Category Archives: Innovation

W2W Tech Showcase Gains Traction

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Unlimited PotentialUnlimited Potential’s W2W is the only event that brings together New Zealand’s technology innovators, entrepreneurs and investors under one roof for a half day of demos, presentations and networking. W2W attracted a stellar speaker line-up this year as well as increased interest from the investor community.

W2W is all about strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for emerging tech firms by facilitating conversations between ICT researchers, business entrepreneurs and technology investors. The event focuses on specially chosen emerging ventures that have the potential to scale globally.

Entrepreneur presenters included Dan Lee, who discussed Beetil an I.T. management and compliance SaaS product and Jody Bullen from Yonix who provide software for business analysts. Both Lee and Bullen are recently arrived skilled migrants, underlining the importance of migrants to the regional economy. John Mitchell showed off Learning Source, a great tool that helps manage and administer training programmes, and Ben Nolan demonstrated the impressive capabilities of digital rendering software Indigorenderer.

Keynote speaker for the event was local hero Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, and one of the world’s most influential tech bloggers. Richard spoke about how he operates a virtual business. Other speakers included entrepreneur and author Ben Young and John Watt nanotechnology researcher and New Zealand Young Scientist of the Year.

Support for W2W’09 by Wellington City Council, Grow Wellington, UK Trade & Investment, Summer of Code, CafeNet, VicLink and iWantMyName was greatly appreciated. If you would like to support W2W 2010, please contact Unlimited Potential co-chair and W2W event project manager Paul Spence:  paul [at} up [dot) org (dot} nz

Ready, Fire, Aim – How Kiwi Culture Impacts Value Creation

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Despite exceptional rates of entrepreneurialism and a highly innovative culture, New Zealand continues to lag in terms of economic performance. But a new study commissioned by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise points to some of our self limiting cultural attributes.

Being a nation built upon successive waves of largely working class migrants, it comes as no surprise that practical self reliance and a tendency to under-value intellectual assets and capabilities, feature strongly in our national psyche. Sometimes the very attributes that make us strong, can also be our undoing.

Perhaps that it is why I have found it refreshing to work with some recently arrived skilled migrants. It has forced me to confront some of my own self-limiting behaviours and to adjust my success horizon. In fact it has challenged me to redefine exactly what success looks like.

The NZT&E report suggests that it’s not just about working smarter to create more economic value, it’s also about capturing that value. It is not sufficient simply to be innovative (which we are already). I think what they are trying to say is that we undervalue the intangible assets like intellectual property and customer relationships.

The report author proposes adding value by not only addressing the cultural peculiarities that sometimes afflict us but also by ensuring that we create value through other channels such as licensing and transfer of intellectual assets. For example at ideegeo we not only provide domain management through iWantMyName, but we also license out the software to other registrars.

It is also suggested in the study that we have deeply embedded cultures within our organisations and a “commodity trading psyche” that sometimes impedes us from getting to know our offshore customers. We need to get better at relationship building. Perhaps the producers of goods, targetted by this report, could learn from how web based businesses create value through open communication environments, knowledge-sharing and the construction of social capital as a means to building intangible value within business.

W2W Taking Kiwi Tech Global

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Unlimited PotentialIts that time again already. Next week’s Wellington to the World event (W2W) picks up where the inaugural event left off in 2008.

W2W is the leading annual showcase for New Zealand’s digital innovation at a time when strengthening our entrepreneurial ecosystem has never been more important and topical. The event gathers technology innovators, entrepreneurs and investors for product pitches, new ideas and networking.

The theme for the event is “Going Global with Your Tech Business”. If you are a technology entrepreneur or investor you should be at this event. Speakers include Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb and one of the world’s most influential tech bloggers. Nanotechnology researcher and Young Scientist of the Year, John Watt will also be there. MC for the half day event is Ben Young, author, entrepreneur and marketing wunderkind.

Registration is essential. You can find programme details here:

http://up.org.nz/w2w09/

Animation Digerati Illuminate Capital

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As an already highly respected world centre for games, animation and visual effects, it is only fitting that our capital city plays host to AnimFX ’09, an event that has emerged as an increasingly noteworthy gathering amongst the global digital animation and movie effects community. 

The main conference programme kicks off on Friday November 6th and includes talks by none other than Weta Workshop founder Richard Taylor. His colleague Matt Aitken, who was visual effects supervisor for District 9, will also be speaking. If that weren’t enough, the impressive international line-up includes Sander Schwartz, formerly president of Warner Brothers Animation, and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences stalwart Jeff Okun who masterminded the terrifying “nano-bots” in the most recent rendition of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Having such luminaries under one roof represents a huge opportunity for the New Zealand industry to form valuable network linkages into what is arguably the entertainment production capital of the world. Now in its fourth year, success stories from previous AnimFX event remind us how important it is for local technology firms to reach out globally and incidentally how we can leverage our natural attributes to lure highly acclaimed individuals to our shores.

