I wrote earlier about StartupCamp and I was impressed to see all the companies that have applied disclosed as part of the review process. Anyone can see the applicants here:
I’m a big fan of openness as part of a review process. I think it helps both the quality of the event and the community overall.
FacebookCampMontreal
We were in Montreal last night for the FacebookCampMontreal event, its was our first time in Montreal as part of their Barcamp community. The FacebookCampMontreal event combined both the developer and marketing tracks into a single night and was able to get nearly 200 people in the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques ).
SAT is great venue and was easily divided into the 2 tracks when required and most importantly had an open bar the whole night.
We bounced around between the different tracks most of the
night. Some thoughts on the different
tracks are blow:
Introduction
Montreal is #9 in overall Facebook city networks and the power of Facebook as marketing platform has certainly spread to the city. I think when Facebook does actually launch a French version it will absolutely take off in Montreal.
Keynote
Roy and I did a keynote for the night, trying to balance both the developer and marketing interests in the room. Our goal was to provide some updates on the Facebook Platform and some real numbers on Facebook in the world and Canada.
Developer Panel
I attended the develop panel because I find the developers often have interesting ideas and solutions. Jerome Paradis was also part of the panel, who met at FacebookCampToronto2 and wanted to hear his views on the Facebook platform. The developer panel was good mix of developers with lots of experience with online and interactive development. The panel included developers from a variety of platforms, .NET, PHP, ROR etc… Many of the Facebook developer challenges and problems were discussed.
Demos
I’ve also been a big face of live demos so I stayed through most the developers demos.
BabyTel Demo
BabyTel was the first demo of the nite and unfortunately had some problems with the internet connection. They demo’d their Egg phone application which lets you call Facebook friends that also have the application installed. The application will soon include the ability to call real phones. I think this application will be great when it can be installed on an Business Page as a ‘Call Me’ button.BlipCast
My first reaction to the BlipCast demo was yuck!, when I saw the iframe inside Facebook that didn’t fit the Facebook style or design. As the demo progressed I thought it was interesting to see all the different media options that they are bring into Facebook. The application presents videos similar to Youtube but provides more of the Facebook social context. I think this is a big advantage
for users that don’t want to invest in a Youtube account and friend network. I do think the application would be more appealing with a more Facebook similar style.
Bok
Bok’s main business is providing cheap long distance using
an SMS call back system. They have created an application that lets you go through this process inside Facebook. You click on a friend and
choose the call them and you receive a call back shortly from Bok with your friend on the phone line. Again I see a lot of advantages for this type of service for business pages.Facebook Roundtable
The final panel was made up of a variety of people including, Sebestian Provencher, who I know quite well from Yellowpages. While the discussion was a mix of English and French it was hard to follow the fast past discussions in French. From what I did pick up it was interesting to hear the perspective of the panel members on the value of Facebook to their lives and businesses. The discussion also covered the Microsoft and Facebook relationship and the impact on the trust level with Facebook. There was a lot of comparisons with Google and their “Don’t be Evil” culture and if a similar culture is possible with Facebook.
Overall a great night, I met a lot of interesting people and the Montreal tech community certainly has a lot going on. There was also a lot of marketing and advertising agencies in attendance so there was some great discussions around the marketing tracks.
StartupCampToronto has been announced after the success of StartupCampWaterloo. The concept is essentially that 5 startup’s get 5 mins each to pitch the audience on their company and get feedback. Kinda like a Dragon’s Den with the audience as the Dragon’s…
I ‘m excited about the concept but a little unsure of the format. As we saw with DemoCamp 5 mins for a good pitch/demo is pretty short. I know companies are suppose to have an elevator pitch but the reality but I think in most cases you have a more than a few minutes to pitch your idea. I have very rarely made a decision on a startup in an elevator ride…
StartupCampToronto is also setting a precedent by charging professionals and services providers who want to profit from startups. Toronto has been having a lot of problems with too many people attending events and large venues being required. I’m not certain that charging just a particular segment is the right approach but we’ll see how it develops.
As an aside I’ll unsure as to which class of ticket I should purchase, I could be considered an entrepreneur with Refresh Partners or SlashID. I could be considered a guru because I do with other startups, and I could be a service provide because startups could require a Facebook Marketing or marketing services. I guess the only thing I am not is a student 
The Google OpenSocial API sounds really cool and brings together the ability to ability to write web applications and widgets for multiple platforms. Launch partners include :
At first glance it would seem Google has collected all the losers in the social media space and got them to work together. Only Friendster and Classmates are missing from the ‘missed a great opportunity’ list.
