Once Vancouver-based gaming tycoon Calvin Ayre seems to be preparing himself for a return from exile in Costa Rica. As one of the online gaming industry’s most successful pioneers, Ayre disappeared to his Central America safehouse and seemed to be retired from active Bodog duty.
Well, Ayre has been active on Twitter (@CalvinAyre) over the past two months and although most of his tweets are about workouts and social media research, he has hinted at lots of upcoming announcements. According to a recent article on iGaming, Ayre's involvement with Bodog is limited to licensing deals through BodogBrand.com but he is involved in the launch of a new poker network due to be announced in September.
According to Ayre's personal homepage, he's also working on a new media project tagged "Do You Have Enemies?" which is scheduled to launch this fall. Interesting angle for Ayre as we know he has his fair share of enemies in North America - the Vancouver Sun's David Baines is no where to be seen in Ayre's Twitter follower stream.
I don’t know if you were a child of the 80s, but if you were, and if you were lucky enough to catch the commendable childrens’ programing that aired on PBS in the latter half of that decade, you might have watched the mathematics themed show “Square 1” which featured a cop drama spoof called “Mathnet,” in which a couple of detectives used mathematics to solve crime. They even carried calculators in their shoulder holsters; and when the calcs came out, we knew it meant business.
I was an advocate then and I’m an advocate now; and it just happens that we may start to see a uniquely mathematical approach to crime fighting courtesy of an Edmonton Transit security analyst Stephane Contré, and his technology. Contré’s software, called Daily Crime Forecast, uses an algorithm to assess crime incident reports from existing data to pinpoint where and when future crimes are likely to occur.
At first instance it sounds like a pipe dream to be placed along stock market predicting algorithms and time machines; you can’t predict human behaviour, and you can’t predict social systems. But Contré’s software has tested incredibly well. Edmonton Transit has been testing it for over two years now and since its introduction, officer initiated calls (calls from an officer who is already at the scene of a situation) rose by 159% while reactive calls (when an officer has to be dispatched to deal with a situation) dropped by 52%. I’m reminded of watching Kate Monday and George Frankly (calculators drawn) elucidating the concept of triangulation to predict the location of a yet to happen car theft. Technology can indeed help us be in the right place at the right time, most of the time, to address crime.
Contré, who has been working with the assistance of the Edmonton-based Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and its novaNAIT centre for applied research and technology transfer, is now poised to go commercial, and he has piqued the interest of an American police agency, as well as the Canadian Military. The US Military may even trexplore the use of his technology to tackle the devastating challenge of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
“Ultimately,” Contré said, “I would like my product to help communities increase the safety and security of their citizens and provide a better quality of life for all by effectively targeting crime.”
More on this story can be found at Troy Media Corporation
The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology is a leader in technical training and applied education designed to meet the demands of Alberta's... [more]
The TechCrunch50/DEMO Conference feud continues thanks to the DEMO Conference organizers upping the ante with a $1 Million online advertising package being awarding to the top enterprise and consumer technologies.
Not surprisingly, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is steamed and has promised to double the prize package offered by the DEMO Conference.
Unlike last year, attendees no longer have to pick one event over the other as they no longer fall on the same date. With TechCrunch50 taking place on September 14-15th in San Francisco and DEMO the following week in San Diego on September 21-23rd, most assumed the similar startup pitch events could both survive.
Not if it's up to Arrington - he still argues that DEMO's $20K "pay-to-pitch" is bad all-around. Startups get gouged when they are most vulnerable AND attendees get shortchanged as well with the presenting company lineup full of those with the means to pay instead of the best startup ideas.
So, will any of our readers be attending either event in September?
While the world is still figuring out this new method of collaboration, we’d like to salute a few of those fearless, bleeding-edge teams that went out and made the mistakes, so no one else had to...full disclosure, I’m passionate about crowdsourcing. I’ve spent the last three years at Cambrian House, talking to people about what they do and how crowdsourcing might help them.
Launch a brand collaboration campaign without being prepared for what people think of you
“Yeah, let’s try this whole crowdsourcing, user-generated content thing! Sounds like people really go for it.” It’s all fun and games, until a big, ol’ SUV comes to the party. Chevy Tahoe provided video clips and soundtracks to consumers to remix, edit and add text for a commercial. Turns out, consumers think the Tahoe is a gas-guzzling, environment ruining, Republican.
Be prepared for disagreement with your brand, but start with the right purpose. “Tell us why you love us” might have been a better starting point for Chevy.
Don’t plan for the unexpected
Ok, so this ends up being kind of funny. NASA asked the public to name the next ISS module....and Stephen Colbert got his viewers to vote for his name. Are you calling out to the right crowd? Asking the general public something is a great idea, but is it really crowdsourcing if one person manipulates the way an entire group votes? No, unfortunately, it isn’t. Qualifying the people you are asking to participate is just as important as asking them to participate.
