Lunch over IP

LeWeb3 - Doc Searls: Introducing VRM, Vendor Relationship Management

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

Doc Searls is a co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto", the book that first suggested that "markets are conversations". Prompted by host Loic Le Meur, Doc says that the idea came to him in the 80s when he worked in the advertising business,. "The best example that markets are conversations", he says, "is here, at events like LeWeb3". Here are the 11 points from his talk, titled "Turning the Tables: What happens when users are really in charge". 

1. Bullshit will lose leverage. To explore, look at the meme called Web 2.0. We use the word because Tim O’Reilly did a really nice job writing it up in 2005. Ten years ago, portals were all the rage and advertising was going to pay for everything; today social networks are all the rage and advertising is going to pay for everything.  Doc closes with a reference to the Web 2.0 B-S Generator.
2. Advertising as we know it will die. Google AdSense has made great advances by making ads accountable so you just pay for what gets clicked. 
3. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them “social” will seem as absurd as it actually is.
4. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers.
5. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation (concept from Norman and Ramirez in the 80s).
6. What’s your business model will no longer be asked of everything. VCs taught us to ask that in the 90s. Now use and usefulness come first.  And money is an effect of those things. (He echoes here a point in yesterday's speech by Nelson Mattos).
7. We will make money by maximizing “because effects”.  That is what happens when you make money because of something rather than with it.   
8. Markets are all three things – transaction, conversations, and relationships (illustrated with a great Hugh MacLeod cartoon)
9. The Live Web is more important then Web-dot-anything. The Live Web is branching off the Static web.
10. We will marry the Live Web to the value constellation. In essence, "I want to notify the whole market that I want to rent a car, in effect a personal RFP that goes out when I arrive at the airport to Hertz and Avis and all the others.  I would like to be the bridge. I would like to handle my own health care data. I should be able to inquire and relate to whole markets, on the fly." The users need to be the platform of the future. 
11. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. We are calling this VRM, Vendor Relationship Management. The project is being launched within the Harvard’s Berkman Center. The core concept is that the individual should be able to manage their relationships with their vendors and suppliers, based on the idea that they actually know more about specific preferences, updated data, etc. And, further, that most CRM systems oversimplify customer data in order to segment, and to effectively manage the info; ultimately they are just a sales system, not a relationship system.

LeWeb3 - Joi Ito: Running a WoW Guild

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

Japanese entrepreneur and investor Joi Ito opens his speech by looking back at what he spoke at LeWeb in 2005, which was about iPod and the Pepsi commercial they had just released and the generational gap between those who wanted to post content and the restrictions that they had to face. Then he talks about other, current gaps -- between games and the web, and between games and Hollywood, and the fact that the people who make decisions often have no idea about what gap they are dealing with. 

Joi complains that there remains a huge huge stigma to games, even though most of us have used games.  We use words like “addicted”. There is always the language of online vs. real world, however, Joi notes that for kids the internet is ubiquitous, it is not something you log in / out of. The internet is part of the real world, it is not like you are offline when your mobile is in your pocket.

Multiplayer online game World of Warcraft is 9.3 million users today. When Joi asks the crowd, almost 30% of the folks in the room raise their hands to indicate that they play WoW.

For two years, Joi went to the Molten Core in World of Warcraft two times every weekend, coordinating a global team of  40 people.  It is a very sophisticated activity, and is like a formal ball -- a 40 person raid can fall apart in a moment.  John Seely Brown calls it an "ensemble", with the sense that you are bringing 40 people towards a common goal. 

Joi goes on to note that MBA’s suck at leading these raids as they don’t listen. The best are those in the service industry (night shift nurse, etc.).  Joi runs, as a Mage, a guild, and has a real-life priest in the guild. The priest has often stated that running a guild is a lot like running a congregation.

One of the key characteristics of WoW is that it is very working class. Joi states that in his guild, he has people who are practically illiterate. "You have 8 year olds who play with ex-cons, and you need to explain to them that the diversity is very important".

In WoW they use team speak, and have developed a series of protocols so that they can manage the open audio space for as much as 8 hours. There is a different skill set, which this generation will bring into the workplace. 

Joi speaks briefly about the issues involved in running his guild, his forums and extensive by-laws. There are regular "town hall" meetings, and people are very focused on being fair and clear. 

Joi then talks about machinima, a comparatively old technology which uses game engines to create content and movies. He shows varied forms, including a music video, an ad for Coke in China, and an advertisement for a Toyota truck, which is very amusing. Here it is:

Joi closes with a plea to the audience to support these cultural connections and content creation, and to use the Creative Commons framework to ensure that content can be shared, mashed, mixed and worked through.  They are currently working with Wikipedia to standardize across the licenses. 

Here is another example of a machinima mash-up shown by Jeff Clavier, a French VC based in Silicon Valley, at SoftTech.

LeWeb3 - Philippe Starck: It's all about the viewpoint

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

Quotes from star designer Philippe Starck:

At the end of his keynote, Starck took two questions from the floor, which were amongst the most captivating part of the session.  First, he was handed the new Kindle reader from Amazon by Robert Scoble (photo: Scoble at left) – and his first reaction was: that it’s nice, "in technology design, the main things are thin, simple, light, and this meets those issues". But then he went through a series of problems in the design of the device: "the designer wasn't humble enough to disappear", the Kindle has too many angles, it's almost impossible to grab it without hitting the buttons that scroll the page, etc. "What is important in this kind of products is what is on the inside. Designers should try to remove as many of the details that surround the core" -- in this case, the core being the screen. His summary: “it’s almost modern”.

