ItSeemstoMe

Demo to Spotlight 15 Innovators

Although, it's not yet up on the Demo Conference Web site, I've justr received an email announcement from MC2 Communications' Becky Sniffen, the conference's excellent publicist, listing 15 technology innovators who will be spotlighted at the year's Februart conference. What impresses me is that each of them is a real innovator, rather than just an attendance-generating drawing card for the producers.

They are:

• Dr. Teresa H. Meng, Founder & Director, Atheros Communications, for playing a primary role in creating the WiFi economy.
• Kai Krause, Founder, Byteburg Research Lab, for pushing the envelope in software demonstrations over the years and advancing state-of-the-art computer graphics.
• Howard D. Elias, Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation, who demonstrated the first multimedia PC at the inaugural DEMO conference in 1991.
• Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Co-Founders & Presidents, Google, for stepping into a market that conventional wisdom would have said was crowded and mature and demonstrating that smart, fresh innovation can disrupt a market and create a dynamic and ultimately gigantic company.
• Les Vadasz, former President of Intel Capital, for providing rocket fuel for many fledgling companies that got their start at DEMO.
• Marc Andreessen, Chairman, Opsware, for his early browser product at Netscape to rapid Web development services of Loudcloud.
• Ed Colligan, President, palmOne, Inc.; Jeff Hawkins, CTO, palmOne, Inc.; and Donna Dubinsky, Co-Founder, Handspring, for the vision, persistence and innovation in creating a remarkable product and, in the end, an industry. There is no better “poster child” for DEMO than the PalmPilot and we are proud of the role the conference played in bringing it to market.
• Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO, Salesforce.com, for almost single-handedly legitimizing the ASP business model.
• Mena and Ben Trott, Co-Founders, Six Apart, for making blogging accessible, affordable and powerful, giving a voice to tens of thousands of individuals.
• Mike Ramsay, Chairman & CEO, TiVo Inc., for fundamentally altering how we consume mass media.
• Dan Bricklin, Founder & CEO, Trellix Corporation, for sharing his vision and innovation with the DEMO audience countless times, from early tablet computing to smart visual display of Web-based information.

I look forward to covering the presentation for Conferenza, my newsletter covering exec conferences. It's neat getting a free pass to conferences such as these.

Conferenza Meets RoboCop

About a month ago, Conferenza sent out its report on PopTech one of the best conferences we've attended. Our report was the longest we ever produced, running 7960 words. One of those words began with the letter "f" and rhymed with "duck." It was in the context of quote, that when delivered, offended no one at the conference, as far as we could tell. When we sent the report out, no one expressed any objection to the word or the context in which it was used. Last week, Michael J. Miller, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine sent me some weird email that apprently was generated by his spam guard. After a little detective work, we figured out that the Ziff Davis spam guard had found something I sent to be offensive and it took very little work to narrow it down to that one dirty little from the PopTech report. Curious, I sent an inquiry out to our entire subscriber list and discovered about five percent of our paid subscribers had been blocked from the original support. This included recipients at three major publishers. We then sent a sanitized version, tagged as "PopTech.disney version," which seemed to me appropriate since the whole incident was a little goofy.

I've been writing a lot lately about the issues of free speech and free press and most recently unconstitutional searches. It never dawned on me that along with the concern that I may someday be hauled into court and ordered to reveal the source of a blog posting, I also now must deal with vigilance of a piece of software that determines what countless millions of people behinf firewalls may have access to.

There's gotta be a work-around.

Conferenza 2004 Awards Suggestions

Conferenza is the leading reviewer of technology executive conferences and I serve as its editor in chief. In January, my partner Gary Bolles and I will announce the recipients for 2004. We do this subjectively, but we are very interested in what other saw and heard.

If you attended a tech sector executive conference last year, we’d love to hear what you loved or hated. We take into consideration what attendees say, particularly some of the quality bloggers we meet at conferences. Please look at the categories below and post the winners and sinners from you experience.

One caution: Please disclose any connections you have with the conference or company you make reference to, or we will disqualify your comments and take down your comments.

And the categories are:

1. Conference of the Year—Last year: D: All things considered.

2. Host of the Year—Last Year: Chris Shipley for her thoughtful, credible and entertaining style at both Demo and DemoMobile

3. Speaker of the Year—Last year: Gilman C. Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, for his personal, passionate and candid talk on what’s wrong with profiling in the name of national security at PC Forum

4. Surprise of the Year—Last year: D. All things considered, for getting it right the first time. This can be a single moment or an entire event. We just love surprises.

