The take-away in a few quick bullets if you are comparing spend:

• Newspaper = $.75 per impression
• Television = $1.80 per impression
• Superbowl = About $3.8 M / 167 M viewers = $.02 per impression
• Radio = $.50 per impression
• Direct Mail = $.80 – $1.00 per impression
• Social Media = $.30 per impression
• Promotional Calendars = $.18 per impression
• Promotional Pens = $.12 per impression

(All numbers and infographic from IAS Promotes. These numbers do not reflect analysis done by Techzulu)

promo marketing

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“Competition for the future is about what you are doing today,” Vijay Govindarajan preaches passionately from the stage at the front of the Metro Toronto Convention center on June 5th, 2012 at the Art of Leadership Conference. Govindarajan is referencing his new book Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, a book on strategy, or what Govindarajan refers to as “pushing back the fold of the future.”

Govindarajan speaks from the world of academia, as Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business and founding director of Tuck’s Center for Global Leadership, but his words are very accurate to the realities of everyday business strategy. His lecture begins with three blank boxes on the projector in front of an audience of 500 business leaders, journalists, and aspiring entrepreneurs, leaders, and business executives of Toronto. According to Govindarajan these three boxes are universally significant; where strategy should be divided at every company. In the boxes he writes:

1. Manage the present

2. Selectively forget the past

3. Create the future

They are three concepts that seem fairly simple. Don’t we all do that? But Govindarajan takes us to an example he is truly passionate about from the emerging countries, in which he believes to be an integral part of the future of America. ”The BRIC countries” he explains, can be looked at for future development based on age demographics and the globalization of information and innovation. His example has to do with Ford Motor cars expanding into India.

The goal of Ford was to create non-consumers into consumers (a task many American companies will face when looking to build in emerging markets). At the time that the India specific car was made from Ford, 90% of the population was using 2-wheelers at a price of $1500, explains Govindarajan. So Ford, pricing their car at $15,000, was aiming at the very rich India car buyer. Designed in the US, Ford decided to save on some features to hit this price point, one of which being to only put power windows in the front. Although, in India the rich population (willing to spend this on a car) has a driver. “The car buyer had manual windows and the driver had power windows!” Laughs Govindarajan.

Govindarajan’s point being that when you look at the 3 boxes, sure you must put focus on box 1, but box 2 and 3 can play an important part. Ford had failed to ‘selectively forget the past’ by using American designers that were not familiar with the market. They looked at box 3, but they didn’t go all the way. Govindarajan continues by pointing out the $2000 Tata in India, a much better approach to the Indian market. Govindarajan finishes the story pointing out that “emerging markets are going to change who we are.”

Govindarajan segways by showing the use of box one, but pointing out that by no means should you be 100% focused on managing the present (processes for efficiency) as the world is moving to fast to lean on the present. He takes us into box three, where energy on the future begins. He suggests that the future strategy of a company can be outlined in one page with five clear points.

Strategy Architecture:

“Do not plan for the future, but be prepared”

1. Non-linear shifts (test hypothesis)

2. Strategic Intent (be visual)

3. Core competencies

4. Annual Priorities (some must be to create the future)

5. New core competences

(All 5 should be a single sheet of paper that is the company’s strategy)

Criteria for Strategic Intent:

1. Direction

2. Motivation- You must present a “compelling reason for each employee to get up in the morning and come to work.”

3. Challenge-

“We will put a man on the moon and bring him back before the end of this decade.”

-John F. Kennedy

Govindarajan ended his talk with the story of Shaun White at the 2010 Olympics in Canada. (This was the part of the talk that I was acutely aware, being a huge snowboard and skateboard fanatic. That and I have met the great Shaun White twice, once at Tony Hawk’s and once at a diner on Sunset Blvd. But now I am just gloating, on with the story). “Competing in one of the hardest disciplines” in the winter Olympics, begins Govindarajan, “with only three attempts to win the gold.” (Govindarajan also pointed out that many of the maneuvers in 3 attempts is borderline statistically impossible). On his second attempt, Shaun White got a score of 48 out of 50, meaning he had already won the Olympic gold. His manager told him, to ease off, don’t try anything for your last one, it is already in the bag. But, to leave without giving it his all would be against his personality and personal goals. He may have already won, but for Shawn you can always reach higher. His third run went above and beyond (a double McTwist 1260 to be exact). Shawn had already reached the goal, he had won the gold. But, in his head the goal was much, much higher. Govindarajan finishes the story with a question to the audience:

Are you happy if you reach your goal, or do you redefine performance?

How far did he push the human horizon? “If Shaun White was a best practices benchmarker, he would have gone home [after winning the gold],” laughs Govindarajan, meaning reaching the top of the status quo is just not good enough. He urges us to look at the big picture and make that our strategy. “Strategy is about next practices, not best practices,” finishes Govindarajan.

The post Strategy is Defined by Big Picture | Art of Leadership 2012 appeared first on TechZulu.

Patil goes on to explain that the speed we do analytics has massively changed, opening up a world of opportunities when facing big data challenges. “We are moving from processing to taking action, shifting our frame,” says an excited Patil. Timely, accurate measurements are suddenly at our fingertips, not just in the world of tech, but in the world of business. Low latency and high speed controls give us the ability of this action Patil speaks of. Like never before, a new focus on form, function and iteration, that is accessible can give business a more sophisticated culture. It is this intersection of business and technology in understanding data to augment our decision making that gives us both tools for more educated progression.

According to Patil,  there are

Four Functional Areas of Data Science:

1. Decision Sciences and business intelligence: Understanding the user, reporting dashboards, and other ways to democratize through visualization
2. Fraud, abuse, security and risk: Data for good over evil
3. Data Infrastructure: owning the data warehouse. Developing tooling for infrastructure.
4. Product, marketing and sales analytics.

Patil goes on to elaborate on the fourth point through his experiences with Linkedin. His colleague (formerly of Aster Data) light bulb product feature of, ‘People You May Know’ which made Linkedin a better product by connecting the user in a more familiar way.

He laughs about the press they got with data measurements of job titles, including the word ‘ninja’ showing a steady growth over the last few years, which Linkedin received a lot of main stream press regarding. In fact, data driven companies like OkCupid alongside Linkedin often capitalize off the press they receive through releasing data surveys (Patil gives the example of ‘The Mathemtics of Beauty,’ a blog post by OKCupid which received thousands of hits upon the first week of publish after a comment in a national newspaper). The above examples, are two strong points in reaffirming Patil’s use of big data in product, marketing, and sales analytics in progressing a business at a time where this is more accessible then ever. “Data facilitates experience,” notes Patil, “set a culture in your organization that is data driven, democratize, make your data accessible.”

