Sunday Tech Invocation: Offline Living in an Online World

We were at an office warming/launch party for f»dforward recently and were surrounded by the usual Dutch suspects from the Internet, Twitterazi crowd here in Amsterdam. But something was different. We thought back to other gatherings we had attended, TechCrunch Europas in London, an e-Unlimited event in Brussels about the Future of Innovation Policy in Europe and we noticed a pattern. People were doing a lot less Twittering at these events. In fact, at the TechCrunch event, I got a text from a Dutch Twitterazi telling me to tweet more cause no one was tweeting. She was right, they weren’t doing their normal volume of Tweets at such an event. Of course there were folks there next to you who you were trying to have a conversation with who were Twittering the conversation you were trying to have, which you were not having. It was an awards ceremony, a celebration and people were uh, celebrating. It’s still hard to drink, applaud and Tweet at the same time.

At this last event, we noticed that people were in general, actually not Twittering, they were actually talking, socializing and having conversations. We had conversations about Twittering, Foursquare and how it motivated you to hold onto your “mayorship”; how delicious a Red Sancerre was; how stay-at-home dads might be raising more well adjusted kid than moms; how the Dutch have one kind of cheese in 45 different varieties; how Sara Lee sneaks her brand into the Netherlands via Douwe Egberts; lessons learned from entrepreneurs; urban sketching (we met a woman there that will blow your mind at how she takes a presentation and intreprets it via illustrations, or sketches); how our last Tattltetech Hot Seat isn’t into money; which month do Dutch women stop wearing boots; artificial intelligence, how newspapers will transform fully to the digital age; why Proscecco is better in the summertime; how good a massage can be from a stranger at this party and most of all, how happy, carefree and at peace people are when they let go of the need to “broadcast” and just engage.

But people did Tweet the event – after the event or on their way home. In fact the next day by 15:00 there were tons of Tweets, photos on Mobypicture (let’s you share your stories) and “thank yous” and “let’s meet up agains”. In real life > digital life > in real life, again.

The point of this ramble? None really, except to say that everything has its place and to connect with people on a personal level, to turn away from the screen and just have a conversation about cheese and not worry about broadcasting that to the world, might just help us be more human and not just a person. – JLH

Tags: e-Unlimited, fdforward, Foursquare, MobyPicture, TechCrunch

Tattletech Hot Seat with Ward Geene, GenY New Media & Gaming Savant

Thanks to a last minute Saturday night Tweetup at De Kale here in Amsterdam, I had the good fortune of meeting Ward Geene. Lots of Generation Y’ers out there, but Ward channels a mindset outside of his demographic. We believe he is one to watch for his views on people’s relationships to the current media environment and his ability to articulate a vision about the world we live in and our own personal relationship with it.

Tattletech: Masters student in New Media & Digital Culture, champion air guitarist, gaming journalist – sounds like a 21st century renaissance man but some would say that is quite an eclectic mix of projects to undertake that are seemingly unrelated. What do you think all those things have in common?

Ward Geene: It’s the power to let go. While playing air guitar it’s all about embodying disembodied sound and creating an illusion with nothing except your own body. You have no place to hide on stage, you just have to show yourself and let go, feel the music flow through your veins. Even though I live quite rationally, I learned to trust my intuition and follow my heart and dreams. I always got the chance to figure out my own path in life without someone telling me what to do or what to become.

This has brought me to all different kinds of places. Some of those are my study, air guitar and game journalism, others are yet to be found. On this path of life I hope to choose my friendships wisely and sometimes there are people that take me along with them like Monique de Haas from Dondersteen Media. She gives me the opportunity to learn and travel faster, but is also willing to listen to my suggestions so that I have a say in which direction we are to go. In the conservative media world and financial crisis we live in today it’s hard to find people that give you a chance especially when you are young. So how I end up in all these places  and different ways of life? It’s about meeting interesting people, letting go of your own conventions and join the story of their lives for a while. Only when you let go, you are able the see the beauty and value in everything around you.

TT: When we met you told me that gaming is all about the “now” and not the past or the present, can you elaborate on that?

