Archive for the 'Public Policy' Category
Jul 30, 2008, post by Randall
A little over 4 months ago we first wrote about an astonishing social enterprise, Jonathan Howard (see photo) and his Run The Dream (RTD).
Jonathan and Terry with Michael Chong, MP
To refresh your memory, take a look at our 22 March, 2008 post by clicking here: With amazing youthful enthusiasm, having Just turned 25 today, Jonathan Howard ran into Elora to a welcome by a Michael Chong, MP, Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj, a number of parents who live daily with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and a good contingent of local supporters. It goes without saying people were inspired and he was very warmly greeted.
It’s really interesting how things that start slowly eventually snowball. There are always challenges and false starts in any truly entrepreneurial enterprise. The snowballing of viral propagation is famous in the world of web startups. Jonathan has witnessed a similar effect with Run The Dream. One shining example of that is Terry Robinson (see photo). Terry, a co-worker at Ontario Public Service and an accomplished two-time Para-Olympian (Seoul and Barcelona), was so inspired by Jonathan’s social vision to commit to a leave of absence from his job to accompany Jonathan by wheelchair from Ottawa to Winnipeg. That’s a 3 month and 3000 kms of dedicated trek. What a team they make as they average a marathon a day, day in, day out.
Jonathan and Terry should be an inspiration to us all. RTD is managed by a core team of about a dozen (effectively full time) volunteers, augmented by literally hundreds of local grassroots volunteers, with Jonathan being the notional CEO (or should I say, Chief Running Officer?). As a startup social enterprise, RTD has an impressive year one business plan. The two main CSFs:
- to raise awareness of ASD, and
- to raise $2.5 million in donations
are ambitious goals for any startup. How many technology startups come close to that in year one?
When we filter investment prospects at Verdexus, we like to think that 80% of the investment decision is centred around the team. As a result, we spend much time getting the measure of founding team entrepreneurs. For a social enterprise, the same is true, in spades. With a vision and an execution track record that Jonathan and Run The Dream has so far, have you any doubt that investors will back Jonathan and his team?
And, guess what? You can to. Help Jonathan and his team meet their goal by donating online at the Run The Dream website.
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May 06, 2008, post by Randall
I finally found some time to record thoughts on a great conference - last Thursday’s Tech Leadership Conference (TLC) by Communitech.
CEO ROUNDTABLE:
Verdexus once again gathered a few tech CEOs from Waterloo and Toronto, the night before at Charbries, to have an informal and open-ended discussion of key issues in financing, growing, valuing and finding exits for technology startups.
As in past years, we assembled an accomplished group who have built primarily software-based businesses during the last decade and are now executing newer models, whether SaaS or the more esoteric Venture 2.0 Playbook necessary for “so-called” Web 2.0 and Mobile businesses. In an earlier blog, I covered a past TLC speaker and Verdexus advisor Grover RIghter’s Venture 2.0 Playbook.
Numerous war stories about increased complexities of dealing with founders, VCs, groups of angel investors, not to mention simply making enterprise sales highlighted common success factors of perseverence to overcome obstacles, failure and experimentation before ultimate success and just plain good luck around timing. The drying up of VC money and other funding challenges remain a constant theme.
Experience in building great businesses over the last ten years has a lot to teach us today. However, the 2008 market also demands significantly different startup building techniques. To explore that, we spent time dissecting the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Some key questions we analyzed were:
- Q: in building companies for less (e.g. under $10 million, or even $5 million, from start to exit), is this building a complete company? Or, is an exit to a much larger acquirer the only way such nimbly funded companies can be grown to full scale? A: yes and no, we had some quite different opinions on this, so perhaps the jury is still out.
- Q: likewise, are these companies inherently built around smaller applications, that aren’t as technologically deep as earlier startups, or is there a genuine breakthrough in company cost structures? A: yes there are real breakthroughs in outsourcing, virtualization, hardware and network costs, virtualizing management, etc. Furthermore, while some Venture 2.0 companies are big plays, many are ultimately just a piece of the whole product and will ultimately find their true “home” only when acquired.
- Q: in an age of “free”, what are the long term monetization strategies that will build companies of real value? A: see discussion around TLC and Chris Anderson, below.
In addition, we spoke about:
- the right time and stage to start going outside for money, and hence the tradeoffs between purely organic growth and the accelerated growth rates external finance allows.
- how to get and maintain, and perhaps legally incent, alignment between investors and management.
- the difficulties a “closed” mobile environment, particularly in Canada and the US, presents to startups and whether purely web-based applications (a la iPhone) represent the optimal rollout strategy. The emergence of 3G will only enhance this strategy (3G is expected to be 20% of handsets by 2010, but that number would be skewed to non-North American markets).
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Apr 19, 2008, post by Randall
The Office Goes Home
Over a short span of years, I’ve witnessed work migrate from a highly structured office setting, to home offices via telecommuting and now into the “Third Place”, a term coined by Ray Oldenberg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place.
