Upcoming Evening Events (typically 6pm – 8pm, check specific event to confirm times)

- November 6th, Team Camp, Turning Ideas into Startups
- November 12th, TON (the Ottawa Network) 3 x 10 Seed Funding Part II
- November 13th, CapCHI, Monthly Meeting;
- November 13th, CocoaHeads, MAC user group,
- November 19th, Ottawa Software Quality Association Meeting
- November 20th, Team Camp, Turning Ideas into Startups
- November 25th, Ruby Tuesday, OGRE (Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiasts) Monthly Meeting
- November 26th, OSBootCamp YOW11
- November 27th, Eclipse DemoCamp, Ottawa’s own Eclipse Foundation is hosting a DemoCamp

WELCOME : New Groups meeting @ TheCodeFactory

CocoaHeads - Contact Philippe Casgrain philippe@casgrain.com
CocoaHeads is a group devoted to discussion of Apple Computer’s Cocoa Framework for programming on MacOS X and iPhone/iPod Touch. During monthly meetings, members present on their projects and offer tutorials on various programming topics.

Ottawa Software Quality Association – Contact Kevin Burr KevinBurr@canada.com
One word is enough: agile. Is there a better way to start a new season ?
We were told that Borland recently underwent a massive internal transformation
to implement Agile in their R&D organization. Come to OSQA’s November meeting and hear how they did it …

Upcoming Day Time Events (Noon – 1pm)
- November 7th, Foosball Friday RealDecoy vs 76Design
- November 1xth, TBD, Lunch and Learn
- November 2xth, Derek Featherstone, Lunch and Learn
- November 21st, Foosball Friday – looking for two startups

Ian Graham

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I had the privilege last night to attend the inaugural edition of founders and funders in Ottawa. Kudos to Allan Isfan, James Smith of Labarge Weinstein and The Ottawa Network. This was a great event and I made a number of very valuable connections. Thank you everyone, I appreciate how much work it is to put an event like this together.

Austin Hill is founder of Akhoa, Angel and Funders and Founders instigator Austin drove in from Montreal and was the keynote speaker for the event. I thoroughly enjoyed his talk. He mentioned that yes in fact the VC industry in Canada and undergone a contraction, however, this has in fact created a stronger more vibrant entrepreneur focused funding community. Basically most of those funders that survive and continue to fund in the current economic climate were in fact entrepreneurs themselves and understand and relate to the start-up challenges. What we have is a pool of friendlier money that will facilitate and build much stronger start-up community. Albeit a much smaller pool but one that will build leaner, stronger and better companies.

I like to think of this as a culling of the herd by the “greed is good” virus. Basically those funders motivated by the mantra of money at all costs, who take advantage of founders and are only concerned about the exit are becoming or have become extinct. I had never really thought about it with that lens on. A bit of the old “That what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”.

While I knew almost all of the start-ups there were quite a few funders that I was not aware of. After figuring out that the funders had $ on their badges they became a whole lot easier to spot.

A great event and kudos again to Allan, James and TON for organizing the event.

Ian Graham

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Our second Team Camp meeting was held last night. Although the weather outside was frightful, the team inside was brightful (is that a word, at least it rhymes).

A hearty warm welcome to new TeamCamp member Armand Konan.

Chris led a great session with plenty of good discussion around ideas and contribution from everyone. I am really impressed with the quality of the people attending and the most awesome discussions we had. Three ideas were presented; GiftMyList (DemoCamp Approved), Social Skipper and Market Detective with at least four or five more ideas on the table there will still be plenty of discussion for next time. Chris introduced us to a very cool tool for vetting ideas called the opportunity selection matrix.

TeamCamp is proving to be a whole lot of fun and our journey of a 1,000 miles now has two steps forward. Looking forward to the next session.

If you would like to get involved contact:
- chrisjschmitt[@]gmail[dot]com

Ian Graham

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This is a good follow on article to the “Forces of Change” Series.

