Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Graeme Thickins (Page 8 of 55)

Defrag 2009 Liveblog

November 10, 2009 /

Defrag
Defrag: Accelerating the “aha” moment

As online data is growing and fragmenting at an exponential pace, individuals, groups and organizations are struggling to discover, assemble, organize, act on and gather feedback from that data.

Defrag is focused on the tools and technologies that accelerate the “aha” moment, and is a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, and thinkers that are building the next wave of software innovation.

Below is the liveblog I published during Defrag 2009, now archived here from beginning to end.  And my Twitterstream during the event is sprinkled in for good measure.  For more pix (about 115, some with actual captions!) here’s my complete Defrag ’09 Flickr set.

  • 9:27 AM: GraemeThickins
  • 9:29 AM: GraemeThickins It’s now early morning Wednesday. I arrived yesterday afternoon, and attended an excellent pre-conference dinner last night, sponsored by Gist. It was at Maggiano’s and attended by about 35 people, I’d say. I ended up at the table with founder T.A. McCann. I’m impressed with what they’re doing with Gist — check it out. Lots of great conversation and laughs last night. And, wow, the lobby bar was hoppin’, both before and after the dinner. I bailed about 10:00, though (11:00 Minneapolis time), to build strength for the all-out schmoozefest and blogfest starting today… 🙂
  • 11:48 AM: GraemeThickins Eric Norlin just did event intro, and now opening speaker, Andy Kessler is up… says he promises to do his entire talk without mentioning the word “Twitter” 🙂 … “Economy Sucks” – showing some funny slides… now getting to the point: “It’s all about productivity!” … “output per worker hour”
  • 11:51 AM: GraemeThickins Andy Kessler: “Are there tools we can use to defrag the economy? Hell yes!” He’s about to walk us through some…
  • 11:54 AM: GraemeThickins Kessler says there are two kinds of people: “creators” and “servers”…
  • 11:59 AM: GraemeThickins Service jobs that have been destroyed in recent years: manufacturing, DJs, supervisors, tellers, secretaries, librarians, postal workers (displaced by email and Twitter… “whoops, I said it”). A category of servers is “sloppers” – just move something from one side of the room to the other.
  • 12:01 PM: GraemeThickins Amazon is a “slopper” company… a low-end task. But they’re moving up the productivity chain.
  • 12:06 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Kessler: “There are still millions of ‘slopper’ jobs that have yet to be automated….We’re in an era of more and more government workers being added – and they don’t care about productivity.” Now he’s talking about “super sloppers”… which he says include all the marketing people that over-hype and sell stuff that isn’t worth the money.
  • 12:15 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:15 PM: GraemeThickins Next category of “sloppers” are “spongers”… another: “slimers” – which includes the finance guys who grease the economy with capital. “But we can’t just get rid of Wall Street – ‘slimers’ are important.”
  • 12:23 PM: GraemeThickins Kessler: “The way to defrag the economy is to eat those jobs and replace ’em with higher brain-power jobs.” Analogy he makes is to “Soylent Green” movie: eat people!
  • 12:25 PM: GraemeThickins RT @davefauth: RT @lizasperling: Can’t we just say innovation must focus on productivity – keep it short and sweet? #defragcon
  • 12:35 PM: GraemeThickins Next talk is by Lili Cheng of Microsoft on “Social Boundaries.” She works in a labs group that looks at the future of social interaction. Now showing her own social map. She’s focusing her work in “social productivity at work.”
  • 12:40 PM: GraemeThickins I’m live-blogging the Defrag ’09 conference here: bit.ly
  • 12:43 PM: GraemeThickins Lili Cheng: “When you look at it, about 70% of people’s email is stuff they really don’t need to read, but it’s still important to them.”
  • 12:45 PM: GraemeThickins RT (lol!) @nfoarbitrage: This MSFT mail “innovation” simply highlights why this kind of stuff needs to be done by start-ups #defragcon
  • 12:46 PM: GraemeThickins Cheng is now talking about what MS is doing with Bing and Twitter, which she says was presented at the recent Web 2.0 Summit.
  • 12:47 PM: GraemeThickins RT (lol!) @infoarbitrage: This MSFT mail “innovation” simply highlights why this kind of stuff needs to be done by start-ups #defragcon
  • 12:52 PM: GraemeThickins Lily Cheng: “As silly as Twitter is, it motivates you, to go in there and have fun.”
  • 12:54 PM: GraemeThickins RT @cshipley Lili Cheng: productivity projects haven’t focused on the work itself, but rather on the flow of information. #defragcon
  • 12:56 PM: GraemeThickins Lili Cheng says her labs group at MS is engaged with more than 200 universities and schools in more than 20 countries. Her Twitter handle is @lilich.
  • 1:27 PM: GraemeThickins Coffee break’s over, now my buddy Aaron Fulkerson (@roebot), cofounder of MindTouch is up as the first speaker in the session, ” Exploring Unsolved & Newly Discovered Problems.” His firm is trying to solve enterprise collaboration with essentially a “more elegant” MS Word. He says they’re well on the way there…”and MindTouch is free and open source.”
  • 1:29 PM: GraemeThickins Now Tim Young, founder of Socialcast (@timyoung), says he’s
    “got 99 problems, but funding ain’t one of ’em” – his firm just announced a round of VC. Funny slide.
  • 1:35 PM: GraemeThickins Tim Young is rolling us back to 1945, a Dr. Bush (no relation) who was the organizer of the Manhattan Project – specifically, a piece he wrote in Atlantic Monthly called “As We May Think” – about thinking machines. He likens problems he’s now trying to solve to questions raised way back them – before this kid was even born!
  • 1:38 PM: GraemeThickins Eric Marcoullier, founder of Gnip is titling his talk: “The business world doesn’t give a shit about your lifestreaming app.” Huge laughs. Of course, social media is hugely useful to the enterprise – marketing, PR, customer service. But business is way more than that.” He suggests we now need to “make a leap to business intelligence*.”
  • 1:45 PM: GraemeThickins Eric is @bpm140 in Twitter. Check out www.gnip.com … “data for the real-time web.” They’re created a filter for social media sites, esp focusing on YouTube, to find videos where people are talking about a given company. He’s closing by challenging developers to come up with solutions that “drive business decisions.”
  • 1:49 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 1:54 PM: GraemeThickins Steve Newman, CTO of Gist, is now talking about solving the problem of managing online relationships. He described Gist, but is also citing other companies “doing cool stuff” — like People Maps, ZoomInfo, Telligent, Microsoft Research (Mark Smith), Lailana.
  • 1:56 PM: GraemeThickins Another keynote now: Stowe Boyd, “Deep Structure of the Real-Time Stream: Semiotics and Microsyntax.” A future-oriented talk, looking 10 years out. “What will businesses of the future look like?”