The second question was why there weren’t more genius designers, outside of Starck and Steve Jobs. Starck’s first response: "Steve Jobs, a good friend, is a genius. Me, I just look like a genius because of the leather pants." After having cashed the room's laughter, he went on an angle of genuine enthusiasm. He said: "We need to do an exercise every morning as mutants. If you walk like a robot, but look at your feet, you stumble. If you look a bit ahead, you don’t trip, it just works for itself. if you look ahead then can work can speak can exchange can interact, but now your duty is to raise your angle of view so that you see farther than the horizon, you are in the territory of intelligence, the range of humanity. It's about the angle of view. The danger zone is to look straight up, to see the light of God, to surrender yourself and… become stupid again."

LeWeb3 - Digg's Kevin Rose: A great project doesn't need to be big

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

From the bus driver at La Chapelle, before I even had a chance to ask if the huge RATP unmarked bus was the right one to the conference's venue (guess the black and black outfit gave it away): "Oui Madame." 

Quotes from speaker Kevin Rose, founder of social bookmarking site Digg and co-host of weekly podcast Diggnation:

I started Digg as an experiment, and would have been happy if it paid my rent. …Then, I started three companies at once, and that was probably a mistake. 

Now, I see a lot of copycats… a little disheartening. 

It doesn’t have to be a big website to be a great project. 

You don’t have to be a coder or a hardcore geek to start a great project online these days,

When we started, all the cool people were at Google, and had Google stock, and all the great PHP people were at Yahoo!

I don’t know if I have groupies, but the podcast experience is a real thing with the fans, and that’s where we get the energy, and then we go out and get beers.

Had a lot of people who said they went to YouTube, saw the podcast and then went and checked out Digg. 

Silicon Valley makes it a lot easier. Anytime you can go to a party, or a bar down the street, and sit down and chat with the founder of Flickr, and have dinner with Zuckerberg of Facebook. It helps.

Second Life: Virtual Worlds and the Enterprise

-- an essay by guest blogger Susan Kish

(Susan Kish has been working with networks and communities for over 10 years. A PDF version of this essay, completed with a glossary and a bibliography, is available for downloading - see at the end.)

When you raise the topic of Second Life (SL) in a conversation, you usually get one of two reactions: 1) Dismissal as “just another game”, “people should get their first life together first”, or 2) Rapt attention as questions start pouring out, and opportunities and risks are explored.

How should enterprises look at Second Life and, more generally, at Virtual Worlds? Is the topic still too early or too distracting from “real business”? Or is SL actually close to the tipping point where, like so many technologies before, it will flip into the mainstream with unanticipated results?

Second Life is a synthetic world, a 3D online simulation where you "walk" (slow) or "teleport" (instantaneous) around in the shape of an avatar - a computer representation of actual people, in lifelike form - and can interact (through messaging, voice or video) with others, buy property and build buildings, shop, listen to music and much more. It's not a game: it's a social space. To get there, you go to secondlife.com and download a piece of software. It's free as long as you only want to "walk" around; you have to pay to buy local currency (the Linden, which is convertible into real dollars) or to buy virtual land (so you can build, invite your friends over, set up a shop, or resell).

This essay looks into these and other questions relevant to businesses in relation to the emergence of Virtual Worlds. We consider here particularly Second Life as the most important and fastest-growing, but there are several other similar entities.

1) CONTEXT

Second Life can not be looked at in isolation, or you will miss where it’s going. Our emerging future will include three separate kinds of “worlds” – the Real World, the Digital World (2D Web, Internet), and the Virtual World (3D Web). 

Under the umbrella of Virtual Worlds are emerging universes, ranging from MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft), and Metaverses (Virtual Worlds that are primarily social vs. game oriented, such as Second Life), to MMOLEs (focused on learning and training environments), to Intraverses (putting up a virtual world inside the corporate firewall), to Paraverses (often also called Mirror Worlds, such as Google Earth).

If we evaluate these technologies in terms of their evolution, we see that Virtual Worlds are a topic today because of a combination of advancements in software (graphics, web 2.0 communication), hardware (PC's computational and graphic capacity), and infrastructure (broadband networks) to list a few. South Korea is already seeing the power of that combination, with 95% of homes on 40 MB broadband -- which explains why digital and virtual worlds are ubiquitous there.

If you view these technologies in terms of technology adoption frameworks, such as the Gartner Hype Cycle (see image), standard patterns emerge. LucasArts launched the first of these worlds, Habitat, in 1985, and closed it down within 3 years. However, the two decades between the launch of Habitat and that of Second Life in 2003, are a classic gap between the introduction of a technology, and when it matures to a level where mainstream adoption is close. 

Since Second Life’s launch, we can identify another Hype Cycle. Enormous media coverage in the autumn of 2006 and early 2007 meant a huge take up of the site – from 1 million members in October 2006 to over 7 million today. Meanwhile, the hype was brought into serious question as analysts such as Clay Shirky questioned the genuinely active number of members in Second Life (currently largely under 100'000 at any given time) vs. the curious experimenters who went and registered as members once, and have yet to return. 

2) PEOPLE AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

Virtual Worlds are fundamentally immersive, visually compelling and highly social experiences. Trusted relationships, both personal and professional, emerge quickly in these environments and can carry over into the real world. These worlds provide a degree of control to individuals – control over their age, their gender, their appearance and their setting – that enables escape and fantasy. Pure curiosity, and the desire to explore and to create, causes many to visit – and often stay.

To understand why it is so immersive, we must first understand the concept of the avatar, the figure (image at right) which users select or design to represent them in these environments (think: user ID come to life).

Avatars make these Virtual Worlds much more similar to the real world than the digital 2D environment of the Internet. With a body in this environment, avatars interact by the same non-verbal cues of real life – moving closer to someone for a conversation, turning away when the conversation is closed, nodding (and sometimes jumping) in agreement, etc.  Avatars also make issues of behavior / netiquette more acute. On the other hand, the pseudonymity of being present through the avatar makes some people more confident: for example, more comfortable asking questions in a course or meeting.

