More BlogOn Transcripts

Here is one on Business Transparancy and on The Transformation of Corporate Communications. The panel on blogging local media has not been posted yet as a transcript but was one of the more interesting. What I took from it was that local print media is dead -- wiped out by venues like Craig's List (Craig was on the panel to talk about this). But blogging offers a new mechanism for the content of local media to reach the local audience.

First Interesting Presentation at BlogOn

Shel Israel, a self-described recovering publicist, is running a panel on how social media is transforming corporate communications. A number of interesting items -- the business of "public relations" is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The press release was invented 98 years ago. Shel points out that 72,000 journalists have lost their jobs since 2000 and that as a result, the press release, once intended for the press, is now a primary news source in itself. The Internet allows companies to bypass news coverage, and provide information directly to its customers.

Shel is providing some case studies that show how effective press releases have been for his clients in driving business. I wonder of Shel has heard of Cluetrain -- he is making the case that the Internet allows markets to become conversations.

BlogOn Transcripts...

Amazingly, there are already transcripts for this morning's sessions online. Thanks to Mike Rowehl for these links: Defining Social Media and The Dark Side of Social Media

Initial impressions of BlogOn

BlogOn has attracted a set of very interesting attendees. In many cases the attendees know as much or more as the panelists. So why create panels in which a set of people blather on about topics in which the attendees all already agree? In other words, the conference is low value add, at least so far. Hopefully it will improve...

BlogOn 2004

Blogging from Chris Shipley's BlogOn conference. Fortunately for me the conference is being held at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley - about a 20 minute walk from my house. All conferences that I want to attend should be held here :-)

The first panel is underway and is entitled "Defining Social Media." Interesting group of speakers including James Currier (Tickle Inc), Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Michael Sikillian (Lycos), and Jim Spoher (IBM). The panel is moderated by Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. I just got here (and was a little late) so I need to start listening instead of typing :-)

Microsoft Mole?

Colly Myers almost destroyed Symbian when he was its CEO. He continues to say some of the same things (in this recent interview with The Feature) now that he leads IssueBits. According to The Feature Colly "...believes that OS-level applications have their place -- namely in extending the system level functions of a handset, but that Java applications make more sense for everything else" and he "....believes that the true mobile economy lies in services, and small Java applications are more akin to services, and more appropriate for cellular hardware / bandwidth than OS-level applications."

These are the same things that Colly, then CEO of Symbian, was saying to me two years ago, when I was the chief strategy officer for Borland trying to convince Symbian that they needed a development tools partner. Two years later, the world looks the same to me (and I guess to Colly) -- why doesn't Colly recognize that:

• High-speed, reliable bandwidth is necessary for handset service-based applications to work and we don't have that now and won't have it for 10 years;
  
• there will always be a set of applications, or at least pieces of applications, that need to be on the device, not the network, and they need to be high performance -- think Doom as an obvious example and extend from there;
  
• 80% of all Java developers use the language as a SERVER development environment, not a client development environment. There are numerous problems with the quality of Java as a client side development tool, starting with standards;
  
• and then there is the problem with the size of the development communities. There are something like 2 million Java developers in the world (that is, professional developers, paid full time to write code). 20% of them use Java for real client side applications -- so we'll be generous -- 500,000 developers. There are 5 million developers using Microsoft tools, and 80% of them use MS for client side applications. That's roughly 4 million developers.

Is Colly trying to help out Microsoft? Convincing the non-MS world to ignore the need for a native device-side application development environment is tantamount to handing the market for handheld computing devices to Redmond.

Strange advice from T-Mobile

I have recently been having some problems with one of the GSM phone on my T-Mobile family plan -- it stopped receiving SMS messages. It could make and receive calls, send SMS messages but never received messages. So I called T-Mobile customer support.

I was quickly passed the dummy script of solutions and was passed on to technical support. The technical support person asked me to shut off the phone and wait while he "adjusted some settings." In a minute he asked me to restart the phone. Sure enough messages started coming through. That was strange enough in itself but the next part was stranger.