  • 1:59 PM: GraemeThickins Stowe says he’s been blogging now for 10 years. Prior to that, he was investigating a collaboration tool, an open email model, called “Buzz Behive.” It was attempting to shape culture, he blogged at the time, and many people thought he “was going off the deep end.”
  • 2:03 PM: GraemeThickins “The individual is the new group,” says @stoweboyd. “We define ourselves through the relationships we have with other people.” Small talk is big again, he says, but real-time is where it’s at now – and Twitter search only goes back two days now. “Must keep up with the tempo; otherwise, you’re behind.”
  • 2:06 PM: GraemeThickins Stowe Boyd: “Meaning is the new search…The latter is based on scarcity… We’ll switch to having things arrive to us by way of our social networks. The important things will find you, as Eric Marcoullier said earlier.”
  • 2:08 PM: GraemeThickins “A shared thread of time is how people will get work done,” says Boyd, “shared with those most important to you.” People will continue “to trade personal productivity for connectedness.” That latter will trump our other obligations.
  • 2:10 PM: GraemeThickins “Flow will be the new center,” says Boyd, “like the bloodstream of the business.” We all will be the engines of meaning – “this is where business will get done.” He says this is very utopian – “I admit I am a hippie.” Oh?
  • 2:17 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 4:49 PM: GraemeThickins Lunch over – now “Smackdown – the 2009 Kedrosky Awards,” with moderator Paul Kedrosky (“big CNBC star,” says Eric Norlin) and panelists Guillaume Cohen (reigning champ), Aaron Levine/Box.net, Jason Lemkin/Echosign, Flip Kromer/Infochimps.
  • 4:52 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 4:58 PM: GraemeThickins Funny line from Kedrosky: “VCs are just people who wanted to be bankers but didn’t have the personality.” Good discussion now by panelists about current venture environment… sorry state of returns, reduced funding needed by today’s startups, etc. Mentioning Y combinator model, how that still works well…
  • 5:20 PM: GraemeThickins First afternoon breakout session – I’m in the “Communication Metaphors” series now – is “Activity Streams: Changing How We Forage for Information.” Discussion leader of this series is Sameer Patel, and the first speaker is Tim Young of Socialcast. He says all humans are basically informavores (our brains crave a steady supply of information). The notion of “information scent,” as sharks smell blood, he says is reflected in seeing a Twitter RT you like, and then feeling you want to follow the person who originally tweeted.
  • 5:28 PM: GraemeThickins Second speaker in this series is Alex Moore, founder of Baydin, on “Why Email’s Not Going Anywhere.” He’s making the point that email is richer and more flexible than other (esp social-media) methods. For example: 87% of emails are longer than 140 characters! See Baydin blog for more fascinating info from Alex’s research. Follow him on Twitter at @awmoore.
  • 5:32 PM: GraemeThickins Third speaker in this series is Michael Cerda (@mcerda99), CEO of cc:Betty. “Email will be around for a long time.” He says that email’s final frontier will be making it smart, engaging, organized, live, sharing, and more…
  • 5:41 PM: GraemeThickins Fourth speaker in series is Matt Brezina (@brezina), one of the founders of Xobni, on the topic of “Email Happiness.” People hate changing workflows. What his firm did is create a social profile of each user that appears in Outlook, used today by a vast majority of the Fortune 500. All an individual’s social media links, photo, etc, appear in their profile.
  • 5:51 PM: GraemeThickins Discussion after the email session. Xobni: “Innovation of consumer web is finally happening in the enterprise. Three million people are now using it.” Baydin: “That success comes from getting people emotionally connected with a tool like this.” Socialcast: “We’re not trying to force another Facebook or Twitter into the enterprise – we’re trying to help them get business done.” cc; Betty: “I used to wish I could tweet more like Scoble or Stowe, but then I realized, hey, that’s their job. I have to push two releases out per week – I don’t have time for this shit!”
  • 5:54 PM: GraemeThickins Sameer patel asks: “Is Google Wave an incremental improvement, or what?” cc:Betty: “It will take a decade to play out. People are trying to figure out use-cases.”
  • 5:56 PM: GraemeThickins Xobni: “Eventually, people will like having Waves in their email.” Socialcast: “There are places where Wave makes sense.” He sees “atomizing discussions onto content. The conversation lives on the content.”
  • 6:01 PM: GraemeThickins “What’s going to keep email alive is long-form ideas,” says Alex Moore of Baydin. Regarding the preference for younger kids to text, cc: Betty’s Michael Cerda says, “When they get a job, they’re gonna have to learn out how to email like the rest of us!”
  • 7:08 PM: GraemeThickins I’m back, after break, ready to do more live-blogging of #defragcon…right here: bit.ly
  • 7:10 PM: GraemeThickins Wow, the hallway conversation with @sether and others kept me out of the “Social Media & Community” breakout session… (Associated Content, Social Media Group, NavStar, Open Text)… with my buddy Steve Larsen as discussion leader. But I made it into the final discussion/Q&A….
  • 7:18 PM: GraemeThickins I asked question about social media policies for employees – should companies even have them? How are companies going about this? Andrea Baker, NavStar, says the US Army is — put they put it out for comment first to the “troops.” She says they also are looking at potentially outlawing iPods and iPod Touches from Army facilities, and seeking feedback on that. She also said that the YouTube channel for the Iraq forces is one of the most popular channels on YouTube.
  • 7:33 PM: GraemeThickins Kevin Marks of Google talking about OpenID, which now has over a billion users… he showed a logo slide that looked like a Nascar page. He’s calling his talk “The Flow-Past Web.” Talking about “empirical standards” like Oauth, Microformats.
  • 7:43 PM: GraemeThickins Next up: Bill Arconati of Atlassian, speaking on “Innovation Culture – Studying the Effects of 20% Time.” His firm is 8 yrs old, about 200 employees. Few yrs ago, they wanted to implement something like Google’s 20% time. They implemented a “FedEx Day” – 24-hr coding exercise. They’re now on their 12th or 13th. Lessons include “one day isn’t enough”… “it takes a long time to ship code”… putting all their developers onto a 20% time program is a $1M gamble, they figured. Results: 48 projects, 248 days of effort, 1.1% time (not everybody wanted to do 20% time), 34 people participated, and they got 8 external blog posts about it. “Filling gaps as much as finding the next big thing”… chance to do “random wacky shit.” Follow bill @barconati.
