Does this mean I'm now a cover model?

Backbone Magazine has just published a great overview of the cleantech sector in Canada that contains quotes from a number of notable people in the space including Kirk Washington (Yaletown Venture Partners), Victoria Smith (BC Hydro), Rick Whittaker (Sustainable Development Technology Canada), Raul Pacheco-Vega (UBC), Helen Goodland (Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre) and me. Thanks to the Globe team and Lisa Manfield the author for a great article. You can either jump to the article, to the table of contents of this issue, or to a list of all of the issues.

I’m super excited to be part of the crew (along with Bootup Entrepreneurial Society) bringing the Startup Lessons Learned conference to town via simulcast this Friday April 23rd. For those of you who don’t know, the Lean Startup movement (a derivative of lean manufacturing) was kicked off by Eric Ries, formerly of Imvu. It has blossomed in a very short time into a global movement of entrepreneurs interested in how to build fast-cycle, highly iterative startups that learn fast and minimize wasted effort.

More information on the event is below.

• REGISTRATION: http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• PRICE: $25 (regular on-site SF price = $695USD so that’s a 96.5% discount not counting the savings in travel costs.)
• SIMULCAST LOCATION: Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, 3rd floor, 163 W. Hastings St., Suite 200.

Startup Lessons Learned, San Francisco (via simulcast to Vancouver)

Startup Lessons Learned is the first event designed to unite those interested in what it takes to succeed in building a lean startup. The goal for this event is to give practitioners and students of the lean startup methodology the opportunity to hear insights from leaders in embracing and deploying the core principles of the lean startup methodology. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful lean startups.

Confirmed Speakers and Participating Mentors:

• Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (@ericries)
• Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute (@kentbeck)
• Steve Blank (@sgblank)
• Randy Komisar, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Andrew Chen, Futuristic Play (@andrew_chen)
• David Weekly, PB Works (@dweekly)
• Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics (@hnshah)
• Cindy Alvarez, KISSmetrics (@cindyalvarez)
• Ethan Bloch, Flowtown (@ebloch)
• Timothy Fitz, IMVU (@TimohtyFitz)
• Drew Houston, Dropbox (@drewhouston)
• Ash Maurya, WiredReach (@ashmaurya)
• Dave McClure (@davemcclure)
• Sean Ellis (@seanellis)
• Laura Klein (@lauraklein)
• Damon Horowitz, Aardvark / Google (@iamnottweeting)
• Max Ventilla, Aardvark / Google (@ventilla)
• Brant Cooper (@brantcooper)
• Clara Shih, Hearsay Labs (@clarashih)
• Manuel Rosso (@manuelrosso)
• Rashmi Sinha (@rashmi)
• Dan Martell, Flowtown (@danmartell)
• Brett Durrett, IMVU
• James Birchler, IMVU
• Andres Glusman, Meetup (@glusman)

Agenda

• 8 AM – 9:00 Registration
• 9:00 – 9:30 AM Welcome
  *Eric Ries, Host, Startup Lessons Learned
• 9:30 AM – 10:20 AM Build Keynote: “To Agility, and Beyond”
  * Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute
• 10:20 AM – 10:40 AM Continuous Deployment Case Study: WiredReach
  *Ash Maurya, WiredReach
• 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM Agile Development Case Study: Grockit
  *Farb Nivi, Grockit
• 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM Case Study: “But Does it Scale?”
  * Tim Fitz, James Birchler, and Brett Durrett, IMVU
• 11:30 PM – 12:15 PM But What about Design? Minimum Desirable Product
  *Andrew Chen (Futuristic Play), Laura Klein, Dave McClure, Rashmi Sinha
• 12:15 AM – 1:15 PM Lunch
• 1:15 – 2:00 PM Conversation: Getting to Plan B
  * Randy Komisar, KPCB
• 2:00 PM – 2:20 PM Minimum Viable Product Case Study: Aardvark
  *Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz, Google (Aardvark)
• 2:20 PM – 2:40 PM Pivot Case Study: Flowtown
  *Dan Martell and Ethan Bloch, Flowtown
• 2:40 PM – 3:00 PM Pivot Case Study: KISSmetrics
  *Hiten Shah, KISSmetrics
• 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM Afternoon Break
• 3:30 PM – 4:15 PM Customer Development 2.0
  *Steve Blank
• 4:15 PM – 4:35 PM Is Customer Development Marketing? Food on the Table Case Study
  *Manuel Rosso, Food on the Table
• 4:35 PM – 4:55 PM Customer Development Case Study: Dropbox
  *Drew Houston, Dropbox
• 4:55 PM – 5:15 PM Customer Development Case Study: PB Works
  *David Weekly, PBworks
• 5:15 PM – 6:00 PM Customer Development Panel
  *Cindy Alvarez, Brant Cooper, Sean Ellis, Matt Johnson

This event is intended for people on the front line of delivering products. If you are a start-up founder, an employee engaged in customer or product development role at a company of any stage, or someone at a large company looking to bring the lean startup methodology to your company, we encourage you to attend the event.

