musings & critique about hi-tech, academia, building startups, and a journal to building eKita
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
It always starts out this way. Slowly, the resistant antiques of us begin to accept the inevitable.
New technology is always laughed at first,
Staunchly resisted second,
and finally when they realize it is inevitable they become your cheerleaders.
LMS or CLMS systems - whichever you prefer to call them - are becoming more widely accepted as cloud-destined platforms, as the obviousness sinks into even the mainstream mind.
However, from a mainstream perspective it is still taking awhile for ERP and other fully fledged systems to make their appeal to this technologically unsavvy crowd - until now.
A good article on just this topic here: http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/erp-ethers
...which has some excellent points I have long been pushing for the industry to realize.
Not least of which is the actual architectural design concept of cloud computing itself - which is not new by a longshot, actually.
Cloud is essentially the extrapolation of what institutions have already been doing for the last 5 to 10 years: co-locating resources to servers within their institution.
And if any of you were involved with institutions 10-15 years ago when this was considered a "new technology" - you will recall the huge amount of resistance and name-calling we future-thinking technologists got for pushing that agenda too.
Of course - thin clients coupled with robust server farms and remotely located resources are now the standard across most academic institutions.
Cloud simply does this to a global level - effectively outsourcing that co-location and all the services required to run it to an external entity (or - well - nobody is stopping you from building your own cloud, too...but thats rarely necessary - and much less cost effective of course).
This global mindset of course allows much more power in terms of connectivity and sharing of resources than did the precursor architecture of thin clients + server farms locally. It allows connectivity, sharing of data, content, and applications on a global level. No longer institutionalized.
The result of which is that there needs to be new software which captures the benefit of these new powerful channels of possibilities.
That is, not-at-all-ironically, still where education technology is far, far behind. It is also where the institutional education model is being disrupted on a pedagogic level. However, the software to support this process is still non-existant.
At eKita we are building something for the future where cloud based architecture for institutions is considered standard. Our global education platform is software that is designed to not only take advantage of this paradigm shift - but in fact facilitate it, as we will offer hybrid and private cloud services to institutions who need the most customizable and controllable features - simultaneously facilitating the disruption of the current academic model which is already happening.
New technology is always laughed at first,
Staunchly resisted second,
and finally when they realize it is inevitable they become your cheerleaders.
LMS or CLMS systems - whichever you prefer to call them - are becoming more widely accepted as cloud-destined platforms, as the obviousness sinks into even the mainstream mind.
However, from a mainstream perspective it is still taking awhile for ERP and other fully fledged systems to make their appeal to this technologically unsavvy crowd - until now.
A good article on just this topic here: http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/erp-ethers
...which has some excellent points I have long been pushing for the industry to realize.
Not least of which is the actual architectural design concept of cloud computing itself - which is not new by a longshot, actually.
Cloud is essentially the extrapolation of what institutions have already been doing for the last 5 to 10 years: co-locating resources to servers within their institution.
And if any of you were involved with institutions 10-15 years ago when this was considered a "new technology" - you will recall the huge amount of resistance and name-calling we future-thinking technologists got for pushing that agenda too.
Of course - thin clients coupled with robust server farms and remotely located resources are now the standard across most academic institutions.
Cloud simply does this to a global level - effectively outsourcing that co-location and all the services required to run it to an external entity (or - well - nobody is stopping you from building your own cloud, too...but thats rarely necessary - and much less cost effective of course).
This global mindset of course allows much more power in terms of connectivity and sharing of resources than did the precursor architecture of thin clients + server farms locally. It allows connectivity, sharing of data, content, and applications on a global level. No longer institutionalized.
The result of which is that there needs to be new software which captures the benefit of these new powerful channels of possibilities.
That is, not-at-all-ironically, still where education technology is far, far behind. It is also where the institutional education model is being disrupted on a pedagogic level. However, the software to support this process is still non-existant.
At eKita we are building something for the future where cloud based architecture for institutions is considered standard. Our global education platform is software that is designed to not only take advantage of this paradigm shift - but in fact facilitate it, as we will offer hybrid and private cloud services to institutions who need the most customizable and controllable features - simultaneously facilitating the disruption of the current academic model which is already happening.
Labels: CLMS, Cloud, education, edutech, lean, LMS, startup, university
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Yes my doggies I know you've been waiting for it - the report of the final day @ LSM D.C.
The final day was indeed the most intense of them all. The air was buzzing all morning as teams wrapped together last chances at (in)validating assumptions by going out onto the streets, then mapping out the results and pivoting one last time based on what was learned.
Quickly after lunch the teams were all required to upload final presentations that they'd put together based on all things learned over the weekend. It was damn incredible how drastically every single project changed from the first day pitches. Some projects did not even remotely resemble their original counterparts!