The tech support person asked me how often in a 24 hour period did I power cycle the phone. I told him that I never turn the power off. He then recommended to me that I shut off the phone at least twice per day! He assured me that he did this himself, and that this would give me much better service. He explained that when you turn your phone on, it registers with a particular cell tower. Throughout the day you may roam around and connect to multiple towers, but the first tower remains your registration point and the way the network finds you. However, as the day goes by, more and more people register at a given tower. The most recently registered devices get the best service...

Is this making sense to anyone out there?

pulver.Communicator Beta Test

Jeff Pulver has granted special permission for me to blog about my experiences as a participant in beta test of his company's new pulver.Communicator software product which I will be doing over on my IP Inferno blog.

Powell Does San Francisco

Opening with the comment that he was surprised to see so many Republicans on the west coast, our new blogosphere member Michael Powell gave a speech tonight at an event organized by the Progress & Freedom Foundation. A few non-members seemed to have snuck in including Tim O'Reilly, Joi Ito, Craig Newmark, myself... maybe it was actually a blogger conference...

Michael's comments were fascinating. Here are a few:

he described himself as a libertarian,

effectively said that he is against government control of content in the media, though expressing his obligation to enforce the indecency act (a part of the Criminal Code, he observed, passed in the 1920s...),

stated that 80% of all spectrum (including licensed) is unused 80% of the time and that he feels more should be done to free up spectrum for varied uses,

feels that when spectrum is licensed that it should be "like a driver's license" -- that is, the government shouldn't tell companies what to do with the spectrum, "just don't kill anyone..."

on VoIP he noted that the number one thing that the industry should be focused is on avoiding the common carrier taxation present with PSTN, but that the few requirements (presumably 911 access, etc) that the government ultimately should impose will not be burdensome on this emerging technology area...

When asked whether the FCC should be abolished he commented that "this crowd is suddenly looking a lot less friendly!" But he did express frustration with the code under which the FCC had been founded...

He also mentioned that he had spent three hours with government attornies trying to explain to them why it should be OK for him to blog...

Speaking of blogging, I expect with so many bloggers attending, not to mention journalists such as Dan Gillmour, Paul Kapustka, etc. in attendence, that others will provide a more in-depth report. I'll provide links as updates when I see other's comments.

Nokia Won't Control Symbian

Graeme Wearden, writing for CNet's News.com reports that "Nokia's attempt to win a majority stake in Symbian has been blocked by three fellow shareholders that have increased their holdings in the company." Industry observer TechDirt seems to think this is a good thing, posting the comment "...it is likely a good thing for the future of Symbian, as the less it appears like a Nokia puppet, the better its chances are of winning deals."

I couldn't disagree more. The 800 lb. gorilla that Nokia must worry about in this marketplace is Microsoft. With apologies to my friend David Levin, continuing to have Symbian as a dysfunctional semi-independent entity dragged in numerous directions simultaneously by multiple licensee/owners will never result in a strong answer to the unified strength of Redmond.

2004 SDForum Visionary Awards

I had the privilege of attending the 2004 SD Forum Visionary Awards last night, in Atherton, CA. This year's honorees were Craig Barrett, Marc Benioff, John Chambers, and Scott Cook. The event honors the "business leaders shaping Silicon Valley" and in some ways the most suprising thing about the event was that, after 20 years, people like Craig Barrett and John Chambers hadn't already been recognized by the group. This is more understandable when the "SD" of SDForum is dissected -- it used to mean "Software Developers" and it clearly doesn't anymore... Scott joked in his acceptance speech that "tonight must be the revenge of the suits..." but that is getting ahead of the story.

SDForum Executive Director Laura Merling was the MC for the evening, making opening remarks and keeping things moving. She seemed a little in awe at the powers that she had brought together on one stage. Not only was the list of honorees an amazing who's who of Silicon Valley, but each person was introduced by an individual impressive in their own right.