Local Simulcasts

For those outside of the Bay Area, we will be offering simulcasts of the event. Official simulcast hosts can be found below – make sure to sign up using one of the links below:

Africa

• Cape Town, South Africa http://sllconf-capetown.eventbrite.com

Asia

• Tokyo, Japan http://startuplessonslearnedtokyosimulcast.eventbrite.com

Europe

• Barcelona, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/638921030
• Birmingham, UK http://sll-birmingham-uk.eventbrite.com/
• Bucharest, Romania http://sllconf-bucharest.eventbrite.com/
• Budapest, Hungary http://sllbudapest.eventbrite.com
• Cambridge, UK http://startuplessonslearnedcam.eventbrite.com/
• Copenhagen, Denmark http://sllconf2010copenhagen.eventbrite.com/
• Delft, Netherlands http://sllconf-delft.eventbrite.com/
• Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=652392323
• Gothenburg, Sweden http://gotsllconf.eventbrite.com/
• London, UK http://www.meetup.com/agile-entrepreneurship/calendar/12944310/
• Madrid, Spain http://www.eventbrite.com/event/640820712
• Munich, Germany http://www.eventbrite.com/event/650629049
• Timisoara, Romania http://www.meetup.com/The-Timisoara-Agile-Software-Meetup-Group/
• Vienna, Austria http://at.amiando.com/sllconfstream.html

North America

• Atlanta, GA http://atlantasll.eventbrite.com/
• Austin, TX http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13090413/
• Boise, Idaho http://sllconf-boise.eventbrite.com/
• Boston, MA http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Circle-Boston/calendar/13093640/
• Boston/Cambridge, MA http://dplc-lessons.eventbrite.com
• Boulder, CO http://sllconf-boulder.eventbrite.com/
• Chicago, IL http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13056515/
• Cleveland, OH http://startuplessonslearneduniversitycircle.eventbrite.com/
• Cleveland, OH http://sllsimulcastcleveland.eventbrite.com
• Grand Rapids, MI http://startupgr.eventbrite.com
• Los Angeles, CA http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13082783/
• Monterrey, NL México http://www.eventbrite.com/event/654293008
• Montreal, QC Canada Chttp://leanstartupmontreal.eventbrite.com
• New York, NY http://dplny-lessons.eventbrite.com/
• New York, NY http://www.meetup.com/lean-startup/calendar/13102326/
• New York, NY http://sllnyc.eventbrite.com
• Omaha, NE http://sllconf-omaha.eventbrite.com/
• Providence, RI http://sllconfprovidence.eventbrite.com
• Provo, UT http://wsg-lsc.eventbrite.com/
• Raleigh, NC http://www.meetup.com/lsc-rtp/calendar/13161035/
• Redmond, WA http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648075411
• San Juan, Puerto Rico http://startups.eventbrite.com/
• Toronto, CA http://startuplessons-toronto.eventbrite.com
• Twin Cities, MN http://www.meetup.com/Twin-Cities-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/12849312/
• Vancouver, BC Canada http://sllyvrsimulcast.eventbrite.com/
• Washington DC http://www.meetup.com/DC-Lean-Startup-Circle/calendar/13068744/

Oceania

• Syndey, Australia https://s.eventarc.com/event/view/597/entry/startup-lessons-learned-simulcast-conference
• Wellington, New Zealand http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Wellington/calendar/12624714/

South America

• Belo Horizonte, Brazil http://sllconf-bhz.eventbrite.com/
• Buenos Aires, Argentina http://buenosairessll.eventbrite.com/
• Florianópolis, SC, Brazil http://www.meetup.com/Floripa-Startups/calendar/13090194/
• Santiago, Chile http://sllsantiago.eventbrite.com

Apr 6-12, 2010 edition

I’m glad Curt got my favourite line in there, courtesy of Vancouver’s world-famous sci-fi author, William Gibson: “the future is already here, it just isn’t widely distributed yet.” True in many domains, including cloud computing.