With exactly 5:00 minutes each to present their projects, and an additional 3:00 minutes for Q&A (and I mean exactly!) - teams were anxiously practicing their pitches and putting together their presentations.
At roughly 15:00 everyone cornered into the presentation room - with quite a few more guests, investors, and interested attendees - making thefort.vc venue pretty packed and focused on that little pull-down presentation canvas.
Check here for all the photos in instagram fashion
From start to finish:
Sporting their DIY company T-Shirts pre-pitch time, LOLDreams...
Pat Sheridan, CEO of Modus Create, a very interesting development team of industry experts pushing agile development to its limits.
A shot from behind of Jonathan Perrelli, one of the damn coolest incubator directors and investors I've met.
So - what you've all been waiting for: Final Pitch Day!
Starting off with team Factsheets.io, who started the presentations with a bang! (Sorry but I love seeing women founders up on stage kicking ass)
Factsheets solve a huge pain button for the US government (and entire public) by providing straight-forward-simple factsheets on how government policies affect YOU! One of my favorites!
Team EventKick pivoted quite alot during the weekend, starting from something resembling a wedding planner and invitation/RSVP tool to an app that helps remind you and your connections of the meetings you promised to show up at. Lots of features and integrations planned forward, and lots of things (in)validated!
Team IAGOZ pivoted wide circles around their target customer/user (yes - same target for both) of the "professional male" demographic. Ultimately resulting in a service which will clone your favorite shirt that fits you the best, into an exact copy (without trademark tags of course) or any other fashion you want...
Up next - Crowdfinder, which aims to help you find the crowds that you might want to avoid - or join.
With location based tracking and a few other features planned, the pressure point for them was to solve people's wasted time waiting in lines by helping people find the stores less crowded...
This next one won a cool factor - LeapList.
Ever get a gift you thought was crap? What does one do? Ever not know what kind of gift to give someone?
LeapList makes it easy: make a profile with the things you really want to do before you kick-the-bucket, and have your friends, family, whoever - help fund it. One little bit at a time...
Ready to take a trip? A tour? Thats just the beginning of course - with the next team that I was actually the one to give them their name: Groovl. Group Travel For Less is their motto - find trips that others also want to take and consequently the group buying effect lowers all of your prices! Groovl will soon expand into other areas of group buying as well!
Ever need a Taxi and cant find one? How about the opposite that you need a taxi and can find 100's but they are all full? How about seeing those long lines of taxi's outside hotels waiting for clients?
Big problem, Simple solution, with Concierge: help taxis and taxi-seekers be in the right place at the right time.
The next team didnt actually come up with a final solution for anything - but what they did do was definitely win the prize of most invalidated assumptions - aptly named: Invalidator, had a long list and chunk of data on products that really wouldnt be useful, which they had a few new ideas on to use for something that would be...stay tuned I guess??? :)
Spicify.me was up next with a solution for everyone who ever wanted to find a specific spice, herb, or special cooking item and just couldnt manage to find it. Look it up, find it in your local area, and help others by tagging those rare ingredients where you do find them.
This next team definitely got the laughs. LOLDreams, an entertaining portal where people share their craziest dream stories and get to enjoy those of others - already launched and active by day 3 with users posting their dreams online and ranking other's. An energetic team with very friendly demeanour, check it out at www.loldreams.com
This group was after my own heart: Smart-ly.com started with an attempt to solve the US education decline (US now ~#22 in education) by figuring out the real problem.
It ends up, the real problem is that being smart just aint cool in the good-ol-US-of-A. So to fix that, students can now aim high, achieve their goals, and get rewarded for it - like, a personal channel and getting to know your favorite celebrity perhaps? Smartly won the top LSM prize by actually not only finding tons of young students and their parents who loved the concept - but actually getting a local celebrity (Jonathan Perrelli) to make a personalized video for a local who had only dreamed of meeting him.
Smartly is also going to integrate with eKita to provide them with the full academic workflow statistics and social graph data they need to systematically reward students for over-achievement. Many celebrities are already eager to help out.
Last but not least - another team after my heart with another education based solution: Quume, where your academic & professional accreditations, achievements, and merits are verified and organized. A great team motivated to solve the process of continuing education and knowledge seekers in providing a simple platform for everyone to prove they know what they know.
To boost their project up they also received a LOI from yours truly (thats me), as eKita will very much support them by hosting their application on our platform.
The final day was indeed the most intense of them all. The air was buzzing all morning as teams wrapped together last chances at (in)validating assumptions by going out onto the streets, then mapping out the results and pivoting one last time based on what was learned.
Quickly after lunch the teams were all required to upload final presentations that they'd put together based on all things learned over the weekend. It was damn incredible how drastically every single project changed from the first day pitches. Some projects did not even remotely resemble their original counterparts!
