VCinJerusalem

Living in a Disconnected Bubble in Munich: DLD Unplugged…and No WiFi

I am composing this blogpost at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, convened by Burda Media. DLD stands for Digital Life Design, and many of the names you would expect are here, about 1000 people representing all the players in the connected world today.

And yet I am having a similar experience to that at CES 2006, when I saw dozens of WiFi networks but none would allow me to connect, see my posting "Water, Water, Everywhere, Not a drop to Drink.” I ideologically do not carry a Blackberry or any other always on device, because I know that for most people these are prohibitively expensive, and because they are addictive (and distracting in public). So I depend these days on finding stable WiFi to connect.

 

When I first arrived in Munich and checked into my hotel, the trouble started. I picked the hotel from Hotels.com, because it advertised WiFi, was cheap, and short walk from conference venue. Turns out the hotel was practicing marketing using Bait and Switch, claiming it “offered Wifi,” but it was additional fee. OK, I said, am prepared to pay. But then they explain that I needed to load some special software from a CD (I kid you not). I immediately called Hotels.com, and rebooked myself into nice hotel (for few dollars more, but WiFi included!!!).

 

At conference expected to have ubiquitous WiFi…and instead what I found (while listening to CEOof Deutche Telekom speak about seamless mobile connectivity) is that the WiFi network was overloaded, incapable of the traffic being generated. Could barely get websites to load. For techies out there, see ping results (when I could get connected, which took a few tries):

 

 

 

For the rest of you, what the above numbers tell us is that the WiFi network at DLD is incapable of supporting VoIP, Video streaming, or any other real time web service. In fact, wrote this blog off-line in word to prevent losing it when trying to post (I usually use on-line Typepad tools from SixApart). 

All this got me thinking that we are so far from the promised land in some many ways. In time I will try to address all of these, and in some way am working to cure these issues, for now just going to highlight:

-Connectivity has a long way to go before, outside some bubbles (office, some universities, etc.) we in the Western world are far from “always on”

-Most people in the world, even if they have a mobile phone that gives them some voice communications, are still cut off from broadband world (further digital divide)

-Often hype creates value way before reality is there. Sure, there are the Googles that manage to score big from revenue point of view, but infrastructure is a blocking point for many

Self Awareness -- Why Robert Scoble Joined Fast Company

Just read a wonderful analysis of a real-life case study as to whether to go the entrepreneurial route or take a job at a "big company" (obviously a relative term, for me anything more than 3 people is a big company).

Robert Scoble has worked at small companies and big ones...and just joined Fast Company/Inc. I have never met Robert, but long been a fan of his blog, called Scobleizer, and many of his insights.  His  [almost] real time  step by step  comparison of life as entrepreneur or part of existing team is better than anything I could put together, so have posted in its entirety below. Pay special to how self-aware Robert is on a personal level--and where he puts his priorities. I agree with his priorities, but also fantasize that all possible. Read on, let me know what you think.

Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Ahh, Andy Plesser broke my career news again (he was the guy who broke my news about leaving Microsoft too). Louis Gray got the story first, though, I think, although I told dozens of people at the BlogHaus last week at CES.

First of all, thanks to John Furrier, James McCormick, and the entire PodTech team. I grew a lot over the past year due to the opportunities they gave me and that turned into hundreds of interviews on ScobleShow.com.

Wednesday (today) Rocky Barbanica and I are moving to work for Mansueto Ventures. They are the producers of Fast Company and Inc. magazines. What will we be doing? Helping to build a new, interactive, online video community called FastCompany.TV which will open on March 3.

UPDATE: Here’s the official Fast Company press release and Lynne Johnson blogged about it here.

UPDATE2: Andy Plesser, this morning, interviewed my new boss, Ed Sussman.

Back when my career moves were leaked over on TechCrunch I said I was considering another option. What was it? Starting my own business. Here’s why I chose FastCompany.tv instead.

But, first let me back up and talk about what I’ve learned about the media business. Here’s the four things you need to have to see success.