  • 7:48 PM: GraemeThickins Final “Fragment” talk is Danny Kolke, founder of Etelos, on “The Rise of the Application Marketplace.” He’s in the business of distributing apps, primarily for large institutions. Describes himself as a “cloud geek”… “finally, our day has come.”
  • 7:54 PM: GraemeThickins RT @Scobleizer Do you need web hosting? Looking to go cheap? Read this success story: tumblr.com #rackspace
  • 7:59 PM: GraemeThickins Danny Kolke of Etelos says he’s a cloud geek, and “our time has finally come”..he’s all about web app distribution & marketplaces #defragcon
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins RT@sether: apparently i don’t know as much about startrek as i thought. tweet “@zingstring know ur trek” and see how you do…
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins RT @sether: apparently i don’t know as much about startrek as i thought. tweet “@zingstring know ur trek” and see how you do…
  • 8:04 PM: GraemeThickins Danny Kolke, Etelos: “The best web app hasn’t been been invented yet, and you may be working on it tomorrow. Users expect it.” He says web app marketplaces are a game changer, just like iTunes was a game-changer.
  • 8:11 PM: GraemeThickins Final keynote of the day: “A Discussion Between Chris Shipley (Guidewire Group) and Chris Sacca (angel investor in Twitter).” The latter just did a bike ride across the the entire country, and tweeted the whole thing. He’s doing a funny schtik on his new (fictitious) startup. The idea of this chat is to chew over what they’ve heard today…
  • 8:18 PM: GraemeThickins Chris (@cshipley) & Chris (@sacca) are talking about how earlier stages of the ‘Net were about snarkiness. “It enabled assholes,” says Chris Sacca. “We’re now moving to an era of the web that’s more civil.” Social media is making us more social?
  • 8:23 PM: GraemeThickins The ‘following’ system feeds narcissism, says Chris Shipley. But she thinks people should be thoughtful about who they follow – take the time to look at their twitterstream, just follow those that seem interesting, deserving.
  • 8:24 PM: GraemeThickins “We’re heading to community-driven authentication of voices,” says Chris Sacca.
  • 8:29 PM: GraemeThickins Final thoughts on the day…. Sacca: “I’m very optimistic about the overall state of things. Even the state of VC.” The ‘Ramen’ type of startup is bringing back the passion. “I haven’t seen a business plan pushed on me in years – now, it’s about live URLs.”
  • 8:35 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 8:36 PM: GraemeThickins Good show, Defrag – it’s a first-day wrap! Now, reception time….
  • 9:42 AM: GraemeThickins RT @defrag big day today: john winsor, jeff dachis, kim cameron, khris loux, and the cluetrain at 10 reunion. action-packed day 2 #defragcon
  • 9:56 AM: GraemeThickins RT @infoarbitrage New Post: “Social Leverage” in Venture Capital bit.ly Just stirring the pot for today’s #defragcon panel
  • 10:16 AM: GraemeThickins I would have come to #defragcon just for this panel today and nothing else: bit.ly
  • 10:18 AM: GraemeThickins RT @mrflip @defrag does it help if I wear a stealth Hawaiian shirt in honor of fake beach day at #defragcon? (darn, didn’t bring hat & lei!)
  • 10:48 AM: GraemeThickins Getting ready for Day 2 – it looks to be a great agenda. Hard to choose in the breakout sessions again! Highlight for me personally will be VC panel before lunch. I’m also going to try to post some audio interviews using this ScribbleLive tool – haven’t tried that yet. I’ll be talking with some interesting startups during breaks and lunch…
  • 11:20 AM: GraemeThickins hey, @andraz – I’d like to chat with you today to get an update on Zemanta… when’s good time for you, during breaks at @defragcon
  • 11:47 AM: GraemeThickins Let’s get this Day 2 party started! Eric Norlin kicking it off… introed first keynoter: John Winsor, author of “SPARK” and “Baked In” – talking today about “Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves”…
  • 11:54 AM: GraemeThickins Winsor says there are four scenarios for telling a marketing story, “baking the marketing in”…. I’ll post the slide shortly.
  • 11:57 AM: GraemeThickins Winsor now talking about Patagonia… slide is “Recognize the artificiality of the corporation.” He notes how “they invite consumers in to improve the system.” Breaking down walls, they know how to making jackets better, for example… “the power of transparency.”
  • 12:02 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:04 PM: GraemeThickins Crowdsourcing in advertising is not a new trend.. Winsor cites Planters Peanuts. They did a logo contest in 1919, and an 11-year old boy won. That’s still their logo today – the peanut guy with the top hat.
  • 12:08 PM: GraemeThickins Winsor is citing some recent key happenings re: crowdsourcing in advertising… including those related to USA Today, Samsung, Unilever, Victors and Spoils. I’ll post the slide.
  • 12:12 PM: GraemeThickins it’s Day 2 at #defragcon and I’m continuing to live-blog it, right here: bit.ly
  • 12:14 PM: GraemeThickins Go check out Winsor’s book project online …. www.bakedin.com …it’s a crowdsourced book, continuously being updated.
  • 12:17 PM: GraemeThickins Next talk is by @KhrisLoux, CEO of JS-Kit, filling in for Anil Dash, who’s laid up. He’s speaking about the Semantic Web.
  • 12:19 PM: GraemeThickins Make that the “Synaptic Web”… see www.synapticweb.org.
  • 12:23 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 12:24 PM: GraemeThickins Back to Synaptic Web… Khris Loux: “If the information is important to you, it will find you.”
  • 12:25 PM: GraemeThickins On “filtering,” Loux says, “You don’t have to read everything, just let it flow through you.”
  • 12:29 PM: GraemeThickins “Implicit connections (like Facebook) are a by-product of the Synaptic Web.” Loux is showing us the Twitter page @synapticweb. Talking about other companies doing stuff in this area, Apture and Zemanta.
  • 12:32 PM: GraemeThickins By the way, if Anil Dash would have made it, his talk was going to be titled “The Push Button Web.”
  • 12:34 PM: GraemeThickins Now in Q&A discussion, Stowe Boyd talking about how your connections are going to make sure the right information flows to you.
  • 12:35 PM: GraemeThickins “Applying people to information, faces next to data”… is what makes this work. I think that was Kevin Marks just talking back behind me.
  • 12:36 PM: GraemeThickins Khris Loux: “If everything you’re doing is connected on the web, for everyone to see, is there such a thing as a secret anymore?” Hmmmm….
  • 12:37 PM: GraemeThickins Next keynote should be great: Jeff Dachis and Tim Young (Socialcast) on “Social Business Design.”
  • 12:40 PM: GraemeThickins Guess Jeff Dachis is doing this alone… Tim felt he was over-exposed, so he’s deferring. Jeff is based in Austin, TX. Says he’s not as good-looking as Stowe Boyd or as funny as Chris Sacca… but he’s forging on.
  • 12:44 PM: GraemeThickins Jeff founded Razorfish, which grew to 2200 people. Now he’s launching into his case for why we’re in a shift to the social business. “New distributed, collaborative, and agile organizations”… powered by the millennial generation.