When you consider that application’s written for the OpenSocial API can work with all of them, things get pretty interesting. I think it will be difficult for all these platforms to agree on functionality. For example Linkedin and Plaxo don’t have any where near the social components that Ning and Hi5 have. Will an application really run the same between them? I doubt it…
I think the other thing that is kind of concerning with the OpenSocial platform is the developer distribution system. Google is holding CampFires to introduce the platform on an invite only basis. As someone who has help organize FacebookCamp in Toronto and seen the impact of a more open communication strategy, I think this invite only approach is limited.
Facebook has published new usage numbers, the growth continues to be impressive, especially in Canada.
Canada continues to be above average in growth with:
With this sort of growth is not hard to see all the active around Facebook Marketing in Canada and why so many people are interested in the FacebookCamp events.
Its been awhile since I’ve written about a DemoCamp but DemoCampToronto15 was yesterday afternoon at Hart House in the University of Toronto campus. The University of Toronto did a great job organizing/hosting. DemoCamp was in the grand hall of the Hart House, which is awesome local for presentation and mingling. Unfortunately even with the time shift to late afternoon no University of Toronto demo’s were presented.
The Demo’s consisted of the following:
Jester JS by Pete Forde
Pete presented the Jester JS REST library which provides a lot of the same database abstraction that Ruby offers. I’ve never been a fan of abstracting SQL but that’s probably because I know SQL and I don’t want to invest in learning different abstracted methods. It’s a good demo and you immediately understand what Pete was presenting and trying to describe.
Mobile Currency Exchange Rates by Radu Negulescu
Even after the initial technical difficulties with the demo were solved, it was hard to follow the demo and the mobile device virtual machine was hard to see. Probably the most interesting aspect was the fact that the app runs on mobile but this also made it hard to demo.
OMESH Networks by Liang SongThis demo consisted mainly of power point slides because the actual demo was small wireless devices that search out each other the best available network source. It was a very hard demo to follow and power point slides didn’t really do it justice either. I’m not sure the best method to demo these type of physical/mobile devices, it would be better to use multiple people through out the space and show how the devices find the best network source.
Ogrant.com by Sachin Ghelanil and Saroop BharwaniI met Sachin a few months ago so I was familiar with the Ogrant concept but I haven’t seen the live site before. I think the concept for Ogrant is great in that it uses social media to help connect people giving grants with qualified students. It also gives students more of a voice in the grant process through a voting system on grant applications. Overall a good demo of the site but it felt too short to cover the site functionality, it would have been good to go through some of the student/applicant videos and content.
ConceptShare by Bernie Aho, Will Pate and Scott BrooksConceptshare blew the doors off DemoCamp9 with the ability for multiple people to comment on different design concepts. I’ve actually used the site on different small projects and found much easier to use than their competition. In the last year Conceptshare has developed a great client list and recently added community guru, Will Pate to the team. The demo felt very rushed and I
again thought it was too short. It looks like Conceptshare has improved the process flow a lot and continues to add new features. I’d like to see an API so that I can bring content into the site easier.
The demos were anything but smooth last nite and David Crow talks about the some of the issues. I’m not really sure what to do to improve the demo process. I think it will be very hard to limit people switching PC, specially for non-web demos.
I think one thing that needs to improve is the time allotment, I’d be in favour of a flex system that guarantees a min of 5 min and allows up to 15 mins depending on the
quality of the demo. I understand this will be hard to enforce/judge but there were some demo’s last night that just needed more time and would have been better given more time.
The Ignite Presentations were as follows:
I first saw Andy Walker on Call for Help and was impressed
with his understanding of technology. His presentation was a little too evangelistic and I didn’t feel that he talked enough about the Little Geeks program and how people can get involved.Shortcuts of OCE Funding by John MacRitchie
I recently met John through an OCE breakfast with Albert Lai and I was impressed with his commitment to involve the Torcamp community. His presentation covered the OCE funding process and how start-ups can into the process. His presentation was very smooth and well timed to the slides, I think
he did a good job of getting his message across.
Testing Tools by Michael BoltonNot the horrible singer, or the Office Space character, Michael Bolton the testing expert focused on the advantages of using humans in the testing process. I think he has a great point in that most people view testing as a process that can be automated and are surprised when the testing doesn’t improve the software. His presentation was good and worked well with the Ignite process. I would have liked to see more questions with him about how to handle enormous software projects, like websites, and how automated tools could be included.