WG: Believing in the now of games started almost a year ago when I challenged the Ludic identity theory of my video games professor Joost Reassens and his colleague Jos de Mul on a logic basis. His course was about implementing his theory about a ludic identity that was being positioned opposite to the narrative identity of Paul Ricoeur. I refused, because their logic did not stand. Narrative identity is about defining who you are by telling stories about what you did. It’s focused on the past. Ludic identity must be focused  on de future then, De Mul suggested, because it focuses on the future possibilities. The focus is on what you try to achieve.

I said no to that theory. Playing games or being an actor in a theatrical play is about the now. Because the situation is always different, especially when you believe in the Rhizome theory of Deleuze and Guattari’s. Because of the experience you gain while playing the game it can only exist in the now. There is no game when you don’t decide to play and put your controller down. There is no theatre when the actors decide not to play their part. It’s not about the script or about what can originate from it. It’s all about what happens WHEN the decision is made to let something originate. Games present themselves to you.

TT: You have to make thesis for your Masters and you are making one around secrets called I like my Secrets – your theory was that today it’s all about openness, no walled gardens, but you have a different view on this. Tell us.

WG: When I just joined Dondersteen Media and was still working as an intern (now I am fortunate enough to be employed) I got the opportunity to hear another great media visionary Gerd Leonhard talk about not being a walled garden as a media company. Companies should gain the trust of their consumers. Reach out towards them. Open themselves up to the public and become love brands.

At Dondersteen Media, where i work now, has also recently worked on a project to open up the walled garden principle at the Dutch Public Broadcasters. Instead of putting all the audio and video material in a closed container, a strategy was designed for creating tools, so that the public was able to grab, post, share and leave comments on the material of the Pubcasters, anywhere they wanted to post this material. The goal was to generate (postponed) shared viewing experiences on all different environments people themselves choose to share material.

But the whole openness debate started me wondering about the meaning of trust? Telling someone to trust me or reaching out is meaningless when you are being either completely open or closed. For example, say we could all communicate like angels and knew everything about each other everywhere every time. You would think there would be no more confusion. But what about my secrets? When everything and everyone opens up there is no place to hide, not even a magical world we could create. Everything would be defined and we would never be able to suggest and spark someone’s imagination. So it’s not about being open so much. It’s about being able to choose who you share your secrets with and being able to regulate the information you posses. This enables you to keep close friends and letting people feel special. Being ‘open’ and sharing without relevance has been given a name long ago: spam. I don’t want to be in a walled garden and make it impossible to make friends and neither do I want to be completely open and make it impossible to built trust among friends. That’s why I like my secrets.

TT: On Dondersteen Media there is talk about computational AI. Do you see the kind of ultra modern world popularized by science fiction, or do you see a more sober wise human stewardship of AI which leads to happier, more productive lives for all of us.

WG: Like my mentor Monique de Haas, I believe that relevance is key. AI or ubiquitous computing should add value to our lives. But there is more to it than meets the eye. The idea of ubiquitous computing and the idea of designing technologies that are integrated seamlessly into our daily lives deprives us from choosing what we want. What happens when everything is seamlessly integrated in your daily activities? You will only mention when the system fails to meet the expectations. Want you want already happens. Instead of the choice we make to turn something on, we will only be busy with turning things off. Instead of choosing what we want, we only choose what we DON’T want. People are already ‘de-googling’ themselves. Web 2.0 turn all options to make sharing as optimal as possible. We are already turning off more and more in our lives. So it’s not that I think the future will be AI controlled, but it’s up to media designers to recognize this development. That’s why Dondersteen focuses on User Centered (UX) design. To make media relevant and to let people choose what they want instead of constantly correcting ubiquitous systems.

TT: Why do people’s media experiences need to be shaped? Have we become so immersed in the online world that we need to be spoon fed?

WG: As we see it, it is not the media that need to shape people! It is people shaping media through their stories and experiences. The driving force to connect, get involved and move through media-environments lies in the power of the stories themselves and how they are able to touch upon our lives. We don’t think it relevant to try and feed a person with something that has no (added) value to them. At the same time, to accomplish cohesion in any multi-facetted media environment their needs to be some form of agreed upon rules of that media-environment and what you can do within.

