- Some of the cultural differences are interesting. US teams are very "star" based, there is a lot of emphasis on individual performance. Asian teams are much more collaborative. For example, in the US, commissions are paid to individuals based on their performance. But in Japan commissions are team based. In the US the attitude is 'why should I be punished by someone else's poor performance?' In Japan people don't like to stand out in that way. Their attitude is that they don't want to make more money than their team colleagues, because then they would hate them. The Harvard Business school chose Trend Micro in a case study of management culture in a global company.

- Cloud computing mirrors the challenges we face globally. A recession in one country affects many other countries. If you dig a well in one spot, you affect the water supply of people far away. The same is true in cloud computing. If you manage your bandwidth well, you can free up bandwidth for a partner supplier in Malaysia or China -- everyone benefits. In cloud computing you are a community of services and connections, everyone can be affected by bad or good behavior.

- I get a lot of my best ideas in planes because I spend a lot of time traveling. I'm always in the 'clouds.'

- - -

Please see:

Trend Micro Broadens Its Endpoint Security Platform With Power Management from BigFix

Trend Micro to Showcase 'Rethink Endpoint Security' at RSA 2009

Trend Micro CEO and Co-Founder Eva Chen Named One of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Technology

Trend Micro Honored with Porter Prize 2003 for Unique Strategies, Innovation, and Management

It is RSA Conference week this week, which means lots of security companies are in town. Among my Monday meetings I had the pleasure of dinner with Gil Shwed, CEO of Check Point Software Technologies [CHKP], one of Israel's most successful software companies.

The media roundtable included several journalists, analysts, and some new members of Gil's team thanks to the recent acquisition of the Nokia Security Appliance business group.

Here are a few quick notes from our conversation:

- Even though valuations are improved there aren't many acquisition opportunites for Check Point. The company is interested in companies that have hundreds of customers, not dozens of customers.

- Companies face many risks and the greatest risks are from security breaches that can take place seemingly undetected. Check Point checks for behavioral signatures to root out intrusions.

- Check Point has made 5 acquisitions, three of them are large. It generally integrates companies by bringing people over to Israel for a week or so, to get to know the company culture.

- Check Point has been a public company since 1996. Being a public company is not so bad, dealing with private investors is a lot worse.

- The Check Point offices in Israel are not open planned. The company has surveyed employees and they prefer to work in rooms of about three or so people. Open plan doesn't work because Israeli's can be loud and they like to offer their opinions freely, they get pulled into other conversations.

- A new law in Israel mandates that all companies have to account for their employees' time so that there is no exploitation of staff. In the few weeks that the law has been in effect, Check Point has had to measure employee time and discovered that staff are working at least one hour longer per week.

- Check Point culture is heavily dominated by food. Senior executives are expected to take turns preparing or bringing breakfast to weekly meetings. There can be a lot of competition between people in serving the best breakfast.

- Food is also important within the entire company. In Israel, each day, employees choose a lunch from 15 different restaurants that is delivered. And each day there is a new set of 15 different restaurants to choose from.

- Communal eating is important. In Israel company dining rooms hold about 400 people. The company has about 2300 staff worldwide and it tries to create the same environment everywhere.

- Gil notices what people eat, especially if they order the same thing every day.

- Rule number 1 at Check Point: If you are at a restaurant with colleagues, you cannot order the same food as your neighbor.

- A former employee found religion and wrote to Gil confessing that he spent about 30 per cent of his time playing online games and hanging out in communal areas, and catching up on personal tasks. He apologized and asked to be forgiven for stealing company time. Gil forgave him and said 30 per cent was on the low side compared with other employees.

It was a fun evening, good food and great conversation. And I didn't order the same food as Gil.

- - -

Please see:

Check Point Completes Acquisition of Nokia Security Appliance Business

Check Point CEO seeks to sell more shares

Is Checkpoint a Potential Takeover Target? -- Seeking Alpha

Robin Purohit runs the Software Products division of Hewlett-Packard's $3 billion software business, the most profitable group within the company, and its most strategic. As 2009 IT budgets continue to be slashed, the software group is becoming the point of the spear for the entire company, potentially driving hardware and services sales as corporate data centers seek to do more with less.

"This year is going to be challenging for everyone, it will very likely be the toughest year in ten years," for enterprise IT vendors, says Mr Purohit. "But we are ready, we've been preparing for this."

If HP's software business were a separate business it would be the 6th largest software company in the US. In just three years, HP has tripled the size of its enterprise software sales thanks to a series of canny acquisitions.

Opsware, Peregrine Systems, and Mercury Interactive, the largest acquisitions, were joined with several smaller software businesses. The goal has been to bolster HP's strong position in data center management and optimization provided by its OpenView suite.

This market is called Business Technology Optimization (BTO), and this type of software is designed to help CIOs gain a deep insight into how they are deploying their IT investments, identify which parts of their IT are strategic, and which parts can be cut. BTO also includes greater data center automation to try to reduce one of the largest expenses in IT: the large numbers of specialists needed to keep enterprise IT systems humming.

. . .CIOs are unhappy

"Everywhere I go, CIOs are complaining that they are unhappy with their IT spend, that it's costing them too much, and that they need to get more out of their IT systems. They complain that 60 to 70 percent of their budget is being spent on on all the things they need to do just to keep the lights on," says Mr Purohit.

HP's message is that its BTO software can map and optimize an enterprise's IT resources, automate many data center operations, and manage new IT initiatives.

A relatively small software investment can quickly produce several tens of millions of dollars in efficiency savings, depending on the size of the company, says Mr Purohit. It also frees up people and resources, that can then be deployed on new IT initiatives rather than the mundane daily tasks of "keeping the lights on."

Software As A Service (SAAS) is a key part of HP's software strategy and part of simplifying customer IT systems. "About two-thirds of our products are delivered as SAAS. Customers will still buy licenses but they want us to host and run the software."

. . . Change comes from the top

But BTO can only do so much. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Some companies are not able to implement the changes that BTO identifies because they aren't yet able to make the changes needed in their organizational structure.

"It all depends on the leadership within each organization. Our software can reveal the inefficiencies in IT infrastructure but the changes have to be driven from the top. For organizations that aren't ready, we will focus on one key problem and use that as an example of what we can do for the rest of the enterprise."

Services is a big component of implementing BTO, and HP's acquisition of EDS provides it with a strong IT services business. BTO customers frequently become HP hardware customers, says Mr Purohit.

. . . A tsunami of regulations

HP's software catalog includes business intelligence software, a key growth area as companies seek to understand an ever growing mass of transactional data generated by the daily commerce of their business groups. Much of this data is also required to fulfill new regulatory reporting rules. "There is a tsunami of regulations rules that businesses will have to deal with, it goes way beyond SOX."

In addition, large corporations have to deal with a relentless number of lawsuits that require them to comply with discovery requests of specific business data. If it fails to find that information within a short-time frame, it can face punitive fines. "A company the size of HP averages about one legal investigation per week. It can cost abut $100 million a year to comply with those investigations. Our software can reduce that to $5 million to $10 million a year."

In today's tough IT climate, HP is expecting a lot from its software business, to help it maintain profits and help drive its hardware and services groups. Fortunately, tough times are motivating enterprises to seek out the efficiencies and cost savings promised by HP's software.

"Our software business is the largest strategic weapon we have," says Mr Purohit.

- - -

Please see:

Gartner and Forrester Now Forecast 2009 Decline in IT Spending - News

HP to acquire Opsware for $1.6 billion | Business - InfoWorld

HP Press Release:HP to Acquire Peregrine Systems

HP snaps up Mercury Interactive - CNET News

Robin Purohit speaks with Robert Scoble inside the HP garage on Fast Company TV

Part one is here: Thought Leader: A Conversation With Valley Veteran Bill Coleman About The Economy And The Business Of Disruption . . .

Mr Coleman is optimistic about Silicon Valley's long term prospects but he is pessimistic about the current situation.

"These days there is just one exit strategy and that is to be bought by strategic acquirers. It's a huge buyers market and that's not good for valuations. And its tough for new companies because every VC firm has to keep their powder dry and make sure that there is enough capital for their companies to survive . . . and no one is dong great right now. That's why cash is king, if you don't have enough cash to survive you either go out of business, or get acquired."

While these are tough times for startups, the giants of Silicon Valley will profit from this downturn.

"I was on a panel with Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel) he said, 'Bill, do you know Moore's second law? The strong get stronger in a downturn.' He's right. The big companies might suffer steep declines in sales but they still have huge amounts of cash and they are still generating huge amounts of cash. They can buy lots of great companies at fire sale prices." [Please see: Cash Rich Tech Companies Cutting Jobs]

Can Silicon Valley save the economy?

"The only disruptive things I see are the three areas we talked about: information technology, biotech, and nano. Silicon Valley is very lucky that the technology we started with is springing all these other technologies; we also have great universities; and we are in at least our third generation of entrepreneurs."

Mr Coleman says that having experienced entrepreneurs is very important to Silicon Valley's continued success. His experience of over 30 years in building complex software systems has shown that "you cannot build it unless your team has been together at least five years and you've done it twice before. It's not something you can just jump into because you did four computer courses at Stanford. It's all about learning on top of learning because there has been generations of experience."

There is a class of very experienced entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that he describes as being part of a "guild" and this is something that other centers of innovation around the world lack. He tells a story of going to Shanghai with fellow members of the exclusive New Venture Club (members include Larry Sonsini, Carol Bartz, John Thompson, John Young, Regis McKenna, Ken Oshman and about 30 other very successful Silicon Valley luminaries...). The club was there as a guest of fellow member Danny Lui, the founder of Chinese computer giant Lenovo.

"We met with about a hundred Chinese VCs and entrepreneurs, all very excited about their ventures and what they were doing." He said that he spoke with one person that said that they didn't have any "architects" with the experience to develop state-of-the-art software, or state-of-the-art chips. "They felt they were still a generation or so away from doing the type of innovation that Silicon Valley is doing. And that makes sense, it's a guild."

Silicon Valley is also very good at reinventing itself, and getting rid of the low value work by moving up the value chain.