  • 12:45 PM: GraemeThickins Jeff Dachis: “Social Business Design is the *intentional* creation of socially calibrated and dynamic business systems, process, and culture.” Got that?
  • 12:47 PM: GraemeThickins What’s the purpose, the goal? Enhanced value exchange among constituents delivering improved “… blah, blah, blah
  • 12:53 PM: GraemeThickins Dachis: “We needed a vocabulary… first was ‘ecosystem’ – from disparate silos to connected nodes.” The second, “hivemind”…from hoarding to collaborating. The third: “dynamic signal”…from static to dynamic, “communication as work, not for work.” The fourth, “metafilter”…. from filter failure to clear signals, “finding meaning in all the noise.” Says he focuses on measuring patterns, not counts.
  • 12:56 PM: GraemeThickins He calls his four vocabulary terms “lenses” or “archetypes”… this guy is the buzzword king of Defrag so far, fer sure.
  • 12:58 PM: GraemeThickins RT (likewise): @SameerPatel: @maggiefox thanks so much for hosting us all last night #defragcon
  • 12:59 PM: GraemeThickins RT @tamccann: interesting home page for social business consultancy, www.dachisgroup.com – #defragcon
  • 1:32 PM: GraemeThickins Got too busy on the break, chatting with @zingstring and doing an interview with Jeff Dachis, then catching up with Eric Norlin and Brad Feld. So, I’m missing most of the preso by Chris Finn of Microsoft on “Adventures in Community Learning with Podcasting”…. will post a link later.
  • 1:46 PM: GraemeThickins Here’s an interview I found online of the last presenter: www.fastforwardblog.com
  • 1:50 PM: GraemeThickins Next up is “A Discussion of Discovery vs. Search”… Buzz Bruggeman moderating, with Robert Scoble, Scott Beaudreau/Microsoft, Robert Reich/OneRiot.
  • 1:54 PM: GraemeThickins Scoble’s now showing live his “river” of information on Friendfeed… says “I just try to pick things out that add value to my life.” About 3-4 posts per second going by…. whoooosh 🙂
  • 1:56 PM: GraemeThickins watching Scoble’s live Friendfeed “river” is a wild experience… here at #defragcon
  • 1:59 PM: GraemeThickins MS guy cites example of Hudson River plane crash… Scoble points out it’s really hard to go back now and find that original TwitPic photo – he spent a half hour trying to do that (finally did). The other Robert of OneRiot says real-time events are important to people – like the families of the people that were shot at Ft. Hood.
  • 2:03 PM: GraemeThickins Why is Foursquare important? Scoble says “it’s a cool location thing, and it’s a game… but that gets old after a while.” But people (your friends) will give you “great information about experiences to have nearby.”
  • 2:07 PM: GraemeThickins Buzz asks, why are new things on Twitter so important? Re: “Lists” feature – Scoble showing his now…anyone can go to his Twitter page and look at what’s going on in them – “don’t have to follow any of these people”… “Twitter has fundamentally changed!” He says he’s spent hundreds of hours on his lists. He even says he has a Defrag attendees list! We’re all on it… “Listoria” is a site he’s showing… lets you find whatever list you want.
  • 2:11 PM: GraemeThickins Robert Reich of OneRiot is showing a “Defrag” search at his site… says it’s real-time ranking. Also has a feature calls “RiotWise,” which is about real-time advertising.
  • 2:18 PM: GraemeThickins Final exchange here is on Scoble asking: “Which search is right for ‘defrag’ right at this moment? The one on Bing (about hard drive stuff), or the one on OneRiot (about the conference)?”
  • 2:18 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 2:21 PM: GraemeThickins Now, we’re hearing Kim Cameron, Chief Architect of Identity at Microsoft, on “Identity as a Collaboratrive Foundation.” He says “we don’t have a mouse for determining who we’re dealing with online.”
  • 2:22 PM: GraemeThickins Kim Cameron: “Everyone has a mosaic of identity, and we need to be able to present that mosaic.” He says we need an “identity metasystem.”
  • 2:26 PM: GraemeThickins RT @krishnan: Kim Cameron of Microsoft talking about Identity. Relief. Some geeky stuff. #defragcon
  • 2:30 PM: GraemeThickins Kim Cameron showing his “AD Federation Service”… which he points out is not an MS framework. (I’m shooting pix of his slides.) Now talking about OpenID in the consumer space. Showing an OpenID Identity Selector in Plaxo as an example.
  • 2:34 PM: GraemeThickins RT @ekolsky: this stuff is so cool i am almost drooling @kim_cameron #identity #defragcon
  • 2:38 PM: GraemeThickins Next up is the VC panel: “Is ‘Social Leverage’ the Next Big Thing for VCs?” Panelsist: Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Howard Lindzon, Jim Tybur, and Roger Ehrenberg. Lindzon says “social leverage” is his term. He became friends with Fred and Brad through their blogs, and Fred later invested in his startup, Wallstrip.
  • 2:40 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “The search-driven web is quickly becoming the socially drive web.” Brad Feld thinks “it’s a total joke how we use the web right now”…we’ll look back in ten years and thinks it’s crazy.
  • 2:44 PM: GraemeThickins Lindzon asks how do we deal with inboxes? Roger Ehrenberg: “I spend way more time on Twitter via Tweetdeck than I do on email anymore.” Brad Feld: “I’m not overwhelmed by the amount of data.” Problem, he says, is people aren’t “rigid or disciplined” about how they deal with it, with tools we now have.
  • 2:48 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson now talking about how the business of building relationships has changed so drastically for VCs, over the ’80s (bus cards and calls), ’90s (email), and now online. He does everything now, quickly and efficiently, with online tools, “and I don’t even use the phone anymore.” Lindzon: “And I do everything Fred does, so don’t call me.” 🙂
  • 2:55 PM: GraemeThickins Lindzon says he’s running a business, but came to the online world late, from the financial business. His next question: are we heading for some kind of a crash because of the lack of innovation in online advertising? Brad Feld: that has nothing to do with monetization of social web. Fred Wilson: “Time to call bullshit” on the ad model – look at revenue models like virtual goods! That’s where the action is. “Who cares about the 5 or 10%! Look at the other 90-95%!”
  • 2:57 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “We’re going to see some amazing monetization models outside of social gaming.” Jim Tybur says brands have opportunities to make money off virtual goods.
  • 2:58 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “We’ll see some amazing monetization models outside of social gaming.” Jim Tybur: brands have big opportunities. #defragcon
  • 2:59 PM: GraemeThickins thanks for the RT! @jeneane: @GraemeThickins live blog #defrag bit.ly
  • 3:02 PM: GraemeThickins Brad Feld now talking about fascinating concept of how we can all be “friends” with Fred (most of room feels they are, by show of hands), but very few have ever met him… or been at his house for dinner.
