Archive for 'People'
“Because I don’t do average :),” Errol Damelin. #WDYDWYD? #TG2009 @ed_wonga
My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?
Errol Damelin, Founder, Wonga.com @ed_wonga
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The acceptance of failure as a spur to innovation
Recently, I was part of the Traveling Geeks tour of UK tech, including the
Reboot Britain conference. (The Geeks are a collection of talented
journalists, and myself.)
I was struck by the repeated comment that failure is stigmatized in UK
business culture. In Silicon Valley, failure is just a normal phase of
one's career. You might succeed in your first endeavor, probably not, so
you're ready to persist in subsequent efforts.
That is, there's some expectation of failure and the expectation that
you'll get over it.
This is not unique to Silicon Valley, but it's far more expected here than
anywhere I've heard. The attitude is the norm here, but in a lot of
places failure continues to be stigmatized, and it's hard to recover.
It seems that widespread innovation and success requires the acceptance of
failure, and then a readiness to move on.
That's generally true in Silicon Valley, maybe needs to be true in the UK
and maybe everywhere else.
UK Diary: Tuesday – It Never Rains But It Pours . . . More BT Innovation
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.
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
(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 studentSkimlinks 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 additionSongkick music concert online database.
UK Diary: Tuesday – Travels With Sky And Dealing With Dongles
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
Monday 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.)
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:
Backstage Pass- WDYDWYD
Susan Bratton is doing a meme — WDYDWYD — Why Do You Do What You Do during the Traveling Geeks’ week in London and Cambridge. She asks interesting people to put their name and URL on a piece of paper, and then give a short statement of “why I do what I do” and she photographs the person with their paper. Susan has been doing this all week and you will find her WDYDWYD memes interspersed throughout the blog.
UK Diary: Monday – Reboot Britain – The Traveling Geeks Help Out
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.
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
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.
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 Traveling Geeks tour: a (mediocre) slideshow
(Yes, I’ll keep my day job. for photography and writing by serious bloggers and journalists.)