Raising money from Suits by Rick Segal
I really like Rick’s blog and I was keen to see his
presentation. Unfortunately it was largely a re-hash of his Mesh presentation but probably very appropriate for the UofT crowd. He provided a good
outline of the process of building business and raising funds. He did a good job of keeping to the presentation flow but I think it would have been better to have more Q&A with him.
Bruce Mau Design by Greg JudelmanI have no idea how this presentation applied to DemoCamp except that Bruce Mau appears to design interesting and beautiful things. The presentation focused on different aspects of Bruce Mau design, including buildings, store signs and websites. Greg did a good job but I was still struggling to connect Bruce Mau design with the DemoCamp group.
Community Networks by Alvin
Alvin’s presentation was a last minute addition but might have been the most interesting of the Ignite series. Alvin did a study on the Torcamp network and
how different people connect to each other. His presentation suffered from the lack of control that the Ignite system creates, where he couldn’t accelerate or slow down at different points. This created some problems for
his presentation. I would have loved to see more detail on his algorithm and how the formation of groups of 3 worked. Overall an interesting presentation though, just needed more time and control over his presentation.
When I heard about concept of the Ignite presentations I thought I’d hate them. In reality they aren’t too bad, mainly because they are never more than 5 mins. Unfortunately this means they rarely provided any interesting content or communication and often end-up being a 5 min rant. I think the key is having someone that can carry 5 min presentation with no slides, most of the good presentations would probably be fine without slides.
SlashID Corporation, a startup I’ve been working with for the past year has released their new Identity Management system. You can see the SlashID.com press release at:
SlashID changes how users access websites with new Identity System
Its been a lot work but its great to see them finally getting their product released.
The Facebook Newsfeed algorithm has been a popular discussion topic and applications have been attempting to optimize for it. A good Newsfeed optimization strategy can make or break the success of a Facebook application. The application can’t control everything in the Newsfeed and the user behaviour plays an important role. For example if an application creates a Newsfeed item that is clicked on by many users it will be displayed with a higher priority for other users. The exact process for displaying Newsfeed items is not disclosed but its a combination of popularity, the users preferences and in the timing of the event.
Facebook has just taken the unusual step of removing the time stamps from the Newsfeed. Working with clients on their Facebook applications and their Newsfeed strategy, we’ve seen many situations where the Newsfeed item appears much later than other events. This is normally the weighting that Facebook assigns to more popular News items that it already has an history for and understands the popularity. For a new application this can be a problem because no history exists and many News items will never appear on Newsfeeds.
This brings up an interesting point since time is not one of the options that the users can control. Each user has the ability to change their Newsfeed preferences to adjust the default Newsfeed behaviour. In the Newsfeed preferences its possible to change the following:
With no ability to adjust the priority of time in the Newsfeed and now Facebook removing the timestamps completely it would appear the Newsfeed algorithm will continue to improve but may have less focus on the time of the events.
comScore released additional usage information on social networks yesterday and Facebook continues its incredible growth. I’ve always been hesitant to rely on comScore for much more than trending information. They are showing that Facebook has grown by 272% vs the Myspace growth of 72%. I believe a big part of this trend has been the Facebook application platform and all the new application that are being created for Facebook. This keeps the site fresh and provide additional reason for people to visit the site.
As some of the early flash-in-the-pan applications start to fade away I think we’ll see some legitimate applications develop to add more value in the site. A great example is the Flixster movie application, which was not part of the launch collection but has continually improved. Recently its launched movie comparison test so that you can compare your friends movie tastes and this is also a great way for the application to go viral and get more people using the site and the application.
It will be interesting to see how Myspace responds to all this activity. Surely they have their own application platform in the works and will be taking a run at the Facebook momentum.
Pragmatic Marketing held its network event in Toronto last night. Pragmatic Marketing is one of the leading training companies for Product Managers. Rich Nutinsky presented on “Start with the Ending” which really focused on thinking where you want to get to with your product line. Rich also spoke at length about building credibility with your peers.
All of the Pragmatic Marketing course I’ve attended have been run by Steve Johnson and I found his insite very helpful when I was a software Product Manager. Now that I’m more focused on web applications I find the Pragmatic approach a little too formal for most of my needs. I think it needs to evolve for web applications which are typically a much shorter development cycle.
