Written on September 27, 2008 – 5:12 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Quite a late report about who won the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition last night at Picnic, but anybody who has ever attended a web conference knows the valid reason for this. Vodafone Netherlands organized the Mobile Clicks competition to support Dutch mobile start-ups with €100k (and to get some good PR).
The last couple of months, 20 start-ups presented their ideas for a jury with acclaimed Dutch and Belgian mobile experts like Rudy de Waele and Yuri van Geest. I witnessed it all from close distance, as my friends Edial Dekker and Laura van der Vlies participated with MapTheGap. They want to create a tool that helps creative folks to easily store ideas - without them losing the context of time and place. It’s just an idea right now, development will probably start soon.
These were the other five nominees:
Nulaz: interactive location based service that shows where your friends and interesting places (like restaurants and museums are).
TipSpot: a social city guide with tips of friends and locals. Already active in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and the Hague.
Mi-i: offers an extra TV experience by providing context-relevant social games.
Mobypicture: easy sharing of pictures on Flickr and co. Is hugely popular in the Dutch Twitter scene.
Exphera: world-wide mobile broad band Internet access for a fixed price.
Yesterday was the day of the climax. The six finalists kicked off in the morning with presentations and the final judgment of the jury led to the show at 6pm. And a show it was. Vodafone Netherlands CEO Guy Laurence really knows how to pump up a crowd. He announced that the prize was split in three: 60k, 30k, and 10k. The winners are…. Nulaz (60k), TipSpot (30k), and MapTheGap (10k)! They were all ecstatic.
The jury picked Nulaz because of its great potential. With growth of 35,000 users in three months (from 25,000 to 60,000), this isn’t hard to understand. That the start-up also has corporate clients, paying customers, and a broad range of services also helped.
Despite these advantages, Nulaz does face ferocious competition, especially from operators who aren’t particularly fond of the service. These companies would rather offer a location based service themselves, especially now that they’re looking for alternative revenue sources. Therefore it’s actually quite ironic that Nulaz won this prize (only one member of the jury represented Vodafone), as there are no strings attached. But hey, if Vodafone acquires the service in a few months, they’ll have their investment back.
By the way, we have 75 invites for people interested in using Tipspot as a social guide in Holland’s largest cities. Get them here.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on September 26, 2008 – 12:01 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Werner Vogels shared his wisdom and experience today with 100 cross media talents at Picnic yesterday. He’s the CTO of Amazon, a company with a 20 billion dollars revenue and 17,000 employees. Despite its giant size, the Seattle-based company experiments with products. Like the Kindle, the nifty little device that supplies books on the go. The process behind this innovative approach is called corporate creativity, Vogels said. He was kind of enough to share it with the young and eager audience.
Take a moment and look back
Every successful person has someone even he looks up to or learns from, same goes for Vogels. He starts the presentation with a quote from American computer scientist, researcher, and visionary Alan Kay: “perspective is worth 80 IQ points”. Look back every once in a while to not lose perspective. Within Amazon, employees have to periodically ask themselves: “Why are we in this business? Are we as agile as we would like to be?”
Grow really, really big trees
Perspective is important for innovations, so much is clear. At Amazon, you’re not supposed to have a short term version. Vogels: “An Amazon principle is to plant a seed and watch it grow. Innovations don’t have to pay off in six months, they might take five or seven years to fully bloom. We are interested in growing really big trees”. That sounds like a healthy ambition, but how does Vogels figure out whether something is going to be big?
Focus on needs that last
Amazon found one thing that works for them. There are two ways of finding inspiration for innovation. There’s the reactive mode. Notice what changes in the world or what your competitors do and try to adopt to that. But why wouldn’t you focus on the inverse? Vogels: “Focus on things that stay the same all the time”.
In Amazon’s retail space, it’s not hard to imagine what customers want: more choice, faster shipping, and lower prices. Innovate with keeping those basic needs in mind. Innovate to extend your catalog, innovate to deliver products faster, and innovate to drive prices down. “By doing that”, Vogels said, “you build flywheels. They keep spinning faster and faster”.
Cannibalize
With that vision in mind, most innovations don’t seem logical at first sight. Amazon now has earth’s largest catalog, which is an absolute unique selling point. Yet the company didn’t always have that, since only a limited amount of sellers had access to the site. Thus Amazon invited other parties to use the site as a selling platform. At first glance this seemed to be wrong, as Amazon would lose money by cannibalizing its own business. But in the end, as we all know now, it turned out to be a master move.
Another example, Vogels: “When Amazon introduced customer reviews, book publishers became extremely angry. What if somebody would put up a bad review? We pushed it through and now there’s not one ecommerce site without customer reviews”.
What are you known for?
