Content Log

Davos and Designing Sustainable Cities

In the morning of the last day of the sessions, I attended a session on Designing Sustainable Cities. The reason I went to this one is that I thought that Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, would be one of the workgroup facilitators. I also thought that Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, who I met the night before at Claudia Schiffer’s Global Warming party was going to be there. Neither was there, Ken due to family commitments and Gavin due to family problems?, but this ended up being a truly multi-disciplinary session.

There were people who designed new cities in China, architects from the major architectural firms, product design people like Tim Brown, Hermann Requart, CTO of Siemens, and some of the Technology Pioneers, who have great ideas, but would never be involved in a session like this. The session had experts from firms who advise governments on how to design cities and upgrade old ones. One odd comment that one of them made was that Dubai was an example of a city that won’t be there in 50 years let alone hundreds. We broke up into groups around areas such as transportation, power, governance, housing and resources.

I went into the breakout group on transportation. What else would someone with a background in IT do? I did study renewable energy when I went to Berkeley, but that is so old. It turns out that Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, thought the same thing. He studied the area of transportation when he was working on his PhD in Computer Science at Stanford. Tim Brown was in my group as well and I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say. Our group decided to start a city from scratch and imagine what was possible from creating entirely new cities as is being done in China now.

Once Larry started talking about how Google was designing a new $1 Billion facility, that some dub GooglePlex, everyone would shut-up. Of course, when a powerful, super-smart billionaire talks about how he is going to solve some of these problems, one would shut up. The amazing ideas that came out were: when we want an item like a tomato, we should be able to get it with a few minutes and the transportation system should be designed around that; battery technology will evolve to the point where a battery will have enough power to move anything; ultra-light aircraft are the most efficient means of people moving from one place to another and that computers will be able to deal with safety issues; the Google complex was designed for efficient movement of people and things to the point of eliminating walls and other obstacles.

We then traded ideas with other groups in an idea of using “speed-dating” between groups. The idea is that each group splits in half and exchange people so that half of one group goes to the other area and half that group comes to yours. You exchange ideas on how things are inter-related. Obviously energy and transportation are inter-related. What I learned in this section is that Ultra-Light Rail is the most efficient form of transportation. Also pneumatic transport of goods and even people can be a very efficient form of transport. Sharing an infrastructure between transport and power can be cost effective, but one expert suggested that we have no wires going in and out of buildings, since it is possible to create completely energy self-sufficient buildings. (Yeah, right. Try doing that in England.) We thought we should also trade ideas with the group that handled buildings, but we ran out of time.

I learned quite a bit about these types of session in this one. I won’t name who, but someone in the planning business just took control of the pen to further their own agenda. Doing stuff like that is why Sharon Stone was not invited to Davos this year. Also, getting this diverse a group of people is fantastic and with the sort of energy that gets generated, you can solve just about any problem. However, two and a bit hours is nowhere near long enough to do anything about it. The rule of the game should be to blue sky given you can really think out of the box, but it would also be interesting to see how we can solve problems like those in London with such brain power. Finally, the conversation needs to extend beyond the Davos event to really take advantage of all the collective thought that has been created.

Davos Workshop on Global Competition

The first workshop that I attended at Davos was a session on “Demystifying Growth and Productivity” which was really a session on Global Competition and I was a bit tentative going. After all, I could attend two shorter sessions on equally fascinating subjects and this one looked decidedly focused on geographies with which I was not as familiar.

My table was led by the President of ABB’s Global Markets and attended by a Harvard Business School Professor, Tarun Khanna, who is an expert in the area of global competition. It turned out that I was an expert of sorts as well. Having lived in Silicon Valley in California and the Thames Valley in the UK, I had first hand experience in what works and doesn’t in the most imitated model in the world for global productivity and competitiveness. It also didn’t hurt that I got to experience Penang, Malaysia and Singapore on my Christmas vacation that gave me new insights on what really drives high tech competitiveness and what is driving investment into these two islands. One person was involved in the development of Dubai that has had a huge amount of development due to the fact that they have eliminated government assistance and intervention.

