Prime Time for iPredict

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I was so pleased to see iPredict’s Matt Burgess fronting up on the TV3 Leaders Debate this week with a demo of a political market trend forecast using their software product. Getting their website address in front of a few hundred thousand eyeballs won’t have done them any harm at all.

I’m pleased for two reasons. Firstly, Matt is a good guy, with an intriguing product and is doing a great job as CEO of iPredict in getting the company market recognition through media, events and the web. Secondly, it validates our decision to select him as one of the presenters at the Unlimited Potential Wellington to the World event on Friday. iPredict fitted our definition perfectly in that they had a novel and scalable global opportunity but still with a relatively low profile. Moreover, iPredict is a great example of academic research that has crossed over into the mainstream business arena.

In fact the first half of our show on Friday is devoted to linking academia with entrepreneurs and investors downtown. It’s an area that we have traditionally struggled with in New Zealand. Academics normally deliver to other academics and are focussed on building a body of research during their careers. Commercialisation of research is generally a secondary consideration. That’s a shame, because more than ever we need to be moving away from selling milk fat and instead moving towards selling knowledge to pay our way in the world.

It’s a cultural issue. In southern California smart post-graduate technology students are queuing up to attend seminars on how to structure their start-up businesses and court investors. Sure, the days when even a half decent business plan would get some crazy 20 year old funding for his pet project are gone. But that’s a good thing. Money migrates to value in the end and that’s where New Zealand creativity has an advantage. But we first need to overcome the barrier of distance to major capital and consumer markets; which is why we’ve partnered with KEA to take the event global.

It’s perfect that iPredict is a successful Victoria University spinoff company. There are other interesting projects emerging from Vic that could go the same way if we can help attract entrepreneurs and capital in that direction. That is why we are taking some first steps with W2W to strengthen bridges between academia and business here in Wellington.

For an entertaining forecast of the election outcome from our friends at iPredict and a look at some other cool ICT projects around town, make your way to the Wellington to the World event from 3.45pm on Friday 7th November at the Town Hall in Wellington. Registration essential.

W2W – Local Innovation Going Global

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The culmination of months of hard work by the UP team and the fulfilment of a long held personal ambition of mine will happen on Friday afternoon 7th Nov when we open the inaugural Unlimited Potential – Wellington to the World (W2W) event.

If ever there was a time when we needed to grow our services exports it’s now. Trade deficits are worsening and commodity prices are dropping along with the value of our currency. On the other hand, with economies contracting, businesses are looking to technology to help drive efficiencies. That represents a huge opportunity for our small technology service providers who can react quickly and now price more competitively in foreign markets.

Furthermore, lean businesses with compelling and scalable value propositions will survive tough economic times and thrive when the next upswing arrives. So at Unlimited Potential we decided to help by creating an event that would both promote technology commercialisation and assist a bunch of Wellington companies to take their products to the world.

With the aid of our multi-talented MC, technology blogger, entrepreneur and Unlimited magazine columnist Ben Kepes, the free two-part event kicks off with an afternoon tea at 3.45pm followed by several short presentations by ICT researchers from Victoria University. Topics covered include network security, robotics and next-gen search engines. Sponsored by VicLink, these speakers are looking to engage with potential business partners and collaborators from downtown to begin moving towards commercialisation with aspects of their research.

The second part of the show begins with drinks and networking from 5.15pm and involves already fully commercial ventures that are preparing to scale up and go global. We’ve deliberately chosen businesses with high growth potential, but that are not well known (yet). We’ll be video filming all the presentations and promoting these across KEA’s huge global network as well as New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s offshore trade offices. It’s a huge opportunity and one that we hope to repeat on an annual basis – with your support. The presentations will be followed by drinks and networking.

We already know that Wellington has a reputation for producing great digital technology businesses and we want to keep promoting the city through this event. Even better still, we think W2W could eventually become a nationwide event, based in Wellington but promoting the best and brightest of NZ technology innovation in a “Kiwi Demo” style format.

The full programme for W2W can be found here

You need to register for the event here.

Did Govt. Squander Economic Transformation Opportunity?