Back to the reactive mode, you should really, really, not adopt it. “When Google became popular, we figured we might add some more white space to the Amazon site as well. Sales dropped immediately because the site didn’t look ‘messy’ anymore.”
So don’t focus on competition because you’ll lose focus on your own goals. Sure, you can benchmark yourself against them, they’re perfect for that. But it’s more important to be ahead of the game and ask yourself: what are you known for? Vogels: “Amazon wants to be the world’s most customer-centric focused company. It’s our tie breaker when we face tough decisions”. Daring decisions like choosing for free shipping seem logical when your focus is customer centric. So stay put with your focus and “do experiments all the time”.
Make it hard to say no
These basics of corporate creativity would be worthless if there wasn’t something like the “institutionalized yes”. “It’s very hard to say no to innovation at Amazon”, said Vogels. So if you’re trying to run an innovative company, make sure it’s really difficult for anyone to say no to new innovative approaches”.
Written on September 25, 2008 – 3:24 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Stefan Agamanolis is the CEO and a Research Director of Scotland-based Distance Lab. The people behind this creative research institute try to overcome distance by using new technologies. Agamanolis addressed a new trend, slow communication.
The way we communicate right now finds a good metaphor in fast food. We want to talk anywhere anytime and the quality doesn’t really matter. Distance Lab represents a new movement that wants slow communication. Agamanolis showed a few examples from his past work at the research institute to 100 crossmedia talents that gathered at the Picnic Conference.
Distraction-free
The good old telephone booth offered a way to make call in a semi-private environment. But it’s disappearing quickly. However, Agamanolis believes we do need a space to get into to have a quality conversation. Therefore he developed the Isophone, a device that makes it possible to call underwater. Callers have no sense of vision, no sensitive touch because the water has the same temperature. All callers experience is the voice of the other person: complete isolation.
People lost track of time, they called for 5 minutes and thought they were chatting for 30 minutes. The nature of conversations was more creative, callers visited a lot of topics. They also gestured more, even with their legs.
Agamanolis: “What we’re trying to do here is to show that the form of communication can influence the outcome of the conversation. Like creating a form that makes people fall in love.
Intimacy
That’s a nice bridge to the next subject. Agamanolis: “How can we bring back intimacy in communication technologies?” One way of doing it is creating a tool with which you can make drawings on a surface at the other side of the world.
This ring can be tailored to reflect the character of the relationship.
Tradition
Most technology looks new, modern, plasticly, sporty, and male focused. Elena Corchero designed a tool that proves technology doesn’t have to so hard-edged. She created an ambient light display that’s made of vintage materials.
Health
Fast food bad for your health, slow food isn’t. Same goes for slow communication. Agamanolis wants to use sports for communication, as it keeps you healthy and it’s also a great way to get to know people and build trust. Why not take advantage of these sports advantages? Like boxing over a distance.
Although I do not believe in a world where slow communication is the norm, I do think that it’s a desirable trend. Let’s reserve a few moments a day for quality communication, it will definitely lead to stronger and more intense relationships.
Violet is the company behind the nabaztag, the funny abstract rabbit that reacts to electronic impulses by blinking, talking and moving. Today at PICNIC the co-founder and chairman of Violet, Rafi Haladjian, talked about how the nabaztag was their first effort at connecting, well, everything. One of his slides simply showed:
His only comment for that slide was “We got step 1 covered and now it is time for step two” to much amusement of the audience.
Turns out Haladjian wasn’t joking. Within a few weeks Violet will start offering the Mir:ror. A simple device you can hook up to your computer via USB with a built-in RFID reader. It will be able to read everything you already own which contains an RFID chip but also comes with a bunch of ‘ztamps’.
These stamp-like pieces of adhesive plastic will also contain RFID chips and you will be able to tag the “7995 other items in your house that don’t know how to communicate, yet”. Apparently we all own about 8000 items of which only 5 know how to talk to the rest of the world. Violet’s goal is to make them all smart and connected.
This means you will be able to tag your umbrella and then hold it up to the mir:ror which will automatically launch your favorite weather report sites. Hold up your car keys to the mir:ror and it will give you traffic conditions and your calendar.
The possibilities for using the mir:ror and Ztamps are endless and really challenge everyone’s creativity.
The first keynote at PICNIC today was by Charles Leadbeater who repeated his usual ‘Power to the People’ speech and gave us a preview of his upcoming book. Ernst-Jan wrote an excellent article just minutes ago about his story.
Leadbeater is a great storyteller who knows how to keep 1000 people in a room quiet which is impressive because one of the things he promotes is user intervention. One of the themes he spoke about was the “Doing to me VS working WITH me”. We are all part of the generation that get things done to them by big corporations and government. Leadbeater spoke about his education where ‘Learning was being done TOO me’ and a visit to a hospital where the doctor will tell you he is working ‘for you’ but everything he does feels like it is being done ‘against me’. Now we are entering a new world where we, the consumer, patient, worker, are part of all processes and get to work WITH people who used to be solely in charge. The internet is the big enabler in this, of course.