Edward Castronova's book Synthetic Worlds (2005), viewed as a classic by many in the industry, places social issues of Virtual Worlds within a historical framework of immigration.  Castronova argues that when these worlds provide a more compelling world than the real one, history shows that there will be migration. Today, extreme users of Second Life can be viewed as early indicators of this trend.

3) ENTERPRISES AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

Many enterprises have set up a home inside Second Life, exploring ways in which Virtual Worlds may change how we do business. These worlds are proving to be entrepreneurial environments. An estimated 200 companies have been created which are dedicated to delivering services within Second Life. Combined they currently employ over 3000 people globally, with estimated annual sales of $60 million (source: Linden Labs).  For many enterprises, the first venture into Second Life is often a store built for marketing and branding purposes; however other key areas of enterprise exploration are:

• Education and Training – The immersive virtual environment is extremely conducive for teaching, from language to tech training and on-boarding. There are currently hundreds of educational sites within Second Life, and over 2000 participants in their dedicated education community. The area of Serious Games, whether within Second Life or within stand alone metaverses / MOLE (multiple online learning environments), will continue to develop and grow.
  
  
• Communication and Collaboration – For many, Second Life presents a very attractive alternative to conference calls and video conferences. Enterprises already regularly use SL for meetings, conferences and connecting dispersed teams. For example, we have been using SL for weekly cadence calls with a large global client and the dispersed team, and have seen consistently good results – time is used very effectively, and participants are more relaxed and open. This potential will increase with the recent test launch of integrated audio and voice capabilities on Second Life.
  
  
• Sales - Many consumer goods, automotive, media and financial services firms (from Nissan to Adidas, from Swiss bank BCV to Reuters, from the BBC to Harvard University) are exploring Second Life as a new channel for sales, customer relationships, teaching and media distribution. From building islands to promote recording artists, to launching a new car simultaneously in the real world and SL, to customizing a shoe in SL to be bought in the real world, these organizations are pioneering the medium. However, to quote a major retailer, “it’s too early to know what will work”. Technology companies are also exploring the medium for corporate sales and services. IBM is a leader in this area, having recently opened a new Virtual Business Centre which experiments with Virtual Worlds as a sales channel. The ability to work with a client in a visual and immersive environment, will only be an advantage as products and services get more complex.
  
  
• Innovation – Companies are using SL to test and develop products. Starwood Hotels, for example built a new concept hotel within SL as a test environment before their real world launch of Aloft Hotels, using the SL members' feedback to refine their plans before starting construction and franchising (after which Starwood donated its virtual SL hotel to a non-profit youth organization).

4) WHAT'S NEXT?

Virtual Worlds will be constrained by technology and acceptance for the foreseeable future. However, environments such as Second Life are moving and evolving so fast that “checking in” every six months or a year is no longer enough.

• Virtual Browsers - Many participants predict the introduction of a “virtual browser” as the next breakthrough, allowing avatars and their assets to move easily between virtual worlds. The underpinning technologies will become more widely available, encouraging enterprises to build their own virtual worlds – adding to the spectrum of virtual innovation.
  
  
• Ubiquity – Like other technologies that are fundamentally about communication, Virtual Worlds will need to go through a series of standard phases – from “Wow, you have an avatar?”, to “I have an avatar too”, to “You still don’t have an avatar?”.  When there is a critical mass in a given community, then the benefits of communicating or collaborating within a world such as Second Life will be much more evident.
  
  
• Confluence – When your avatar flies through Second Life (or when your mouse maneuvers through Street View, a recent feature introduced on Google Earth) you can’t help thinking – what if? What if the next generation of technologies could allow the ultimate mash-up of Google Earth and Second Life – allowing our avatars to stroll down a real time Broadway on their way to the movies? The combination – whether a Google Life or a Second Earth or another similar entity - could be the ultimate enterprise in Virtual Worlds.   

SL and other virtual worlds have demonstrated the potential to become the next generation of interface for connections, content, and collaboration – effectively the post-Web platform of choice – taking the 2D internet and transforming it to a 360-degree 3D experience. The question now is: can they overcome the challenges and go beyond the tipping point of widespread acceptance of the technology, moving from the leading edge user to ubiquity? And if so, when?

(Susan Kish can be contacted at susankish.com This essay, completed with a glossary and a bibliography, is available in PDF  for downloading here (1.4 MB). Any comment and suggestion will be gratefully received. Research assistance by Lauren Du Peza).
© Copyright 2007 Susan Kish. Distributed under Creative Commons License Attribution/Non Commercial/Share Alike

Picnic Green Challenge: the finalists

Running notes from the Picnic07 conference in Amsterdam.

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

(UPDATE - The Picnic Green Challenge winner announced)

Picnic07 closed yesterday evening with drinks and television shows and folks running around in green swimming caps snapping photos of each other, The attendees streamed into the Public Lighting room -- floor covered with woodchips, checked tablecloths -- for the pre-final stage in a process dedicated to finding concrete solutions to fight climate change: the Picnic Green Challenge (see also these previous posts).

The PGC is the result of a collaboration between the Picnic conference an the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Picnic contributed its networks, its platform and its catalytic role, and the Lottery brought its expertise and the funding of the serious prize money: 500'000 euros.

Bruno Giussani was up on stage hosting the whole evening, so he turned the LoIP blog over to me. And be warned: this will be a long post. The evening opened with a video starring Amsterdam major Job Cohen suggesting his own response to climate change. It's short, and you really want to watch it. As Bruno said after it, "I don't know what you guys in Amsterdam really think of your major, but if you can clone him, I want one for my town":

Marieke van Schaik, head of the charity department at the Postcode Lottery, explained that the Challenge was inspired by a speech given by Bill Clinton Bill Clinton in Amsterdam last December, when he said that the solutions to the climate crisis will come from the new economy fueled by new ideas, not from the old economy fueled by oil. She also explained this very unique construct that is the Postcode Lottery: half of every lottery ticket sold goes to charity, and a big part of the lottery's appeal is that the winner "shares" the prize with everyone else who bought a ticket in the same postal code. Nice cycle.

