buzznovation

AlwaysOn 2006 Steve Woziak

Woz…how do you make a computer…so helpful to a human. Needed an affordable machine. Sit down, turn it on, and type in a computer language. Buy and use it like a typewriter. Miracle really happened. Press got on to it. Couldn’t buy that kind of advertising. How do you make it simple. Made it open, easy to tinker with.

“Every day is a special day”…how many things last 30 years…

Started first dial-a-joke! Computers were intimidating…How do you make it so simple that an ordinary person would know what to do. Mike Markula the key guy who put up $250k.

After something like Apple, how do you do something else? Hadn’t started Apple to make money. Judges high school robotics. You want to solve a puzzle. Getting better and better at it. Coming up with all these little tricks. Needed 4k of memory to run Fortran. Best thing, I had very limited resources. Had to find the best way in the world. Had all the little elements.

Apple is a monopoly to people who are going to buy a Mac!

Remarkable conversation..hand wrote the OS, couldn’t afford the assembler language terminal.

 

AllwaysOn 2006 Final Panel...The Long Bet...

Off the chart panel…

Paul Saffo…who is good at making long bets..

Stewart Brand, co-founder, the Long Now Foundation

Kevin Kelly, author and editor-at-large, Wired

Nathan Myhrvold, CEO and Co-Founder, Intellectual Ventures

Stewart: Where does the long bet fit. Response to Moore’s law. You want a civilization that is capable of thinking out a long way.

Kevin: Bets becoming more common in science. Trying to steer research. Most interested in the reasoning behind the logic.

If we can create a culture of thinking about the long term conversation.

Saffo…coolest bets are the ones that get the greatest conversation going.

 

AlwaysOn 2006

What is the data telling us?

Usama Fayyad…data behind portal is still extremely relevant, and includes very surprising ways to improve products. Search not enough!

Michael Yavonditte…relevancy the best approach in serving up an ad. More engaging you make an ad, more the apt they are click on an ad. Esthetics matter.

Usama…lot more that can be offered today, not about speech.

Excellent panel, lots of content, just sitting back and watching. The stream is here…

AllwaysOn 2006 Sliding into home plate..

It’s Thursday afternoon, another sun drenched beautiful day in Silicon Valley. Great lunch with smart people, talking about fun stuff.

First panel up is about ubiquitous computing…

Frederick Kitson…Motorola. fourth wave, i.e. Wireless/Mobility. Convergence of Internet and mobility. 45% of the market is mobile phone. 2007 will the market will be for 1 B. new cell phones. Great slides. Motorola going for Linus based solution. Mobility has gone from toy to tool. It is always interesting to see what dynamite slides a very big company can put out when they have lots of time and money to put them together.

Stuart Butterfield of Flickr. Talking about convergence. “Convergence that this involving in a way that it is interesting”.

Scott ___________ prof at Stanford…

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear…” Mark Weisser.

Talking about prototyping. Tools that enable us to build stuff. “What are we getting out of this?” Build a prototype, get some feedback, and then build a better product.

Terry Winegard…full prof at Stanford.

How do you take the best of what people do? Design thinking coupled with analytical thinking. Really learn by doing..What program is looking at are human values, not just tools.

Scott…how should orgs move toward U..computing. (U=ubiquitous)

Kitson…test is what would the user want out of the device.

Stuart…far end of the spectrum. So many constraints in building physical product, as compared to software. Have to have the same kind of willingness to fail.

Frederick…Average college graduate 5,000 hours of reading, 10,000 hours of playing games, and 20,000 hours of watching TV.

Frederick…Thin was king, something you couldn’t leave at home. Hard to put a value on the iconic factor. Much bigger surprise. Metal product with an antenna inside, had to believe that there was a value there. Getting it right as important as signal/noise relationship.

Terry…Flickr, consumers are the ultimate producer? Will Flickr…deliver content. Sharing of your life is the high value proposition.

Stuart…YouTube is user curated stuff, content is funny, having the expertise of people making videos.

Frederick..Voice is still the most important piece. In terms of actual capabilities, next year you will see phones that will work around the globe. 80% of the world have cell phone coverage, but 30% have actual services. Connectivity part, just about solved. The experience part is the hard part.

Stuart…SMS…to Yahoo for info.