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The Canadian socialist tendencies toward entrepreneurship are a bit perplexing and perhaps a significant contributing factor to our dismal performance in innovation. In my opinion socialism and entrepreneurship are indeed something of an oxymoron. Why then you might ask is there this uniquely Canadian policy around funding non-profits to deliver on innovation? Frankly I don’t get and judging by our (Canadian and Ontario specifically) sub-standard performance in innovation, what we are doing isn’t working. There is an old saying “If you keep doing what you do, you’ll keep getting what you get.” In innovation Canada continues to do what we do and then everyone is surprised to find out we keep getting substandard performance. Therefore in my humble opinion perhaps we should consider changing what we do so we don’t keep getting what we got.

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I do believe in social responsibility, however, not in an innovation or entrepreneurship context. In terms of entrepreneurship and innovation I am a huge fan of nurturing the young until they leave the nest, then it is survival of the fittest. However, Darwin appears totally absent from the Ontario Innovation Agenda which is built around a model of sole sourcing economic development through local non-profits. Basically creating a non-profit controlled monopoly on regional economic development. What is the rationale for assuming that non-profits are the best equipped to foster innovation and then providing them with an economic development monopoly on the region? In fact I would argue that based on my experiences in Ottawa this economic development monopoly does not work in the best interests of regional innovation.

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Instead of acting as facilitators of entrepreneurship and innovation what you have is a bureaucratic organization with 85% of their budget going to fund headcount acting as gatekeepers to innovation dollars. This may sound harsh, however, bureaucrats don’t innovate they procreate. That’s right bureaucracies tend to grow those two things most near and dear to them, head count and budget. Where is the innovation in a bureaucracy? There isn’t, I don’t get it.

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Here is my read on the situation. Canadian’s have the misguided belief that profit and money are somehow BAD. For profit equates to “Greed is Good”. Therefore only a non-profit can act as economic facilitator. A non-profit isn’t a facilitator of innovation; it is in fact a consumer of government innovation funding, redirecting financial resources to bureaucracy rather than fuelling innovation.

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Well … you know what “Greed is BAD” and “Profit is GOOD”. Profit implies value creation. People will pay for value. Most high performance for profit organizations understands socially responsibility to the community, their customers and employees. Good for profit companies create abundance and contribute to wealth creation, improve local standards of living and often give back to society. Just look at Google that have created all kinds of programs and initiatives that give back to society. Bill Gates and Microsoft are another example of corporate abundance giving back to society or RIM creating a $150M seed fund in Waterloo.

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Economic times are changing and we in Ontario need to cast a critical eye on our economic performance and model for innovation. Providing equal access to all providers of economic development rather than creating walled fortresses with non-profits acting as gatekeepers and innovation roadblocks could significantly improve the probability of economic success for Ottawa.

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Let’s open source economic development in the province and fund those best positioned to contribute to the province of Ontario’s economy.

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Ian Graham

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TheCodeFactory friend and supporter Darren De Jean forwarded information regarding a workshop opportunity that may be of interest to Ottawa start-ups looking for some coin (and frankly who isn’t, looking for coin that is). CLF stands for Common Look and Feel and “The Treasury Board Secretariat” and “Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade” are moving to this new Standard called CLF 2.0. The reason I mention this is that one of the advantages of being a start-up in Ottawa is the proximity to government contracts. This often provides the chance to add to start-up coffers and extend launch runways by doing work for the government. In these challenging times every little bit helps.

Here is the event notice:

We invite you to attend the Common Look and Feel (CLF) 2.0 Workshop at GTEC on October 29, 2008 at 2pm in the British Columbia Room (Westin Hotel, Ottawa). The Treasury Board Secretariat Common Look and Feel Office and Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade will be making presentations on CLF Standards and CLF Implementation success stories followed by an open forum question and answer session. The session will be hosted and moderated by Thinknostic Inc.
The workshop session will be presented free of charge. Seating is available on a first-come basis. Please see additional details about the workshop below.

Synopsis Draft
The Common Look and Feel Standards for the Internet (CLF 2.0) provide an accessible, consistent and predictable presentation of government services and content for public facing websites. An overview of the CLF 2.0 Standards along with implementation success stories related to deploying a CLF 2.0 compliant website will be discussed by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Department of Foreign Affairs & International Trade.