The Picnic Green Challenge was launched in June with a deadline of the end of August. 439 applications were received, from 50 countries. Bruno, who was a member of the preliminary jury, has already blogged some considerations after they read all the entries and shortlisted the five finalists. In particular, he said that if we took the PGC entries as a sample of current trends in "green" thinking, this would be the shortlist:

• carbon compensation/offset schemes
• systems for coordinating carpooling (via cell phones, the web, or both)
• systems for monitoring household energy and water consumption/increasing consumption awareness
• solar lighting and solar panels in-a-box
• wind turbine kits
• initiatives to induce/encourage people to act "sustainably"
• green labeling and certification of products/services and of business/brands
• sustainable building and construction materials and concepts
• alternative approaches to transportation and energy infrastructure
• biofuels

The preliminary jury did the first cut, each jury member creating a shortlist of 15, which were then pushed through several rounds of reviews, additional research and discussions. They finally focused on a shortlist of 8, before sending 5 to the final, yesterday night. The preliminary jury was made up of Emily Farnworth from the Climate Group, Joris Krüse from Media Republic, Jeffrey Prins from the Doen Fondation, Femke Rotteveel from the Postcode Lottery, Marleen Stikker from Picnic, and Bruno Giussani.

The five nominees were:

• The Solar Lampion: a designer uses available solar technology to create a beautiful lampion, an invitation to designers to engage with the technologies of sustainability (website / article)
• The Sustainable Dance Club: a project to change clubbing and mass events to make them sustainable (website)
• The Green Thing: an online, not-for-profit social movement to mobilize the masses to act against climate change (website)
• City Cargo: a project for zero-emission cargo distribution in cities using existing tram infrastructure (website)
• Qurrent: an energy company that doesn't sell you energy, but helps you make and manage your own (website) 

The five finalists that were presenting had been at Picnic all week, attending the conference but also having their own "bootcamp", with speaking coaching, private discussions with entrepreneurs and investors, and the gift of an electric bike. The finalists had 10 minutes to present, strictly timed (there's a clock in the corner of the screen, and Bruno cut one off), followed by 7 minutes for questions from the jury and the floor. Then the members of the final jury have worked on the final evaluation. Their decision will be unveiled in a few hours. The members of the final jury were: Avery Baker, from Tommy Hilfiger; Helen Jones, from Ben&Jerry Europe, John Thackara from Doors of Perception, Liesbeth van Tongeren from Greenpeace Netherlands, venture capitalist Eckart Wintzen, Steve Howard from the Climate Group. The jury was chaired by Richard Branson, founder of Virgin.  Branson and Howard were not attending the presentations -- they were in New York at the Clinton Global initiative, flying in overnight -- but Bruno explained that they've been constantly briefed and that the presentations were only one of many elements in the final jury's choice.  Branson had sent in a video message: "To make an impact on climate change, we will have to give people a better choice. You won't get them to stop consuming, so let's get them to consume in a better way". So here my running notes of the five presentations.

The Solar Lampion
Presented by Damian O’Sullivan

Damian introduced himself as an industrial designer, based in Rotterdam.  He described how he has been surrounded by solar cells for as long as I can remember, as his father was responsible for solar panels on some of the European consortium satellites.
Ugliness doesn’t sell. Determined to come up with a solar lamp that was aesthetic and mobile. Looked to the past for inspiration, lights made of glass and steel, Chinese and Japanese lanterns weigh next to nothing and give beautiful light, simple candles and oil lamps. However, these are beautiful but not efficient. Standard white LED lamp is 1500 times more efficient than a naked flame.
Now we don’t need to carry lights with us anymore, light is everywhere. So maybe it is a romantic notion to move away from the supply, cut the umbilical cord connecting us to the power.
Damian presented his working drawings, the final image, and then the lampion itself -- a lovely cylinder of solar cells, designed to sit on a table or be hung from a tree. He wanted to use standard materials such as 50x50 mm solar cells, and come up with something as beautiful as possible. To explain the design, he plotted the lamp on a matrix of Fixed vs. Mobile, Innovative vs. Traditional, placing it in the Mobile / Innovative quadrant.
Mobility:  he described how you can pick it off the branch and take it anywhere you want. The bedroom. The living room.  The porch. Innovation: The lampion is made of solar cells fitted into an exoskeleton made of a metal alloy designed for strength.
The cells are translucent, so the light shows from the sides, not just the top or bottom. Damian developed the exoskeleton, and each crown includes 6 inclined solar cells. Once the design was complete it looks like a spiraling pine cone. The prototype lampion has 30 cells, which all work with a rechargeable battery. The lamp works for three hours after a day charge, and is expected to cost around 185 euro.
He showed the lampion, tuned it on, and got a series of "ahhhs" from the audience. Well deserved, it's beautiful.

The Sustainable Dance Club
Presented by Michel Smit

Michel’s idea is to change the world by changing clubbing. What if we could capture the energy that we produce every time we take a step, he asks? In a club, that could be used to power the music and lights, and the dance floor could be turned into a generator. The SDC (Sustainable Dance Club) intent is to make clubs and festivals more sustainable all over the world, and to do so without having to go into the clubbers comfort zone.
Clubs are the places for the young, with 1.5 million clubbers per week just in the Netherlands.  However, clubbing today is not sustainable at all. Clubs don’t think about the issue, and the yearly impact of a club for 1000 people, is that they use 30x more water than a household of 4, create 40x as much waste, use 7000x more bottles, and burn 150x times as much energy – even if the club is only open a couple of nights a week.  The total carbon production of one club in a year is 450,000 kg of carbon.
Michel and his colleagues have a lot of experience of clubbing, and have developed expertise about sustainability.  Their initial focus is on the SDC energy dance floor, with the idea that the more people dance, the more energy you make -- there is a system under the floor to capture that kinetic energy.  However, the total energy produced from 500 people dancing for a night, is only around 25,000 watts, or about 1% of the energy required.
The team is opening up a club, “MyTown” in Rotterdam, in the spring of 08, targeting a 50% reduction in waste / water / energy. “So… Shall we dance?”

