Commentary – Page 76

Government Response to MATRIX

If you want a AAC file recorded from this event, grab it here (14MB, 30 minutes). The guts of this is about developing support for Industry-led Innovation Communities. Something like @digitalcircle is trying to do. 1. Establishment of a Government Innovation Gateway. In essence a portal to help local Industry Led Innovation Communities (IICs). It … Continue reading “Government Response to MATRIX”

If you want a AAC file recorded from this event, grab it here (14MB, 30 minutes).

The guts of this is about developing support for Industry-led Innovation Communities. Something like @digitalcircle is trying to do.

1. Establishment of a Government Innovation Gateway.
In essence a portal to help local Industry Led Innovation Communities (IICs). It has the potential to reduce Red Tape. This is key to some of the IREP recommendations on simplifying the offerings. It’s going to be another website.

2. Developing Support Mechanisms to IICs.
Mentions fast-tracking support for R&D&I and a programme of dispersal of risk. Without any detail at the moment and probably sensitive at the moment post-IREP.
Competence Centres
Collaborative Networks Programme
Nothing mentioned about Digital Media and Software.

3. Enhanced Role for Further Education Sector in IICs
Involvement of FE in IICs to be encouraged. I’d go a step further and say it should be mandated – not as a pressure on the IIC, but as a deliberate instruction for the college. Colleges should be mandated to get involved. At the moment Innovation Vouchers are the answer here but there’s not enough College involvement for my liking.

4. New approach to public procurement to encourage innovation in Northern Ireland Industry
More focus on Pre-Commercial Procurement and development of market opportunities in the local market. This may go somewhat towards fixing the issue of our taxpayer money being spent on large company services outside NI when perfectly good small companies inside NI exist – just hampered by the red tape.

End of the day, this sets out a 2-3 year plan. This is not going to be quick or easy. Tragedy is that this stuff needed “several months of cross-Departmental collaboration” and represents “a true focus by all Departments”. An “Inter-Departmental Group of senior officials was established” to produce this response..

MATRIX was formed in February 2007. So, we’re nearly 3 years into it already. It’s designed to be focussing on improving the state of the economy in tech and science for the region. It’s meant to be giving Northern Ireland the “edge” in industry – turning the region into a successful high-tech economy. The Minister re-iterated that our competition is not between Belfast and Derry, or Belfast and Armagh or Armagh and Derry – but against other economic regions. It’s designed to help reward collaboration between industry and education. Implementation is already underway – but who are the implementors?

The Innovation Community spotlighted was the Global Wind Alliance. It’s not clear if they’re meant to be a n example to follow – because they were in place before this new strategy

I’d suggest that more needs to be done to encourage blue-sky work. We see very little of it in local businesses and yet the Universities are criticised for doing too much blue-sky (non-industry-focussed) research. We need to be doing more to bring these guys together. The blue-sky vision of academics tempered into keen opportunity by enthused entrepreneurs. Do we need 3 years to put that in place?

Movember Day 17

Another quick #Movember update. If you’re feeling flush, then pop along to my sponsorship site and throw some cash in there. It’s for prostate cancer; one of the ‘it won’t happen to me’ afflictions. We’re now on Day 17 of the month and the moustache is starting to get uncomfortable. Owning a Mo means a … Continue reading “Movember Day 17”

We’re now on Day 17 of the month and the moustache is starting to get uncomfortable. Owning a Mo means a lot more work. You become concerned with the appearance of it and find it necessary to carefully trim to keep it even – never mind the absolutely necessary trimming to keep the hairs out of your mouth. I have become concerned whether the Mo needs some sort of conditioner to soften the spiky bristles which make up male facial hair and I do fret a little that it’s not harbouring morsels from my last meal. It’s really a lot of stress.

But without further ado, I present to you, Mo17.

Workplace 2010

Workplace 2010 is an initiative within the Civil Service. I recently met with Mark Bennett, who works for the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) and is specifically charged with OpenDataNI along with a team of talented anarchists within the walls of the Civil Service. Mark took the time to show me around Clare House … Continue reading “Workplace 2010”

I took a short video:

This shows some of the facilities, including the circular meeting rooms, a glimpse of some of the ‘standing room’ for visitors as well as the copious amounts of hot-desking space and collaboration areas. This, a booth not dissimilar to that found in a restaurant, was my favourite:

A booth with ethernet, power and a monitor. Plenty of room to spread out or work with someone. Perfick!

Did I mention the entire place was flooded with WiFi? (BTOpenZone so not perfect but still, progress, and from somewhere you would not expect).

Day 9 of Mo Gro

I’ve been growing this Mo for charity for 9 days now and I’m still not struck on it. Is it that it grows both grey and ginger, betraying the fact that I’m a secret ginge and also an old fart? Being a Mo owner has it’s responsibilities and it is my opinion that those who … Continue reading “Day 9 of Mo Gro”

I’ve been growing this Mo for charity for 9 days now and I’m still not struck on it. Is it that it grows both grey and ginger, betraying the fact that I’m a secret ginge and also an old fart?