Not the best article I’ve had, not the worst. More accurately, when I worked at Business Objects, I worked on collaborative software, web 2.0 strategy, and also SUPPORTED the Saas business unit by providing additional market research capacity.

As usual, this article doesn’t clearly articulate the overlaps between Saas and cloud but I’m not surprised. That’s hard to do at the best of times. My version of that has always been that cloud is now being broadly defined in three columns and three layers so the whole grid is “cloud”, column 1 is “true public cloud” and the box in the upper left corner is “true Saas”.

In Curt’s defense, it was the middle of the Olympics and he was surrounded by much more interesting work.

Since Business in Vancouver doesn’t offer permalinks to their articles (see above line!), I’ve copied the whole article here below:

Cloud control growing for more businesses

Companies that service and use the shared computing model are growing in step with the technology

Curt Cherewayko

It’s probably been four years since Troy Angrignon last had a conversation about building a desktop-based application, let alone built one.

At that time, he was an emerging technology strategist with Business Objects, where he helped build the company’s first Software-as-a-service (SaaS) unit and do market analysis for the unit’s first product.

That Angrignon’s title included the word “emerging” reflects that SaaS and “cloud computing” are relatively new concepts.

But while SaaS and cloud computing aren’t ubiquitous in business yet and while there’s still confusion about what the cloud is, Angrignon and other IT professionals agree that the cloud is growing.

“The future is here,” said Angrignon. “It just isn’t widely distributed yet. All software should be built as SaaS. There’s no reason to do it otherwise.”

Angrignon, who co-chaired a day-long cloud computing conference in Vancouver last month, is now an independent IT consultant.

In its simplest form, the cloud is a mish-mash of remote applications, platforms and infrastructure connected to their users by an Internet connection.

Whereas enterprise or desktop-based software is housed in its user’s local hardware and servers, cloud computing applications are typically based in data centres that can be hundreds of miles away from the user.

And the businesses that manage and maintain cloud software can be hundreds of miles away from the data centre and their clients.

Businesses on either side of the cloud computing model – the providers and their customers – are growing in step with the cloud, as providers advance cloud technologies and more businesses adopt such technologies.

Sarah Morton, president of Backbone Systems, likens cloud computing to a co-op program in which member benefits increase as the co-op grows.

While many of Backbone’s clients are small and medium-sized businesses, they’re part of a cloud computing co-op that’s powered by thousands of other organizations.

Backbone clients use the same programs and computing power as some of the largest international corporations.

Morton added that “business are sharing a large enterprise infrastructure and paying a smaller price for it.”

And as they scale up, businesses can access more services and computing strength in the cloud as needed.

Discovery Parks retired its desktop software and internal network and moved to a SaaS model largely because it didn’t want to have to hire a dedicated IT professional to manage its IT as its real estate portfolio grew.

Mark Betteridge, Discovery’s executive director and CEO, estimated that such a professional would command an annual salary of roughly $50,000.

Instead of updating and maintaining its software, licences and firewalls itself, Discovery pays a monthly fee to Backbone to manage those tasks.

Previously, if Discovery had network or software complications, it would have to hire an outside IT troubleshooter and suffer through what could be days of downtime.

“With Backbone, they can diagnose it almost immediately and fix it almost immediately,” said Betteridge.

Backbone houses its customers’ servers and networks in a Vancouver-based data centre.

The company, which bundles and manages products for clients, launched its first product, a remote e-mail and business application offered by Microsoft Corp., in 2006.

With 10 employees, Backbone now manages software and applications for more than 1,000 employees in numerous organizations.

In 2008, Mono County, California, and the Town of Mammoth, which is in the county, were using enterprise systems to manage land development and sustainable growth.

The two governments’ small and aging in-house systems had become increasingly dysfunctional as the resort community’s population grew.

“We were faced with significant growing pains,” said Nate Greenberg, GIS co-ordinator for the town and county.

Last year, the two governments switched to web-based permitting platforms managed by BasicGov Systems Inc. after being referred to the Vancouver company by another government.

Greenberg said BasicGov’s platform has reduced government infrastructure and the number of staff hires needed to handle increased pressure on their permitting systems.

He added that staff can access the web-based platform from any location that has an Internet application.