5. Lemon of the Year—(formerly Disappointment of the Year) Last year: AlwaysOn’s Innovation Summit.

We also make special awards when we deem appropriate. For example, last year we gave a special award to TED for extraordinary program content. This year we are considering:
• Rookie of the Year. It can be any individual who participated in a conference, including conference hosts.
• Best moment of the year. This moment must have occurred in public at a conference. We do not plan to get overly personal.
• Other. Please join in and nominate a selection.

Please reply, no later than Dec. 31. If you would like to see a Conferenza Report for free, please email me and say which conference you’d like to read about.

Bionic People

I read Bary Bonds leaked testimony to the grand jury investigating steroid administration to top athletes. He testified that he didn't know the drugs supplied by trainer Greg Anderson were illegal: "When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, 'Whatever.' Somehow, this has the ring of truth to it, or so it seems to me, or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part. In any case, there appears to be little doubt that some of our most respected athletes have been taking human-enhancing medications. It seems to me, this is a practice that probably will not be stoppable and the real implications will be part of the course taken by the human race.

I attended PopTech 04 back in October and found it among the most interesting conferences I ever attended on my Conferenza beat. Numerous speakers examined technology new focus on enhancing people.

Joel Garreau, was among the conference favorites. He called said we have entered into “third evolution in which we will enhance our ability to shape ourselves” by re-engineering ourselves through four emerging technologies: Genomics, robotics, information- and nano-technology (GRIN). Garreau forecast: “Over the next 20 to 30 years, we will change the essence of humankind.”

Garreau presented a string of dramatic anecdotes supporting his case, showing film clips of a Duke University-housed telekinetic monkey that became addicted to a joystick-controlled computer game. Researchers implanted the monkey with a brain-wire device using 600 micro-probes to monitor muscle movements, letting scientists literally read her thoughts while she played. Then they disconnected the joystick from the console, and the monkey continued making moves in the video game, apparently playing by thoughts alone. Researchers then connected her through the Internet to a game console at MIT, 600 miles away, where her thoughts moved robotic arms to play the game with equal speed and skill. Was this real or special effects? I’m not absolutely certain.

DARPA funded the project. Why spend time and money on a telekinetic monkey? “Think of the battle advantages of flying an F22 plane with thoughts instead of pilots,” said Garreau. He said that the next step is to move from telekinetic to telepathic monkeys, and then to step up to developing the same capability in genetically-enhanced humans. His example: The dramatic body changes that occurred to Barry Bonds in his 30s. Just when most people get slower and weaker, Bonds mysteriously got stronger, faster and larger. Garreau wondered if in the future, there will be an asterisk beside Bonds’ name, saying he is no longer the same kind of human as Babe Ruth when he smashed through the long-standing home run record.

Garreau claimed every attribute of every comic book super hero is now under development in some laboratory, and we can expect those attributes to be attainable within the next 20 to 30 years. Will we someday deliberately alter genes to produce athletes or valedictorians? If Garreau is right, we have already gotten our toes wet with genetically-enhanced people. Work is underway to defeat disease, improve memory, upgrade cognition and even change eye color. You can hear his full 50-minute talk at IT Conversations, the increasingly valuable audio, or "podcast" site. You can also get the full Conferenza PopTech report by emailing me.

It seems to me that we are entering a new era in the very nature of humankind. What may be considered cheating by professionals today, may be treated tomorrow as nonchalantly as a jar of wrinkle cream or vitamin enhancements tomorrow. Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen.

Service Kudos to Comcast

For those of you who have followed my perilous experiences on customer service, I am shocked … SHOCKED to report that I just had a wonderful experience with Comcast. Regular readers may recall my ongoing, agonizing perilous journey through SBC’s Temple of Gloom that they claim is customer support. I switched at the time to Comcast, who went down late this morning, leaving me sweaty of palm with dread of talking to one party after another of increasing dim-witted support people.

Not so. I called information and got the right number on one try. SBC took four. I was given only four choices by their voice processor. I punched one key and someone who shared my native language picked up on two rings. He asked my phone number and Zip Code, punched a few keys, then told me there was repair work going on in my area. He estimated I would be up in two hours and it took only three.

I’m a happy customer. It seems to me that we have entered a period in all applications—enterprise, small business, government and home that support is the crucial differentiator as the technology matures and becomes commoditized. The companies that give superior support—wherever it is based are the ones that should prevail and probably will.

Thank you Comcast. Now, just cut your rates a bit.

