Conferences, VC’ing, hot topics this morning

Who makes the million buck projector? I’d like to see one.

Jake: I’m not sure. But they were impressive. Sorry, I had my facts wrong. They were $125,000 each.

Wow. I used to do 20,000 person events on smaller budgets, with better food and projector deals, etc. Because yes you CAN rent those kinds of projectors. In my mind, it’s once you get over about 2500 people that an event gets hard, because the scale of infrastructure you need is that much greater.

With less than 2500 or so people, food and bathrooms are easy, cleanup is fairly easy, etc. After that, though, you need multiple food tents, multiple bathroom areas, etc.

I’m not saying you guys did anything wrong, because I don’t know the situation, just letting you know that the barriers you’re running into aren’t the same ones everyone runs into.

Wow. I used to do 20,000 person events on smaller budgets, with better food and projector deals, etc. Because yes you CAN rent those kinds of projectors. In my mind, it’s once you get over about 2500 people that an event gets hard, because the scale of infrastructure you need is that much greater.

With less than 2500 or so people, food and bathrooms are easy, cleanup is fairly easy, etc. After that, though, you need multiple food tents, multiple bathroom areas, etc.

I’m not saying you guys did anything wrong, because I don’t know the situation, just letting you know that the barriers you’re running into aren’t the same ones everyone runs into.

A lot of people snarking are not (A) starting up their own gigs via bootstrap, nor are they (B) getting the VC cash. Classic armchair-quarterbackism. Rock on.

Jeremy: if you wanna have a conference in a hotel venue that has nice amenities, it’s expensive. 20,000 person things? Those aren’t conferences. They are expos or something else. Not something where people sit in a chair all day long and listen to ideas.

How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr?

You are painting yourself into a corner.

RSS is just syndication, and not very mainstream successful at that, just ask Pew Research. Pointcast had it beat years and years ago, on seemingly half of all corporate desktops. 90% of the population will still go huh, per RSS. As even my tech-phobic sister who couldn’t tell you what “feeds” are or much less how to use them or what an “aggregator” is, BUT she can still recall Pointcast (to her that was the old Internet). And Flickr is total implementation, anyone can think up a photo-sharing slash social-site, and many upon many have, but only a few really have sticking power. Why? It’s in the implementation and the marketing.

And “tearing things down” is not cheap, you have to know what works, to know what doesn’t. You wouldn’t build a highrise skyscraper, without first knowing what DOESN’T work, laws of physics and all that, same thing in market economics. Accepting everything carte-blanche, willy nilly, is the road to disaster. It’s far easier to accept everything, bet on all tables, without having to deal in the hard issues of choice and demographic research. Critics and the skepticals, are great filters for the mountian heaps of scams, ponzi schemes, stock schemes, and pure overhyped vaporware. As they say in Journalism, “You say your Mother loves you? Prove it.”

Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated? Action is only what makes ideas real. Example: Hollywood is FULL OF IDEAS, but the really good scripts are few and far between, and then a good idea, with a good script still needs a good implementation (Directing, Casting) and then even a good implementation, needs good marketing. It’s complex. The idea is but the spark, the seed. A Microsoft example: you have tons of R&D guys coming up with nothing but ideas, how much works it’s way down into a successful product or even workable code? Not very much at all.

Insert any random Web 2.0ish New Agey wild-crazy MLMish loony-buubleish quasi-scam unworkable idea, yet anyone dare saying the ‘Emperor has no Clothes’ in Hugh’s worldview translates into armchair-quarterbackism. Hear no evil, see no evil, no evil. Just beeeeelive. Hope springs eternal, eh?

But I have the eternally perfect comeback for Hughisms: “Excellently observed, but let us cultivate our garden.”

I hear this all the time “ideas are cheap, implementation is expensive.” Oh, really? How many of you thought up RSS? How many of you thought up Flickr? If ideas are so cheap, where’s the new ideas?