As well, the single systems replaced a patchwork of in-house systems that often couldn’t communicate well with each other.

“That allows for really smart decision-making ability because people in one department can see what people in another department are doing,” said Greenberg.

Like Morton, Greenberg pointed to the strength-in-numbers benefits of cloud computing.

“With the power of all those people buying into it, we can leverage much larger functionality than we could have locally.” •

cgc@biv.com

This article from Business in Vancouver April 6-12, 2010; issue 1067

Business in Vancouver (www.biv.com) has been publishing in-depth local business news, analysis and commentary since 1989. The newspaper also produces a weekly ranked list of the biggest companies and players in a wide range of B.C. industries and commercial sectors, monthly features and industry-focused sections that arm its subscribers with a complete package of local business intelligence each week.

Enjoy!

Vancouver’s First Cloud Camp is in two more days!

What will you do at Cloud Camp? You will learn how to take advantage of cloud computing to do things you could not do before, to save money, to be more flexible and agile. You can get your questions answered about security, privacy, and compliance. You can learn about and understand the differences between public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid clouds. Hear from your peers who are building and developing on the cloud about how they have stopped buying and installing and maintaining physical servers.

CloudCamp is a free full-day “unconference” where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place where we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing.

End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to attend and participate.

We’d like to ask your help to spread the word. You can do that by:

• Sharing us on Facebook
• Letting your LinkedIn contacts know you’re attending the event
• Tweet about us using the hashtag #Cloudcamp or full phrase “#Cloudcamp Vancouver”
• Email your friends and invite them to come.

The URL for sign-ups is: http://www.cloudcamp.org/vancouver.

Sign-up closes Friday night at midnight

Details are below as a reminder:

DATE/TIME: This Saturday March 13, 2010, 9:00am

LOCATION: Discovery Park, 887 Great Northern Way (map)

COFFEE and LUNCH is provided and/or feel free to bring your own.

COST: FREE! (bring your friends!)

AGENDA: (this may change)
9:00-9:30am Registration
9:30-9:45am Welcome & Intros
9:45-10:00am Lightning Talk
10:00-10:30am Unpanel
10:30-11:00am Organize Unconference
11:15-12:00pm Session 1
1:00-1:15pm Lunch
1:15-2:00pm Breakout Session #2
2:00-3:00pm Breakout Session #3
3:00-3:30pm Wrap-up Session
Evening – ad-hoc dinner/drinks somewhere??? (at your own expense!)

We would like to thank our sponsors who have made this event possible.

Venue: Discovery Park
Gold: RightScale, Backbone Systems
Silver: Peer 1, Tropo, Agreement Express, Layer 7
Media/Promotion: Bootup Entrepreneurial Society, BCTIA, TechVibes

Thanks from the Cloud Camp Vancouver team.

And if you’re interested in cloud computing, please remember to sign up to attend the full day Cloud Camp Vancouver being held on March 13 at Discovery Park on Great Northern Way. I’m co-hosting it with local cloudies Trevor Orzstynowicz and Jenny Yang, both of whom are building cloud companies here in Vancouver.

Under the Radar Round 2 Calls!

As many of you know, I am extremely fortunate to be assisting the Dealmaker Media team as co-chair of the upcoming Under the Radar event on April 24, 2009 in San Francisco. This is round 2 of our call for companies in the cloud computing, virtualization, software as a service, and web services categories. This is an excellent opportunity for early stage startups to present their businesses and ideas to CIOs, CTOs, and Technology VPs at companies like AT&T, Getty Images, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, etc, as well as VCs, prospective partners, and industry press. Of the 400 companies that have presented on this stage in the past seven years, over 50% of them have been funded (more than $1.3B in funding so far) and nearly 20% of them went on to be acquired by companies such as Google, Salesforce, Cisco, and Microsoft. This event has practically become a rite of passage for early stage startups. Previous Under the Radar Alumni include: Ribbit (which was acquired by British Telecom), Zoho (do they EVER stop building cool applications??), Box.net, Animoto, Elastra, Jive Software, 3tera, Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo), Nirvanix, LinkedIn, SupportSpace, SlideRocket and Q-Layer (acquired by Sun Microsystems.)

The deadline for applications is March 20, 2009. You can apply here.