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Prime Minister Helen Clark has often called for New Zealanders to “back themselves” in business with the same enthusiasm that we support our sports teams. But after nine years in charge, Labour seem to have run out of ideas on the economic development front.

To be fair, I agree with the points made by Infometrics economist Chris Worthington in this weekend’s DomPost. Dr Cullen’s boring but fiscally responsible twin planks of repaying government debt and instigating a universal superannuation fund has put the economy in a strong position to weather the global economic storm and cope with future demands on resources from an ageing populace. On the downside, the oft quoted aspirational goals, regarding climbing the OECD ladder, will not be met anytime soon. Equilbrium is the best we can hope for.

I suppose a mediocre economic performance and low growth is better than a meltdown. But our greatest failure has been an inability to put capital to work more productively. There is no shortage of ideas in New Zealand on how to leverage innovation. However we are simply not good enough at attracting capital and executing on those ideas. Even addressing basic infrastructural issues such as broadband and roading seems about as easy as wading through treacle – yet almost everyone agrees that these are urgent issues. We can’t afford to wait until near the end of each election cycle before committing to such projects.

The Labour government had a burst of enthusiasm in 2001 when it backed the Knowledge Wave Conference. A lot of good ideas sprung out of this event and there was initially a great deal of goodwill generated amongst business movers and shakers. The Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (GIAB) was established shortly afterwards with an impressive looking group of influential business people involved. But nary a word has been heard since. The last press release from GIAB itself was in 2005 and a number of promising initiatives such as the ICT Taskforce have been quietly subsumed as attention drifted once again back to the primary sector as our economic saviour.

Lately independent thinktanks and commentators have been attempting to fill the void left by the lack of government leadership. But there is not a coordinated effort. Auckland seems to benefit increasingly from government largesse in terms of technology and innovation programmes at the expense of other regions. Hence the incoming government needs to think seriously about developing an equitable national innovation blueprint that will drive progress on these issues.

So why didn’t Labour propose a Fast Forward styled initiative for the ICT sector for example? Aspirational goals are fine, but if we are to overcome the disadvantages of geographic distance from capital and consumer markets and an over-reliance on tourism and primary exports, we need some radical solutions. We also need the commitment to back ourselves, as the PM often states. Half measures and programmes that only nibble at the edges of the problem simply don’t cut it.

Yes there are competing calls on government budget; but how are we to pay for improving health, education and superannuation in the future if we cannot earn a crust in the world and remain competitive? Now, I don’t think Labour entirely squandered the opportunity during their tenure, but they failed to generate and support a really powerful and vibrant leadership vision for how innovation might strongly underpin economic growth.

The scary part is that the blue squad seem to have even less of a clue on how to go about it. Certainly the prospect of having living fossils like Williamson, English and Brownlee sitting around the Cabinet table is not an appealing one in terms of ideation. Other small nations like Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and Finland have backed themselves with investment and forward thinking public initiatives on innovation. Why can’t we?

Nats Deploy Smoke and Mirrors on RS&T Policy

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John Key’s recent announcement that the hard won R&D tax credit will be wiped out under a National government demonstrates a deep lack of understanding by the party regarding the role of the State in stimulating innovation and encouraging improvements in terms of global competitiveness.

Oddly, only two weeks previous they were proposing only a reduction in the tax credit from 15% to 10%. Now they want to drop it altogether, as well as kill Labour’s Fast Forward programme. The supposed savings would then be applied to pastoral greehouse gas research and primary sector and food research. Those are precisely the areas Fast Forward was targetting already, which means their policy results in a rather poorly disguised net loss of funding available to research, science and technology.

And if you think that government funded innovation sounds oxy-moronic, I agree. The agencies that fund and support innovation and economic development are (ironically) amongst the most bureaucratic and tunnel-visioned in New Zealand – and to their credit National have clearly expressed a desire to work on improving that situation. After all, there is a core of good people working within those organisations and a bunch of passionate scientists who really do want to make a difference, but whom are sometimes stymied by silly rules, mountains of paperwork and funding inconsistencies.

And there certainly remains a role for State intervention in economic development because markets do not always resolve economic short-comings in an equitable fashion. In fact, other small, agrarian nations have surged ahead in OECD rankings and in global competitiveness partly through the wise use of state directed programmes, including tax incentives. The Nats would be well advised to get over their pathological revulsion towards government sector and instead open their minds to some fresh ideas.

