My Meetup Testimonial
In January I started the Washington DC iPhone/Android Developers and Marketers Meetup group. My motivation was to drive innovation and help stimulate the economy through bringing smart minds together. It’s working.
The group is four months old on Monday. We’re at 130 members which include developers at all levels, startups, major companies, carriers, venture capitalists, economists and media. We’ve formed eight committees and assigned co-chairs to make sure every member gets exactly what they are looking for.
Our May 11th meeting, in partnership with Mobile Mondays, is at the Finnish Embassy where Nokia, Google and the inventor of iFart will be sharing success stories for mobile applications. A little different from the pizza joint ten of us met at in January.
I commend Meetup for developing a great model. This group is young but we are impacting industry, driving innovation and supporting the recovering economy. And bringing perfect strangers together and making lasting connections makes the world a better place, too.
Check it out, here.
Mastering Mobility
As a golfer I love the Masters. Allright, I could do without the piano and violin music on CBS. And as founder of the Washington iPhone/Android/Smartphone developers and marketers group I am also interested in the mobile applications market. When looking up scores today on the Masters website I immediately noticed a prominent ad for the iPhone Masters application which makes it easy to follow the action in real-time (sans music!). I think this is an interesting development that might not get that much attention. The target audience for the Mastes is a middle-late aged male who is likely to be the CEO or executive at his company. I would guess that many in this market segment don’t currently understand the value of the mobile applications space. Perhaps after they download the Masters application they will. I wonder how many developers are going to called into the big bosses office this coming week to answers questions about how “XYZ” company can get their applications to work on the iPhone or other platforms. Okay, back to the fake chirping birds….
Social Government Services
This name was inspired after I saw Jive’s Clearspace platform rebranded as “Social Business Software 3.0″.
This weekends Government 2.0 camp is really about the business of social networking as it relates to government operations. I haven’t seen the market referred to as “social government services” but it just may be the right name for it.
The Economic Stimulus and Innovation
A question came to me after many recent discussions about the economic stimulus. Will the trillion dollars being pumped into our economy drive innovation? Or, will it only drive adoption of technologies that have already been innovated? While adoption is certainly a great thing, innovation is one of the vital links to our economic future. Innovation expert Scott Anthony cites in his blog how the stimulus might impact the health care industry from an innovation standpoint (see #2).
I ask the broader question without any answers right now. Perhaps adoption is the key to future innovation but I have a nagging suspicion that we might be trading short term fixes at the cost of rewarding medium to long-term innovation. I hope I’m wrong.
From Heaven Via iPhone
Everyone should have a favorite place in the world. That place where life’s daily challenges don’t seem to exist. Mine is Totten Inlet, a pristine body of water at the southernmost point of Puget Sound in Washington State. The worlds best oysters are grown here, arrow heads are still found on it’s shores and salmon start their journey into the many streams who’s fresh mountain water blends easily with the salty pacific ocean fed sound. So what does this have to do with technology? Creativity.
Technology is art. How it’s built, talked about, used and improved is done best with the right side of the brain. Right brain thinking is possible when the left dominant world is far away. Which brings me back to Totten Inlet. Ideas flow easily here. I don’t know if any of them are useful or not but there is clarity. It makes me wonder what percentage of great technologies are thought of in places like this vs. where we spend most of our time in the busy corridors of daily life.
Video’s Increasing Role
In Scoble’s blog March 6th he discusses why he’s gone under the radar for two weeks and he’s clearly making a big move which will be interesting to follow. But in his entry he sings the praises of the latest Flip Video HD which sells for about two hundred bucks. This puts real power into the hands of everyday citizens to capture and share video like never before. It also empowers organizations to start doing the same thing. Here’s an example of how Oracle is using cameras such as the Flip to improve internal communications about their own products.
I look forward to the many applications that will follow these devices. Look for new entrants in the market who figure out how to make it easier for us to tell our stories using video.
I Don’t Care About Technology
Walking back from DrupalCon today a friend commented on how I am a guy who is passionate about technology. I corrected him with something along the lines of “actually, I care about the human element of what technology can do.” Since I uttered those words I’ve felt some kind of relief. I can’t really explain it other than it feels right. From the first time I programmed an Apple II writing basic code people have thought of me as a technology person. Technology brings people together and solves problems.
I am passionate about that.
The Cool Drupal Community
I was lucky enough to have volunteered at this weeks DrupalCon DC. As a non-developer I have to find other ways to give back to the community and this was a small way that I could do it. It was great to come face-to-face with the people who’s posts I read on forums, sites I visit or apps I use. In addition to meeting the people I was also able to touch the amazing aspect of a community who trusts its members to take care of the greater good. Here are some of the things that will stick with me:
- Registrations were sorted by first name
- No ID was required to pick up your badge
- Everyone who checked in was so thankful for my help in getting their badge and told me so
- I didn’t see a single person try to sneak in to a sold out conference with some silly story about why they should get in
Cool.
DrupalCon
If there is any question where the market is going for CMS and community platforms, it looks like open source and front runner Drupal have an answer. This weeks DrupalCon DC says it loud and clear on the home page with the “sold out” star where the registration tab once was.
This is telling. I can’t recall the last time a technology conference was sold out, even during the irrationally exuberant days of the dot com bubble.
Good for open source, good for Drupal. Perhaps a wake up call for proprietary platforms trying to compete with the long tail of the global developer community.
The Triple Bottom Line
Jeff Erickson*, Sr. Editor at Oracle Publishing and writer of the blog, Tech Spectator, points out this term which was used by Indie Energy CEO Daniel Cheifetz. See my Feb 26th entry for reference.
Searching on this term quickly explains why Dan and many other green energy CEOs have made the term (or soon will be) part of their regular vocabulary. Wikipedia’s opening two sentences: “The triple bottom line (or “TBL“, “3BL“, or “people, planet, profit“) captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) success: economic, ecological and social. ”
The concept is very appealing. I can imagine a venture capitalist shrinking in their chair when they hear it, however. Which gets back to the CEOs who need to know when to use it. When: In proposals for projects that are government funded, part of the stimulus package and when giving presentations to multiple stakeholders. When not to: To investors or in board meetings where only one bottom line will still matter.
*Yes we’re related, best brother ever.