Demo in San Diego

Demo continues to be my favorite conference — the semi-annual event took place this past week in San Diego. There were some outdoor tables at the opening reception and I joined one with three friends from many Demos past — Amy Wohl, Shel Israel, and Steve Larsen. While there were many attendees in their mid-twenties, the four of us joked how we had 150+ years in technology around the table.

The Demo conference allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. The product introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the coming 12 to 18 months. This year there were 69 companies showing off. Unfortunately I could only stay in San Diego for the first day of the conference due to board meetings back in New York so I did a little research on the companies and visited the ones in which I had most interest. Chris Shipley kicked off the conference with insightful comments about the industry. See the Demo blog for more on her thoughts.

The booth at which I spent the most time was Truphone. Tru phone enables mobile phone users to enjoy low-cost (if not free) calls and text messages [SMS] by routing them via WiFi. The service is presently in beta and delivers Voice-over-IP, SMS-over-IP and “presence” (showing when your friends are online). A Truphone-enabled mobile handset automatically connects to WiFi hotspots when one is available. The obvious question some of us had was whether this would work with the iPhone. The short answer is yes at Demo but no after Apple updated the iPhone the next day. More on this in a separate iPhone update in the next couple of days. There are many comments online about Apple’s latest move to keep the iPhone locked down.

Visit demo.com for the full list but following are comments about some of the companies at the conference. Not surprisingly, there were many companies at Demo that arose from the YouTube revolution. Technologies, products and business strategies aimed at every part of the video and entertainment value chain were on display. Some focused on infrastructure and others on tools to help consumers find and interact with video content. There were seven companies in this space. Digital Fountain showed a content delivery network for streaming video with full-screen TV-quality experience. You had to see it to believe it.

Every Demo has some consumer content-oriented companies with new ideas. There were eight in that category this year. One of them — run by an old friend, Samir Arora — is called Glam Media and is focused on the glamour industry. His energy and enthusiasm have enabled him to create and then sell one company after another.

Chris called them "Enablers and Sea-Changers" — seven companies that focus on infrastructure and new ways of connecting. Jasper Wireless is a global "mobile to mobile" operator, providing data communications in over 35 countries around the world. LogMeIn, Inc. showed the first Web-based service that enables IT technicians to remotely access and take control of a smartphone and the connected PC. This will become important as more and more smartphones are delivered. I was impressed with Phreesia, Inc. which demonstrated a technology that brings the doctor’s waiting room into the 21st century by automating patient check-in using a very user-friendly approach. No more clipboards!

One of the important elements of Web 2.0 is consumer-generated content and five companies showed some very creative implementations. Graspr, Inc. was one of the better ones. Their application allows people to get help with projects from other users. “How to” videos created by "ordinary people with extraordinary experiences" provide chocolate soufflé tips to Harley Davidson repair assistance.

Every Demo I can remember has had new companies with new ideas on how to organize, prepare, and conduct online meetings. This year there were nine companies with solutions. I liked Dimdim, Inc. which is a free and open source Web meeting service which requires no software to be downloaded. It allows users to show slides, share a desktop and talk, listen, chat, or broadcast via webcam.

Five companies offered small business solutions. I liked CashView, Inc.. They have a web-based services for sending invoices, paying bills, and keeping track of cash. For $10 per month plus a dollar per transaction this may be a big hit with very small businesses.

Take a look at the full list of companies at Demo.com. Demo 2008 will be here before we know it and there will be another six dozen or so startups with another batch of great ideas. It would be interesting to know the percentage of startup companies that survive. Out of ten companies there is probably a home run or two, a couple of triples and doubles, a few singles and unfortunately some strikeouts. There is no end of good ideas and capital to fund them.

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Students

It was my great privilege yesterday to be a guest lecturer at MIT in Cambridge. My friend Irving Wladawsky-Berger met me at Kendall Square and we walked to Building 4 passing among throngs of students. You could feel the energy of young people in the air — students who are bright, hard working, and on a mission to get a great education and make their mark in the world.

Irving is now Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT’s graduate school and he is teaching a course called "Technology-based Business Transformation". (See Irving’s blog — it has some profound content — worth reading). I talked about two topics: "Launching a Potentially Big Idea" and "The Future of the Internet". My slides are on the presentations page for anyone who may be interested.

The best part of being a guest lecturer is the interaction with students. The couple of dozen students in this class all have undergraduate degrees, mostly in engineering, and have been out in the real world with jobs for five years or so. They worked for Global Crossing, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Nokia, and other fine companies. They are eager to learn and ask great questions. The majority of the questions were about how to make companies change — how do you get around the momentum of not changing? How do you convince the marketing department to buy into your innovation and help move it forward? How do you effectively communicate new ideas to the market? How do we get telecommunications companies to listen to the voice of the consumer that wants choice, not two year lock-in plans with proprietary implementations. How often to colleagues need to get together in person to effectively collaborate? Would IBM have adopted the sweeping strategic embrace of the Internet if it had not just had a near death financial experience in the early 1990′s? Probably the hardest question was what company can a student work for after finishing grad school where the company will foster innovation and be receptive to big ideas that may change old models.

