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David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

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Community 2.0

Building communities, not products

by davidcrow

Photo by Lawrence Whittemore http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrence_evil/149197406/in/photostream/
Photo by Lawrence Whittemore http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrence_evil/149197406/in/photostream/

I’ve been feeling a little rusty this week. I received feedback that my focus of the past 5+ years on community and evangelism was not necessarily a benefit to an early-stage technology company. This came as a shock as I had to justify and rationalize the past 9 years that I’ve lived in Toronto and why I have been relentless about the need to build a stronger ecosystem and community in Toronto.

I moved to Toronto in November 2001. I had left Austin, TX in July 2001 after spending a great few years working at Trilogy Software and at Reactivity Inc. I had spent the previous years doing interaction design, presales, and product management for a sales force automation company and then for early-stage and pre-product clients at Reactivity (this was before the transition from startup accelerator to a product firm aka the XML firewall company that was sold to Cisco). I worked with more than 15 clients including Living.com, AllMyStuff, eLaw.com, Zaplet, MetalSite and others. It was a great time, I learned a lot about small teams, venture funding, and how to effectively build products for undefined markets, undefined customers, and undefined budgets.

When I moved to Toronto there was (and continues to be) a very strong agency culture. There were firms like Cyberplex, BlastRadius, Organic, JWT, ModemMedia, MacLaren McCann, Critical Mass and others. There was a hub for this community with Spadina Bus, TechSpace and AIMS. The problem was there wasn’t a strong Internet application or product culture. I wrote about my investigations looking for TO software companies part 1 & part 2.

As part of the return to Toronto, my spouse started her optometric practice. One of the requirements of the financing to get this off the ground was that I get a regular paying gig. And then strangely September 11, 2001 happened. I took a job working at CIBC in the Retail Markets group as the lead Usability Consultant. I lasted about 6 months at CIBC, big corporate culture was not an environment where I thrived. I found a gig at Ryerson University rolling out the self-service component of their Human Resources Management System. Turns out my first recommendation was to scrap the Oracle 8 Forms based application in favour of new HRMS selection and patching functionality in the existing system using web applications. It looks like the front end of the applicant tracking system I built is still running 5 years after I left (if you’re curious the system built using Fusebox 3.0 running on Coldfusion 6.x against Oracle 9i on Windows Server 2000/2k3). This was as close to product I got until about 2005.

In 2005, I decided I really wanted to be back in the startup game. There was a flurry of activity and events in Silicon Valley, Seattle and Boston that were attracting my attention. I thought I would benefit by replicating the ethos and DNA of these communities in Toronto — see my post on TorCamp. This was the beginning of DemoCamp, StartupNorth and my attempt to facilitate a community of like minded individuals in Toronto doing great things. Did you know that I met Jay Goldman, Jon Lax, Geoff Teehan, Leila Boujnane, Reg Braithwaite, Mike Beltzner, Mark Surman and others at the first BarCamp Toronto?). At the bar after the second day of presentations, hacking and meetups, Albert Lai and I hatched a plan to do a lighter weight monthly gathering modeled after DEMO where entrepreneurs and developers show what they’ve been working on, aka DemoCamp.

And I started thinking about the role that community plays as the framework for making Toronto a stronger ecosystem for software, Internet, mobile startups. I was trying to build my own future. I was trying to create a strong, dense community of companies where designers, developers and entrepreneurs can find employment, inspiration, a sense of belonging. Why? Well this is what I was missing. But it meant that I stepped back from representing a single company or a single product. My role was to build a stronger community. John Oxley and Mark Relph at Microsoft understood this mix of community, product, technology and rabble rousing.  They took a chance and hired me. This allowed me to focus on helping to enable a stronger community. And my particular focus has always been startups, early stage technology companies, etc. It required me to take a role in evangelism marketing. To continue to be a social media enabled and facing presence in the community. To host events and continue to identify, nurture and develop influencers particularly in the unfriendly to Microsoft community.

So it was funny this week to hear from someone in the industry that I respect deeply make comments that my product abilities are substandard and describe the focus of the past 10 years as counter productive to my career. It brought up a lot of personal turmoil about past decisions. And generally it has left me thinking about my role in the community versus my career as product builder. I started all of this community activity because I wanted to build emerging technology products in Toronto. There wasn’t a strong community of product builders and entrepreneurs (or I couldn’t find this community in Toronto). I think there is a much strong network of entrepreneurs, developers, designers, funders and others that have emerged. StartupNorth and TechVibes provide local coverage of events and activities. There are world-class startups like Dayforce, Rypple, Idee, Well.ca, Kontagent, CiRBA and others.