  • 3:03 PM: GraemeThickins Fred Wilson: “Trouble with online video is it looks a shitload like TV. People always want to go to models they know.”
  • 3:06 PM: GraemeThickins Brad Feld: we’re witnessing a lot of VC firms dying off. Takes a while, but it’s happening. Fred asking Roger to explain his blog post of today: “mix of angels w/domain expertise and VCs” – it takes a combination of investors today.
  • 3:10 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 3:11 PM: GraemeThickins Lunchtime! Back soon….
  • 4:29 PM: GraemeThickins Back after lunch and checking out of my room. Now joining “Listening, Learning & Emergence” in progress….
  • 4:34 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple is a tool to ask your colleagues work-related questions… get fast, anonymous answers. How to get people to listen? Brevity, honesty, and engagement. How they designed it for learning: continuous, action, and sharing. See more at www.rypple.com “Rypple is to feedback surveys what Twitter is to email.” For performance reviews, surveys, more…
  • 4:38 PM: GraemeThickins “How Heavy is the Internet?” Next up is Dan Neely, Networked Insights (the guys with their logo on our fleece!)… Great slide, the “Life of Social Media Analysis” (I shot a pic).
  • 4:44 PM: GraemeThickins Dan Neely: “huge difference between monitoring and social media analytics… the latter helps deal with the river of information.” He says there are 1.5 billion online conversations a day… “best focus group that ever existed.”
  • 4:48 PM: GraemeThickins Discussion after this session: moderator asks, “People don’t like feedback – how do we make it fun?” One panelist says depends on def of fun… engagement factor is the key, we engage online, play games, cuz it’s fun. Our brains like that stimulation. Key is to bring that into the learning environment.
  • 4:55 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple founder says most learning is in small chunks. Andrew Lewis, Smart.fm: “We sit and look at our Twitterstream and email inbox because we want those little microbursts of dopamine.” Humans seem to be programmed this way, he says. Good question from audience: is there way to enable group, remote learning for, say, sixth graders who want to learn about the same thing. Lewis: “Smart.fm!”
  • 5:00 PM: GraemeThickins Rypple co-CEO Daniel Debow: “When kids are playing World of Warcraft, are they just playing a game or are they learning how to collaborate?”
  • 5:21 PM: GraemeThickins Next session is “Context & Analytics.” Discussion leader is Ian Glazer, Burton Group. Panelists are from Collibra, Radiant Logic, Kynetx, Kognito.
  • 5:29 PM: GraemeThickins Collibra is an enterprise software company integrating with and adding Business Semantics to all major SOA, EAI, and data integration vendors. RadiantLogic is a provider of virtual directory solutions for identity management and enterprise information integration. Its platform provides unified, secure access to identity and contextual views built out of heterogeneous applications and data sources.
  • 5:31 PM: GraemeThickins Phil Windley of Kynetx is up now talking about the location metaphor (the web site), and suggests the metaphor of purpose is a better one.
  • 5:37 PM: GraemeThickins Focusing on purpose requires a client perspective. We need intelligent, adaptive browsers to deal with purpose… and he cites companies that are doing things in this area, like Gist, AdaptiveBlue, in addition to his own (which is a builder of tools). His thesis is really interesting… will post slide of his contact info.
  • 5:40 PM: GraemeThickins John Thompson of Kognitio is now talking about “Turning Data Into Money Intelligently – Fast, Easy, Flexible.” Bring it on, baby….
  • 5:44 PM: GraemeThickins Kognitio provides solutions to business problems that require the acquisition, rationalization, and analysis of large or complex data, giving firms the ability to turn their raw data into valuable business insight fast.
  • 5:48 PM: GraemeThickins does the moderator of this session look like Frank Zappa, or is it just me? #defragcon
  • 5:51 PM: GraemeThickins I put up a bunch more #defragcon pix on my Flickr set: bit.ly
  • 5:57 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:10 PM: GraemeThickins Missed the “Sharing, Markets & People” session (just dropped back into the big room in time for the discussion/Q&A). I was out in the hallway sitting around a table with Steve Larsen, Chris Locke, Rick Levine, JP Rangaswami, and Doc Searls – recording kind of an ad-hoc, free-association conversation about Cluetrain and the whole history of these guys working together, going back to the early ’90s. (I met most of these guys back around ’97 or ’98, and have followed their amazing careers ever since.) OMG, it was fun! Before I knew it, I’d captured 43 minutes worth of this crazy gab-fest – which I’ll definitely post to my blog. Serendipity!
  • 7:15 PM: GraemeThickins wait till you see the slide deck Doc Searls put together for the closing Cluetrain keynote here at #defragcon got an early peek – too good
  • 7:19 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:20 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:21 PM: GraemeThickins
  • 7:23 PM: GraemeThickins The “Cluetrain at 10” panel is beginning! This is gonna be fun….
  • 7:31 PM: GraemeThickins 46 billion results on Google now for “Cluetrain”!
  • 7:33 PM: GraemeThickins The slides Doc showed were funny…I shot pics and will post to my Flickr set.
  • 7:43 PM: GraemeThickins Doc Searls cited the great line of Chris Locke’s that “we’re not just customers, we’re humans, and our reach exceeds your grasp.” Rick Levine says it’s a shame companies are still treating people as masses, not individuals – trying to aggregate them, segment them. JP says a statement from Cluetrain that really struck him was “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy” – and he says it’s really come true.
  • 7:48 PM: GraemeThickins Question: any opinion on where we’re headed with OpenID? Rick Levine is now channeling the one Cluetrain author that couldn’t make it (David Weinberger)… he says anonymity still has its place on the web, for those who are afraid they will be attacked if they speak out, and JP cites those in the third world who also may need anonymity. Doc: “I don’t want more identity on the web. I want less.” He thinks it will be a long time before OpenID really catches on.
  • 7:57 PM: GraemeThickins JP says Cluetrain was about human beings. Eric Norlin: “Isn’t it crazy that the US government is talking about regulating the ‘Net?” All agree. Now Eric’s telling the story of how Chris Locke called him in 1999 out of the blue and said he’d found something that was gonna change the world: Blogger. Eric says that was literally when Ev Williams had the server in his bedroom.
  • 8:01 PM: GraemeThickins Chris Locke misses the days when bloggers were really a tight knit group, “discovering all this new stuff.” He says kids today didn’t get to experience that – “I hope that spirit can live on.”
  • 8:03 PM: GraemeThickins Defrag ’09 is a wrap! Thanks Eric and team – it was awesome…