I’ve been using Linkedin for bout 5 years now. I can remember when it was first launched and I had to spam people to get them to add themselves to the site. Now its pretty common to find people in Linkedin. The biggest problem with Linkedin is its business model of charging people to have broader access to the network. A great example of Linkedin stupidity is the forward function. This is when one of your friends wants to contact another but you have to be the human mail router. This sounds like someone’s idea of a joke but Linkedin actually thinks this is a good idea. I may quit Linkedin purely for this reason…
The new kid looking at the Linkedin cheese is definitely Facebook. In Facebook the connecting with people is just the beginning and in most cases it doesn’t require any of the stupidity that Linkedin requires. To avoid spam Facebook has made some serious investments in spam prevention and it works great. I’m expecting more and more people to be found in Facebook and if Linkedin continues this stupidity it will be irrelevant…
I’ve got my first article up on InsideFacebook.com. I’m going to be reviewing Facebook applications with them so if you have any facebook applications you’d recommend let me know.
Last night was the Romanian NewWave Cinema’s first film night at the University of Toronto. The night consisted of 6 short films with one longer feature film. All the films were shown in Romanian with English subtitles. I had never seen any Romanian films so it was an interesting night to see some of the different aspects of Romanian culture. I went with my friends Alex and Iuliana. Alex was convinced that is not possible to have a happy ending in Romanian films and none of the films shown disappointed this expectation. I’ve never been a huge fan of short films because I find that it takes more than 10-15mins to develop good characters and I’m also interested in interesting characters.
So for me the highlight of the night was the Marilena from P7 film. The film is a very interesting portrayal of life and the dialog, even with the English translation shows a lot of the grit of living in large Romanian cities. The film focuses on a group of boys, lead by Andrei, who believes he’s in love with one of prostitutes he sees in his neighbourhood. And of course things don’t end well for Andrei or his Marilena.
A good night and I’d like to go back to more. Hopefully future showings will feature longer films and have a better quality display. Watching the films through a laptop projector was less than ideal.
I’ve been following the Praxis Theatre group for awhile mainly because of Laura Nordin’s involvement. I’ve attended their reading series in the spring and was exited when their annouced DYAD as part of Fringe Festival this year. If you’re not familar with the Fringe Festival is a collection of smaller/independent plays that take place around Toronto. The DYAD is being presented at the George Ignatieff Theatre on the University of Toronto campus. Its a combination of 2 acts that take advantage of the outdoor aspects of the theatre location.
The first act features 2 male characters who meet up rather randomly over cigarettes. The dialogue and delivery were great and both Glen McDonald and David Tomp played their roles well. The combination of the outdoor scene was great and it was easy to visualize the scene happening almost anywhere.
The second act moved the play into the theatre and set the scene between student, Laura Nordin, and teacher, Marget Evans. Again the group used the space well with Laura starting her delivery from within the crowd and then moving onto the stage. The tension between the student and teacher seemed to develop well but wasn’t well supported by the dialogue. I think a clearer dialogue would have allowed both actresses to further developer their characters. The death of the student is the climax of the scene was the best part of the act.
Michael Moore movies have been a favourite of mine since watching Roger & Me years ago with my dad. He has a great ability to connect with people and provide a direct response to their indignities but I felt that his last movie, was too sensational. I like Michael Moore when he’s using other people to bring across his message and he does a much better job in Sicko. He brings home the problems with the US medical system but interview people most effected by the problem and soliciting requests from the public their own experiences with the different levels of HMO’s, medical insurance and hospital regulations. It was hear about the many situations where good medical service just wasn’t available or affordable.
It really made me proud to be Canadian and take alot of pride in our decision to provide universal health care coverage. Even with the problems of universal health care coverage I know of very few situations where it has let individuals down when it was needed. There may be long waits for less urgent surgery but I believe that more emergency situations are handled well and we are well served by our health care system.
One of the best parts of Sicko is when Michael Moore takes several of the sick American’s he’s encountered who are being denied medial care to Cuba. While in Cuba they receive medical care at a small fraction of the cost of US coverage and they receive quickly without incident. The only sensation part of the movie was when Moore takes his group of Sicko’s to the US military base in Cuba to try to get medical care. Earlier in th movie Moore discussed the level of medical care being offered to the prisoners.
Overall an interesting movie and entertaining movie. I hope its an sign that Moore is getting back to his roots.
I grew up with Transformers and after Starwars they were probably the childhood brand that I could identity with the most. Most Saturday mornings featured Transformers and G.I.Joe back to back but the Transformers were much better at merchandising their cartoon and I ended up with many of the toys. So needless to say I was excited to be going to see the new Transformers movie 15 years later.
The movie starts off well with the Decepticons attacking a base in Qatar. With the element of surprise its not really clear why the Decepticons would choose Qatar as their primary target with its well established military presence but it did provide an excellent opportunity to advertise/promote the US forces in the middle east and all major services, Army, Navy and Airforce go some create coverage. After the main attack the movie kinda fell apart for me. For some reason the movie seemed to focus more on the development of human characters like an Army Captain stationed in Qatar and the relationship between Sam and Mikeala. The movie is very long and the scene with the Autobots climbing around Sam’s house was brutal and should been left on the cutting floor. Throughout the movie the Transformers are left looking shallow and without character, which made it hard to connect with them.