But I think it’s time for me to focus on building a company and products again. To shake off the rust of the past 9 years. And go deep on the product management, design and customer development needed to design, build and ship a world-class product. It leaves me wondering about my pedigree which 9 years ago I thought was stellar: Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon, Trilogy, and Reactivity (an Accel funded startup with spinouts funded by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia). I get it, this was a lifetime ago. But really have I gone from being an asset to a detriment? And what do I need to do to change this perception. Time to focus on my career and not the community for the time being.

Posted on November 24, 2010 Filed Under: Articles, Community 2.0, personal Tagged With: career, funding, personal

Moving mountains

by davidcrow

techdays-2008Mark and the Community Team at Microsoft Canada have been working hard on TechDays.This is the first attempt to move beyond a marketing event. Though you might not get that from the web site. It is a shift from Microsoft speakers standing on the stage with new product announcements and walkthroughs to sharing the stage with non-Microsoft employees showing examples of solutions they’ve built to solve problems (in big companies, small companies, as individuals, etc.).

What is TechDays?

TechDays is a career-development event for developers, IT professionals and IT managers with a focus on the Microsoft platform.

It’s hard out here…

This event is a big change for Microsoft. It represents a shift from marketing and product launch events to a focus on software development and IT as a profession. The goal is to focus on career development of professional and practical developers. To give real-world developers an opportunity to share their stories and experiences with attendees. To provide a public forum to celebrate the people making a difference to their companies, to their communities and to people.

techdays-speakersThe biggest change is that the content is not going to be Microsoft presenters doing Microsoft demos and product launches. It’s probably not obvious from looking at the speakers page, but 90% of the content is being delivered by non-Microsoft employees. The first seven people listed on the Speakers page are all Microsoft Canada employees. 

Once you scroll past the usual suspects, you’ll find a group of Microsoft friendly people from other companies. Consultancies. Big corporations. Smaller companies. Client side. It includes MVPs like Colin Bowern, Mark Arteaga, Laurent Duveau, and Barry Gervin. And others like Robert Burke and Ken Cox. Sure lots of these speakers are MVPs, it means that they are “exceptional technical community leaders”. They are experts. They write books. They blog. They consult. They build things in the real world.

Baby steps

I think it is courageous of the team to take a chance, they are having to battle internal forces that are resistant to change. They are making a bet that developers and IT professionals in Canada on the Microsoft stack want something more than canned demos and pitches. The bet is that professional development involves hearing from others in the community. About sharing their stories of the trials, tribulations and learnings to make help make others better developers. Yes, it’s about the Microsoft developers.

It is a step in the right direction. I hope that people will support the changes, because it will make the next set of changes easier to get support for.

If you are a Microsoft developer, IT professional or IT manager, then TechDays is attempting to bring the best of Canadian Microsoft community to you in 7 different locations including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax and Winnipeg. Check out the Mark Relph’s Letter to your Manager if you need help generating support.

Posted on October 9, 2008 Filed Under: Articles, Community 2.0, Development, Microsoft

Galvanize the Empire

by davidcrow

Jevon beat me to the punch. We have added a great group of speakers to the StartupEmpire program including:

don_dodge Don Dodge – Don is a Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team and was recently a panelist at the TechCrunch50 conference (check out his summary of TC50 launches: investor services & tools; social networks & collaboration; advertising & commerce; enterprise software). Don calls Microsoft “the biggest start-up in the world” and his job is to work with VC’s and start-ups to help them build great companies

hugh_macleod Hugh MacLeod – Hugh is an inspiration to many of us building companies and brands with limited resources. His work with English Cut and Stormhoek are some of the earliest and best examples of using social media to connect and engage people. To build community and evangelists as part of the marketing strategies laid out. And he draws cartoons.

david_cohen David Cohen – David is the founder and CEO of TechStars in Boulder, Colorado. TechStars is one of the most successful seed stage funds in the world. Don Dodge provided his summary of the TechStars 2008 Demo Day.

The Rest of the Schedule

startupempire We are working diligently to finalize a schedule for StartupEmpire. There have been a lot of great speaker submissions, and it has been making more work for me. We really want to provide something that you will find valuable. The feedback has been that we need to have sessions that deliver hands-on, actionable advice with takeaways. We are working to build a program that is more than just people talking. We’re hoping that after each session that entrepreneurs will have tangible bits, e.g., cashflow statements, business plan, sample pitch decks, draft legal agreements, etc. We’re working on finding ways that entrepreneurs can be involved in the program including demonstration opportunities; pitch feedback sessions; and more. If you think we’re missing something, drop me a note. I’m happy to see what we can do to find an appropriate speaker to fill any gaps.

You still have a chance to submit your proposal in the next few days, and we will still take a look for anything that we think we need to get on the program.