Do the Green Thing
Presented by Andy Hobsbawm

The Green Thing is a free online community that makes it really fun to change your behavior and “get more green”. This is based on the premise that the vast majority of people really want to live greener lifestyles, however, they feel it’s too futile, too confusing, or too difficult.  Most of the actions recommended are seen as too activist, or too scary, or too preachy. The Green Thing aims at using creativity to fight climate change.
TGT is set up as an online not-for-profit (get rid of that issue as a potential barrier). The process is simple; you sign up, get an intriguing email at the end of every month which leads you to a short video / call to action, inspiring you to undertake that month’s activity.  Two weeks later you get a reminder, with another film that dramatizes this month’s Green Thing.
The Green Thing has lots of things to make acting more fun. The launch activity will be walking so it will come as a podcasts that you can listen while walking (Tracy Chevalier, the author of the "Girl with the Pearl Earring", is apparently writing the story). Their research has also shown that community reinforcement is really important, to create social currency. The intention is to create a series of Green Things for each month’s action, which you can trade, and show them on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, launching a green YouTube.
The power of the idea rests on the premise that entertainment will hook in the community, understanding to bring them context, which drives them to serious behavior change over the longer term. The people in turn, will drive government and business to do Green Things too.
Green Thing will launch in October in the UK, and possibly in April in San Francisco. The plan is to reach 25 million people by the end of 2008, inspiring 2 million actions per month, which could save at least 135,000 tons of carbon.
Andy closed with his launch video, a funny blend of steet signs and storytelling, and the whole room smiled and laughed.

CityCargo
Presented by Michael Hendriks

CityCargo is focused on using old and existing things in new ways, in particular sustainable cargo distribution in urban centers, using the existing tram network. The process starts by receiving cargo in large warehouses on the outside of the city, where the cargo of four trucks get transferred to one freight tram. That trams go to locations inside the city, where they are met by smaller electric vehicles that take cargo from the tram to the final destinations.
CityCargo aims to take out half the number of trucks that come into the city (in Amsterdam, that would mean cutting the number of trucks from 5000 to 2500 a day).  In addition, Citycargo intends to use zero emission electric vehicles (clean), to reduce the number of trucks (safer for streets), to use the tram infrastructure (fast and efficient). The market is global with over 240 cities with tram systems. They have found all the partners to make this happen, have done a trial run and obtained a 10-years license from the city of Amsterdam.   
Michael closed by reporting a conversation with a CEO two days ago who said, “I love green - it’s the color of money and the color of nature. If you combine the two, I’m in.”

Qurrent
Presented by Igor Kluin

Igor opened by challenging Picnic08 to set a better example in being green –- by lowering the temperature in the rooms, using different lighting systems etc. (Applause).
The focus of Qurrent is to be the first energy company not to sell you energy, but to help you make  and manage your own.
Qurrent produces a small black box, called a QBox, which does three things:  (1) Energy Optimizer: turns on and off things such as your washing machine at the time when it is most efficient and cheaper; (2) Energy monitor: gives you clear insight into energy flows of your home presening it in a very friendly fashion; and (3) LEN: is a router for a Local Energy Network (LEN) within your neighborhood, connecting you to the grid and to your neighbors. Igor believes in decentralized energy systems. Which, so far, is not affordable and too complex. Lowering those two barriers is Qurrent's focus (they also will advise people on how to set up their own energy production systems -- wind, solar, etc).
Qurrent's product is already post-prototype stage, and they are trying to sell them to energy companies and real estate management companies, "which are very conservative". He plans to use the prize money, if he wins, for demonstration projects.  “For mass CO2 reduction, bring CO2 reduction to the masses", he says.

In closing the evening, Bruno stressed that whoever wins, the prize money must be used for investing in taking the project or idea to the next stage.

The winner's name will be announced by Richard Branson in a few hours.

UBS Women's Leadership Conference: A changing environment

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

(Kish is the VP of Network and Community Practice at  Xing and the CEO of First Tuesday Zurich)

Running notes from the UBS Women's Leadership Conference in Zurich (29 May).

UBS CEO Peter Wuffli opens the session with "welcome ladies· and ladies". There are about 12% men in the audience of 1500. The theme of the conference is "Changing environment, new markets, adaptable skills".

Patrick Hohmann, CEO of Remei, talks about starting a company 17 years ago to try and make organic cotton for everybody. It was a hobby, and "everyone thought I was crazy". Remei had to organize an entire organic textiles value chain. But the impact of controlling the full chain is significant. For example, producers usually try to gin as many kilos as possible. However, with the full value chain under control, Remei can say that the number of kilos is not important - instead the length of fiber is key, as it is more flexible and higher quality. In the standard textiles value chain the farmer sells his product to someone who "gives him money". At the other end, the textile industry buys the product from a dealer. By restructuring the value chain, the textile factory buys from the farmer themselves, and knows the face and has a relationship with him, and the farmers in turn see where their cotton goes and feel pride in their product. This different approach is cited as a key factor behind why Remei now has 6500 farmers who work for them (picture above).

During the Q&A session, the audience asked Patrick how he deals with the pressure for quarterly results when you clearly need a long-term perspective to make these kinds of projects work?  The response came from former Swiss Stock Market head Antoinette Hunziker-Ebneter, now with FormaFutura, who pointed out that the most effective driver will probably come from the end consumer, which in the case of the financial markets is the individual investor. In Switzerland, currently about 3% of investors are focusing on concerns about sustainability. When that number reaches critical mass, about 6-7%, the pressure in the markets will shift from a quarterly to a qualitative perspective, she said.