Yahoo founder Jerry Yang was first up, introducing Craig Barret. Amongst his praiseful comments for this truly great business leader was the observation that Jerry was "jealous" of Craig because Craig had received a PhD from Stanford (Jerry dropped out to start Yahoo). It is particularly interesting to note in looking at Barret's background that he joined Intel in 1974. Thirty years with the same company is unusual in our industry, especially today.

Craig used his acceptance speech to talk about American competitiveness. He expressed concern that we are not investing enough in education or in basic research. He talked about some of the things that Intel is doing to support education and he made an interesting comparison -- he pointed out that the US Government spends the same amount of money, $5 Billion annually, on basic science research, that Intel spends on semiconductor R&D. He joked, "and Intel is just not that big of a company. On top of Intel, there is Microsoft's R&D, Cisco's, etc..." Craig also took time to rib Jerry Yang, suggesting that it would be possible for Jerry to buy that PhD he was missing from Stanford and that Craig would be happy to negotiate with Stanford on Jerry's behalf.

CNet founder Halsey Minor was up next, to introduce Marc Benioff (who was not able to attend...). Halsey told a funny story about his email to Marc after the recent SEC troubles... "I told Marc to go into his back yard, dig a deep hole and throw his blackberry and his cell phone into the hole. Then he should fill the hole up with dirt again and out of this hole an IPO would grow..." But Halsey reserved most of his time to talk about the innovative Salesforce Foundation into which Marc has dedicated 1% of the company's profits, 1% of the company's stock and asked the company's employees to donate 1% of their time. This non-profit organization is dedicated to supporting tech educational projects in public schools.

Ex-Cisco employee, and now venture capitalist Pete Solvik introduced his ex-boss John Chambers next. Pete gave quite an impressive introduction for John, pointing out that when he joined Cisco as the head of sales, the company had just $70 million in revenue. His success in growing Cisco led to his appointment as CEO in 1995, and since then, John has increased revenues from $1.2 billion to almost $19 billion. When John took the podium, he picked up where Craig Barrett had left off, expressing enormous concern for US competitiveness. In particular, he spoke against the proposed FASB rules regarding stock option expensing. He said that Cisco has done an analysis of the real value of granted stock options against the proposed FASB expensing formula over the past 10 (or 20?) years and the analysis came out showing that the proposed FASB method would have been 300% wrong. He didn't say whether that was on the high or low side... He also talked about a commitment that Cisco is making in their 20th anniversary year to dedicate a cumulative 20 years of community service -- roughly 5 hours for every Cisco employee.

Finally, venture capitalist Ann Winblad introduced Intuit founder Scott Cook. Scott was his usual modest self, although in Ann's introduction she recounted a comment that Scott had once made to her that it should be an obligation to always behave modestly even if one didn't feel modest. It was hard to watch Scott be modest in his acceptance of the award without wondering if it was only an act that he had perfected. But Scott deserves to be immodest about his accomplishments, since founding Intuit in 1983. And he took his time at the podium to talk about leadership and one's moral compass. He closed his speech and the evening with a reminiscence from Harvard Business School -- he recalled that on his last day in one particular class the professor did not provide a case to work on but spent the time discussing moral choices that we make in our lives. The professor observed that many, if not most, of the world lives from hand to mouth and is sometimes forced to make decisions that they regret morally, in order to feed their families. But he pointed out to these soon-to-be-minted business school students that they had no such issue. They were the ones that were privileged on this planet to know that they would always have the ability to provide for themselves and their families. And so there was never a time when they should face a moral question and make the wrong decision. Scott posed this lesson to all of us in the audience as well -- we are the privileged ones, and we have no excuse for not making the right moral decisions in our businesses and in our lives.

A truly impressive event, and memorable evening. Thank you to Craig, Marc, John, and Scott for your leadership and inspiration.

Rational Exuberance

Perhaps we all remember Greenspan's prescient "irrational exuberance" speech made back in 1996, before he become goggle-eyed over technology as a productivity improver... With the latest 1/4% interest rate rise and general positive comments from the Fed on the economy, can we now expect a period of rational exuberance?