1. Content. This should be obvious, but you’ll see where I’m going with this point later. Key here is to make content that no one else has. Content that’s better quality. “Special” in some way. Gets viewers access to something they couldn’t otherwise get access to.
2. Revenues. If you don’t have them, it’s hard to buy cameras, lights, microphones, or take the time to do things right. Yeah, you can bootstrap for a while like Rocketboom did in its early years, but at some point if you don’t have cash coming in you’ll need to find a real job and stop working on media production.
3. Distribution. If no one sees your videos you won’t get revenues, so getting viewers/participants is key. Now, you can either get viewers by doing stunts (like Gawker Media did at CES) or you can get it by making deals to distribute your videos into places that have high viewership. Revision3, for instance, has reportedly made deals to distribute its videos into several airplane video systems. Mansuetto’s magazines have more than a million readers, which will make it easier to get people to come visit the new network.
4. Scale. The SuperBowl has all the above three, right? But the place it really makes sense? Is part of a network. Why? Because then there’s more for audiences to engage with than just one football game a year. Also, there’s economies of scale since the camera crews can work on other stuff while they aren’t working on the Super Bowl.

As I considered job opportunities I kept these four things in mind. Could the new company we’d join deliver on all of these? How about working for myself? Could I be successful? Both Mike Arrington and Om Malik (and others) urged me to start my own company. But, when I looked in the mirror I just didn’t have that passion for doing it all myself. Why not?

1. I don’t love doing much except for interviewing and blogging and my family. I’ve run the books at UserLand Software. I hated that. I’ve tried managing people at PodTech and found that I wasn’t particularly interested in doing more of it (which is one reason why Rocky’s going to play a key role in the development/production of the network — it’s important that we build a strong team, but I’d rather focus more of my energies on getting great content than on finding and keeping great people).
2. Building a diverse set of income requires a sales crew and attention to client happiness. It’s one thing to take care of one sponsor. It’s a whole nother thing to make magic happen for a wide range of sponsors. That takes a team of professionals. I don’t have the time, nor the skills, to build a world-class sales team and if I took the time that’d cause me to take my eye off of doing my videos, which would be the life-blood of the organization.
3. Setting up a business requires a ton of other tasks. HR. Banking. Invoicing. All the other drudge work that takes time away from doing interviews, going on photowalks, reading feeds, hanging out and networking with industry leaders, etc that leads to great content.
4. Doing a business is stressful on everyone involved. Om Malik’s heart attack had an impact on me. So did Marc Orchant’s death. Life is too short and if that means I leave a few million on the table because I gave up equity in my own thing, so be it. I’m happiest when behind a camera talking with someone like Doug Engelbart or taking Patrick, my son, to MacWorld. Anything other than that I’m going to outsource, ala “the Four Hour Workweek.”
5. Brand extension is hard when running your ass off to build your own business. For instance, I want to build communities that lead to interesting events. But if I did my own business, running an event team would have to wait until I got my business on solid ground. That could be a year or more. That would mean opportunities lost. Fast Company and Inc have awesome event and marketing teams — I’ve been to their events and if I wanted to build a team like that it’d take capital, time, and talent that I don’t have.
6. Getting access to things, when running your own business, is tougher. Yeah, I can get access to a lot of things, but did Steve Jobs invite me to attend his keynote at MacWorld? No. If I was part of a bigger team with a more established brand, would it be more likely that I’d get invited? Yes.

So, why FastCompany.tv? Why not something else? Several reasons.

1. Fast Company (the magazine) has seen a resurgence in the past year. The content has gotten better. Ad sales were way up. They have new offices in New York City (I won’t be moving, rather staying in Silicon Valley).
2. The editorial team at Fast Company and Inc. Magazines is getting cover articles that few others are able to get and the whole team will drive a lot of great content that’ll show up on my show and on the network.
3. They have invested in a major new social networking site that’ll be revealed soon. Fast Company was one of the first magazines with a social network, called “The Company of Friends” and the new site, built in open-source Drupal, excited me because of the distribution and community it brings.
4. They are working on a new magazine aimed at startups, too, which obviously I’m interested in.
5. They have a sales team that’s already successful in selling to clients outside the tech industry (getting diversity is important to protect independence and also to bring fresh approaches to events and advertising).
6. They liked my participatory style of video better than other companies and want to expand it. Excited about technologies like Qik, Kyte, Seesmic, Mogulus, DotSub, etc. Other people/companies I talked with had blank stares when I talked about these technologies and how they might change the media business.
7. They have a tech team who understands how to integrate various Web technologies together. My column’s page on Fast Company , for instance, has a calendar from Upcoming.org and a feed from Google Reader integrated into it along with video interviews and other things. We’ll expand that kind of integration on the new network.

FastCompany.tv is not just me. They made a commitment to getting a great lineup of other stars in the industry to be part of the network — my show won’t be the only one on FastCompany.tv and we’ll be adding more shows even after our March 3 start date.