An iPhone Fanboy Reviews the Droid

November 2, 2009 / / 6 Comments

Or should I say "tears it apart"?  No, seriously, my objective is to be fair here.  As an independent blogger, I take the opportunity from time to time to do a review. And I was offered a Droid loaner a few days ago by my PR buddy Al Maruggi, while we were at our Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast meeting.  I told him, sure, I'd take a look at the new phone from Motorola and Verizon he handed me in the box, then return it to him today. Droid_VS_iPhoneNote to the FTC: I'm not keeping it, dudes — it's a loaner!  Of course, I don't need it, anyway, since I'm now into my third year of unmitigated iPhone bliss, having upgraded to a new 3GS a couple months ago. Well, I should say bliss with Apple, not necessarily with AT&T.  The latter is, of course, the only carrier choice in the U.S. for the iPhone — unless you want to jail-break your phone and void the warranty.  People tell me they do that on T-Mobile and the phone works fine.  But for those locked into a Verizon contract, or those convinced they can't live without the better 3G network that Verizon claims it has (you know, the superior coverage they keep beating us over the head with in their ads?), then the Droid would seem to be the closest you're going to get to the iPhone experience on Verizon. 

The Experience

So, okay, let's start with that — at least the initial experience. (And no company, hands down, does that better than Apple.)  Which of the above phones would you rather have?  It all starts with the home screen, I guess. Now, granted — on the Droid, if you touch the arrow on the tab at the bottom and slide up, you get a much better looking screen on with all your little app icons — and without the mottled gray background (what's with that?) — but, overall, I have to say that the visual experience with the Droid doesn't compare well with the iPhone.  And I say that even knowing that the screen is supposed to be higher resolution than the iPhone (personally, I didn't notice that much).  I guess it's really the "brand experience" I'm talking about here.  And that applies to the box, the packaging, too.  Motorola (or is it Verizon?) tried to come up with something here as good as the iPhone, but to me they missed the mark. Something about the darkness of the whole thing — the black, the gray, and then that goofy little glowing red ball on the screen (on both the package and all over Verizon's promotional materials). Inside the package, though, the little "Getting Started" booklet is very nicely done — love the fanfold, and it tells you everything you need to know, quickly.

(NOTE: See the "Update" added at the bottom of this post.)

The Feel

The Droid feels good in my hand — solid, a little heavier than the iPhone. But that seems to be because it has more metal. And, heck, it does have a slide-open keyboard, so it should be heavier.  But that slight additional weight didn't bother me.  It's also a little thicker than the iPhone, as you would expect — but that's hardly even noticeable.  It's a teeny bit narrower as well.  To be quite honest with you, though, that actually feels a little more natural in my hand than the iPhone does.