W2W’09 is another event that aims to build capability and connect technology entrepreneurs globally. Focussing on web-based and ICT enabled ventures, W2W runs on the afternoon of 17th November. More about this next week…

ION e-Letter August/September 2009

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GeniusNet is proud to host the ION e-Letter. ION is New Zealand’s original virtual community for innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors. ION is kindly supported by EGL and Revera.

 EGLRevera

W2W W0W

The magic that is Wellington to the World returns on the 17th of November. Unlimited Potential are once again managing this annual technology showcase aimed at further cultivating the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Included in this year’s stellar speaker line-up are Read Write Web founder Richard MacManus, McDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year John Watt and Ben Young author, entrepreneur and social media guru. The event revolves around pitches from local tech entrepreneurs and presentations from the cutting edge of ICT research.

The central theme for W2W is “going global from New Zealand” so video content from the event is circulated to KEA‘s global network. Entrepreneurs from last year actually received phone calls from investors in the United States after seeing the online video content. Business intelligence software developer Futrix secured direct assistance from W2W co-sponsor UKTI to establish a market presence in Europe, after they presented at last year’s event.

Registrations are essential for this key event that aims to build bridges between technology innovators, entrepreneurs and investors.

http://www.up.org.nz/w2w09/

EDTalks Symposium

If you are planning to head to the capital for W2W, why not stay on for EdTalks the following day? The symposium will attract educators and officialdom from around New Zealand to hear about technology, learning, creativity and innovation. The programme looks great if you are in this field.

http://www.core-ed.net/edtalks-symposium

Icehouse Fast Pitch 2009

Fast Pitch is a real-life Dragon’s Den style business pitch competition for Kiwi entrepreneurs. Last year’s winner of the Best Funding Opportunity for Investors category was Sam Ng from Wellington. His company, Optimal Workshop, develops specialised feedback to enable software developers a way of getting and following-up feedback from end users. The programme offers pitching workshops and personal coaching and is great value at only $85.

Multicore Computing MiniConf

Interested in multicore and parallel computing? Come along to the MiniConf at the Linux conference in January. Multicore and parallel computing is an emerging area that promises to spawn some of the high growth businesses of the future. If you are a technology entrepreneur or investor, computing science researcher or software developer, the miniconf may well be of interest.

iwantmynameION Spotlight – Beetil

Beetil is a web-based service management solution by Wellington developers YouDo. Based around the ITIL framework, Beetil provides a seamless and easy to use framework for I.T. support and compliance. YouDo co-founder Dan Lee says that Beetil simplifies service management for small and medium enterprises who aren’t looking for a highly complex system. Beetil not only handles fault management, but also compliance around software changes. Users can also control customer access permissions through a unique portal set-up.

http://www.beetil.com/

Got an enterprising Kiwi tech story to share? I want your name! ION Spotlight is kindly supported by iWantMyName New Zealand’s most innovative global domain registrar.

ION Homepage Makeover

In case you have been wondering what has happened to our homepage – fear not. During October we plan to spend some time tidying up the site and returning it to its former glory. In the meantime you can still reach the ION forum here.

Got an event or story related to innovation or entrepreneurship in New Zealand? We’d love to place it in our bi-monthly newsletter. Reply to this blog or catch up on Twitter @GeniusNet.

BB Build Begs Benefits

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It is certainly a relief to finally see some leadership from the government in terms of their expectations around the broadband rollout. But in 5-10 years time when the project is finally complete will we have found a way to leverage this huge investment of public funds?

Industry ginger groups are being politely optimistic about the plan but it remains to be seen for how long the honeymoon lasts. Telecommunications is a highly political arena with many vested interests. Indications that the Crown Fibre Holding company will remain a Crown entity rather than a commercial state owned enterprise are certainly encouraging however; because the last thing we need is the new network being flogged off to an incumbent player or other foreign controlled interests at some point in the future.

But what are we going to use high speed broadband networks for once they are built? One would like to think that there will be more lofty social benefits than facilitating faster access to pornography, violent online games and moronic TV shows. Of course despite all the clamour by telcos and their equipment suppliers for a bite of the apple, we have never yet seen a properly articulated explanation of exactly what the social and economic return will be.

That aside, there is a wonderful window of opportunity for the government here. Surely we now need to provide an innovation challenge to stimulate the development of novel online services? Imagine how many creative new start-up companies could be kick-started. It seems glaringly obvious, but this aspect of the plan appears to have been somewhat overlooked as the government instead heavily promotes cowshit and tourism as our economic saviours.

There is another issue that has been overlooked as well. Until New Zealand gets access to better bandwidth and some decent competition on networks across the Pacific,  improving domestic connectivity is likely to have only a limited overall effect on economic growth.