Anyway, what’s next? FastCompany.tv will start on March 3. Between now and then we’re working on finding some great content (I’m working with editors of the magazines, as well as looking for the hottest emerging tech companies along with leading business executives/strategists and visionaries). I’ll be going to the World Economic Forum and then to LIFT in Europe to find stories that are outside the United States and the “tech bubble.”

We’ll have lots of surprises too, and will be stepping up the quality of my shows — Rocky’s already working on that as we speak. But most importantly I haven’t seen a business network that treats viewers as partners. See, most of the TV (either mainstream, like CNBC, or “new” like that from Revision3 or elsewhere) treats viewers as, well, viewers. The thing is that the new technology lets you PARTICIPATE with the people who are in front of the camera. You got a taste of this while I was walking around CES with a cell phone and you could ask questions WHILE I WAS FILMING LIVE. That really changes the equation a lot and that’ll be a key differentiator on FastCompany.tv. After all, if we’re talking to Fast Companies, why shouldn’t they answer YOUR questions live as well as mine?

Anyway, to wrap this all up. This was the best “win-win” for you, for me, my employers, and for my sponsors. That’s why I’m proud to be a member of the Fast Company and Inc. families today and I’m looking forward to participating with you on March 3 on fastcompany.tv.

In between now and March 3? I’ll continue to post videos (yesterday alone I posted about a dozen videos on my Qik channel from MacWorld conference) and other items I see in the industry on my blog on scobleizer.com.

  Filed under: Career Moves, Fast Company, Video, scoble @  1:00 am #

It All Remains the Same - CES Review

OK, so this was my first CES. I had attended Comdex many times (what do you say about a dead trade show -- May It Rest In Peace?), and for many years was a regular speaker at the VON conferences hosted by my friend Jeff Pulver. But this was first time at the fabled CES -- where all the latest gadgets and doodads get released, and in the demise of Comdex and E3 everybody was supposed to converge on Las Vegas.

And so they did. For three days we (remember, was there with the mPortico team) ran from meeting to meeting, which made the trip well worth it. But what of CES itself, you ask -- did I learn anything new? Did I see any extraordinary developments coming down the pike for the technology industry? I am sad to say, no. What I saw was same old same old. On every level. Down to worst aspects of trade shows -- yes, the "booth babes." No, I am not referring to the Adult Entertainment Expo happening literally next door (that's a whole other subject), but rather to the need for seemingly self-respecting serious companies to feel the need to bring themselves down to the lowest level -- mainly because for most, in this day of instant journalism and constant communication, there really isn't anything new to say. Even the iPhone from Mr. Jobs had been blogged to death before the "unveiling" at CES.

To use one example close to my heart, which is the current best known VoIP company, Vonage. These guys have spent hundreds of millions to let everyone know who they are, and they succeeded in generating over 1 million subscribers (paying!). But Vonage does not have a new story to tell -- they are about making phone calls. Lets analyze their booth:

For a better view of the Vonage Vixens, click on the thumbnail. Now what do dancing girls in short minidresses have to do with Internet based communications? Please enlighten me. In addition, if you enlarge the photo, you will see the tag line of Vonage on the booth: "A Better Way to Phone for Less." It seems that VoIP companies like Vonage are still focused, ten years after the first commercialized VoIP efforts (I was blessed to be among that pioneering generation) on cheap phone calls. Even ten years ago we said it was NOT about cheaper phone calls, but something else (because we were pioneers no one expected us to actually say what else...;-)). The best thing I can say about the Vonage booth at CES is that they had nice giveaways for my kids (VON trucks for my three year old, playing cards for the others).

There were some interesting plays on mobile television, unfortunately most of those companies could not say when their demos would be really commercialized. Sling Media had a huge booth, very slick materials, (no booth babes -- I guess they have confidence in their product) and were always crowded with people. Sling are first movers in place shifting, but when you think about it they are a backhanded hack -- redirecting data from my house, for use when I am traveling. Now, if I want to get HBO while traveling, why have it stream to my house and then be redirected....seems like a waste of perfectly good bandwidth. If I want to get HBO when in Singapore, why not just subscribe to HBO directly (for beginning of this idea, see Network2.tv initiative). Of course HBO doesn't let you subscribe to it directly as RSS or some other form of direct subscription...but its only a matter of time.

I guess my real problem is that I just don't like Las Vegas -- I don't gamble and hate the smell of cigarettes, which meant going in and out of buildings in Vegas a torture. In general, I found Vegas to be a sad and depressing place. But to each their own.

Here is the view from room at my hotel:

I much prefer hills of Jerusalem...