Craig's Lemonade

Attensa and attention at Supernova

I just finished my 5 minutes at Supernova where I outlined the explosion of RSS in business, Attensa's take on attention metadata, and the availability our Attensa for Outlook 1.5 (whcih goes into a free public beta in the next week or so.) My last slide announced our Enterprise RSS Server and "the world's first RSS appliance!" Attensa's participation in TechCrunch's "Connected Innovator" was a little unusual as essentially all 11 of the other companies were sexy web 2.0 plays - and we are a conventional client/server software business targeting the enterprise. Nevertheless, a great event, well attended by the digerati, and I met lots of smart folks to boot. Now its off to Montreal for the Canadian GP. The pict is from our advisor and metadata know-it-all Andreas Weigend's flicker collection.

Tags: attensa, attention, supernova2006, EnterpriseRSS, RSS, Microsoft Outlook

The Software Association of Oregon and Advocacy

Friday was our annual Software Association of Oregon scramble golf tournament out at the Preserve in Hillsboro, Oregon and while it wasn't exactly balmy the rain did hold off for the most part...then poured right as we rolled into the tent for lunch. Seeing several faces I haven't in years as well as meeting some new ones it reinforced my firm belief in our region's solid software heritage. There are hundreds and hundreds of software companies of all shaopes in sizes in our fair state...and the past several years has seena lot of new companies formed and new investment dollars pouring in.

Consistent with this, the SAO itself has been reinvigorated. Greg Drew, CEO of Webtrends sits as our new board chair and the SAO's John Tortorici leads the team on a variety of new initiatives to step up the SAO's impact our industry and influence policy decisions important to our constituents.

THe SAO web site on advocacy:

In March of 2006, as a part of the Grow initiative, SAO’s Board of Directors resolved to create an Advocacy Committee with the intent to monitor and influence public policy efforts that affect our member organizations ability to prosper in an increasing global economy. This committee primarily advocates for tax and economic development policies that further SAO’s ongoing efforts to advance and grow the software and technology industry in Oregon.

By leading discussions with federal, state and local officials about the important contributions of software powered companies throughout the state, the SAO influences policy making that has an impact on the software industry and assists, advises, and communicates opportunities to the SAO Board of Directors and the SAO membership regarding key pieces of legislation or regulatory matters. The SAO works collaboratively with and is a resource for government agencies, leading business organizations, educational institutions, and other groups to be a strong voice for the Oregon software industry for years to come.

SAO is the voice of the software industry statewide to:

• Provide leadership on issues important to the growth of the software industry and to engage in issues that have a positive impact on SAO Members;
• Remain non-partisan in the selection of issues, endorsement of candidates, and execution of strategies;
• Focus on selected issues with the greatest impact on the software industry;
• Drive toward creating a business climate that promotes innovation and public policies that encourage software development and the expansion of Oregon's knowledge-based economy.

Advocacy Committee Members:

Craig Barnes, Attensa - Chair
Erin Brennock, Synopsys
John Cimral, ProSight
Jack Isselmann, Vista Strategies
Pamela Jones, JONES Partners
Phil Keisling, ProDX
David Kopf, Symantec
Harvey Mathews, AOI
Lewis McMurran, WSA
James Robertson, Radisys
Jim Wall, Symantec
Erick Watson, Microsoft
Jim Wasko, IBM
Jonathan Williams, Intel
John Tortorici, SAO
Molly Moore, SAO

For more information, please contact Molly Moore, Vice President at [email protected] or (503) 228-5401.

We're doing some heavy lifting here in Oregon, and we're agressively building an association that actually can make a difference. It is my hope that we cannot only help enterpreneurs and business leaders to "start, move, or grow" their business in Oregon but to actually effect public policy  especially in the areas where Oregon's tax policies are essentially "anti-business" (and that is my personal view and not necessarily representative of the views of the advocacy committee.)

Web 2.0 and free software. Sigh.

