Bloggers, entrepreneurs, et al

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The Charlottetown bloggers are meeting one week from today at noon at the Formosa Tea House. Looks like about 10 people have committed so far. I plan on going – so contact me if you want to ride share.

The PEI group seems to be a dynamic lot, as was evident by their frisbee golf tournament this Summer. As my regular readers know, I am trying to establish a loose network of small companies in the region, especially bloggers, entrepreneurs, creative artists, knowledge workers, etc. I’m going to try to get some feedback on this idea next week, in order to have a larger, regional networking event in Sackville around the end of October.

As a working descriptor, I’ve come up with IODINE (is this too hokey?):

  • Interdependent (we help each other)
  • Open (as in open to new ideas, and supporting the open-source philosophy)
  • Digital (we use networked technologies to leverage our small size and distributed nature)
  • Innovative (not just new technologies, but better ways of working and living)
  • Natural (as in organic, sustainable and renewable)
  • Entrepreneurs (we think and act for ourselves and stay in close contact with our customers and communities)

Other organisations/models that we may feel a close affinity to include Natural Enterprises, Emergent Learning Forum, the Open Source Movement, the Natural Step.

So far, the networking events in Moncton and Charlottetown have been a lot of fun and productive in linking people together. What are your thoughts on how we can keep it very informal but still get a critical mass of 20 – 30 participants? Will Pate had suggested a rotating venue, which is why the three (so far) bloggers and a few others in Sackville have committed to hosting the next meeting. My wife, Andrea, has even offered some of her culinary expertise.

NB Innovation Forum

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At the NB Innovation Forum in Fredericton yesterday, members of CSTD and HRANB got together for a session with Don Simpson. Don has a wealth of experience and many stories to share. Don said that the “next big thing” is NIBC convergence (NIBC = nano, info, bio, cogno). Here are his axioms for the knowledge economy, gleaned from many sources:

  1. The Knowledge Economy is an economy of networks.
  2. Matter matters less (increasingly value is found in the intangible assets).
  3. Markets are now conversations and are self-organizing faster than the companies that have traditionally served them.
  4. The language of the Knowledge Economy is the language of systems thinking.
  5. Collaboration is the DNA (the fundamental element) of the Knowledge Economy.

Many of you are familiar with these, from The Cluetrain, and other sources, but for some in the audience I think that these were revelations. It’s good to see the message getting out in more traditional venues. Other items of interest during the course of the day were:

RDeL

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Tomorrow, at the LearnNB forum, I will be quickly presenting (only 15 minutes allocated) a summary of the Research & Development in e-Learning (RDeL) project as well as an overview of professional development opportunities through CSTD. I have therefore posted the RDeL material here in advance and for future reference.

As a follow-up to the discussions and collaboration of the NB Learning Industry during the Winter of 2003/2004, I was engaged to coordinate the first formal Community of Practice. This ad hoc organisation, of industry organisations and individuals, grew into a larger group, including the creation of the LearnNB brand and website.

A record of the discussions of the original RDeL group is still available.

In October 2003 it was determined that this discussion board was no longer adequate for the community’s needs, as it was not secure and had limited functionality. Following an industry meeting in Saint John on 15 October 2003, I was given the mandate to develop a community of practice (CoP) to further the needs of the R&D community. As of April 2004, funding was made available by IRAP, and this Community of Practice initiative began.

The initial focus of this CoP was research and development, especially business models and commercialization. It was not intended to be a theoretical or academic community, but one that is looking at the development of practical applications ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú be they products, services, standards or models. Membership was and is open to anyone.

Here is an overview of the major events during the course of this project:

  • Establishment of an initial blog
  • Report on best practices in the establishment of a community of practice
  • Interview protocol and initial interviews in New Brunswick, PEI and Nova Scotia
  • Evaluation of technology platforms for the web presence of the community
  • Discussions/conversations/interviews with interested members
  • Establishment of two web-based systems for discussions, one private and one public
  • Continuing discussions in person, via e-mail and through blogs with interested parties
  • Fine-tuning of technology platforms

The best practices report and case study are available on the LearnNB Collaborative space.