I learned a lot in this session, especially in that there is great confusion as to what works given that there are a lot of variables that go into competitiveness, such as tax breaks, government protection, education, institutions, free trade associations and good transportation. I was very concerned though at the level of support for protectionism presented in other names such as support and assistance.

There was a sort of softly spoken undercurrent in Davos that protectionism is the way to develop the developing countries by giving them a break. It showed up in a very non-aggressive way in this session. Pair that sentiment with a broken Washington, a multi-headed European policy and no wonder the Doha Round of trade negotiations is struggling.

Dignity and Spiritual Davos

Last Sunday, I attended the closing session of the World Economic Forum title "What is Dignity?" I expected the session to be held at the main Congress Center, but I eventually found it in one of the smaller halls in the main part of the building. There weren't many people there, perhaps 150 at most and many of them were speakers in the event. Most people were hungover, packing or on the sky slopes.

The session started with a film on the concept of dignity that used striking visuals and then held a discussion panel similar to others held at Davos and hosted by John Defterios. The mix at first was an eclectic selection of charities from around the world talking about the inhumanity around the world that is faced by brave people who have held their dignity. It started slow, but gradually picked up steam as the speakers became more emboldened and strengthened by their causes.

 

Crown Prince Haakan and John Bryant Hope

It really started to pick up when a young man by the name of John Hope Bryant started to speak. My goodness, I thought the art of oratory was gone until I heard him. He talked about his mentor, Andrew Young, being inspired by his mentor, Martin Luther King Jr. I could hear the power of Dr. King in his voice. He spoke of the dignity that he saw in the poorest of men in India and the lessons that it can provide America. "In order to have dignitiy you have to offer it first...You cannot call yourself a leader unless you are prepared to serve."

I heard from several speakers from many faiths and walks of life that what is required to bring dignity to everyone is respect, the ability to give something back to the world and for all of us to give dignity back. Dutch Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, saved from the Nazis, talked about bringing dignity and opportunity to the Palestinians. There were those that worked for the poor, disposessed, and disabled talking about our need to provide the means of dignity to others. The Crown Prince of Norway spoke passionately and emotionally about visiting an AIDS hospice where both a husband and wife had AIDS and they did not know what would happen to their small children or aged mother and asking him "Do all you can to make sure that this does not happen to anyone else?" His speech made me proud to be half-Norwegian.

That's me behind Crown Prince Haakan of Norway.

After all of this emotion, Defterios brought everyone back to earth by saying "I think Kleenex has a big market opportunity here."

One of the last speakers was Linda Rottenberg who talked about trying to inspire kids in Latin America with the story of Steve Jobs and Apple, since that is what inspired her. The kids told her, "What relevance is that to me? I don't have a computer. I don't have a garage." She is now focusing on helping role models in Latin America to present to kids in Latin America. It occurred to me that here is an area I can actually help. Open source can be done anywhere, even with Nick Negroponte's $100 computers.

Irene Khan, Amnesty International

Finally in summing up, Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said that this was more spirtual than any service that we could have in a church, synagogue or mosque and that we can go out with our soul recharged. (I agree.) She also said that this session should be the first next year. That this provides the foundation for why we are all meeting in Davos and it should be the major CEOs and world leaders listening to these stories. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the Forum, was in the audience and we will see what will happen. It was certainly a loss for the 2250 delegates who didn't attend.

In a forum that focused on connectedness and a network world, a human dimension seemed to be missing. Fairness was sort of a subtheme, but in an us vs. them sort of way. I think it helps to have discussions like this to put everything in perspective. I have never seen such an assemblage of power and influence and as much good intention behind it. However, missing this type of context makes it difficult to sustain.

In my own world, I can see the argument of dignity in a world that is starting to creep with spying, bullying, spamming, sexual explotiation and collaboration of terrorist threat. However, the internet and the new networked world is empowering, making it possible to make a living in the first world from anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter what you look like, what color your skin is or if you have a disability, you can still work and contribute to the world. I hope it is a track toward dignity for all.

Help keep me honest. Ask me occassionally what I have done in getting open source opportunities or even inspirational stories to those kids in Latin America. And ask yourself, what have you done today to bring a bit of dignity to the world.