There was also several characters portrayals in the movie that didn’t sit well with me and bordered on racism. For example the used car salesman and scene with the computer hacker screaming at his grandmother. I’m also not really sure what value these scenes added to the movie and further confused me about what I was watching. Overall the movie was fairly entertaining but didn’t all connect with the Transformers themes and its not something I would recommend.
Its been awhile since I’ve seen a Bruce Willis film and he as reputation for delivering great action movies. Live Free or Die Hard sure doesn’t disappoint in the action category with some amazing stunts and an action packed plot line. As someone who’s worked in network security and followed the field for awhile it the plot was quite interesting with the bad guys taking over most major computer networks. I thought the interesting part about was this was that rather than relying on some new computer/technology or even aliens, they recruited hackers from around the world to attack components of the computer network. There are many instances where the networks attacked in the movie just wouldn’t be publicly available but I guess thats just Hollywood.
My only complaint with the movie was the number of cheezy moments between the 2 main characters. I’m not really sure the message these scenes were trying to convey but they didn’t come off well at all. There one scene while they are driving to Baltimore that was almost unbearable. Luckily the action keeps the movie fast paced and there are many sequences that were a surprise and not included in the trailer.
Rogers Sportsnet launched its new MySportsnet.ca site today which is a highly personalized site for Sports fans. MySportsnet.ca automatically customizes the content on the website depending on the users behaviour. For example if the user reads a lotabout Hockey they will get more content related to Hockey on their
homepage. The same personalization can also be applied to on-site advertising based on the users interests.
The site reminded me of a conversation last year about the real growth online being in the Implicit Web. For most websites today you need to be explicit setup and you have to
tell the site what you want and how you want to see things going forward. For many users this level of customization is not practical and creates a barrier for them to use the technology. RSS readers and social network sites run into this challenge where users don’t see a real benefit from the site until they invest a lot of time importing
their information. Facebook does a good job of allowing users to find friends from their personal email accounts like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo.
Where websites can create an Implicit experience it can be very powerful. For example when you buy a Harry Potter book on Amazon.com it automatically suggests other books that you might like. This is based on user behaviour that Amazon.com can aggregate and create a recommendation for the user. The user does not need to
explicitly search for similar books or try to find other titles by the author. This is a great example of the Implicit Web Experience.
The challenge as marketer with the Implicit Web, is user privacy. In many cases its only possible to create an Implicit Experience a lot of user data and this creates a privacy concern. The easiest solution to have a clear privacy policy, avoid capturing personally identifiable information, and allow users to opt-out where practical.
MySportsnet.ca does a good job of handling these concerns. The site is powered by a desktop application ( PC only ) that is used to track the content that you read online. The application privacy policy states it doesn’t capture personal information and the application can be easily turned off and un-installed. After running it this morning and watching the site update as I read more about the Toronto Maple Leafs than the Toronto Blue Jays its easy to see how this can be a powerful experience. My only complaint was the the website wasn’t available at all when I closed the desktop application or if I used a different PC.
MySportsNet.ca is a great example of the experiences that are possible with Implicit Web and the balance with privacy that we’re going to face as we develop these experiences.