Some of the companies who are already invited include Boomi, Ctera, Eucalyptus, Heroku, Marketo, New Relic, Qwaq, Sauce Labs, Spigit, Symplified, Tap In Systems, Twilio, uTest, Virsto, Zephyr, Zimory, and Zuora and we have more exciting companies waiting in the wings for final confirmation.

Want to learn all about cloud computing? Sign up now for early bird tickets.

For anyone looking to understand the cloud space and see who’s innovating AND who’s buying -  this is a one-day deep dive into what’s happening. Tickets are still available at the early bird discount rate. To register for that rate, please click here.

Judges, Moderators, and Sponsors

Here are some of the judges who are committed so far (with more to come):

• Bipin Sahni, VP Technology Manager , Wells Fargo
• Steve Phillpott, Chief Information Officer, Amylin Pharmaceuticals
• Steve Heck, Chief Technology Officer, Getty Images
• Doug Harr, CIO, Ingres
• Gary Little, Partner, Morgenthaler
• James Urquhart, Market Manager: Cloud Computing & Virtualization, Cisco
• Joe Weinman, Strategy and Emerging Services Vice President, Corporate Bus.
• Development – AT&T
• John Foley, Editor, Information Week
• Larry Dignan, Editor, ZDNet
• Maha Ibrahim, Partner, Canaan Partners
• Matthew Glotzbach, Director of Product Management, Google Enterprise
• Mike Maggs, Director of Business Development, Azure group (Microsoft)
• Mitchell Kertzman, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
• Rob Hayes, Partner, First Round Capital
• Robin Vasan, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund
• Sunil Dhaliwal, Partner, Battery Ventures

We have also pleased to have some excellent moderators for the event:

• Rafe Needleman, Editor at Large, Cnet
• Jeremy Toeman, Stage Two Consulting
• Charlene Li, Co-Author – Groundswell
• Ellen McGirt, Sr. Writer, FastCompany

Of course, an event of this size is only possible with great sponsors and we have the best possible sponsors for this event:

• Gunderson Dettmer
• Microsoft
• Mosso – The Rackspace Cloud
• Salesforce.com

This April 24, 2009, I’m fortunate to be working with Dealmaker Media who will be hosting the 13th Under the Radar conference. In one day we will present a full roster of innovative startups, tech thought leaders, and REAL enterprise & big media customers who are buying cloud services to let you see for yourself what the cloud REALLY MEANS…

What is Cloud Computing?

We have a very simple but broad definition of cloud computing:

Applications, services, platforms, or infrastructure that are highly abstracted or virtualized, web service enabled, able to be automatically provisioned, and generally charged on a pay-as-you-go model.

As the market evolves, we predict that there will be a number of clouds from a variety of vendors with a range of performance characteristics. They will vary by location, security, pricing models, supported “stacks”, degree of regulatory compliance, location, service level agreements, and many other dimensions.

Benefits of cloud computing

The key benefits of cloud computing are that it allows organizations to:

• shift up-front capital expenditures to ongoing operational costs which can allow businesses to provision more quickly or scale faster than if they had to deploy capital;
• provision infrastructure more quickly than by their traditional infrastructure purchasing and provisioning model;
• dynamically match computing capacity to demand more accurately, which means less wasted resources in low-traffic times, and less downtime during high-traffic times;
• test ideas with a lower threshold by deploying test environments in the cloud and then shutting them down when not in use;
• scale up to computing capacities that would have been impossible to achieve in any other way cost-effectively;
• decrease the time-to-value of new IT projects because of the faster provisioning and lower costs.

In short, it allows organizations to do more, faster, with less resources. In some cases, it allows organizations to do things they could never have dreamed of doing before. 

Current Issues with Cloud Computing

It is still early days for this next generation of computing. There are many issues to work through including: security; performance; vendor lock-in; cloud interoperability;  stack selectivity (only certain clouds will support certain technology stacks); cross-cloud portability, administration, and management; regulatory compliance (current clouds do not comply with many regulatory frameworks such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI, data protection regulation or others), and even common metering and billing models.

We believe that this is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to identify and fill those gaps by picking components of the stack and bringing them forward into this new era and we’re hand-picking the best ones to tell their story on April 24!

Early Bird Tickets are going fast. Register to be the first to meet and do deals with these innovators.

Here is the slide deck.

As part of the run-up to the conference, the team decided to hold a blog relay – “The Radar Relay” – where different writers would summarize the week’s Office 2.0 news at the end of the week. This is my week. But you might want to start here first if you haven’t been keeping up to date until now.