The presentation ends with a shift towards the applications of data in the health industry, a national problem plaguing more countries than the US. “Intuition is where it starts,” says Patil, before going on to introduce DataKind, during the question period, a company dedicating data scientists to analyzing problems in developing worlds, giving us the opportunity to take action on this democratized knowledge. Using data for good is an important cause advocated by Patil. He believes that data applications can play a positive role across many differing types of organizations. Data can be a very safe and constructive resource, whether for the organization or returning back to the individual. Patil’s goals are to let us know that as business and technology industry individuals and organizations at the Mesh Conference, we have the power to use data to make more sophisticated organizations with more opportunity than ever before.

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When we think of our neighbors to the North in Canada, we think of bountiful natural resources, open land, and flannel shirts; we don’t necessarily think of tech. The major cities are dominated by industries such as oil, resource exporting, and politics. With the latest in RIMs downward spiral, Canada should be expected to leave this industry to the Valley. So, when I arrived back in my home country after six years of sunny and buzzing California, I thought that finding a tech scene would be a needle in a haystack. I couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“Jenna! Welcome back!” Chimes my good friend Alyssa Richard’s voice on the other line a few days after my arrival to Calgary, Alberta (my hometown). I had met Richard at a MaiTai tech networking trip of kiteboarders in Maui and ended up traveling again with her later that year with a fragment of the group to explore the tech scene in Australia. Richard grew up just outside of Toronto, entering the tech scene a few years ago, co-founding Ratehub.ca, a mortgage comparison and lead platform, with her technical brother; who left Microsoft Canada for the project. “You have to come check out the startup scene here in Toronto (for I am a bad Canadian, and have not visited most of my country). There are some cool things happening here,” Richard exclaims in excitement. Next thing I know, my ticket is booked.

It turns out there are a lot of big tech companies with talent to offer. Facebook, Google, Zynga, (can we count Disney Interactive?), all hold big Canadian offices. Large technology firms who are training sums of talent, check; one box filled on the startup ecosystem checklist. Richard explains how her brother left his fat salary (by Canadian standards) at Mircosoft to come build a startup with her. At 25 years old, Richard saw an opening in the marketplace for a Canadian version of Bankrate (although, she would describe the development different at the time, but bankrate.com is the most comparable company) and went full throttle into building Ratehub.ca. She has not looked back.

Richard is not the only person pulling from big tech companies in the city and the ecosystem of startups is certainly gaining traction. I sat down with Andrew Peek of Rocketr, a social idea platform, regarding his move through the scene. Peek is a staple to the Toronto startup team, not just for his dreamy reputation with the ladies, but for his immense participation in the tech scene of Toronto.

He started his journey in tech with local startup success, Freshbooks, a digital invoicing tool, which has been a hit in the Toronto scene. They are used by almost all the entrepreneurs I met with and have gained some serious traction in the marketplace. In fact, every time I heard the name Freshbooks while mingling in the scene, it was said in a Wayne’s-World-esque tone (as if the hit Dreamweaver were playing in the background).

Peek left Freshbooks to work with boutique UX design firm, Jet Cooper, which is another major staple to the Toronto tech scene.With a team of about 20 designers, Jet Cooper is well known in their city for their work. Still with Jet Cooper, Peek decided to take his passion for product and do his own thing, starting Rocketr. Almost, two years since the inception, he has built up a team and product making a name for himself as one of the city’s most promising entrepreneurs.

Perhaps, what intrigued me most about Peek’s story was his beginnings in building Rocketr. He started the company with a grant from the Canadian government, something which began to come up a lot in my travels. Available seed funding, check; another one down for the startup ecosystem checklist.

Fellow entrepreneur, Carlo Perez, invited me down to the MarS building, a bit of an incubator built by the government for biotech startups and research, where he shares community space thanks to a government grant of his own. Although, unlike Rocketr, Perez is on the prowl to raise a non-government funded seed round.

Perez’s startup, UKnowA.com, is in a major pivot (or expansion, rather) and is building out a completely new platform. Same space, different spin. With a team of about 9, Perez’s UKnowA.com served as a lead generator for contractors and other trade services. He spoke of his competitors to the South and a recent visit to Las Vegas to a ‘lead gen conference,’ which made him wary of the ‘lead gen’ model solely. Perez returned from the conference with a fresh idea to solving problems in the contractor industry and is building a new platform to expand with. From a rushed pitch (he had back-to-back meetings), his knowledge of the area had depth and his new platform is revolutionary for that space. “We’ve found a lot of interest in our new model and I am actually hopeful that it won’t be difficult to raise a round.  We haven’t actually sought funding prior to now,” says Perez. The Toronto angel and Venture Community tends to be quite a bit different out here, as I could tell from the conversations I had with many of the entrepreneurs.

The companies looking to build solely based on users and raise for it (without revenue models) like this is the Valley are all wrong (not in reference to UknowA.com), explains a passionate Alkarim Nasser, CEO and founder of BNOTIONS, a local development firm taking on some of the largest projects in the Toronto tech space. “The Valley has a lot of money willing to gamble on building companies based on users. We don’t have that here. To raise in Canada, you must have proper revenue generating business models,” explains Nasser while sipping a Guinness at a pub across the street from his office. I guess you could say, it is a bit more traditional that way.

In fairness, Nasser has been cash-flow positive from the start. He started building websites in his basement as a kid. A few friends thought it looked cool and joined up, and the rest is history.

I walk into Nasser’s BNOTIONS to be greeted by an unpredicted slow clap; a company policy. The room is filled with life, fanboy trinkets from every geek brand ever created, and developers working away in their ‘Dre Beats’ headphones. The office had an amazing energetic feel, reflective of the Valley, and when you meet Nasser you can see why.

“I work with everyone at BNOTIONS, they do not work for me,” says Nasser to my question regarding the office flair, “we have a lot of fun.” So much fun, that they are continuously building fun new products from team discussions at the pub the night before. Nasser explains their project, Eightshit.me, a goofy crowdsourced Twitter avatar tool that received some traction and a write up in Fast Company. “We had celebrities ordering hand drawn Twitter avatars made on shit tools like Mac Paintbrush. We had so much demand that we had to shut down the office for a week and draw shitty avatars. It was a blast, but we quickly realized we had to get back to our main focus,” laughs Nasser. In fact, this was only one of several fun side projects that the team has tackled after pub discussions around ideas.

BNOTIONS also does incubation, currently working with a startup called Atendy based around social crowdsourcing for event promotion. I met the team briefly while on the facility tour with Nasser. As I toured, he even went on to explain some of the seed funding he does along with incubation. This is one hectic place, I tell you. I don’t think Nasser sleeps. His excitement and energy was on par with Richard’s of Ratehub.ca, which made for a bright outlook on the future of the Toronto tech scene.