From the Case Study:

Conclusions

  • A sense of community cannot be forced;
  • Communities are self-defined;
  • Communities are conversations; and
  • Communities evolve over time.
  • Face-to-face contact can be the impetus for online conversations, while
  • Online contact can be the impetus for face-to-face meetings.
  • Communities of individuals appear to have stronger bonds than communities of companies;
  • Blogging helps to define dispersed communities; and
  • Password-protected web sites do not encourage conversation.

Recommendations

It is recommended that if there are future efforts in this area, then we should:

  • Keep the LearnNB online community spaces for special projects and events.
  • Advertise the LearnNB space for others to test out blogging.
  • Encourage more community members to use blogs as a community building tool.

Finally, any efforts to foster community should be addressed at the grass roots level. Centralized command and control does not work well in this internetworked world. Regional initiatives (e.g. Atlantica), or very local initiatives (e.g. Charlottetown) seem to stand the greatest chance of success. Provincial boundaries are blurry, and not part of many people’s sense of reality.

Innovation and Idea Protectionism

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Albert Ip talks about the reality of developing new products, and then dealing with lawyers and patent issues.

In these days of patent lock-up, it is NOT about publishing the achievement and improvement. My patent lawyer told me the other day, it is about limiting other people’s use of your idea. Hence this concept of patent portfolio and mutual licensing. He advised me to break my invention into several patents in order to start building a patent portfolio. When there is a way of doing thing which is lock up in other’s patent (by the way, I discover the method myself independently – but it does not matter, somebody has the exclusive right just before you), one can use one’s patent portfolio to negotiate for some mutual licensing. This makes sense, a lot of $en$e – but only to the lawyers! I ended up protecting my IP using "trade secret". BTW, if you ask nicely, I may tell you my trade secret after a drink.

Albert’s experience shows why the open source movement and intiatives like Creative Commons are essential for innovation and for our continuing economic growth. Innovation is NOT about limiting other people’s use of your idea. Our civilisation and technology is where it is today because scientists and others freely shared their findings in order to grow their disciplines. Albert is keeping his secrets, but on his terms. We should do like CC says – skip the intermediaries [lawyers].

Innovation Articles – Summary

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The LearnNB community has been provided with a number of PDF articles on innovation – mostly Canadian perspectives. These are in preparation for the quarterly meeting this Wednesday, September 22nd. The documents have been hidden away (password-protected) in the collaborative work space for LearnNB (I can set up an account if you want one). I have also posted the names of the articles on the public LearnNB blog. A quick search today has shown that most of these documents are freely available, and I’ve done a quick synthesis of a few.

What follows are some short summaries of the documents that caught my attention.

A series of three articles from Research Money by Alan Cornford, (significant subscription fee required) provide some interesting observations on innovation. Cornford states that increasing R&D spending will not increase innovation capacity, as only 3% of of public R&D spending results in measurable innovation; the only way to measure innovation is through the outputs – or local wealth generation; and there is plenty of VC money available, but not enough finance-worthy ventures. The key to driving innovation is having the right people. He also shows that private sector investment has 15 times the return on investment as that of the public sector. His main recommendation is not to weaken public R&D spending, but to strengthen it through private partnerships, especially with small and medium sized enterprises. Cornford is also in favour of enhanced R&D tax credits and the channelling of government investment into "community innovation idea outreach" to communties and SME’s
.

Where local SME (small and medium enterprise) R&D receptor capacity is limited (as in most of Canada), the universities, polytechnics
and colleges can conduct applied R&D for local SME industry and therefore benefit from these increased R&D investments, while community SME innovative capacity grows.

Cornford also produced a report for ACOA in 2002, entitled – Innovation and Commercialization in Atlantic Canada , which I have not read yet.

A different perspective is presented by Douglas Barber, who in 2003 surveyed the 120 most innovative companies in Canada, (those who spent more than 3% on R&D) and determined that the main issues around innovation were inadequate tax

incentives, lack of qualified workers, uncoordinated government support and regulation concerning R&D. These companies included Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, BCE

Emergis Inc., Corel Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline Inc., Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp., and Sierra Wireless, Inc.. This paper focuses primarily on large companies, not SME’s.

