Archive by Author - Tom Foremski

UK Diary: Tuesday – Back To Soho and Dinner With Agency.com

by on July 14, 2009 at 4:57 pm

[Being a Traveling Geek takes stamina. I challenge any traditional journalist to keep up with our daily agendas. Not only are we interviewing people and staying up late writing, editing video and posting but we are also being interviewed by others, taking part on panels, and reporting on the same panels, and taking part in lots of other inside-out media activities.]

Our fourth event for Tuesday was dinner with Agency.com and assorted clients and friends — in Soho at Soho House. It was great to be back in this vibrant part of London because this is where I got my start in journalism in 1982.

It was a great place to work and a great time to be a young man around town, with plenty of small bars, restaurants, cafes, and after-hours clubs.

We sat at a very long table and we introduced ourselves and spoke briefly about what it was that attracted us to social/new media. I managed to get video of most of the replies, my apologies because I missed a couple of people.

http://www.blip.tv/file/2353961

Please also see Susan Bratton: DishyMix: Susan Bratton Podcasts & Blogs Executives

UK Diary: Tuesday – Guardian Newspaper Media Panel . . .

by on July 14, 2009 at 4:29 pm

TravelingGeeketes.jpg

We left BT and managed to hail a few black cabs amid the rain and made our way over to the Guardian newspaper for a panel on the future of media.

I was thinking that maybe the death of newspapers is just nature’s way of helping us all to reduce our carbon footprint.

Some of our fellow Traveling Geeks were on the panel, our Geeketes were at the front of the room, which must have had a distracting effect (see photo – by JD Lasica) while the rest of us were mostly at the back Twittering onto a big screen at the front of the room.

Here was my take on it, an extract from: A Guardian Newspaper Media Panel, Twitter, From Back to Front And Beyond…

The Butcher of Fleet Street

I was sitting at the back of the room next to fellow TGer Craig Newmark of Craigslist. And inevitably, the panel’s moderator couldn’t resist asking him to stand up and explain himself for killing the newspaper industry.

Craig is mightily fed up with this question. And I agree. It is not his fault that the newspaper industry is in trouble. But Craig handled it all very well, throwing in a line “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” which drew laughs and distracted the panel from further pursuit of a tired line of questioning and drew the discussion back to the favorite subject of the day: Twitter.

Ayelet Noff posted a video of the event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FUs9acyk4o&feature=player_embedded

Here is JD Lasica:

The podcast just went live. Stream or download (Time 51:13):

(You can also listen to it, naturally, on the Guardian site.)

A few highlights

The entire 51 minutes is well worth a listen — I think it’s one of the smartest podcasts I’ve been a part of. A few snippets:

• I returned to the problem of newspaper culture that punishes, rather than rewards, experimentation, innovation and failure (without which innocation is impossible). But harping on newspapers’ failures is like shooting dinosaurs in a barrel.

• Sarah Lacy suggested that we may see 10 metropolitan cities without a daily newspaper by the end of the year. (I think the time frame is more likely on the order of two to three years.)


Time for innovative news models

Here is Jeff Saperstein:

…The Barbarians are at the Gates in every sector of the communications industry. Advertising agencies are being decimated by the Google model, Encyclopedias and paid resource media have been annihilated by Wikipedia, Network television conglomerates have been supplanted by Cable subscription channels and digital narrowcasting, and the movie studios are enraged by You Tube and other web sources to download feature films outside the movie theatres, on and on with the music industry and I-Tunes , etc.

In other words, the journalism industry is not unique in its economic viability being challenged. The Internet/digital media content delivery model is not just a hiccup, but a tectonic shift. Our Traveling Geeks are players and informed commentators in that shift.

The Guardian Dialogues « Traveling Geeks in London

Here are some of my Tweets during the event:

– Blogging and traditional media have a lot in common – lack of a viable business model 🙂

– Paper or electron is shouldn’t matter. Newspapers need to transition into news services imho…

– The media is dead long live the media! We have more media in more forms today than at anytime in history!

– Newspapers have been communicating in 140 characters or less for hundreds of years: In news headlines!

– The panel has seems to have an “us verus them” attitude. Surely media today is about “us and them” which is a good thing

– If a blogger blogs in the blogosphere does anybody blog it? Takes time to build an audience

– Blogs build credibility over time, they don’t get it just by being. It takes time to build a media brand

– Bloggers aren’t all very free wheeling, they have reputations to defend just the same as regular media

– News has always been a collaborative venture, taking the story further. Why should it be a problem today?

– Why is there a distinction being made between blogger media and newspaper media? It’s all media.

Next stop on this rainy Tuesday: Soho and Agency.com dinner

UK Diary: Tuesday – It Never Rains But It Pours . . . More BT Innovation

by on July 14, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Tuesday afternoon with the Traveling Geeks and we are over at BT HQ seeing half-a-dozen presentations from its business units.

