Social and Collaborative Applications are Working Their Way into Enterprise 2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is taking place through Thursday of this week at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in the scenic Seaport District of the city.  As you probably guessed from the conference name, the focus of this tidy expo is collaborative technologies, Web 2.0 solutions, designed specifically to enable enterprises to become more efficient, productive and innovative.

Steve Wylie, the conference GM (you'll find tweets from the show at #e2conf), points out that while businesses are taking advantage of game changers like cloud computing and data center virtualization, applications that exploit these infrastructure technologies have lagged the application advances being made in the consumer market.

That's what e2conf is all about: examining and showcasing the latest developments in enterprise-class social and collaborative applications. And there's no shortage of talent at the expo.  Today I had the opportunity to spend a few hours listening to the keynotes, kicking tires on the show floor and asking a few questions of the software developers who were there.

As you might suspect, most of the exhibitors on hand are smallish, privately held software companies.  The big guys were there too, including Novell, IBM and Cisco.  But the vast majority are innovative, emerging companies developing very exciting social and collaborative solutions for business.

In one day it's impossible to get a close look at all the companies there, but I was able to take a look at quite a few.  From what I saw and heard, these three are my picks for the coolest companies at this year's e2conf:

• Doodle, in their own words, "makes scheduling virtually effortless."  Using Doodle, scheduling a meeting with busy coworkers is as easy as creating a poll, casting a vote for the preferred date and time, and informing participants of the outcome.  Doodle was founded in 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland and has about 10 employees.  And I love the name.  Do you Doodle?

• At the other end of the emerging company spectrum is Jive Software, a well-funded, well-established company with more than 2,500 customers (they claim).    Jive Software, now based in Palo Alto, Calif., (the firm was started in Portland, Ore.), is eyeing an IPO in 2011 and is led by industry veteran Tony Zingale, who led the sale of Mercury Interactive to HP four years ago.  I saw Zingale's keynote earlier today and he still turns it on.  Jive Software is partnering with heavyweights like Google and Twitter and looks to be well on its way to building an enterprise 2.0 company with staying power.

• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Baydin, a San Francisco-based company and winner of today's "Launch Pad People's Choice," a fun text message-based audience-participation contest pitting four newish companies against each other.  Baydin has an "Unsearch" product that's built into Outlook and hunts down or "automatically discovers" in your email, documents and colleagues who could help you with any given project.  I love this:  at Baydin, they talk about "the future of search...is not having to search."

I apologize for leaving out so many other cool companies and I'm already looking forward to the next edition.

Controlling Cancer for Pennies in the Cloud

You might know how bullish we are here about the potential of the cloud. You might even go so far as to think we believe the cloud could help cure cancer!  You might be right.

We came across an interesting story this week about an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico named Shuang Luan.  Professor Luan specializes in finding ways to apply computers to improve treatment for cancer patients. Last year, Luan's team decided to tackle an interesting treatment issue facing the medical community. Researchers realized the best way to treat cancerous tumors with radiation was to attack one damaged cell at a time. By doing this, they avoided collateral damage to adjacent healthy cells during treatment. 

They could reduce a week of calculations to less than 15 minutes at a cost of about .10 cents an hour for computer time.

But the math is a problem, specifically the complex Monte Carlo simulations required to figure out where each proton and electron from the treatment beam will travel during therapy. These calculations help medical physicists determine how much radiation should be used and at what precise angle it should hit the tumor. Of course the path of the radiation is indirect and different for every tumor.  The beam has to travel through muscle and fat and bone, all of which needs to be taken into consideration to map the target area to achieve the kind of pinpoint treatment envisioned by the researchers. Calculating this takes hundreds of hours, so the only viable solution was to use a super computer -- base cost about $150,000 before you pay for those pesky add-ons like peripherals and software. The time and cost required to apply this to every tumor clearly exceeds the scope of most physicians and insurance coverage, so the only alternative is to use far less precise short cuts in calculations. At least, that's what most physicians have thought. Professor Luan and his team realized you just need a credit card.

Physics graduate student Roy Keyes, a member of Luan's team, set out to tackle the problem in the cloud.  He created new treatment calculations while Christian Romano, an undergraduate computer science major on the team, determined how to run the calculations on 200 different computer nodes rather than one super computer.  They went to Amazon's web services with Luan's credit card and found they could reduce a week of calculations to less than 15 minutes at a cost of about .10 cents an hour for computer time.

The process won't be ready for every day use for a couple more years because the grad students need to get a medical license for their technique. But the promise is enormous. Keyes told KRQE TV in New Mexico that he thinks this is just the beginning of what medical research can do with affordable access to the cloud. In fact, he recently finished a presentation in Amsterdam on how the research and technology works and is scheduled to make other presentations. 

In a university press release, Professor Luan explained it like this: “In the Computer Sciences lab upstairs they probably have fifty or sixty machines, and a lot of students using them. You cannot just say I’m going to use them all today. But in cloud computing, we just basically type in a credit card number and say give us 200 nodes. And they give it to you in maybe five minutes.” 

So maybe the cloud actually can help cure cancer -- or at least dramatically improve the quality of treatment and reduce the risk of collateral damage.  If only it could clean up an oil spill.

Apple’s Forgotten Founder Living in the Nevada Desert

Have you ever heard of Dick Taylor? Dick Taylor, along with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was a founding member of the Rolling Stones. But Taylor decided to go back to art school, so the Stones hired bassist Bill Wyman to replace him just as they were preparing to record the band's first album. As a result, Taylor became one of the great “what if” stories in rock history. Have you ever heard of Ron Wayne? Ron Wayne is technology’s equivalent of Dick Taylor. One of the great “what if” stories of Silicon Valley, nay, the enter technology industry. Wayne was one of three men present at the “birth of cool” when on April Fool’s Day 1976 – along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – Apple Computer was launched. Not only was Wayne one of the founders of the new computer company, he was the guy who designed the company’s logo, wrote the users manual for the first Apple I computer, and drafted the company’s partnership agreement. That partnership agreement gave Wayne 10 percent ownership in the fledgling company. That tidy little slice of the pie that would be worth $22 billion today – if only Wayne wouldn’t have sold it back to Jobs and Wozniak 12 days after the company’s launch for a mere $800.