The keynote speaker was Beatrice Weder di Mauro (picture left) a Swiss woman who's considered one of Germany's economic "Wise Men". Prof. di Mauro opened by stating that the world is in generally good shape (increased market integration, low inflation in both advanced and developing countries despite oil shocks, low volatility across asset classes). In this "flat" world, she looked at the impact of borders. To evaluate if borders are still important, she looked at the volume of trade between Basel and Zurich, (both in Switzerland) (83 km) and Basel and Freiburg, Germany (70 km). Freiburg is closer and should, according to the "gravity theory" of economic trade, be the larger counterparty.  However, in economic terms, it seems that the distance is multiplied by 10X because of the border. On that scale, Freiburg is closer to Hamburg, which is hundreds of km away. (I wonder if anyone has done that mash-up on Google Maps). Di Mauro's key conclusions:

• Trade and finance are still determined by geography and border effects are large: the world is bumpy thanks to mountains and oceans
• Structural change and the decline in manufacturing jobs (the shift from "manly work" and an explosion in "geek work"), is mostly due to technological progress, not shifts in trade
• Worldwide income inequality is mainly due to differences between countries, and as a result, economic policies still matter
• Your wages are not set in Shanghai, but in your university: education, education, education.

She was followed by a panel of six, moderated by Susanne Wille. I've picked a couple quotes from each of the speakers to give a flavor of the discussions.

Thomas Bull-Larsen, director of McKinsey Switzerland, on diversity:  "It is very clear that we were not as successful with women as we wanted. In fact, we have had several clients who wanted a diverse study team - and we have lost mandates because we had an all-male, white team. "

Heliane Canepa, president and CEO of Nobel Biocare, on success: "You have to want to get to the top. If you always stay focused then you go on the top - it's as simple as that". On the future of teeth: "We have over 80 million people who will die with their teeth in a water glass. What a terrible future." And on being a businesswoman: "As a woman you have advantages as well. You are listened to because you are exotic, you are very good, and of course you shouldn't make mistakes.”

Amity Forrest, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, on success: "A lot of it just happens when you like what you do, when you have a lot of focus, when you see what you want and go for it - and when you are around people who believe in you. It started with my father who told me I could do whatever I wanted to." On being the first woman partner at PwC: "At the partner's meeting, it was 179 men and I. They would open the sessions saying "Lieben Kollegen, and Amity".

Dmitri Stockton, president and CEO of GE Money, Central and Eastern Europe, on success: "You have to be a driver of change. You have to be in situations where you do things no one has done before. You are only as good as the people around you - and figure out how to get them doing great things." On doing what's comfortable: "I think you miss the essence of life and opportunities if you put a barrier in front of you, if you do what is comfortable for you."

Renate Schubert, director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions at ETH Zurich, on change: "Change starts with the leader." On women and risk: "Is it more difficult for women to take a risk?  I observe many women who are willing to take much higher risks than men are - it is a question of information and encouragement."

Franziska Tschudi, CEO of Wicor, on success: "Getting to the top is sheer luck. The other part is to take what is given to you and make the best that you can."

Tweakfest07: metaverses, multitouch screens and virtual fashion from the 1940s

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

(Kish is the VP of Network and Community Practice at  Xing and the CEO of First Tuesday Zurich)

Running notes from the second day, Friday 25 May, of Tweakfest in Zurich (see this post for Steve Wozniak's opening keynote).

Ian Hughes, "metaverse evangelist" from IBM's lab in Hursley, talked about Second Life and metaverses. In Ian's words: “I live my life online -- I either write a blog, do IM, Flickr, visiting Youtube. But I am a different person online. These virtual worlds are so visual that you will use a different person when you are online, and you are essentially forced into it.” Ian showed up on stage wearing his favorite leather jacket that he had his avatar dressed in, and a t-shirt that he created for his avatar. During the talk, he showed a 3D model of his avatar, epredator, created by a 3d printer by Fabjectory (picture left). Talk about a virtual and real life mash-ups. 

Ian's view is that Second Life is a social changer - not just a technology phenomenon. SL is distinguished by the fact that you can go up to people and talk to them, and give non-verbal cues like coming close to talk, or walking away to show a conversation has ended.

IBM has made a significant commitment to Second Life and virtual worlds, announced at a press conference held in Second Life last fall as one of the results of their global open Innovation Jam. There are currently over 40,000 IBMers active within Second Life and they have meetings, do client demonstrations, and “just build stuff - boats, houses, etc.”. 

Ian's most interesting points were about corporate life - specifically about that well-known phenomenon: conference calls. On a large call, you wait for all the people to join, you get down to business, then you finish the call and we all hang up. However, in real life there's much better flow of conversations, especially before and after. If each of IBM's 330,000 employees have an average of 3 teleconferences a week, with an average 5 minutes of dead time at the start of each call, Ian figured that that would sum up to about 9.5 years of dead time per week. He contrasted that with meetings and events held in Second Life, where the time before and after meetings could be spent by the avatars in those small conversations and serendipitous encounters that are often the way real business is done.

Ian closed with quoting the growth numbers for Second Life - currently at 6.5 million members vs. 60,000 last year (Consider however Clay Shirky's analysis of the real meaning of these numbers). This amazing growth has impacted other virtual worlds - Habbo Hotel, There.com, and Active Worlds, which has been around for at least 10 years, and “everyone ignored it until SL”. Kaneva is another virtual world, where people have recently been invited to the Beta.

During the afternoon, there were exhibits and talks inside and outside the Technopark space. The coolest for me was a big grey, anonymous box up on a small stage, surrounded by people. When I climbed the steps up to the box, I saw that they all had their hands on a large screen embedded in the box, all moving and resizing a series of squares on the screen. Daniel Lüthi, who did this project with Christian Iten for their diploma at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst last year, describes it formally as an Interactive Multitouch Surface (image right). After playing with the boxes, Daniel brought up a virtual game sort of like billiards, where you could shoot the balls at each other, and they would be carried by momentum and bump into other balls. Very neat -- similar to what Jeff Han has been showing at TED.