Vendors need to understand how CLF 2.0 affects their products and services and what it means to provide compliant solutions to government departments. Potential business opportunities, related to technical solutions and tools, will also be discussed followed by an open forum question and answer session.

Target Profile
1) Product vendors wishing to make products and services CLF 2.0 compliant
2) Managers looking to understand more about CLF 2.0 impacts & hear implementation success stories
3) Technical resources wanting to understand CLF 2.0 issues
4) Companies wanting to understand the business opportunities related to achieving and maintaining CLF 2.0 compliance

Ian Graham

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Perhaps the second and most pervasive change afoot in the world today is “Business Model Migration”. Business Models are changing, flattening, and becoming leaner and more efficient. You can think of the change in business models as analogous to the changes in the software industry.

With the advent of open source software the way products were developed and organized changed radically. The proprietary software model is one based on hierarchy with a top down approach to development. I attended one of the Carleton University TIM lectures and listened to Doug Levine from Black Duck Software speak of the change from a proprietary hierarchical or waterfall development model where requirements would trickle down the organization to a flatter more distributed or network based model. One could say that the changes in software development were a leading indicator in the changes that are now affecting the corporate business model.

Back to the water analogy … If the old hierarchical or industrial model is referred to as the “Waterfall” model then the new distributed, flatter, network based model could be thought of as the “Oasis Model”. I believe I am the first person to coin the phrase Oasis model with respect to business or software development and the concept (Oasis Model) is remarkably similar in both contexts. The Oasis Model is incredibly flat and efficient with little or no hierarchy. You can visualize the model as pools of resources scattered about the dessert each with their own innate skills and abilities. When there is a project to be developed or delivered that requires different skills the appropriate Oasis pools co join to complete the task. When the task or project is complete the pools break apart again ready to reform with other latent skill pools as required. So what you have is a very flat, highly efficient and focused array of skill pools.

Okay, “Oasis Model” for software interesting, but what in the heck does this have to do with business models?
In fact EVERYTHING! Much the same way that software migrated from waterfall to oasis the leading organizations in the “Knowledge Based Society” are adapting their business models. The “Knowledge Based Society” business model is the Oasis, the Waterfall is in decline. This business model migration is in the early adopter phase with perhaps Google being one of the first to adopt the Oasis business model. Google uses something called Googlets to spin off design teams into self contained Oasis pools. Other evidence of this new model can be found in such things as the co-working movement, the entrepreneurial generation and the decline of the hierarchy. Transition in any aspect of the product or economic life cycle tends to be slow and deliberate; however, the current massive economic upheaval could potentially act as a catalyst for rapid, radical change. Those quick to adapt will survive and even thrive, but those that cling to outdated industrial business models are likely doomed to mediocrity and extinction. Just look at the destruction in traditional industrial sectors such as; automotive or pulp and paper certainly poster children for the waterfall and “TV Industrial Complex” models.

The freight train of social and economic overhaul is rumbling down the tracks. Will you get on board, get out of the way or get run over?

Let’s close this series as it began with Charles Darwin’s words of wisdom:

It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the ones most responsive to change.

Ian Graham

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The second edition of OGRE (Ottawa Group of Ruby Enthusiats) was held last night at TheCodeFactory. You might be thinking to yourself … wasn’t last night Thursday. Yes, it was and due to some cross firing of brain cells and mild bouts of dyslexia the event was held on Thursday instead of Tuesday.

In any event moving forward OGRE will be meeting on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 7pm to 9pm at TheCodeFactory.
We hear three lightening talks last night from Chris Schmidt, Don Kelly (coding dojo ninja) and Edward Ocampo-Gooding. Chris gave an overview and lead an interesting discussion on Team Camp another event of potential interest to Ruby Enthusiasts. Everyone seemed quite engaged and interested with some good discussion. Don Kelly presented next on debugging in Ruby (feel free to jump in Don if I am off base) which was well beyond my humble capabilities, however, sparked some good questions from others in the group. Edward gave an animated presentation (I believe there may actually have been a dancing cartoon character on one of the slides) related to Ruby blocks. This actually looked familiar to me and seemed very similar to nested procedural calls and fired a few synapses in the back of my brain from when I had done some programming. The meeting adjourned and we went to the Cock and Lion on Sparks Street to sample a few beverages and listen to would be karaoke crooners.