We were a little wet from dodging torrential rain bursts. But the afternoon sessions are interesting.

Meghan Asha was impressed by BT’s programmable broadband service:

BT’s Open Broadband is a BRILLANT solution to broadband issues for businesses. What is it exactly? As far as I can understand, it allows companies to easily program broadband strength with a couple paragraphs of XML for specific websites. This is fantastic for stream gaming where you’re gaming via the cloud. In short, this is perfect for any application that needs guaranteed bandwidth. I love this idea, if only someone would implement it in the US. My first site request would be YouTube (bah!).

Click here for more info on the development of Open Broadband.

BT’s Programmable Broadband!

Innovation apprentice

We also heard about BT’s apprentice program, which involves several hundred high school students every year. BT sets up day camps where young people brainstorm new ideas. Then it offers to show them how ideas are developed into commercial products. It’s an excellent program. Interestingly, school drop outs are encouraged to attend — it’s more about ideas and passion than it is about how well someone did at school.

A level playing field

BT is tightly regulated and it must provide equal access to its telecom infrastructure to any company. This is fine for BT because it is keen to have many companies create innovative applications on top of this platform, in addition to the new services it is rolling out itself.

I asked JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Innovation and strategy at BT, how does BT avoid the impression that it could become a competitor to the companies it is hoping will use its advanced communications platform.

“We make sure that we only innovate around platform services and leave the applications alone,” he said. “We want to avoid the criticism that others such as Microsoft have had about this issue.”

I mentioned that four years ago I was at an event where Rob Hull, a business development manager at BT Group was talking with local entrepreneurs and hoping to lure them to the UK and have them use BT’s telecom platform. Mr Hull said that BT would split the revenues with the startups 80 percent, with 20 percent for BT.

However, should their service become hugely popular, BT reserved the right to port the application to its machines and reverse a 20 percent / 80 percent revenue split in its favor! I was shocked.

(Silicon Valley startups told: Come to London … BT wants your business! – SiliconValleyWatcher)

Mr Rangaswami said that this provision no longer exists. Since he joined BT in 2006, he’s made sure to ensure there is very competitive platform for developers without fear of BT coming in and scooping up the rewards from popular services.

Next: We’re back into the rain and off to the Guardian newspaper…

UK Diary: Tuesday – Seed Camp’s Highflyers

by on July 14, 2009 at 1:03 pm

Seedcamp.jpg

(Photo Susan Bratton.) Tuesday morning the Traveling Geeks were at Seed Camp. I couldn’t make it but here are some of our reports:

Susan Bratton: My Impression of UK and Euro Entrepreneurs from Today’s Seedcamp NESTA “Speed Dating” Adventure

We started off the day today with a fun event created by Reshma Sohoni and Alasdair Ball ofSeedCamp. SeedCamp is an early stage fund that also provides exacting business support and grooming for UK and European start ups who are socially-oriented. Typical investments are up to 50 thousand Euros for about 10% of the business.

By the caliber of the entrepreneurs and the quality of the business ideas I witnessed today, Reshma and her team are making smart investments and providing wise and plished council for the entrepreneurs they back.

Every single one of the thirteen companies was, in my estimation, a great idea combined with a terrific leader or team. The most successful to date include Spotify, the European version of Rhapsody’s “all-you-can-eat for one monthly fee” celestial jukebox…

My Impression of UK and Euro Entrepreneurs from Today’s Seedcamp NESTA “Speed Dating” Adventure


Craig Newmark reports:

Hey, the folks at Seedcamp, with NESTA, have done remarkable work with a number of British Net-related companies. My fellow geeks spoke with the following day; I was consistently impressed, these guys have real stuff. I’ve already started using some of their work:

Basekit Rapid website design and development tools.

Groupspaces Group webspaces.

Huddle Huddle.net combines live conferencing,
project management software and document sharing.

Kwaga creating a new revolutionary service that will
help you manage your mail.

Moo miniature business cards

Qype Local reviews on everything

School of Everything puts teachers in touch
with potential student

Skimlinks hyperlinks keywords in websites

Spotify legally downloading songs.

Stupeflix automatically arranges and animates
banks of pictures.

Ubervu meta-web 2.0, merges and tracks
conversations and feeds across the web.

Zemanta dynamic text editor that assists in
content creation and addition

Songkick music concert online database.

UK Diary: Tuesday – Travels With Sky And Dealing With Dongles

by on July 14, 2009 at 12:05 pm

Sky.jpg

I missed the first event of the day for the Traveling Geeks because I was hunting local shops for an Ethernet to USB converter as I, (and we collectively) struggled with Internet connectivity issues.