"Silicon Valley is the greatest engine of creative destruction in the world. If we were Detroit, we'd still be populated with chip fabs and people in those horrible suits earning $20 an hour. Instead, we have software engineers making $150,000 per year plus full benefits. Silicon Valley has been successful at reinventing itself time and again. The only other place close to us is Israel. India and China will get there but they aren't there yet."

I mentioned that I had met with a delegation of Russian VCs on a trip to Silicon Valley hoping to build centers of innovation in Russia. I told them I would tell them Silicon Valley's secret. They all leaned closer to hear it. I said it was failure, tolerance of massive amounts of failure. One in 20 companies make it here, but if you fail you try again. In other cultures if you fail you often don't get the chance to try again. [Turning Oil Into Innovation: Russian Delegation Seeks Silicon Valley's Lessons]

"Yes," Mr Coleman said. "I've had failures, Visicorp was a failure and so was Dest Systems. At BEA Systems, when I was putting together my senior staff I wanted people that were in at least one company that had failed. You learn not just about failure and how to make things work, you learn the psychology of failure and how you react to it. If it's the first time you are learning it you probably aren't keeping the momentum going in your company. You are exactly right."

"When I got out of the air force, and went to VisiCorp and we failed. And then at Dest Systems, great technology but we couldn't get any money. I was looking at all these people, at the time there were lots of PC companies , and I started to notice that guys that failed started showing up at other companies in more senior positions. Aha, I realized, it doesn't matter if you have some failures what matters is that you dust yourself off and learn from that failure. I used to say Sun did everything wrong that was possible, but it never did anything wrong for too long. A startup is not a technology company it is a learning machine."

Please see part one of this interview: - Thought Leader: A Conversation With Valley Veteran Bill Coleman About The Economy And The Business Of Disruption . . .

Next week I interview Patrick McGovern, head of global publishing powerhouse IDG and one of the smartest media company executives on the planet.

- - -

Additional Info:William Coleman: Executive Profile & Biography - BusinessWeek

He began his career in the United States Air Force as the Chief of Satellite Operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. Mr. Coleman has been a Director of Symantec Corp. since January 14, 2003 and is a Member of the Trilateral Commission and serves as a Member of the Audit Committee.

He is also a Member of the Information Technology Advisory Board at Warburg Pincus LLC. Mr. Coleman sits on the Board of Directors of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group and the American Electronics Association. He served as a Director of Skillsoft Public Limited Co. since its merger with SkillSoft Corporation in September 2002 till January 31, 2004. Mr. Coleman served as a Director of SkillSoft Corporation from August 1999 to September 2002.

In 2001, he was named "Entrepreneur Of The Year" by both Ernst & Young and the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Colorado University-Boulder and, by BusinessWeek, as one of 2001's "E-biz 25 Top Executives." Mr. Coleman has a B.A. in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy and a M.A. in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Stanford University.

What was especially interesting about our conversation is that he doesn't see green/clean technologies as a disruptive technology. Yet Silicon Valley leads this nascent industry.

Mr Coleman says that green technology doesn't follow the Peter Drucker rule of being a disruptive technology, which means being 10 times better or cheaper than what was there before.

"In the green market, what we're displacing is cheaper per unit than what is displacing it. It won't be driven by a tsunami of adoption." He says companies and individuals will take their time before adopting more expensive green technologies, especially with the current economic condition.

However, this could change if President Obama's administration adopted a plan of offering incentives for the development and use of green technology. He says this would be a far better stimulus package.

"There are lots of benefits for humanity, but the economics of the green market won't drive a rapid adoption unless there are incentives."

Mr Coleman is a critic of the current government stimulus package, that focuses on physical infrastructure projects. He says that incentives for green technologies would create better quality jobs and have a longer term economic stimulus effect than pick and shovel jobs that end after the project is done. Green technology jobs have a longer life span than bridge or road projects.

Plus, infrastructure projects slow capital formation, he says, which is needed to fuel the next recovery.

Cloud computing, biotech, and nanotech are examples of Silicon Valley's best disruptive technologies, and they don't need any government incentives, says Mr Coleman. And these are industries where Silicon Valley leads.

The recession will hit hard, says Mr Coleman, but Silicon Valley will survive because it reinvents itself every ten years.

You can read the rest of the interview here:

Thought Leader: A Conversation With Valley Veteran Bill Coleman About The Economy And The Business Of Disruption . . .

We talked about Silicon Valley trends and which technologies will likely lead the next phase of Silicon Valley's recovery.

I'm sitting with Bill Coleman, and one of his colleagues, in a small conference room in downtown SF. We're talking and also trying to eat our sandwiches.

He is telling a story about being at JFK airport late last year, and getting a call from a reporter at the New York Times, asking if the recession would be better or worse for Silicon Valley compared with 2001.

"I said it will be worse than the previous downturn. The last time about 800 companies went out of business that had no business model. Secondly, the large companies had sold too much capacity and it took a year or two for things to catch up. This time the recession is not about Silicon Valley it is about something else."

He said it would take a long time for capital spending to come back and that this would hurt Silicon Valley.

"I said you'll see accelerating layoffs in the first quarter and that's exactly what we've seen."

What will this mean for Silicon Valley innovation?

Mr Coleman says he's an optimist but he does have some concerns.

"I have a basic theory that Silicon Valley reinvents itself by inventing a new platform layer every 10 years." He says that Silicon Valley was lucky to develop Information Technology (IT), a technology that is becoming cloud computing, a new platform. Information Technology is also vital in driving the development of two additional disruptive technologies: nanotech and biotech. And fortunately, Silicon Valley leads in all three industries.

Silicon Valley also leads in green technology, a large and growing market. But green technology is different -- it isn't a disruptive technology. He says that a disruptive technology has to have a characteristic of the Peter Drucker rule in that it provides ten times the value of what it's displacing.

"In the green market, what we're displacing is cheaper per unit than what is displacing it. It won't be driven by a tsunami of adoption." Mr Coleman says the government should come up with incentives for companies to adopt green technologies otherwise progress will be slow.

"People already have the capacity for doing what they do today. So this means that they can put off using green technologies for a long time. There are lots of benefits for humanity, but the economics of the green market won't drive a rapid adoption unless there are incentives."

He points out that a government program focused on incentives to adopt green technologies would provide a more effective stimulus than the current stimulus package, with its focus on building physical infrastructure. Building a bridge, or a road, is a one-time event, and it won't provide long term stimulus. "It slows down capital formation," he says, potentially slowing an economic recovery. If the government helped to expand green technology it would create higher quality jobs and provide other long term economic benefits.

Cloud computing doesn't need government incentives because it is a disruptive technology, says Mr Coleman, especially the next stage, beyond what he terms "cloud 1.0." As the cloud computing platform becomes more sophisticated, he predicts that there will be an acceleration in the use of the cloud driven by a "quadruple conversion." Video, audio, and IT data all become IP based, and productivity applications become integrated with social networks.

"As we move forward from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, all your productivity tools become integrated with your social networking, which becomes your business networking. Your mobile life and your online life will become the same. So now the client moves into the cloud and that's when we'll see a dramatic change in the cost structure of computing and of the capabilities you can have."

He says that a platform ill be successful if it has three characteristics. It has to be able to commoditize a market. Secondly, it has to obey the 10x better/cheaper rule.

"When I was at VisiCorp, heading software development, each of our developers had a PC. This was faster and dramatically cheaper than using DEC VAXs [minicomputers]. Thirdly, a platform must allow you to add value with custom additions. The reason Netscape wasn't a platform was that no one could program to it, nobody could add value. (By the way, that's also true for virtualization...) Unless you have all three characteristics, you won't have a disruptive chain that can accelerate a startup from zero to sixty, and turn it into a major player."

I mentioned that a characteristic of a disruptive platform, is that it disrupts. If you are in the path of a disruptive technology you can often see what's up ahead, you can see the train wreck, but you can't get off the rails in time, you can't downsize or restructure in time, you hit the train wreck.

"Yes. I call it the DEC spiral. DEC tried to deny the importance of the PC and then when they realized what was happening they couldn't layoff people fast enough to match falling prices. There was little left and they had to sell [in 1998 to Compaq, the top PC company at the time.]" said Mr Coleman.

(Please come back for the second part of this interview on Thought Leader Thursday... why Silicon Valley succeeds, the importance of failure, and who will survive this downturn.)

Splunk is in the business of IT search -- its technology allows large enterprises to sift through massive amounts of log data produced by networks, servers, routers, etc -- to troubleshoot problems, meet compliance requirements, investigate security incidents, and much more. This is the "dark matter" of enterprise data and there is huge amounts of it. It's not easy to search but it is vital to a modern enterprise.

Splunk has become so useful that in many organizations people say "Splunk it" when trying to troubleshoot a problem.

It's a booming business. Take a look at some of its 2008 achievements:

- Q4 2008 best quarter in company history (+68% vs. Q4 '07)

- Year over year growth of 85%

- 143 new customers in Q4

- 411 new customers in 2008 (+88% vs. 2007)

- 29 Customers in the Fortune 100

Late last year I met with Splunk CEO Godfrey Sullivan, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He first came to California as a young man and soon began working for Apple -- during the fun early growth years. "I learnt a huge amount when I was at Apple," he says. "After 11 years I left and joined Autodesk."

He was president of Autodesk's Discreet Division and after 8 years left to run Promptu, a short-lived enterprise marketing automation software company.

In 2001 he was tapped to run Hyperion Solutions -- successfully turning it around from $500m in revenues in 2001 to more than double the revenues in 2007 -- and a six-fold increase in its market cap. He's also on the board of Citrix Systems and Informatica.

He could have retired many times over but was lured back into the industry by the opportunity to run Splunk.

"I spent a lot of time looking at the industry to see if there were any companies where I could add a lot of value. And there wasn't much out there. There were a lot of medium sized companies, where their competitors had been acquired by larger firms. But those were the chumps that the gorillas had left behind."

Splunk had all the qualities and positioning where he felt he could make a difference. And that certainly has been the case so far.

In gloomy times Mr Sullivan says it is important to be realistic with your board of directors and set expectations. And it is important to have a "Plan B" just in case. But so far "Plan A" is working out very well for Splunk.

I'll be asking Ms Chen about the huge changes in computer security and the titanic battles going on behind the scenes to prevent massive criminal scams. The advent of cloud computing has extended the battle lines into a hugely complex online world.