You’ve got to be really careful here. You are calling RSS and Flickr ideas. They are implementations. The idea of electronic syndication has been around for a long time. I used an excellent electronic syndication system in 1982 which was private and run by Batelle Institute. It was funamentally the same idea as RSS. I’ve taken a few good ideas of my own (and others) and brought them to market. I know the difference.

Here are some good ideas:
1. A better blogging search engine.
2. A higher yield wheat to reduce starvation
3. A way that music be available to anyone, on any medium, in any format they want it, yet protect the rights of the artists.

Memorandum is an incremental step toward #1. Norman Borlag, building on the work of Orville Vogel, did what many thought impossible and implemented #2. And sadly, nobody has done #3.

Sometimes implementations sound like ideas. The “Million Dollar Home Page” is a good idea. Try to do it yourself, and you’ll see the difference between idea and implementation. I dare you.

So, implementers, great thinkers, those who can understand and overcome the myriads of constraints on markets and technologies…. yes, we need those. And yes, we need people to “tear ideas down” because it’s the best filter to stop wasting our time with pointless ones.

I would tone down the “ideas are great” rhetoric and focus a bit on “practical implementations of good ideas are great”. The former is vapid.

Excuse my typos. I know it’s Memeorandum, not Memorandum. WordPress really needs a preview mode! I’m one of those “proofread, proofread, proofread” people. I hate this “click and taken your chances” stuff!

Scoble: An expo? No, they were conferences. Morning keynote, then 2 sets of morning workshops (about 10 tracts in each). Then lunch. Then an afternoon keynote / discussion, then 2 sets of afternoon workshops / panels (about 10 tracts of each). Then an evening keynote, followed by some open sessions.

It’s kind of a moot point. We found a way to do cheaper conferences, but our audience was entirely different than yours as well, and in a different country (maybe the market for high-end rental equipment is different in Toronto, where hundreds, if not thousands, of 10K+ person conferences are held each year).

Either way, Mix is still too expensive, though I may end up there anyways.

Scoble: An expo? No, they were conferences. Morning keynote, then 2 sets of morning workshops (about 10 tracts in each). Then lunch. Then an afternoon keynote / discussion, then 2 sets of afternoon workshops / panels (about 10 tracts of each). Then an evening keynote, followed by some open sessions.

It’s kind of a moot point. We found a way to do cheaper conferences, but our audience was entirely different than yours as well, and in a different country (maybe the market for high-end rental equipment is different in Toronto, where hundreds, if not thousands, of 10K+ person conferences are held each year).

Either way, Mix is still too expensive, though I may end up there anyways.

Christopher Coulter : “Ideas are nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Need that repeated ?”

Action can’t take place until the idea is proven or theoretically correct. The ideas[i] you have, combined with your patience[p] to live with the idea for a while, before going over board. Then a proven theory[t], followed by core design[d], need to factor in technological advancements in the industry[g] and finally prototype[y]. There only remains action[a], and reaction[r]. So…

((((((i*p)+t) +d*1.5)*1.7)*y)+(a+r*1.5))

So how does this equate? Ideas * patience, the multiplier is cause you have many ideas, weeding them out takes time. technological advancements only have a factor of 1.7 cause I figure a real idea takes about 2 years from inception to conception (rolling on all four wheels). I threw in a fudge factor for design. Also for reaction. The problem is you often get part way into the idea and never see the action. This of course is not for lack of trying, rather other ideas, technological advancements, or it’s just plain dumb (should have factored this one as well). Once you get to reaction (if your so lucky) rinse and repeat for new ideas, within the same space to keep ahead of competition (also not factored). Of course I’m just making this up for fun in order to make the point.

IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so. If action and reaction where so important we would patent them instead of the underlying technology.

Robert, if ideas count more than implementation, the why didn’t Windows take off until 3.1, and really dominate until 95? Windows 1.0 had the idea. If ideas, not implementation count, then why update? Why change the UI multiple times if the idea counts that much more than the implementation, then why improve.

The PointCast point is excellent. It was a great idea, and still is, but it wasn’t until RSS that the implementation didn’t suck ass. How many revs did it take for Windows mobile to get to an implementation that sold well? Hmm…looks like a few to me. How many revs will it take for Windows to have a decent security implementation after it was deliberately broke in the initial revs of NT? Vista.