While I cannot say anything in particular about companies that are presenting here at MDV, I can say that I am feeling some rational exuberance myself - silicon valley inventors are at it again and the powerful combination of factors that make this such a dynamic generator of new technology and new companies are, I think, poised to unleash some very exciting new trends...

So maybe the long boom is back?

Moto/MS Get it Right (Smartphone)

Third try is a charm, the rest of the Smartphone world should really start worrying about Microsoft now. It looks like the new Motorola MPX is going to be VERY hot. Here is a fansite with photos and a description. There are 14 pages of comments so far -- it is worth going through all the pages as "Bengalboy" answers readers questions and posts more photos of the device and its capabilities throughout... THE MOTOROLA MPX

JavaOne Blogger Meetup

I'll be at the JavaOne Blogger Meetup on Monday -- how about you?

The IM Wars

Yahoo decided to change the API for connecting to their IM service. Jim Hu of ZDNet writes "Yahoo to Trillian: Talk to the hand." Of course the change blocks other 3rd party clients such as GAIM, and the one I use on my mac Adium.

But the egg is on Yahoo's face as Trillian has already released an update to fix the problem -- according to publisher Cerulean Studios

So why continuously change the interface if it takes less than half a day for the third parties to patch their software? Someone over at Yahoo needs to get a clue -- this is a war they are going to lose. Yahoo should learn to love the 3rd parties instead of harrasing them.

Congrats to Benioff

$1.7 Billion. That is the current market cap of market innovator Salesforce.com in the second day of trading on NASDAQ. And what a coup to have scooped up the symbol CRM -- as the Wall Street Journal said, "that would be like Porsche asking for the symbol CAR." Marc and his team have proven that the application service provider model is a viable business model, if not the future of software... or should I say, the future of no software? I expect to see more companies follow in this company's footsteps.

But don't be mistaken by the name of the company or even the ticker symbol -- the magic here is not a new approach to salesforce automation of even customer relatoinship management. The secret sauce is a multi-tenant industrial strength application hosting environment. This infrastructure investment could be the launching point for hundreds or thousands of new applications - now to wait and watch Salesforce (and their development API division SForce) to see if they can break out of the narrow application specific market that they have succeeded in so far, and provide a broader platform for applications.

FCC Chairman Endorses IP Inferno

OK, not exactly. I think what he said in his keynote speech here at Supercomm was that "the IP market is on fire!" Which does sound like an endorsement of my proposition that IP is the fire burning down the traditional telecom industry..."

All quiet...

Its quiet over her because I am posting the results of Supercomm interviews over at IP Inferno... Come on over and read about the WiMAX Forum, Motia, SkyPilot, and Peerio... And more to come.

Taking the Plunge

It has only been a month since we shut down CallTrex and I have alreated started a new adventure. The good folks at Mohr, Davidow Ventures have asked me to join them as an "entrepreneur-in-residence." This is an exciting opportunity to pursue some of my own ideas and to learn more about how the venture community works, from the inside. I am here for my first day, learning about what an EIR can do to support a venture partnership. It will be an exciting few months!

Russell Beattie on Nokia

Long time mobile watcher Russell Beattie has a great post on what is wrong over at Nokia. If you follow mobile devices and Nokia in particular, this is a must read. I have only one disagreement with him -- he suggests that Nokia exit the S40 business. Its sometimes easy for gadget wonks like us to forget that most of the world still wants *free* phones -- well, subsidized by operators. Nokia has to have the world's cheapest phones in addition to the world's best phones. It is a delicate balancing act -- maintain the volume with operators and the public so you remain the most important guy on the block, but produce the best mid-range and high-end phones to earn real profits. But without the volume business, Nokia would have less distribution power for the high-profit phones. I mean, would anyone have agreed to carry N-Gage at all, if it wasn't for Nokia's overall market presence?