Back in the early 1980’s, I was a pioneer of telecommuting, between Waterloo and Chicago via a state of the art 1200 baud modem, pictured above, no less. There was intense interest in this at the time, because as an extremely early adopter (too early some might say) of the telecommuting paradigm, I felt a bit like a guinea pig. In retrospect this workstyle enabled extreme concentration and productivity. At the same time, the primitiveness of the communications technologies, from network speed to the software then available, necessitated a lot of travel for in-person meetings. And, tellingly, the home office can ultimately be a lonely workplace, leading to a decrease in social interaction and overall motivation.
In that early revolution over the last 25 years, telecommuting saw work slowly migrate, or more typically intermingle, between the second place (the office) and the first place (your home). Telecommuting has changed traffic patterns, social life and, on the whole, provided an improved work experience by increasing knowledge worker flexibility.
Enter the “Third Place”
As an early adopter, not to mention beta tester, of many cutting edge mobile technologies and as a long time road warrior working on a number of geographically dispersed projects, I’ve often explored a work style that the Economist has labelled “mobile nomadism”, in their richly insightful 12 April 2008 special section on “The New Nomadism”. Always a great read, the particular Economist feature stands out, especially for those interested in mobility for social, technological, political, artistic or economics reasons. Last week, Alec Saunders ran a great SquawkBox conference call on iotum, with the podcast available on his blog here.
In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg characterizes the Third Place as:
“the place which is neither home nor work, where you spend comfortable time in easy association with friends and a few strangers.”
He celebrates the magic of the English Coffeehouse tradition and the seductive and widespread Viennese Cafe Culture as social gathering places that have often been scenes of political intrigue and even major business enterprise. Likely few are aware that in 1698, Jonathan’s Coffee-house in London started trading stocks and commodities, and eventually evolved into today’s London Stock Exchange. Ironically, Oldenburg was lamenting the decline of such third places.
Today’s revolution of being always connected, spawned by wiresless technologies, has dramatically reversed that decline. Version one of “on-demand” spaces is, of course, the humble WiFi enabled cafe. Locally in the Waterloo area, many establishments, beyond the ubiquitous Starbucks, have innovated in this genre, including:
- A Matter of Taste which is an amazing fusion of art, coffee and WiFi hotspot,
- Exhibit Cafe another melange of art and local, organic food right in the Children’s Museum,
- Williams Coffee Pubs, a local chain with food and long hours, popular with students doing late night assignments, hackers and even those working on offering memoranda, and
- C’est Bon Cafe, with its international flair and sinfully good Chocolate Fiesta Fire, and Refuge for village cocooning are great examples in bucolic Elora.
Initially, these cafes served as venues for meetings that were more informal, more conducive to creativity, and powered by wonderful Latte macchiato creations (pictured above). Eventually, I started to do small amounts of work there to increase productivity in the dead time between offsite meetings, including planning and brainstorming, reading briefing documents and eventually emails and, truth be told, writing this blog post. The environment is pleasant, a vibrant mix of people from a wide array of social backgrounds. It is worth noting that I always have the choice how much I wish to tune in or tune out those around me, just as I choose to go there to relax, work or both.
All new technology breakthroughs require adjustment. In this case, the major downside of nomadism is that the mix of real and virtual channels can lead to socially awkward situations. One is the issue of alienation, where people are more attuned to those they are in their virtual universe than those in the real world around them. While I may return to this topic at a later time, I would expect that society will eventually evolve a hybrid, multi-tasking communications style, learning to strike a reasonable balance between isolation and the global reach afforded by such virtual, always-on communications.
Instead I will focus on the opportunities. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits of reduced commuting, I strongly believe that the next generation of third places could serve to enrich our life as we build communities of the future. In Waterloo Region, there are signs that many are thinking about this challenge and building better third places that encompass peoples’ needs from business to the arts to entertainment and fun. In short, the building of vibrant, social spaces will create healthy cities of the future.
One aspect that is immediately apparent in the best of these first generation, third places listed above is the role of the arts in their mix. The simple coffee house is just the beginning. The impact of the arts is much more than art on the walls — it is a certain style and ambience you feel when you enter. Arts is an enormously creative endeavour, and I firmly believe, has a great affinity for the natural creativity inherent in the most innovative, knowledge-based companies of the 21st century. People like Alf Bogusky, Director General of KW Art Gallery have been developing a vision to reshape our urban spaces on a collaborative model based around the notion of third place. Historically, the arts institutions like art galleries, public libraries, theatres and concerts halls have been enclaves, walled off from the rest of the city. Alf and a group of leading thinkers have been mapping out a very different future, which exploits the natural synergies between all these stakeholders. Stay tuned …
In summary, we’ve witnessed a huge transaction through several generations of societal change from fixed offices to telecommuting and now rampant nomadism which is creating new spaces called the third place. I challenge all those who are beta testing the new mobile nomadism and who interact in these new third places, to please comment and share your experiences - we truly are building the city of the future in the context of the global village.