Between the two I was introduced to local startups by name and space: BetaKit, Stocial, Freshbooks, Saleschoice.com and many more. It is not so barren for a country known for Maple syrup, toques, and beaver tails. I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the vitality of the startup scene in Toronto, although strikingly different from that of the valley. Most of the startup checklist boxes were hit, including startup acquisitions and talented entrepreneurs and engineers. I regress, it will never be the Valley, but it is certainly a scene worth noting; and if you are a venture capitalist, a trip worth taking.

The post Keep It Down Up There | The Canadian Tech Scene in Toronto appeared first on TechZulu.

“The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities,” writes Swedish documentary filmmakers, David Dworsky and Victor Köhler, when describing their 2011 SXSW debut film Press, Pause, Play; documenting the technological shift recently allowing a creative democracy in music. Although, the overall message of the film is quite bleak as they point to the mediocrity that more access to creation and freedom of distribution creates.

Malte: It was great to finally show something publicly. We loved the idea of showing an early concept device at SXSW, because we wanted honest feedback. Everyone was very intrigued and we certainly raised expectations, which will motivate us to do a great job in the coming weeks and months.

A very ballsy move. Any good stories from the event?

Malte: SXSW had a photo finish for us. Luckily, we did get the prototypes ready in the nick of time; and it also survived the hundreds of hands that played with it and the overall chaotic event that SXSW is. We can honestly say that it couldn’t have gone better for us with the phenomenal response we got from artists, press and potential partners.

Malte: We still have lots to do. The feedback we got will help us iterate and next time we show, we will have an even bigger impact and better product.

Who are the prominent early adopters of Miselu?

Malte: There are quite a few artists that like the concept and would like to be part of the development. We hope to start working more closely with them in the coming weeks.

(I did get some top secret names on this one from Miselu’s director of software, Keisuke Shingu, but I can assure you these DJ’s don’t disappoint)

Malte: The music industry as a whole has been changing and moving quickly in the last few years offering many great opportunities. We are here to be part of that movement and help making music creation, distribution and consumption easier, more mobile and user friendly.

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“When I was running my digital marketing firm I was constantly in corporate meetings. In most offices there would be a shelf of business books. Since, I am constantly reading to learn I would always ask questions about advice from the books. Almost every time the response would be, ‘that sounds great, I haven’t read them yet’ ”

If this were a cartoon, this would be the moment when the light bulb appeared above Cunningham’s head. He thought, ‘of course they haven’t read them, when would they get time?’ And there lied a problem for an entrepreneur to solve.

Cunningham’s current business, a marketing agency, Polar Unlimited in Toronto, had expanded in growth through the last decade by embracing social media and web 2.0. They specialized in content creation. Like Gary Vaynerchuk, Cunningham built the family business 10 fold through creating branded web content with a viral touch. Cunningham walked into his office one day and thought, why wouldn’t I make content with the information from my favorite business books, but speed it up and make it visual? Readitfor.me was born.

The first video was created in a couple weeks by the team back in 2009 with the intention of continuing to create great content for social media. “We thought, this isn’t a business, this is social media,” laughs Cunningham in reminiscing about the beginnings. The video was meant to be an engaging 10 minute video to summarize a valuable book. Then the agency would use this content to interact and create conversation around executing the advice given in the video from the book. And it really genuinely worked… until Cunningham found himself in a flurry of emails regarding partnerships, more videos, and customer requests for selections. This time his cartoon light bulb was so bright it was about to combust.

Taken from Readitfor.me

Readitfor.me officially launched 4 months ago taking the original content a ballpark further. From a piece of content, to a full business model with ‘freemium’ features and a vision. Cunnigham talks of the ups and downs, but more about the serendipity of the project becoming a business. In fact, many of the books they cover today are staff picks and e-mailed requests from the early adopters of the video content. Cunningham recently launched the affiliate program out of requests from students who enjoyed the product so much they asked Readitfor.me if there was an affiliate program. For Cunningham and the team at Polar Unlimited, together this created the product.

Readitfor.me soon became not just about the speed of getting ‘to the meat,’ but rather embracing many different types of learning styles. After all, not all of us are book smart, nor care, nor have the time, to ever be. Rather, Readitfor.me created the L.E.M.A. approach. Coined by Cunningham, ‘learn, experience, memorize, act,’ is about taking the content a few steps further.

“I had looked back at all the books I had read over the previous year and thought to myself ‘how much have I actually executed?’ I started to document what I was actually taking to the streets and it turned out really not much.” This is when Cunningham approached the team about creating a platform where viewers could move quickly and seamlessly to action based on their new knowledge. The ‘learn, experience, memorize, act’ platform meant video, PDF summary and a related workbook to help you put the information to use in your workplace or company. Not only did you watch the quick video to save you the hours of reading, but it replaced those hours spent ingesting into digesting. Believe it or not, these great time-savers are only slightly past the minimum viable product at this point.

“My grand vision came a bit after” the inception of the product, explains Cunnigham. When asked about the current scope Readitfor.me, Cunningham reveals that the grandiose vision is actually for a marketplace between authors and their audience to create more robust products and learning tools. “Many authors do lectures and other services. In fact, many times they write a book to point you to these other tools.”

Readitfor.me would like to create a seamless platform for information services, not only for people looking to save time learning but for students, as well. “I pictured a better way to teach kids the things they don’t learn in schools” and Readitfor.me looks to build that imaged oasis. “I want teaching to become communicating,” says Cunningham. How to run a marketing program, how to run a better business; these are things that Readitfor.me is proving that kids want to learn just as much as working adults.

But turning this vision into an entire business model proved tricky, despite the serendipitous inception of the brand. “At first we did a 30 day trial. Then a week. Then we had to figure out how to transition these users into customers,” laughs Cunningham. “We started realizing that every user had different needs and the product really wasn’t a product until we started catering to those.” That’s how they bridged the gap into a subscription model that people would actually pay for.

After only four months on the market, Cunningham has already set up a team subscription plan and is working on a corporate version. You can also expect new features to roll out in the coming months including more content and differing services from authors in the coming year. Although, we do have to remember, no matter how much time they are saving us on reading books at Readitfor.me, it still is a start up and we truly don’t know where they might pivot; and perhaps more notably, are we really using that time for better purposes?

The post Toronto Based Start Up Readitfor.me | Reads Books for You appeared first on TechZulu.

Youtube.com, 48 hours of uploads every minute and three billion views daily, according to Youtube.com’s official blog in May of 2011. With consumption of online video up “400% with the release of the Iphone 3G back in 2009” (MacRumors, Eric Slivka) and the numbers ever growing, it would be tough to testify that we aren’t as a globe, obsessed with online video. With producing at our finger tips, we can film our lives to post for the word to see. Again in 2009, sales of all pocket camcorders were just over $2 billion world-wide, growing 21% in unit sales to 13.6 million in 2010 from the prior year, according to research firm IDC (taken from the Wall Street journal’s coverage on the GoPro camera). But enough with the numbers, point being, we all do it.