The FBI says highly organized high tech criminal gangs are stealing more money than the entire computer security industry makes in a year. How can companies protect themselves?

Sign up, and tune in at 11am, and ask your own questions too.

http://www.brighttalk.com/webcasts/2023/attend

Tech companies continue to be heavily male dominated and that's something that Girls in Tech hopes to change through networking, roundtables, and entrepreneurial workshops. And only women are invited.

"When women get together we can connect on a deeper level than if men are around," says Ms Gascoigne. "It helps to build confidence and it helps to create stronger relationships."

Men are allowed to some events such as dinners but they have to be a guest of a member.

A lot of women in tech tend to try to blend in, they dress in a similar manner to the men, and they behave in a similar way but this is a mistake she says.

"It is important to embrace feminity, to embrace girliness," says Ms Gascoigne. "Too many women think they need to be more like men to succeed. You don't."

Ms Gascoigne says she was lucky growing up, her parents encouraged her to be very self-confident, but that's not true for many women. Being in a heavily male dominated workplace can be intimidating.

It was this realization that led Ms Gascoigne to create the Girls in Tech organization.

The first meetings started with just five or six women getting together every other week. In March 2007 Girls in Tech was launched as an official organization.

IIn September 2008 Jessica Valenzuela and Davina Anthony were encouraged to participate as co-founders to help strengthen the presence of Girls in Tech. There are chapters in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and plans for chapters in Portland, Austin, and London.

(Ms Gascoigne is the director of corporate communications at Hi5, one of the world's largest social networks.)

Please see:

» About Us : Girls In Tech :

Recent Girls in Tech articles:

» How To: Biz Dev in a Slow Economy

» Tune Out to Tune In

» Keeping your career UP in a DOWNTURN: Job Strategies for a Bad Economy

Here is an upcoming Girls in Tech event:

- - -

Thoughtleaders: Where are the women in technology? Anita Borg Institute aims to shake things up

"When Marc Benioff found out we were at the Marriott he pressured the hotel to move us out. That's how we ended up here at the St. Regis, and Marriott is paying for it." The move might have backfired for Salesforce because the St. Regis is a lot nicer than the Marriott and just as close to the Moscone.

The reason SugarCRM might be irking Mr Benioff is that it's growing very fast. "We now have more than four thousand customers, and more than half-a-million users, in 80 languages. That's in just four years."

While Mr Roberts credits Marc Benioff with educating the market about the benefits of software as a service, he says SugarCRM is winning business because there isn't any customer lock-in as there is with Salesforce and its proprietary behavior. For example, application developers for the Salesforce Force.com platform have to use a programming language called Apex.

"What is the point of Apex? We built SugarCRM in PHP and we use Internet standard technologies. We are open source, our technologies are owned by the Internet. We view ourselves as the Linux of the CRM world."

Much of the demand for SugarCRM comes from word of mouth, says Mr Roberts. "I don't have to have a big sales force that needs to travel all over the place." Daily downloads average 5,000 per day and recently exceeded 5 million total. Site licenses are $449 per user or customers can choose to the on-demand version for just $40 per month.

"The Internet has totally changed the software industry. We allow our customers to try before they buy."

SugarCRM is home grown and developed in Cupertino from scratch. "We don't off-shore development. I don't believe that you can build innovative software that way," Mr Roberts says.

The company has strong growth and money in the bank. "We raised $20m last year but we haven't had to touch it. We were planning an IPO in 2008 and we needed to show we had $20m in cash."

Mr Roberts says the company might have to wait until 2010 before it can IPO. SugarCRM was hoping that MySQL would be the first commercial open source company to have a successful IPO. But MySQL abandoned its IPO plans and agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1bn at the beginning of this year. Now SugarCRM could become the first commercial open source public company.

Until the IPO market reopens, Mr Roberts isn't twiddling his thumbs. "There are five million businesses in the US, and only 10 per cent of them have CRM, the rest are using spreadsheets. That's a huge opportunity for us."

Movable Type celebrates its seventh year in October 2008, created by co-founder Mena Trott, an unemployed dotcomer. The application has come a long way from its humble roots as a way for laid-off developers to write about their day. Movable Type software is now used by many mainstream media publications and also by newstream media such as Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Kottke.org (and Silicon Valley Watcher).

While Wordpress, the competing blogging platform, has taken over the "one man and his blog" market, Six Apart has moved firmly into the commercial world, providing a simple way for any organization to quickly set up a web site with many community features built-in.

"Publications today want to be able to engage their readers in many ways. With Movable Type you can set up your own private Facebook-like network and you'll see more of those types of features later this year," says Mr Alden.

Six Apart expects to do well in a down economy because corporations can use its software, or its hosted services, to replace home grown content management systems, some of which can cost millions of dollars to build and support. But working with corporations requires having a services group. "Companies want to be able to pick up the phone and know that they have support." Earlier this year Six Apart acquired Apperceptive in New York to beef up its design and development services.

Services is a lower margin business than being a software company and it requires additional people to scale, but Mr Alden says, "Sometimes the seasoning makes the food--it is a necessary thing."

Competing with Wordpress . . .

Six Apart used to own almost all the blogging software market but it fumbled its first moves to commercialize its software by charging a high license fee. Although it rectified that mistake, it triggered a revolt among the early bloggers towards the open source Wordpress, which now has a large and fanatical following. Lots of plugins are available for Wordpress while Six Apart has chosen to build features into its software application--an approach that can offer improved stability and security.

"The competition between Movable Type and Wordpress has been good for both and has made both products better," says Mr Alden. But he does regret the sometimes "snarky" comments that have been made by the rival camps about each other.

Both products offer an easy way to quickly publish web sites. Some key differences: Movable Type makes it easier to manage multiple blogs and its design has enabled it to avoid some of the security headaches that have plagued Wordpress by keeping its template code separated from its core code. "Security isn't much of an issue for most personal bloggers but it is an issue for large publishers."

Disruptive but not destructive . . .

Six Apart is trying to move ahead of its competition by moving up the stack, going beyond being a tools provider to "providing ways of wielding the tools." It also wants to integrate the qualities that a large social network such as Facebook or MySpace offers developers and advertisers. It launched its own ad network earlier this year, and later this year it will announce ways of creating "engaging experiences" for advertisers, and users.

Some of the new features in Movable Type and its hosted solutions, revolve around what is known as action syndication. When a user uploads some photos, or posts a blog post, or writes a comment, that information is broadcast to other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

In a similar way that blogging helped to disrupt but not destroy, mainstream media, Mr Alden believes that today's big social networks will be disrupted by new types of social/blog networks. And Six Apart wants to help in that disruption.

Look for a series of big announcements in late November.

More info:

From Six Apart:

Blogging has many of the qualities companies need in a depressed economy: it’s a low cost, high-profile and effective way of engaging with customers. Whether it’s large companies – like Kenneth Cole, Wells Fargo and Starwood Hotel – gaining efficiencies by using social publishing as their web presence, or individuals marketing themselves via blogs – unknown interior designer found book publisher through her blog – Six Apart predicts that blogging will gain even more traction in the down economy that it has in boom times.

The transformation of social networks – just as blogging helped to reinvent traditional media, social publishing is poised to do the same to the mainstream social networks. Blogging is decentralizing social networking and creating micro-communities around content

2008 is a pivotal year for blogs - for the first time, more Internet users are reading blogs than not (according to eMarketer), professional media are embracing blogging as a strategy rather than experiment, name brands are fully participating, and everyday people have successful blogs

Social publishing is the next evolution of blogging – blogging has evolved from a personal to a social pursuit, further blurring lines between blogger, reader and community member.

Obviously, we talked about the financial crisis and how it might affect the PR industry. Ms Horn's response was typical: "If we are heading into a recession, bring it on. We've been here before and we know what to do."

Earlier in the day she addressed the San Francisco office and talked about the potential effects of the financial crisis. "I think its important to let my people know that we know how to handle these types of situations."

She finished the meeting with three four-letter words: Sell like hell!

Ms Horn lives in New York and her agency spans both coasts, with about 45 people and $10m in revenues. Over the past few years she has diversified the company into web development and graphic design--services that help her clients.And now social media is a key driving force for the company.

"Eventually social media will replace a lot of traditional PR but there will still be room for both," says Ms. Horn. And companies need to understand the best combination for their business. She says some clients want to rush into "social media" without considering what it means and the commitment that has to be made.

Every company is a media company . . .

I've often spoken about how every company is now a media company and needs to master the new media technologies at our disposal, such as RSS, blogging, Twitter, social media, etc. But being a media company requires a commitment, it is not a "campaign" that runs for a few months and finishes--it is a long term commitment and not everyone understands this aspect and what that means.

I love to remind people that these are fascinating times for professional communicators, whether they are media professionals or PR professionals because there is so much change going on. There are still so many questions about the best use of the new media technologies. What are the best formats, the best practices? And we all get to figure out how this all works, we all have a hand in helping to create the future.

It is this aspect of the PR business that excites Ms Horn. "I'm fed up with the animosity that you see between some journalists and the PR industry. If they think we don't do anything of value I challenge them to spend two days in our shoes, sitting in on our meetings and seeing what we do."

No one has taken up Ms. Horn's challenge. I said I would do it, I'd love to know more abut how things are done in the PR world.

I look at the PR industry as a partner to what I do. I would not be able to do my job if it wasn't for people in the PR industry paying attention to what I'm writing and offering top CEOs, and pitching interesting stories. My problem is not the many bad pitches, which seem to anger younger journalists, it is all the great pitches that I don't have time to get around to.

Horn Group is one of the PR companies that I'll be watching as one of the thought leaders in a rapidly changing industry--with or without a recession.

- - -

Please see:

Horn Group Weblog

Sabrina Horn: Horn Group Weblog: A Nickel for Your Thoughts

. . . There is this undertone in a lot of blogs that what PR folks do in this role is largely intelligence-free. It is true that if I had a nickel for every time in my 17 years at Horn Group I interviewed a starry-eyed professional who pronounced they “like working with people” I’d be sitting on a beach somewhere. But I’m not. Here’s the deal: to all those nay-sayers, those folks who are dare-i-say-it, too complacent and comfortable, all those jaded Doubting-Thomases, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. Call it a call to arms, or an all hands on deck to our colleagues in PR. We need to embrace the changes seeping through our walls. The reality is, many of us have been leading the charge for some time now.