Govt Aims to Improve Science Dialogue

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The Prime Ministerial advisor on science, Prof. Peter Gluckman is hoping to facilitate a better dialogue both within the science community and between scientists and the New Zealand government. He may have an uphill climb ahead of him.

In a recent radio interview Gluckman made it clear that his brief was simply to provide advice and to act as a translator to both government and public on science issues, it was not his role to become involved in politics. But when pressed on the subject of why the National government killed both the Fast Forward initiative and the R&D tax incentive scheme, he refused to comment. This suggests that (at least in public) he will be obliged to moderate his tone on some topics.

Professor Gluckman said better scientific literacy was required across the whole of society because we were having to deal with more complex issues such as climate change and the ever increasing impact of technology on our personal lives. He also indicated that it was his view that the science funding system was overly competitive and that this was dampening creativity; perhaps foreshadowing some much needed change in this area.

Prime Minister John Key recently gave a speech on economic direction. It was clearly signalled that, in terms of science research, the government is now primarily interested in supporting the agricultural sector as a bridge to greater economic prosperity. Unfortunately that confines us to a future of increasing pastoral pollution, high carbon output and enslavement to commodity prices that continually devalue in real terms.

But Gluckman agrees with his colleague Paul Callaghan that science must remain “an integral part of the innovation system” and that we need more high tech companies like Navman, Rakon and Weta Digital. If we are to improve economic productivity then science needs to connect with business, both within New Zealand and abroad, he stated. It will be interesting to see if he can similarly persuade the Prime Minister.

How Safe is Your Digital Identity?

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iwantmyname_logo_50The ongoing saga around the threatened discontinuation of url shortener tr.im plus the recent DOS attacks on Twitter are chilling reminders that your personal data is far from secure on the Internet. It also raises philosophical questions about the transient nature of knowledge on the Web. So where should we turn?

It’s a little unclear whether or not the tr.im panic was reality or just a cleverly orchestrated publicity stunt, but it doesn’t matter. What this incident reminds us is that when it comes to Internet content, we are all at the whim of the service providers. Whether it be business data, webmail, blogs, images or short links, if your favourite free service tanks – it can cause a lot of disruption.

Much of the trust we place in hosted web services hinges on the assumption that they will remain in perpetuity. Furthermore, we like to believe that such services are secure and that our personal data will not be abused. Are those fair assumptions? Even the big guys have server downtime and most don’t publish monthly reports on their financial stability. How can we feel confident that the best interests of end users are being served?

Don’t get me wrong. I like using services in the cloud and I’m 99% happy with what they provide. I also think tr.im is a very neat and user-friendly product and I’m sure they will find a way forward. However, it is a fairly straightforward exercise to set up your own personal url shortener service within your own branded domain name. Over at iWantMyName we’ve come up with a list of providers who can help you set up your own url shortener service. In some cases these services offer link portability – but you must own your own domain to do this.

But what if the domain name system (DNS) itself gets taken down? Well never say never. What we do know is that, despite it’s failings, the DNS system keeps chugging along and has done so for many years. It also has a powerful and well resourced regulatory body. The strength of the domain registration industry business model should ensure its longevity, unlike some other service offerings on the Web. So if you want to properly protect and control your digital identity, find an ethical, user-centric and innovative domain registrar such as iWantMyName and secure the web domains that you need.

Update – here’s a great article from LifeHacker assessing risks in the cloud:

http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing

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.

Innovate at the Point of Pain

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I get a lot of ideas across my desk and I’ve learnt the hard way that you need to question everything before offering to back someone else’s idea with your own reputation. One of the first questions I ask aspiring technology entrepreneurs is – what is the problem you are trying to solve?

This may seem like an obvious question but you would be surprised how many projects are launched on the basis of a good idea rather than upon a soundly researched market. It pays to question the market data as well because, after spending hundreds of hours on development, an enthusiastic technologist will do just about anything to justify their emotional investment in a product.

Many great ventures began as a personal point of pain for the founder. But the ones that survived were those that actually identified a mass market and then went on to execute well. A good idea on its own is not enough and the fact that there is “no competition” is not a selling point either. You need competitors for benchmarking and to validate that a market really exists.

For example at ideegeo we made a conscious decision to build a domain registrar site that rejected traditional norms of presentation because we observed that a lot of people really disliked having to grapple with poor navigation and invasive advertising found on other sites. Although the product caters for a design-centric niche user base, it turned out to be a winner because other companies approached us to help them improve their own offering.

Before you write a line of code or partition off your first protein molecule, ask yourself – where is the point of pain? What is the problem that you are trying to solve and are there a million other consumers out there who are suffering the same pain? If you can answer that question objectively and in the affirmative, you might just have a successful product on your hands.