Tomorrow MESH 2.0 kicks off. I have to admit to being more than a little curious about what great ideas will surface this year. Last year I live blogged the conference. I might do a little of that this year but I really want to take the time to dive into MESH's zeitgeist a bit more. Until then, here are some thoughts from last year's MESH by RadiantCore's Jay Goldman:

I asked some audience members to send me their thoughts on the conference for posting on Gagglescape. Jay Goldman of RadiantCore, one of the BarCampTdot organizers, offered the following:

Some thoughts on Mesh:

- I've been to many conferences that were planned in much longer amounts of time, most of which where chaotic and disappointing. Stuart, Rob, Mark, Mike, and Matthew did a wonderful job of pulling together an informative and interactive two days in a remarkably short amount of time.

- The network connectivity, especially on day one when they had many of the ports blocked, could have been much better. Conferences for the tech crowd need gobs and gobs of bandwidth almost before they need anything else.

- The mix of tech and marketing folk was fantastic and made for some excellent networking. The two sides of the fence are often divided by great chasms where collaboration and mutual respect go to die. Mesh really helped to build some bridges, at least in the Toronto area.

- I liked the mixed streams of sessions because it made it easier to plan my day.  It would have been interesting to also cross the streams and have some panels made up of marketers and technologists -for example, I would definitely have attended a debate between Steve Rubel and Chris Messina on the relative merits of blogging as a marketing and information (...read more...)

Matt Thompson, director of Save the Internet's award-winning "Independence Day"video, joins City TV's New Media Specialist Amber MacArthur; online expertKris Krug; and consultants Mark Kuznicki and Jason Roks to talk 'net neutrality' at nextMEDIA: The Future of Digital Content, Canada's premiere event for digital content producers. The sister event to the Banff World Television Festival, nextMEDIA takes place June 8 - 10, 2007 at the Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff, Alberta.

Dubbed the ‘First Amendment of the Internet' in the United States, ‘net neutrality’ has been called "THE central issue in the development of the architecture of the media platform of the future." It aims to ensure the public can view the smallest blogs just as easily as the largest corporate Websites. Although the issue has yet to gain the same momentum in Canada as it has the United States, that could all change if a report by the federally appointed Telecommunications Policy Review Panel that recommends changes to the Telecommunications Act is implemented.

The ICE Conference (formerly iSummit) is over for another year. Lack of electrical outlets and a usable wireless system capable of handling a geek-filled audience made live-blogging pretty well impossible. That said, this conference unlike, say, MESH, did not require live blogging. Why? Well, ICE 07's theme could be described as "How do big media companies monetize all this digital stuff anyway?" We are talking big, juggernaut companies like Bell, Telus, and Rogers who really don't need Gagglescape's help promoting themselves.

Not that we hadn't heard the messages all before. Let's face it, digital media is now mainstream and is a money-making commodity managed by accountants who, by their nature, are concerned with the bottom line of the industry. The corporate presentations were trade-show stuff. Not to say many in the audience expected more. They probably didn't. But if you came looking for the latest Web 2.0 and social-networking trends you were left unsatisfied.

Still, the organizers did a great job and the conference went on without a hitch. Lots of old friends reconnected and new friendships were made. At the end of it all I suppose that's the important message (along with there is money to be made in this industry and we - big companies - know how to do it).

One event that snuck in some younger thinking was the CHUM U-Pitch challenge. Hosted by the always knowledgeable Amber Mac and including as a panelist TorCamp's David Crow, the presentations had a bit of that "American Idol" flavour to them. Who would win? In the end my favourite from the Murmur guys came second.

Grand Prize Winner
Where'd You Get That? by ChickAdvisor Inc.

2nd Prize
Torontopia by Gabe Sawhney

3rd Prize
Reach For The Starz by Digital Goldfish

I'm off to OCAD's Mobile Nation Conference today. Stay (...read more...)

This weekend at Ryerson University another "Unconference," an example of the BarCamp phenomenon, took place. PodCampToronto, as this one was called, was a two day extravaganza about all things related to podcasting and vloging. The user-organized conference model where a loose association of people gather without so-called "experts" to learn about what is going on in the community, is revolutionizing how we learn. Oh, and it may just put regular conference organizers out of business. Think disintermediation here.