Ron Wayne

Wayne was 42 years old and working at Atari when he met up with 21-year-old Steve Jobs who was freelancing at the video game company started by Nolan Bushnell. Jobs had already met up with Wozniak and the two had created a prototype of the Apple I that they had demonstrated at the Homebrew Computer Club that met on the campus of Stanford University.

The Apple I

Jobs and Wozniak knew they were onto something with their new machine, but their wildly different personalities, and approach to business, threatened to kill their project before it could off the ground. They turned to Wayne for “adult supervision.” Wayne would give the two Apple partners counsel, help them resolve disagreements and provided business advice. For his valuable input, Jobs and Wozniak asked him to join them in their venture and carved off 10 percent of the company ownership for him. Once all three had signed the partnership agreement, Wayne took it to the county registrar’s office and Apple Computer became an official company. Almost immediately after becoming a legal entity, Jobs plunged the company deep into debt when he took out a $5000 loan and bought $15,000 worth of computer parts to fill an order for 50 computers for the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California. Wayne was impressed with Jobs’ salesmanship, but was nervous about the amount of money the company owed. Byte, an early Silicon Valley computer store, had a reputation for being slow to pay its bills and Wayne worried if Apple would get paid before their loan payment came due. Jobs and Wozniak, both in their early 20s at the time, were penniless. So if creditors came after Apple for its debt it would be Wayne that they targeted. Wayne just wasn’t ready for that type of risk, so less than 2 weeks after he helped launch Apple, Wayne asked Jobs and Wozniak to buy him out. It was back to the county registrar’s office for Wayne where he renounced his involvement in the company. For that he was paid $800. A year after Wayne left the company, Jobs and Wozniak filed the paperwork for incorporation and contacted Wayne asking him to officially forfeit any claims against the company. Wayne did so and received an additional $1,500, bringing his total payment from Apple to $2,300, almost exactly a millionth of what his shares would be worth today. Today, Wayne is living a simple life in the desert town of Pahrump, Nevada where at age 76 he supports himself by selling stamps are rare gold coins to supplement his government social security checks. But one has to wonder, what if?

French Innovation Meets Silicon Valley

Last evening I attended the 4th Annual French Tech Tour event put on by UbiFrance, the French agency for international business development. Out of many applicants, UbiFrance had selected an exemplary group of 15 emerging French companies to travel to Silicon Valley for the opportunity to engage the local Valley start-up ecosystem in a series of events and meetings. UbiFrance director, Gaëtan Gachet, and his team organize a great week for the selected companies, culminating in a Sand Hill Road reception attended by VCs, company execs and Francophiles. The evening’s program consisted of brief presentations by the 15 companies and a panel discussion featuring industry luminaries on what entrepreneurial foreign companies need to do to be successful when coming to Silicon Valley. This was followed by a reception where the participating companies informally presented and demoed their products. The panel was interesting, with good recommendations for entrepreneurs to be open, network extensively, listen and learn when they visit Silicon Valley. Among the participants, CRN Systems Editor, Damon Poeter, provided comments that most resonated with 3Point. “Get good PR. Make sure you engage the media in the right way. Be open, make friends. Tell a story and the whole story. Not only tell the technology story but the whole story of how you came to be and what you are all about.” 3Point agrees with Poerter that the story is key to any company's success and is why our focus is on helping our clients define and tell their stories through our Navigator process.

The 15 companies covered a wide range of technology categories. Some of my personal favorites among the companies included Lexip, which makes a very cool 3D mouse (CEO Eric Delattre pictured left holding his device), and Laster Technologies, which has a fascinating augmented reality solution (CEO Zile Liu pictured right explaining augmented reality). Other well represented categories included mobile -- Arkamys, which has developed technology to greatly increase the audio quality from mobile devices, along with MobileGov and Mobile Distillery -- and cloud computing -- LYaTiss and MLslate. Green tech was represented as well with EcoVadis, which took the top prize of the evening for its pioneering sustainable supply chain management solutions. Names the top start-up of the group, Ecovadis will receive a one-month, all expenses paid stay at the Plus and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley.

Check out all the companies participated: · ActivNetworks · AlphaUI · Arkamys · Avob · DelfMEMS · EcoVadis · LASTER Technologies · Lexip · LYaTiss · MLstate · Mobilegov · Mobile Distillery · Prim’Vision · Relaxnews · UbicMedia This representation of French innovation was fascinating and whets my appetite for a trip to France in coming months. For you readers out there, what other emerging French companies should we keep an eye on? Bon Weekend!

Smartphones a big hit in France

I came across an interesting article in Les Echos this week. According to a survey by GroupM and SFR, four million French connect to the Internet daily from their smartphone -- that's about one of every thirteen citizens over the age of 15. Mon Dieu! However, only 18 percent of mobile phone users have a smartphone. The moral of this story seems to be if users get their hands on a smartphone they will use them and use them a lot. Orange, with its recent announcement of a range of Android-based phones from Sony Ericsson, LG, HTC and Samsung for less than 49 euros, is well positioned to make customers out of the the 82 percent of French mobile phone users who don't yet posses a smartphone. If the smartphone market booms in France, as it appears to be primed, it will be a welcome boost for the economy overall as carriers, equipment providers, handset manufacturers, mobile content developers and advertisers all stand to benefit.

BP Ignored Lessons From The Past

Honestly, at this point is there anything BP can do to even remotely repair its deeply tarnished image resulting from the horror in the U.S. Gulf Coast?