Frederick…SMS..to go-go devices.

Stuart..four way rocker is becoming ubiquitous.

Question… Will WiMax take off? What kind of services will we see?

Frederick…Devices do exist that will work with WiMax.

AlwaysOn 2006 Thursday mornng...

Traffic on 101 came to a serious halt this morning, so I was a few minutes late, and took advantage of a hot cup of coffee, and a flat panel TV to watch an excellent presentation by Vinod Khosla on ethanol and then a panel on “home runs in the VC business.” Sometimes the content at events like this is so excellent, that I have to sit back, watch, and just enjoy the richness of the thinking. I haven’t paid much attention to the CEO Showcase, but decided that the panels this morning, were things that I could watch later, and decided to ease on down to the room where the pitches are going on.

To set the stage, I am sitting in a room with about 120 sits, about 75% filled. So far the two pitches that I have seen are about technologies underpinning ad revenue on TV, and enhancing the multimedia experience over the net. Next up is Palamida, an idea behind the software supply chain. Selling a new class of tool.

Next up BitPass…a platform that enables digital content to be monetized.

Out to hall, and back for Scoble moderated pitches on consumer software.

Scrapblog…on line scrapbooks. What will be the evolution of photosharing. First site that combines photosharing and blogging. Wouldn’t be a scrapbook if you couldn’t add the balloons. Kind of like a rich media blog.

Streamload ….very nice online backup service. I had been looking at another service that charges say $5 a month. But I worry as to what happens if these companies go away and you have 20 gigs of data stored on line.

Click.TV Metadata with TV.

ThisNext….Individual points of view being aggregated. Trusted experts in the network.

ARNetWorks.. pitched to Latin users…

And the winner is…(you will hear later today….)

AllwaysOn 2006 George Gilder...Life after Telephony...

Off and on I have been a fan of Gilder and his writings. When the bubble burst, his reputation for being a seer crashed as I recall.

Cyriac Roeding, Vice President, Wireless, CBS Digital Media…Moving more and more into cross platform distribution of content, bringing it to the wireless, looking to integrate in audience into the technology. What comes after telephony comes personalized mobile media.

Dragan Boscovic, Director, Wireless Systems and Networks, Motorola…What is life after telephony, (showing a phone) this device is dead as a pure phone? Voice is something that we use for both social and business networking. Voice won’t disappear. Media will supplement what we are talking about!

Charlie Paglia..VoIP company, sees two trends. One being wireless handset, the other being talking through your computer. Trend will be either using mobile phone or your computer, but not land line with handset.

Mark Plakias, VP, Strategy, FTGroup-Orange…Go into an Orange store, and you can get digital TV over your copper wire, etc. $40 a month for 18 megabits. HD over copper. You need fiber at the access level. Doing fiber to the curb. #1 DSL provider, 8 million customers.

Gilder…All financed through click through?

Jack Waters, EVP and CTO, Level 3 Communications…invested 10 Billion since starting. Sees the world as all optical. Now sees the market as being more rational.

Gilder for Mark… How do you see Symbian as being a factor….Orange is about using all platforms..

Mark….WiMax threat to 3G.

Gilder…Will the government prop up legacy business models.

Gilder…Now we are on to Metaverses…Neil Stephenson ….

Enough for today…signing off…and headed for the adult beverages…

AlwaysOn 2006 Peter Hirshberg of Technorati...

The intelligence is us…The giant brain is us…blogosphere doubling about every every 5 months. Major news events cause the blogosphere to surge! Peter’s a piece of work. Huge energy, lots of fun, lots of ideas. Watch him on the webcast. Well worth the time.

Wow…what a Mashup…Gloria Gainer and Jesus Christ!

Panel…

Charlene Li / Forrester…does a lot of research in the social network space.

Jeff Nolan…SAP…Trying to get people to stop referring to the big German software company.

Steve Rubel…Edelman…MeToo revolution group, try to bring big brands into the conversation.

Bradley Silver…How’s the PR machine working, how are you customer being affected?

Jay Stockwell..Intelliseek, Nielsen Buzz-Metrics…function to monitor what’s going on

Q: Are brands embracing because of fashion or ROI?

Jay…any company can participate, if they have a loyal fan base. HIM has 443,00 friends on MySpace! Toyota announced a recall on a forum!