Sky Schuyler was our resident IT support guy and fellow Traveling Geek. He has the patience of a saint. Every morning we’d dump our laptops, BT dongles, and cell phones in his lap and beg him to perform his particular form of magic and get them working and connecting again. He has unlimited patience and good humor — it’s no wonder that he was chosen by the Dalai Lama Foundation to be its Chief Technology Officer.

(Photo by Susan Bratton from the post: “Communication is how we connect to others at a deeper level,” Jim “Sky” Schuyler)

Please see: BT Openzone Wireless Broadband – Sky’s Blog

UK Diary: Monday – The Geeks Eat Dinner At The Top Of The World

by on July 14, 2009 at 10:54 am

BT-Tower.jpgMonday evening the Traveling Geeks were invited to dinner in the 384 ft BT Tower, which used to be known as the Post Office Tower when I lived in London. It has a revolving restaurant near the top and has been closed to the public since 1980.

It was a rare honor for us to be hosted by BT CEO Ian Livingston and his top team of managers. This giant European Telecom is quite a surprise, very innovative and very aggressive. You might expect the opposite. Yet it is the US telecoms that appear slow and Luddite in comparison.

The innovative energy is caused by strict European Community regulations that ensure a level playing field for competitors. This is unlike the US system, which seems designed to prevent new competitors from entering markets and results in telecoms companies that turn-off mobile phone functions and control what applications and services can be offered.

I met quite a few of BT’s top management team and all of them exude a spirit of industry and innovation that was very refreshing. The leadership for this culture comes from the top with CEO Ian Livingston.

A stand out is JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Innovation and strategy at BT, who has managed to craft a team that shares his passion for innovation. And he writes a very good blog: confused of calcutta — a blog about information

Originally an economist and financial journalist, I’ve been an accidental technologist for over a quarter of a century. I’ve spent most of my adult life working in that strange space where finance meets technology, for a number of very large firms.

Also, I want to pick out for extra special mention and attention: Sian Baldwin, Director of Broadband & Content Services at BT Wholesale. Ms Baldwin is extremely impressive and was recently recognized as one of the top managers under forty in telecoms. (Photo by Renee Blodgett.)

SianBaldwinTomForemski.jpg

It was an excellent evening in a spectacular setting with one of the top corporate innovative teams in Europe. I’m always impressed with the access I continually get to such top people. (I’m just a guy with a laptop.)

Here are some more views of this evening from my fellow TGers:

Craig Newmark was very impressed that Ian Livingston interacts with customers:

Apparently the guy publishes his email address, and gets a few customer service emails every day. He answers or delegates each one.

I don’t believe the CEOs of AT&T or Verizon do that, nor do they have any direct reports doing something like this. (Related: this is why a President needs to keep his Blackberry.)

cnewmark: Ian Livingston, CEO, British Telecom

Renee Blodgett has a gallery of photos from the event:

down the avenue: BT Tower by Night

UK Diary: Monday – Reboot Britain – The Traveling Geeks Help Out

by on July 13, 2009 at 5:37 pm

Monday morning several Traveling Geeks take part in the Reboot Britain conference organized by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

Howard Rheingold:

The day starts with an exercise in cat-herding, with the whole crazy crew piling into three London taxis. Try putting any five of those rather strong individual personalities into an enclosed space and “intense” is the only word for it.

… It was the first time I had spoken publicly about a subject I’ve grown passionate about – 21st Century Literacies. You know you’ve hit the mark when people are still sitting at the end of the last session of the day. I finished speaking, acknowledged warm applause, sat down — and people kept sitting. So I got back on stage and fielded questions for another 20 minutes. Thank you, London, for making my day!

http://www.smartmobs.com/2009/07/07/reboot-britain-first-stop-on-traveling-geeks-tour/


There were lots of interesting panels.

Renee Blodgett:

On the panel, “is the web female?” moderated by BT’s JP Rangaswami, four women talked about their opinions around a) what does the web ‘being female’ mean and b) should there be the “divide debate” at all?

…The debate in the hallway was mixed but most didn’t feel that technology was geared towards men. They haven’t been to Silicon Valley I was thinking. 99% of my client CEOs and head honchos have been men as have the majority of their engineering team. There’s always a token woman or two among us but I never feel as if they’re the main decision drivers. Bear in mind that this is the majority of my experience but not all.

down the avenue: Is the Web Female?

Renee Blodgett posted a short video of Jeff Saperstein’s talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pr9ePqvm84&feature=player_embedded

Craig Newmark was on a panel talking about his favorite topics.

Meghan Asha:

FixMyStreet.com: A website that allows users to report, view, or discuss local problems (like graffiti, street lighting, or broken paving slabs). Craig plans to employ a similar site in the United States. Thus, using social media to employ change in the public sector.