. . . Are we doing PR? Yes, and no. Its just that PR has changed and taken on a much broader role as a communications discipline. In fact, with some clients, there are times when the last thing we actually talk about is PR. Now its more about how we can help our clients be “social”. But that’s the new PR of today, and the Communications business of the future. To discuss the many aspects of this topic further, we’re co-hosting a panel discussion with Girls in Tech, date TBD. I also invite you to take Dee Anna’s challenge and come spend a couple days with us. It's inspiring, it's awesome, and if we don’t surprise and delight, I’ll give you a nickel.

Orange is one of the largest and fastest growing European mobile carriers. It operates in 28 countries and runs 18 R&D centers around the world. It spends about 2 per cent of revenues on R&D, far more than US carriers. It is part of its strategy to avoid the commoditization trends in mobile and distinguish itself from the competition.

I met last week with Olaf Swantee, head of Orange Mobile at the Orange Labs, San Francisco:

Some highlights from the interview:

- Orange has a close relationship with Apple and co-develops certain technologies.

- It also invests in content which is responsible for about 6 per cent of revenues.

- Normal user uses 30 KB of data per month, Orange's iPhone users use abut 90 MBytes per month. Blackberry users use about 1 to 2 MBytes per month.

- Orange is very keen on building a seamless mobile internet, despite the high costs of investment in building out its wireless data networks. It is doubling the size of its data network every year.

- Mr Swantee says sustainability is one of the biggest challenges for Orange. Larger data networks use more energy, require more bay stations and will require more spectrum.

- European regulators are a problem.

- WiMAX is not seen as a solution to the spectrum bottleneck issue.

- Orange is looking at Google phone and partnering on search.

Also on camera is Yves Martin, Chief of Staff. Off camera is Georges Nahon CEO of Orange Labs San Francisco, and Pascale Diaine.

She says that the explosion of Web 2.0 type innovation is masking a large problem.

She has a new book on this topic: ]]> Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:39:54 -0700 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/jazz-guitarist-stanley-jordan-translates-financial-data-into-musical-patterns-of-prediction/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/jazz-guitarist-stanley-jordan-translates-financial-data-into-musical-patterns-of-prediction/241381Tuesday I had the rare privilege of meeting the great jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan at the studio of leading Bay Area photographer Jim Dennis. Mr Jordan is in town as part of a tour for his new album "State of Nature."

I have no musical talent at all, I couldn't carry a tune even if it were super-glued to me. I enjoy talking with musicians and I'm always interested in how they think about things because they use parts of their brain that I don't.

As we were listening to the excellent "State of Nature" Mr Jordan was telling me about a project he has been working on for several years. He has developed software that can take large amounts of data and translate it into musical passages.

"I first started doing this with weather data. I've been collecting barometric, temperature, humidity data for many years and by assigning different instruments to the data I could hear patterns in the weather that I couldn't see in the numbers," said Mr Jordan.

Then he began experimenting with currency data, looking at the exchange rate between the US and Canada. "I used several years of currency exchange data and I could hear the drop in the US dollar and I knew it would continue to drop."

Stock market data . . .

Last year he loaded up with ten years worth of stock market data. "I was shocked at what I was hearing and I stayed clear of the market. This was a just a few months before the whole sub-prime collapse."

I asked how he could tell if a trend would continue or stop. "Musical patterns have a certain energy that needs to be played out and that's what I was hearing."

It's an interesting approach to interpreting large amounts of complex data. I wonder if a person such as myself, with no musical ability, could interpret that data in the same way. Or does it take a musician's mind? I'm thinking the latter.

Mr Jordan said he can tell me more about his experiments with data. "It's the opposite to computer music in which you try to create music by programming data into the computer. Here, you take existing data and map it to the music, you can assign certain data to the alto, etc."

Stanley Jordan is in town for the next few days, he is playing at Yoshi's in Oakland July 7-9.

- - -

State of Nature

Stanley Jordan's first release in more than a decade is "State of Nature" it's an excellent album. I asked him what inspired this project.

"I was thinking about nature and how inspiring it is to me. And I was getting upset at how much pollution and destruction there is, and how it often seems we can't do much about it."

He talked about how the outside world, nature, inspires our inner world and that through music he hoped to motivate people to do something about the external world.

"But I didn't want it to come across as preachy at all, it is an invitation, it's more like "here, come over here and check out these amazing things."

And that's exactly how it is, it is not a preachy album, it's inviting and motivating. The last track on "State of Nature" is a theme based on Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out." It's uplifting and extraordinary in its gentleness and its spirit. "With that I wanted to invite people to step outside and to do something in the world, to change it for the better."

- - -

State of Nature is a series of reflections on the relationship between Humankind and the natural world. Through music, Stanley attempts to address the fundamental questions of Man's inharmony toward self, other, and nature, and then attempts to musically express the partial answers he has found in his quest. Extensive commentary in the liner notes chronicles his thoughts on these matters and illuminates the meanings of the songs. The songs are mostly instrumentals and are intended to stand on their own, yet each contributes to the overall theme in a specific way. Using the music as his guide, he ponders the questions of how we can be so knowingly destructive to the environment and yet not change our ways, and how we might develop ourselves on the inside to becomes more harmonious with nature. To his surprise and delight he finds his own answers within, and he attempts to share these insights in the music, which is ultimately hopeful and optimistic. The key to finding the answers was to realize that his own work on this project symbolized Humankind's quest toward being in the world--not only living sustainably but also attempting to achieve and maintain a state of grace.

Dan comes down and we walk out to have lunch. He chooses a restaurant that has real tablecloths. "I need to eat some real food," he says. I nod in agreement, the single, blogger lifestyle, doesn't encourage good eating habits.

It is always a pleasure speaking with Dan because we speak the same language. I'm not saying this in an elitist way, but there is something that happens to you through the experience of blogging, that does change your perception of the media industry, and provides an understanding of what is going on that cannot be attained by reading about it.

It doesn't matter if you've been a media professional for decades, or how young or old you are, understanding the changes going on in the media industry comes from experiencing it first hand. You can see what I like to call the "trajectory of ideas" in the mediasphere, how media is consumed and shared.

And it is that understanding that Dan Farber brings to his new job, as editor-in-chief of News.com, one of the first online news organizations.

Dan nods as I say that we speak the same language. "Things have changed a lot in this business. There is a velocity to news media and you can see it as a blogger," he says. "There is no end to your day."

Over at ZDNet, Dan set up a large blogger network (I write there too) and he was probably the most prolific of the entire group, often writing posts late at night and many times throughout the day.

"I have to restrain my blogging these days, because we have writers with beats," he says. "But everyone now blogs at News.com, it doesn't matter who you are, even if you are in production, you blog." (Dan's new blog at News.com is Outside the Lines.)

Dan has a team of about 35 people, most of them reporters and editors plus a few software engineers. And he is leading CNET's premiere brand: News.com.

Emergency meetings...

Tom Waldrop, over at Intel (Intel is a sponsor of SVW) told me an interesting story about the launch of News.com. He said that the corporate communications team at Intel had an emergency meeting to discuss whether online journalists were real journalists and how they should work with them.

When I left the Financial Times in mid-2004 to become a journalist-blogger, about a decade after News.com launched, Intel had another emergency meeting. Tom Foremski has left the Financial Times to become a blogger. Are bloggers real journalists? How should we work with bloggers?

It wasn't just Intel asking those questions. Tens of thousands of corporations worldwide are still trying to figure out the changes in the media industry, and who is or isn't a journalist, and how they should respond...

News.com was once a leading light of the change in the media industry towards an online media world. For example, CNET's decision to drop print publications (except in China) was a bold one.

Lost the lead...

When I met with Shelby Bonnie, the former CEO of CNET, in mid-2004, he told me that the company had 5 different publishing systems, and two large data centers. It was trying to reduce the number of publishing systems.

CNET tried to create one publishing system, Project X. However, this was later abandoned, at a cost of about $60m according to one of my sources. This was not atypical, many media companies were trying to crete their own content management system. The Financial Times was shifting to a new, never before tried publishing system, when I was there. It broke down several times a day, it cost millions of dollars to develop. Some days it was a wonder that we managed to produce a newspaper.

All of this meant that News.com was not leading the next big change in the media industry: the adoption of the blogging platform as a two-way publishing platform linking journalists and readers.

Bloggers take the lead...

Upstarts such as Mike Arrington, publisher of the popular Techcrunch blog, are these days seen to be in the forefront of the new changes in the media industry, and are challenging even relatively new media companies such as CNET .

Mike Arrington recently revealed a plan to deliver a "crushing" blow to CNET by building a "dream team" of bloggers and rolling up prominent blogs into one organization.

Dan Farber smiles at the mention of Mike Arrington. "We are a better platform to roll up blog sites because we have the infrastructure, we have ad sales people, etc." I agree. I can't see the over-sized personalities of the blog world sharing the same planet let alone the same company.

CNET could potentially regain its lead in pioneering the new media world. And that's what Dan Farber can provide: the blogger publishing experience from the front lines of the business.

Among the changes Dan Farber has already made:

-Different CNET departments now publish using the same template.

- Publish a story as quickly as possible, edit it later.

- Stories are updated constantly.

- Adding the right keywords and tags to make stories discoverable by search engines. About 40 per cent of CNET traffic comes from search engines.

- Use Internet standards whenever possible.

- There is no end to the work day, you are always on call.

- Everybody blogs.

- Create synergies between news, reviews, analysis, and blogs.

- Getting journalists to put in web links to non-CNET publications. "It's about being part of the web and not separate from it," he says.

- Carrying a pad of paper and pencil is not enough. Journalists also take photos, videos, and make podcasts.

I know that some of my colleagues at large media companies are not too happy with all the extra work they now have to do: blogging, video, podcasts etc. Dan says that his team gets it and is happy with the changes.

New skills...

You can certainly teach an old dog new tricks, Dan and I are living proof of that. I've got nearly 25 years under my belt as a journalist and Dan has a few more than that.

It just goes to show that this "new media" has nothing to do with age, there is no "generation gap" it is an "experience gap." And Dan is making sure that his News.com team gets that experience and is ready for this new, always on world. (I'm finishing this at 3 am Monday morning.)

Dan Farber can bring to CNET the best practices of the new media world, but as he says, he doesn't have control over everything. CNET still needs to sell ads and control costs within a challenging time for all media: a complete revamp of the media industry business model.

As I like to say: These are the best times to be a media professional because we will never ever be at such an amazing and disruptive change in our industry in our lifetime.

The trick is to make sure you are on the right side of the disruption, and not on the sharp pointy end of it. Can CNET become a disruptor? That's part of Dan's challenge, and that's what makes his new job one of the most interesting jobs in media.

HP clearly expects a lot from Mr Flaxman. He reports directly to CEO Mark Hurd and he is on HP's elite 11 member Executive Council Leadership Team.

With a US recession looming, his job is going to be critical to HP's performance, if there is any industry-wide downturn.

"We spend more than $1bn a year on travel, we spend more than $16bn on procurement, we have office space in multiple countries equalling about 900 soccer fields. How do we make the best use of that real estate? And how can we improve our business process? My job is to build shareholder value," says Mr Flaxman.

If I were a HP business group manager I'm not sure I'd be happy to get a message that Mr Flaxman called. Because that could be a sign that his team is taking a close look at how business is being done and what can be improved, and what can be shifted.

Building "shareholder value: can be code for unpleasant changes such as cutting jobs and ratcheting up work loads. But it doesn't have to be that way, says Mr Flaxman. He points to HP's increasing head count and that he is looking at ways to better deploy staff, and use HP technologies to make his teams more productive.

A key chunk of the drive for operational efficiency is HP's shared services group, which consolidates many operational tasks that were previously handled in separate departments. Its shared services group is a way HP can in-source rather than outsource--and gain the same benefits and more.

Another key initiative has been to significantly reduce the number of suppliers while at the same time strengthening those partnerships to enable closer cooperation on product and service launches.

Call centers are also an important focus because that's where customer retention plays an large role. And there are other HP business groups where improvements can have a large impact on overall performance.

"You can't just take one business and analyze it. You have to consider the whole process and where it fits into the company's strategy. And how it affects our other business groups."

What are the metrics for this? "We constantly benchmark ourselves. We look at the industry and also at our competitors. But our goal is not to have the best business process in the industry right now. We want to go beyond that. Because if we just focus on today's benchmark, by the time we reach it, it will have moved on. We want to be ahead of that trend," Mr Flaxman explains.

HP uses a lot of its own technologies. For example, to reduce travel costs, it has set up 38 Halo rooms, which feature its high-definition telepresence video conferencing technology.

HP has also been consolidating the number of its data centers and using its technologies to manage the resulting massive numbers of servers and storage systems. HP's data center management tools, and virtualisation technologies, free up its IT experts to work on new projects. HP is building a state-of-the-art IT architecture to support its aggressive "everything" as a service strategy.

[Please see Essential Viewing: Chief Strategist Shane Robison]

HP's technologies can also manage its power use and control its carbon footprint.

"I focus a lot on green technologies. We have a goal of reducing our carbon footprint by 15 per cent by 2010, (compared with 2005 levels)," Mr Flaxman says.

And as HP acquires companies (Opsware, Mercury Interactive), Mr Flaxman is there to make sure that those businesses are integrated into the HP way of running a business. This speeds up their contributions to the bottom line, which is always welcome.

---

Additional info:

Chief Strategist Shane Robison on HP's Services Strategy:

[I was happy to notice that if you Google Shane Robison, Silicon Valley Watcher pops up in the number 5 slot, The Inquirer is number 4, and Forbes is number 3.]

Hideshi Hamaguchi, one of the co-founders of Lunarr, recently visited with his team,to show me a preview of the beta version of the service.

The user-interface of the alpha version was already very minimalist, with just a few tabs at the top and no branding at all. Mr Hamaguchi said that Lunarr has managed to simplify its user interface even further while at the same time adding functionality--an impressive claim.

Dog-ear simplicity...

The solution was to get rid of the tabs at the top of the page and add a single "dog-ear" on the top right of the page to show that there is a back side to the document. And there is just one line at the bottom of the page that has three choices on the left "upload file - import web - use template."

I was impressed. That is very close to what I consider must be the simplest user interface of all: a blank web page with just a cursor blinking in the middle of it.

Unknown unconstrained uses...

Since I first wrote about Lunarr in September 2007, it has acquired about 1200 users. I asked how are people using this service? [Please see: A Once in a Blue Moon Company with a Unique Collaborative App]

"We don't really know," said Mr Hamaguchi. Why not take a peek at what people are doing I asked? "We have very strict data privacy regulations we would never do that," he said.

Interesting and fascinating. A company that doesn't know how people are using its service seems to be a recipie for disaster. Yet I think it is a fascinating approach because people could discover totally new ways of using the service without being constrained by the way it is being used by others.

It can also be a bit daunting for some users because they are presented with a blank page. That blank page is a collaborative document that can contain a web page, a text document, a pdf, virtually anything. But how would you use it?

Lunarr has started to provide a limited set of templates to help people get started, but there are many other types of uses that haven't yet been created or explored. And that's exciting.

Patience can pay...

What is also interesting is that Lunarr is patient. It is completely self-funded by cofounder Toru Takasuka, one of Japan's most succesful and richest entrepreneurs. It can wait and develop Lunarr at its own pace, it doesn't have to have a revenue model immediately.

It doesn't have VCs or other investors pressuring Lunarr's team to rush into commercializing the business. It's an interesting approach that many Silicon Valley startups must envy.

Lunarr has started getting the word out through a cryptic billboard message on highway 101 in the heart of Silicon Valley. Every month it will change, remaining cryptic, until it emerges into public beta in about a year.

Lunarr remains private by invitation only. I have a few invites left if you are interested in trying it out. Send me your email address tom at siliconvalleywatcher.com. I'll give priority to my Facebook friends so please send me a Facebook invite, it lets me know something about my readers.

And if you are a Lunarr user, I'd love to find out what you Lunarrtics are up to :-)

Here is Lunarr's first billboard:

Here is Lunarr's description of what it does:

LUNARR is the first and only company to add a "back page" to all digital documents in order to streamline collaboration. The metaphorical "back page" is similar to that of a piece of paper. With one click, any Web page or local file can "flip" to it's own back page where LUNARR automatically stores all meta-information and communication surrounding the document or project.

LUNARR plans to replace the current paradigm of attaching documents to an email system and is already integrated into any email host.

The back page stores the entire history behind the creation of the document including all email communication, revisions, linked documents pertaining to the front document and more. First, put a document on the front, and then click a small dog-ear icon in the top right corner to "flip" the document to the back page to access all meta-information. Users may also send the document to collaborators from the back page.

The front can display Web pages (including Web-based office suites), MS Office files, any local program file, audio files, video files, and more. Users can also link any file type to the back for easy storage and organization.

Please also see: Portland's High Tech Community And The Space To Think

Autonomy's technology has been licensed on an oem basis and is found in many enterprise software applications. The company acquired California based Zantaz earlier this year, which helps companies discover documents related to legal issues such as lawsuits.

Mr Lynch is also on the board of the BBC and talks about the changes and challenges in the media sector.

Your browser does not support JavaScript. This media can be viewed at http://www.podtech.net/home/4551/thought-leaders-autonomy-ceo-mike-lynch-on-the-meaning-of-meaning-based-computing

Video and editing by Aron Pruiett.

They laugh and we sit down to talk about their VC investments and philosophy. They tell  me that getting out from the Sand Hill Road VC community in Palo Alto was important.

"We got fed up with the same scene, and seeing startups go from one firm to the next, all day long," said Gordon Ritter.

"We also wanted fresh and independent thinking and so getting out was important in that regard," said Jason Green.

The four year old Emergence recently announced a second fund, $175m, an increase of $50m over its first fund. And its focus is on what they like to call technology enabled software and services startups.

The first fund had an early success with an investment in Salesforce about a year before it went public. And the other investments have been in similar types of companies in the software as a service sector.

"We decided from the beginning that we would specialize in one type of investment rather than have many different investment sectors," said Mr Ritter. Most other VC firms invest in startups in different sectors. But Emergence decided that focus and specialization would enable it to establish through leadership and expertise--and that would produce more successful investments.

Mr Green says that this has paid off in that they are now known for their expertise and that their portfolio companies have succeeded in raising additional funds.

"Startups in our space know about us and they come to us." He said that Emergence gets to see about 68 per cent of all dealflow in their areas of expertise. That's about 600 business plans per year.

Technology enabled service startups are attractive because they offer a regular services revenue model. Mr Ritter does not believe in hybrid models where companies offer a license for the software, or a software as a service.

 RightNow Technologies, for example, offers its software to customers to run in their data centers or they can purchase it as a service.

"Hybrid models won't work because not everybody will upgrade to the new software and so that limits development of new features and services," said Mr Ritter.

The small and medium business market is a natural target market for the type of companies Emergence funds--a huge opportunity and one that IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc are also targeting.

How about exit strategies? "It's too early to think about IPOs and selling companies," Mr Green said.

But when the time comes, the two men are confident there will be plenty of opportunities for exits. The large IT vendors are obvious potential buyers for their portfolio companies.

Emergence is emerging as new rules VC firm. I define a new rules venture as: take a few specialists in a specific area; focus on the most efficient and productive business processes; and wrap open source and web services IT around them (Mr Green says their in-house IT capabilities are far more sophisticated than at the $1bn VC firms where he used to work).

In many ways, Emergence is a technology enabled services company itself.