Of additional concern is the fact that the National Party’s economic development spokesperson Dr Richard Worth has been notably silent on exactly what strategies the blue team have in mind to forge New Zealand into “an innovative, export-led and high wage economy”. In fact Dr Worth’s last press release about anything at all was almost a year ago. This illustrates how much of a cult of personality that National has now become. That’s a problem because of Key’s background. He made his fortune trading in financial futures and equities, not through being entrepreneurial and actually building something worthwhile. In fact Key and his ilk are precisely the reason why the global economy is in serious poo right now.

Next week: Did Labour Govt. Squander Economic Transformation Opportunity?

NetValue Makes the Connection

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Waikato technology group NetValue have recently demonstrated that New Zealand companies can connect with investors and major global players in the Northern Hemisphere. So why isn’t more being done to replicate this kind of success story?

That was the question we asked ourselves when we started thinking about delivering an event that would actually link innovative New Zealand technology firms with investors, mentors and new partnerships offshore. I don’t care what some people say about the “weightless economy” being the new economic paradigm. It is still bloody hard work engaging in markets that are a day’s flying time away from our little islands, especially so in the current investment climate.

NetValue is actually an umbrella for a number of different technology enterprises acquired progressively over a number of years. These include a software developer, hosting and web design services, a search technology venture and a company offering a genomic research tool. The latter arose out of research work into DNA sequencing conducted at Genesis Research which was originally spun out into a company called Cartesian Gridspeed. Bioengineering experts have described this astounding technology as “one of the most significant advances in sequence search technology to date”, although the company initially struggled to gain recognition despite its claim of a 10,000 fold improvement on processing speed over other systems on the market.

I remember seeing Cartesian Gridspeed company founder Leonard Bloksberg speak at a conference a few years ago and I figured his company would make it big one day. Let’s hope that their new found partnership with Microsoft will allow them to develop the product without altogether giving away the intellectual property to offshore interests. Unfortunately that is the quandry that all successful tech companies eventually face because of the lack of depth in the technology investment market at home.

I’m interested in NetValue’s progress for another reason. We’ve adopted a similar organisational model at ideegeo Group Limited. We are leveraging a core set of skills under one roof, with the aim of spinning out and commercialising new project ideas from R&D as resources permit. Mind you – our journey would be a lot more fruitful if we could spend more time on commercialisation and less on red tape. Dealing with the various government agencies that are supposedly supporting technology innovation and intellectual property protection is a bit like wading through treacle at present.

Digital IP Strategy Needs More User Input Less Govt.

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Last week I spent a day at the inaugural Digital Development Forum meeting, along with about 150 plus other well-meaning representatives of stakeholder organisations from the New Zealand ICT sector. One of the messages to emerge out of this meeting was that a lot of people are concerned about where the new copyright legislation is heading.

Almost everyone agrees that we urgently need to address the existing law, because it is woefully inadequate given the rapid changes in technology that are occurring. In fact the whole issue of intellectual property protection is receiving attention globally for this very reason. The current system doesn’t really work that well anymore, given the rapid rate of ICT innovation.

But the chief complaint with the New Zealand legislative changes seems to be that there is an imposition upon ISPs to police Internet use and to deactivate recalcitrant abusers and that the government has not listened to industry concerns. That is ironic because Digital Development NZ projects itself as being the industry mouthpiece in the ear of a government that is committed to listening to the industry.

So in a (rare) demonstration of unity the industry has asked that implementation of the legislation be delayed pending further input. But since the amendment to the Copyright Act Bill was actually passed months ago, one has to wonder whether or not these concerns were raised when the legislation was at Select Committee stage over a year ago. Or was the ISP policing clause inserted discretely afterwards?

In any event, the copyright legislation (and the DDNZ Forum) are unlikely to have any affect at all on teenagers and other so called “digital natives” whose lifestyles revolve around ripping off and re-mashing creative content from a variety of sources. Last week’s forum meeting was an invitation only event dominated by middle-aged public servants and well paid industry lobbyists in nice suits and comfortable shoes.