The unnatural disaster is now more than 50 days old with environmental  ramifications that will persists for decades to come.  Like the war in Afghanistan and the on going challenge in Iraq, news of the the oil spill disaster along the Gulf Coast has fast become part of our daily lives.  The images of injured wildlife and interviews with business owners whose lives depend on the bounty from the Gulf waters appear daily on the 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. news broadcasts and all over the net. 

For most of us, the disaster is emotionally close but physically distant.  But for too many Americans, the oil spill is personally and professionally disruptive -- and with a long road until the finish line.

The massive oil slick  is one disaster.  And is one, it seems, that could have been prevented.

The way BP has handled the situation from a communications perspective is yet another disaster.  Also, it is one that could have been prevented from at least spiralling out of control.

You'd think that the brightest minds at BP would have known to not repeat the communications mistakes made by the many global brands whose own disasters preceded BP's.  BP had its pick.  There's the chapter on FEMA and Katrina.  Or the chapters on Tyco and Enron.  Barry Bonds or the Catholic Church.  And perhaps the grand daddy of them all -- Exxon Valdez.

The list goes on and on.  The lessons are there, in black and white.

The latest communication on BP's web site, appearing just today, is that the company is going to donate the net revenue from the oil it recovers from the Mississippi Canyon 252 oil well to restore the environment and habitats in the Gulf Coast region.

And if you don't think that fulfills BP's commitment to repair the damage done by the oil spill, well, you're wrong.  Because, as BP adds on its site, "The creation of this fund is over and above BP's obligations under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990."

That's right. The establishing of the fund is "over and above" what the law says BP must do in the wake of the accident.  Wow. Talk about a failure to communicate.

BP continues to communicate to the world about one of the the world's largest unnatural disasters on its own terms.  Even though the global world of communications professionals is at its disposal and almost begging to assist a brand that is sinking like a stone. 

What's past is past.  But if BP chose to listen, here are five ways -- from among many more -- it might have protected the brand it has been building for 100 years:

• Present an objective and honest assessment of the situation as soon as they had a good measure on things.  Tell the world this is a first for BP and the oil industry at-large and that they are unsure if known methods of plugging a massive oil leak will work in this particular situation.
• Don't create false expectations.  Tell the world a number of proven and untested techniques will be deployed and that the outcome, due to the uniqueness of the situation, is uncertain.
• Keep the lawyers at arm's length. While liability is certainly an important consideration, the company also has to think about its long term reputation and the viability of the organization.  It's not just about getting through the crisis at hand but is also about reputation recovery and sustainability.
• Put out as much information for public consumption as possible and not only the information the company wishes to control.  Transparency will earn trust over time. Most people can see spin coming from a mile away.
• Instead of insisting on CEO Tony Hayward as the primary crisis spokesperson, solicit the support of a trusted, honest communicator who would be perceived as more objective than a company executive drenched in the company's stock. 

iThis iTime iApple iDots iThe "i"

Apple is a great marketing company. And as Bill pointed out in his post here earlier today, they also make some pretty good products; the kind that sneak into your life and then become so integral to the way you live that you really miss them when they're gone.

For Bill it's his iPad. For me, it's the older, but just as cool, iPod. I have the 60Gb version loaded with more than 50 days worth of music. That's right. I can carry around 50 days worth of tunes in my shirt pocket.

But as great as Apple's products are, I have to admit that I'm getting really sick of the "i" nomenclature. Not everything in the world needs an "i" in front of it. Apple, however, disagrees.

Yesterday at its World-Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco Apple once again tagged everything it could with an "i". First, there was the new iPhone 4. Then there was its new operating system, iOS.

And guess what? This time around Apple wasn't iSued.

You see, three years ago when Apple first introduced the iPhone it didn't get permission to use the term "iPhone," which was a trademark owned by Cisco. The companies eventually settled out of court with the terms undisclosed.

This time around, Apple got the OK up front from Cisco to use the term "iOS," which Cisco has been using for more than a decade for its Internetwork Operating System.

For my money, I'd like to see Apple drop the entire boring iBrand and go back to creative names such as Macintosh and Newton.

iPhones, SmartPhones and the Coming Cloud Addiction

I'm not your typical early adopter, but I pre-ordered Apple's iPad and have used it endlessly since the day it landed on the doorstep of my Virginia farmhouse. Wherever I take it, I end up doing a sales pitch for the darned thing.  From waiters at the only good restaurant in town to kids and adults at the hockey rink, everyone wants to know about Apple's magical device. The question I answer most often is "What do you use it for?" My answer is about 100 different things, but not just one thing. There is no killer app.  For all its sizzle and hype, the iPad is a subtle device.  It works its way into your daily routines in a hundred ways until you end up having separation anxiety when your spouse sneaks off with it to read a book.  Weird, but true. Then again, isn't that what great products do?  They subtly work their way into our routines.  We don't know they have crossed the path from useful to vital until we don't have access to them for a period of time.  Then we panic.


A few years ago, I bought a car with a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT).  It wasn't why I bought the car.  Truth be told, I didn't even know what CVT was. I liked the car.  Five years later, when I went shopping for a replacement, I only considered cars with the smooth shifting CVT.  Marketers can fill Times Square with all the brightly lit messages they can afford, but unless a product delivers consistently every day until we are dependent upon it, the product ranks as fad not trend.


For all the fanfare surrounding the cloud, I suspect this is the way the cloud will enter our work lives -- slowly, steadily and subtly. We won't be aware of its integration into our lives until there is a problem and we can't access something. I think this is already happening on a much wider scale than we realize.


The savvy people over at ZDnet's CloudTweaks raised an interesting illustration of this point in their blog about yesterday's introduction of Apple's other wonder tool, the iPhone. Writing about the introduction of a whole new class of SmartPhones, from Apple, HTC, RIM Nokia, Motorola and others, CloudTweaks pointed out that "these devices are introducing cloud computing offerings to many who might not otherwise care. The folks purchasing these devices don’t really care about all of that, however. They just want a slick looking, highly functional device."  Exactly!


