Tag: entrepreneurship (Page 5 of 6)

As a follow-on to my earlier post today, I asked Esther Dyson some questions about her upcoming event in Carlsbad, CA, March 12-14. She was kind enough to take out some time to give me her perspectives. Here’s the interview:

What should attendees expect at this year’s PC Forum?
Esther Dyson: The people they sit next to at lunch and dinner will be interesting — either prospects or competitors or potential partners or both, with challenging ideas and opinions. [Ed: and that doesn’t even include breakfast, my personal favorite!] Aside from that, the content will be thought-provoking. The subtheme — “Users in Charge” — sounds like a mindlessly cheery, rarely-delivered-on slogan. But it’s preceded by the provocative reality of “Erosion of Power.” New business models, when they’re delivered on, often destroy old ones. Users in charge is no mere slogan; it’s a threat to the people who were in charge. Businesses have a choice whether to lead the changes or resist them. But just deciding to respond isn’t that easy. You have to figure out how: how to put users in charge, how to listen, how to mediate among users who disagree, how to collect revenue (and for what)….and most important, how to change a culture. So, in many ways, things are easier for startups — except they lack resources and have to prove their new business models. So, the discussions will be fun. I have spent the last two months interviewing all the speakers — but I know I’ll still be surprised with what they say, especially once they start talking to one another and engaging with the other participants.

How might it compare with previous years’ events?
Esther Dyson: In character, it will be the same, but we have new material — everything from recent developments around Google to a gaggle of startups ranging from Spot Runner to invisibleCRM.

How is PC Forum different from other conferences?
Esther Dyson: The content tends to be more provocative because we don’t have any outside sponsors. By and large, we don’t let speakers “present.” We ask them questions. And they really talk among themselves, rather than presenting serially. There’s a dramatic tension that gets people paying attention. Beyond that, we really cater to all the attendees, not just to the speakers. It extends to the details: The badges are large and readable and don’t flip over, so it’s easy to find people you want to meet. [Ed: And they have a great attendee networking site, with features better than any I’ve seen.] We keep the lights up in the auditorium so you can see the other attendees as well as the speakers. We encourage people to bring their families, and that makes the atmosphere more relaxed and friendlier than at most conferences I attend. Also, we hold it in a slightly out of the way place, so people (even speakers) come and stay, instead of dropping in.

Please tell us about the types of attendees you attract, and the quality of networking attendees can expect.
Esther Dyson: They include entrepreneurs, investors, industry veterans, big company execs, analysts, press. We’re proud of what we do and we charge for it, so we get high-level attendees. On the other hand, we work hard to bring in new people and especially startups, so many of these high-level people are ones you haven’t heard of — yet. And things start happening at PC Forum: for example, Eric Schmidt met Larry Page at PC Forum, IBM met Lotus, and AOL met ICQ/Mirabilis.

How do you select the categories for companies you debut, and the companies themselves?
Esther Dyson: We select the companies first, by and large, and then we design the categories to fit them. We’re looking for companies that will be successful, of course, but we’re also looking for new ideas. We want attendees to walk out saying, “Now that’s a neat idea!” Over the years, our debutantes have included Flickr, Brightcove, IronPort, Technorati, Emode (Tickle), Groxis, Junglee, Mirabilis (ICQ), Eurekster, and JotSpot, to name several.

What are your conference themes this year, and which of these are getting the most buzz so far?
Esther Dyson: Well, in addition to what I said in answer to the first two questions, “Users in Charge” is getting lots of buzz. But it’s my contention that many people who think they resonate with it don’t quite get all the implications.

What are the three outcomes you most hope will result from this year’s PC Forum?
Esther Dyson: I’ll give you four, actually: that 400 people will walk away with new ideas and new friends and business partners…that the 70-odd family members who came will feel appreciated and closer to the world of the attendees who brought them…that the ideas that were floating around PC Forum will get crisper….and that the companies embodying those ideas will learn from one another and will compete more effectively, giving their management better tools and goals, and end up serving their customers better.

My thanks to Esther for these great insights into PC Forum, especially for those of us who’ve never attended. I look forward to seeing any and all of you who can make it. And I of course plan to do many more blog posts on this one…

Tag: PCforum06
Tag: PCforum

One thing is certain: Esther Dyson and her organization, Release 1.0 (now part of CNet Networks), know how to plan an event. The PC Forum conference is the venerable high-level tech event of the year, and the most long-standing one, with a history measured in decades. It never lets down. And the big players come out, bigtime. The theme of this year’s event — “Erosion of Power: Users In Charge” — couldn’t be better timed. Without a doubt, it is a developing reality today in the technology business, and well deserving of spirited discussion by the many big thinkers and doers who will gather in Carlsbad, California, March 12-14, to sort out the implications for all of us.