You talk about original ideas, yet you work for a company that’s never made money off an original idea. MS is all about beating people on implementation.

Learn your own company’s history Robert, it will save you a lot of lookin’ dumb time.

An alternative is to just say no to the $1,000 coffee urns or call out the rip-off artists. Or…maybe run an event sequentially for a week. Or maybe rent a football stadium if that works better.

John: I see the disconnect. I don’t look at ideas the way you do. I look at them more as a combination of the idea and implementation. Gary made that point up above.

Expenses are high at healthcare’s HIMSS expo. An example:

In order to give the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies away in your booth, you have to rent the machine from the convention center. There is a $500 charge for the machine and a $100 delivery fee. In addition you must have a certified cookie attendant at $80 an hour for a 4 hour minimum.

IMO it’s the ideas, the entire company depends on them, patents them etc.. Ever seen a company patent an action plan, business plan, marketing model, business model, accounting structure? Didn’t think so.

You need to read up on patents.

First, you can’t patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea reduced to practice. In addition, there have been “business methods patents” for a long time, and USPTO now distinguishes these as separate types of filings, although business methods have been patented for a long time as “process patents”. For example, 4,346,442 is a process patent by Merrill Lynch for a particular method of cash management. Many of these methods do not even involve automation, such as QA systems implemented by following specific paper-forms-based procedures.

Most of the things you describe, such as accounting structures, marketing models, business models can be (and are) patented regularly. Ideas, on the other hand are not. Only specific methods of implementing ideas.

Much of the patent marketing hype invites people to “Patent Your Ideas!”. This is just marketing drivel.

Of course, without ideas, there’s nothing to implement. So, don’t get me wrong… Wow, I love good ideas! But, most ideas end up being shot down, and the good ones usually take many implementations to mature. The biggest mistake is thinking that once you have a great idea, you’re at the end of the road. You’re just at the beginning.

…At least when you have an idea you’re on a road, albeit the beginning.

With no idea you’re either nowhere at all or reduced to trying to improve on the implementation of someone else’s idea. Perhaps that’s a sort of “second-order” idea – “Hey, i have an idea – let’s make a spreadsheet program that works in Windows, since Lotus doesn’t”. Something like that.

And of course Windows 1 & 2 were malnourished implementations of someone else’s idea. 3.0, to a smaller and 3.1 to a larger extent were implementations of suffucient quality to be successful.

Gary, your right thanks for the correction, I realize it’s not just the idea but the implementation that gets a patent. I was not aware of the possibility to patent an business type (accounting etc..) implementation. I really do need to read up on this stuff (just wish I had the time) or (could find a way to stop time). Anyway my apologies. Thanks for the link.

Indeed, the road is long.

Robert, if you see ideas as also containing the implementation, then you can’t see a problem with people saying the implementation counts at the same level as the idea, because your statement agrees with that.

You can’t have an implementation without an idea, and an idea without a usable implementation is useless. Look how long it took the mouse to go from an idea to a functional implementation used by, well, everyone. Object – Oriented Programming the same way.

We’re still waiting on a good implementation of a car that uses a renewable fuel source, the idea’s been there for a LONG time.

Etc. You can’t say “Oh the idea counts more than the implementation” and then say “I count the idea as the idea AND the implementation”, they’re rather contradictory.

John: the thing is my idea of an idea isn’t as global as your idea. Heheh. Flickr, for instance, contains hundreds of ideas. The idea that you should be able to tag your photos, for instance, and have those tags show up on Technorati. It was the first one I’ve seen to put that idea into action.

That’s what made Flickr different for me. Now, is it the idea, or the implementation that matters? Both, in my view.

Tagging metadata onto photos is FAR older than Flickr or Technorati. What you’re seeing is a useful implementation (Flickr using technorati tags as image metadata) of an old idea (Image metadata).

Maybe if you stopped thinking of the world as being only two years old?