• Feb 23, 2007 / Richard McManus
• Feb 28, 2007 / Rod Boothby
• Mar 7, 2007 / Zoli Erdos
• Mar 9, 2007 / Stowe Boyd

 
Also, if you haven’t registered for Under the Radar yet, the readers of this blog can take advantage of a special price at this link. I’ll be there, to see what the judging panel think of the selections that our committee made, and also to give a brief talk about Office 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

On with the Radar Relay. Tthis week has been ripe with office 2.0 news. There is so much that I’m going to do it in point-form:

• A web application designed to help people through their bankruptcies was cited for “practicing the law without a license” and its creator was charged and found guilty. The case is currently under appeal. (thanks to Kurzweilai.net for the link).
• The Office 2.0 Database tipped the scales at over 450 Office 2.0 startups. 95% of those will be gone in 36 months but who cares? As Paul Kedrosky says, “It takes a lot of dead bodies to fill a swamp” when you want to get to the other side.
• Gianpaolo gave us an 8-floor, 3-bullet point “Why SaaS for the Enteprise” pitch. I would add to his points the ability for users to pilot-test without IT involvement (which really rolls up to shorter time to value though). I think his 3 bullets are absolutely awesome. Concise, and to the point.
• The world continues to twitter about Twitter. Millions of people pinging each other with little tidbits of information on what they are doing at the moment. I know that many of the things that take off seem to confound people but you have to realize that deep down in biological and spiritual cores, we are social creatures. We are designed to be social from the ground up. But as people leave organized religion, and as fewer people get married, and as fewer people have kids, and as fewer people live in multi-family homes, there becomes a vast social vaccuum waiting to be filled – hence the explosion of blogs (find your community), photo-sharing (meet people with an appreciation for art), SMS’ing silly messages to each other, or signing up for Twitter – these are all manifestations of a desire to find and stay connected to a community in an ever more disconnected world.  I don’t doubt that we will develop a bunch of these tools along the way and will eventually be in partially aware, partially connected states to our communities at all time – but will be actually be social or have any friends? It reminds me of the quote I read the other day, “I unsubscribed from all of my social networks so that I would have time to invite friends over for dinners!” Also, here is a shortcut to using Twitter.
• Google’s diabolical plan to plant people in Microsoft is paying off. Microsoft has managed to make Office 2007 and Outlook 2007 both slow and destructive to data at the same time as Google has launched their applications with a service level agreement (that they breached already.) Lots of notes here on Zoli’s blog.
• Anne Zelenka posted “Ten Things I Hate About You, Web 2.0“. Funny list. Anne, how about Office 2.0? I’ll start with my top four most annoying things about Office 2.0:
• NOT ONE COMPANY has managed to make a text editor that doesn’t completely suck.
• Do we really need 50 spreadsheet apps? Are we really that lacking in creativity?
• Web 2.0 was about wasting time. Office 2.0 is really about being productive with your time. We need more web 2.0 in office 2.0 or the conferences are going to be REALLY dull.
• Just because you have an Office 2.0 company doesn’t mean you have to forget about: customers, pain points, revenues, or long-term viability.
• Phil Wainewright has a good post on the Saugatuck report showing that SaaS has hit the knee of the curve or as he writes: “SaaS hits the hockey stick.” I’m sure he meant the curvy part near the bottom of the stick near the big flat part that hits the little round thing-a-ma-jig. Go, Beavers, Go. As you can see, I’m not a hockey fan so I prefer the knee of the curve story a bit more. He writes: “Most surprising of all was a huge jump from 18% last year to 49% this
  year of companies planning to use SaaS for mission-critical
  applications.” I think it’s instructive to look at internet banking. People didn’t want t o use it either because they were afraid of the web – until seemingly overnight when everybody’s Grandma joined web-banking.
• Harry McCracken over at Slate wrote a decent review of the Zoho office tools suite. I agree with Harry that their suite seems pretty advanced. However, I have tried to use them for real work and have still found enough holes that I couldn’t use them. Particularly Zoho show which was nearly useless. The other apps seemed somewhat better. But they have achieved a heck of a lot and I wish Raju Vegesna and his team the best.
• AvenueA-Razorfish’s new Digital Outlook Report 2007 was released (thanks Guy Kawasaki for the heads up). Some highlights:
• “In retrospect, the massive digital disruption we’ve experienced over the last 12 months should have been anticipated. But it seems few were fully prepared for the speed and depth of the changes. Perhaps it’s because the changes weren’t just about what Web sites became popular or what new technologies were introduced. Rather, it was a broader cultural change. Consumers’ expectations of their media evolved. The places they trusted to provide information and entertainment changed. New outlets for consumers to express themselves emerged.”
• ““Great service. Creativity. Flexibility. A passion for their product and for finding ways to push innovation within their organization. A desire to understand clients’ objectives and not to retrofit them into their own. The hallmarks of great Web publishers are obvious, yet subjective and elusive. Those who are focused on delivering real solutions are best positioned to become partners to agencies and advertisers.” – Sarah Baehr, VP Media, New York.
• “Information seeking equals entertainment: Once upon a time, play was more deeply integrated into our daily lives, but that changed with the introduction of industrialism. Then came the Internet, and with it, a reemergence of play in new ways. Information as entertainment was a core concept we heard from our study participants, and one that we can see around us as well….Any way you look at it, play is back, and it’s here to stay.”
• “Mobile phone use will grow—but not for talking, according to our participants. Phones calls are considered to be invasive in this hyper-culture, to be used only when necessary. For ordinary use, a quick text message will suffice, and many of our respondents didn’t see themselves reversing this trend in the future.”
• Overall, this is a fantastic report. Get it. Read it. Take action on it.
• Dick Costolo wrote a great post titled Too Many Companies? where he addresses an entrepeneur’s question about whetehr or not he/she should go out and try to capitalize on a maket opportunity. I agree with Dick. You can’t know anything really when you start. It’s all a best guess. Once you have done the basics of identifying whether you are entiering what could be a high-growth market, something that you are passionate about, and that you have (or can soon have) a great team to build something with, then get out there and do it and adjust on the fly. Not wait until you “have it figured out”.
• Cisco bought Webex. For 64x earnings or  8.4x revenues. ($3.2B for 2006′s $50M earnings on $380M revenues). I agree with Michael Arrington who questions the value of such a deal when Webex is being disrupted SERIOUSLY by a lot of light, fast, cheap, and frankly much better competitors. Of course, Webex has real revenues that will accrue to Cisco’s bottom line and can actually “move the needle” on Cisco’s income statement. Hopefully they were buying the revenues and not the technology. I also agree with Paul Kedrosky who says “While this is not your father’s Cisco, it’s not clear just whose Cisco it is becoming either.” When they bought Five Across, it could have been an aberration. Adding Webex to the mix means it is definitely a trend. For it to make any sense, there would need to be some follow-on acquisitions that signal a clear shift in corporate strategy and a redefinition of what and who Cisco intends to become in the next few years.
• Darren Barefoot did a nice little review of three new-to-him Web apps: Harvest for simple time tracking, Buxfer for moving money easily, and WhosOff for tracking holidays in the office. Very fitting for the Office 2.0 Relay!