A Look at How the Droid Is Billed

So, here's how Verizon presents the new Droid phone on its web site — including a big fat poke at the iPhone in a commercial they run at the front of this web page (hit "Skip Intro" if you've seen it). Funny how every new smart phone out there has to go after the leader. And Motorola, the manufacturer of the Droid with whom Verizon partnered, describes the phone thusly on its media center page for media and bloggers:

Introducing DROID by Motorola, a Smartphone powered by
Android 2.0 developed in partnership with Google and Verizon Wireless,
the nation’s largest 3G network. DROID delivers high-speed Web,
voice-activated search, a super large touch screen and thousands of
customizable apps and widgets from Android Market™. With the
thinnest full QWERTY slider available on the market, it’s a
no-compromise supergenius in your pocket, multitasking at break-neck
pace to get things done.

High-Speed Mobile Browsing

• See the Web at break-neck speed on the largest high-resolution display with a Flash 10 ready HTML browser.

• Look up favorite sites, video and music fast with a high-speed, cortex A8 processor and lightning-fast connection.

•View it all on the 3.7” display with more than 400,000 total pixels, which is twice that of the leading competitor.

• Work faster on the Web with double tap to zoom in and out.

Google Searches Beyond the Web

• Type your search to deliver results such as contacts and music offering a complete search experience on a mobile device. 

• Use voice-activated search to serve up both your contacts and Google search results, based on your location. 

• Find your way with free spoken turn-by-turn directions with Google MapsTM Navigation (Beta), with Street View and LatitudeTM. View geographic information, such as My Maps, Wikipedia entries and transit lines, right on the map.

How It Worked for Me

I must say the Droid itself, and Verizon's service, worked pretty darn well, in the few hours I spent playing with the phone. The hardware is solid, and the service is fast — whether accessing the web, the "Android Market" to download apps, sending emails and texts… it all was quite speedy. I downloaded about four apps, one at a time, and they were all on my home screen fast. I've never used the Android Market before to get apps (this is the first time I've ever even used an Android phone), and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it worked. (I hear about 10,000 apps are available there now, versus 85,000 for the iPhone on the App Store.) I downloaded a few apps from Minneapolis-based DoApp Inc. (which already has 75 in the Android Market) — I grabbed "MyLite," our local "WCCO-TV Mobile Local News," and a similar one for San Diego called "SD 6 News."  I also searched the Android Market for the app I use most — "Tweetie" — but no dice.  Also couldn't find "Twitterific," another one I've used.  But there were tons of Twitter apps in the Market, most of which I'd never heard of, or they were specialized apps for certain kinds of tweet content. The one general Twitter app that looked to be the most highly rated, in the five-star icons that appear with each app, was "Twidroid" — but I didn't take the time to try it (I know how Twitter apps work).

I also tried the camera yesterday, and found it works okay, though it took me a while to figure out how to best use the skinny little camera button on the side. And I really didn't notice the camera's auto-focus function. I did email photos successfully.  They must be big files, because it's a 5-megapixel camera.

Built-in apps like YouTube worked great. Again, quick access — and I searched on my name, and up came all my videos very quickly, in a nice interface, and even some I had favorited (all mixed together with my vids). The Maps app was awesome. Very impressive, and the GPS function was pretty darn accurate in instantly finding my location. There's a new "Layers" aspect to the Maps that I didn't really understand, but I clicked on "Traffic" and got a different view. Then I drilled in via the "Satellite" menu option and got a scary-good overhead view of my neighborhood — up close and personal.  Maybe that higher-res screen is what made the Maps look so darn good on the Droid.

The slide-open keyboard worked okay for me, but my fingers (which really aren't very big) were fat-fingering that thing bigtime. I honestly would have no idea how anyone could double-thumb that keyboard — except maybe someone with thumbs the size of a three-year old. I much preferred using the "virtual keyboard," which comes up automatically when doing searches, emailing, etc.  But the keys are much smaller for that in portrait mode than the iPhone's virtual keyboard — making it horribly hard to use!  So, flip it to landscape mode, and you get much bigger keys. That option worked way better for me.

So, What's My Net-Net?

Okay, those are some of good things. I try hard to be a positive guy!  But now how do I really feel?  🙂 Let me try to give my overall, bottom-line assessment…

Some things that really bugged me were the lack of the nice big, round home switch which I'm so used to at the bottom front of the iPhone. Man, I really missed that on the Droid!  Having to go to the top of the phone, and find that little tiny switch at the upper right was a real pain. I swear it takes two hands, or a real contortion of one hand, to press that damn thing!  That is a major user-experience mistake in my book.  I also found a lot of other things that just weren't intuitive about the phone's operation, or the navigation within apps, including email and texting. For example, I could not figure out how a text became a Draft when I was trying to send it, nor could I figure out how to retrieve that Draft so I could send it. Couldn't figure out how to delete some private messages I'd sent, either, before I turn in the phone. And, right now, I can't even get back to the home screen, no matter how many times I press the little home icon on the front of the phone.  Another weirdity: I have yet to see where I go for "Settings" — there's no icon I can see for that, as there is on my iPhone.  So I could not, for example, shut off the damn machine-language guy saying "Dro-o-o-id" in a low, bass drone every time an email came in. Puh-lease. Also, it just never really seemed natural to use this phone — which way to hold it… up or sideways, or slide it open… or what. And that home button way up top, then the camera button way down low. 

So, okay, my net-net … you knew this was coming: it ain't no iPhone.  Now, if you really can't leave Verizon, and you really want to pay the same price as an iPhone ($199 with a two-year contract), just to stay with Verizon — then, yes, it's a close experience.  But close is what you get, not the cigar.

Then again, if you really like Verizon all that much, why not just wait?  All us fanboys in the know predict Apple is sure to add Verizon as a carrier for the iPhone here in the U.S., just as soon as the AT&T exclusive expires. 

What do you think?  Lock yourself in for two more years with Verizon now, or wait for the iPhone?  What would you do?

UPDATE 11/6/09:
Wanted to cite an earlier, very comprehensive Droid review by Engadget, which appeared prior to mine.  (Amazing how being a paid blogger let’s you go to the lengths this guy did.)  Also wanted to give this local shout-out: Garrick Van Buren’s Droid review.  Finally, I point you to what I think is the best review of all — by the master himself, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, on November 3rd: Motorola’s Droid Is Smart Success for Verizon Users. In addition, here are some more local tie-ins: a growing, grass-roots local organization called Mobile Twin Cities, and their Google Group.  They’re focused on all things mobile, including marketing, and all mobile OSes, including both Android and iPhone, of course.  And, on top of that, we even have a burgeoning Minnesota Android Developers Google Group as well.