CaseCamp was back in action last night at the Century Room. As always Eli Singer and the Casecamp team had a great line up of marketing cases and the place was
packed. I really impressed with the turn out, my estimate was there was close to 200 people there. The presentation area and seating were well setup so that you could see and hear the speakers from almost anywhere. The four cases for the night were:
1/ Yamaha Motors Sled Talk Blog by Maggie Fox
Yamaha has created a blog for the snowmobiles written Chris Reid, one of its long time product planners and avid readers. Like most large corporation the thought of blogging was initially kinda of scary and initial concerns were around controlling the feedback/comments and messaging. The blog opened with alot of readers and minimal promotion
was done initially the attract readership while the program was monitored. I thought the tracking of user comments was fairly interesting with 43% positive, 48% neutral and only 8% negative. Through the blog Yamaha was also able to track interaction with a key snowmobile influencer and who his experience on the Yamaha blog led him to represent the Yamaha snowmobiles on other forums. Overall a great case, with a fair bit of meat about how Yamaha used their blog, monitored it and saw benefit from it.2/ Freshdaily and Blogto by Tim Shore
Freshdaily is one of Canada’s leading blog networks with blog’s covering the Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Most of the presentation was focused Blogto.com ( being that Toronto is the center of the universe, this was all good ) and how the blog has evolved to become a major media source. The content is focused on cultural events and has
expanded to cover major events like the film festival and popular restaurants. The site has also started publishing to other media sources like the National post. The presentation was interested but I would have like to hear more about how Blogto is using social media.Their Facebook group was only mentioned briefly and they have a huge Flickr following as well. It would have to be great to understand how
their using these media.3/ BMW Canada by John Capella and Paul Curtin
This was probably the weakest presentation of the night. I think there was probably too much information trying to be covering in the little time allowed. I think it would have been good to pick a component of the BMW online strategy and go deep on it. Major online sites like the BMW M Owners club were glossed mainly as a result of time. I think BMW has been pretty innovating in getting its brand out their with BMW Films and some of their loyalty programs. I thought one of the most interesting aspects was hearing that 80% of BMW lease their vehicle so the customer satisfaction and retention programs are so important. The other key take away was that BMW seems 90% of their
buyers using the internet to research their vehicles.4/ Specialized Riding Club by Chris Mathews
Chris did a great job of setting the scene for why Specialized wanted to create a riders club and the decision to create a paid program rather than exclusively free one. As part of the riders club subscribers get stickers, shirts and all sort of Specialized crap but the biggest feature they get is the ability to create content. This was a conscience decision to only allow paid subscribers to create content in the form of rides, a journal/blog and other interaction. Free subscribers can participate in existing rides and events but
cannot create their own. I thought this was interesting process to monetize the site and create some clear definition around paid and free programs. Chris also provide alot of insight into what went well and what didn’t, talking about how the initial target was only high-end biker purchasers and believing that stores would not want to participate.
Another great nite for the CaseCamp team, I think my final thoughts were that its hard its probably best to present a single smaller more focused case than try to present too much. Everything was well organized and a great environment to network and see what other companies are up working on.
I’ve written an article for OneDegree.ca, you can find here:
http://www.onedegree.ca/2007/06/03/building-your-brand-in-facebook
OneDegree.ca was recently purchased by Kate Trgovac from MyNameisKate.ca fame and this is my first article working with her.
I missed most of the Mesh07 Wrap but it didn’t seem like a lot of people stayed for it either. It was a muggy day and most of us had been out late the night before. The socializing moved over to thePoque Mahones and it seemed pretty quiet there too.
Overall I thought Mesh07 was again a great place to network but still lacking as conference. I really found the bigger panel like discussions to be a complete waste of time and lacked any meaningful content or discussion. The smaller sessions were a lot more insightful so I’d suggest there probably needs to be more of these and less of the big
full session keynotes.
I’d also suggest that Mesh needs to start eating its own cookies ( as Mike McDermett puts it ). The wiki was missing from last year and it would have been great for people to be able to add to the schedule. Specifically the rooms weren’t displayed on the online scheduled and the speaker bios were not available in the paper version.
It was also very hard to track the online activity around the conference without searching Technorati or Google directly. I’d suggest there should be a process for each session to allow people to submit blog links, photos, videos etc.. It should be really easy for me to see what is happening in other sessions. This would also help to
promote mesh for more people who might be on the fence for next year.
I’d also like to see more start-ups and more students participate. I’m not sure the conference can survive otherwise.
The afternoon sessions on day 2 were great. I focused on probably the smallest room and it allow for more intimate discussions:
How to Pitch VCs with Rick Segal and Susan Dingwall Williams
I read both Rick and Susan’s blogs regularly and I was excited to see both of them. Rick did a great job of providing an quick overview of how to pitch VCs and the keys to get VC interest. I didn’t there was really anything new in his presentation was but it was great to see everything outline. Some key highlights for me were the time lines for
funding, 6 months to raise, 18 months to provide and the rinse and repeat until exit. And ALL VCs are looking for an exit plan. Rick also spoke briefly about Angels in Canada, and believed their issued approximately $21M last year in capital. Many of the Angel funded projects were not practical for VCs.
Build a Team, Build a Culter with Mark Dowds
I was seriously impressed with the setup and process that Mark went through in this session to start the discussion. The audience was divided into groups of 4-5 people and each group member was given a hidden agenda. In many cases these agenda conflicted and the group was asked to develop different aspects of their companies strategy of
vision. In my group was some members were focused on having fun and others were focused on results, and punishing for bad results, it ended up being a funny corporate vision of ‘Have fun performing, or else…” The process was great and it was interesting to see how each group tried to solve these differences.