I just ran across a post by DEMO's Chris Shipley entitled "searching for revenue models" and think she hit the nail on the head. In my opinion, so many of these Web 2.0 companies are AJAX laden "eyeball monetization" projects with no business model other than advertising. Which of course is fine, but like Chris I don't see more than a few really being able to scale to where the advertising revenue will be significant. Further, and what is specifically interesting from where I sit is that the functionality of many of these products/web sites are impressive and are often capable of replacing their traditional conventional software counterparts. This will likely only effect consumer software, in my opinion, but its impact will be devastating to consumer software businesses. Chris writes:

"In the late '90s, a constant parade of start-ups came through my office showing business plans that relied on “monetizing eyeballs” and revenue sharing to generate an income and achieve some splendid valuation. We all know how that story ended: companies – eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google, and a very few others – that presented a strong value proposition to consumers weathered the storm and those that relied on other companies for their businesses, more or less, did not.

Today, the parade is back and this time the start-ups are beating the drum of free software and services. These so-called Web 2.0 businesses give away sometimes outstanding functionality now in hopes of finding a business model somewhere down the line. In the meantime, most of these companies are tapping advertising networks and hoping to build a revenue stream (trickle?) from click traffic. (Feels a whole lot like monetizing eyeballs, doesn’t it?)" Whole article here

The software  business has seen constant innovation and business model evolution from the beginning. All of it - from Consumer to Enterprise Software - have utilized tiered pricing. With the proliferation of broadband internet for reliable and quick distribution, most vendors offer a "free limited trial version" as the entry point. As the markets get even more competitive, today many of these same vendors are offering a free version in perpetuity. Whether web based or desktop based this strategy is now commonplace. OK, this is not really news, but as a conventional software entrepreneur it is frustrating to see many of the "free" offerings that don"t need to be. In the long run this cannot be supported by advertising. Chris also rightly summarizes with:

"...at least for now, I believe consumers will pay for value and that it is fundamentally wrong not to ask to be compensated for the value you deliver to the market....The software industry, however, in large measure has become afraid to ask people to pay. Ultimately, this devalues not only the application, but also the industry.

This wont really effect large or enterprise software business at all. In fact, for companies like ours the free "seeding" of client-side or web based software is an expected marketing imperative. But the functionality and service needs of large customers simply cannot be served with free software (save for open source which is another discusssion entirely.)

The software industry is only hurting itself in my opinion and there are only a handful of Oddposts or Writelys that will see a payday with their "its free and I hope someone buys us" strategy (otherwise known as a hail-mary pass.) In the meantime, real software companies lead by experienced managers are going to have to adapt and in my estimation migrate upstream where businesses will gladly pay for real value. Consumers are getting a lot for free and they aren't going back to paying for much of anything. Now that I think about it, many younger consumers never have and never will actually buy a piece of software. Until they get jobs that is, and in that case their employers will buy the software they require to actually do their job and work with others.

Our company, Attensa, is focused on delivering meaningful value to businesses. Not consumers. Not publishers. And, by the way, its not evil to actually be paid for it.

When a customer gets it...blogs and RSS in business

Recently I was forwarded an analyst report from an important pilot customer of Attensa's that is about to deploy our Enterprise RSS server (appliance.) Simply, they get it. Or at least, HE gets it. I cannot emphasize enough how unbelievably refreshing it is to work with customers that are paying attention. If only investors could (en masse) put down their "crackberries" long enough and stretch their attention span to 10 minutes or so, they'd see the revolution going on in front of them! Brad Feld of Mobius gets it. Richard Fishman of RSS Investors - no web site yet - but he still gets it. Our beloved Hugh Macworth of SmartForest Ventures - he took some work (wink, wink) - but he gets it too. Sand Hill, not so much. But hey it's only June, so by the time they start working again down there in September or so we will get through another cycle of what I like to cynically characterize as "having a keen insight into the obvious." For whatever reason, right now social networking and photo/video sharing type "consumer web 2.0 plays" rule the roost on Sand Hill. It's like anti-spam all over again and I predict nearly every major fund will have one of these photo/video sharing sites by the time this genre has run its course. I read a few days back on TechCrunch that even KPCB joined the fray. Hmmmm. End segue.