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Check Out “The New Me” on the Web

October 28, 2009 / / 2 Comments

So, what do you think of my new online business card?  Here's a JPEG of it:

GT-buscard2

To see the real thing, go here: http://graemethickins.businesscard2.com.  When you click through to that link, mouse over the card and check out all the features!  Do you have one of these yet? 
You should!  It's free, and so easy to set up.  Just go here to get your own: www.businesscard2.com. (Or there's a link in the footer of every card.)  Business Card2 is a powerful new
tool that lets you easily manage and promote your online identity. BC2-logo

I'm happy to report that Minneapolis-based Workface LLC, the
developer of BusinessCard2, is my newest client. Very cool stuff!  Please check out their web site. And stay tuned… because the story is just beginning.

So, I Went to the MIMA Summit… Maybe You Heard About It?

October 8, 2009 / / 0 Comments

It was October 5th at the Minneapolis Hilton. And if you didn’t hear about it, where were you?  Well, at least if you’re from these parts. Because, when marketers gather for an annual confab, they know how to hype it — especially our local marketing community.  MIMA-logo I said the same thing in my coverage of last year’s event.  Except, this year, the local crowd brought new meaning to the word noise, owing to the fact that — unlike last year — they now seem to have fully embraced social media.  Yessirree, can you say… Twitter, Twitter, Twitter?!  Matt Wilson, current/outgoing president of MIMA, said from stage soon after the event was underway, “You know we’ve made it when our Twitter hashtag has already been flagged as spam.” MIMAsummit09-logoAnd that wasn’t even the only hashtag — there were other variations being used, too, by what had to be a large majority of attendees pecking away on Twitter apps all day long, most from their mobile devices. (You could spit from any spot in the Hilton and hit an iPhone.)MIMAsummit09-ballroom

But myself and my colleagues from Minnov8 decided, as we have for other recent conferences we’ve covered, to skip trying to live-Twitter the whole thing — so limited by 140 characters and all — and live-blog it instead using a tool called ScribbleLive.  And, when we wanted to tweet — or when we needed to, when the wi-fi was challenged (which it was a lot) — we had it set up with our Twitter streams feeding into that live-blog window, too.  So, all four of us had our mobile phones at the ready to tweet, as well as our laptops open to live blog.  We were jumping back and forth between the two, but it worked pretty well.

So, here’s the result of that live-blogging/Twitter-feed combo: it’s now archived here at Minnov8.com. And there’s other Minnov8 coverage of the event as well from my colleagues: Steve Borsch did a great recap post, and Phil Wilson shot and edited a nice FlipHD video, interviewing attendees at the closing reception to get their takeaways.

I did some audio interviews, which you can listen to or download here:

• Graeme interviewing Rohn Jay Miller of interactive agency IconNicholson

• Graeme interviewing Mark Kurtz, VP New Media at Gage Marketing, a sponsor of the event

• Graeme interviewing Scott Severson, CEO of AdFusion

• Graeme interviewing Lee Odden, SEO guru and head of TopRank Online Marketing

Here’s my Flickr set of photos from MIMA ’09, such as they are (can you say grab shots?):

And, just for fun, here’s a quick Animoto video I made for free using that photo set:

Finally, here’s a video I shot with my new iPhone 3GS before the morning sessions got going:

My Live Blogging of DEMOfall 2009

September 17, 2009 / / 5 Comments

My twice-yearly coverage of the DEMO conference — this one, the DEMOfall edition, where some 70 new ventures will be launching — will appear here. It's a special event because it will be executive director Chris Shipley's final DEMO, after 13 great years. She's co-producing this one with Matt Marshall of VentureBeat, who takes the sole producer role as of DEMO 2010. 

DEMOfall09-ScribbleLive

Here's the page where my live blogging posts will appear, in real time as they are published: bit.ly/TWU3L.  (I'll be leaving this post here at the top of my blog as a "sticky post" for a few weeks.) To do this live blogging, I'm using a great tool designed just for this purpose called "ScribbleLive."  My coverage begins either Monday evening 9/21 (after the reception), or Tuesday morning 9/22 when the opening session kicks off, and goes through early afternoon Wednesday 9/23, when I must bolt for the airport. 

At the last three DEMO events I've attended, I have live-tweeted them rather than live blog — and that works okay.  But this approach is better, for a number of reasons: (1) I'm not limited to 140 characters per post… (2) I find it a nice middle ground between doing short, often hard-to-write (and understand!) tweets and the more rambling long-form blogging… (3) it's as fast or faster than tweeting… (4) it's way faster than me trying to post quickly on my own Typepad blog here… and (5) it prevents many of my Twitter followers from getting mad and unfollowing me when I'm doing so many rapid-fire tweets at events, which for a DEMO can be upwards of a couple hundred! Another cool thing is that I can attach a photo to any of my live-blog posts as well. (Though I will also upload all my pix to a Flickr set during and right after the event.)  The tool also allows me to attach an audio or video file, if I wish, but I don't expect to do that.

For me, as a longtime event reporter, this ScribbleLive tool is really an ideal solution. Thanks to my colleague on Minnov8.com, Steve Borsch, who set up this tool for some of the other events we cover, and helped me with this one.  Here's an example of how our team of four Minnov8 bloggers used the tool simultaneously for the first time: it was at the recent Blogwell event at General Mills in Minneapolis.

I look forward to DEMOfall and hope I hear from you — whether during the event, before, or after. I will likely be publishing some other, stand-alone posts here on this blog while at DEMOfall — namely, audio interviews, as I did for DEMO '09 back in March. To communicate with me, you can always post comments here at my blog.  Or, talk to me via Twitter by putting @GraemeThickins at the beginning of your tweets — since I will be monitoring Twitter search closely as I live-blog the event.  I'll be in my usual spot in row three of the press section, right down in front.

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