But we aren’t all film editors, Final Cut Pro wizards, or have the student-like time to sort all of our footage from the helmet cam last mountain bike trip, ski trip, or ski dive. We want content, content, content; we want speed, and we want to see it now. Highlight Hunter founder, Noah Spitzer-Williams, realized just that. With a love for kitesurfing, action videos, and startups, Spitzer-Williams felt it was just his problem to solve.

In fact, some of the best brands we have taken for granted to solve our everyday annoyances started as just that, a founder wanting to solve their personal daily annoyance. International women’s wear designer for all occasions, Donna Karen started by designing a line just for her and her friends to make dressing simpler. Callaway golf founder and creater of the Big Bertha, Ely Callaway, genuinely just wanted better clubs for his retirement golf life. IKEA’s, Ingvar Kamprad, loved to make and sell furniture but he wanted product that he and his best friends could afford. This idea of making a product for ourselves and our closest friends seems to be an entrepreneurial right of passage. After all, our best friends usually are our first customer.

For Spitzer-Williams, his venture started exactly how most of today’s startups begin; in a bar talking over brews about their day in the water kitesurfing:

Spitzer-Williams: When are we going to see a highlight reel from all this footage?We’ve barely

watched any of it ourselves and we haven’t shared a single clip with our friends.

Bar buddy: Noah, we have 100+ hours of footage and it would take us weeks to find the good parts.

Spitzer-Williams: So remind me why we even use this camera if it just creates tedious boring work for us?

After chatting over a concept for a way to solve the delema, Spitzer-Williams set out to see if others were having the same problem with editing footage that needed to be solves. Turns out they did. Giving Spitzer-Williams the green light for setting about finding a solution, which became Highlight Hunter.

“I’ve been a tech geek and sports nut my whole life so it’s a dream to be working on something like Highlight Hunter,” comments Spitzer-Williams when we delve into his background. “Tech-wise, I started coding as young as I can remember. (To Jenna — I’ve got a really old baby pic of me sitting at a computer if you want it for the post…yes, I’m a geek). After graduating from Tufts University with degrees in Computer Science and Entrepreneurial Leadership, I moved out to Seattle to work as a Program Manager for Microsoft.” Quitting his steady job at Microsoft last year to work on Highlight Hunter (his solution to this widespread editing problem of sorting through monotonous footage), says that Entrepreneurial Leadership degree might have made a big impact.

But what is Highlight Hunter, and more importantly, how is Spitzer-Williams solving this problem? According to Highlight Hunter’s website, “The free Highlight Hunter app for Mac and PC saves you hours of video editing time by finding your highlights for you. Ride all day. Record all day. Don’t miss a thing and stop wasting time sifting the awesome from the everything.” To do this just, “use one hand. Or both. Or a shoe. Every time you cover the camera lens, Highlight Hunter marks the previous 30 seconds (or however long you want) as a highlight.” basically, the app helps you mark and cut footage with a swipe of your hand. It is an automated version of new Hollywood’s sync clap (a person in front of the camera will clap in front of their face before and after each scene to mark where cuts will go as the editor sorts through footage). “Load your videos into the app and it will create a 30 second highlight clip for each bookmarked moment,” reads the apps instructions.

“Camera companies have figured out how to record your adventures. The social networks have figured out how to share them. But up until now, no one has figured out how to quickly find the highlights that are actually worth sharing,” explains Spitzer-Williams. “Highlight Hunter is simple, memorable, and puts control in your hands,” he goes on to follow. With a start in actions sports niche but large market, Spitzer-Williams feels that sports highlights across sport’s many markets are the beginning places for the app’s use. Highlighting break through moments, your kids best-of’s, first goals, to first steps; Noah sees a wide range of applications down the road, but so far the early adopters are fellow adrenaline junkies. As the app builds traction and collects users videos, Spitzer-Williams is ecstatic about the different use cases that his users will come up with next. Spitzer-Williams throws out the number that 44 million of US kids play organized sports, so it seems logical for him to start here and wait for the rest to come organically. Which leaves me thinking that leaving highlights up to users, is a very free territory if you later include Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and Kim Kardashian; but we don’t need to go there.

Kitesurfing example of app

The post Highlight Hunter | Taking The Work Out of Finding Video Highlights appeared first on TechZulu.

A 50 car line stacked up the street from the conference entrance filled with women idling, applying mascara, brushing their hair, and finishing early morning conference calls. I had planned to get there early to attend Flickr and Hunch co-founder, Caterina Fake’s morning keynote at 9:20 am. But after the lady car queue and a filled parking lot, I managed to screech in for the second keynote by Zipcar and Buzzcar co-founder, Robin Chase (we had some seriously ambitious females speaking, many with multiple successes under their belts).

The room was flooded. Seats filled to capacity, walls colorful with leaners and not a space on the floor to decipher the carpet pattern; all in laughter as they listened to Chase’s tales from the front lines of Zipcar‘s early days. She was walking us through the first few months of inception, about 4 months into the project, with just one beta car that sat outside her house for people to come and grab using keys she had hidden on her porch. Explaining that customers were

able to sign up online and rent the car, with only $50,000 invested in the company, which went towards the website, database and beta car. The audience listened in anticipation, as Robin explained how she was 3 days before launch with $63 left only to find out that to rent 3 more cars for launch she needed $21,000 in deposit money. It so happened that just that day she had ran into an old friend who had asked her why she looked so stressed. “I need $25,000 by tomorrow morning or we can’t launch!” Within the next 8 hours he had wired her the money, as the story goes, sending the perfumed crowd of Women 2.0 into wild applause.

Chase had many tidbits of information for the room of lady innovators from “every single person is your free consultant” to “make sure you are an ‘I can make that person’ versus ‘I can buy that person’ if you want to be an entrepreneur.” Before Robin Chase left the stage, she left the delighted crowd with one great piece of advice that we often forget as women, fight for your rights, “being private and founder owned is not negative,” pointing us to Rose Industry’s female founder holding a $2 billion private company.

Next up, came a round of female startup pitches to be judged by female partner at KPCB, Aileen Lee, angel investor, Christina Brodbeck, the charismatic, talkative and often controversial, Dave McClure of 500 Startups, as well as managing partner of AngelPad, Thomas Korte, and DFJ investment professional, Rachel Pike, to round out the majority of lady judges. It was a tough judging panel indeed as we watched McClure grill the girls behind Perfect Beauty, a niche ecommerce website for beauty products and interaction, followed three other eager pitches.