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e-Day Approaching

Perhaps the most useful outcome of my day at the forum was that I met Lawrence Zwimpfer, who is organising the nationwide e-Day event to be held on Saturday the 4th of October. e-Day is a great initiative that provides a free disposal and recycling service for owners of old or unused computer and cell phone gear. So there is no excuse for biffing all that obsolescent junk in the landfill.

They could really use some more volunteers to help out on the day in over 30 venues around New Zealand too! You can sign up here.

Wellington to the World to Showcase Local Tech Innovation

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I’m currently project managing Unlimited Potential’s Wellington to the World Event (W2W) to be held on Friday 7th November. There are so many really neat tech firms that are just bubbling below the surface that we thought we would create a great event around launching a few of them onto the world stage. If you are a technology firm based in the Greater Wellington Region and focused on growing through engaging with global markets, you need to be at W2W. With the support of its sponsors such as 920, Grow Wellington and Gen-i, Unlimited Potential are hoping to make this important event an annual fixture.

 

W2W involves live networking with angel investors plus business pitches from local technology companies that will be video-cast to a global web audience of innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors with the assistance of KEA the Kiwi Ex-Pats association. KEA now has over 27,000 members globally, many of whom are in business and want to help New Zealand businesses go global. There will also be some presentations of cutting edge ICT research from Victoria University that has commercialisation potential. The Wellington City Council, Wellington Convention Centre and VicLink are to be applauded for getting behind the initiative.

 

We are looking for new faces! Emerging technology companies wishing to raise their profile, can articulate their message well and which have the capacity to scale up and go global – now is the time to step forward.

 

Contact me directly, if you are an emerging technology venture with a great story to tell.

Developers Converge on Open Source Hackfest

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Unlimited Potential strikes gold again for the ICT Capital with the Software Freedom Day event. SFD ’08 is for I.T. professionals who worship open source technologies or who simply love the joy of writing software code.

Software Freedom Day looks set to become an annual event and will be hosted this year by Nathan Torkington, author, Perl programmer and former web 2.0 provocateur for technology publisher O’Reilly Media. The event comprises a “bar camp” or “unconference”, at which participants set the speaking agenda, and a “hackfest” where developers will be set a task or can work on their own open source projects. There will also be the opportunity for users to upload and test various open source applications.

There is a great bunch of supporters bringing this event to Wellington, but special mention needs to go out to Don Christie and Catalyst I.T. Don, who is a founding director of Catalyst and president of the Open Source Society, has emerged as a leading light in the New Zealand technology scene through his public commentary, industry leadership and general willingness to pitch in and help out with events such as SFD. In fact without volunteers like Don, software industry networks would not be in the healthy state that exists today. Why does it matter? Well, arguably the best jobs, the coolest projects and the smartest new ventures get discovered and supported by way of networks. So making an effort to get involved can reap rewards. Places are limited, so hurry and register.

Being users of various open source products and services ourselves, the ideegeo crew will be present at the event throughout the day hacking code as well as helping out the event organisers wherever we are needed, so please stop by and say hello. Just look out for the ideegeo orange banner. We’ll also be blogging and twittering live from SFD ’08 and showing off our new i-Phone app to anyone who’s interested.

ION e-Letter August/September 2008

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GeniusNet is proud to host the ION e-Letter. ION is New Zealand’s leading virtual community for innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors and investors.

 EGLRevera

DIY Online for Dad’s Day

Fresh from their debut Morning TV experience the Dad’s from DIYFather.com are on the final countdown to Fathers’ Day. The global website aggregates rich educational content tailored specifically for fathers from both New Zealand and abroad. The site promotes a sense of community around the important job of being a Dad in the modern world including linking to resources through the SKIP parenting skills programme. Site users can upload their own stories and articles, promote father related events and enjoy loads of multimedia content about parenting.

W2W  Showcase Kicks Off Capital Tech Fest

Creative Wellington Innovation CapitalWellington is blessed with a plethora of high tech events in November. First off the block on Friday 7th November is Unlimited Potential’s long awaited innovation  launchpad gig Wellington to the World (W2W). This event is aimed at showcasing undiscovered local technology talent and emergent university ICT research with commercialisation potential. Presentations will be videocast to a global audience. Expressions of interest to: paul (at} up {dot) org (dot] nz

The AnimFX conference and AFCI Cineposium follow later in the month.