SmartPhone Apps have moved in one year from the novelty of Zippo Lighters to very functional network-based applications and services. And these are not just limited to apps of restaurants, maps and directions. There is an increasingly diverse set of corporate applications in areas like CRM, banking and communications.  The cost benefits and limited risk certainly make these applications appealing to SMBs.  But if employees start injecting cloud usage of their own accord via SmartPhones into the technology gene pool of large corporations, will their subtle reliance on the cloud accelerate the adoption of more mainstream cloud deployments?  How long will it take until the cloud wends is way into mainstream corporate usage?   For all the hype and marketing about the cloud, nothing will measure success in technology better than separation anxiety. In fact,  I think they call it addiction. Excuse me. HONEY, WHERE'S THE iPAD?!!!!!!

Innovation is not just for the USA

Readers of this blog have undoubtedly been following the ongoing controversy between Jim and Steve about whether Boston or the Bay Area is the most important center for technology innovation.

Jim and Steve, what about all the innovation taking place outside of the US?

Grenoble, France, where I happen to live, is located just under three hours from Paris and, much like Boston and the Bay Area, is home to some of the nation's leading universities, medical schools, research institutions and technology companies.

According to the magazine l'Usine Nouvelle, The Grenoble Institute of Technology is the second largest engineering school in France and is second in terms of research contracts awarded. The Grenoble Graduate School of Business was the seventh best MBA program in Europe, according a 2009 Financial Times report.

Research institutions include Minalogic and Minatec for nanotechnology, NanoBio and Nano2Life for biotech and Tenerrdis and the PV Alliance for solar and other forms of renewable energy.

Technology companies in the region range from established multi-nationals such as Capgemini, HP, Radiall, Soitec, STMicroelectronics, Sun and Xerox to dynamic start-ups like H3C-energies and UShareSoft.

The great thing about innovation is that anybody anywhere can have a great idea. And, given the right environment -- world class higher education, research institutions and an dynamic economy -- great ideas become great companies creating great products.

Get Ready for 4G

Tomorrow, Sprint Nextel will be the first carrier to announce the availability of 4G wireless technology with the release of its EVO. Then in the Fall, Verizon will roll out 4G service in 25 to 30 cities, and you can bet that they’ll market the heck out of that. Much smaller MetroPCS will announce a 4G phone around the same time.

And let us not forget that Apple will announce its iPhone 4 sometime this summer, although it’s unclear if it will be built to run on a 4G network or today’s standard 3G technology.

So prepare yourself for the marketing onslaught that will no doubt be great. You can count on TV, print and online ads to tout the benefits of 4G, as well as marketing efforts targeting you directly every time you receive a bill from your wireless carrier. “If you don’t have 4G, sign up now to see what you’re missing!”

But what exactly are the advantages of 4G over 3G?

First, let’s go back a few years to look at the truly quantum leap between 2G and 3G technologies.

Back in the old days of 2G technology, you could basically use your mobile phone for two primary purposes – making phone calls and sending SMS (text) messages. That seemed to be a pretty useful thing since up to then if you wanted to place a phone call you had to be at your desk using a landline or spend thousands of dollars on a mobile phone built on old military technology.

Then 3G came along at the start of the new millennium, and suddenly phones could do really cool things like real Web browsing, video and music downloads, and take high quality photos. Another advantage of 3G was the high speed of the network and the improved coverage and quality of reception. That is unless you have AT&T or T-Mobile where 3G coverage is only available in the highly populated parts of the country. If you find yourself in upstate New York, or even Napa Valley, forget using your iPhone.

And that brings us to 4G. Basically it’s a new way for mobile phones to access the airwaves designed from the start for the transmission of data rather than simple phone calls. This is accomplished by borrowing some aspects of the latest generation of Wi-Fi, the short-range wireless technology.

What users are likely to see is slightly faster access to data and streaming video that flows a little bit better, no stuttering, and higher resolution. That’s about it. No break through applications as we saw when we moved from 2G to 3G. Oh, one other thing, it’ll cost you more.

And to muddy the marketing waters even more, AT&T and T-Mobile are upgrading their current 3G networks to provide data-transfer speeds that will be actually HIGHER than the 4G networks from Sprint and Verizon.

What’s a customer to do?

Don’t let the marketing hype get to you. Ask yourself what you really need from your mobile or smart phone and how many applications you really use. Are those applications working for you now? If so, you probably don’t need the upgrade. And if you’re an iPhone or AT&T user, the upgrades to the AT&T network will provide you with more than enough power.

I’m already waiting with bated breath for 4.5G.

Five Things Corporate Communicators Must Consider Pre- and Post-IPO

Though stronger than last year, almost six months into the year and the U.S. IPO market has been nothing to write home about.

Yesterday, Zipcar -- the Cambridge, Mass.-based car-sharing service company -- became only the 108th U.S. company to file an S-1 in 2010. Although the active IPO pipeline boasts 153 companies, it includes companies who have filed registrations or amendments with the SEC in the last two years, according to Renaissance Capital, an independent provider of IPO research. Another 18 companies recently withdrew or postponed their IPO vs. six companies who did the same by this date one year ago, also according to Renaissance.

As of this posting, Zipcar is the only U.S. company in the month of June to have registered for an IPO.  Of course, it's only June 2 so there's still plenty of time for other companies to follow suit before the next round of holiday cook outs after which time the U.S. IPO market will likely take a summer hiatus.

Filing an S-1 prior to the kick off the summer holiday fun is actually a great strategy because the mandatory "quiet period" is easier to uphold during the summer season than during other "busier" times of the year.  Perhaps it's what the communications strategists at Zipcar had in mind.