The technology that provides the armature for these conferences is, of course, the Wiki. Here is what the WIkipedia says about the medium:

A wiki (IPA: [ˈwɪ.kiː] or [ˈwiː.kiː] [1]) is a website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change available content, typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.

People who have something to say book themselves as speakers. People who want to attend sign themselves up. This conference also added real-time video feeds online. Go to the link above and follow it to the calendar page. There you can link to videos of the event.

More about wikis and BarCamps later. Today, however, I'm off to a conference -- the old fashioned kind.

One of Web 2.0's recent offsprings is http://www.twitter.com. Here is the site's pitch:

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!

OK, so, why is that interesting and who the hell cares? From a socio-political perspective I suppose the fact that thousands of people are posting to say "look at me, this is what I am doing right now," says something about who were are as an increasingly wired world. But saying something and meaning something (or having meaning) are entirely different things.

The site is probably best described as a venue for people who don't have the patience to wait for their fifteen minutes of fame - thirty seconds now and again will do just fine thanks. McLuhan foretold an coming age of increased tribalism and this is just more evidence of his thesis. Oh, and for those of you who think he meant that uncritically as a good thing, well, go back and read him again.

Still, the site has a degree of potential -- it may over time become a meaningful tool to unite diverse people. It may even me a good way to propagate your URL across the Googlebot searched webiverse. But it seems a shame that the best we can do with these potentially powerful tools is to twitter.

One of my favourite business researchers, Dean Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business, explodes another myth in today's Globe and Mail. In a direct attack on the venerable Bill Gates, Martin says Canada doesn't need to graduate more technology students. No, what we need more of is business students.

I've attended a number of presentations by Roger Martin over the past few years and one of his dominant themes is the debunking of media "superstitions" concerning the economy. The technology education myth is another one.

Bill Gates propagated that myth when he argued in the Globe that the secret to American economic dominance rests in the number of technologists that country produces. Not so argues Martin. Then he gets out the stats. The financial services sector alone in the U.S. is 67% larger than the high-tech sector. Wages are 18% higher.

According to Martin, Canada produces 11% more science and engineering students per capita than the United States. But we are not proportionately more competitive. Where Canada doesn't eclipse the U.S. is in the production of business students. In the U.S. a full 21% of students in universities are in business courses. Canada, on the other hand, restricts its business school enrollment. We produce just 57% per capita of the U.S. business graduates.

Here is how Martin ends his story:

From the narrow perspective of the software industry, Mr. Gates may see the obvious prescription for Canada. However, if we discipline ourselves to look at the facts rather than superstitions, we will head in a dramatically different direction than that advocated by the science and technology lobby's most prominent member.

My experience backs Martin's position. Think about it. Canada has great researchers and engineers. We produce remarkable products that, more and more, have to go outside the country to (...read more...)

Want to know what it takes to be innovative in your company? here is Bob Sutton's personal advice:

I talked about what I’ve learned about teaching people to innovate from academic research, teaching classes in the d.school and Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and from working with companies like IDEO, HP, and SAP. I emphasized five points and their implications for policy. I doubt that many of you will be surprised by any of these ideas, but knowing is not the same is doing. Few of these practices are used at the university level – not just in the AER, throughout the world. Here are the five points:

1 Producing smart individuals is the first step; teaching them to collaborate is the second step.

2 Teach people how to fight as if they are right and listen as if they are wrong.

3. Teach experts to seek out novices, and novices to seek out experts.

4. Teach people to treat innovation as an import-export business.

5. Teaching people how to succeed isn’t enough; teach them how to fail too.

I also added that renowned innovators – from Charles Darwin to Steve Jobs – not only have good ideas, they also always seem to be able to sell their ideas or to hook-up with people who can do it for them.

I like point 4. Too many of us don't understand the economic value of innovation. Shifting mental gears to consider it as an exportable product may be a good first step to overcoming that inertia.

For anyone in the financial community who is interested in the potential of what Don Tapscott calls "Wikinomics," this weekend saw the Toronto technology community embrace the collaboration form to generate new ideas for the TTC's obsolete website. The one day event -- held at the popular Gladstone Hotel on Queen Street West -- brought together the TTC's top brass including Chair Adam Giambrone and Commissioner Joe Mihevic with some very smart and enthusiastic brainstorming participants.