Later in the afternoon, Ugo Bonanni of the MIRALAB at the University of Geneva showed some of their past  research with virtual humans, motions, and mass. Ugo talked about past projects starting in 1995, through the first distance tennis match at the Telecom 1997 between players in Lausanne and Geneva, dance performances, and the creation of a virtual Hagia Sophia, Pompei, and Xian Terra Cotta  projects in virtual archaeology. The Pompei project, part of the Lifeplus EU initiative, targeted to create real scenes and place virtual humans within them, creating problems of effective natural light and shadow. Ugo also showed recent work from Miralab in fabrics and fashion. There are now several fashion designers working on virtual clothes, such as the studio of  Yves Saint Laurent, working with how cloth stretches and forms. The software which Miralab created, Fashionizer, is being used in the industry for modelling and developing fabrics and designs.

Miralab also used the program to recreate fashion sketches from the 1940s and 1950s of dresses which never made it into production. Ugo showed these great gowns (picture left), which survived only in the form of a sketch. The textures are fabulous, and it is wonderful to see the fabric drape on the models and sway as they walk. This type of modelling is possible today because of new accelerated graphics tech. Ugo responded to a question from the audience, and estimated that it would be still five more years before these creations can be done in real time.

"Smart mobs" author Howard Rheingold joins then Tweakfest in Second Life, hosted by IBM on one of their islands (so: he is at home in California, and talks to us through a teleconference in the virtual world). He speaks of a new vernacular emerging with the explosion of Youtube and similar sites, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to upload videos. Video has shifted away from being the exclusive province of professionals with expensive equipment and training. He talks about how he still spends a great deal of time with text, but nowadays he consumes and uses video as well. He wanted to show two recent videos in Second Life, echos of an article he wrote for The Well in 1993 which became a classic, A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community . Unfortunately, we could not watch the videos that evening due to the inevitable technical problems that still arise with emerging technologies. However, both can be seen on YouTube: A (Re-)Slice of Life, Part I and A (Re-)Slice of Life, Part II.

Yunus asks the right question: Are banks peopleworthy?

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

(Kish is the VP of Network and Community Practice at  Xing and the CEO of First Tuesday Zurich)

Last week I went to hear Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, at the GDI, just outside of Zurich. Muhammad spoke for about an hour and a half, without notes, and without powerpoints. He was in Zurich to explain what he feels can be done to create a different kind of world.  He was spellbinding. The room, filled with the business elite of Zurich (directors from the biggest Swiss private banks, successful entrepreneurs, editors of leading magazines, etc.) hung on every word. Muhammad captured his audience with a combination of a great story, an authentic spirit, enormous energy and humility, and sheer intelligence.  (Now, I need to qualify my comments by saying that I also have a background in banking -- commercial banking, the kind who lend companies and people real money).

(The speech, courtesy of GDI, can be seen in videostreaming here, or downloaded here -- MP4, 147 Mb).

Muhammad told the story of how Grameen Bank came into existence, and then talked about his learnings, his hopes and his projects.  Listening to him, you get the sense that to change the world all you really need to do is to question everything and use your common sense. Why do we have banks? What are they supposed to really do? Why are two thirds of the world not served by banks? Why are some people poor? Why is business only about maximizing profits? Are we as individuals really so one-dimensional? 

He told about the very first and now legendary loan: 27$ of his own money to 42 people, successfully repaid. He replicated that system -- small amounts, weekly repayments -- lending through the bank that was on the campus at his university.  As he describes it, having worked through this local bank where Muhammad acted as personal guarantor, “after all this lending experience with family after family, and village after village, these local bank managers would not change their mind, and were waiting for it all to collapse. If anyone tells me the poor people are not creditworthy, I will scream – I have seen it for myself! So, why don’t I have my own bank? ” 

Muhammad finally received all the necessary approvals and opened the doors of Grameen Bank in 1983. The banks said “are you crazy? We have enough trouble with the rich people – they never pay us back!”  However, Muhammad had the benefit of tracking statistics since 1976 (all reported clearly on the website), and came to the conclusion that anything banks would usually do – he would do the opposite.

The results are impressive. They have 7 million borrowers. The loan repayment rate is 98%. They lend $500 million per year, all funded by deposits. 70% of the banks deposits are from the borrower themselves. Their most popular product is a pension fund, where if you put a little amount in every week for 10 years, they will match it after 10 years – which works out to an approximately 12% interest rate. New branches are told that “we give you no money – first you take deposits, then you lend, and in one year you must break even for all costs”.

The business model works.  Since founding in 1983, Grameen has been profitable for all but three years, and in 2006, Grameen Bank made a profit of US$20 mio. 

After this kind of success, Muhammad would have conversations where the bankers would say, “Ah, you are lending to the Entrepreneurial Poor”.  To prove the model works, Grameen put in place a program just for beggars. He says: “I don’t imagine anyone will every say that it’s an entrepreneurial beggar”. 

To start the program, Grameen went out and talked to the beggars. In Bangladesh, beggars usually go house to house, say prayers for the family, and ask for a cup of rice from each house.  At the end of the day, they have enough rice for a meal. So Muhammad asked, why not go from house to house and offer something for sale? The original loan was $10.  With the expectation that maybe 2-3000 beggars would sign up for this new program.

After three and a half years, the program has 100,000 beggars. Over 10% are no longer beggars, they are now working as sales people, and some are now part time beggars.  Muhammad describes the result:  “If you get even 100 who stopped begging, it is a cause for celebration – it breaks the pattern of generations”. 

Are banks peopleworthy? This was the question that Muhammad asked, which probably remained in the heads of the people that night. Ironically, the audience in Zurich, a world center for private bankers, might actually understand that message.  Private banks must always compete for their business – and many of the relationships are genuinely personal and trust based.  However, it would be interesting to have them compare repayment records and impact on borrowers with the credit committee of Grameen.