So with Zipcar's filing as a back drop, here are five things corporate communications executives must be aware of pre- and post-IPO:

• Evaluate the company's communications capabilities.  Diverse skill sets and deep experience in navigating the pre - and post-IPO waters are required and differ greatly from the needs of a private company.
• From the moment a company whispers a plan to file for an IPO, new rules and expectations on how it communicates kick in.  The cost of noncompliance with quite periods and other restrictions, including Regulation Fair Disclosure and Sarbanes-Oxley, could break a company's back.  Communicators must be able to build company awareness while playing within the lines.
• Adopt a communications approach that addresses all stakeholders and encompasses all pertinent communications disciplines. 
• Function as strategic counselors to management; help them understand what "safe" media activity is inside of pre- and post-IPO quiet periods.
• Train company employees on the behavioral changes and expectations within a pre-IPO and newly public company.  A fully-informed employee is typically more motivated to put the needs of the company before the needs of the individual.

We Built It and They Came

Silicon Valley

My esteemed colleague Jim wrote on this blog just a couple of days ago that he is tired of hearing about how Bay Area is the end-all, be-all of technology innovation and that for his money Boston is every bit as tech savvy as the nerds in Silicon Valley.

Ironically, that very day, Apple – a Silicon Valley based company – surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable technology in the world! That’s right, a company from Cupertino, CA #1 in the tech industry.

But as strong as Apple has become over the past few years, it is far from being the only formidable technology company here in Silicon Valley. You may have heard of some of them -- Google, Facebook, eBay and Intel. And literally tens of thousands of other companies too. But we’re not just about the Internet and semiconductors any more. No siree!

Just this past week President Obama was in Fremont, another Silicon Valley city, touring Solyndra, a maker of solar panels, where he touted the new factory as an example his administration's efforts to encourage job growth in innovative technologies. Green tech comes to Silicon Valley.

And Solyndra is not alone. There are dozens of new companies developing green technologies here in Silicon Valley, and a number entrenched semiconductor companies, such as Intel and National Semiconductor, are spending big amounts of R&D money on new photovoltaic and solar projects.

Biotech is another area of growth for Silicon Valley. In fact, hundreds of Valley-based biotech firms are expected to vie for $1 billion in new federal tax credits and grants aimed at boosting medical research and generating jobs.

Boston is certainly a vibrant and important market for a number of diverse technologies. But Silicon Valley, like Apple, isn’t going to give up its #1 tech ranking easily. That’s why 3Point Communications is located in both Boston and the Bay Area. We know that if you’re going to provide world-class communications counsel to technology companies, you have to be in both places at once.

Built It and They Will Come...ah, I Don't Think So.

I'm sick and tired of surveys and self-proclaimed pundits claiming that the Bay Area is the end-all, be-all when it comes to technology innovation.  I'm willing to bet a week's salary (no jokes) that Greater Bostonians appreciate technology innovation as much, if not more, than our Bay Area brothers and sisters.

Just eavesdrop on a conversation or two at the Starbucks at 755 Boylston St., Boston or during business breakfast hours at Henrietta's Table at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA and you'll be witness to Boston's appreciation for technology innovation.

What has me fired up is this:  a research consultancy -- Penn Schoen Berland -- did a pretty clever thing this week when they announced the findings of an online survey, focused on the Bay Area, to herald the opening of their new San Francisco office.  They called the research "The Bay Area Future of Technology Survey" and not without some pandering to their latest host city, called out attention to the "fact" that Bay Area residents are generally more tech savvy than non-Bay Area U.S. residents.

So right away, to me, it's a west coast vs. east coast thing.

While the survey results show Americans-at-large "are embracing the future of technology" and are generally excited about innovation and technology trends including cloud computing and convergence, they also show that the the good citizens of the Bay Area are "different."  Yes, that's the word the firm uses in it press release-- different, as in special. 

Different how, you're thinking?

Well, according to the results of the survey, more Bay Area residents vs. the rest of the U.S. population are excited about future technologies, hold more dear the "latest and greatest" shiny objects that are introduced and desire a greater level of engagement  in "making new technologies possible and accessible."

So do Bay Area residents really appreciate technology more than folks in the rest of the U.S., including greater Boston, which when I last checked (and I check every 30 seconds or so) was still considered to be one of technology's global centers of gravity?  It's really hard to say and one certainly has to to take with a grain of salt the results of a survey that queried only 501 people and was issued, in large part, to condition the Bay Area market for Penn Schoen Berland's arrival.

I will go out on a small limb to say greater Bostonians likely appreciate diverse technologies more than Bay Area residents because we are no longer the IT-centric region we once were.  Instead, greater Boston is now home to a very diverse community of innovative businesses in pharma, bio-tech, life sciences, nano tech, semiconductor manufacturing, defense as well as IT (including cloud and mobile/convergence). 

The survey results aside, I think there's at least one area where Bay Area residents separate themselves from greater Bostonians and everyone else in the U.S.  And it is this:  they do the best job of promoting their offerings, likes and dislikes, while Bay Staters have had, at least historically, more of an engineering attitude about technology and innovation:  "build it and they will come."

Bill Shander of Tippingpoint Labs recently asked if Bostonians really have an "overriding lack of confidence" about their "place in the world of innovation and business?'' Do Bostonians really have a "perpetual chip" on their shoulders despite their history of innovation, he wonders.

Perhaps Bill is right on this.  Perhaps we'll conduct a survey to find out.

Can't we all just get along?

The previous two posts to this blog asked the questions, will the cloud save journalism, and is old (traditional) media dead?

I’d like to expand on this discussion by recounting the experience of a friend of mine who joined the San Francisco Chronicle a few years back to head up the “traditional” newspaper’s new online department, dubbed www.sfgate.com.

At first, she describes, “everything went well.” The traditional print side of the business didn’t fully respect, nor fear, the upstart online editors and reporters, so they simply went about their business as usual.