Organized by many of the people who bring the city its successful BarCamp and DemoCamp Wiki-organized gatherings (David Crow - thanks), the Toronto Transit Camp is a case study in how the "Wisdom of Crowds" phenomenon can be applied to difficult problems.

In his opening remarks to camp participants Jay Goldman, of Radiant Core, said the day would provide answers to these three questions:

How do we improve the dialogue between ttc and its ridership?

How do we apply the BarCamp group problem-solving model to other problems?

How do we build bridges between different creative communities in the city?

The day's events provided answers to the first question. It seems everyone left on a high knowing that they'd contributed to improving the city and "Bettering the Better Way." Mark Kuznicki, of ReMarkk Consulting, framed the day's events as an approach or system that can be used to tackle city-related issues. Here is an excerpt from Mark's blog:

This was an experiment in bringing BarCamp event practices, social media and online collaboration tools and community stewardship practices to the rest of the world - the real world. Web 2.0 obsessed technologists (this means you DemoCamp) often forget that technology is a means, not an end. Transit Campers were challenged to become city-builders and at the end of the day an amazing new community was born armed (...read more...)

Gagglescape's sister blog is http://www.corporateknightsforum.com. We have a series from the Davos World Economic Forum Conference that you may enjoy.

By Toby Heaps: Editor of Corporate Knights magazine which publishes the annual Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations list each year at the World Economic Forum.

----------------------------

Environment themes and their relationship with the economy, particularly climate change, are hot this year in Davos.

Case in point. Last night I was waiting outside the Belvedere, the main Davos Hotel where the glitterati gather at night. As I was running a little late and it was quite a long line to get inside the hotel through the security check, I wondered if anyone would notice if I budded a little. But when I noticed that the Premier of Quebec was waiting behind me in the cold line, my better instincts suggested that was not a good idea, especially in Switzerland.

The Premier and I were both heading for similar events. He was off to speak on a panel with UK Conservative Leader David Cameron on climate change and energy security, and I had a dinner to co-host. I was looking forward to the dinner for two reasons: to hear what the world’s leading investment bankers had to say on taking the good fight (climate change, human rights) to the political stage, and I was curious how the red-blooded Wall Street crowd (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Swiss Re) would appreciate the 100 per cent vegetarian-meal I had ordered for all of them.

It turned out that the hi-carb but low-carbon veggie-lasagna was a big hit, but my dinner conversation was interrupted when a senior Canadian aluminum company executive had to go outside to answer questions from a newspaper survey on whether his company supported the Kyoto Protocol and what they were doing about it. (...read more...)

For Gagglescape.com readers who just can't get enough of Apple's new products, we have this fan video from New York. Apologies in advance to James Blunt fans:

Arstechnica.com has an interesting story about NBC's VP of Digital Innovation, Sab Kanaujia, and his on-again, off-again post on what NBC Universal is going to do to compete with upstart media companies YouTube and MySpace. It turns out that Kanaujia did not want to spill the beans so the post got pulled - except, it didn't. Thanks to Google cache:

It won't surprise anyone that my team at NBC Universal Digital Media is currently leading a major social networking initiative. I guess every online media firm is doing something in this area. We know we're already late. But unlike Fox, our approach has been different.

Instead of buying an existing social networking destination (Digital Media evaluated some candidates back in the summer before I joined the team), the decision was made to internally build the platform grounds up - we do have a few 3rd party partners to give us a jump start. The decision not to buy was mainly due to integration challenges and the inability of most of 3rd party social networking destinations to scale, a key aspect for a large media firm like ours.

Okay, we've all done this - hit the submit button only to realize we forgot to spell check or fact check or . . . In this case, we can guess that people at NBC did not want their tactics to reach the competition. That's the problem when blogs become the stream-of-consciousness tools they were meant to be, people say things that would never see the light of day in the print world. But that's fine. The transparency of ideas is building a momentum of entrepreneurship that will launch the next economic golden age; or, maybe it will destroy us. I wonder what Kanaujia thinks.

Many in the business community believe in Malcolm Gladwell's maxim, "Don't think--blink!" When a CEO of a company is well-versed in the issues and functions of their company, often decisions have to be made on a moments notice. Having insight in how to make better snap decisions can make the difference between success or failure.