This doesn’t mean eliminating negative feedback, Dell, for example, asked customers what they wanted and got a loud, “no Windows” in reply. Dell now ships computers with Linux, much to the appreciation of consumers.
Assume work to happen for free
LinkedIn recently asked its users to translate the site for a “badge of honour,” annoying professional translators. The thing is, if you are asking someone to do something for free, you are telling them what they normally get paid to do has no value. Not a great way to get on people’s Christmas card list.
On the other hand, BT Ieas (no link - it is an internal program) asks its employees for thoughts on saving the business money or making it more revenue. If they implement an idea the employee gets a percent of the money saved/gained. Cause hey – ideas aren’t free.
Expect that a utopian collectivist community to emerge
Yeah, I get it, don’t throw stones...When Cambrian House originally started, we thought we could match "founding teams" to crowdsourced ideas. That’s a little too much accountability for anyone to take on after hours when it isn’t their idea to begin with.
What does work? Involving people with passion at a level they are comfortable with. Through three years of trial, error and discovery we’ve honed in on four areas that crowdsourcing plays really well with: brand collaboration, market prediction, product innovation and research discovery.
Assume people care
Bottom line: People are busy. Is this going to improve their life? If you don’t provide the proper incentive, it just won’t fly. As with everything else on the internet, just getting people to notice is most of the battle. The key to all of successful crowdsourcing is feeding a need that isn’t currently being met.
Crowdsourcing done well can solve seemingly insurmountable challenges, bring you closer to your brand and get stuff done. Hope this gives you a bit more insight.
Launched in 2006, Cambrian House began as a crowdsourcing community using a wisdom of crowds based approach to discover new business and technology... [more]
Abbotsford based web agency Domain7 is opening a second office in Vancouver and will soon be calling Gastown its home away from home. Coming up on its 13th year, Domain7 is one of the largest web development companies in Vancouver, with a team of 25 focused on strategy, design and technology for the web.
Domain7 was founded in Abbotsford by Shawn Neumann and has enjoyed considerable success, in part by recruiting great talent from all over the Fraser Valley.
Domain7's new Vancouver office will be home to a number of the Domain7's current team including business development, account management and graphic design staff.
Domain7 is a web agency, a skilled team of programmers, online marketers, designers and strategists who've assembled to do one thing and do it... [more]
This week's update is a quick one. Thanks for those who've contributed thus far - as always, if you have some Vancouver game industry news, contact me via my website.
Diving right in...
Klei Entertainment Signs with CAA
Jamie Cheng's company, Klei Entertainment, has signed with Creative Artists Agency. CAA represents well known people and companies such as thatgamecompany, Wil Wright and Steven Spielberg, among others. Klei are the developers behind Eets: Chowdown, the unpublished Sugar Rush (still in limbo after Nexon Vancouver, its publisher, folded), and their upcoming title, Shank.
New Media BC Seeks President
With New Media BC President Kenton Low set to move on to a new post at Bardel Entertainment, the organization is now actively seeking a new President. Just this week the job description went live and the search has begun. The #1 and #2 priorities for the next President, as listed in the job description, deal with increasing revenue for the association, most likely so more progress can be made in NMBC's efforts to establish interactive incentive programs similar to those in Eastern provinces.
Threewave's Dir of Prod Dev Resigns
Stephane Morichere-Matte, Director of Product Development at Threewave Software for the last 3 years, left the company recently to start his own consulting firm. Catchy Consulting specializes in risk management and project management for various publisher clients. The firm is already working with EA on an undisclosed title.
Artery Featured in The Escapist
On Tuesday, The Artery, Su Skerl's community for local artists and graphic designers, was featured in the well known game industry web magazine, The Escapist. If you're an artist not already familiar with The Artery, check it out. Every Thursday evening The Artery hosts "Draw Jams" at St Augustine's bar, an event that is well attended by not just artists, but producers and designers as well.
Adrian Crook is a game consultant based in North Vancouver. With over 14 years experience, Adrian designs and produces social, casual and AAA games for a variety of clients. He has spoken on the subject of free-to-play games at GDC and SXSW and writes articles for trade publications.
Threewave is The Multiplayer Game Development Studio. Our goal is to work closely with the world's finest game studios to provide services that... [more]
New Media BC is the association devoted to promoting and connecting BC's thriving digital media companies. Through networking events, peer-to-peer... [more]
Klei Entertainment is an award-winning game development studio based in beautiful Yaletown, Vancouver, BC. Starting from our humble beginnings as a... [more]
Adrian Crook, senior producer of Triple-A videogames and entertainment, lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife Lara, sons Oliver and Shepherd,... [more]
Open source software development has brought us many wonderful things. From Mozilla's Firefox web browser to free Microsoft Office alternative OpenOffice.org.