Building a community with Kate Trgovac
Kate had the unlucky position of closing off the conference but she did a great job of creating a discussion around building an online community. She used several current examples, like flickr, or facebook and was able to help define what is an online community and what is a platform. It helped that there was also many people in audience that
were actively in the process of trying to build a community.
Mesh07 Day 2 kicked off with a bit a little weak with the PR session with Richard Eldeman. Unless you were really into PR this one was difficult to handle.
The 2nd keynote was a big hit with Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist. Working at Trader Corporation I’ve followed Craigslist for awhile so it was great to hear more information about their business. The most interesting aspect was their business philosophy. Craigslist is a unique position of many alot of money and not really needing to
create huge profits for its investors. I really admire them for them for this approach and their view Craigslist almost like a utility/service for people in many aspects of their life, from dating to finding a home, or getting a job.
Jim handled most of the questions directly but really didn’t have much information to reveal. The company still has 24 employees, with 2/3 focus on the technology and 1/3 focused on customer service. They have no sales or marketing people. Their office is in a small victorian house in San Francisco. I’d love to visit their office at some point.
In Canada they receive over 500,000 classified ads per month and the site ranks 7th in overall site traffic. Toronto is the 2nd largest Canadian Craigslist city, after Vancouver and both cities are the top 25 overall Craigslist cities. Craigslist revenue was not disclosed but Jim did mention that they are charging for job postings in 7 cities and real estate brokers in NYC. They began charging after discussing with their users in these cities and found that charging would provide a good barrier for spam or too much content. Before charging in any category they discuss the concept on the user forum for that category/region.
The singular strategy that Jim talked about was listening to users and providing services that users want. I love the concept of this but I think it might be a little mis-representative. For example Jim mentioned that users do not want video. I’m not certain this is entirely true and providing video would substancially increase the
complexity and traffic requirements of the Craigslist experience.
As a fan of Green technology I was excited to hear Jim discussing page views per kilowatt hour. Craigslist can achieve 175K per kilowatt hour, which he believed was industry leading. Craigslist currently runs on approximately 200 servers hosted at multiple locations. Overall I really found Jim’s discussion/interview to be very entertaining and it did provide alot of incite into the Craigslist business.
Day 1 of Mesh 2007 is complete and I think my overall impression is that Mesh continues to be a great conference to network but the sessions were fairly weak.
Many of the sessions are panelist based and lacked diversity. For example the new vs old media lacked anyone from the old media. This made for a fairly repetitive and dull session. I’m not sure the selection of panelists was ideal either, many didn’t have a lot to offer. I felt that many sessions were too long, often running close to a hour. So I’d like to see shorter sessions, maybe even more tracks so the sessions can be smaller and more intimate.
There seems to be a strong shift to professionals from last year. I don’t know if the student numbers were reduced or if less showed up. I haven’t met many students yet and the number of startups, hard core geeks also seems to be down. Many of the people I’ve met have been ad agencies…
The after Mesh social event was kinda disappointing too with the group fragmenting around the distillery district. The speakers were no where to be found ( atleast till 11pm when I left ) and the boiler room was difficult to get seated where service was available.
I’m excited about Day 2, the line-up is much more solid and if all else fails there is lots of breaks for meshing.
The Mesh 2007 Conference kicked off today with a great line up of speakers and panelists. One of the great aspects of the Mesh Conference is the social interaction between speakers. Its a great environment to interact with speakers and other members of the industry.
One of the dominate themes I’m seeing at this years Mesh is the exploitation of the Long Tail. Content continues to find readers on the internet. For example Cynthia Brumsfield talked an online web camera watching cheese age, and people are watching. I think this is a great example of the Long Tail. It costs almost nothing to web enable cheese aging but a certain percentage of the population will watch and it can be monetized.
I think we’ll see more example of this going forward and there are niches developing that represent significant opportunities. For example this year’s Mesh also featured a Charity 2.0 presentation and Women 2.0 presence. Niches are hot right now and its becoming cheaper to connect people across geography that have a common interest or goal.
Microsoft has recently started making noise about Linux patent infringement again. Microsoft has maintained a license rather than litigate approach for years and they signed a license deal recently with Novell to allow them license for their Linux installation. The only thing new is the number of patents that Microsoft claims that Linux infringes on, 235 according to Microsoft. Open Office infringes on 45 directly.
My initial reaction was to condemn Microsoft for trying to create FUD around Linux and the Open Source movement. I think in reality is fairly common reaction, if Microsoft is dealing with a small company one of the first tools their use to keep them in line is the patent stick. Why don’t they use this approach with IBM, Sun or Apple? I think all of these company have sufficient patent arsenal that a legal battle would be a no win situation for both companies, like a nuclear war. If Linux and Open Source really want to be feel of these threats they need to develop their patent arsenal. Many companies like have recently donated patents to Open Source and this needs to continue.