What is this "keen insight" as I call it? RSS in business. It is already huge, and obvious, but it is admittedly hard to prove or even explain to the uninitiated unless one investigates. Blogs are mostly responsible for this transformation and that usually means internal business use too - not the consumer bullshit that gets most of the attention (but I suppose that's nice for some too.)

The report I was sent  was replete with obvious statements about the emergence of Wikis, Collaboration software that works, etc. But was most interesting to me (and our pilot customer) was this highlighted paragraph:

...For the most part, blogs are becoming more widespread behind the firewall than outside it. In the press, many companies (e.g., automotive, insurance, government, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing) have been reported focusing blog technology to improve information sharing, collaboration, and community building. Scenarios in which blogs have been applied include competitive intelligence projects, lab journals, operations logs, communication of insights from subject-matter experts (e.g., knowledgebases), market research, intelligence sharing (e.g., among federal agencies and law enforcement groups), litigation support, program, product, and project management, and general communications and news-related applications.

Why is it interesting? I contend it is because this is just the tip of the iceberg of how companies are using blogs and blog like technologies to improve how people work. Yes, it's that simple. Even more interesting is that this transformation is coming from the edges not top-down. I personally think that is why so many of the pioneering collaboration software companies failed, and that is that they tried to change how "knowledge workers"  fundamentally function and force new systems down their throat via big IT projects (that cost a fortune too by the way.)

Blogs and RSS are different than the failed tools before them in business. Why? Because they augment how people work (or want to work at least) and have a low cost/learning/useability threshold. The jury is still out on this but I have strong feelings on this subject with some 21 years in the software business. The predictable nature of users is their desire to improve what they are already doing. And if it is not a cognizant desire it is a subconscious requirement to not make them think - at least not too much. Meaning, not draconian change from on high but small, enjoyable, obvious improvements in productivity with little or no effort. Blogs and RSS are delivering big-time. And it's happening now in big business, this is not theory.

OK, so here's my broken record prediction: Insane levels of information overload - but at least this time around users are actually asking for it!

So, Attensa? We'll be here to help.

P.S. The report was far more interesting, informative, and detailed than what is described here but it's my blog and I'll beat a dead horse on what's important to Attensa if I want to. ; )

Tags: Attensa, Enterprise RSS, Business Blogging, Wikis, SmartForest, RSS Investors

And now for something completely different...PowerSquid

When I first decided to sign up for TypePad and actually commit to a blog, I quickly felt I needed  to set up some categories. I could only justify spending the time on it if I thought if it was centered around my business (Attensa) and my experiences and opinions about starting and running software businesses. When I set up these categories I also included design. I studied graphic and industrial Design at CMU, but I didn't last long there and dropped out to start my first software company back in 1984. At the time the Macintosh had just shipped earlier that year and user interface design was a spanking new area, and interesting DOD-funded projects were emerging at the school. The rest is history.

I share this background because this post has nothing to do with Attensa, attention meta-data, information overload, or even RSS! I was so impressed with a simple new and useful product that I ran across thumbing through dwell magazine that I was compelled to share it. So, I discovered "PowerSquid" this morning.

Check out the Industrial Design firm's web site, called Trident Design that created the thing. Apparently PowerSquid is their venture and the company is based in Santa Cruz, CA. The picture of the product tells the story. Who doesn't get frustrated plugging in devices into power strips? I have three under my desk at the offfice but using less than half of the plugs because they are stacked vertically and too close together and adapters are all too big. Or, perhaps I just have too many gadgets. Either way, kudos to PowerSquid on a useful, fun, interesting, and well designed product.

Tags: PowerSquid, Trident Design, Industrial Design

Attensa is a "Connected Innovator" for SuperNova 2006!

We just learned that Attensa has been chosen as one of a dozen "Connected Innovators," a new program that is part of the annual Supernova technology event in San Francisco. "Created in collaboration with Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.com, the Connected Innovators program brings together the creators of exciting emerging technologies with the industry's top technology and business influencers" the web site says.