But soon, the online part of the paper started scooping the print-version of the Chronicle on important local stories by virtue of being able to distribute the stories electronically, i.e., instantaneously. Suddenly, the stories that would have been fresh and exciting in the morning paper were old news.

And, because some of these young, hungry online reporters were willing to get out of the office and actually talk to people, they were coming up with stories on their own that were being missed by the print version.

“Soon, our daily editorial meetings were becoming very contentious,” my friend told me. Rather than working together to provide a comprehensive view of the news – immediate and top level via online and more thorough but a little later in the print version – the two sides of the organization were locked in a ferocious battle.

“The print guys still owned the bulk of the advertising dollars,” my friend said, “so we (the online team) were always playing second fiddle.”

After a couple of years of doing this tiresome dance my friend had had enough and decided to strike out on her own.

“I knew that there was a market for an online paper in San Francisco, so I decided to start one of my own,” she told me.

Using her own money, she started the fledgling www.sfappeal.com online paper focused exclusively on local stories. “It was a lot easier than I thought,” she said.

She hired a few reporters and paid them by the stories they wrote. There weren’t any printing or distribution costs because she set up the entire operation in the cloud. She pays only a few dollars a day to have her entire enterprise housed on computers, as she puts it, “somewhere out there.” And the online ads she sells cover her costs and allow her to stash away a little for herself.

She went on to tell me she doesn’t have physical office space because she’s found that when people don’t have to go into the office they find their way onto the streets where the news is being made. As a result she gets better content and is now getting 700,000 unique visits to her site every month.

This is not to suggest that traditional newspapers, or magazines, are completely obsolete.

The way we look at it here at 3Point is akin to a pebble in a pond. The initial pebble, in this case the story in traditional media, often makes a small splash, but the ripples it causes, the tweets, the blog posts, and the online news stories expand out to cover a great distance.

Slowly these two forms of communication are finding a comfortable working relationship and will together serve to keep us apprised of the important events that occur around us each and every day.

That’s why, as Jim put it yesterday, “we believe in the intersection of traditional media and new media.”

Old Media is Dead, Long Live Old Media

Old media is dead. 

Isn't it?

Well, that's what many of the new media folks are saying, so it must be true.  That old media has been completely and utterly usurped by new media -- by all things digital and by what is "social."

If you don't believe me, just take a look at a handful of marketing or PR agency web sites, or take a look at the marketing job boards.  It's new media or die, no exceptions, no excuses.  If you still don't believe me, take a look at reports such as "State of the News Media 2010" as referenced earlier this week in a blog post by my esteemed colleague Bill Bellows.  5,900 newspapers jobs were lost in 2009 alone, Bill reports.  And since 2001, 450 jobs at the local TV level were also lost -- and lost forever more than likely.

So old media just doesn't matter anymore. Please don't waste time building relationships with journalists at the Wall Street Journal or Fortune or eWeek.  THEY SIMPLY DON'T MATTER ANYMORE!   Instead, spend 100 per cent of your time building relationships with and pitching only new media channels -- because old media is dead.

Well ... maybe not so fast.

There's a pertinent and lively discussion on this topic taking place right now on LinkedIn in the "Network of PR Professionals" group, of which I am a proud card carrying member.  Most of the communications professionals who have weighed in on the question, " Are the 'old media' relevant?" -- and they hail from all over the world -- believe that old media are still relevant and still play an important role in integrated public relations. 

Reinforcing this point of view is a report released just today, "2010 Edelman Trust Barometer," which reports that next to a stock or industry analyst report, articles in business magazines are deemed to be the most credible.  Thanks to Mike Holland of Smye Holland Associates for sharing this report.  "So, 'old media' seems to be doing ok," Mike says.

Studies aside, plenty of senior PR pros from around the globe seem to agree with the "Barometer" and with Mike, who adds, "People tend to value information that they pay for. So coverage in paid-for 'old media' is still regarded as having a higher value than coverage in free 'new media.'"

A media advisor at NaoriComm International takes the point a step further.  "Ye Olde media is now going back to be more relevant than ever.  Many people are looking to the good ol' media to get in-depth coverage on a topic that would otherwise get a Tweet of 140 characters or less, missing the actual point," said Sharon Levy-Matzkin.

Yes, new media channels are turning our industry on its head and are playing an ever increasing role in the reputation of companies.  And yes, newspapers and magazines and radio and Cable TV are struggling mightily against the tsunami of new media challengers.

But to declare old media dead before its time?  Well, it's just not right, if for no other reason that coverage in  old media channels just might keep you in your job for a while longer, and that's worth much more than any number of tweets.  "No CEO will want to frame their Twitter stream or blog postings...a CEO values the validation that coverage in a newspaper or magazine provides," says Brian Kennedy of Allen and Caron.

In terms of integrated public relations campaigns, old media can and should co-exist with the plethora of opportunities provided by new media.  I believe the facts and the opinions and experiences of PR practitioners bear this out.

At 3Point, we believe in the intersection of traditional media and new media. Maybe that's why so many tweets include references to traditional media articles.

Will the Cloud Save Journalism?

Do you ever struggle with defining the line between content and news?

I could justify the blurring border easily if I look only through my commercial lenses. But that seems self defeating, because the question ultimately brings into play the foundation of democracy:  What happens to the press' role as the Fourth Estate when the news media experiences the kind of rapid decline we've witnessed over the past decade?  

The emerging void in journalism should worry all of us. The Project for Excellence in Journalism's recent annual "State of the News Media 2010" report, indicated 5,900 newspaper jobs were lost in 2009 (in addition to a similar number in 2008). The overall impact is a 33% reduction in newsroom employment at newspapers since 2001.  In the same time, there have been 450 jobs lost at local TV news operations.  We've seen major dailies shutter their doors and major news magazines like Newseek placed on the auction block.  We've seen this offset with an incredible number of bloggers -- only a handful of whom are legitimate journalists.  But can a disaggregated array of bloggers -- many of whom represent corporate interests rather than independent, objective journalists -- serve as the new Fourth State?  And if not, what is THEIR role? 

