Category Archives: Community

Gee Whiz It’s GGG’09

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Unlimited PotentialIt’s almost time for Geeks, Gamers and Gadget lovers to converge upon Unlimited Potential’s signature event for the year.

Hundreds of tiny elves have been toiling day and night to bring GGG to Wellington once again. And if you don’t believe me, come along and check out this year’s free and hugely diverse trade show. There will also be engaging talks by local speakers from the movie effects masters of the universe at Weta Digital and games developer Sidhe.

Keynote speaker will be Bill Reichert, regarded as one of the leading lights in the Silicon Valley entrepreneur community. Along with Guy Kawasaki he founded Garage Ventures an influential early stage venture capital fund. GGG’09 kicks off at 4.30pm on Monday 24th at the St James Theatre in Courtenay Place.

Find out more about the event and sign up here:

http://www.up.org.nz/ggg-09/

..and if that wasn’t enough, next week Unlimited Potential is bringing you a fairytale event that turns the tables on local investors and puts them in the hot seat. So if you want to find out what dragons and angels look for in a technology investment, check out this event:

http://www.up.org.nz/damsels-den/

Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

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seedlingI can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve attended recently where I was involved in explaining the importance of having an entrepreneurial ecosystem within which to grow high value technology ventures. Unfortunately it can be hard work explaining why social capital is important when people are focused solely on linear metrics.

Recently I was inspired by a great success story that powerfully underlined my long held belief that building healthy communities and networks is an essential aspect of cultivating an entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is especially so in New Zealand where we are disadvantaged by our distance from the major consumer and capital markets of the world. But that disadvantage can be overcome by leveraging the creative boundaries where local networks overlap with those offshore.

Networks have  multiplier effects, as witnessed by the density of economic activity found in Silicon Valley. By building and maintaining social capital in our local technology sector we are establishing the pre-conditions for new economic life and the basis for small seedlings to grow into very large Kauri trees. But it takes time, 5 to 7 years for a good idea to develop into a viable business and then emerge as a high growth venture. Unfortunately this timeframe can be a problem for sponsoring organisations which rely on political support for their existence.

Investors in technology start-ups typically take a 5 to 10 year view of how much time will be required to launch, grow and then exit a high value business. But securing investment in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that underpins such ventures can be highly problematic because social capital is intangible and cannot be transacted. However, building the ecosystem is about making the pie bigger for everyone. Please consider supporting initiatives such as Unlimited Potential and Global Entrepreneurship Week if we come knocking at your door.

Where’s the Vision?

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If there is a change of organisational leadership within a business, one of the first tasks of the new leader is to review what values the organisation stands for. New ventures must also begin with a vision as a foundational building block. So when a new government comes to power you would think that this would be a project of some urgency for politicians. But neither the National government nor its predecessor have ever made any attempt to articulate exactly what we stand for as a nation.

The net result of this lack of leadership has been that policy-making is driven by subjective advice at departmental level, but without any central overriding objective in mind. This environment is a fertile breeding ground for politically correct personal agendas and is the basis for much of what is wrong about our public service. And whilst it may be the case that public agencies retain the specialist expertise needed by Cabinet to make decisions, it is not their role to set aspirational goals for the nation as a whole. That is the role of our leadership in consultation with the wider community.

In a country such as ours endowed with considerable natural beauty and a rich diversity of culture it seems almost irresponsible not to have a clear vision on the way forward. Instead we are continually burdened by short term decision-making neccessitated by petty politics and regional self interest. The media circus in Mt. Albert and the lack of due process around the “super city” debate spring immediately to mind. In stark contrast, Pres. Obama seems to have taken the bull by the horns in terms of re-stating what America stands for in a global context. I hope Mr Key accepted some advice on the matter during their phone exchange last week.

What is your vision for New Zealand?

Rural Towns Left to Wither

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I had occasion to head home to the provinces for a family visit last weekend. What always strikes me is the character of the little towns along the way. Some of them have been dying off for years, only kept alive of late by the fact that the surrounding rural economy has been booming. But with commodity prices plunging, the underlying support from dairy (and oil) is falling away.

If city dwellers are feeling the pinch now, spare a thought for the rural towns. For some, almost nothing has changed since the 1950s. Their central business districts generally comprise a petrol station, convenience store and a public bar. Now with falling trade even some of the pubs and petrol stations have passed on. Weeds creep insidiously through gaping holes in ramshackle corrugated iron fences that surround overflowing car wrecking yards and the odd farm machinery repair workshop. It’s not rustic or charming, it’s decay; and it’s a testament to how decades of questionable government economic policy has left such towns unimproved.