Additional Info:

http://emergencecapital.com/home.html

Portfolio Companies:

Salesforce.com (CRM) San Francisco, CA
The pioneering provider of customer relationship management solutions delivered as a service.
www.salesforce.com

Adapt Technologies Pasadena, CA
Paid search advertising platform and services.
www.adapt.com

DVDPlay Los Gatos, CA
Automated DVD rental in retail locations
www.dvdplay.com

Genius Inc. San Mateo, CA
On-demand customer intelligence service for sales and marketing professionals.
www.genius.com

Goodmail Systems Mountain View, CA
The leading provider of email authentication and certification services to corporate email senders.
www.goodmailsystems.com

HireRight Irvine, CA
An innovative provider of technology-enabled employee background screening services for large corporations.
www.hireright.com

Intacct San Jose, CA
Integrated suite of Web-native financial back-office ERP software solutions delivered as an on demand service.
www.intacct.com

inQ Agoura Hills, CA
eCommerce company that provides online chat services to generate incremental sales or leads.
www.inq.com

Ketera Technologies Santa Clara, CA
The leading provider of on-demand spend management solutions.
www.ketera.com

Krugle Mountain View, CA
Vertical search engine for software developers.
www.krugle.net

Megapath Networks Pleasanton, CA
A leading provider of value-added broadband Internet connectivity and services.
www.megapath.com

SuccessFactors San Mateo, CA
A leading provider of hosted human resource solutions including workforce performance management, assessment and planning.
www.successfactors.com

Visage Mobile San Francisco, CA
A leading provider of enabling services for mobile virtual network operators, or “MVNOs”.
www.visagemobile.com

The clap and rumble of thunder is followed within seconds by the sound of a torrential, tropical downpour. I'm sitting in the Tonga Room, in the bowels of the swank Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, with John Roese, CTO of Nortel, the $11bn Canadian telecoms equipment giant.

The thunder and lighting and tropical rain storms are fake, and only briefly interupt our conversation, which must sound like mumbo jumbo to many of the happy hour crowd that is sitting on adjoining tables.

As soon as I met Mr Roese that Thursday evening, we launched straight into a conversation about the IPSEC standard, and then into an alphabet soup of acronyms associated with a multitude of communications standards and Internet technologies.

But that's what this sector is about: billions of dollars being staked by telecommunications, cable companies, government agencies and enterprises on numerous existing and next generation communications and networking technologies.

The problem is that not all sectors of the market are as fast moving as others. There is a lot of older telecommunications and Internet infrastructure in place.

Yet there is a fourth generation (4G) of mobile wireless and communications technologies ready to roll. They offer dramatic improvements in capacity and equally dramatic reductions in costs.

Burn the boats

However, there is still a lot of 3G and older equipment being purchased with few gung ho proponents for 4G. It is a status quo that Nortel was once happy to support unti just a few months ago,  when it came up with a radical new business strategy.

"We realized that for Nortel to be successful, we had to get totally behind 4G. That's why we have been selling our older lines of business. We call it our burn the boats strategy. It is what Alexander the Great did when his army crossed into Asia, there is no going back."

I said it was very brave of Nortel to do such a thing and it showed that it must be confident it can shift the telcos and cable companies into making large investments in 4G. From where I sit, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Fat, dumb and happy

Fat, dumb and happy is how Mr Roese described the attitude of some large telcos. And it was refreshing to see that he pulled no punches in his criticism of telco/cable industries for their slow rate of progress in bringing new technologies to consumers.

From the telcos/cable point of view, why mess with a good thing?  My bill for telephone/mobile calls, and cable/entertainment has tripled over the last five years.

Yet I'm not talking more on the phone, or watching more TV.  Plus, in those five years, those providers have adopted lots of comms technologies that have slashed their costs but not mine.

Last mile paved with gold

The last mile into the home has become the golden mile for the duopoly that controls it--all with government approval. Being a regulated industry has lots of benefits.

Mr Roese smiles and nods. He is much more optimistic than I am. He should know about these things, at just 36 years old, Mr Roese is already a veteran of this industry.

I joined Nortel in the middle of 2006 after being CTO of networking technologies at Broadcom in California, CTO at Enterasys Networks (along with being CMO, CIO and a host of other roles) in Andover, Massachusetts, and CTO of Cabletron Systems.

The fact that this is my fourth CTO role of a significant public telecom company by age 36 can either mean that I am overly focused on this type of work or that I really enjoy being in the center of the telecom industry. The truth is probably a bit of both.

From: John Roese’s Blog » Introduction to my blog

BTW, Mr Roese is not the only new blood, numerous top jobs at Nortel have been refreshed in the past couple of years. CEO Mike Zafirovski joined late 2005 from Motorola and GE.

Nortel also has Lauren Flaherty as chief marketing officer, an IBM veteran. She is considered one of the top marketers in the world and very keen on new media, blogs etc.

An $11bn startup

I tell Mr Roese that I'm impressed with this bold "burn the boats" strategy.  It must do wonders to boost morale at one of the oldest tech companies in the world (Canada's Nortel is more than 111 years old). Not to mention the brutal years of retrenchment and job losses from the dotbomb fallout.

"Morale is up, our people are very excited. We see ourselves as being an $11bn startup. We are totally focused on 4G becoming a success. And what will move the telcos is competition," he says.

He names a few upstart companies such as Clearwire, which is betting on WiMAX, one of the 4G technologies. And there are others in developing regions of the world--which is understandable because there is no legacy business or legacy infrastructure to protect ... and to continue to milk.

In North America, Clearwire and a few other small companies, are just a drop in the bucket in terms of potential 4G spending. I would think that it would take more than that for the major telcos to get serious about 4G in a hurry.

And there are other infrstructure drivers that still need to take place. Intel (an SVW sponsor), for example, won't have it's WiMAX chipset ready and in volume until late 2007. Then there has to be time for the market to build, which means a good two years or so before 4G WiMAX systems light a fire under our incumbent last milers.

Mr Roese says things will happen faster than that, (but then he would, he doesn't have a boat...or a paddle).

Extending enterprise 4G

He says that the enterprise market will be one of the key drivers of change because corporations will want to extend their use of WiMAX and other 4G comms technologies beyond their walls.

"We are doing a lot of work in getting the business people talking with the telcos so that they can see there is demand for 4G. We are also doing a lot of work talking with governments such as the Canadian government about where research and development funds should be directed."

These, and many other projects, initiatives, and efforts to educate markets will pay off for Nortel, says Mr Roese. And Nortel's investment in developing a range of 4G communications technologies means it is ahead of rivals.

I ask Mr Roese if WiMAX and other 4G technologies work as advertised? It seems there has been much talk about their promise of cheap, ubiquitous wireless broadband but not that many pilot projects.

He says that there is no doubt about the effectiveness of 4G and that Nortel is setting up a WiMAX umbrella in Ottowa and other municipalities, to demonstrate that it works.

Silicon Valley blackspot

I ask him to consider setting up San Francisco and Silicon Valley as a WiMAX hotspot to prove the technology. It seems as if the telcos deliberately keep the Bay Area in a backward blackspot.

Getting a decent broadband connection is as difficult as getting a decent mobile phone signal in large parts of Silicon Valley. That has to be deliberate.

My theory is that this is done by the telcos  just to mess with Silicon Valley and it's so called disruptive companies and technologies--it's a finger in the air rather than a signal in the air.

Eat your customers

What I'd love to see is companies such as Nortel taking a much more aggressive approach to move markets.  Instead of "eat your children" as Intel chairman Andy Grove has advocated, I'm looking for "eat your customers."

Nortel, and other companies that have groundbreaking technologies, should set up new businesses that challenge and compete with their customers. They'd only need to do it in a one or two regions, eat the lunch of just a few customers, before the rest of the market got the message and switched to the new technologies in double quick time.

Clearly, Nortel has lots on its plate without venturing into the telco business directly. It must execute on a bold strategy that will be very interesting to follow: Nortel has burned its boats but most of its potential 4G customers haven't.

. . .

Additional Info:

An excerpt from John Roese’s Blog:

I have no doubt that the 4G wireless world will have dramatically different economics because, in order to be hyper-connected, a per-device monthly cost of US$50+ is not realistic. Additionally, if we drive down the cost of connections to a level that supports hyper-connectivity in the developed world, we may be able to achieve full connectivity for people in the developing world. Today, the technology elements are coming together to make that possible. What we must now decide is what we, our governments, and the world will do with the technology in order to close that digital divide.

A comment on the blog by an ex-Nortel exec:

I’m a Nortel alumnist. Unfortunately, I succumbed to my frustration with the Nortel culture of the 90’s and left for life in tech start-ups.

In my nearly 10 years at BNR/Nortel, I’d been a part of both public and enterprise sides of the business in roles spanning management of various R&D orginizations, Bus Dev, Sales & Marketing, and even a short ’sabbatical’ in an M&A team. One of my most memorable and frustrating roles was attempting to drive forward strategic alliance initiatives with folks like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, etc. There were a fantastic volume of initiatives where Nortel had a real opportunity to take the lead with partners like Intel and Microsoft in defining how the content and computing plane interacts with the network plane. We were simply bringing smarter people to the table than ‘the other guys’ and were held in extremely high regard for both technology and go-to-market strategies that we were proposing.

At the time, there absolutely zero appetite within Nortel to pursue these initiatives - and an equally minuscule understanding of its strategic importance. To a great degree, our team at the time was partly to blame for our failure - we were driving ahead a huge change in how a company needs to innovate and compete on both R&D and GTM fronts. While our efforts were, in my view, the right strategic direction, it was also extremely clear that we were trying to change deeply rooted culture in a very short time span.

I could not be more excited to see leadership in place who are able to react and drive the company ahead with the kind of vision that I’ve read about in this blog.

I have become more ‘impressed’ by Nortel in the last weeks following this blog than I have been since leaving. I’m almost sorry I’m not there to help.

February 11th, 2007 at 7:49 pm by Randy Fehr

Nortel History

News Releases

Investor Information

eMedia Kit

See SVW related:

Can dotMobi break the stranglehold of the wireless Telcos?

Accessing the Internet from cell phones is possible but the experience is poor. Mobile web browser performance is clunky, few web sites are designed for cell phone access, and the customer bill can be astronomical. I recently spoke with Alexa...

Posted by Tom Foremski on December 22, 2006 7:49 AM

Intel Breakthrough: Demonstrates Its First Mobile WiMAX Baseband Chip

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher Intel (an SVW sponsor) is a strong supporter of WiMAX, the wireless broadband technology that works over a distance of several miles compared with the hundred foot or so range of WiFi. WiMAX...

Posted by Tom Foremski on December 6, 2006

I recently met with John McHugh VP and general manager of ProCurve Networking. This HP business has been growing at about 25 per cent per year over the past five years, a fast pace of growth under the leadership of  Mr McHugh, a 25 year HP veteran who joined straight out of college.