Q: Aren’t brands still scared to death!

Steve: Control is the linqua franca of brands. Continuum between control and transparency. Can’t reside in the same box. Control issue by far is what counts. Regulated industries are really in trouble.

Jeff: Being driven from the bottom up, i.e. blogging. CMO..”How do we know that blogging is driving decisions”….

Charlene: What is the relationship you want to drive and then what tool do you want to use.

Bradley: Test is where the org. is in their sense of adopting the opportunity. Customer owns the conversation, driving research and product performance.

Jeff: Apple has gone so far as to sue bloggers.

Steve: Apple stores, blog and podcast!

Bradley…some interesting examples..finding audience and driving audience into the movie.

Q: What’s the line between finding and spamming?

Steve: Gets more pitches that are crappy….what are the motivations of the person who publishes the blog. Compare that with what the company is trying to do!

Charlene: What does my audience really want to hear about? Generosity of spirit is important to the the community.

Bradley: Participate in conversation, and recognize they are speaking to you.

Steve: Fortune 500 companies don’t go where the bloggers are!

Jeff: Brought 11 bloggers to Orlando. Didn’t limit them in any way. Let them go wild. Amazing result, the 11 bloggers stayed together! Didn’t go to bloggers, but brought them to us.

Q: Brands are beginning to create their own networks!

Charlene: Schwab brought together 400 of their top traders. Outsourced the community building idea. Blogs are a megaphone experience. 50–70% participate every week!

Steve: What Brands need to do, is connect to the other places where people are hanging out.

Charlene: Looking for people who share her experience.

Jeff: Who is blogging, what are they saying, do they have any authority, how can I communicate with them.

Steve: Money is not going to the small bloggers.

Charlene: Looking at user generated media. Dell 80% of the comments were comments on the blog, but 20% were customer service issues.

Peter: The word consumer is becoming an oxymoron.

Charlene: People don’t trust bloggers because they haven’t achieved a reputation.

Steve: Three underlying technologies, RSS, Tags and Mobile!

Jay: Mobile is going to be huge!

Charlene: Branding is going to be very different. Branding is about engaging people.

 

AlwaysOn 2006 .... The Code Ahead.

Great lunch, great conversation…next up Mark Bennioff of Salesforce.com. I just walked by Mark, and didn’t recall who he was, but was amused to note that he’s probably the only guy in the room with a pin-striped suit on.

So far his talk is about E-Mail and hosted E-Mail via Gmail and Yahoo mail. Funny, Mark is giving a variation of the talk I have been giving, having now talked about the Google Spread Sheet product. It would be nice to see if he would post his slides.

Ten things about the future of software:

Multi-Tenant Imperative (shared!)

Greater Vendor Innovation

High Performance Infrastructure for Every Customer

High levels of reliability

Transparency …at the heart of the software service economy

Scalability, 1–10k users, on the same instance.

East Meta-Customization Transcends Versions

Standard Web services APIs deliver easy integration

Mash-Ups: Composite Web Services Apps.

www.bikramfinder.com

Replicated Development Environment as a Service

Fully automated replication & change management.

Multi-app delivery

Write once, run anywhere….sounds a lot like ActiveWords vision,

On Demand is the Future of Software

Ray Lane..

Only two things count, innovation and scale. Lane has a great chart on a white board. “Innovate or Dominate” 70% of the software business is in “no man’s land” Business model change is the key to escaping no man’s land.

Panel…

Mark Bennioff

Bret Caine

George Condifa

How do you respond to software as a service model?

Mark: Gets down to customer success. Key per Benioff. Our technology made our customers more successful At Oracle there was no trust page, rather a FU..page. On Demand versus Software as a service.

The back channel is wild. Lots of sarcastic comments.

Zack…Microsoft has a version…

Mark…it becomes shades of gray until it really works for the customer. Nothing to do with hardware/software.

George..Not just a software layer. People want to buy as little as possible. Paychecks. Do basic payroll in an on-demand fashion. Very strategic shift. Rather 95% of companies have classic software model.

Simpler is better solution….better model. Need something that solves a particular problem.

Lane…some of the challenges

Hy-brid..hosted and on premises. More than half…with large enterprises. Compliance with SOX. Large corps, can’t give a 3rd party the ability to control the product. Giving the customer the ability to control.