Being a Mo owner has it’s responsibilities and it is my opinion that those who volunteer to have a Mo tend to be the more vain of men. It takes work to keep it balanced and level. It takes more effort than maintaining beard, more effort than being clean-shaven.

I find I look very “English” with a Mo. Probaly because my Philtrum is freakishly long compared to some of my other Mo Bros.

Mo – Two days later

Cleanshaven other than the Selleck I’m aiming for. You can still donate to the Movember charity using this link. The charity is all about Prostate Cancer in Men and awareness of male health issues. Related posts: Movember update Growing a Mo for charity Sponsor my Daughter. Please. An email sent to a senior person in … Continue reading “Mo – Two days later”

Cleanshaven other than the Selleck I’m aiming for.

You can still donate to the Movember charity using this link. The charity is all about Prostate Cancer in Men and awareness of male health issues.

I’m so full of interesting information, I feel like the latest edition of something or other.

It’s been a while since I blogged and it’s entirely because of keeping confidences. Last week was the culmination of a lot of planning, a lot of thinking. Some of it started the previous week, when John Hartnett of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) had a meeting with InvestNI, QUB, the University of Ulster … Continue reading “I’m so full of interesting information, I feel like the latest edition of something or other.”

It’s been a while since I blogged and it’s entirely because of keeping confidences.

Last week was the culmination of a lot of planning, a lot of thinking. Some of it started the previous week, when John Hartnett of the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) had a meeting with InvestNI, QUB, the University of Ulster and, at my insistence, Momentum and Digital Circle. But part of it started 90 days previous, when David Kirk asked me to participate in putting together a document which would form the framework of what we thought needed to happen in Northern Ireland’s technology landscape. Even more relevantly, it started back in February this year when we had the audacity to travel to Cupertino and make a pitch to Apple Inc about the talent and innovation available in Northern Ireland. All of this, from pitch to pitch, has made great dividends for Northern Ireland.

Fail Fast, Fail Often
For my part, at a meeting last Thursday with John Hartnett and John Gilmore, both of the ITLG, I pitched for Digital Circle and my pitch was simple. I want an onion skin approach to involvement with our cousins in the ITLG. I want to start by getting them to take notice of the companies in the digital content and software sector. I want to ask their help in identifying real world opportunities and, in many cases, we want them to help us to fail fast and fail often. This will be the first groundswell of culture change in Northern Ireland which regards failures as something to be despised (and only marginally less palatable than successes).

Get Involved
I also want them to use their experience and presence to advise those ideas which survive the fail test and nurture them. This can be as shallow or as deep as required. In truth, I would hope this would range from a couple of hours a month spent on Skype giving out advice to face-to-face visits in order to secure a small amount of equity. And if things worked out and the people involved liked each other, the individuals would have opportunity to become intimately involved with the company, joining the board, investing, becoming a de-facto salesman for the company as they move in their circles.

This isn’t going to happen overnight, but it ties well into some of the things we came up with in the document I contributed to which has become known as “NISW”. I’m putting a lot of effort into this, even outside of the day job, because it’s the way forward for the sector and, to be honest, in 18 months I’ll be looking for a job and I’ll want a process like this in place already for whatever I do next.

As for the confidences – I’m yet to see an announcement so I can’t say anything at all about them. But what I can say is that I am looking to meet up with the smartest folk in the province, with the best ideas and the biggest vision. And I’ll put them in touch with the first layer of the onion and we’ll see if we can create something amazing?

Coolest Brand: iPhone. And soon on Orange and Voda.

Hot on the tail of Orange announcing they have secured the iPhone onto their network, Vodafone have also announced they’ll be joining the Apple tsunami. Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, has said that not having the iPhone was a key reason why the operator lost 159,000 customers in its latest quarter. O2 dropped the ball … Continue reading “Coolest Brand: iPhone. And soon on Orange and Voda.”

Hot on the tail of Orange announcing they have secured the iPhone onto their network, Vodafone have also announced they’ll be joining the Apple tsunami.

Vittorio Colao, Vodafone’s chief executive, has said that not having the iPhone was a key reason why the operator lost 159,000 customers in its latest quarter.

O2 dropped the ball by keeping the iPhone pricing high and seems to have hinged it’s hopes on the Palm Pre which it unleashes on the network on October 16th. The Pre has awareness in probably 1% of the UK and their App Catalog policy seems to be as bad, if not worse, than Apple’s.

It’s going to be a tough battle for the Pre in the UK, of course, with Apple holding 3 of the top 5 brands (according to CoolBrands) and iPhone being currently the #1 brand in the UK. Certainly the iPhone has penetrated suburbia – at a house party at the weekend, nearly half the attendees had iPhones and the rest were a mix of Nokia and Blackberry devices (and a smattering of lesser manufacturer fashionphones). And this was not a geek party – it was a party of bankers, firemen, teachers, HR personnel and homemakers (and I was the only geek there).