DemoMobile 04

I had a good time covering DemoMobile 04 for Conferenza a couple of weeks back. The social networking aspects are top flight, and I’m usually at my happiest when I’m surrounded by enterprenuers with new ideas and hopes. The were two standouts from the attendee perspective: Aliph, of Brisbane, Calif., who launched Jawbone , a mobile phone headset they developed iwith DARPA, who needed it for battlefield communications. This start up blew away Plantronics and Logitech in a three-way competition.
Also scoring high among attendees was Kansas City-based Handmark, Inc., who launched a suite of handy services designed to let customers view rich data versions of news, white and yellow pages, a street Atlas and driving directions on a handheld device. You could easily use it to one-hand information on a movie, find out where it’s playing, and – perhaps, in the future – buy a ticket and get directions to the theater, all with ease. The service will be available from carriers for $7 a month sometime soon.
But these were the only real standouts among 33 presenting companies it seemed to me. While there were lots of neat improvements and refinements to stuff we’ve seen before, few came close to blowing the socks off my feet. As one veteran VC, John Zeisler pointed out, America continues to trail behind Asia and Europe in wireless innovation.

Two reasons come to mind that may explain this:
(1) Americans had the money to buy notebook PCs. Many people in Asia and Europe didn’t, so users there were quicker to adopt cellular technology and use them for messaging and other services long before Americans even felt the need.
(2) Venture money went through a painful drought three years ago, and the result is that we are seeing fewer watershed innovators in wireless and other sectors.

In any case, the Demo companies loved the conference as much as attendees. One CEO told me getting ink, “was like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun.” If you’d like to see a full DemoMobile report, just email me.

Three Tips on Conference Presentations

As editor of Conferenza Premium Reports , I attend more technology executive conferences than most people would want or afford to, which makes me appreciate my press pass—most of the time. I’ve just completed covering both DEMOmobile and Dow Jones DataCenter Ventures , two very different conferences except they both spotlight promising early stage companies delivering new and occasionally exciting technologies to market. Often the technology may be promising, but the presentation sucks so badly that companies who sometimes have spent years to get to this critical moment do irreparable damage to the company’s future.

Why, I often wonder, are they so foolish to wing their presentations or relegate its scripting to some lower tier member of their company PR or marketing team. Why do CEO’s allow themselves to emote phrase and thoughts that they would never use in conversations with peers, prospects or employees? Why, after putting products through alpha and beta testing, through focus group scrutiny and all sorts of hoops, do they not think investing in the time to get the verbal portions of their presentation tight?

There is no second chance for a first impression and yet companies with perfectly good technology just blow it. At DemoMobile, company executives stood on the dais in front of more than 400 people including a global representation of press and bloggers, investors, companies looking for partners and they read from stilted scripts that failed to deliver suitable messages. I ask a couple of CEOs who stumbled about this and they said they just hadn’t had time.

That seems to me to be a bone-headed answer showing arrogance and a lack of understanding of the importance of the moment. Before stepping on stage executives, should:

1. Write the first draft of their own scripts. When marketing refines them, allow only words, thoughts or terminology you would use with a trusted colleague,
2. Never read a script. Let me put it another way never, NEVER read a script.
3. Be able to say in one sentence, using neither adjectives nor hyperbole just what your technology or company does that is unique, valuable and enduring.

If you cannot do this, if you do not have the time to prepare, my simple advice to you is to sit down and shut up until your ready to taking up the important time of other people.

DemoMobile’s Challenge

I leave in the morning to cover Chris Shipley and DemoMobile in La Jolla tomorrow for Conferenza Premium Reports . This is usually one of my favorite conferences of the year. Shipley has a great, easy-going but thoughtful style and historically displayed a keen eye for companies that show well.

But I wonder about DemoMobile as it enters its fifth year. Conferences seem to me to be at their best usually when they are dealing with new and rapidly changing technologies. Fragmentation may not make for healthy markets, but the fierce positional jockeying between companies before standards are set are always fun to watch and cover.

Mobile computing no longer seems to me to be new category. While the DemoMobile website promises attendees will see the latest innovations in wireless technology, we are not so certain that wireless is in an innovative phase. The standards, players and applications may have pretty much formed and that could make for thin soup in terms of the 35 or so companies demonstrating new technologies. We hope not. We hope our socks will be blown off our feet.

Conferenza is a subscription-based 'zine covering most top tier tech conferences. If you'd like to receive the complete DemoMobile report for free, just email me.

NetworkWorld Singapore Article

Network World has published an opinion piece I wrote on Singapore's broadband policy. I continue to be fascinated by this tiny island city-state and its enormous potential as a technology trading partner for U.S. companies.

The Meaning of Crickets

Summer has finally come to northern California and Paula and I enjoyed a leisurely dinner with an old friend. After, we sat outside listening to crickets in surround sound. It brought me back to summer nights in New Bedford, Mass. , where I was raised. New Bedford is neither the best nor the worst place to grow up, but their cricket symphonies were first rate. I shared this thought with the friend who asked me if the sound had any special meaning to me.

It took a moment to remember the answer: Crickets meant that school was out. When I was 10, that was cause for considerable joy.