The last estimate I heard was that average cost to defeat a patent was approximate $2M. The cost to register a patent is somewhere around $100K. With this sort of economics it doesn’t make sense to try to defeat Microsoft on a patent by patent basis. Instead the Open Source community needs to include patent registration as part of its process. It will be expensive and it will slow down the process but it will provide a defense against in the patent coldwar.
Facebook launched their marketplace place service over the weekend to allow Facebook users to create classified ads. There was an interesting interview last week with Mark Zuckerberg in the NY Times. What I found really interesting was Mark’s comment:
“There are no anonymous listings, and we give you a very clear path to see how you can trust the other person you are conducting business with,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.
No more anonymous listings… Is this a good thing for classified advertising? I’m not sure. Do most people want to sell their old car, TV, couch, computer etc.. to someone they know.
I recently sold some Police tickets for a small fortune, approximately 600% margin. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable making that sort of margin off someone I know. It will be interesting to see if the Facebook marketplace can achieve the level of success that Craigslist has achieved with a very smart anonymous classified system.
Disclosure: I work for Trader Corporation which operates several classified publications and websites.
The popularity of Facebook has taken off in Toronto. The population of the “Toronto Network” on Facebook is close to 10% of the city’s registered population. This is amazing market penetration and its creating some interesting situations within the online community. For example, typically students and teachers maintain a certain professional distance. Facebook’s original strategy was to go after solely students and its penetration’s still seems to be higher in these younger demographics. Now that teachers are joining Facebook it puts them in immediate contact with their students. Problems have already started to develop with defamation on Facebook and many schools are setting up policies for how they will respond.
Facebook as a whole is not that dissimilar from the internet except that it allows people to connect more readily and provide a more accessible platform to communicate. Its brought together the concepts of blogging, email, digging or bookmarking content, and social groups. In the past it was difficult to find your friends web pages or blogs and teachers rarely interacted with them. Now they can easily encounter them through the Facebook network and there is much more publicity around inappropriate content. Facebook also creates a perception of privacy with its exclusive friend network and group settings but the full privacy settings are rarely used.
As a marketer its a great opportunity to interface with a variety of different age groups on a single platform. There are very few sites that have penetrated as deeply into the Toronto population across different age. It will be interesting to see if Facebook can maintain this position or they will fade away as different age groups seek specialized experiences. For example do students really want to be on the same platform as their teachers? Do co-workers want to be on the same platform as their drinking buddies? Some of these situations can be handled with the Facebook’s existing security model but many cannot. As Facebook increases user privacy it will risk slowing it growth.
Online advertising growth in Canada is taking off. IAB Canada just released their report on 2006 growth and it was 80% over the 2005. While I have great respect for the IAB I thought their summary of reasons for the growth were extremely weak. One of the biggest trends in advertising is the consumer shift towards online. Many industries are reporting that the majority of users consider online media first when doing product research or making a purchase decisions. Combine that with a very strong internet market penetration in Canada and you get an amazing online advertising growth story. Advertising almost always follows the consumers, the IAB seems to get this wrong with this statement:
“Add to all of this, results from the 7 CMOST (cross-media optimization) research studies that the IAB has undertaken over the past 4 years, plus the fact that in the past two years alone, over 1,000 senior-level advertiser, agency and publisher representatives have taken the IAB’s Intensive One-Day Course in Interactive Marketing and Online Advertising — and you get a sort of “perfect storm” that was able to move the Canadian Online advertising dial forward to such an extent,” says Paula Gignac, President of IAB Canada.
I don’t believe that Advertisers can build the market, no matter how many senior-level advertisers participate in the IAB workshops.
After the last DemoCampToronto the process to Demo was re-factored and the time for demos generally shortened to 5 mins. In many cases past DemoCamp slots were full months in advance and a limited number of demos could happen in one evening. With the shorter time slot more demos could take place and even if they completed sucked they weren’t on for long…
DemoCampToronto13 also featured the inclusion of Powerpoint. Several demonstrators moved away from live software and into slide ware. I’m not really sure this is a good move but live software did limit the ability to interact with the audience.
The Demo’s were as follows:
I thought it was a great set of demos and great night overall. There’s been some discussions about further changes to format and trying some other approaches ( speed powerpoint etc.. ) but I think we have a pretty format right now. The time delay between demos was minimal but it did allow for some discussion before the next demo.
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