Software Freedom Day ’08

Speaking of cool tech events, Software Freedom Day ’08 is almost upon us. The 20th September event will feature an ‘open source barcamp’ and ‘hackfest’. The event is an opportunity to develop code, share experiences, drink good coffee and celebrate the joy of open source software. Around 150 developers are expected to attend the half day event. SFD are urgently looking for one more co-sponsor for this event, an opportunity to put your brand in front of NZ’s leading developers. Contact organiser Jayne Wallis directly   jayne (at} up {dot) org [dot} nz

ideegeo Leveraging Developer Talents

ideegeo

Software development firm ideegeo Group Limited has its sights set on dominating the Internet domain name management space globally. Two of the co-founders are recently arrived skilled migrants who chose to reverse the brain drain and move to New Zealand for lifestyle reasons. Now the firm is building a services export business based around developing high volume, web-based transactional technologies for enterprise applications. In addition to building their own suite of products, ideegeo provides development consulting and software trouble-shooting in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby and also devises implementations involving databases such as SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle. Enquiries to paul {at] ideegeo (dot) com

Networking at Software NZ – 9th Sept

NZSA hold their popular monthly networking dinner on Tuesday evening in Auckland. The speaker is i-lign CEO Tony Crewdson. Learn from the mistakes and successes of his 30 year career in the New Zealand I.T. industry and enjoy networking with your peers at the Viaduct venue.

i-Phone Spawns Kiwi Innovation

With Apple anticipating global sales of its 3G i-Phone to reach 10 million units in 2008, Kiwi developers are launching mobile apps in all directions. Orsome let you watch the weather or track your TradeMe auctions, ideegeo will shortly launch a data management tool and Polar Bear Farm have already enjoyed huge success with their search app. It seems like New Zealand developers are rising to the challenge of this emerging market.

ION Member Profile – Tim de Jardine

Tim is a New Zealand based business consultant and technology entrepreneur who thinks outside the circle when it comes to management and innovation. Tim is also a director of Hirewall a start-up venture that offers online management of the employee recruitment process. You can check out his thought-provoking weblog here.

IONise Yourself

Starting a new tech venture? Want to promote your innovation event? Need to connect with innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors or investors? Post a reply on this blog, share about it on the ION forum or simply drop us a line.

ion [at} genius (dot| net {dot) nz

Please note that the ION forum is active but you need to be logged in to make the most recent posts visible.

www.ion.net.nz

Developing a National Innovation Blueprint

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Corporates such as Intel and Cisco naturally want to promote us becoming more e-enabled because there’s a buck in it for them. But large multinationals are the natural born enemy of innovation, when you think about patent litigation costs and the detrimental effects of technology cartels. So I take it with a grain of salt when I hear that they have been filling conference halls on the topic of innovation. 

Notwithstanding my cynicism, the idea of a national innovation blueprint is a good one. Improving broadband infrastructure would help, but even if we could open an electronic super-highway to the world tomorrow, it’s not a panacea on its own. The primary choke on opening up the commercialisation of technology in New Zealand is lack of capital, not lack of ideas or lack of broadband. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that geographical proximity has a lot to do with investment decisions in the tech sector and for that we suffer. Hence the plea for high growth ventures to get offshore quickly.

Kiwis also hate divesting control and this is an additional barrier to growth. In fact we’ve already had this debate amongst the founders of our new venture as we begin to develop a product suite with global reach. The antidote is better education, more mentorship and good role modelling by other entrepreneurs who made the leap and succeeded without selling their souls. You can build a great business whilst still enjoying the lifestyle New Zealand has to offer.

Lastly, the vast majority of businesses will not receive any venture funding and may never grow beyond 5 or 10 employees. Yet, they pay tax regularly and put bread on the table of families. There is no certainly no shame in this. Perhaps one focus of a national innovation blueprint is that we need to better identify the really hot opportunities from amongst those hard-working small businesses and provide intensive practical support to build their value proposition and connect to the real world out there.