Of course the more people are able to shape that environment to their own needs the better. But people also love to have a little guidance, it takes a lot of time and effort to continuously reshape every aspect of a media-environment you get into, often misbalancing with the pleasure you get from being there and actually doing the things you really want to do. Taking out too much of the hassle and being able to shape the experience to your needs: that actually IS the art of people shaping media experiences.

TT: So, we were talking about nuts when we met, on a serious note, which nut is the king of all nuts?

WG: That must be the coconut. The first reason is the fact that the coconut is the one nut girls can use to make a bikini top. Secondly I can drink my beverages from it. And last but not least you can make awesome horse riding sounds with them like Monthy Python did in The Holy Grail. Yep, it’s definitely the coconut.

– JLH

Tags: Artificial intelligence, Dondersteen Media, Paul Ricœur, Ward Geene

Let me recommend this to you

So today, f»dforward let its widget out into the wild wild web.  I am not sure you realize how old recommendation tools actually are for the fancy new web we live and work in. These tools from f»dforward are for readers AND writers. Why? Clearly you need both to make it work. It is just as important for bloggers and content editors to see what others are writing about as it is for avid consumers of that content to see where the content they are interested in is written about elsewhere. Obviously the web doesn’t specifically segregate between readers and writers. Many, if not most people who are on the web are BOTH of those, they comment, they have their own blog and they tweet. You can’t continue to throw up walls in the garden of the next web, we have to let the sun shine in. F»dforward is a large step in knocking those walls down intelligently.

Let me put it this way. Fitzgerald and Hemingway used to go out, have a few drinks, and then one would agree to write a flattering review for the other’s new novel. Then a year later (cause they used typewriters and drank a lot) when the other wrote a book, they would write a flattering review for their novel. Thus, the logroll was born, which we now know as the “blog roll“, which f»dforward has now completely revolutionized. We call it blogroll 3.0. – JLH

Tags: Christian Vogel, Ernest Hemingway, fdforward, kimengi, Lateral Linking, Lucien Burm, Recommendation technology

Tattletech Hot Seat with Jeff Coe, Business Expansionist

Jeff Coe. Sevenload shareholder and former Director of International, wine enthusiast, Aussie, smarmy humorist and Business Expansionist. Yea if we can now have titles like Futurist, Ideologist and Chief Creative Officer, we think that Business Expansionist is the exact term for Jeff Coe. We met via mutual Danish angel maverick and friend Morten Lund and talked over glasses of wine and ended up here.  Jeff’s main focus is with venture backed start ups in Technology, Communication and Media and to expand them in both physical size as well as strategy and product til they are where they should be, and then some.

Jeff currently works with several technology based business venture start ups who are in stealth mode as their Business Expansionist. We decided to throw him a variety of questions to see where his head really is. He did not disappoint. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at @hrcolors.

Tattletech: Slate Magazine recently said that Spotify is what iTunes would be like if Apple decided to give everything away for free What do you think about Spotify and why do you think that Apple didn’t do this?  What’s your prediction on where  the market end up?

Jeff Coe: Well I will have to answer that question in a couple of parts. 1) Apple was never a content company, but a hardware/technology company. The whole reason they made itunes was as an auxiliary product to the ipod (I don’t personally know SJ, so this is of course my opinion only) and it worked a treat, just like what they have done with the iPhone App Store (no point selling a flash sports car that runs on peanuts if people could never tank up on peanuts). There was never an obvious play to make money from the content (hence the % pay back to labels and publishers), so exploring other business models other than transaction based, was not important to them. 2) Spotify and what I think of it is a little more sensitive for me to answer – As being a pioneer owner of firstly a transaction based music service in the late 90”s and then more recently a shareholder of a adfunded video portal, I have dabbled with both models. The adfunded model is seriously floored in many ways and I see that even Spotify have identified the need to pursue a pay per model and they are increasingly leaning towards the more widely seen Freemium model of offering the basics for free and then hoping (by providing better tech/ service/content) they can get people to pay a subscription. To be incredibly blunt though I see the winner as the company who can control all areas of consumption (phone/TV/web) and combine everything into one, so the user is playing a flat fee for all his content needs across all screens and content desires.

