Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category
Smibs visits Silicon Valley: The real-time web is coming on fast
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009Last Friday I flew down to San Francisco to attend the TechCrunch CrunchUp conference. This year the conference topic was ‘The Real Time Stream’. The conference was aimed to capture the opportunities and latest developments arising from the the rapidly growing amount of real-time data that is generated on micro-blogging services like twitter, friendfeed and soon facebook.
The conference was an excellent event for me. It gave me real insight about where the web is going next and on the seriousness and progress rate of the current developments. In the opening panel (video below) Ron Conway describes the real-time web as having multiple multi-billion dollar opportunities. He goes so far as to compare the current development with the early days at Google, when they still hadn’t figured out a business model and could only imagine what an impact Google would have on how we use the web today. Watch the video below for the full opening panel on ‘The Realtime Opportunity’ …
The day was packed with interesting panels and presentations and after getting an idea of how far people and companies are along in developing new platforms, tools and services, I have to say I am once again astonished. The world might be in a recession but Silicon Valley is bursting from the mass of innovation it’s producing, and its buzzing with people who will eventually turn that innovation into striving businesses.
I keep repeating myself but every time I am in the Valley I notice its biggest advantage in the tech sector: A huge amount of people who want to try new stuff – not just entrepreneurs but also consumers and businesses of all sizes. This results in new ideas getting traction early on. By the time the rest of the world notices a new idea like twitter already has a couple of million users, and the rest of the world watches as they reach critical mass.
TechCrunch put on a nice after party and I met a lot of people from last year and some people I have only met online so far. All in all it was a great trip that opened my eyes with regards to the next big wave of innovation. I look forward to taking the opportunities that come with it 
.
Oh, at the conference someone noticed that I didn’t wear socks in my business shoes so I had to explain my reasons on camera. Watch the third video under the ‘Channel’ button in the embedded video box below!
artsScene Edmonton – part three
Friday, June 12th, 2009View in HD Download 400p Version Visit Peter Urban’s ExposureRoom Videos Page
Further SmibsTV coverage highlights young entrepreneurs and community leaders who were in attendance at the artsScene event launch. Episode includes interviews with Alana Williams (artsScene organization committee), Kristi Sainchuk (owner of Ginger Apparel), Cam Linke (organizer of BarCamp/DemoCamp), Denise Lefebvre (visual artist), Amedeo Pagliuso (owner 29 Armstrong), and Kris Harvey (The Collective).
Check out Amadeo, 29 Armstrong and other businesses this Saturday June 13th as they host the “Al Fresco Block Party,” which begins at 4:00 pm and is located at 104th street and 102nd avenue. Expect to find a variety of food, beverages, and entertainment as the businesses on 104th street showcase themselves in a block party style event that will be a night to remember.
Also look for Cam Linke as he hosts BarCamp this Saturday June 13th from 10:00am to 5:00pm on the 6th floor of the Edmonton World Trade Centre. If you’re interested in the tech community this is definitely an event you dont want to miss. In the spirit of the Smibs Network, it’s also a great forum to meet creative professionals, share ideas, experiences and potentially collaborate on current and upcoming ventures.
artsScene Edmonton – part two
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009View in HD  Download 400p Version  Visit Peter Urban’s ExposureRoom Videos Page
Paul Steier of Smibs talks to Poet Laureate and performing artist Cadence Weapon (Roland Pemberton) at the artsScene launch event. They discuss corporate involvement in the arts, how the arts scene in Western Canada is perceived and how he found success as an internationally recognized recording artist.
artsScene Edmonton – part one
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009View in HD Download 400p Version Visit Peter Urban’s ExposureRoom Videos Page
Peter Urban talks to the Chair, Ken Bautista and Co-Chair, Michael Brechtel of artsScene, they discuss how artsScene came to Edmonton and why the arts is such an important element of society. artsScene is all about bringing the arts and business together and providing support to local artists. They organize many events throughout the year, with this event at Planet Z, their launch event, they had a huge success with over 100 people in attendance.
Daydreaming finally pays off
Monday, June 8th, 2009One of my favorite marketing blogs, Neuromarketing, recently ran a post about the positive side of daydreaming.
As blogger Roger Dooley notes, when business teams need to brainstorm a new idea, the knee-jerk action is to get people sitting down together to spend a segmented amount of time concentrating on thinking and talking about one topic until something sticks.
Don't think so hard. According to psychologist sources, daydreaming can be productive.
However according to Karina Christoff, psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, this tried and true method is not always the best approach.
It’s not that concentrated thought is a bad idea. But daydreaming, Professor Christoff suggests, isn’t as unproductive as it is said to be. In fact, daydreaming improves your creativity.
Christoff explains: After all that mind-wandering, eventually you start seeing connections that you wouldn’t have seen before, because you would never have logically allowed your mind to make those connections. Now it’s going to make them for you.”
I’m sure that most marketing experts have their own unique take on the creative brainstorming process. Few people can come up with something truly innovative by staying within the lines.
So what’s your approach?
Image source:Â http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4567659/Americans-embarrassed-by-poor-spelling-performance-compared-to-Britons.html