With exactly 5:00 minutes each to present their projects, and an additional 3:00 minutes for Q&A (and I mean exactly!) - teams were anxiously practicing their pitches and putting together their presentations.
At roughly 15:00 everyone cornered into the presentation room - with quite a few more guests, investors, and interested attendees - making thefort.vc venue pretty packed and focused on that little pull-down presentation canvas.
Check here for all the photos in instagram fashion
From start to finish:
A shot from behind of Jonathan Perrelli, one of the damn coolest incubator directors and investors I've met.
So - what you've all been waiting for: Final Pitch Day!
Starting off with team Factsheets.io, who started the presentations with a bang! (Sorry but I love seeing women founders up on stage kicking ass)
Factsheets solve a huge pain button for the US government (and entire public) by providing straight-forward-simple factsheets on how government policies affect YOU! One of my favorites!
With location based tracking and a few other features planned, the pressure point for them was to solve people's wasted time waiting in lines by helping people find the stores less crowded...
Ever get a gift you thought was crap? What does one do? Ever not know what kind of gift to give someone?
LeapList makes it easy: make a profile with the things you really want to do before you kick-the-bucket, and have your friends, family, whoever - help fund it. One little bit at a time...
Big problem, Simple solution, with Concierge: help taxis and taxi-seekers be in the right place at the right time.
It ends up, the real problem is that being smart just aint cool in the good-ol-US-of-A. So to fix that, students can now aim high, achieve their goals, and get rewarded for it - like, a personal channel and getting to know your favorite celebrity perhaps? Smartly won the top LSM prize by actually not only finding tons of young students and their parents who loved the concept - but actually getting a local celebrity (Jonathan Perrelli) to make a personalized video for a local who had only dreamed of meeting him.
Smartly is also going to integrate with eKita to provide them with the full academic workflow statistics and social graph data they need to systematically reward students for over-achievement. Many celebrities are already eager to help out.
To boost their project up they also received a LOI from yours truly (thats me), as eKita will very much support them by hosting their application on our platform.
Labels: 3DS, cowork, education, edutech, lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop
Monday, August 6, 2012
Day 2 of LSM @ DC was intense!
A very, very long day full of action packed lean learning. Some good workshops, one by myself on ideation and techniques of how to use it in customer development; but otherwise a day full of participants getting out of the building and talking to customers, learning, and pivoting fast.
We've got everything from an educational project to help make education cool - a realization after attempting a learning platform that nobody would really use it because getting high grades and being smart in the US culture isnt considered cool. So the pivot is now working towards making high-grades and academic achievement highly rewarded by being able to have private channels of communication with student's favorite celebrities. Want to meet your favorite celebrity? Get straight A's and you will, on Smart-ly.com!
Obviously this is a very interesting project for us at eKita.
There's also group travel buying project Groovel (name change imminent: there's already a groovel.com) who help people looking to travel in groups get it that much cheaper - by group buying the travel and tour packages.
A similar concept to what Elan is doing over at MorePeoplePayLess.com.
Overall we've got about 8 projects here, with some very interesting ideas here that are evolving into solid solutions for painful problems - right in front of our eyes.
With its hyper-drive model of invalidating and validating assumptions about product->market fit and customer->product fit, LSM is definitely a success at making you learn lean!
The only cave-at I have so far about the intense 3-day approach of this is that there are lots of false negatives and false positives in the testing process. Something that I've seen happening here quite alot with teams, and have mentioned to them to keep this in mind: dont necessarily throw away an assumption simply because of a quick street-test that invalidates it!!!
All in all though - learning the techniques and methods is the goal of LSM - and at that, it is excelling incredibly well.
Participants are quickly becoming lean startup machines!
A very, very long day full of action packed lean learning. Some good workshops, one by myself on ideation and techniques of how to use it in customer development; but otherwise a day full of participants getting out of the building and talking to customers, learning, and pivoting fast.
We've got everything from an educational project to help make education cool - a realization after attempting a learning platform that nobody would really use it because getting high grades and being smart in the US culture isnt considered cool. So the pivot is now working towards making high-grades and academic achievement highly rewarded by being able to have private channels of communication with student's favorite celebrities. Want to meet your favorite celebrity? Get straight A's and you will, on Smart-ly.com!
Obviously this is a very interesting project for us at eKita.
There's also group travel buying project Groovel (name change imminent: there's already a groovel.com) who help people looking to travel in groups get it that much cheaper - by group buying the travel and tour packages.
A similar concept to what Elan is doing over at MorePeoplePayLess.com.
Overall we've got about 8 projects here, with some very interesting ideas here that are evolving into solid solutions for painful problems - right in front of our eyes.