Muhammad’s story also reminded me of the great quote from Bill Gates a few years ago that “the world needs banking but it does not need banks”. Most readers interpreted that to mean that banking would shift to an online world, provided by telco’s or retail institutions, or even Microsoft’s. 

However, the Grameen’s of the world force you to understand that the mental model about non-bank banks was nowhere near radical enough.  Here is a business model that has been tested family after family, village after village, region after region, country after country, from Bangladesh to Costa Rica to Sarajevo to Zambia, and extended to other sectors. The numbers that this bank delivers, the impact of this bank, and the robustness of their model will rock the world.

The "Google of biotech" and other Swiss entrepreneurial awardees

- by guest blogger Susan Kish

(Kish is the VP of Network and Community Practice at openBC Live and the CEO of First Tuesday Zurich, and has been a member of the Entrepreneur of the Year jury since 2003)

Friday night (20 October) I went to the Maag Areal, a dismissed industrial-area-turned-trendy in Zurich, along with probably 200 other luminaries of Swiss business society, for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards 2006. This is the ninth time that E&Y has attributed the prizes, which are part of a global program to celebrate the individuals and the qualities that make a great entrepreneur. The experience shows – it was a great party, everyone looked wonderful in black tie, the floor show and video shows were exciting (although we all kept asking ourselves about that androgynous flame dancer – maybe that was the point?), Heinrich Christen was gracious as the host and the E&Y partner responsible for the event, the moderator was funny and kept things on time - we're in Switzerland - and the sponsors were a positive parade of great brands of the Swiss establishment ("dear winners, here’s your key to a car from AMAG, the importer of Audi; here’s your IWC watch; here’s your certificate from Swiss Air Lines; and here’s your gold bar - chocolate wrapped in golden paper of course -  from Credit Suisse. Sheesh). 

You may ask, but what about the entrepreneurs?  They were great too, from their humorous remarks to their wonderful stories.   I’m going to focus on one – Fabio Cavalli – a genuine serial entrepreneur and Chief Business Architect and CEO of MondoBiotech

Fabio bounced on stage after the jury member announced his name, to a great swell of music and huge applause. After being handed the award (a pretty enormous plexiglass thing that will do well in the company's reception lounge), a short video was shown and he was interviewed on stage. 

What did we learn about Fabio as an individual, and about Mondobiotech? Well, we learned about all the those little things that make for great entrepreneurs:

A great cause - Mondobiotech focuses on finding cures to so-called “orphan diseases”, illnesses that are rare and typically deadly. These diseases are not the focus of major research at big drugs company, for by definition their cure would never be a blockbuster.  In Fabio’s words, "we try to make money while making a difference".

An intriguing business model - Their website describes it as “licensing out”, a model which thrives on the explosion of communication, network, storage and analytical technologies. The company is built on networks – they work with networks of external doctors to create huge databases of existing treatments, and then to model and test those already approved treatments and their possible application to the 6000+ known orphan diseases.  In the process of doing that, they come across some potential matches, which they then test and out-license for production. See their description of a recent deal for a possible treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension with Biogen, announced in September. This model keeps their fixed costs to a minimum, focuses on their speed of growth and their cash flow, lets them leverage global networks of research and production, and lets them take full advantage of the fast track approvals available for orphan diseases and for pre-approved drugs.  Fabio quotes an analyst at a recent meeting describing Mondobiotech as a "the Google of Biotech", and goes on to say that these words are just a dream for their team.

A great communicator - Many entrepreneurs are passionate and effective communicators. Fabio sure is one.  He’s clear to say that in 2000 when they had the first conversations about this and while in the midst of one of his previous startups (selling snowboards), he did not have a clue as to what pulmonary arterial sclerosis was.  Fabio makes a gigantic effort to connect what he and the firm does to us. Their recently opened headquarters in Basel, in a lovely XIX-century villa, are dedicated to making these things accessible and visual, and feels more like a hip museum than a nerdy biotech firm.  Fabio works consistently and effectively to connect the abstract and inaccessible world of these diseases to his listener, and his non-scientific background and his advertising and communication experience are a real advantage here.

A clear idea of their role – Fabio states “I am a coach, not a doctor”.   

A genuine appreciation of the team – Many leaders come on stage, and say how they would never have made it without the wonderful contribution of (fill in the blank). You listen to it, and it sounds politically correct.  Fabio talks about his team, and his enthusiasm jumps up a notch. He describes his “fantastic wife” who heads up scientific research. He sounds genuine and authentic – and personally, I believe that this kind of humility and recognition of others is a hallmark of a great entrepreneur. Too many times, entrepreneurs take their success too personally. 

My favorite quote was probably when the moderator described him as a serial entrepreneur, a healthy man with the inspiring energy of success, and then asked him if he was a magician. Fabio said without hesitation, "absolutely". And no one in the audience would ever have interpreted that statement as arrogance.

Switzerland needs more people like Fabio. They make entrepreneurship accessible, inspiring, tangible and real. (Read also his remarks at a previous conference). You sense that Fabio has not always succeeded, but has never stopped trying.  It lets you share in his success – and not be jealous of it. What a great way to live.

Fabio received the award in the category "startup". The other Entrepreneur of the Year prizes went to Walter Borner of Zimmerli, a fashion and textile group (category "services") and to Rudolf Lieberherr of Morga, an organic and health-food producer and distributor (category "industry"/high-tech"). Domenic Steiner, founder and CEO of Thermoplan, a leading producer of automated coffee machines (it supplies Starbucks among others) was awarded a special "Master Entrepreneur" prize. Congrats to all!

(In the picture, the winners and the organizer. From left: Borner, Cavalli, Steiner, Christen and Lieberherr) (Cross-posted on the OpenBlog)