Not surprisingly to regular readers of this blog, we believe the cloud will serve a valuable function in rebuilding the Fourth Estate, enabling the high costs of printing, publishing and physical distribution to be contained while restructuring advertising models. We see an interesting new vision that integrates journalism and neojournalism in projects like Newsflash from Future News: What Will Journalism Look Like?, published last year by the design experts at IDEO.  We see exciting possibilities for media in new technologies like HP's MagCloud, and we see user friendly delivery systems emerging with the new generation of eReaders like Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle. Technologies and ideas like these involve audiences, diversify content, expand ideas, accelerate the creation and delivery of information into a continuous two-way stream and provide us with relatively familiar formats for accessing information with the touch of an icon regardless of where we are in the world.  

But journalism doesn't exist without journalists. The question that worries us most is whether news media can shed the crushing costs of traditional brick and mortar publishing overhead and embrace these new models fast enough to begin reinvesting in their depleted editorial staffs?  


Image reprinted from Newsflash from Future News: What Will Journalism Look Like? © 2009, IDEO 

Cloud Apps Come Up Short In Support Of Globally Ambitious Small Business

As a small business, 3Point Communications has embraced the cloud-based applications and has enjoyed many benefits such as lower costs and easy, anywhere, anytime access. Many lists of excellent tools, of which many are subscription-based or pay as you go, for small business are readily available, including this list from Refocusing Technology that covers applications that help with communications and administrative functions for small business.

With lower barriers to entry and enablement by cloud applications, Going Global is a dream of many small businesses. Business can reach customers where ever in the world they happen live and work. Laurel Delaney, CEO of http://www.globetrade.com/, recently penned an article which contains some solid ideas on how to expand business abroad. Tools like Skype and Gmail make it easy to stay connected with customers and partners, and there are many applications for sharing information and collaborating, such as Google Docs.

However, cloud-based applications fall short in supporting small businesses that seek to actually establish operations abroad. Selling products via the internet to customers internationally is one thing, but the complexities of establishing a base outside the U.S. requires a level of sophistication that apparently many vendors have yet to solve.

3Point Communications is on a path to expand internationally itself this year, and we have hoped to leverage cloud applications to help run our business, achieving cost savings and the flexibility that SaaS applications afford. Structurally we are geographically diverse, with associates spread across the country, collaborating daily via various cloud apps. And, as our teams are increasingly multinational, we need internet-based applications to enable easy input and access for team members wherever they happen to be.

Unfortunately, as we move to create a presence in both Europe and Asia, we have encountered limitations to some of the applications we use. Time tracking and accounting software are two areas where significant improvements could be made. For example, QuickbooksOnline, which we have successfully and happily used to manage the company's finances, does not accommodate multiple currencies.

In our business, we need to track time priced at local hourly rates in local currencies and consolidated into single currencies to invoice clients. Currently QuickbooksOnline is unable to accommodate this.

Some same limitations are found with time tracking software such as Freshbooks which states on its website “Every customer should look like a Fortune 500 company, based on the image sent by invoices, bills, or other accounting communications, no matter what size the company is.”
This is not quite so, as in the case of the small business who wishes to send a consolidated invoice covering activities in multiple countries, for multiple currencies, Freshbooks is not able to comply as Freshbooks can only support one currency at a time. So, all employees regardless of location would need to use a mutual currency or each employee would need to manually convert the hourly rates from local currency to the rate billed to the client. An unnecessary loss of time.

This may sound picky and certainly not all business would require the same level of capability, and I am assuming that most vendors are focusing on products for the domestic market. However, there are companies like 3Point out there that have ambitions beyond the borders of the U.S.

We will continue to audit applications that we can utilize with our business and will pass along our thoughts through this blog. Please provide us comments to this post and any leads to great small business applications.

We Love Apple

I am not an Apple customer.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I do own 3 iPods. But for a variety of reasons I own a Motorola Droid smartphone and have used PCs since my days at IBM. I have nothing against Apple products per se, in fact, when I’ve encountered them I have found them easy to use and of the highest quality.

While I may not be an Apple customer, I do like the company. My kids attended school in Cupertino, where Apple is based, and benefited from the company’s tax dollars and generous gifts to local schools. And who can argue with the stock performance during the past few years!

So I am sympathetic when Apple finds itself being attacked. In the past two days, Apple has found itself being attacked on several on several fronts at once.

A few weeks ago I posted to this blog about the young Apple engineer who lost his prototype 4G iPhone in a bar in Redwood City. Believe it or not, it looks like it’s happened again.

On Wednesday, a Vietnamese web site posted pictures and a video of a prototype 4G iPhone, complete with Apple logo and 16 Gigabytes of storage written on it. The video shows the inside of the phone that includes the new A4 processor from Apple. The company has not yet responded to the incident, but it’s clear another prototype has been lost.

Back on this side of the Pacific, Apple wasn’t talking about its most recent lawsuit either. On Wednesday, Taiwanese cell phone maker HTC filled suit against Apple for the violation of five key technology patents. While the lawsuit wouldn’t block the sale of Apple’s iPhone, if the ITC rules in HTC’s favor, Apple might be required to pay millions in fines and licensing fees.

And if that weren’t enough, Adobe, Inc., maker of Flash, took out a full page ad in Thursday’s edition of the major newspapers including The Wall St. Journal and the San Jose Mercury News criticizing Apple for blocking application developers from using Flash for apps that run on Apple’s iPhone and iPad product lines. Part of the copy reads, “What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.”

Ouch.

Yes, it’s been tough couple of days for Apple. But with more than a million iPads already sold, 7.8 million expected to be sold by the end of the year, and more than double that number sold next year, Apple will probably do just fine.

Even if they don’t have me as a customer. Yet.