However, some have compared the movement of giving away products for free, sharing source code and collaborating with anyone who wants to pitch in to, well, communism.
With that perception in mind, Andrew Ross of the Free Open Source Software Learning Centre moderates a panel of industry, government and community representatives and asks: Is open source pro or anti-capitalism?
See the discussion in the video below.
These days everyone wishes they started the next big social media network, and the expansive online universe, in its enduring esoterica, hardly
fails to offer up new untapped niches for the social media model. That’s why Seattle startup Timu is taking it upon themselves to provide the connective and community-building capabilities of social media to the world of organized amateur sport.
Think about it, playing for sports team in the past (for those of us who found that sort of thing appealing), what communicative powers did we have? Team meetings? Phone calls from the coach? The always satisfying Team Banquet? Timu, led by social media veteran Matt Heaton, has built a platform that will allow amateur athletes, teams, and leagues to coordinate schedules and rosters, post stats and pictures, and generally engage the sports community. Imagine being able to compare your batting average to hundreds of thousands of sporting amateurs in the world, and then, provided your average is sufficient, sending a few cheeky remarks to tomorrow’s opponents. Or watching bowling video posts from last night's local league play to keep an eye on the tournament. Sounds like fun.
Of course, Timu aren’t the only people who have thought of this; there are scores of social media networks in the making out there, even in the sports genre, such as WePlay -- endorsed by LeBron James himself-- Sportsvite, and Vancouver’s own TeamPages. And we can’t forget that that heavyweights like Facebook will be hoping to keep sports groups in it’s enormous, multifaceted fold. But for Matt Heaton there’s is much inadequacy in the existing platforms out there, and he would know a thing or two about social media building, having co-founded the popular Active Rain real estate network.
Timu launches this week.
TeamPages is an online social network and utility for amateur sports that makes it easier for coaches, team managers and players to: manage their... [more]
Timu provides a social networking platform for amateur athletes and sports teams at Timu.com [more]
The ongoing debate over the relevance and value of social media was auspiciously added to last month, with an inventive job-hunting campaign that has many observers scratching their unemployed heads. We’ve all been in the depths of a particularly nasty job hunt; blaring through job postings until they transcend our dreamscape, endlessly typing out applications from an inbox full of no-replies. So it’s been refreshing to many to hear the story of Vancouver creative Chris Kahle, who landed his dream job through a twitter campaign he devised for himself.
Coveting a creative position at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a Colorado ad agency, Chris posted a clever online job request imploring CP+B to hire him, and he invited the twitter users to help him out by re-tweeting the link to his would-be bosses Alex Bogusky and Jeff Benjamin of CP+B. As a show of good faith, he committed himself to donate $1 to charity for the first 200 tweets.
A couple weeks later with 80 tweets sent on his behalf, his project site had received 10,000 visitors and he found himself accepting the position he had so desired at CP+B. What’s more, he started a whole twitter debate over his campaign, with hundreds of commenters responding and giving their opinion. Predictably, the spectrum was represented from those who felt compelled to denounce him and all he stood for, to those who thought it was clever and fun, and probably a few people who didn’t quite get it.
The real success was that it managed to ignite conversation, which gave it legs to spread far and wide, and garner attention. It’s a perfect example of how the collective intelligence of the online community can be harnessed for a focussed goal, and how decentralized communication modes are beginning to blaze trails through the conventional mediums and their power bases. Now if only I had thought of it.
In a nondescript office at Airport Executive Park in Richmond, Vancouver, one small company is looking to shape the future of mobile media.
Disternet, headed by CEO Fay Arjomandi, is planning for the day when cell phones don’t just hold your music collection but also open up your phone to the world’s media in real time. And Arjomandi doesn’t just want to stream video to your phone, she wants to personalize that content specifically to you.In fact, the company has created software prototypes that assist telecom companies to accomodate personalized content and customization.
While Disternet has yet to make a profit, it comes with a decent pedigree. Arjomandi founded L3 and Mobidia before starting up Disternet, which boasts an advisory board including execs from Cisco and Telus.
But even with an impressive resume, competition in the mobile space is heating up like never before. Everyone acknowledges that not only is mobile THE destination platform for development (after all, it’s the only platform that’s always with you) but the new generation of smartphones are pushing the space forward in ways that seemed inconceivable even a year or two ago.
Mobidia provides wireless operators with the ability to better monitor, manage, and monetize IP data traffic and offer their mobile subscribers... [more]
We are building an exciting product; an innovative breakthrough solution for the broadband operators worldwide. We are a group of successful serial... [more]