Following Perfect Beauty, a vivacious financial advisor presented Prosperity (spendonpurpose.com), a finance management system for small business owners. Labeling it a “behavioral based software” with 2600 paid subscribers, CEO, Leanne Ozaine-Smith found her niche through her love of teaching finance one-on-one. McClure also took no shame, explaining scalabity with Ozaine-Smith’s model built around one-on-one training sessions with her personally as part of the service, as a problem soon to be faced. Although, with a bright spark, the audience could easily relate to early traction with personal sessions with Leanne. Her presentation was captivating, despite a fearful judging panel of the scalability problem.

On the flip side, the panel congratulated the following presentation by CEO, Tara Hunt, for trying to tackle the difficult ecommerce space with her startup, Buypsphere. Hunt strives to improve product search with crowdsourcing through product questions, comments, and reviews. She called it the “Quora for shopping,” which is two words that this 500 women at Women 2.0 likely relate to.

Although, the judges were tough on the startup presenters, there was much to take away from their comments. I decided to sum them up, for all the men who unfortunately do not get a welcoming invite to Women 2.0:

• While presenting, if their are any technical failures or moments unplanned, take that time to engage with the audience and keep them tuned in
• Always think about scalabilty, even in the beginning
• investors look through press, do not use it to explain current traction
• Find 3-5 niches and focuses when choosing an audience
• Understand the psychology of Persuasion
• Register your company on Angel List early if you know you will be looking for funding

With much to think about from the pitches we were promptly greated by Facebook director of platform and social marketing, Katie Mitic for more inspiring startup tips. A member of the EBay board, with a strong female voice in the inner working of Facebook, it was no surprise to find her to be a charismatic speaker. Katie started with personal stories and spoke of her mission in social as humanizing technology. She left us with 3 main points in building a company:

1. Start with a mission. Be big and ambitious, as this will be what inspires people to build with you.
2. The first ten people make the culture. choose them carefully.
3. Ship early and often. Build it, get it out, learn, repeat. This is the main objective of any company.

Mitic lastly left us with one powerful piece of advice that Robin Chase also heavily touched upon:

Products that are successful are not only product that you as an entrepreneur love, but your users love as well. Don’t build a product they like, build a product they love.

I couldn’t help feeling that love was in the air as we gathered for Women 2.0 on Valentine’s Day to tell tales explaining why women love technology—perhaps more than a currently male dominated Silicon Valley would assume.

The post Women 2.0 Conference 2012 | For The Men Who Missed It appeared first on TechZulu.

America’s immigration system proves to be stifling inbound founders, engineers, and graduating foreigners looking to join the tech industry due to complex visa applications and provisions. Strict boundaries and a marathon of hoops to jump through, just to submit your documentation as an immigrant, are resulting in less immigrants educated in America staying to pursue the process, rather opting to return to their home countries. Even investors and experienced founders are caught in the same net as recently educated graduates looking to build companies.

Take the U.S. category E visa for investors as a prime example of the recent troubles. Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius, an international law firm, recently released a continued learning immigration law webinar to discuss the issue stating E visa provisions; clarifying just how difficult the process of immigration is proving to be. An E visa is meant for foreign investors looking to start a business in the U.S. or purely invest in established U.S. entities. Unfortunately, the visa requires that the entity be majority owned by U.S. nationals, making it difficult for investing founders to reach requirements, as well an application checklist with no set amount (or tiers) for investment.  USCIS, when checking the application will compare the dollar amount with other investments in the industry in order to disprove marginal amounts. At the same time, if the entity were to raise capital, any dropping share of the company below 50% for US share holders would disqualify the foreign investors from the E visa. Therefore, a founder bringing skills, a business, and perhaps an opportunity for job creation may be denied before the company can even be formed. With this, Silicon Valley has decided to speak out about the stifling affect of immigration law and the impacts that have caused crippling of the American tech industry.

In Silicon Valley’s favor, “U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) have authored bipartisan legislation aimed at jumpstarting the economy through the creation and growth of new businesses” through the reintroduction of the Start Up Act. Originally introduced by Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar in 2010, the act was reintroduced in late 2011 based on opinion that company creation could be a strong push towards job creation. “The Startup Act outlines a five-prong approach to job creation based on the proven track record of entrepreneurs:

1. Reducing regulatory burdens
2. Attracting business investment
3. Accelerating the commercialization of university research
4. Attracting and retaining entrepreneurial talent
5. Encouraging pro-growth state and local policies,”

According to the official press release on Senator Moran’s blog.

The act is not only to change investment regulations into new businesses but also opened the doors to reforming the Sarbanes-Oaxley Act, which has scared recent foreign investment. On immigration, the Act would create “an Entrepreneur’s Visa for up to 75,000 immigrant entrepreneurs who register a business and employ at least two non-family member employees, and invest in their business within one year of obtaining the visa,” as outlined by Watson Immigration’s summary of the act on their blog (http://moran.senate.gov/). “Current H-1B Visa holders or those who have completed graduate level work in a STEM field would qualify; and encourage successful pro-growth state and local policies by studying state laws that affect new business formation and economic growth.”

But not so fast, as the law is still a proposal and not predicted to be enacted until at least later this year. To speed growth, some companies and venture capitalists, most notoriously Blueseed, feel so strongly about “U.S. immigration law choking the flow of ‘bold and creative’ entrepreneurs into Silicon Valley (Garling, Wired)” that they are building a floating IT fortress. The ship will be a place “where entrepreneurs can be ‘bold and creative’ right next to Silicon Valley without actually setting foot on U.S. soil,” as reported on by Wired Magazine’s Caleb Garling. Yes, it is a floating crusade to be located 12 miles offshore of San Francisco free from immigration regulation. Wired goes on to tell us “this is more than just an idea. Big-name venture capitalist and PayPal founder Peter Thiel just sunk some cash into the Blueseed crusade,” releasing detailed mockups of the plans in December of 2011. Although until this “floating Fortress” becomes an immigration reality we are left to rely on the current visa choices, which don’t bode well for the emerging foreign entrepreneurs looking to found companies on US soil.

Photo of mockups taken from Wired article by Caleb Garling

In fact, “25% of the US science and technology companies founded had CEOs or lead technologists who were foreign born,” going back to MorganLewis’s recent account of the current immigrant statistics. In Silicon Valley, the numbers are among the highest for the amount of companies submitting applications for visas, as well as for the number of immigrants currently working as founding entrepreneurs. With H1B caps at 65,000, plus another 25,000 for individuals with post-graduate degrees from the US, based on employment sponsorship, where are founders to turn for the right to create an entity.

According to MorganLewis it is much harder for owner beneficiaries to get an H1B, restricting founders from being classified as they must prove employment by an external entity. Even the L-A visa created for managers, executives, and specialty talent require an entity abroad that must be held during the entire duration of your visa (up to 7 years) in which, the applicant must have worked at for at east one-year prior. Mark Zuckerberg certainly would not have made the cut for this right to form Facebook, with his beginnings from his college dorm room.