Photos Copyright (c) 2007 Associated Press

Web 2.0 is for the Right Side of Your Brain

A lot was said in Davos about Web 2.0 as a concept that was important for the development of the world. The level of buzz around connected devices, virtual worlds and community sites was tremendous in Davos as it seems to be subsiding in the valley. I was even interviewed by the BBC about avatars and the virtual world of Second Life, even though I'm not an expert on either. People who attracted a lot of attention at the conference were Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, Mitch Kapor, Chairman of Linden, the maker of Second Life, and Caterina Fake, the founder of Flickr. CNN even hosted a somewhat disorganized audience session on Web 2.0 that had Mitch, Caterina, Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO of Orange, Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters and Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook who looks like he just left university, because he has. Too bad that CNN, like many other people, doesn’t seem to understand what Web 2.0 is.

On the Saturday, I went to the Geeks' Dinner, an alternative to the Gala Soiree developed by techies and journalists who were not encouraged to go to the Soiree since they might not fit in. The dinner was held at the Pot au Feu, which is an informal, traditional Swiss restaurant and a real contrast to the Grand Soiree. Attending the dinner is everyone you can probably think of involved in Web 2.0. There were also journalists, Nobel prize winners, Olympic athletes, anyone left who matters from enterprise software like Shai Agassi, Paul Sagan and Peter Gabriel. Larry and Sergey from Google were there and apparently they brought some of the people there in the Google jet, which is a converted 757 that has been fitted out something like Air Force One. Paul Saffo from the Institute for the Future was the Master of Ceremonies and asked everyone to introduce themselves in seven words or less. (Let me tell you, that was a truly terrifying prospect in such company.)  It was the Web 2.0 people who probably had the easiest time describing themselves like Mark Zuckerberg and Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia.

At this dinner, I sat next to John Markoff, technology writer for the New York Times, and Caterina Fake. John was explaining that he originally wanted to be an astronomer, but that he didn’t enjoy the math. He was also talking about an idea that he had for a portal that was very visual for the everyday pieces of information that people need. We talked a bit about personality types and how they respond to different types of information. Caterina mentioned that she was very good at math, but really preferred right brained activities. It finally clicked! John and Caterina were right brained and very much aligned with what was happening in Web 2.0. Everything that has been described about Web 2.0 is more or less a description of right brained activities whereas the old web is about left brain activities, built by people with left brained tendencies.

So far, Web 2.0 has been defined from a session that Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle (who was at Davos and may have been at this dinner) back in 2004. In this session, they collected a set of “memes” that described a new wave of web properties that were emerging on the internet. Rather than trying to synthesize the collection, that named it Web 2.0. Since then, there has been a debate about whether this is really something new or just evolutionary. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it felt like something new.




This meme map is not very helpful in distilling the essence of what Web 2.0 really is. Now consider the definition of Right Brain/Left Brain or Lateralization of Brain Function from Wikipedia. The left brain functions include:

•    Language and grammar
•    Arithmetic and mathematics
•    Present and past
•    Concrete concepts
•    Linear thinking
•    Pattern perception

Right brain function includes:

•    Intonation and emphasis
•    Philosophy
•    Present and future
•    Abstract concepts
•    Holistic reasoning
•    Spatial perception
•    Facial perception
•    Music
•    Artistic ability

When you think about the touchstones of Web 2.0 like Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and Second Life, it all falls into place. When the last generation says that there is nothing new here, it is because they cannot see it. They see the technology, which has not moved on significantly, and miss the nuance and conceptual difference. There have been technological changes to be able to better express either abstract concept or spatial relationships, such as AJAX and the virtual world of Second Life, but these pale in the change in accessibility of internet services. First generation was created for the people who built the internet and second generation is for everyone else who isn’t left brain.

This was a real revelation for me. However, I don’t think that John and Caterina shared my excitement. Maybe it’s already bleeding obvious. The next day I did a Google search on “Web 2.0” and right brain and didn’t find a lot. However, for me it is profound and it is something I think that we can apply immediately to the development of Alfresco. I am going to explore the concept more and I believe that there are implications from Myers-Briggs personality types in how they interact with the Internet.