It is an impressive achievement, especially since few people associate HP with network equipment. Yet it is precisely this fact that has helped ProCurve build its business. Looking at Mr McHugh's business card, the HP logo occupies a tiny piece of the real-estate, and that is done on purpose.

Mr McHugh's insight was to keep the HP name low-key, knowing that that would help ProCurve establish a distinct identity and communicate an image of a singularly focused business.

"I didn't want to make the same mistakes that others have done, such as Dell, where its network business is seen as ancillary to its main business. ProCurve is full of people that are veterans in the network business, we speak the same language as our customers. And we re-invest about 12 per cent of our revenues in R&D. These things are very important to network equipment buyers," said Mr McHugh.

ProCurve's focus comes at a time when market leader Cisco Systems is moving into consumer and other markets. Cisco also talks about the network being the computer, a tag that was often used by server vendor Sun Microsystems and brings up associations with processing rather than networking.

ProCurve is sticking to its core mission, to make better networks.

And Mr McHugh credits Procurve's focused strategy for some large wins from companies that used to only buy Cisco equipment.

Procurve prices are less than those of Cisco, and there are no annual maintenance fees--factors which play especially well in educational and government sales.

"We are less expensive than Cisco, but that's not why people switch. We have to do more for less, it is not enough just be cheaper," Mr McHugh says. "And we have to show customers that we have a vision, that we have the technologies and the foresight to be able to help them deal with issues now and several years away."

And that's where the unveiling of the Adaptive Networks vision comes into play. It is about placing more intelligence at the edges of the network; it is about having management systems that make complex networks easier to administer; and increasingly, it is about being able to implement business policies across an entire IT infrastructure because of regulatory and audit requirements.

And because ProCurve has had to grow up within a world that required its equipment and systems to be able to interoperate seamlessly with that of other vendors--its Adaptive Networks strategy is one that can be integrated existing networks.

Announcing a clear strategy to network buyers now, is also good timing. A lot of companies upgraded their networks to deal with the millennium bug. Companies refresh their network equipment between five and ten years, with seven years being the average, that means many networks are now ripe for replacement.

ProCurve has benefited from keeping the HP name low-key and from taking advantage of its HP connection. For example, it deploys sophisticated security technologies developed within HP Labs. And from the development of powerful switching chips that add a lot of intelligence into the edges of an enterprise network. Those chips are adaptive in that they can be reprogrammed on the fly, essential in being able to adapt to changing security threats, changing regulatory demands, and changes in business applications.

However, predicting the future is notoriously difficult, and there is one technology that could derail the network industry from building more intelligence into networks, and send it back 20 years into the stone age of dumb data routers.

This potentially disruptive technology is called IPsec. It allows computers to create an encrypted communications channel that tunnels through a network system. It carries its own intelligence and therefore the network is just shuttling packets.

IPsec is part of Microsoft Vista, the next big upgrade to Windows, and it is turned on by default. Corporate Vista buyers get an intelligent software based networking technology for free. IPsec could be used in a way that could extend the life of existing networks.

Mr McHugh says "I'm keeping an eye on IPsec, especially since we don't yet know how people will use it."

ProCurve's strategy is to be able to work with IPsec and to become the larger "wrapper," adding capabilities to IPsec streams and thus be able to hang onto the value-add intelligence piece of the network equipment market.

[Coming up: John Roese, recently appointed CTO of Nortel talks to SVW about Nortel's "burn the boats" business strategy.]



-----------------------------------------

Additional info:

ProCurve announcements in 2006:

» ProCurve Networking by HP Climbs to No. 2 in Enterprise Networking Revenue and Ports—November 27, 2006 » ProCurve Networking by HP Joins Ethernet Alliance to Drive Adoption of Ethernet in the Enterprise—August 1, 2006 » ProCurve Networking by HP Delivers Secure, Unified Wired and Wireless Network—May 15, 2006 » ProCurve Networking by HP Expands Functionality at Network Edge with New Intelligent Switches—February 13, 2006

Late last year I met with Drew Clark, co-founder of IBM Venture Capital Group which operates out of the heart of Silicon Valley, in Menlo Park.

There are just half-a-dozen specialists and their support staff, yet the group has been very successful, and doing it with OPM (other people's money).

Drew Clark, explains: "In the late 1990s we saw the many billions of dollars invested by the venture capital community and we thought about the best way we could participate and leverage those investments. That's when we set up the VC group. Since then we've helped IBM acquire key startups and also partner with hundreds of others in business ventures."

IBM's Venture Capital Group does not manage a fund as do other VC organizations. The company doesn't even have a strategic VC fund such as Intel, which makes billions of dollars in investments. Instead, it tells the VC community, and the startups, what types of technologies it is interested in, and the direction of its business strategies.

Then it waits for the magic innovation engine of Silicon Valley to spit out companies with technologies that it can leverage across its global business platform.

For example, Steve Mills, head of IBM's Software Group, can acquire a small Silicon Valley software company and immediately monetise its products across IBM's global distribution channels. It would take years for a software company to acquire that kind of capability.

It is a sweet deal for IBM since it doesn't have to identify, and invest in startups, and help grow them into larger businesses--the Silicon Valley VC community does it all for them and with their own money.

And the VC community is happy to do it and have an exit--selling a portfolio company to an IBM, SAP or Oracle,  is very welcome.

The IBM VC group has had a hand in 15 acquisitions, and Mr Clark says that the annual rate of acquisitions will accelerate. It will  accelerate because IBM is pushing harder into emerging markets, in India and in China.

"In China we helped a small startup in the financial services area where we needed a secure online payment system. We have good contacts with the banks and we were able to put together an IT and business solution that has been very successful," Mr Clark says.

It is such IT services projects that IBM can help startups find customers, and help refine their technologies. Big Blue is creating "innovation" centers around the world where its engineers and researchers help startups develop their technologies, and bring them into contact with IBM's client companies. It partners with about 1200 startups.

IBM benefits from the IT/business services contracts that build the complex IT and business infrastructures. Services is more than half of IBM's revenues and increasing--so it is a smart strategy. It makes more money from services than it would as a vendor of hardware and software.

Mr Clark is particular impressed with China and the startups that are emerging over there. He sees a lot of innovative thinking in China, and emerging technologies that IBM could leverage.

We spoke for a while abut innovation and Silicon Valley and the unique culture of this place. Mr Clark fully appreciates the value that Silicon Valley continues to produce, despite innovation occurring in many other places around the world.

I see Silicon Valley as unique because it tolerates massive amounts of failure. Here, people are allowed to fail, and fail often--something that other cultures punish.

Mr Clark and his teams regularly  meet with VCs to tell them what they are looking for. One current area of interest is in Service Oriented Architecture.

- - -

Additional Info :

IBM: The Venture Capital Group Report

• Hot topics at IBM Venture Capital Group
  
  The Long Tail of SaaS
  Virtualization creep
  Irving on Innovation
  Open source & storage: it's about time
  Open hardware is here to stay
  Mainframe trends: a virtual and practical leap to SOA
  Information-based medicine

About:

• Partnering programs
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• In the news
• Working with us

IBM Strategy & Venture Big News - Drew Clark | PodTech.net ...

Drew Clark of IBM's Director of Strategy and CoFounder of IBM's Venture Capital Group talks about the formation of a new Venture Capital Advisory Council ...
www.podtech.net/home/technology/105/ibm-venture-news-drew-clark - 30k -

Jajah is one of those rare startups that managed to put a tingle down my spine. It's best described as a telecommunications company creating new types of phone call services using Internet technologies.

Jajah is not a VOIP company, don't confuse it with Vonage, or Skype. Jajah uses VOIP but this is not about technology it's about spotting a very large business opportunity. And it's also about innovation in its proper sense.

Jajah has developed what it calls "web activated telephony" which is a mouthful compared with the simplicity of its service. You go to its web site, input your phone number, and the number you want to call, and click to connect--that's it. You use your own phone, there is no download, no headsets to use, it's dead simple. And for many users it is free.

I recently met with Roman Scharf, co-founder of Jajah. "We wanted to create a very simple to use telephony service and one that uses the current telephone system and telephones. Skype is popular but only 3 per cent of Internet users use it. You need to install the software, and you have to be at your PC, and use a headset."

Jajah takes advantage of free local calling by establishing local PBX sites in more than 100 countries and using its network to carry the voice traffic between them. The beauty of this approach is that it leverages the existing global telephone network, and more importantly, it has a massive potential market of existing phone owners--much larger than the number of Internet users.

But how defensible is this approach to competition? "There is a lot that we do on the backend that is not easy to do. Also, it would take at least a year to negotiate all the contracts with the telephone companies around the world." A year is a long time for a competitor to establish the back end infrastructure especially since Jajah is well into phase two--negotiating big partnership deals on the front end.

Mr Scharf says that telephone companies are concerned about Skype and Vonage but not about Jajah. "We work with the phone companies and we help them keep customers. In Germany, for example, there is huge churn in phone customers, the phone companies costs of acquiring customers, so that they can sell them all the other services, is huge. Partnering with Jajah allows them to keep hold of their customers."

Jajah is close to announcing some partnerships with large media companies that will expand its reach. It is also exploring business models that could eventually make all voice calls free, to anywhere.

But this is not all. Jajah will soon be unveiling some very inventive phone call products/services. I'm not able to talk abut them yet but I'm impressed with Jajah's creativity. I'm also amazed that nobody has thought to innovate on the basic telephone platform--which has barely changed in function in 125 years.

Jajah is name you will be seeing a lot because I'm certain that you'll be using its co-branded services in many places--online and offline.

- - -

Additional info:

JAJAH Mobile and Roman at ScobleShow

Thursday, October 19. 2006

Robert Scoble recently launched his new video blog project called ScobleShow. He dropped by our office in Mountain View at the end of September and taped an interview with one of our co-founders, Roman Scharf. Roman also does a brief demonstration of Jajah Mobile with special guest Guy Kawasaki.