Requires an employer. Slide taken from MorganLewis Immigration presentation.

Although, in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, the opposing side may argue he may never had have a chance if an immigrant would have the flexibility to come in and create the company before he did. A side proving hard to argue “with almost 20% of the newest Fortune 500 companies­—those founded between 1985 and 2010- have an immigrant founder,” employing hundreds of thousands of US nationals, proving that the numbers show a need for reform (more from the Morgan Lewis, immigration webinar, 2012).

The Start Up America initiative will extend this opinion by shedding light on internal policies to make life easier for foreign entrepreneurs.  From the front lines of Silicon valley, the immigrant horror stories could fill up libraries of personal immigration battles out of everywhere from Apple, to young immigrants working at the most renowned venture firms, to highly publicized founders deported and running their companies remotely. For many, myself included, whether the solution be a floating fortress or reform it could not come quicker.

The post American Immigration: The Invisible Wall to Innovation appeared first on TechZulu.

As customers shift online, retailers have no choice, to not only follow suit, but to adapt to their changing demands. The rise of ecommerce giants EBay and Amazon.com has shone a light on a new path to consumerism. Or rather, nudged store-fronts to question their position. American behemoth Walmart is perhaps showing leadership in the shift with the development of Walmart Labs. Headed up by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman (the founder’s of Kosmix), formerly of Amazon (their acquirer), the low income retailers are chasing their buyers online.

The online buyer is not so simple and neither is the changing American consumer. Just as we are summed up by the advertising methodologies of the 1950’s as unpredictable and irrational (The Economist, Sex and Advertising, 2011), not only are we both these traits, but also with the power of click-a-mouse comparison shopping we are perhaps pickier, more demanding and less ‘experience’ oriented over product features.

The warmly lit Gucci showroom, the smell of Macy’s at Christmas, the ma and pa customer experience are all under prioritized to the fast-paced price comparison, as well as products exactly suited to our specific tastes and desires, based on the utter speed of browsing online. A retail experience was once a finely crafted mesh of brand and experience. Advertising theorist and Viennese psychologist, Ernest Dichter, made famous for the emotional driven advertising age of the 1940’s and 50’s called this “motivational research”, as written by December, 2011’s The Economist, “if shopping was an emotional minefield, then strategic marketing could be a gold mine for companies.” Rather, the online store is a speed machine built not on being soothed into what we need, but rather on the features and use of the product on it’s own. It is an age that Dichter would never be dealt with in his theory of mastering the consumer.

The experience of purchase by branding is shifting in the sense that the call to action is different. Some of the old theories of Dichter still apply as he stated “the ability to express oneself through shopping was a matter of great importance,” as he understood the emotional experience of the consumer yet he did not foresee the bypass of retail experience which the internet has made possible. Instant comparison gives us choice in regards to price and function rather than emotion and experience.

Although, America is littered by finely crafted brand images and saturated by messages to create this. But, with the power given to the consumer created by online retail merchants, consumer behavior shifts. Consumers demand an exact product suited to our exact needs and this time we do not want to be told what this is.

Personalized customizable online shopping is a rising trend in technology’s hot hand. I recently put my finger on the pulse meeting Australia’s Shoesofprey.com. Shoesofprey.com have built an easy-to-use online software to build your own shoe, order, and have shipped to your door for any occasion or mood. Similarly, Shoedazzle.com, one small move away from complete customization, makes a dashboard of choice based on particular preferences and requests. A customized browse (or soft sell) rather than a customized product, yet still a customized experience.  Shoesofprey.com also runs the same business model in the glasses business with their off shoot sneakingduck.com. And to go with your new glasses and shoes you can hop on youtailor.com and literally create your own matching outfit, making us all designers.

From dress shirts (shirtsmyway.com & propercloth.com, to name a few more) to jewelry (gemkitty.com), the internet has already birthed customization of ‘retail therapy’s’ top selling ‘mall’ products. Nicholas Marx of Bespokable.com is rumored to be cooking up an entire marketplace for all sorts of different types of personally created products from online (user-friendly) software. Even the golf industry has joined with Lindgolf.com customizable clubs and on the flip side several chocolatiers have started the same. Remember when we thought it was revolutionary to choose your own M&M’s for themed parties or design your own Vans and Nike shoes online? It has gone beyond that as the online customer exerts their power.

This being said, I feel the luxury market is an especially warm inviting stomping grounds for this type of online customizable consumerism. The luxury shopper is picky, not threatened by price based on mass distribution, and pleased by the thought of personalization. A luxury buyer shops in different catalogs, different stores, and usually is characterized by unique and demanding tastes. This is certainly something online software could approach. Although, the luxury consumer has more dependency on experience and sometimes less of a demand to stand out since they have so much alternative choice from the masses at their fingertips. At the same time, it would not be surprising to see a customizable section on the Tiffany’s website. Brands not built by designer name and creditability perhaps have an open window to quickly adapt the changing online consumer demand.

Yet, the old model of branding won’t die without a fight. As the consumer still needs a nudge towards what they may need, increasing online advertising into 13.7 percent of all American advertising in 2011 (Rao, Leena, Techcrunch). This being said, there is no reason a customizable product can’t still have a ‘label’ or brand image. Shoesofprey.com’s founders Michael and Mike, formerly of Google, feel they can still create a branded label that gives them positioning while still offering a completely customizable product. After all, it is still an experience, right?

Former marketing exec of Zappos.com (who chooses to remain anonymous due to the term ‘former’), in fact, feels the opposite. He is sick of the giant brand tags and littered labels across product and feels he represents a critical mass of the American consumer. “We want to feel unique in our choices” and the shift in purchasing landscape has lent its vast reaching hand to doing exactly that. He rather feels large branded labels of similar products are dead in the water with the opening for unique choice made exactly for you and only you.

But the growth of customizable ecommerce is slow moving. It seems only a handful of tech companies have dared to embark on this new consumer shift and the marketplace seems wary. We love choice, but we are always plagued by the paradox of choice (in other words, too much choice). In my research, I could only find a handful of companies opening the doors to complete consumer customization of retail and few journalistic accounts about this space. It seems we are just now grasping online retail. The timed-sales model of Gilt Groupe and Haute Look alike, has gained popularity in the last few years and perhaps the forefront of a movement to the web. But with a shift in the way we buy, comes a shift in the way we are moved to buy, comes a shift in our tastes and demands, comes a shift in the exact neuron that fires ‘buy’ in our impulsive consumer brains. If we are asked to create rather than passively purchase will we continue down the path of a consumer economy?

The post E-commerce’s Changing Landscape | Customization appeared first on TechZulu.

Morris May is a computer graphics (CG) film big wig—or at least he was. It is not that Morris is no longer a ‘big wig’ or even an FX supervisor credit for that matter, but rather he splits building ‘ 3D nebulas’ for Reliance Films with surfing. He is not the average computer nerd, one might say.