It also suggests a more appropriate name for Web 2.0 - the Right Web, as opposed to the Left Web. The Left Web as the necessary infrastructure developed to make the Web possible in the first place. The Left Web is not done, especially if you want to see the holographic web that John Chambers is talking about or the physical web that Shai Agassi is talking about. However, the Right Web is only just starting and based upon the bold and visionary statements made at Davos, I think we will see rapid development of the creative and personal side of the web in the next couple of years.

It also occurred to me that this wasn’t a nerds’ dinner anymore. The left-brain, analytical nerds were gone from this event and seem less relevant today. At this dinner were all the right-brained people defining the world that we will live in. Looking at the comparison of the two lists of characteristics above, it will probably a much more fun world as well.

Dave Sifry of Technorati on Davos

Please check out Loic LeMeur's video log of Dave Sifry of Technorati. It's a great on-the-spot account of what it is like to be a Tech Pioneer at Davos. You can also see Dave's video log of Steve Case to see the type of interaction that happens. You really can just walk up to more than famous people and ask them virtually anything. As you can see though, Steve has his own agenda.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I was up against Dave in a tech pioneer presentation, that was really something akin to a bake off. The session was titled "Next Big Thing". When I was ushered to the table, I thought "Oh No! Technorati!" That was probably the one company I didn't want to go up against. Many of the people in the audience were investors, others were just curious what was going to come up next. They tried to group companies into various sectors such as biotech, energy, information technology and I guess others. We were organized in groups of 4, with the best being discussed out of each of the 10 tables. At our table, we even had Mozilla Foundation, which was shuffled in at the same time that I was and represented by CEO Mitchell Baker.

I gave it my best, but I sort of compare it to JBoss against YouTube. I wouldn't mind being in JBoss's position, but who wouldn't want to be in YouTube's position. Technorati is used by anyone and everyone tracking blogs. But Dave painted a very articulate, passionate and evangelical view that was compelling and charismatic. When it was my turn, I gave it my best, but it is hard to beat the draw and pure energy of Web 2.0 and one of its least general public aware participants as Technorati. Technorati was a source of information when we started Alfresco. Good luck to Dave and I'm sure we will see Technorati hit its 100 million user target in the not too distant future.

BTW, it was in this session, that Mitchell yielded the remaining spot on the table to me. Otherwise, one of us would be slugging it out at the biotech table. I hope I give out the reason in the near future, but it was certainly helpful. Mitchell did get the opportunity to speak out about making sure that the internet is open. She was there at the Living in the Future session espousing the same thing. The internet got to where it was today because it open, let's ensure that it stays that way in the future.

Also at my table were Mike Mulica, CEO of Bridgeport Networks, who is a great guy and who has a very nice wife. We were at the wine dinner the night before and then the McKinsey part. "Hey John! Where were you? I don't chase people, they chase me!" Well, I was talking to the mayor of London, but I digress. Unfortunately, I missed Mike's presentation, because they missed several of us in the set up including Mitchell. The fourth participant at my table was, Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Transitive, the company that helped Apple move all it's old programs to the Intel processor and is another Accel portfolio company. It was all tough with competitive and articulate CEOs.

Needless to say, there were lots of other technologies there. There were genomics, energy, battery, polymer and even diamond manufacturing technologies. I really liked the idea of the watch that can predict when you will have a heart attack or stroke from ThereVitae.

However, it says a lot about the status and stature of software now days. Software is taken as "done" by the world's CEOs whereas in previous years it was the toast of Davos. That is a big reason that there is consolidation at the moment. I should count my lucky stars that I was even in Davos since Bob, Mitchell and I may have been the only software technology pioneers with software as a service and Web 2.0 being the darling of Davos. However, paid for software service is still less than a $1B industry. Later on, I hope to explain why the reduced status of software is only a temporary situation based upon some of the other sessions I attended.

Technology Pioneer in Davos

I am here in Davos as a participant of the World Economic forum where the formal sessions have just concluded and all I can say is Wow! We were selected late last year as a Technology Pioneer and to actually come here has been the most surreal experience of my life. I have been able to shake hands with some of my heroes and some of the people I don’t really like, but who are powerful enough that I went out of my way. I passed kings, presidents, prime ministers, senators, ayatollahs and gurus. I even had dinner with some of them. It was amazing to just sit in front of Tony Blair talking about a vision of a more effective global organization and realize that this is not a television in front of me.