Denzil Doyle in a 2004 report for ITAC (PDF) examined the selling of Canadian high-tech companies and purchases by foreign investors. This again focuses on larger companies, not the smaller companies that are predominant in Atlantic Canada. Doyle concludes that:

This paper has been written on the assumption that Canadian policy makers want to position Canada as a global player in the worldwide high-tech industry. In order to achieve

that goal it will not only have to create a favourable environment for foreign-owned branch plants but it will have to grow several world class companies with the majority of

corporate decision-making carried out in Canada. Examples of such companies are Nortel Networks, Cognos, ATI Technologies, OpenText, McDonald Detweiller Associates, and

Research In Motion.



While Canadians can be proud of their R&D skills and achievements in nearly every field of technology, more attention should be paid to ways and means of commercializing

more of the resultant technology in Canada. This will require the development of a financing industry that is capable of launching companies properly and of taking financial

control of them when the original investors decide to exit their investments.

Other documents available from the government of Canada, include: Knowledge Matters: Skills & Learning for Canadians

This document addresss, at a very high policy level, how the government can foster learning for in public education, build the workforce, and attract more immigrants.

The series of government documents on innovation are good for those planning initiatives that they wish to align with government policy – good until the next election.

A shorter paper, by Peter Josty on technology commercialisation focuses on Alberta’s situation, and provides some case-specific information, as well as a short SWOT analysis. This is a quicker read than some of the others, with a Western perspective.

I’m sure that you’re seeing some common themes (tax credits), and there are more documents that I haven’t read yet. I hope that this quick summary provides a bit of an overview for my colleagues who will be at the meeting in Fredericton this week. See you there.

Innovative Entrepreneurs

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Dave Pollard has written a concise article on how to stimulate and measure Canadian innovation. He trashes the methods used by the federal government and the BC science council to measure and promote innovation. I agree with his verdict – they’re lame.

And if you want to stimulate innovation, invest in the people that live and die by innovation — entrepreneurs. Their profits stay in the community, get reinvested, and create jobs. By all means subsidize those entrepreneurs to do their research at Canadian universities — you better believe that research will be focused on commercial opportunity.

To continue the thread started by the Atlantic open source gatherings this Summer, as well as the blogger meeting in Moncton this week, the common threads of interest appear to be:

  1. open source models for software, innovation and learning
  2. new business models, including natural enterprises
  3. networking and learning in the digital commons (blogs, YASNS, wikis, etc)
  4. economic development at a grassroots level in Atlantic Canada

I’m sure that many of the small, outwardly focused, technologically savvy companies in the region would not been impressed by measurements like "percent of population completing university", as a means to determine innovation. There are many successful entrepreneurs here who have skipped university in order to really innovate.

At the blogger dinner in Moncton there were at least three new business initiatives that we discussed and these will be followed-up. Not bad for seven folks in the space of a couple of hours. This was more successful in fostering innovation that most sponsored conferences on innovation. So let’s keep the conversation going, especially in the blogosphere, and let’s have a mass innovation meet next month. With 20 to 30 entrepreneurial individuals networking over pizza & beer (or your choice of brain food) I’m certain that we can start an Atlantic movement to help each other, and kick butt internationally.

All of the ingredients are here – smart people, nimble companies, a sense of community, existing relationships, and a hunger for something better. There are still a number of us who have to get to know each other a bit better, so I hope to see many of you in Sackville at the end of next month.

Please post your comments as well as your preferred dates.

 

Emergent Learning Forum – East

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Still hyped from last night’s blogger meeting, I am following up on Jay Cross’ suggestion to hold an Emergent Learning Forum (ELF) Flash Meeting. Cameron, Chris and I discussed having an informal social gathering in Sackville for October. We’re looking for a location, and think that we might be able to negotiate a spot like the president’s cottage at Mount Allison University, or the local pub, or if worse comes to worse – my place. The ELF mission is in line with our practices to date, and I think that it might be a good thing to be part of a larger movement – ELF is:

A non-commercial, global community of people who make decisions at the intersection of learning, technology, business, and design.


