Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

Just returned from an interesting talk Mark Evans of B5 Media gave at the Toronto Board of Trade this morning. He compared startup environment of the last boom to the current with a few pointed and entertaining examples, though nothing you probably didn’t know already:

• how wasteful of capital the last boom in retrospect overspending on perks, offices and superbowl ads
• how raising 2M dollars really isn’t as much cash as you might think
• how nonetheless the web2.0 boom is so much more about frugality (everything is cheaper to build, and even with funding B5 doesn’t need status-symbol offices they do just fine out of Mark’s garage and Jeremy’s basement)
• And (what I find interesting) how basic office/enterprise2.0 tools gmail, writely, freshbooks etc has let build out out the world’s 3rd largest blog network with hundreds of “staff” with almost no physical infrastructure.

Ultimately though it was just inspiring to see the canadian venture community (Rick Segal, J L Albright, Brightspark ) having the courage to get behind a deal with B5. Sure, B5 is still at the early stages of capitalizes on this new disruptive force in the media world, but they’re a smart bet if you ask me.

As Mark was saying, prior to joining B5 he was writing both for his blog and for the National Post. He felt like he was holding one foot still on the platform and the other on the train that was leaving the station. And for him, it was a no-brainer which way to jump.

Some excellent points Lars, while I myself sometimes take certain (mischievous?) pleasure in declaring various “old” media like email just plain dead, the reality ( if we want to get picky about it) is of course far more subtle.

Better quality and availability of alternative communication mediums (e.g. so-called “social media” – not that that phrase makes as much sense in the business context) really just provides a greater choice in communication options for users/systems/humans/yourdog/cat etc.

Ideally, new mediums just let users select from the available tools those best suited to the job a hand. Which, in a lot of cases, won’t have to be email anymore.

What with the (nearly-alarming) proliferation of social/professional/marketing/media/hobby etc. community sites these days, I have this fear that within a few years 90% of all email (not counting the other 90% which will still be spam) will consist entirely of password reset emails and add-me-to-your-friend/buddy-list confirmation e-mails…

Posted by: Thomas Purves | 12 December 2006 at 14:03 GMT

You can read what argument I was replying to here on Lars Plougmann’s blog cheers. [hint: Lars has another good post in his ongoing conversation on social media killing off email as a useful tool for collaboration (or in this case, if social media like wiki’s are really any better or a complete substitute and so forth)]

Damn you fran, my dear friend of most remarkable and continuous Autobiographical Locality, has once again found herself afoot in vienna for Roboexotica with famous art interventionists Monochrom (wikipedia: Monchrom) mixing robots with alcohol.

Link to Fran’s tale:

I naturally then made my way to Roboexotica 2006 where Johannnes in his trucker hat was directing fan traffic. As usual there was no shortage of robot stunts. I walked between a scultpural catapult cocktail maker, a machine that simulated drunken driving…Han was peddling his robo-cocktail dorkbot t-shirts and I vowed to go back for more today….While in the last few weeks it has been a busy and crazy time in my work life and life all around, I am glad I came back to beautiful Vienna where the gold winks at you and pushes you along her well-proportioned streets encouraging you to let go.

Flickr photos tagged with roboexotica

From Boingboing, See also video of Fran, Johannes, Cory Doctorow and co. on Austrian community TV last year. Love the mock-seriousness with which they manage to conduct the discussion on this very important conference of international cocktail robotics.