None of these questions have simple answers. Irving and I did our best to share our combined 80 years of experience business experience. I doubt if we had the precise answer to any of the questions but hopefully we planted seeds that will help the students keep asking questions and more importantly try things and be willing to fail at times. Both Irving and I encouraged them to use "trial by fire" as a way of innovating in the market. It took decades to do that before the Internet. Now it can be done in days.

Epilogue: Not only was this a rewarding day with students it was also a delightful excursion. The flights from Danbury to Hanscomb Field and return was beautiful with nearly unlimited vizibility. I also learned some new parts of the T (Red Line) that I had not been on before. Since I have a few more trips to Boston planned I ordered a Charlie Card online.

Thinkers 50

Who is the most influential living management thinker? That was the simple question that inspired the original Thinkers 50 in 2001. A lot of hard work and number-crunching later, the answer became the first global ranking of business gurus. So says Stuart Crainer. I first met Stuart ten years or so ago in Europe. He later interviewed me for a section of a book called "Business, The Universe & Everything". The subtitle of the book is "Conversations With The World’s Greatest Management Thinkers". The interview was called "John Patrick: The Attitude Thing" and is in the chapter called "Selling the Future". Ok, guilty as charged.

Stuart has since worked with the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), to create a definitive bi-annual guide which lists "thinkers and ideas".
I don’t think of myself in the same league as many of the others in the list of nominees but if you are so inclined feel free to cast a vote.

Searching

A friend of mine said that Google has increased everyone’s IQ by 100. Web search — whether it is Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, or any of the many specialized search engines — have certainly changed our lives. I am continuously surprised at what I can find but today I received an email out of the blue that really highlighted the impact of the Internet on searching for things. A realtor in Auburn, Alabama received a phone call about a home he has listed. The caller was named John Patrick but had a blocked number and left no information on how to contact him. The realtor did some web searching on my name and apparently found my web site and discovered I had gone to grad school at the University of South Florida. This past weekend Auburn played South Florida in a football game and he surmised that the call had come from me and would I be interested in talking about a home for sale in Auburn, Alabama. At first I thought it was spam that got through my filter but then realized it was actually legitimate albeit flawed research. It was unlikely leap of logic to make the connection but it shows the tremendous power of the Internet.

Many of us do not want to be found, analyzed, searched for, or advertised to. Many just want their privacy. I am quite confident that Internet technology will give us as much privacy as we want over time, but there are many who are not looking for privacy but rather are looking for connections. This is why there is such a huge rise in social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Quechup, Multiply, MySpace, and countless others. The social networking sites are not just social and they are not just young people. In addition to facilitating the sharing of movies, music, meeting new people, and just hanging out and socializing, these people oriented sites are helping make connections. Finding jobs, finding prospective employees, making deals, starting collaborations are all possible and happening. The emerging challenge I see is that there are so many "social networks" that it can be all consuming to join them and participate in them. I have no doubt that someone will attempt to become the network of networks. In a sense that is how I see it going — an intersection of network spaces. Facebook had a brilliant idea with their introduction of applications. These are applications developed by Facebook users themselves. As of this morning there are 3,959 applications ranging from dating to fashion to sports to calculating your carbon footprint. As the World Wide Web evolves into the semantic web it is likely that the various applications and information such as found at Facebook will become compatible and the network of networks will indeed be the new web. There is a lot to look forward to.

Book Update: 3Q2007

So many great books, so little time! I read a number of blogs to gain information like most of us, but there is no substitute yet for enjoying a hard-cover book. Every once in a while I post a list of books I have been reading. They all have reviews at Amazon that are much better than I could write. So, here is the list of what I have been reading this summer.

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz. He keeps cranking out great novels. This one is a chiller and keeps you on the edge of your chair. It is classic Koontz.

Killing Che: A Novel by Chuck Pfarrer. Certainly a controversial figure. This is a novel but likely close to the real story. Pfarrer has an amazing command of the landscape and the life of the people. He portrays a lifelong struggle that does not turn out well for the star of the book.

Blaze: A Novel by Richard Bachman (Author), Stephen King (foreward). The story is about a life of crime and murder. Hard to imagine that there are people that are treated so badly in their childhood and grow up with no values. Turns out Clayton Blaisdell has develops a soft spot near the end.

Memory: A short story by Stephen King. This is an add-on to Blaze. A very creative and touching story of a wealthy executive who is in a horrible accident and how he deals with it.

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell. This is a true story by an American heroe. It is one of the best books I have ever read. Luttrell offers a lot of insight into what is going on in Afghanistan and is not bashful about his opinion of the impact that politicians and the media are having on the troops.

Spook Country by William Gibson. I got this new book because I had read Neuromancer some years ago. Spook Country is quite different but equally challenging to imagine. It is about some mysterious shadowy intelligence veterans who take on a small crime family. The details are intricate and you are kept in suspense until the near the end to figure out what the actual crime was.