Mission


Promote understanding and use of learning in industry and government worldwide

Provide a forum for resolving issues impeding the progress of eLearning

Identify and publicize new developments and emerging best practices

Host a global virtual conversation of vital eLearning issues



Values


We tell it like it is

We value the impact of eLearning on human performance improvement

We are stridently non-commercial

We practice what we preach

We dare to be at the leading edge

We believe in sharing best practices freely and without boundaries



How We Operate


We encourage our members to network with one another

We do not offer consulting services and do not charge for research reports

We promote applied best practices

We think of ourselves as innovators and provocateurs

We eject people who use our gatherings for blatant, uninvited sales pitches



Membership


Membership is free and open to anyone who makes decisions about eLearning.

Our community includes designers, training managers, consultants, product developers, academics, researchers, and business managers.

Fifty to sixty people attend [the San Francisco area] monthly meetings.

Our mail list includes 1500+ opt-in members.

This all seems pretty good to me, so tell me if you’re interested in:

  1. Trying this out under the ELF umbrella.
  2. Having an informal gathering to meet people who are interested in the digital economy, new business models, some techie stuff, and have a sense of community both locally and globally.
  3. Limiting any presentations to 5 minutes (inspired, isn’t it?).
  4. A continued focus on social networking software, small business, and open source business models.
  5. Having it take place in Sackville, with suggested dates of any afternoon during the last week of October, the 25th to 29th.

In the meantime, we will scope out locations, and remember that Sackville is less than a two-hour drive from Halifax, Charlottetown, Miramichi, Fredericton, Saint John and Moncton.

 

Moncton Blogger Gathering

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At Steve’s initiative, a number of us ( Seb, Chris, Cam, Will) met for an informal dinner to meet and catch-up. Some folks met for the first time and it was good to partake in the conversations. Apparently Steve has been dreaming up some good stuff, called Data Libre, so check out his new & improved blog.

Most of us would like to see more of these events – informal, loosely joined – around blogging, open source, micro-businesses, natural enterpises or some other common ground. The Sackville bloggers are looking into organising a gathering here, perhaps in late October, so we’ll keep you posted. It would be good to get about 20 people together around open source and small business partnering – or something else, if you care to comment.

Blogs or LMS?

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Jeremy Hiebert makes an interesting comparison between blogs and LMS in higher education:

But then I really cringed when I hit the conluding sentence: "A blogging tool would be a valuable addition, therefore, to any LMS." No, no, no, no, NO.



In spirit, blogs are the opposite of a Learning Management System like WebCT. If you lock personal publishing away inside an LMS, it’s the equivalent of yet another crappy discussion board in a course. Blogs work because people are engaged in their own interests and can find their network from the entire world. An LMS constrains the topic, assignments and partipants, closing off any potential for authentic outside interaction and personal engagement.

Could not have said it better myself – it’s about learner control.

 

Next NB – what’s next?

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I attended the Next NB education discussion session at Mount Allison University this evening. Not a lot of of people showed up, given conflicting appointments and the rather poor advertising, or maybe just due to apathy. I found out why the website doesn’t work, and now Lisa, our facilitator, has my utmost sympathy.

There were 15-20 people in attendance; most of whom were middle-aged or older. Attendees included university professors, retired professors, school disctrict representatives, teachers’ association representatives and others – not quite what one would call vox populi. I made comments based on my previous posts, so I won’t repeat them here. Some other interesting comments were:

  • We should bring back the teaching of civics in school.
  • We need to be inclusive of all minorities.
  • We expect too much of our teachers.
  • We should reinstate apprenticeship programmes.
  • Low expectations are a critical problem.

As you can see, it was quite the potpourri of perspectives this evening. Not much was accomplished, but all comments were recorded. My suggestion to link to other blogs and conversations will be taken up, and I’m told that there will be links to this blog on the Next NB site.

A document entitled A Covenant with our Children: Education in New Brunswick (PDF) was handed out tonight. From the document:

  • We must embrace the movement towards standards-based assessment, increased accountability and greater social inclusion. [interesting trio]
  • Principals and vice-principals should be removed from the collective bargaining unit of the New Brunswick Teacher’s Union (sic) [is that why there were two reps from the NBTA in attendance?]
  • Education reform is too important to allow the voices of teachers to be barred from the conversation. That discussion must include an open dialogue about French immersion. [and the students?]

Lots of stuff to digest, but I kept asking myself, will this exercise change anything? I’ll finish with an often quoted observation from Albert Einstein:

The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far, has problems that cannot be solved by thinking the way that we thought when we created them.