Despite the fact that he can create things on Autodesk’s Maya that their own software designers may have never have dreamed up (or more accurately, that only a few people on this Earth can), being a ‘big wig’ was never May’s intention. As a CG Supervisor at Hydraulx, Morris led CG on blockbuster hits, 2012,  X-Men Wolverine, Fast & the Furious, Bedtime Stories, and Australia. He lived in the actual country of Australia for two years leading Happy Feet, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Film, has an MTV music award from earlier in his career for a Garbage video, and worked on Spiderman 2, which again won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. We could say his resume is thick and growing thicker, despite his distaste for offices; lunch carts, cheese platters, and the moments at 3 a.m. snooping office kitchen cabinets finding nothing but stale saltine crackers to tide him over while rendering on 60 hard drives.

“I would do it for free,” Morris tells me of his love for building CG film. Although, his vast knowledge and expertise is a day and evening activity when he is not in the afternoon wind on a kitesurf board in Malibu (explaining his not so nerdy tan).

I caught up with Morris over an afternoon surf at a secret spot up in Malibu to learn just how a CG film is made. To those of us far removed, it is a vast and intricate assembly line of departments resembling that of Henry Ford’s. I have heard it once described as a series of miracles. To Morris, it is a carefully calculated and crafted series of steps, executed by the smartest people he knows. And believe me, these people are smart.

First Take CG Sup Reel from Morris May

The story department

Every film starts with a script; CG, live action, student short, the script is the bed frame. In CG, the script is a working tool, adjustments are more easily ‘rendered’ in for a CG film, therefore the script floats more than live-action.

“I have worked on CG films where the script was re-written half way through production several times,” explains May. Something we would never see in the world of live action without blowing budgets vastly out of proportion. Although, you always have to start somewhere, so the script kicks us off.

Casting actors is the second step to CG (sometimes similar to live action but usually only if ‘a name’ needs to be attached to sell a script, an actor may be cast beforehand). With animated and computer generated characters we don’t often associate casting as an integral beginning step, as the characters the actors are playing are not even formed. Yet, actors remain a main part to character development (based on personality), as well as the ‘performance’ of the film.

Actors are brought in, from the beginning, to record voice in studio. The new CG films even take it one step further, in that they videotape actors while recording scenes. “We record to catch certain nuances of that actor,” says May. “One of my favorite examples of this would be Robbin Williams as the CG animated genie in Aladdin,” exclaims Morris excitedly.

With this new development, we often think of the dramatic roles of Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Caesar in this year’s release, Planet of the Apes: Rise of the Apes, played by Andy Serkins. Serkins was video recorded for both roles on top of motion capture in order to create a CG character with human-like depth in facial expressions and emotions. This is a technological innovation of the past decade and perhaps the most extreme case of using the actors ‘nuances.’

With this example, May went on to stress the difference between live-action and CG in recording actors, as scenes in CG are recorded solo. Interaction is removed (often), making it easier to record snippets and pieces to animate to as the scenes evolve through the on-going writing and production of the film. “Actors love doing CG as they can come to a studio in their pajamas, record for a few days, and work on other projects,” with just a few rounds of additions and adjustments, says May. CG is a great gig for actors, to say the least.

Once actors are recorded, we move to ‘boardomatic.’ “Boardomatic is a story board (drawn characters and scenes, frame-by-frame) of the entire film from beginning to end. It is the length of the film with actors dialogue placed on top of a series of stills that are drawn” of the characters, settings, etc, as explained by May. Then comes ‘animatic.’

Animatic is rough animation to get timing and the look of the characters, once in digital, down. The entire film is created in rough animation based on each storyboard frame.

Lastly, comes the CG nitty-gritty and building to perfection of all the in between; character emotions, special effects, environment changes, setting, etc. Once the framework is set, it is about putting all the departments in motion to bring a cohesive picture to life.

The Breakdown Behind CG

Production in CG always begins with the art department and the style guide (photos and drawings showing the look of the film used as inspiration for the art department to create “the look”). A style guide will dictate color scheme, mood, feel, etc.

Character design is thus begun by the modeling department, with permission from the art department. Characters are each molded out of clay for a 3D look. This is done so that the animators can see what each character looks like from every angle. The modeling department designs “characters, sets, props—wire frame is thus created by use of the clay models,” which will be animated by May.

Once the models are built, ‘character rigging’ takes place. “We place a skeleton inside the model (the bones) [on the computer], as this is what will be animated,” says May. “Face shapes and movement all come from this structure like in a real person. Controls to animate character come from rigging, where we can blend shapes, for example, carving the phonemes of speech (a, e, i, o, u).” Once you have the phonemes, these can be combined to create speech in full and “make basic expressions; surprised, shocked—the tools to bring characters to life!”

Simultaneously, The Texturing department works side-by-side creating “a 2D texture map of the characters, i.e., skin tone, clothes, hair, and eye (done by specialists for each attribute).” This will be layered on top of the fire framing (bone structure).

In today’s CG animation, rather than distorting the exterior, rigging allows the animator to rebuild the exterior. “When you smile, skin moves over muscles to form it, your face does not distort, skin rather forms over bones to make coherent motions,” says May. In CG, this fluid movement is the main goal in creating realism within each shot and character expression. Therefore, rigging is a very important step in how animators will later control characters when animating.

As the CG film moves into the stage of animation, there becomes two methodologies. We begin with key frame animation. This is the “Pixar and cartoony” look, according to May; in which case, everything is done by hand. This method is much more time consuming. It mimics stop-motion. “A great example of this type of animation is the original Jurassic Park,” laughs May, as this is not his preferred form of animating. “The armature of characters is based on a motor that would capture it in space and time and the animators would move it from there.”

The second type, is motion capture. Like our example earlier of Gollum and Caesar of Planet of the Apes, this method uses an actor in a suit moving through scenes while data of this motion is fed into a computer. Examples of this type of animation are seen in Polar Express, Happy Feet (both films in which May worked on) and Mars Needs Women. Motion capture is often remembered by the ball covered suits that actors wear.

In this suit, each ball is magnetic and optical; surrounded by infrared cameras. The balls create “point tracking data,” which tell us where each ball is in 3D space. According to May, “this is then used to triangulate point cloud data to tell you where each ball is, as strategically placed for inverse kinematics.” Inverse kinematics gives us a guide to “locations of joints for building the characters in CG,” elaborates May. (May goes on to tell me a spine tingling story of how he suggested drilling a hole in Tony Hawk’s elbow during the creation of Pro Skater, as this way there would be no distortion in movement created by the fabric of a suit—a true CG animator with a one track mind)

For facial capture, a series of points is drawn on a face of an actor that drives the skin to capture actor’s expressions (once again, our Planet of the Apes and Lord of the Rings example). “Motion capture is used in facial expression as well,” May dictates, “you always have to reanimate, but it is a great reference point.”

