Just a quick post to wrap up the loose ends from Monday's 24th Angel Forum in Vancouver. Overall, the day was a huge success and the Angels singled out the following companies in the Investor Choice Awards (award sponsors included):
Congratulations to all the winners! And for those of you who are looking for money for your own venture, the next Angel Forum will be in early 2009. Start polishing those pitches!
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Today was the third and final day for CanUX 2008 (you can read about day 1 here and day 2 here). I had a great time at the conference, and I’d highly recommend attending if you’re considering it for 2009.
We started off with a session on Sketchboards from Adaptive Path’s Brandon Schauer. He took us through his process of sketching and idea generation. It starts with a six simple sketches. From there you pick one to focus on and flesh out a bit. Finally, you take your finished sketch and add it to the sketchboard, which will contain all your sketches and inputs. It was pretty interesting! You can find slides, templates and more at Brandon’s blog.
Our next session was presented by Dave Gray before and after lunch, called Visual Thinking in Practice. He shared with us some simple techniques for drawing, and expressed his frustration at the common response, “I can’t draw!” Dave has made it his mission to change that outlook, and was quite passionate when talking about how visuals are important for effective communication.
Our final session of the day was from Dennis Wixon, a researcher at Microsoft working on Surface. Despite being right at the end of the day, everyone was captivated by the presentation. Dennis did a nice job of explaining how Surface, as a Natural User Interface (NUI), fits into computing history. He was hesitant to talk roadmaps or product features, but offered a number of insights into the design and importance of Surface. He confessed that the technology existed long before anyone at Microsoft knew how it would be useful!
I’d like to thank the nForm crew for putting together an excellent event! It was great to meet some of Canada’s User Experience community, and I learned a lot.
Next year's Canadian Financing Forum takes place on January 29, 2009 at the Hyatt Hotel in Vancouver and with the first Selection Committee meeting scheduled for December 2nd, now is the time to apply. Presenting companies are split into two streams - Cleantech & Advanced Technology and Information Technology - and will have an opportunity to get to know the Venture Capital Community and promote their company at this premiere event.
The Canadian Financing Forum is one of the most respected resources for North American investors who seek to recognize, gain exposure to, and facilitate partnerships with the best and most promising Technology entrepreneurs and companies that are based in Canada.
Past presenters have raised over $1,080 Million and 47% of the presenting companies attending the Canadian Financing Forum have successfully raised funds over the last 7 years (2001-2008).
Visit the Canadian Financing Forum website for more information.
Jason Cohenour, the President and CEO of Sierra Wireless, was on hand at the BCTIA's Techforum luncheon (held at the Sutton Place hotel in downtown Vancouver) to explain why his company is "Hell-Bent on Success". Having weathered many economic storms on the way to the Vancouver-based company's current prosperity.
Cohenour outlined the steps Sierra Wireless took to ensure success even when the economy varied wildly around them. He broke down the Sierra Wireless story begining with the company's first product, the Pocket Plus, which was a do-it-all modem that was a technological marvel but sold precisely zero products. The company retooled the Pocket Plus into a mobile modem for police, which did sell and put the company back on track. The tech bubble, starting in 1998, meant the company could and did go for an IPO, because as Cohenour said "we could, because anybody could."
The stock and valuation of the company fluctuated, and once the tech bubble burst Sierra Wireless lost customers, since some of their corporate customers ceased to exist. But Sierra was operating from a position of strength financially, so they weathered the storm and introduced the Aircard, still one of their biggest successes. They also made key alliances with big carriers in the States like Verizon, as well as selling modules to Palm.
The key lessons learned were to be first to market with key new technologies for big customers, always be in the M and A hunt for targets that improve position, and never forget who the boss is in the value chain. Sierra Wireless charged too much, Cohenour said, and lost Verizon as a customer, which he said would never happen again. When the customer responsible for 40 percent of your business asks for something, he said, there's only one right answer.
Diversification is also important, he said, but it requires over-investment in both the new and the old business. And the most important lesson is to be "laser focused on execution in the core business."
Sierra's new plan is the "invasion of China, Inc", and has opened a new R&D office in China to take advantage of innovation in Asia. Sierra has launched a new line of USB products and is now pursuing vertical market OEM.
Cohenour emphasized the importance of observing the ecosystem around you and responding properly, as well as timing cash raising in capital markets. Sierra was able to go to the capital markets "when they stll existed," Cohenour joked, in October 2007 right before the economy took a sour turn.
Cohenour said the next step for wireless is machine to machine, as well as "unmanned" applications, such as teller machines, parking meters, all the way to machines monitoring oilhead drills. "You have to spend to get to these markets," but once you're there you can become the dominant player, he said.
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Just got back from day two of CanUX 2008. The schedule was packed, but it seemed to go quite quickly which means I wasn’t bored or overwhelmed. There was a nice balance of content and activities, and again, great food!
In the first session, Luke Wroblewski from Yahoo talked about web form design and why web forms suck. He spent some time talking about forms in general at the beginning, but devoted most of his talk to redesigning a Boingo form. He listed his ten best practices, and had clear and thorough reasons for each. I thought it was a good way to illustrate the concepts. Luke finished by advocating gradual engagement, and challenged everyone to consider whether or not a form is actually needed. I’ll definitely be picking up a copy of his book.
The second session was on UX Swimlanes, presented by nForm’s own Yvonne Shek. A UX swimlane is a document that provides a bird’s eye view of where you are in a project, by communicating a story or scenario. The document consists of vertically stacked lanes for different audiences, all illustrating the same concept. The executives have a lane with a comic strip, the UX/creative types have a lane with a workflow diagram, etc. It’s a neat concept, and I wish we had more time to explore it. You can find some comic panels to use here, and a Visio template for swimlanes here.