The twelve Supernova 2006 Connected Innovators are: (note: I inserted the snippets below of what I understand the businesses to be so apologies if I don't get them exactly right)

• Attensa - Solving  Information Overload with Attention meta-data for users and organizations
• Ether.com - Define your hourly/minute price and availability for your area of expertise
• LifeIO - don't know what this is but it is a project of "attap" (all things to all people) and has a nice web page
• NetVibes - AJAX based home page with lots of cool and useful widgets (I've tried this one, nice implementation)
• PostApp - Site says "PostApp will change how the world thinks about syndicating functionality on the web."
• Protomobl - "...enables mobile users to locate and communicate with nearby friends..."
• Sharpcast - There's been a lot of press on this one. Sync'd photos between your phone and desktops and more.
• SoonR - "Desktop Search, Outlook, Skype, and the files on desktop computer(s) are made available anywhere"
• StumbleUpon - "With a single click you can find and share cool sites matched to your interests."
• Vpod.tv - Video publishing on demand
• Webaroo - "free software program and service that lets you search and browse real web pages without a connection"
• ZiXXo - Local online digital coupons

Like some 65K or so folks (according to Feedburner stats) I subscribe to Arrington's TechCrunch, and like the weekly Industry Standard print publication back in the bubble, I always look forward to Mike's posts each morning to learn about what's going on in the Web 2.0 world. Between TC, parties, panels and edgeio, when does the guy sleep anyway?

What TechCrunch has confirmed for me since I've been reading it is that Web 2.0 is all about the consumer play. Admittedly, I am a bona fide gadget-geek, left-of-the-chasm, use it before its really ready kind of consumer - and it gets me in trouble all of the time. So, while I enjoy learning about these new Web 2.0 companies (such as our co-connected innovators listed above) it can sometimes be lonely applying new technologies (such as attention) to "less sexy" enterprise business problems. But, that's what we're working on here at Attensa and we are thrilled and proud to join this group as the token "Enterprise 2.0" company. P.S. A few months back I posted on all of these Web 2.0 companies.

We learned today that each company will have about 5 minutes on Thursday evening (June 22) to talk about their unique value propositions. Ours is (dare I say it again?) all about "Solving Information Overload." There will be no demonstrations apparently but I will of course reference our almost ready for prime-time Attensa for Outlook 1.5 (which has attention based predictive ranking) and plug our RSS Enterprise Server.

We're doing a lot more than just RSS client/server, and we look forward to participating in this new event.

Tags: Supernova 2006, TechCrunch, Attensa, Connected Innovator, RSS, Enterprise RSS, Microsoft Outlook

Technology CEOs without a clue (technically) are dangerous

Last week on his BusinessWeek blog NussbaumOnDesign, Bruce Nussbaum wrote about so-called "elite" CEOs and their growing disconnect between them and their customers. See "Are CEOs A Tech Gap in Themselves? You Bet." He starts with;

"The more I listen and learn, the more I'm convinced that members of the corporate elite of America are technologically backward and a threat to their own companies. Outside the tech/net space itself, CEOs, by and large, do not go online, know little about blogs, and are increasingly divorced and distant from their customers, their employees, their managers and their global partners (most of whom live and work online)."

One might characterize this phenomenon as some type of  inverted digital divide! I couldn't agree more with Bruce, but I will take the truth of his observation even further and tell you that even in my own peer group in Portland, Oregon, small company CEOs can be as equally out of touch. And most are leaders of friggin' software companies! This is acceptable and even expected of  CFOs, but c'mon, the CEO (and CTO) need to lead and chart a course for their business - not be a "threat to their own companies" as Nussbaum writes. And you can't do this with your head down and your assistant printing your schedule because you don't really use a computer (yes I heard this one at an AEA event from the CEO of one of our region's technology leaders!)

I serve on the executive committee of our trade industry group, the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) and frequently socialize with other leaders of small, medium, and a few large sized companies in the technology sector, and I am routinely amazed at how few of these folks are with the program with regard to technology that is relevant to their business. Nothing is more critical than understanding how a potential or current customer can use your product or service. even better than understanding is actually engaging in the process. I'll give you an example... "Mobile" platforms. I am amazed and even disappointed at how many of my peers are not paying attention to this important area! Phones are computers and they run software and they will be the most important device for all of us - Soon.

