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Unseasonable Predictions

Starry nights, colored lights, and kid's delights all remind me that Christmas still is less than a month away. This is causing me some cognitive dissonance since it is still November and some days the weather here in Denver is warm enough to play tennis in a T shirt. For business reasons, and out of fear of another recession, the mass media is pushing the holiday season further and further back in the calendar.

In yet another sign of unseasonality, I received my first predictions for 2012 press release. 2012 already? I am still not really done partying like its 1999. The press release is from Doyenz, a pretty new media savvy cloud recovery company and is titled Doyenz Forecasts Top Disaster Recovery Predictions For 2012. They were not alone. Daptiv, the on-demand Project Portfolio Management company also released Davtiv Forecasts Top Predictions for Project Portfolio Management in 2012, IDC announced its top 10 predictions for the APEJ region and Blue Coat Systems predicted 5 trends in Networking.

Now I am as big a fan as anyone of evergreen content, but shouldn't these releases appear between Christmas and January 1st when everyone is looking forward to the new year?

The four predictions Donez makes are:

1. The Demise of Cloud Storage
2. SMBs Will Demand Availability of Applications, Not Just Data
3. Access to Recovery Environments from Any Device, Anytime, Anywhere Becomes Critical
4. Blind Trust Will Be Traded in for Hard Proof

Personally I would rather see Doyenz make predictions about its customers and not its industry. It would be interesting to know how many small business were saved when they recovered their data, what industries are most prone to disasters, and how great the financial losses from these unfortuately events.

My belief is every business has a unique view into some other business that can be turned into interesting content. The challenge is teasing that view out.

The "Most" Valuable Domain Name?

An interesting press release from Aron Meystedt of XF.com Investments came to my attention recently. XF.com is selling the domain name tablets.com which the dictionary defines as "a number of sheets of writing paper, business forms, etc.,fastened together at the edge; pad."  Obviously the hope here is to cash in on the rapidly expanding market for tablet computers . No news there really. Tablets.com is not even going up for auction, much less been sold at a record price.  What is interesting is how Mr. Meystedt is using a press releases, Linked In, and  the tablets.com site itself to promote a sale.

The title says it all: "One of the Most Valuable Domain Names on the Internet Hits the Market". Will tablet.com be more valuable than Citrix's domain cloud.com, or  Monster's jobs.com, or Calvin Klein's underwear.com? For accounting purposes Cirtix values its domain name at $18 million, but who knows? From a marketing perspective it doesn't matter.

On a Tuesday in a slow news week before a vacation Mr. Meystedt is offering any number of story lines - the high price of select domain names, how you can cash in on domain names, can a new record be set for domain names, is the system for allocating domain names fairly. That is the magic of this approach. By offering an interesting idea and then using supporting sites to provide facts, the story practically writes itself. By my count in just 24  hours since its release the press release has generated 27 stories in English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese. In addition the number of hits on tablets.com is bound to increase its statistics (which Alexa currently ranks as the 456,093 most popular site in the world). Not bad for an empty site. 

Photo Credit: macronald

Women In Technology

In an era when women are becoming increasingly prominent in medicine, law and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? This is not just an academic question. The National Science Foundation estimates five million people work in science, engineering, and technology— just over 4% of the workforce. Even though women hold 56% of all professional jobs in the United States, they account for only 25% of IT jobs.

And the disparity is increasing. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, girls take 46% of all the Advanced Placement Calculus exams but only 19% of AP Computer Science exams. In 2009, 18% of Computing and Information Sciences undergraduate degrees were awarded to women, in contrast to 1985, when women earned 37% of these degrees.

According to research done by the AAUW, most people associate science and math fields with “male” and humanities and arts fields with “female”. AAUW Research also shows that people judge women to be less competent than men in “male” jobs unless they are clearly successful in their work. When a woman is clearly competent in a “masculine” job, she is considered to be less likable.

To overcome these perceptions, five years ago the Colorado Technology Association created Women-in-Technology (WIT) as a mentoring, networking, and education group for women in the field.

"Even in the year 2011 the equality of women is still not a given," said Emily Rayman, Account Executive with Integra Telecom. "Programs like this one help overcome stereotypical thinking even in an overwhelmingly male dominated profession."

On Thursday night Women-in-Technology (WIT) held a networking benefit event at the 18th Street Atrium for the Women's Bean Project. Over 100 women involved with technology attended. Many of those present were attending for the first time.