That’s a heck of a week!! Lots of interesting things happening and I’m sure we’ll have another crazy week next week as we get close to the actual Dealmaker event.

Have a great week ahead everybody!

At the Angel forum, my friend Martin Bliemel and I have the good fortune of facilitating a day of investor pitches where 30+ companies will pitch 70-100 investors their idea for a new venture. The Angel Forum was founded in 1997 by Bob Chaworth-Musters and is now the oldest and largest angel group in Canada. To date, it has held 20 Angel Forums in Vancouver resulting in over $20M being raised for emerging companies..

My friend Debbie and her team at Dealmaker Media are running the “Under the Radar: Office 2.0” conference in Mountain View, CA on March 23, 2007. Aside from having been on the selection committee with some fine folks (Rod Boothby, Richard McManus, Zoli Erdos, Ismael Ghalimi, Stowe Boyd, Ori Weinroth, Brad Feld, and Rafe Needleman), some of whom I know, and others whom I have admired from a distance, I will also be presenting a customer perspective on why it’s imperative that we employ and deploy social software in the enterprise.

It should be an exciting day. We have a fantastic slate of presenting companies, Sean Wise and Rafe Needleman will be moderating, and we have a full panel of judges that will vote on the companies that have the most compelling businesses and offerings. Should be fun!

Resourcs: Event site, Powerpoint (not yet available)

Lots of interesting discussion, and great questions from a very keen group of people. Thanks Lorraine and team for the wine and food!

I would have posted this sooner, but well…I have been too damned busy at work to post much of anything!