Sponsors

Thanks for all your support, we are working hard to create something you will find valuable. We have received a lot of support from our lead sponsors Microsoft and High Road Communications. Mark Relph puts up with me at Microsoft and has been incredibly supportive of the efforts to engage start-ups in Toronto. Martin Hofmann didn’t hesitate when I approached him for help. We’ve had some fantastic open conversations about social media and start-ups for the past 3 years.

Don’t forget to get your ticket before the early bird deadline, or ASAP before we sell out. The venue is small and we can’t really add more seats.

Posted on October 2, 2008 Filed Under: Articles, Canada, Community 2.0, Entrepreneurship, Events

StartupEmpire is the new black

by davidcrow

Image by Balakov Leave it to two knuckleheads, who tend to just do things rather than planning. The result is often something other than what was expected, sometimes you get bitten on the ass for your actions. Jevon and I both jumped the gun, showing you why entrepreneurs need help with logistics, legals and trademarks. Apparently there was a trademark registered with the previous name of our conference. We loved the name. While we’ve been in informed that our use does not infringe on the existing trademark, we decided it was just easier to change the name of the conference.

We bounced around ideas including:The League of Extraordinary Startups; StartupUnion; Her Majesty’s Canadian Startup; among others. Ultimately we’ve settled on StartupEmpire!

It’s a little audacious. Entrepreneurs need to start thinking big.

We’re working on planning the very hands on workshops. The goal is to provide entrepreneurs an extremely practical content around starting a company, building a product and growing a business. Participants can expect to leave the conference with example term sheets, example shareholders agreements, practical advice to dealing with cease-and-desist letters, marketing plans, example pitches, sample budgets and cashflows. All learnings from entrepreneurs and experts about in workshop format. We’re also open to suggestions and ideas for sessions. We want to make this valuable to attendees. We need a stronger, louder voice to build awe inspiring companies. Drop me a note about what you find valuable in a conference like StartupEmpire.

Posted on September 24, 2008 Filed Under: Articles, Canada, Community, Community 2.0, Conferences, Entrepreneurship

The battle for local

by davidcrow

Lost Remote has a great description of the pending battle for local attention and advertising. It’s a great summary of the challenges and opportunities for each media outlet.

  • Television
  • Newspapers
  • Radio
  • “GYM” aka Google/Yahoo/Microsoft et al.
  • Craigslist and paid classifieds
  • Pure play locals
  • City guides
  • Yellow pages and other directories
  • Alt weeklies and local magazines
  • Outdoor

The local market is a huge opportunity. Just evaluating a single player in Canada shows the potential of building a strong advertising business based on helping people find things in their neighbourhood. The Yellow Pages Income Fund reported just over $879.9 million in gross operating profit in 2007 (that’s a total net income of over $527.7 million). The commitment to local focus has seen YPG re-zone their Toronto Yellow Pages to smaller areas to “improve searching and finding both locally and more broadly such as the addition of maps for high traffic retail areas”. YPG has done a great job building partnerships and relationships with regional phone companies and has a circulation of over 30 million copies of their phone directories with approximately 420,000 unique advertisers. There is a huge opportunity to continue to refine the space and services needed by local businesses.

Y Combinator has identified areas like: 12. Fix Advertsing; 20. Shopping Guides and 25. A Craigslist competitor, that they’d be interested in funding. It’s no surprise then to see a plethora of local startups that fit in a variety of the above categories:

  • GigPark
  • HomeZilla
  • OurFaves
  • 5 blocks out
  • Homestars
  • Toronto Life
  • Metblogs
  • blogTO
  • Torontoist
  • ZipLocal

I’d love to see an equivalent of EveryBlock for Canada. But until then the recommendations provided by GigPark are enough to help me find services in my neighbourhood.

Posted on August 18, 2008 Filed Under: Articles, Community 2.0, Toronto Tagged With: advertising, Entrepreneurship, local

Happiness as Your Business Model

by davidcrow

Patrick points to a presentation by Tara Hunt. I can’t wait for Tara’s new book. This is a fun evolution in thinking about people, communities, and building a better place.

SlideShare | View | Upload your own

There is the opportunity to make $$ making people happy – Tara Hunt

The Universals of Happiness

  • autonomy
  • competence
  • relatedness
  • self-esteem

The Powers Working Against Happiness

  • fear
  • confusion
  • loneliness
  • lack of control
  • struggle for survival

This is a presentation that should be a must read for entrepreneurs, designers, developers, and marketers. What are you doing to help your customers achieve autonomy? competence? relatedness? self-esteem? Or are you working to promote the powers working against happiness. Tara does a great job evaluating:

  • Zipcar
  • Southwest
  • Skype
  • Zappos
  • Twitter
  • WordPress

These are all great examples working to grow happiness. Thanks Tara!

Posted on July 2, 2008 Filed Under: Articles, Community 2.0, Innovation Tagged With: happiness, Marketing, missrogue, tarahunt

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