May is clearly a much larger fan of the motion capture method of animating, by the tone of his voice. He explains that key framing is a much longer and time consuming process, which takes editing again-and-again, according to the directors reviews. May, further explains why by telling me that with “motion capture, a director can direct in real-time” while watching actors move in motion capture suits in front of him. This allows motions to be adapted on the spot, rather than after the fact. It literally gives the director freedom to direct the actor on the spot, rather than correct in post-production. This is something that can save a film a lot of money.

The Department Breakdowns, According to Morris May

When Henry Ford created the assembly line, he knew that mechanized creation was the sum of many moving parts placed in a specific order. The movie business is no different. Each department acts as a cog in the larger moving whole of the machine. I again reiterate the quote once told to me of the series of consecutive miracles that lead to film creation.

The basic departments of a CG film can be broken into two. Story and production. In story, we have boardomatic, animatic, look development, and pre-visualization. Each of these departments prepare the story to be told in a certain way. We covered all above, except pre-visualization which is roughly blocking out of a scene (camera angles, etc.)

In production, the basic breakdown is: modeling, animation, lighting, look development, simulation, effects, character effects, crowd, and texturing.

As a CG supervisor, May oversees everything. Although his passion lies within effects and animation. In effects, May works with particle driven scenes: explosions, snow, water, any kind non-character movement. The job of the effects department is to simulate everything that happens in the film. They are removed from the animation team.

Demo Reel from Morris May

Unlike effects, a department like lighting is directly connected to every department. This team of people develops how light behaves in each scene which effects the way we see characters, sets, as well as effects simulations. Is the light source from the sun (meaning the set and characters are outside)? How does light bounce off objects within the scene? This department has been fluttered with new technologies as it plays an all encompassing role in the film.

“Newer films use radiosity, which shows how light behaves when bouncing,” says May. May also mentions global illumination, which can be defined as photo realistic lighting. Just like in a live action Hollywood studio film, the lighting can define the entire look of the picture.

How to Create a CG Film: The Difference Between Computer Graphics and Live Action Hollywood

In computer graphics, the script is the floating bed frame of the film; meaning it is never final. It is rather an outlined structure. Dialogue is add-libbed in, manipulated, deleted, and so on. Due to the nature of the process, this allows for on-going change. In live-action, actors are always in scenes; meaning words and actions can not be changed after the fact. “The boardomatic is constantly manipulating [in CG],” says May on the process.

Because of the non-linear work flow in CG, it is easier to make these manipulations. The film is not bound to actor, scheduling or plates; but rather can adapt according to team adjustments. In CG film-making, you can stop and start all over again as many times as you want. The original Toy Story is a classic example of this, as it went through even a series of directors before completion. In a live action film, it would be almost impossible to do this without starting from scratch.

Notably, a CG film is created by a committee of decision makers. In live action film, the editor has a lot of control as you are dealing with plates that are locked in timing, as well as multiple actors. CG actors are recorded alone, allowing for so much manipulation that having a group of decision makers can give the film a nice touch. In CG, it is rare to look at dailies (scenes from the day’s work) alone, where in live action decisions come down to the director as top authority.

The differences also explain why a CG film may take much longer to complete. Once again, I bring up the original Toy Story, as it took about 4 years to complete. Morris May, continues work on a film that has been in production for almost five years, with another one to two years predicted longer in workload. To May, the process is so intricate and complex that it seems very normal to work on a project for a long period of time. Like a business, there needs to be several elements to lead to successful creation. In live-action, strict scheduling and limitations lead to a much shorter production period. Back to the world of CG, on average, it can take three to six years from original concept to end with thousands of people working on it. I even asked May: if a CG film was created by one man, how long would it take? He responded, “a lifetime.”

The post The Work of Film Through Technology: Interview with CG Supervisor Morris May appeared first on TechZulu.

‘Facebook me,’ ‘tweet it,’ ‘Shazam that;’ in the world of tech, your name is not just a service or brand, it is your verb. The stakes have been raised. The goal is not only to create a brand but rather the hope of becoming everyday jargon referring to the action in which you provide. In the world of social, sharing, and online apps, becoming a verb may be the difference between life and death of a company.

About a month back I sat down with Scribd’s CEO, Trip Adler for a casual lunch to catch up. We had met several months earlier in Maui during a kiteboarding trip at a very exciting time for the company. They were receiving 90 million unique monthly visitors and becoming a household name in tech start-up. Scribd’s document uploading and sharing platform is making us all self-publishers and adding information to the Internet at a vast and expedited level. Today, several months later from our first meeting in Maui, Trip was ready to raise the stakes with their mobile app of Scribd, called Float.

‘Float? Let me get this straight, you have a service recognized by millions and you are going to change the name?’ I held back the gulp of ice tea I had just taken in risk of spraying it out with my shocked reaction. I couldn’t possibly fathom the strategy behind this. Why would you change the name of a product people know and associate with? Isn’t the end goal users?

“Scribd is not as good of verb as ‘Float’,” Trip responded starkly.

Turns out Trip’s strategy was a hot topic among Silicon Valley start-ups as the terms ‘Google me,’ ‘Facebook me,’ ‘Tweet it’ are regular cocktail party verbose, no longer just at Stanford. For me, in college, ‘Facebook me’ was conjugated in our lexicons as frequently as ‘to study.’ This made me think that Trip makes a valid point with the marketing strategy behind ‘verb names.’ The question is, will a name that is easily made a verb make or break your product? I would hope to think not.

Take the story of Microsoft’s search engine ‘Bing.’ Like Google, the name is simple, catchy, translates globally well, and is really just a great ‘name verb.’ Microsoft hired Interbrand to come up with the name and spent an estimated $80 to $100 million USD according to Ad Age on the launch campaign. They also paid Verizon $550 million USD to use the search engine as the default on all their Blackberry devices. Do we use the name Bing as a regular verb at social gatherings, cook outs, birthdays, dinner parties? As an optimist, I would say not…yet.

According to CNET’s Lance Whitney, Bing has increased their market share by 75% up to 17% from 9.7%. This is a large number if you consider the users. That being said, it would be hard to argue the name was the main variable behind Bing’s crawl to catch up. A variable it may be, but one we have yet to measure accurately or even understand its ROI.

Both Bing and Scribd feel a strong name that transitions well to a verb is a risk hopefully worth the reward. It is indeed a strong marketing chance, or in other words: a systematic strategy. In the case of Scribd, will Scribd’s Float become a household verb if the product is successful? Or would we have said ‘Scribd it?’ Silicon Valley seems to think Float was a wise choice, but putting a value on creating a verb, that is a whole other can of worms.

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