After his inspiring speech Clay Shirky entered the stage to ask Leadbeater a few questions. His first provocative question was ‘Where WON’T this work?’. Leadbeater gave a few examples of which one was ‘You wouldn’t want your hernia operated on by someone who read about the procedure on the Internet’. Good point.
At one point Clay opined that the formula for influencing crowd controlled systems were too simple. Shirky:
“Digg is supposed to be a user controlled medium. But I know that if I post an article titled “the 7 Hottest Women in Science Fiction” it will reach the front page of Digg in no time at all just because the title has a number in it, has the promise of NSFW images and ‘Science Fiction’ in the title. There is only the impression of democracy…”
Written on September 24, 2008 – 2:39 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Charles Leadbeater, author and former adviser to Tony Blair, opened the Picnic conference in Amsterdam today with a keynote about collaborative creativity. He started with a statement about collaboration: “it not just applies to high tech, new media, and culture, but also to social challenges - like the environment. Collaborative action is not just about new things, but about very broad challenges. We’ll have to bring different people together”.
He wrote the book “We Think” about this, but don’t worry, you won’t have to buy it. According to Leadbeater, several people told him a four-minute YouTube video gives a good idea of his book.
When showing this video to his 13-year old, the young fella patted him on the back and left after two minutes. 92,000 other people did like the video though and left over 300 comments. “It’s the beginning of a conversation”, said Leadbeater.
He then showed a video that his kid probably liked better: a teenager playing along on his electric guitar with a synthesized version of Bach’s Air. Leadbeater: “49 milion people around the globe spend five minutes of their lives on watching this kid playing his guitar. Just image he would have told the BBC controller of entertainment whether she wanted to show this five-minute clip. (..) Get out of here, would have been the definite answer. Thanks to the web this boy didn’t have to go through all that. It’s the new world.”
Leadbeater talked about the changed media environment. How the old media world existed of a few major players and the millions of smaller parties that have now popped up. “The challenge is to connect them and try to make something more out of it than just bits”. This is of the utmost importance, because creativity mostly flourishes because of collaborative action. “It’s a myth that creativity always comes from a single person with a brilliant insight. Most creative ideas come from people blending and mixing things”, said Leadbeater.
Yet not all collaboration leads to creativity. Sometimes there’s too much consensus (boring) or too much chaos (leads to nothing). To get us started, Leadbeater shared five key conditions for stimulating creativity through collaborative action.
Diversity is king, participants need to think differently and have different knowledge.
Give people ways to contribute. They need really simple ways to add their piece of information.
Connect people with each other by using the most suitable technology
The most important one: participants must have a shared sense of purpose and an individual sense of pay-off. Use a mascot or something.
Communities need to have some element of structure to make decisions.
Written on September 24, 2008 – 1:15 pm Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last week I wrote an angry post about people who try to kill the business card. Although I’m friends with a couple of these wannabe killers, I felt I had to defend the ultimate tool for self-expression during first impressions. But now, with pain in my heart, I have to give a couple of these guys a stage. After all, I cannot appear too biased. So here it is, a business cards-killing service which just launched in private beta: Project E.
Next Web Editor David Petherick & Robert Scoble with ‘E’ Prototypes
Three Dutch designers Paul Geurts, Arjen Sondag, and
Renato Valdés Olmos want to get people connected with “a device operated by a single gesture. “Exchanging contact info and social networking info with E takes as long as a formal handshake”, Renato explained when I interviewed him at The Next Web Conference.
Eventually, the three guys want to have specially designed hardware that makes this contact exchange possible. While they’re looking for investors to make this production process possible, they’ve also worked on a service that does the same thing, but with (most) mobile phones. Just a few clicks and you’re connected with your new contact on the services you desire, like LinkedIN.
This social network isn’t actually yet integrated. The beta now works with Twitter, Soocial, and the network of the conference they’re launching at this week, Picnic. Integration with delicious, Netlog, and Last.fm is coming soon.
For now, Renato told me he’s excited to hear your feedback about the UI and the connectivity between different devices. So give it a shot, the first 25 lucky people who leave a comment will receive an invite from me.
Written on September 27, 2008 – 5:12 pm
The last couple of months, 20 start-ups presented their ideas for a jury with acclaimed Dutch and Belgian mobile experts like Rudy de Waele and Yuri van Geest. I witnessed it all from close distance, as my friends Edial Dekker and Laura van der Vlies participated with MapTheGap. They want to create a tool that helps creative folks to easily store ideas - without them losing the context of time and place. It’s just an idea right now, development will probably start soon.
Written on September 25, 2008 – 2:06 pm
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