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IBM Happenings: August 2007

The month of August is slow in many parts of the business world but it seems IBM took no break as the month was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. One of the most interesting announcements to me was that IBM had two scientific breakthroughs in the field of nanotechnology that could lead to new kinds of devices and structures built from a few atoms or molecules.

Here are all the other announcements made by IBM during the month. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.

iPhone – Update No. 6

The news of a $200 price cut on the iPhone made a lot of people quite upset, although the announced $100 rebate took out some of the sting. I think of the $200 as an early adopter tax. Everyone has the choice to wait until the bugs get worked out and the pricing stabilizes. Although the cut came quickly and was significant, such actions are not unprecedented in high-tech, especially in the mobile space. The price cut will surely accelerate demand and more users means more interest from more software developers resulting in more useful applications for all users. After two months of using the iPhone, I remain captivated with the brilliant user interface. I have also been using the iPod feature of the iPhone a lot more and find it to be superb, as iPods have always been. If a phone call comes in you just say hello, have your conversation, say good bye, and the music returns. Seamless.

The lack of an iPhone copy and paste capability remains a major shortcoming for me. Back from the lake and taking the train to New York for a board meeting quickly reminded me of how dependent I have been on the Palm Treo 700P which contained train schedules. I copied the schedules from the MTA web site, pasted them into an Outlook note and then synched the notes with the Treo. The iPhone has notes also but you can’t paste anything into them and they don’t sync with anything, making them basically useless. I am sure everyone has their iPhone wish list — for me it is copy/paste. There have been two updates to the iPhone software so far — one per month is not bad — but neither of them added any new functions. The other annoying shortcoming is that weather locations, stocks, and favorite phone numbers are not sorted alphabetically. I remain confident that Apple will step up to the shortcomings and continue to delight customers. The really big issues with the iPhone are two — the Network and the availability of applications.

AT&T, without a doubt, is the weakest part of the product. Apple touts the iPhone as the “Internet in your pocket”. This is only true if you sign-up for two years with AT&T, and if AT&T happens to have an adequate signal where you happen to be. I travel a lot on Interstate 84 between Danbury, Connecticut and Scranton, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas. Coverage is very spotty throughout. In the Connecticut town of 25,000 where I live, there is almost no coverage. AT&T calls their network "Allover". Right. When you do have an AT&T connection to their "Edge" network, it is extremely slow. Fortunately, the WiFi support in the iPhone is very good, but WiFi is not everywhere just yet (more on that in an upcoming posting). The iPhone is truly a network device and without a good network even a great device can’t do much. On the positive side, you can tell that AT&T is trying really hard to offer good customer service. Their people are courteous and responsive, in spite of the ancient backend systems and processes that support them. They call themselves "the new AT&T", but when the first charge showed up on my American Express bill it was labeled "CING*517655729 Snerocky Hill". I am guessing this meant Cingular, an account number, and Southern New England Rocky Hill (a town in Connecticut). Between that and the forty-four page bill replete with errors in the account plans I had chosen, I get the feeling the "new AT&T" is actually a collection of old companies and systems that AT&T hopes to weave into a new enterprise. Their pricing models are also antiquated. A call to Norway on the iPhone is $1.49 per minute. If you sign up for an international calling at $3.99 per month, the same call to Norway is sixteen cents per minute. International calling is surely the highest profit margin part of their business. When someone comes up with a way to enable Skype on the iPhone the obscene international rates will drop. If you work for a large company that gets a discount from AT&T you will find out that those discounts do not apply if you have an iPhone. Bottom line, the exclusive deal between AT&T and Apple may be a good deal for them but for the customer it is yet another example of reducing choice for consumers, just the opposite of what they want. A web site called Free The iPhone is pushing for what they call Wireless Freedom — "the freedom to use all Internet devices on any wireless network in a market that offers true high-speed Internet and real consumer choice". Some people look to government to solve this problem and others look to hackers. I would prefer competition as the solution and the iPhone is the beginning, not the end, of the race.

PalmGear.com claims to have 29,000 applications. The iPhone has just a handful — the basics — so far. I thought we would see some new apps by now but am still confident there will be many of them soon. The new applications will become available through iTunes, just like music except that the applications will likely have to be approved by AT&T, the exclusive provider of network support to the iPhone. This is analogous to finding an Internet application for your PC but not being able to download and install it unless your Internet Service Provider approves. Not good. The good news is that the iPhone will support any Web 2.0 application from the Safari browser. One application called AppMarks provides an iPhone-like menu in a web page thus avoiding the need to go through iTunes and AT&T. In other words AppMarks is providing a separate menu with an icon for each iPhone web application. The icons look just like the icons that are on the iPhone home page and you can add, delete or edit them. The larger overall question is whether the predominant application environment for the iPhone will be a locked down proprietary thing controlled by Apple and AT&T or whether it will be more like an open web environment. I expect to see a lot more clues on this in the weeks and months ahead and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

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