With its hyper-drive model of invalidating and validating assumptions about product->market fit and customer->product fit, LSM is definitely a success at making you learn lean!
The only cave-at I have so far about the intense 3-day approach of this is that there are lots of false negatives and false positives in the testing process. Something that I've seen happening here quite alot with teams, and have mentioned to them to keep this in mind: dont necessarily throw away an assumption simply because of a quick street-test that invalidates it!!!
All in all though - learning the techniques and methods is the goal of LSM - and at that, it is excelling incredibly well.
Participants are quickly becoming lean startup machines!
Labels: 3DS, cowork, education, edutech, lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Trip to New York & DC: arrival just on time for Day 1 of Starting Bloc (www.startingbloc.com) conference, located in a very cool venue called AlleyNYC smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.
StartingBloc was definitely a cool thing to see - with a jam packed venue of roughly 100+ people coming in from all over the country (even a few from outside) to partake in their 5 day event focusing on the creation of social enterprises. AKA Social Entrepreneurialism. Something I'm quite a fan of myself as a model for sustainable business.
In the evening, LSM hosted a session of a new 4-week accelerator program in which they hold evening sessions of leanstartup practice, teaching, and hands-on work with a very low ratio of participants to mentors.
It is an interesting take on LSM being able to cater to people who want to learn the principles and put them to work but in a more casual and less intense compact manner that their 3-day intensive weekend workshops offer.
I will update with some photos when I'm back in NY, as I was so exhausted and at the same time excited to see all that stuff going on (and people to talk to) that I didnt actually take any shots.
But I did take these from the place I stayed the night, a cool French guy named Arthur who works at the U.N. and has an absolutely beautiful view from his really nice flat.
Enjoy!
StartingBloc was definitely a cool thing to see - with a jam packed venue of roughly 100+ people coming in from all over the country (even a few from outside) to partake in their 5 day event focusing on the creation of social enterprises. AKA Social Entrepreneurialism. Something I'm quite a fan of myself as a model for sustainable business.
In the evening, LSM hosted a session of a new 4-week accelerator program in which they hold evening sessions of leanstartup practice, teaching, and hands-on work with a very low ratio of participants to mentors.
It is an interesting take on LSM being able to cater to people who want to learn the principles and put them to work but in a more casual and less intense compact manner that their 3-day intensive weekend workshops offer.
I will update with some photos when I'm back in NY, as I was so exhausted and at the same time excited to see all that stuff going on (and people to talk to) that I didnt actually take any shots.
But I did take these from the place I stayed the night, a cool French guy named Arthur who works at the U.N. and has an absolutely beautiful view from his really nice flat.
Enjoy!
Labels: alleynyc, cowork, lean, leanstartup, new york, social entrepreneur, startup, workspace
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Day 1 of LSM (www.leanstartupmachine.com) in Washington D.C. was quite a thriller. Hosted in a fairly interesting (and relatively new) incubator in central D.C. called TheFort.vc, the D.C. startup scene looks to be growing and thriving.
I came over here (all the way from Bangkok) to learn what they are doing and start working with them as an MC (master of ceremonies; role description: run the show). It is indeed different than expected but in some quite positive ways. They definitely seem to have nailed down a very functional leanstartup method and even after the first day - which was actually less than a half day (started at 18:30, ended at 23:00) I could see teams grasping leanstartup methodology and techniques actively.
LSM looks like a very hands-on, learn by doing workshop. Which is great because the learn by doing philosophy is of course what I'm all about (its even our 3 Day Startup signature). The team running LSM is also really fun. A young group of people who have really researched leanstartup well and as the saying goes they do what they preach. LSM itself is a startup that very visibily uses its own techniques - and has done a fairly impressive job at scaling and executing new projects that adapt and improve in real-time.
Day 1 of LSM@D.C. saw participants come together, get an introduction presentation by Trevor, after which they are all required to sign a pledge that helps to break them out of the mental mold and contributes to forcing them to adapt and learn leanstartup techniques over the weekend.
From that point, quick idea pitches are given by participants, of projects they want to work on.
A typical voting mechanism takes place and teams are formed.
From that point, a bit of information is given and a plan of action (assignment) is given to the teams: to start using LSM's custom leanstartup canvas (components taken, customized, and added from the Business Model Canvas method) to start learning fast by failing faster (a very interesting and well-branded slogan for LSM indeed).
Brant Cooper, a fairly active evangelist of leanstartup also skyped in to give a nice Q&A session a bit later in the evening, while iconically sipping a beer in his backyard out in California.
Stay tuned...there's 2 days left, and more to come! (and here's a nice arbitrary photo of a view from TheFort;)
Labels: lean, leanstartup, startup, washington DC, workshop