The one beacon of hope amongst this desolation is the local school. Tidy, manicured grounds surround the elderly buildings, replete in yet another coat of standard issue Ministry paint. The school is the last remaining focus point for the community. But even the school is at risk as roll numbers dwindle and the same Ministry casts its bureaucratic ruler over the books. Not even community pride in the school can prevent the young people from leaving town as soon as they are able – there is nothing to hold them.

Some of the troubles faced by rural towns are simply geographical. No amount of government intervention can compensate for poor soil, challenging climate or remoteness. For those towns that do not have viticulture or glaciers or fishing quota, the future looks rather bleak. On a broader front, the withering of our small towns is related to the fact that New Zealand in general continues to lag behind in GDP per capita. There is simply not enough cash to go around, largely because we have underinvested in innovation as a nation. Our small provincial towns are a metaphor for the wider economy.

I mentioned that education is a beacon of hope, there was also another glimmer of light on the horizon last week. McKinsey run an annual exercise involving mapping global innovation. Auckland was the only New Zealand city that was polled, but it showed up in the top left corner of the data as a “hot spring” of innovation. In other words we are registering more technology patents each year, but only in a small number of areas. Now, it turns out that bubbling hot springs generally host a thriving microcosm of life. On that basis investing in science and technology innovation as a means to generate economic wealth seems like a good idea. So why is the government heading in the opposite direction?

Power to the Tweeple

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Last week’s “blackout” protest was a lesson in how readily Internet technology can be used to disintermediate traditional sources of information and motivate a community to action. It also showed how quickly informed debate can be subsumed by a vocal minority making clever use of the very same technology.

Recently I suggested that Twitter might one day seed a political revolution. Now Twitter users in New Zealand have put that theory to test by calling for others to black out all their online profiles (and blogs) in order to raise awareness of a protest against amendments to the Copyright Act. The section 92A amendment was originally proposed to counter illegal downloads of copyrighted material and supposedly places the onus on ISPs to disconnect offenders upon accusation.

I say “supposedly” because I have yet to locate a complete rendition of the new legislation. In fact an examination of numerous “prominent” blog sites that are supporting the protest fails to reveal any links to the complete text of the amended Act. So we are taking it completely on trust regarding their interpretation of the wording of the amendment. But there was an even more disturbing aspect to the manner in which this protest was conducted.

Spreading the word about the protest through viral means such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook has turned out to be hugely successful, with global media and some prominent individuals picking up on the event. But my heart sank when I read a tweet from an over enthusiastic supporter who suggested that Twitter users should “unfollow” anyone who didn’t conform to the blackout mandate. I wonder if anyone noticed the irony?

S92A is certainly an unjust and poorly drafted piece of legislation that both impacts on personal freedoms and has facist bully-boy overtones. Yet calls for the black-listing of non-protestors shows the same level of crass indifference as demonstrated by the politicians who drafted the amendment in the first place. Join our cause or suffer the consequences? So it was with some sense of relief that I discovered that at least one popular blog site has set up a forum to allow both sides in this argument to express some viewpoints. Some informed debate, including a discussion about the experience of other countries in such matters, would be refreshing at this point. Isn’t that how intellectual communities find consensus and move forward together in an open society?

Bloggers PredICT Event ’09

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Unlimited Potential is kicking off the New Year in fine style with its annual Bloggers Predict event. Bookmark Tues 27th January and start contributing your own predictions by adding some comments below.

Our picks for this year:

1. 2009 will be the year of the community exemplified by the growth of enterprise use of Web 2.0. The most successful cloud applications, blog sites and gaming venues will be those that cultivate an active community of interest around their services. “The network creates the value”. The same applies to real life communities such as UP!

2. Twitter will blossom as an important mainstream social media application provided it addresses capacity constraints, manages spam and adopts a business model that does not disenfranchise users. Likely to receive an attractive takeover offer, but may choose not to sell initially.

3. The first generation of (real) semantic web applications will emerge in 2009 in response to user needs to organise ever increasing amounts of web based content. Applying semantic search to real business problems will be the focus for developers and investors.

4. Plunging commodity prices and declining consumption will hurt investment in recycling and other clean technologies and will shift the media debate away from green issues. Creation of web-based problem solving technologies around water conservation and energy management will leap to the fore however.

5. Gesture driven multi-touch interfaces such as Fingertapps (that we featured at W2W) will be adopted increasingly in a variety of electronic consumer goods and services.

6. Our domain registrar site iWantMyName will experience huge growth on the basis of its easy functionality and through the deployment of innovative value added services during 2009.

So…post your own predictions below, register for the event and see you there on Tues 27th Jan.