The investment that people put into their apps is an anchor to a platform. This worked well for Windows back in the day as people couldn’t do without certain apps and it was hard to convince them to re-buy their apps on the Mac (or just do without on Linux or BSD). The same goes for the iPhone. Some people have hundreds (or even thousands) of pounds worth of apps on their iPod touch and iPhone devices – it’s going to be hard to convince them to move to another platform and their loyalty to iPhone will now start to convince hold-outs who resisted the iPhone due to the networks it was available on. After that – once they’ve bought one Apple device, it won’t be long until they buy another. That’s the halo effect in operation.

There’s no need for VC in the UK. Apparently.

Richard Tyler of The Telegraph writes how “Public venture funds make very little difference”. This is based upon a report by the British Venture Capital Association and NESTA and it states the following points: Britain has no untapped reservoir of high-growth companies starved of venture capital This is a contentious point at best. Does this … Continue reading “There’s no need for VC in the UK. Apparently.”

Britain has no untapped reservoir of high-growth companies starved of venture capital

This is a contentious point at best. Does this mean that either there is overfunding or, as is my opinion, there is no supply chain of deal flow to provide venture funds with suitable startups?

…when companies receive investment from one of various publicly backed venture funds, the change in their performance is only “modest” compared with the step change seen when a private fund invests.

This speaks volumes about the sort of folk who are hired to manage public venture funds. Either they’re not very good investment managers or they don’t treat public-backed venture funds with the same attention or respect as private money. So – examine what the problem is there.

The report says: “Companies that are recipients of funding under one or more of the government hybrid funding schemes examined do not yet exhibit significantly better performance. This suggests that the UK does not posses an untapped resource of high potential firms whose (greater) performance will be unleashed by simply making available more equity finance within the ‘equity gap’.

Or alternatively, the way that government funds are managed is not suitable for young startups. The equity gap exists for the average startup at several positions in their life – initial seed, business growth, market share expansion. It is my opinion that the earliest stage equity gap means that many companies are unable to take advantage of venture funding due to poor engagement from the VC market and, frankly, red tape barriers for access to public funds. Understanding that we, the people, are responsible for this red tape is important but a small percentage of wasted funds if placed in the hands of a blame-averse (as opposed to a risk-averse) seed capital, would reap significant rewards.

The report also confirms the anecdotal impression that venture funding is a poor way for Government and the regional development agencies to create jobs.

Is this really all about jobs? I would have hoped that this would seriously be about generating wealth – not just making sure that people are sitting in offices. Northern Ireland has had a disastrous history of selling itself short as a cheap place for a call centre. We don’t need to inspire people to take low level internships – we need people to think bigger.

Paul Graham at TechCrunch50

Paul Graham at TechCrunch50: “How does it all work, what’s the insides like. And so you have to ask a lot of questions. People never seem to answer all the questions pre-emptivey in the presentation so you gotta ask a lot of questions.” TC50 and Paul Graham from sarah lacy on Vimeo. I’ve been following … Continue reading “Paul Graham at TechCrunch50”

Paul Graham at TechCrunch50:

“How does it all work, what’s the insides like. And so you have to ask a lot of questions.

People never seem to answer all the questions pre-emptivey in the presentation so you gotta ask a lot of questions.”

TC50 and Paul Graham from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

I’ve been following Paul and Y-Combinator for a while. There’s parts of their business model that I really admire – something I’d like to steal for businesses in Northern Ireland.

One of the things I admire about Y-Combinator is that they haven’t had any major successes but they still plug on. Paul reckons justin.tv or Loopt might have that global potential but the point is, they’re willing to take a chance even on projects which might not immediately have world-conquering potential. That said – a heap of their companies have been heavily funded or acquired which, by any stretch of the imagination would be a success for indigenous companies. Companies like reddit, Scribd, Dropbox, Posterous or others from their portfolio show they’re simply willing to give startups a chance.

SonySpeak about PSPMinis

Sony on Games Development for the PSP Mini One of the first things we tried to do with our new approach is lower the barrier to entry by bringing down the kit prices to about 80 per cent. The second thing we’ve done is take an approach on how people applied to be part of … Continue reading “SonySpeak about PSPMinis”

Sony on Games Development for the PSP Mini

One of the first things we tried to do with our new approach is lower the barrier to entry by bringing down the kit prices to about 80 per cent.

The second thing we’ve done is take an approach on how people applied to be part of the PSP development program – it’s a very open approach, definitely, but there’s still a [selection] process because you do need a dev kit.
…
On that website, all developers really have to do is explain their game and their company and very quickly we give them accessibility to the platform. That includes access to technology sites before they even commit to buying a development kit, so they can spec what they want to do.
So, incentive-wise, this is more a case of Sony reducing the barriers to entry more than anything else.
…
Right now, we’re looking for a good portfolio of games. Unlike with the App Store, we’re looking to support everyone that develops for us, instead of leaving developers out in the wilderness. We’re not immediately interested in giving developers free access and no help.

There are dangers in having total open access; having six thousand applications where probably only thirty are discovered by the consumer. Some of the developers working on the App Store and PSP Minis tell us that they prefer our approach because they get more visibility.

So, this is about reducing the barriers. If you’re one of the chosen few. So you get increased visibility. Among others of the chosen few. Who get barriers reduced. And because of this we’re better than the AppStore.

I think you’ve been very clear, Mister Sony Man.