All in all a good night. Future Ruby Tuesday events will in fact be on the 4th Tuesday of each month. Check theCodeFactory Calendar for details.

Back to the “Forces of Change” on Monday.

Have a great weekend,
Ian Graham

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“The TV Industrial Complex” is a term coined by marketing genius Seth Godin. The term describes the global economy being driven by industry leveraging sales, marketing, production and almost everything around using the TV to mass promote to consumers. TV through advertising essentially drove demand for their products and services with manufacturing and distribution used to fulfill orders on the backend. Thus the TV Industrial Complex was an economy largely based on demand creation through TV with order fulfilment based on manufacturing. This model became adopted in the early 1950’s and reigned supreme until just recently and is in fact still an important aspect of many businesses. However, the adoption of the internet as the preferred social media of choice has moved the TV Industrial Complex from the mature portion of the economic life cycle to a model in decline.

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With the “TV Industrial Complex” in decline the economy had begun to shift to slowly to the “Knowledge Based Society”. The transition from “Complex” to “Knowledge” is one that began in the mid 1990’s as the Internet became more readily available and accessible to the early adopters and toward the turn of the century to the early majority. The initial uptake was largely geek based (as expected) and did not pose a significant threat to the existing “TV Industrial Complex”. However after the turn of the millennium the adoption rate of the Internet as the social media of choice exploded until we reach today, where I expect more of the economic stimulus is related to Internet driven sales than the “TV Industrial Complex”. Today the Internet is pervasive with almost everyone in the industrialized world having easy access.

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I do not claim to be a social media expert; however, my observations are that the Internet has evolved from a conveyor of information to a purveyor of knowledge. The bland one dimension websites are being replaced with rich user centric experiences. Web sites no longer convey information they help users absorb knowledge. The next phase of Internet evolution is one where the ability to store, convey and present knowledge will be the most valuable asset. The way companies connect with consumers and businesses has significantly changed. The TV Industrial Complex used a shot gun like blast to bombard consumers with their message. The Knowledge based society uses surgeon like precision to highly target potential customers.

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The transition in economic life cycle from “TV Industrial Complex” to “Knowledge based Society” is one of the most, if not the most significant, forces of change affecting the world’s economy today.

Ian Graham

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and the 20/80 rule.

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Let’s start this post with a bit of context. The world is changing both socially and economically at a rate and magnitude not experienced since the advent of TV in terms of social media and since the Great Depression in terms of economics. These two factors; social media and economic upheaval are having a profound impact on the way we work, play and do business.

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To quote English naturalist Charles Darwin:

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It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the ones most responsive to change.

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Now back to the 20/80 rule which states that 20% of the stuff accounts for 80% of the results. This applies to things like software programs (excel, word …) where you can do basically everything you want by utilizing about 20% of the features. Let’s extrapolate this a bit and I am going to postulate that about 80% of the social and economic upheaval in the world today is related to 2 significant forces of change.

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These two forces of change are:
- Transition from TV Industrial Complex to a Knowledge Based Society
- Business Model Migration

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Will do a post or two on each of these significant forces of change over the rest of the week.

Ian Graham

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What’s the difference?

This is an important post in setting the context for a number of the following posts in this innovation series. Understanding the distinction between direct and indirect funding of innovation by government is an important concept. This post will provide some background on direct versus indirect funding.

Lets start by saying there is a significant difference between direct and indirect support of knowledge based infrastructure through government policy. Direct Policy puts government funding into publicly (government) administered programs. Indirect Policy creates industry based tax incentives and grants that are applied to the private sector. In very simplistic terms direct policy means that government funds public sector support organizations that administer and /or deliver “programs” for industry. Indirect policy also has support organizations, however, they tend to be much leaner and the majority of the funding makes its way to the private sector. If you are planning to use public policy to innovate and commercialize then it is far better to have the funds used at the discretion of the strategic target industry rather than creating bureaucracies.

Ian Graham

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