TT; So we know you are a wine connoisseur and you have a website, OzzieWineDude, what is your favorite grape variety and why do you love it?

JC: I would never call myself a connoisseur or an expert, as whenever I believe I know what I am talking about, that which I am talking about changes, and I no longer know what I am talking about!

I started to write them down and I had 80% of all grape varieties… so I love any good wine J But I really want to taste  PINGUS 2003 RIBERA DEL DUERO, 1976 Penfolds Grange Hermitage, and 2003 Domaine de la Vieille Julienne Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee Reservee. Then I could lie down and die

TT; What do you think VCs are looking for these days in start ups?

JC: That’s a broad question as there are some shitty VC’s out there and some really good ones, and so I will answer to what I am looking for and ‘pretend’ I am one of the good ones.

There are three integral parts to any successful business and for me they start in this order (usually based on what order you in the real world see things by). A) A good idea, and this is obvious, but an investor wants to see something that makes sense straight up…. Which can be summed up in a 30 second pitch basically, as if it is incomplete, complex or incoherent, then I would go the other way. I want someone to come up to me and say “This is the idea”, ”This is how much money I want”, ”this is why I want the money’,  ”and this is how much money you are going to make when we are done”.   B) Good people, I won’t even start to tell you how people can screw up a good product, in fact I remember talking to Stevie Wonders manager when I was young and in the music biz and he said ‘A shitty band can go a long way with a good manager, but a great band will go nowhere with a shitty manager”.  C) Relevance, being that we all follow trends or are influenced in some ways by our surrounds, so if I am a VC from Berlin who specializes in the Mobile Phone and you come to me with a great idea and great team doing something with small fish in Argentina, it will be hard for you to convince me to invest, as your idea will just not be relevant to me, no matter how great it is.

TT: How do you think traditional “mainstream” television programming has driven the creation of so much user generated content – is this a zero sum game?

JC: Apart from the obvious reasons such as people want to be famous or at least experience five minutes of notoriety, UGC is the best possible platform for people to share/indulge in niche interests. Mainstream TV is a linear form of “you must watch this because our user group said you would like it”, where the web/phone has opened up the ability for people to find specialized content where maybe only a handful of people would enjoy. Mainstream TV is also not interactive (it is dumb) and people are becoming more and more used to being directly involved in the content they consume, hence UGC’s rise in popularity even with or in parallel to mainstream TV programming.

TT: In the wake of the Pirate Bay ruling and the Swedish Pirate Party winning a seat in the European Parliament, where do you see the future of copyright system and internet privacy headed?

If I could answer this question, then I would be “god” as this is the same question being asked by the music industry and has been asked for nearly 15 years now. People want quality content, but quality content costs money, so someone has to pay for this. If you look at sport as an example, people are more than willing to pay a fortune to see a football game on TV, however this is real time and this real time makes the policing of it easier for the IP holder. So, with TV content and Music you do not have this “real-time” advantage to police the service…. Or do you? As mentioned earlier, enhancing the product with user interaction could be the golden egg, as people will be prepared to pay for something they think is worth paying for which they cannot get free elsewhere, and the combining of real time interaction within content, could be the value that brings out the wallet.

TT: In a fight to the death, who would you put your money on – Superman or Aquaman?

JC: Superman. I personally don’t like super heroes though… I just like… Heroes!