"I didn't know a women in technology organization existed in Colorado," said Michelle Lanuza, Account Manager at NetApp.

The event benefited Women's Bean Project,which started as a soup-kit assembly project to help homeless women to develop job skills and good work habits with the hope of making a lasting change in their lives. The project has proved to be successful and over the years the project's annual operating budget has grown from $6,100 to over $1.5 million.

The evening’s entertainment included costumed portrayals of unconventional Women of the West by The Legendary Ladies.  The group performd the  life stories of a number of famous women in Colorado past.

The historical examples of women like Calamity Jane and Mary Rippon, who made their own way in life, left a deep impression with attendees of the event.

"Girls rock", said Natalie Cutsforth, Client Solution Executive at .Idea.

Sources: 2010 AAUW "Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics" and the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

iGivefirst Plans to Improve Charitable Giving Efforts

The urge to act when we see other people suffering is as old as humanity itself. Even in these jaded times, most hearts hold the eternal human need for hope and most minds the conviction that something should be done in the face of suffering.

The global nature of media and ubiquity of the internet now bring us face-to-face with horrible catastrophes than ever before. Images of a tsunami in Japan, a yellow fever outbreak in Uganda, a tornado in Alabama, an earthquake in Sumatra, a flood in Australia, a fire in Texas, a volcano eruption in Iceland, a typhoon in the Philippines appear in our living rooms and offices almost as soon as they happen . But what can someone do from where they read or watch this unfortunate event unfold to ease the suffering of a distant people? Today not much really, except feel badly and share the news with their friends and family.

An innovative new start up called iGivefirst empowers people to proactively take action during times of need by making charitable giving as easy and pervasive as "liking" or "tweeting". Its bold mission is to increase the total donations of charitable giving world-wide through the use of mass media without adding additional cost to the giving process.

"On-line charitable donations have been limited to a mere 8% due to scams, frauds and inefficient charities," said founder Sharif Youssef. "iGivefirst rewards accountable, trustworthy nonprofits with digital media exposure. We combine digital media and new technology for global good."

Their technology scans content and serves up those nonprofits that are directly related to the story. While the technology itself not exactly groundbreaking the company's business model is innovative. iGivefirst makes its money by charging a 5% transaction fee to the non-profit for managing all of the tax reporting, customer service, on-line fund raising, risk mitigation, marketing and payment processing. Its policy is not to resell or share personal data without the donor's permission although this information is very valuable.

iGivefirst also screens charities to ensure they are legitimate, and registered with the IRS. Optionally they ask charities that would like to participate in the program to get 25 people to endorse their organization and their cause.

Once a donation is made because of a story, about say a tsunami in Japan, the total amount collected is distributed to the charities involved within 30 days. For disaster relief causes, iGivefirst plans on distributing the funds within three business days.

Charitable giving is a big business, $290.8 billion was donated in the United States alone in 2010. According to the IRS there are 1,574,674 tax-exempt organizations, who accounted in 2009 for 9% of all wages and salaries paid here as well as 5.4% of the GDP. In total public charities have $1.41 trillion in total revenues, $1.40 trillion in total expenses, and $2.56 trillion in total assets so, iGivefirst has a lot of work cut out for it.

We wish them good luck and god's speed in this endeavor because someday it may be us who needs the charity.

Can RazorChain Create a Demand Forecasting Revolution?

RazorChain is the new venture of Jonathan Fleck, an expert in supply chain planning, forecasting, modeling, simulation, and optimization. Jonathan gained his hands on experience in supply chain at companies like Reebok, Johns Manville, and Oracle. He also developed his theoretical understanding of the process at MIT where he developed case studies and contributed to papers. This background has allowed Jonathan to pinpoint a potential need in supply chain process – demand forecasting.

Demand forecasting is the art of predicting the quantity of a product consumers will purchase. Looking both forward into the future and backwards at the past, demand forecasting involves rigorous analysis of historical sales data and educated guesses about future trends. Although it has a number of other uses, demand forecasting is particularly important in determining the amount of inventory a business needs.  

Estimating demand incorrectly can have a significant impact on both a business’ sales and profitability. If inventory is too low, money is left on the table, if it is too high profitability is impacted or even eliminated.