Headquarters:
JAJAH Inc.
2513 Charleston Road
Suite 102
Mountain View, CA 94043
European Office:
JAJAH Technologies S.A.
11A, Boulevard Joseph II
1840 Luxemburg
Development Center:
JAJAH Ltd.
48 Ha'amal St.
Ra'anana, Israel

JAJAH - web-activated telephony

I recently met Timothy Ferriss, a kindred intellect. Timothy has packed more lives into his 29 years than Steve Jobs has in his 51.

He's finishing up a book called The Four-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich , due out in April, and it is packed with some great tips for our harried times.

Tim is already a successful entrepreneur, and one that discovered the aimlessness of entrepreneurism at an early age. "I was constantly on the go, running around, making lots of money but hating to think that I would be doing this for the next 40 years. I'd already seen enough people do that and end up with quadruple bypass surgeries in their 50s, but I didn't know how to get off the tread mill," he said.

So a couple of years ago, Tim took off to the closest airport, and picked a destination at random. "I didn't know where to fly. I saw London on the board and bought a one-way ticket. Until then, the whole of my life had been scripted, I wanted to do something spontaneous."

Hallelujah, I can relate to the thrill of unscripted adventures. Tim ended up traveling the world, he lived in London, in Ireland learning Gaelic, in Japan learning Japanese and spent six months in Argentina learning Spanish.

[BTW, Tim is also a linguistics scholar, a neuroscientist and a competitive wrestler...]

"Argentina is an incredible place, it has every type of climate and you can get a great apartment for $400 per month. And there are more wireless networks there than anywhere I've ever been. Incidentally, Japan has none at all, I couldn't find any."

And that's where Tim gave up his Spanish studies and took up Tango classes. I had just been reading about Tango in a collection of short stories: "Sex, Death and God in L.A" One of the stories talked about how Tango can become a very addictive pastime...

"Soon, I was doing 6 to 8 hours of tango lessons every day," says Tim. "I was in a class filled with beautiful women and there just two guys." [Surely there must be more to tango than just beautiful women, I need to investigate further...]

Tim is by nature an athlete, a competitive wrestler by earlier choice. It's no surprise that he soon got into competitive tango and got as far as the semi-quarter finals of the world championships(!)

Getting back to his book, one of Tim's themes we discussed (at SVW's 24 hr meeting booths at the Lucky Penny Diner) was digital leashes.

"I've upset many a relationship because I couldn't get off my email. I'd be managing my email or my alerts and instant messaging, getting interrupted all the time. I had a desktop computer at the time, and that screen would always be on, bright and beckoning. Now, I use a notebook so that I can close it shut."

I know what Timothy is talking about and so do my readers. Not only do we have to deal with information overload, in this day and age we also have to deal with what I call "conversation overload."

I like to joke that I love BlackBerries, except for the email feature. Every time I peek into my inbox I lose two to three hours--and I'm still not done.

And some days I don't get to manage my email because I'm out and about visiting with people, trying to get interviews and scoops. Then when I get back to my desk, I'm writing and ignoring my email until my writing is done, or I fall asleep. Some days several days worth of email gets backed up in my inbox at which point I fantasize about blowing it all up.

When Tim went traveling he put himself on a one-day-a-week email diet! "I went from being addicted to email to checking it just once per week. I also left a message on my phone that I would not be checking voice mail messages but to send me an email."

It is difficult saying no to our digital leashes but I believe that being able to "just say no" is going to become an essential character trait for survival in our always on society. Tim's upcoming book has lots of great tips on this and many other subjects related to our modern lifestyle and culture, stay tuned for more...]]> Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:28:34 -0800 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://content.presspage.com/clients/150_2054.jpeg?10000 https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/svw-chat-ibms-cto-of-emerging-technologies-talks-about-web-20-and-trust/ https://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/svw-chat-ibms-cto-of-emerging-technologies-talks-about-web-20-and-trust/242946

David Boloker CTO of Emerging Technologies at IBM came into town to speak at Ajax World. I caught up with him Wednesday morning and we talked about Ajax and Web 2.0, and a new early alpha initiative IBM calls QEDwiki that can provide the framework for integrating information and applications within enterprises:

David Boloker is very interested in Ajax and very interested in making sure that there aren't dozens of nuances of Ajax. He and Scott Dietzen, CTO at Zimbra, one of the earliest Ajax apps companies, founded the Open Ajax Alliance.

"Every Ajax toolset was following its own nuance of Ajax and the problem was that each toolset wanted to 'own' the whole page. This created many conflicts and made it difficult to pull together different components," said Mr Boloker. "We did not want to create a standards body but to create agreement on some basic things such as naming JavaScript objects."

Is an Ajax application the same as a Web 2.0 application? "No, a Web 2.0 application has to include the social dimension, how it implements tagging, for example, and sharing, and all the other community oriented aspects that are important," said Mr Boloker.

For IBM, Ajax and Web 2.0 represent new generations of  applications that use the web as a platform. And they have characteristics that enable users to create their own "my web" experience by mashing/pulling  together Ajax components from many different sources.

A key to that approach is to be able to provide the framework that enables that type of integration. And that is the OpenAjax Hub an open source project.

But with everyone having access to this framework, where is the value-add? Mr Boloker says it will be in two places. One is in the value of the data or content. The databases of content will have value to organizations and users, such as Reuters feeds, or databases of chemical data for example.

The second place will be in the Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) layer which is all about services. And IBM is a services oriented company.

"The focus for us is on the business professional, not the IT department. All you need to do is operate a mouse and know how to drag and drop."

That's the basis for IBM's alpha project called QEDwiki (Quickly and Easily Done wiki), which is being tested by 20 large corporations. This is IBM's version of what Jotspot, SocialText, and others are offering, a way to enable business people to mashup sources, feeds and applications, by what I call drag and drop share or not (DADSON), depending on user access rights.

But mashing up feeds and data means trust in the source. I pointed out that Google News recently was carrying a news headline that had been hacked, it carried an anti-US anti-Israel message. In that case, Google had not verified the content, it was corrupted, and that corrupted trust in Google.

In the brave new world of web applications and mashups, verifying that content comes from where it says it does will be absolutely critical. But how will that be done?

Mr Boloker said that feeds could be signed with security certificates but he also acknowledged that even Microsoft has had problems with security certificates.

Trust will come from long standing relations, contracts, and also using security technologies, said Mr Boloker. "It will come from your relationships with your vendors and an established history of trust. You will assign different levels of trust to a feed. And trust will be offered as yet another service."

- - -

Additional resources and links:

SVW related stories:

Pre-mashed online suites knock the "P" out of PC

We badly need a way to verify sources of online content - we need a "trust trackback" 

UPDATE: Google distributes hacked newspaper site with anti-Israel/US message...

About: OpenAjax Alliance

In late 2005, thanks largely to the globetrotting of David Boloker, IBM’s CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies, a small number of leading companies brainstormed about how to ensure that Ajax fulfills its potential as the industry standard rich application platform based on open technologies. These early discussions came to a climax on Feb. 1, 2006, with the announcement of the "OpenAjax Initiative", whose 15 original companies included BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Google, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend and Zimbra. (See press release on launch of OpenAjax with 15 original companies.)

Between February 1 and May 15, another 15 organizations joined "OpenAjax", and the (then) 30 companies held a two-day kickoff meeting in San Francisco to lay out the blue-print for the initiative moving forward. At the meeting, the group decided to establish the OpenAjax Alliance, defined its mission, agreed on an interim organizational process, and established its initial activities. Today, over 50 companies have participated in the OpenAjax Initiative (see article on first OpenAjax meeting) and are at various stages of joining the OpenAjax Alliance.

The OpenAjax Hub is a set of standard JavaScript functionality defined by the OpenAjax Alliance, with strong focus on being small and fast, that addresses key interoperability issues that arise when multiple Ajax libraries are used within the same web page.

The OpenAjax Hub represents a key part of the technical work of the OpenAjax Alliance.

The Alliance is managing the development of an open source reference implementation of the OpenAjax Hub at SourceForge.

From IBM:

IBM EXPANDS OPEN SOURCE CONTRIBUTIONS TO FURTHER ENABLE WEB 2.0 ADOPTION
IBM Sees Everyday Web Applications as Driver for Business Collaboration and Success

Santa Clara, CA - AjaxWorld Conference, October 4, 2006 – In a keynote speech to leading technology executives, David Boloker, IBM's chief technology officer for emerging Internet technologies, said that the combination of Web 2.0 tools and open source communities are creating a "perfect storm" to enable new kinds of collaborations among businesses and their constituents.
Mr. Boloker also announced that IBM would make new technology contributions to the open source community to speed the adoption and growth of Web 2.0 technologies among enterprises.
Included in IBM’s newest contributions to the open source community are additional enhancements to the Eclipse Foundation’s Ajax Technology Framework (ATF) and the Mozilla Foundation.  IBM plans to generate Ajax as part of the JSF Tools in the next release of IBM Rational Application Developer, which is slated to be available later this year. 
 For more information, please visit: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ajax.

3/12/2002:

I would like to thank the Heinz Foundation for recognizing with this award that the development of the technology for the future must have positive social and human impacts. In the near future, technology will affect everything: our economic, political, social and personal lives.

Will technology be used to help solve problems of energy, food, water and clean air? Control disease? Nurture our children? Care for our elderly and disability? Will technology be used to increase literacy, particularly among women? Will it enable a fair global economy? Will we live in peace? Will it be used to solve the problems or create the futures that women want?

. . . Around the world, women are not full partners in driving the creation of the new technology that will define their lives. This is not good for women and not good for the world.

The involvement of women can bring important perspectives and directions to the technology of the future. Women must have dramatically higher representation in technical fields.

But bringing women into the existing system as technologists is not sufficient. All sorts of women—technical and non-technical, rich and poor, from the developed, developing, and underdeveloped worlds, must define the technology of the future.

The system that creates the technology of the future must change to include all of these women, as women, not just as faceless technologists.

. . . I want to take a few words to honor all of the women who are now working in computer science and technology as programmers or researchers or systems developers, building the future in the way that they think it should be built. It is often difficult to continue in spite of the fact that their environments may not be supportive. To any women who has stuck with her ideas, believing that there are different ways to do it, thank you for sticking with it!

Finally, thank you to the people, women and men, who share and support the passion and vision at the Institute for Women and Technology. We can change the world!

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SVW: Interview with Telle Whitney, head of the Anita Borg Institute