Hey all, had the good fortune of participating earlier this week in the University of Waterloo’s Web 3.0 thinktank, which was a very interesting experience. While the conference was the subject of some uncertain tweetering of the entrepreneurial class that attended the event (Velocity’s Jesse Rodgers has a pretty good summary of the vibe), on the whole everyone was pretty pumped by the seeds of integrating various creative and entrepreneurial instincts with a similar wealth creation imperative. BTW, Jesse has the best blog banner in the country: “Whoyoucallingajesse.com”.
I share a wariness of the big, national initiative bias that attend such events. As I posited in my post-conference discussions with Waterloo’s new digital media commercialization director, Glenn Smith, it may be that such “big” and “national” concepts are much like Einstein’s general theory of relativity: they work and are fundamental in examining big things, but they don’t work quite as well in the quantum world in which us startup folk generally reside. The trick is in finding the key drivers and friction points, understanding the math behind success, and having faith in that the appropriate inputs will generate the appropriate results, without too heavy a hand on the strategic direction. Oh yeah, and it’s probably key that we understand there is no finish line to this stuff. Maybe that is the string theory that will piece it all together.
Highlights and takeaways: in my view, probably the best is Andrew Fischer from Wesley Clover’s echoing of Terry Matthews’ rant that the government has to find ways to be better testers, users, validate-rs, and ultimately buyers of new technologies. This isn’t a “Buy Canadian” thang. It’s merely the notion that we would divorce our policy makers from the risk-management nightmare of being mentioned in Sheila Fraser’s annual audit report, and empower them to try new and sample new technologies. My idea for your feedback: what about a gov’t app store, a place where pre-blessed technologies could be sampled and tested by the public service and its consultant network? If you see me around, give me your feedback on that, I think it would be a great tool for companies to access a decent crowd-sourcing network of users in an enterprise setting. And it is probably easier to implement than you might think.
If you want to weigh in on anything Waterloo Web 3.0, you can access the discussion group here. This is supposed to be a Province-wide and national initiative, so probably the only way to pull some of the benefits back to Ottawa is to get involved somehow.
And finally, since I am ever the English major (this thing was held in Stratford after all), I leave you a slightly treated text from the last act of MacBeth from which my post title hails, which is actually a pretty decent high level take on the whole thing. I hope to inspire your use of the word “exeunt” in casual conversation (Scotts and Aydin, just an FYI, it is not an anatomical reference).
“Enter Stratford Rotary complex with drum and colours, Kevin Tuer, Ken Coates, Dalton McGuinty, and company, and their entrepreneurial Army, with boughs.
Kevin: Now, near enough; your leavy screens and national visions throw down,
And show like those budding geniuses you are.
You, worthy uncle Tom (Jenkins from Open Text),
Shall, with my cousin, your right-noble son Mike (Lazaridis from RIM),
Lead our first battle; worthy McGuinty and we
Shall take upon’s what else remains to do,
According to our order.
Ken. Fare you well.
Do we but find the multinational media tyrant’s development and distribution power to-night,
Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight.
MacGuinty. Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath and big financial commitments,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood, death and (hopefully) some kick-ass digital media startups.
Exeunt.”
By James Smith
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