"Demand forecasting is the sweet spot in better supply chain management", said Jonathan. "Companies spend tens of millions of dollars on enterprise resource planning systems. Yet demand forecasting is the #1 most important input into these systems and demand forecast accuracy is almost never measured or reported to executives."

Pulling current forecasts out spreadsheets and putting them into a software-as-a-service site where best practices, new tools, and better collaboration promise to make the art of demand forecasting more a science.

RazorChain will be completing its web prototype in the next few weeks and looking for beta testers after that time. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter at @jfleck13 and or explore Razorchain at http://www.razorchain.com. 

 

DEMOGala Denver

On Friday I attended the 7th annual Demo Gala event put on by the Colorado Technology Association. Hats off to Su Hawk and her team who staged the best one yet. A significant number of companies, new and established, presented their products and I talked to a number of people from AdvenTech, Green House Data,  Extraordinary People, iGivefirst, Latisys, MDSV, Ping Identity, RazorChain, SpyderLynk, TeamSnap, TCG, Trace3, and Vertiba among others.

Although Denver will never be the Silicon Valley, events like Demo Gala show how far the mile high city has bounced back since the dot com boom. Thanks to groups like Tech Stars and the Founder Institute there is a steady stream of new businesses seeking to change how everything from QR codes to charitable giving is done. Many of the businesses are eerily complementary, which without the 5 minute presentation format, would be impossible to know. All for all DEMOGala gave a good overview of both the forrest and trees that is the Colorado technology market today.     

Chris Roon joins Firebrick

Our old friend Chris Roon has joined Firebrick, the technology strategy consultancy. 

Chris spent 20 years in leading technology companies. During his operating career, Chris pioneered a few of the product offerings, business models and partnerships that created the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), supply chain (SCM) and social CRM categories. Now he helps general managers and entrepreneurs to take innovative ideas into mainstream.

Prior to joining Firebrick, Chris led the transformation of PeopleSoft's $1+B global services organization as VP of Strategy, moving from tactical implementation of software to full-services enterprise solutions, a shift that was the leading driver of that organization's growth. As VP of Product Strategy at Salesforce.com, he contributed to the early creation of the Application Exchange. During nearly 5 years at Oracle, Chris designed, developed and brought to market the manufacturing order management suite.

Chris's more recent advisory includes a variety of organizations in diverse industries including heath care informatics (Arcadia), payment networks (Fuze Networks), and mobile customer management (Infinian). As a competitor, he is still active on the soccer field, ice rink and tennis court. He has an MBA from Dartmouth.

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Much has been said and will be said about the untimely demise of one of technology's greatest entrepreneurs and reasons for his spectacular success.  All that I would like to add is that even in death one of his greatest strengths was his timing.

New Handset

All my life I have wanted to own a Triumph sports car. It is not really so much a question of transportation as prestigue. Since owning an old car that breaks down often is not really in cards at the moment  I bought a Motorola Triumph handset from Virgin Mobile. Although it is not exactly the same thing, the Motorola Triumph is currently the most powerful handset you can purchase on the market without a contract which I suppose provides a measure of prestigue in the pre-pay market. It has two cameras, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, email, music, and prepackaged widgets among many other features. The only product feature its shares with a Triumph sports car is radio. After I bought the phone Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) very thoughtfully purchased Motorola Mobility Holdings (NYSE:MMI) confirming the wisdom of my purchase. Now my challenge is to master my new handset. Since it has all the power of 360/370 class IBM mainframe learning to drive a Triumph would be easy by comparison.  I learn by writing so my solution is to blog about how to master the Triumph event at the risk of boring you gentle reader.  

Derek Robinson's War Story

When I was a boy, some of my favorite books were biographies and autobiographies of the great World War I pilots. The "War to End All Wars" had only finished 50 years before my 10th birthday and the men who fought then were entering the age of reflection  My grandfather was one of them. He endured the squalid existence of an infantyman in the trenches - years of standing aound in the mud enveloped by death. The war in the air seemed so much cleaner and more comfortable to me. Contempories felt the same way. In an understandable state of denial they romanticised the desperate and often cruel realities of air combat. Derek Robinson sets the record straight. His iconicalstic book War Story  has the worst title but is the best written of all the novels of Robinson's I have read so far. War Story is set in 1916 just before the Battle of the Somme and follows the life of the fictional Hornet Squadron as they drink and die their way though the War. Impressive fiction, War Story captures what it actaully must of felt like to be a pilot then better than any dry description of fact.