– JLH

Tags: Business Expansionist, Jeff Coe, Morten Lund

“Stealth Mode” is new marketing tool

Apparently, there is money out there for start ups and all you need is a good idea that you don’t talk about and a super star management team. Ok we are being sarcastic, but MOBShop just got about $2.5 million USD from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, plus they spent two partner’s time on this investment. And no one really knows what they are doing. Well I guess Kleiner does but for now it’s a secret – related to the iPhone. So, here’s the deal – the story is that we “don’t know” what they are up to which makes it a story. So what is news these days?   — JLH

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• Booyah Raises Series A from Kleiner Perkins (web2.sys-con.com)
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Tags: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, venture capital, VentureBeat

Tattletech Hot Seat with Tiina Parviainen, LiviaConcept

So Tattletech was on an island, Fåglarö!, Sweden, over the Midsummer holiday. We found ourselves at a three day Midsummer party with 33 international guests all staying in the same summer house, cooking, talking and drinking. In the midst of former Canadian Hedge Fund managers, seriel entrepreneurs, non profit fundraisers for Doctors without Borders and some Swedish racing sailors, we found Tiina Parviainen who just started LiviaConcept. Tech addict, avid interior designer and tyro business woman. I give you, Tiina, a bit of fun with a Fin.

TattleTech: What gave you the idea to start LiviaConcept?

Tiina Parviainen: Livia Concept is a project that is under development and stands for my love for textiles, prints and interiors. Since quite young age I have been creating things – painting, sewing, crafting, later on decorating and hosting events, web design, renovating my home and programming. There was a long period of very theoretical engineering studies in my life, so since interior design is my biggest passions I owe it to myself to develop my skills in those areas.

TT: You are a programmer by trade, but how did you go from programming to creating an online interiors resource center, like Etsy?

TP:  I don’t think it’s a great leap in any ways. I work with system development so I know what it takes to set up a an online marketplace like this. At the moment, I am busy with my interior design blog and I have just designed my first collection of pillows and am looking for producers, importers, etc.  All of this is creative and technically challenging, but I also still have my day job as a programmer and in fact I’m just about to start in a new job as a project manager. There are 24 hours in a day after all, why not use them all!

TT: You are blond, highly intelligent and a technical genius — what do you feel are the biggest challenges you face as a female entrepreneur?

TP: I believe the biggest challenge is to believe in your “thing” and your skills. I have never experienced any real difficulties but because I grew up with self esteem. The only thing that I experience as negative and challenging is the fact that a young woman who is highly educated, skilled, straight forward and feminine is considered a threat by other women. That is sad. I tend to think that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.

TT: You told me once that ‘creating’ is a lifestyle, can you expand on this and how it applies to LiviaConcept?

TP: Creating and creativity IS a lifestyle. Even if it’s hard for you to be creative you can never really shut down the creative brainwork, can you? It doesn’t really matter what type of creativity it is, for example a person can be extremely good at solving problems, that is creativity. Some people have it and other people don’t. The people who are creative are just that by nature and usually are so in many other aspects of their lives.

– JLH

Tags: Etsy, LiviaConcept, Tiina Parviainen

Sunday Tech Invocation

Life souldn’t be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a well preserved shell body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, iPhone in the other and body thoroughly used and yelling “woo hoo, what a ride!”

Archemides Screw applied to Location

Archemides Screw takes water from one place and moves it to another. The rotating motion with Archemides Screw represents change. Sometimes the benefit of change, the transfer of water from one place to another to nourish the newly planted field, isn’t noticiable right way. It may take time to move the water once the tip enters the body of water, but eventually the screw keeps turning and that water is moved to the top and change takes place.

This is what we see happening as the body of water that makes up the current Web begins to migrate to the future Web. In a recent article in Wired, they talk about the future of the Web and it’s location, location, location with an emphasis on mobile and tagging. Web-research firm Compete says one in three mobile-phone owners uses location-based tools, and the number of apps has exploded from 500 to 2,500 since last October.

We also see niche areas around location evolving in the areas of heathcare, education and online learning.  We see both a broad and narrow casting application of location.  We think that niche can survive but too many broad applications can not once Archemides Screw moves all the water to the new field.

Companies like Loopt, Foursquare, Graffito, Socialight mentioned in the article, have their eye on the future Web built on location and tagging. They have bet on the fact that mobile phones have changed how we connect to the world around us.  The article puts the ultimate question out there –  how is the return of geography going to change our lives?  – JLH

Tags: Add new tag, Foursquare, Geo location, Geo tagging, Graffiti, Location Based Services, Loopt, mobile social networking, Sociallight