PR 2.0 - North Shore Style

Defining the North Shore of Massachusetts has been a subject of debate for as long as I can remember. My childhood summers, for example, were spent on Salisbury Beach -- a beautiful stretch of dunes and salty air lying just south of the New Hampshire border. To those of us who were fortunate enough to spend summers splashing in the waves on Salisbury Beach, the much more famous Cape Cod might as well have been on Mars. We knew where it was, generally, but we had no reason to go there. We had our own beach, and the Cape people had theirs. North Shore residents, by the way, also have their own cape -- the lesser known but still striking Cape Ann.

The North Shore used to be primarily defined by the coastal towns just north of Boston. Towns like Rockport, Gloucester, Ipswich, Marblehead and Manchester-by-the-Sea, for example. But today, the North Shore is generally used to describe all of the coastal communities north of Boston and south of New Hampshire. So Newburyport, the towns of Rowley and West Newbury, Salisbury Beach (of course), and also the town of Beverly, which is located in the heart of the North Shore.

It is in this quaint, relatively quiet town of 40,000 people, where there's something peculiar brewing -- and it's not just the coffee at The Atomic Cafe on Cabot Street.

Mainly by chance, this home to the Cabot Street Cinema Theatre -- host to the longest running magician show in the U.S. -- is where PR 2.0 practitioners of the North Shore come to meet on a regular basis to talk shop, share best practices and new ideas, discuss trends in social media, the best ways to pitch a particular blogger, who's hot, who's not, newer technologies such as cloud computing and tablets, their best clients and their clients from hell. And all of this high octane conversation fueled by the delicious lattes, cappuccino and chai concoctions thoughtfully prepared by the baristas at The Atomic Cafe.

Participating in today's meeting of 3Point associates were several experienced PR pros whose careers span the broad spectrum that includes global PR agencies, smaller highly focused firms, the corporate side and on their own as solo PR practitioners.

The discussion touched on Twitter as a "news feed." "I don't even need to read the trades as religiously as I used to," said one associate. "I use Twitter to follow the writers and influencers important to my clients. The ideas and links they are posting are what's most important."

There was more discussion of Twitter. "It's not a competition," said another associate. "It's not about the number of followers. It's about having the right followers, the ones who influence the business of your clients."

"You know what's hurting our industry," chimed yet another. "It's the PR person as 'rock star.' It shouldn't be about us being the rock stars or about our number of followers. It should be about us helping our clients become the rock star. I like to tell the stories. But I'm not the story. I'm the broker."

And, finally, yet another seasoned pro said, "Some clients are so concerned about 'where' to have the 'conversation' with their customers and prospects -- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. -- that some are missing the opportunity to have the conversation at all."

Nearly two hours had elapsed since the group sat to sip their first cup of coffee and started to tackle the challenges and opportunities facing our clients and our trade.

It was time to get back to the office and to other work.

For Thursday is another day, when another group -- The North Shore PR Coffee Meetup -- comprised of North Shore-based communications professionals, will meet at the same spot and will refuel with that great java to take on -- once again -- the industry's hottest issues.

Hey, There's a Cloud in my Car!

Few things are as central to our daily lives as the automobile.  Yet car manufacturers have traditionally been slow to integrate new computing technology into vehicles.  That is changing rapidly -- due in large part to the power and potential of the cloud. 


Motor Trend magazine predicts passengers in cars will soon integrate with social media networks, streaming Pandora, YouTube and other content, play online games from the car and control home lighting and home heating and cooling systems. This can all be done today on a smart phone. So, even more interesting is the idea that the cars themselves will become sensors, passing on information via the cloud about traffic, weather conditions and potholes as the vehicle encounters these and other obstacles.  This is part of the the growing Internet of Things  we discussed in a recent post.


Intriguing as these applications are, there are more immediate applications of the cloud in our cars.  One of these is a combined development effort by Ford and Microsoft.


Ford SYNC
First introduced at the North American International Auto Show in 2007, Ford SYNC lets you use voice commands to control your Bluetooth mobile phone and digital media players.  Today, customers who own 2010 Ford vehicles with SYNC already also have been using hands-free, voice-activated cell phone and digital media player integration, 911 Assist and Vehicle Health Report. 


The latest innovation offered on the SYNC platform is called TDI (Traffic, Directions and Information).  Considered by Ford to represent the integration of navigation systems and smart phones, TDI lets you download this latest app the same way you would download a song from an online media store such as Apple’s iTunes or App Store.


Using voice commands, SYNC TDI connects a customer’s Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to Ford’s Service Delivery Network voice portal delivering turn-by-turn driving directions, real-time traffic, business searches and news, sports and weather.  Similar to GM’s Onstar, a driver can ask for traffic information, turn-by-turn directions or information.  But, then magic happens behind the scenes through the interaction of several technologies in the cloud.


When you make a request, it is translated in the cloud by the Tellme voice portal.  Say “Traffic,” for example, and you receive a text message on your phone and a message broadcast over the vehicle’s audio system in real-time, with the location and severity of accidents or new road construction. This is produced by INRIX, a company that gathers real-time speeds, directions and locations from nearly 1 million commercial trucks and cars driving America’s roadways.


Say “Directions,” and a turn-by-turn route is downloaded from Telenav and  spoken to you, again, through the vehicle’s audio system and displayed on the central information display near the radio. Directions incorporate real-time traffic information thus offering the best route.


Airbiquity translates data for transmission over a voice channel, making sure that the coverage is widespread and the size of the transmission is limited to avoid delays.


Using an online location called syncmyride.com,  customers can personalize sports, weather and news. And Ford can create its own app store to let customers download other SYNC applications and updates.


Ford's application of the cloud is ahead of the curve -- both in what it can do and in its integration of multiple cloud technology vendors. It is a vivid and practical illustration of what is here today and foreshadows how we all soon will be dealing with the cloud in our cars  -- hopefully with our eyes on the road.