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Mar 15, 2008, post by Randall
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And, don’t worry, with modern hand luggage restrictions, I didn’t have my sword to open the oyster to extract a pearl! In fact, Oyster is a Transport For London brand for their payment system. Many here in North America feel we are at the epicentre of the technology universe and have a monopoly on great technologies empowering the connectivity behind our increasinly always on lifestyle. With a different work-life cultural balance, Europe has much to teach us about deploying state of the art technologies, especially those we might encounter in daily life. But, too, not all are absolutely without flaws. I will share a few experiences from a recent pan-European sojourn.
OYSTER CARD:
Although deployed for a few years, this convenient contact-less payment card, containing an RFID chip, has in the last year or so taken off to the point that it is now used by around 90% of all trips on London Underground, buses and even some National Rail services. While, in North America, we think of RFID’s use in logistics and as a more active version of all those UPC barcodes, these embedded applications may be the more fundamental ones.
How does it work? You simply pay £3 for the card, which is yours for life, and you then top it up as a pre-paid card. Oyster users pay less per trip, and, by monitoring your usage and appropriately capping charging, it also replaces a single day travelcard. Further, Oyster can also be used as a multi-day pass. You can register online so you can keep your money should your card be lost or stolen. In use, it is important to swipe both in AND out at the turnstiles, like in the photo above.
Compared with:
- Toronto Transit Commission, which replaced its 50 year old tokens, with ones that are harder to counterfeit, or with
- San Francisco’s BART, which uses 1980’s technology magstripe cards,
Transport For London (TFL) has taken a much bolder step in payments with their Oyster Card. It was convenient, fast, well documented, but …
What’s the Catch? Several times, I found that I got the message “See Supervisor” and would have to swipe again to make it exit. And, remember, that unless you swipe both in and out from your journey, you may find a £4 charge for a short trip, instead of the correct charge of £1.50. How this happened to me was that I swiped on exit, got the “Supervisor” message, and swiped again. The gates opened, but I found it had ended my first trip then begun a second trip, which it viewed as uncompleted, hence the £4 charge!
Like most great technologies, it comes down to intelligent software design and execution. Clearly smarter pattern recognition in the software could have removed this artefact either because of the short time between trip end and trip start or because this was an outbound turnstile, from which trips should end not commence.
WiFi ON BUSES:
Normally, I don’t travel on buses. Here in Canada, they are typically unpleasant, crowded and I’m old enough to remember when they were smoky as well. Because of a missed flight by my partner, I made one unscheduled 1 hour inter-city connection on a bus. Imagine my surprise when the price was great, there was free coffee served by a human, TVs with headphones and comfortable seats. But, most surprising of all, and I haven’t seen this anywhere else, was FREE WiFi connectivity on the buses. I was actually able to crack open my notebook and connect to the web and synchronize my email. While it did fade in and out a few times, I was totally amazed that this would even work at all. I’m still trying to figure out what technology connected the bus to the rest of the world (is it 3G wireless?), but clearly this was impressive. So, a combination of great technology, great service and comfortable buses was instructive in creating a “business class” experience in a European inter-city bus.
FON WiFI HOTSPOTS:
I was excited a few years about when FON was launched to make an open, universal WiFi Cloud. Part of the idea was for each person to “open up” their home or business routers, but in a secure way, to create a cloud in an almost open source way. And, because part of the founding energy for Spanish company FON, came from the Skype principals, it looked very promising indeed. So, I signed up in 2005 and then nothing happened.
Imagine my pleasant surprise to be in a cafe in Munich, called News Bar, and to see the familiar FON logo. Furthermore, after having paid €3 per hour at a previous cafe hotspot (not to mention £4 per hour in London!), it was great that this cost only €3 per day. What is more, I logged in at 2 other cafes that day, all using FON and all for that same €3 charge in the first hotspot. Although the FON business model includes a revenue share with the hotspot owners, they will not get rich from the proceeds. It was great to see the high level of FON penetration in Munich, and London appears to be following along. I can only hope that Waterloo and Toronto will wake up to this movement to create an open source cloud, as well.
3G:
Perhaps WiFi will become less important as 3G technology, in particular HSDPA with around 3.6 Mbps download speeds, becomes pervasive. Having started rollouts in 2003 in UK and Italy, Europe has about a 5 year head start on North America. Few will realize that Rogers has been staging a rollout of HSDPA into major Canadian cities over the last year and, similarly for AT&T across the US.
Enroute back to Toronto, I was in the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge, struggling, like everyone else, to connect to their WiFi network, when I noticed one Swedish laptop user was productively downloading, surfing and emailing. His secret? His 3G PC card. Now, of course Europe insn’t a total 3G data utopia. I suspect it will be a year or more before international roaming in 3G data becomes more reasonably priced (read not extortionate) and, for those of use who aren’t residents and rely on prepaid cards, unlimited prepaid data tariffs become available. However, hope is on the horizon - my colleague, Alec Saunders, at World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, used Yoigo for an amazing €1.50 per day, on a prepaid basis. How long can it be that such a great concept will propagate from Spain to the rest of Europe, and perhaps the rest of the world?