Gladwell's book, Blink, was partially based on science and partially on anecdotal evidence. Yesterday, the BBC ran a science story that adds legitimacy to his argument. Researchers have determined that in some situations people make better decisions in a fraction of a second than they do when given time to study a problem:

Ten volunteers were shown a computer screen covered in over 650 identical symbols, including one rotated version of the symbol.

They were asked to decide which side of the screen the rotated image was on.

Given a fraction of a second to look at the screen, the subjects were 95% accurate.

But when they were allowed to scrutinize the image for over a second, they were only 70% accurate.

Dr Li Zhaoping, of UCL's Department of Psychology said: "This finding seems counter-intuitive.

All of this goes a long way in supporting those successful people who credit their success to so-called intuition. That is a very human trait: when we don't know the reason for something we assign it to a category that embraces the undefined.

The truth is we can prepare ourselves to make good, fast decisions. It is called hard work and preparation. Welcome to the future -- and the past.

It is that time of the year again: time to look back over the last 365 days, admire your accomplishments, cringe at your failures and plan for the new year.

Did you learn anything in 2006? Do you have what it takes to succeed in '07 or are you and your team ready for a hard landing? Business 2.0 is offering advice from 50 well-known, successful people. Gagglescape.com brings you eleven of the best. These are people who recognize that successful businesses need people power and innovative ideas in order to rise to the top. How do you get innovative? Take a look at my story on the key lessons of innovation. After you've done that read through what these eleven success stories have to offer:

Sergey Brin
Co-founder, Google
SUCCEED WITH SIMPLICITY

Chris DeWolfe
Co-founder, Myspace
KEEP SOCIAL NETWORKS SOCIAL

Chad Hurley
Co-founder, YouTube
GIVE YOUR STARTUP A FIGHTING CHANCE

1. Test first. Launch your product or service before you have funding. See how people respond to it before you have a PowerPoint and business plan - have something people can use, and go from there.

2. Seek outside feedback. As you start building the product, don't assume that you know all the answers. Listen to the community and adapt. We had a lot of our own ideas about how the service would evolve. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we saw YouTube as a powerful way to add video to auctions, but we didn't see anyone using our product that way, so we didn't add features to support it.

3. Give partners what they want. Approach your business partners with concepts that they can get their heads around, and try to respond to their needs. An interesting example is what we've done with the music labels. With Warner and others, (...read more...)

What started as a hobby for lawyer Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, a Web 2.0 blog, is now so profitable he's taking time away to think about what the future might hold (Gagglescape aspires to such a fate). The San Francisco Gate has the story.

In the 18 months since he started the blog, Arrington has emerged as a major player in a tech scene that is quickly changing the media landscape. Bloggers, using inside information and posting at all hours of the day and night, are often beating traditional media to big stories and are setting the news agenda from Silicon Valley to Washington.

Last night's attendants of the MIT Enterprise Forum got to see what makes a company stand out. Touted as Canada's IPO success of 2006, Evertz Technologies went public with a $67 million offering in June of this year. They now boast a market cap of one billion dollars. How did they do it when every other IPO of the season seemed to stall from a lack of interest? The big answer is through exceptional execution by a talented management team. But as we all know, big answers are made up of hundreds of smaller, critical details.

Brian Campbell, the EVP of Business Development for Evertz, is a details guy. Trained as an engineer, he has an MBA and years of experience in Toronto's financial community. More than that, he has the ability to understand the numerous functions that come together to create success. He shared his insight with the audience last night. Campbell explained how Evertz took a $2 million dollar a year company to $150 million in eight short years. It was not luck. The team executed with clinical efficiency on the key factors behind their growth: Engineering, self-financiing, innovation, and team-building.

I'll write more about this remarkable story later in the day.

Update: Let's take a brief look at how the management at Evertz took a series of small steps over time that resulted in building a very successful company. Campbell explained that in 1997 two former Leitch Technology employees identified an opportunity to buy a stable, 30 plus year old tech company with about 17 employees. At the time, they surveyed the market horizon and decided that high-definition television - HDTV - was going to be a big industry once governments settled on regulatory standards. Thus they began focusing their company's products towards HDTV. Smart move.

WIth support (...read more...)