After lunch we had a long session on creativity, facilitated by the Banff Centre. We broke into three groups: one worked on collages, one explored drumming, and the group I joined focused on improv. Everyone seemed to enjoy the session! I found the activities we took part in were more applicable to leadership than to creativity, but I still had a great time. My favorite activity in the improv group was the last one. Working with a partner, you start off by saying “I have this great idea for a party…” and they follow with “yes, but…” and you keep going until the facilitator stops time. Then you switch, and do “yes, and…” instead. It’s incredible how wild the latter ideas became! Great tool for brainstorming.
The final session of the day was A Better Method for Designing with Developers. Jerome Ryckborst shared with us his experiences using the “Five-Sketches-Or-Else” method of getting developers and potentially other team members involved in design. It’s a really intriguing concept that I’m keen to try out. You can find most of Jerome’s presentation here.
After dinner was a “Show & Tell” reception where anyone could get out their laptop and show others what they are working on. It was neat to see some of the projects that attendees are focused on. Tomorrow is the final day of the conference, and the schedule is packed once again! You can read about day 1 here. I’ve been uploading photos here and I posted a few additional thoughts here.
Social Media Direction, a Vancouver-based social media consulting agency, will be hosting Beyond Technology: Making ‘Cents’ out of Social Media conference on Thursday, November 20, 2008 from 1:00pm - 4:00pm at the Pan Pacific Vancouver Hotel. The session aims to provide organizations with a high-level overview of the social software industry and opportunities available to increase community involvement, internal communications, and the bottom line.
Keynote Speakers:
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I arrived in Banff this afternoon for CanUX 2008, the Canadian User Experience workshop. The annual event brings together a wide range of people who care about making things work better. CanUX is organized by Edmonton-based nForm Experience Consulting. One of the most appealing things about CanUX is the size – there are only about 80 people in attendance, and that’s on purpose. It makes for a more intimate type of event.
The day started at 9am with the UX Bootcamp, a preconference workshop to get attendees up-to-speed on user-centered design. The conference officially began after the Bootcamp at 3pm. Each attendee received a tote bag with two books inside: Subject to Change by adaptive path and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.
The first session of the conference was called Design Slam. A group from the University of Lethbridge led the session as “BestJet”, a fictional airline not unlike the real WestJet. We broke into groups and were tasked with designing a strategy to help BestJet grow its market share and reduce customer frustrations. It was a fun exercise, and served as an ice-breaker without feeling forced! Most groups came up with some sort of airline profile, so that passengers could save preferences for future flights. Almost everyone said the planes should be upgraded to contain touchscreens.
The design work and presentations for Design Slam were split by dinner, and followed by the opening night reception. It was great to meet a bunch of new people today, and I look forward to the rest of the conference! I’ll be blogging about it here and on my own blog, and uploading photos to this photoset at Flickr. You can also follow along on Twitter!
Huge week in Vancouver for Tech events and there is a little something for everyone.
If you're an Angel Investor, it's not too late to attend the 24th Angel Forum tomorrow at SFU Harbour Centre. A great slate of startups will be pitching their businesses in hopes of landing some elusive seed money.
If you're tired of hearing about this 'Social Media' thing and have no idea where to start, be sure to check out the Beyond Technology Conference which promises to explain all the hottest sites and tools - Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Linkedin, and Twitter.
BCTIA's Techforum: "Hellbent on Success"
How to make a Six Figure Income as a Technical Communicator
VEF Momentum's "Now More Than Ever"
The Beyond Technology Afternoon Conference (Social Media Training)
If you have a tech event that you would like listed in our blog summary, please feel free to add it to the Techvibes event directory.
On Tuesday November 18th, the British Columbia Technology Industries Association (BCTIA) hosts their next techforum event and this time around the speaker is Jason Cohenour, President and Chief Executive Officer of Seirra Wireless.
Leading a technology company is not for the faint of heart. It’s a cyclone of glory days, financial losses, restructuring, redirection and new found success.
On November 18, you will hear how Jason Cohenour, President and Chief Executive Officer - Sierra Wireless has survived the storm and set the stage for continued growth and profitability.
This luncheon event takes place at the Sutton Place Hotel and gets underway at 11:30am - be sure to pre-register.
Sierra Wireless modems and software connect people all over the world with mobile broadband networks that keep them in touch, informed, and... [more]
As the largest and most influential association representing BC's technology industry, BC TIA is dedicated to fostering growth and development in... [more]
Of course we would be greatly concerned about companies using or selling our private information. We're so terribly concerned... that we're giving it away for free.
At the Insight Internet Law conference that happened this week in downtown Vancouver, James Bond (the lawyer with Lang Michener LLP, not the spy with MI5) pointed out the strange disconnect between what people say about online privacy and what we actually do. He cited a Pew Internet Project study from November 5 showing:
Yet many of us are still giving in to the convenience of free web apps for work and staying in touch with our friends... and we typically don't even bother reading the contract before signing up (Have you ever read the Facebook terms-of-use contract? How about iTunes?)
Bond points out that the increasing ability of governments to obtain any private information they like a la the US Patriot Act doesn't bode well for their ability to protest behavioral tracking in the private sphere, given what they're doing.
The only conclusion that is easily drawn here is that we can't reasonably have an expectation of privacy on the Internet, if such a thing ever existed.
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