That all said, lets not stop with the corner office. What is that saying, "Eat your own dog food?" I was actually talking today with someone at a blogging software company (who incidentally actually likes to write) but doesn't have an active blog?! Of course, I'm sure the rationale is sound. At the end of the day I don't expect that many CEOs will blog (too busy, right?) and probably most shouldn't, but there is no excuse for being "technologically backward" if you are actually leading a company in the technology space. So, technology CEOs, you don't have to personally start writing a blog - but you should know what one is.

Off soapbox.

P.S. Also relevant, a ways back I posted "CEOs not using RSS are irresponsible, lazy, or clueless"

Tags: NussbaumOnDesign, Business Blogging, Software Business, SAO.org

The Stages of RSS in Business

At my attention pitch a few weeks back in New York at Syndicate, I shared a little bit from our experience at Attensa about how RSS finds its way into business. Clearly, as with consumers and RSS, it starts with blogs. This might be obvious to many but I am asked about it so frequently, I thought it warranted a more detailed post. I have seen how RSS can rapidly proliferate in organizations once it is utilized for true business purposes. My observations have convinced me that RSS seems to make its way into business, organically, as follows:

1. Blog Post Updates, Mainstream News - Perhaps obvious but this is how it starts. An individual from anywhere in a company starts using RSS to get updates from blogs and more than likely it is not work related. The other introductory use of RSS flows from subscriptions to news sources such as BusinessWeek, major newspapers, or even more useful an industry publication such as eWeek. This is getting progressively easier with toolbar products that auto-discover feeds. IE7 has this new feature, and Attensa has a toolbar today for IE7 and firefox that detects and displays multiple feeds on one page. Of course, I am biased but it is hands down the best implementation of its kind PLUS includes delicious tagging tools as well. See it here.

2. Marketing and Competitive Intelligence - Rather than cluttering email inboxes with Google alerts, RSS often becomes important overnight for business as a means for marketing folks to keep informed about both their brands and the activity of their competitors. Sales people can use RSS to monitor both current customers as well as prospects. (And, by the way, Attensa's Outlook based RSS reader lets you search for terms across up to 16 search engines.)

3. Business Blogs, Wikis and Collaboration Software - There are numerous players in this space ranging from enterprise class solutions like SocialText and Confluence, collaboration tools like BaseCamp and CentralDesktop, and lastly even offerings such as Six Apart's TypePad (which I use.) All of the applications support RSS, enabling them to communicate updates to those in the relevant groups that are subscribed to the appropriate feeds. This is an exciting growth area that is affecting not just large businesses but even small and medium sized businesses. Also worth noting, Attensa's new partner, Six Apart, has an enterprise offering looming. Details here so far.

4. Enterprise Applications that utilize RSS - Although early, progressive enterprise application vendors are enabling their applications with RSS. There is probably no better place to look than to Spanning Partners' application of RSS to SalesForce. Charlie Wood, the company's founder, is already a leading expert in this area. I've already learned much from him and through his efforts about where enterprise the enterprise app vendors are going. Also, a few months ago Charlie wrote on this subject, see this post.

So, where does that leave us? It doesn't take complicated math to see that before you know it individual users are going to be receiving THOUSANDS of RSS items per day. Some people today (most?) are still in stage 1 described above and if subscribed to two or three hundred feeds for news, blogs, smart searches, etc - they might already occasionally get 1,000 items in ONE DAY. Granted, they are asking for these feeds and it's not like getting 1,000 emails a day where half of it is spam.

I think RSS will mirror the success AND the negativity that email has brought to us in business. Most businesses couldn't imagine trying to work productively without email - but email also brought us spam, viruses, inappropriate use, the "RE: RE: RE:" annoyance, security challenges, etc etc etc. Same will be the case the RSS. RSS will bring to all (and already is for some) unprecedented business productivity. The difference is, I am convinced, that the sheer volume (sans abuse or spam) will dwarf e-mail.

Ideally, Attensa will be there to help cut through this information overload!

Technorati Tags: Attensa, IE7, Collaboration, CentralDesktop, Six Apart, SocialText, Software Business, SyndicateNYC, Enterprise RSS, BaseCamp, TypePad