Lots of buzz will be happening in and around this event, and the 400+ lucky attendees will especially be the beneficiaries. [Registration is still open, by the way, so if you want to get the full-on buzz, live and in-person, get over there now and click.] I’ll be blogging lots about PC Forum over the next couple of weeks, and I’m really looking forward to reporting from the event. Watch for an interview of Esther Dyson in my next post for some special insight into what you can expect.

What kind of an event is it? Officially, it’s a three-day executive-level, business-oriented conference “focused on emerging technologies and business models in software, the Internet, communications, and electronic commerce.” In the mornings, general sessions are moderated by Esther Dyson and deal with key issues and trends that her organization, Release 1.0, have identified throughout the year. [Esther is constantly on the go, traveling worldwide to meet with an amazing array of established industry players and new, emerging ones.] In the afternoons come the company presentations (which I’m particularly jazzed about), where startup companies tout their wares, many of them debuting at the event. Some of the companies in past years that either had their coming-out party at PC Forum or made very early appearances to the world include Flickr, IronPort, Technorati, Emode (Tickle), Groxis, KnowNow, Junglee, Mirabilis (ICQ), Eurekster, and JotSpot. Some are even pre-debut, as will be Brightcove this year. [Can you say “disruptor”?] In fact, according to Business 2.0, which wants to dispense with the over-used term Web 2.0 and replace it with the concept of “The Next Net,” cites several PC Forum presenters, past and present, in its just-published Next Net 25 list. [Great stuff.]

So what are some of the specifics of this year’s PC Forum 2006? Here’s a quick rundown, and I’ll be expanding in coming posts.

The morning general sessions. Esther will kick things off on Monday by moderating two panels that deal with individuals as consumers being in charge of data about themselves. The first will focus on how consumers can manage and even sell our own data; the second, on how marketing companies are using behavioral targeting. Then, something different: a panel on health care, which Esther says will take “institutional muscle to change anything,” with the key institution being employers. Then, in Tuesday morning’s general sessions, Bill Joy (a founder of Sun and now a partner at Kleiner Perkins) talks about “big swings at big problems” — water and energy. Yes, KP is still trying to change the world, but in ways you may not have thought, and Bill says he’s more excited than ever. Following this, a panel on peer-to-peer security will look at how individuals can get empowered to protect themselves. But, wait, there’s more (hope there’s time for a bathroom break): two panels on business models, the first focusing on the shift of power to the edges — featuring the CEOs of Salesforce.com, Brightcove, and Augmentum, and the VP of tech strategy at Microsoft; and the second on (what else) search — in which the business models are going to domain-specific information services (so-called vertical search) — as in Zillow…and, yes, our old friend, personalization — as in Yahoo’s community services. Wow, will my notebook be bursting after these.

The afternoon sessions. As if the morning sessions aren’t enough, I get really excited about what happens next (startup guy that I am), because it includes the company presentations. Many of these firms are being introduced for the first time at PC Forum. Here’s the list, with a snippet on each:
Search:
• Healthline – leveraging a deep medical taxonomy.
• Illumio (still pre-launch) – bringing knowledge search to social networks.
• Kosmix – categorizing search.
New Business Models:
• Edgeio – online classifieds via RSS and tagging.
• invisibleCRM – adding Outlook front-ends to enterprise apps.
• Spot Runner – making TV advertising possible for the little guy.
Access & Control:
• Iovation – a reputation system for devices.
• Novatium Solutions – a $100 PC with the guts of a cell phone.
• Site Advisor – addressing the human side of consumer security on the web.

But the Tuesday afternoon session also includes two great roundtable discussions. The first, on the accountable Net, looks at the interacting concepts of trust, reputation, and identity. And the second Esther calls “Me Media”, which deals with the proliferation of platforms and models of user-generated content — blogs, tags, video, long-tail advertising. What’s fad, what’s lasting? And are there any viable business models in this space? I’m looking forward to this one, as the founders of Wink, Dabble, and Tremor Media lead the discussion. Finally, the dinner panel on Tuesday is called “New Forms of Life” and deals with online community, featuring the CEOs
of LinkedIn and Facebook, and a representative of still-stealthy Seriosity. The notion is that online life isn’t “virtual” anymore — it’s just another form of life, along with work and play.

PC Forum is also featuring a group of very interesting “gallery companies” including Bitty Browser, imeem, Kalat Software, Movo Mobile, and Riya (the latter one of my favs from Demo)….”reflecting the wonderfully diverse instantiations of creativity possible on the user-empowered Web,” says Release 1.0. More soon…

Tag: PCforum06
Tag: PCforum