Benioff..

Gave out page with ten names of financial services model that are using Salesforce.

Lane…Banks as big consumers of software as a service? Early adopters? I think he is saying, it ain't going to happen.

Brett Caine…head of CITRIX Online. talking about using his product in a corporate security model.

Benioff…Mash-Ups are the future? 200 ISV have already done fully integrated applications. That is the proof point.

Lane…Agrees with Mark. Enterprise will mirror the the consumer market.

Bennioff…All about customer success.

Bach…Someone has to write the application,…one problem it doesn’t solve is the cost of integration. Transactional system will not be fragmented.

This panel all presupposes that their various products work as advertised, that there is unlimited bandwidth, and the optimal results occur. I just don’t buy it!

Zach…will it be a suite of applications? or SaaS.

 

AlwaysOn 2006

The next panel is all about open source…Everyone on the panel seems to be making money through services, albeit with some coding. Regrettably given the fact that we are trying to sell software, this is a subject that I have little interest in.

Nice quote…”Intellectual Ventures looks like they are going to be in the shakedown business!” 

Next piece an hour long commercial for the “D” school here at Stanford. Nice woman, interesting exercise…but time for lunch.

AlwaysOn 2006...Wednesday morning..

A little late this morning, both working out, and talking with nice and smart people over breakfast.

First panel is “What is the secret behind creating contagious behavior…?

Thoughts… creativity is messy…

With teams…relationships get strained. Mess is emotional as well on the teams. Test is not whether they will fight, but teaching them how to fight.

You have got to embrace the mess.

Mitchell Baker..”People are not comfortable with ambiguity”

Google…”Company that is messy and who release products often well before they are ready.”

BMW…”Company made up of builders and who are not afraid of ambiguity”…

Second Panel: “How far will consumer generated media go?”

Kara Swisher…moderator…

Panel includes:

Michael Arrieta..Sony

David Goldberg…Yahoo

Chad Hurley..YouTube

Michael Robertson..MP3.com

Chad..launched YouTube in late 2005. Solving a problem in a very simple way. Saw opportunity in video space. more people with tools, remove barriers, completely web based. Microsoft is trying to build a clone of our service. Platform to distribute media, just a different way. Creating a stage where everyone can decide what they enjoy watching.

Michael: Always looking for ways to distribute content in new ways. Involved in IFilm…use social networks for marketing purposes. Consumers are going to get media, and will do so in new ways. Want to generate more awareness, and hope to yield more revenue. As a content creator, I need to find a way to participate.

David…Really good mix between user and professionally generated content. When professional content creators allow people to do something with their stuff, the results are very interesting.

Michael R…Consumers are saying if you won’t get it for me, I will either create or get it somewhere.

Michael A.  Consumers are telling us as to how they want to be involved.

Chad… Now networks and labels are working working with YouTube.

David: Hope to get all the labels involved in getting rid of DRM.

Michael R. Power of YouTube, platform that anyone can dump their stuff on.

Chad….YouTube is not profitable. Get profitable via advertising. Users on site don’t want to watch anything over 2.5 minutes long. Right now just banners. Test is how to benefit the user experience.

David:  Access to content, comes about because someone has to pay somebody for it….Consumers understand.

Michael A… How do you bring in a monetization scheme that works? Looking at all kinds of schemes. Video header adds are tough. Test is to see how the monetization happens. More delicate dance…

Chad..Dealing with clips, much different experience. 100 million videos on a daily basis. Has architecture that will scale.

David…if you give the consumer an add that is interesting, people are actually quite happy. Key is targeted adds.

Michael R. Life is a bell curve, some adds will get better.

Kara…Let’s talk about what comes next… 

Chad…YouTube has become the destination for uploading videos. Opportunities for helping people creating better content. Consider ourselves as being powered by the users.

David: Try to help people through people editorially.

Michael R…Foresees YouTube creating channels with users input to feed them.

Kara…Users are always smarter than the people writing down to them.

Kara…”What’s most important thing you seen?”

Michael R. Aya-spot…video editing.

Chad…Goal is to get in front of the most consumers.

Michael R. YouTube is going to bury all the other guys as long as their servers stay up.

Chad. We want to stay independent.