I was thinking about the best highlights for me and it was really hard because there are thousands. From a business perspective, I was pleasantly surprised how valuable it was networking with the top of the high tech industry, but that still felt a bit like a Silicon Valley event. Some of the best sessions for me were the dinners where you can sit down with the most brilliant people in the world and talk about the most extraordinary things, and the workshops where you brainstorm with some of the most brilliant people in the world.

I took  the train from Zurich to Davos with Geoffrey Moore. Geoff was on Documentum’s board, so I know him well, but it is still great to spend so much time with such a busy man and influential thinker. We discussed some of the trends away from computing and more toward collaboration and communication. He also gave me lots of hints on how to get the most out of Davos. This is Geoff’s sixth year at Davos and he hosted some of the best sessions.

Yesterday, I attended a session on innovation that was moderated by a correspondent for CNBC and observed by Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo, and a professor from a Swiss Institute. I was in a group that included C. K. Prahalad, one of the greatest thinkers on the subject. Each group was tasked with the creation of a new product using different innovation models. We created a new game and film company that would take advantage of new gaming technologies with a sort of market-based collaboration between designers and customers. We were up against stiff and I was the one who presented our results. Bernard Liautaud, Chairman of Business Objects, did a fantastic job of presenting a carbon-trading fashion company using a terrorist cell market model and I believe that got the most votes. Our product didn’t do very well, but it was an honor to be able to work with CK.

The last session before Blair’s speech was a lunch session with some of the leading forward thinkers and CEOs of the future about what that future might look like in 2015. I sat next to John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, who was overly enthusiastic about a future where no needs to leave their room as holograms deliver your companions and even your outdoors right in front of you. In the second session, I sat next to Shai Agassi of SAP, where he laid out a vision of a physical world analog to the internet that helps deliver physical goods and items to you the way the internet delivers packets of data. Arianna Huffington laid out a world where everyone was not having sex, because they were experiencing virtual sex. I’m looking forward to seeing the summarizations of the session that covered new emerging life styles, increased globalization, more power in emerging markets and opportunities to tackle global warming, ubiquitous access to the internet for all, and securely handle user’s identities.

On Thursday night, I was in a wine dinner hosted by Jancis Robinson, the UK’s leading wine critic. Geoff gave me a bit of a ribbing because I dumped his dinner session on Mergers and Acquisitions Heatmap, because Geoff would have rather been tasting the Bordeaux wines. The bottles, which ranged in price from $200 to $800 each, were paid for by a Mister Ahkmatov, an industrialist from Ukraine, who was himself hosting the Prime Minister of Ukraine. It was a very generous gesture with the most incredible wines and terrific commentary from Jancis. We were kicked out at 10 and retired to the bar with the remaining bottles of wine hanging out with one of the world’s greatest wine experts.

I don’t know how to describe last night without reusing all the same superlatives. It started off with a political dinner where I met with John Kerry and sat at the same table as Senator Patrick Leahy and the Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs. Senator Leahy had interesting off the record commentary. I even got to ask Barney Frank over at the next table some questions about Sarbanes Oxley. Then I went to the Accel party where I got to meet Shimon Perez and ask him his opinion on the future of Iraq. I met one of my heros, Michael Porter, afterwards, which was a real treat. We then headed over to the Google party, which was wall to wall mayhem with every known famous person around. I met Sergey Brin and Larry Page but got to spend more time with Larry in a session on city design this morning. The guy is a renaissance man having figured out new models for flight transportation and influencing the design of Google's new $1B facility.

This evening I am heading out to the Geek Dinner, which originated back when the techies weren’t allowed at the Grand Gala. I have been told the Geek Dinner is much better. I understand that everyone will give a prediction as to what will be coming up in the next year.

I’ll write some more about the week later, but for now I have run out of adjectives to use. I would like thank Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, for yield her spot to me for the Tech Pioneer competition, Dave Sifry, CEO of Technorati and who deservedly beat me in that competition, for yielding his seat at dinner and Mitch Kapor for his help in the conference.