GovLoop.com: A social network that connects the government community. You can join if you’re a government employee, organization, contractor, or student. This social network cuts through the bureaucracy, empowering government officials for change.Check out Craig’s blog, he plans to lead grassroots effort using social media growing the engagement of others from millions to billions in the next 20 years.http://meghan.nonsociety.com/lifecast/136352109–

Here are Craig’s thoughts…

My focus was on how a lot of people in the US, gov’t and private industry, know how to get stuff done. That’s equally true of the UK.

That is, there’re already a lot of solutions out there, but getting people to work together is required. Online social media can be used to do that.http://www.cnewmark.com/2009/07/at-rebootbritain-tech-and-risk-taking-can-help-restore-a-govt-and-an-economy.html

UK Diary: Monday – A Meeting With Intel’s Government Guy

by on July 13, 2009 at 4:53 pm

Monday morning the Traveling Geeks are off to the Reboot Britain conference organized by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

But first we have breakfast with Tristan Wilkinson, Intel’s Director for Public Sector for EMEA.

Renee Blodgett:

He tells us about a program called One Goal which will be launched in August and piggyback off the South African World Cup. The goal is to get 30 million online signatures in an effort to help make poverty history. Take note: 75 million children still don’t have access to primary school education in the world.

down the avenue: Redefining Digital Inclusion

Mr Wilkinson said he wasn’t much interested in technology but what technology could do for people and for countries in terms of improving the quality of life through better economic opportunities.

Tom Foremski:

He posed an interesting question: Do the people that enjoy the benefits of the digital economy have an obligation to help those that don’t have the same access and skill sets?

UK: Digital Inclusion And The Moral Obligations Towards Tech Education – SiliconValleyWatcher

We discussed the technology divide or was that the wrong divide to consider these days?

Ayelet Noff:

Scoble, part of the TG party, also reiterated the idea which he calls the “Friend Divide” – this is to say that even if you have a computer and are able to get online, you’re still at a major disadvantage to people who have already built a rich network of friends which they can use to get and spread information.

Blonde 2.0 » Blog Archive » Traveling Geeks – On the road in the UK

Interestingly, Mr Wilkinson doesn’t think much about social networks. He says he’d rather be climbing trees with his kids. The TGers gang up on him about this and by the end of the meeting he says he will rejoin Twitter. You can find him @IntelTristran.

He later posts on Twitter: “Reflecting on the day, deciding social networks can’t be ignored any longer.” And he’s kept it up, tweeting 6 times on July 9th. Our work is done.

JD Lasica conducts a quick interview with Mr Wilkinson:

Intel exec on social media literacy from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

UK: Cambridge And Professor Stephen Hawking

by on July 12, 2009 at 11:51 pm

It’s been a fascinating and exhausting week on the Traveling Geeks tour. The best part has been our visit to Cambridge, the innovation capital of England. I’ve got lots of material to post from our trip, all this week, so please check back regularly.

One highlight of the trip was on Saturday night. My son Matt and I were looking for a place to eat. We just happened to choose one of the favorite spots for Professor Stephen Hawking. It was a huge honor to be in the same room as Britain’s top scientist.

The photo shows his two blond assistants helping him with his high-tech wheelchair.

StephenHawkingCafeRouge.jpg

Traveling Geeks: A Guardian Newspaper Media Panel, Twitter, From Back to Front And Beyond…

by on July 8, 2009 at 3:36 pm

MattWells.jpg

Tuesday evening our third event that day for the Traveling Geeks (but not the last) was to take part in a media debate at The Guardian newspaper’s offices in north London.

The Guardian is one of the UK’s largest newspapers and its media section is superb — anyone that is anyone in the media industry reads it, and anyone that’s interested in media — reads The Guardian’s media section.

It was a very good turnout for the event despite horrid downpours. Part of our TG gang (Robert Scoble, Sarah Lacy, and JD Lasica) were on the panel discussing the future of media with the Guardian’s Emily Bell, and the BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones.

It was a good discussion but it felt very “2005” in terms of the subjects, which kept returning to blogger/social media versus mainstream media.

The Butcher of Fleet Street

I was sitting at the back of the room next to fellow TGer Craig Newmark of Craigslist. And inevitably, the panel’s moderator couldn’t resist asking him to stand up and explain himself for killing the newspaper industry.

Craig is mightily fed up with this question. And I agree. It is not his fault that the newspaper industry is in trouble. But Craig handled it all very well, throwing in a line “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” which drew laughs and distracted the panel from further pursuit of a tired line of questioning and drew the discussion back to the favorite subject of the day: Twitter.

From Back To Front

It was fun publishing from the back of the room and having our Tweets projected onto a big screen in the front of the room.

Here is the evening’s Twitstream.

And here are my contributions: