Yes …..i finally won. I bought a Herman Miller Aeron for $20CDN
I felt like one of those people who have bought a precious painting at a yard sale. I know there is no way that I would have bought one of these at full pop ….
But you never know what you will find at your local office surplus place. This one was piled amongst chairs needing some repair before being resold. When i spotted the webbed back and seat rest I instantly knew what I had found.
When I asked the guy at the place how much he looked at me with a puzzled look …..”it’s broken …..you want a broken chair? …I can let it go for twenty bucks …..twenty bucks I respond ……is that too much, he quips …….i couldn’t get the 20 spot out of my pocket fast enough.
I will probally have to spend a hundred for a new lift cylinder ….but aside from that the chair works well.
So …. I wanted to know a bit more about my chair. My gut told me it was a left over relic from the internet boom bust …..I really wanted to confirm. I did some checking on the chair …..to know the history and to find it’s part in history.
…..and the chair is from a company Accelight Networks Canada Inc.
January 2000
” Although AcceLight Networks is young – born December 1999 – the company is ambitious. Their goal is to be the world leader in all-optical Internet switching. By the end of the year, AcceLight plans to begin manufacturing the “core optical switch” that will route the flow of data over the Internet faster and in greater volumes than eve
before.
November 2001
AcceLight Networks Raises $60 Million for Photonic Service Switching
AcceLight Networks, a start-up based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, announced $60 million in new equity and debt financing to support its development of its photonic service switching platform. The funding will also be used to expand the company’s sales and customer engagements in key North American and international markets. In addition to AcceLight’s initial investors, Menlo Ventures and Venrock Associates, the company attracted new venture capital from the investment firms CDIB Ventures, Granite Global Ventures, Mitsubishi Corporation, NIF Ventures, Stonewood Capital Management, Western Technology Investment, Whitecastle Investment and Vertex Management.
January 2003
AcceLight Networks Inc. closed its doors for good last Friday and sent its last 60 employees home, according to industry sources. Word is that in the end, the company’s photonic switch fabric didn’t work as advertised; and the company even tried to replace it with an electrical fabric in a last-ditch attempt to raise more money and keep potential customers interested. The company’s managers did not return phone calls. Short of an official casket viewing and ceremony, several Light Readers have already started chiseling AcceLight’s tombstone.
From what I can see they raised well over 100 million ……and all that is left is my $20 Aeron …..
I suggest you check your local surplus suppliers …..but don’t bother going to mine ….
Cheers
Scott
Posted in Product Design, Usability ~ 3 Comments
Written by Scott
ConceptShare was born from our needs as visual communicators. It is a revolutionary new way to share and manage ideas visually. ConceptShare fills a void for anyone who needs to communicate design concepts visually and receive effective feedback.
We are very excited about letting CS loose on the world. Right now we are still tinkering to ensure that your experience is going to be great. Thanks to all those who have signed up for the beta and we haven’t forgotten about you.
Cheers
Scott
Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design, Technology ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
Seth Goodin wrote in his blog today, about the right process can leveraging intuition and how people are shouldn’t be afraid of process.
Is it because it gets in the way of intuition?
I spend a lot of time railing against organizations and teams that fall in love with process at the expense of innovation. This is not a post about that.”
more
I agree with this post, however I sometimes confuse process with procedure. Some companies try to force a set way to do things. This is probably more procedure or best practices than it is process. I can only imagine their motivation is to prevent screw-ups. To me its like saying A) I don’t trust you to get the job done or understand what has to be done. B) Please dont innovate because we can’t control that C) We need a canned set of hours to get this done don’t go off the path.
Process if fine…I agree that Lots of creative people can have processes they can maximize their producitivity while still keeping their intuition alive and using process to measure or fit within a communication strategy or similar.
We see our product as part of the design process. You use your intuition to design your concepts. You post them for feedback and you rinse and repeat.
Posted in Business, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie
If you watch American Inventor last week like me you may have seen the Wacom Cintiq in action. The Cintiq is basically an interactive display that combines a great lcd monitor with a wacom tablet. Basically you can draw on the screen directly with the pressure senstive pen. The Cintiq also has a cool coating on the screen which apparently makes it feel like you are drawing on real paper. On American Inventor, a product design firm handed over the pen to the inventor himself so that he can demonstrate his intentions right on the design they way he would with a sketch pad. It was cool, the guy didn’t have to know how to use photoshop or even a mouse. He just had to know how to use a pencil. Of course he could have just described verbally his corrections to the design but that’s not easy and sometimes not even possible. This is kinda what led us to ConceptShare in the first place. We know that people who are involved in the creation of anything you can see or hold, can really only discuss and or correct the thing using visual tools. Man, the Cintiq would be quite the demo tool for ConceptShare.
Bernie
Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Product Design, Technology ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie
Grabbed this interesting cartoon from 37 Signals Flickr Link. I think it sums up one of the main things we are trying to defeat with ConceptShare.
Posted in Business, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie
I was reading about the new Nyko Intros Xbox 360 Cooling Solution. Its basically a product that answers the pain gamers have by the extreme heat the xbox 360 produces that has been said to cause the system to freeze up and even shut down. It got me thinking… and I was marveled at the way that product flaws can create a whole line of products that people are ready to buy. Whole companies are even formed around just waiting for designers to screw something up so they can create a product to fix. Of course there’s always definite  room for customization and accessories for popular consumer products. But look at the iPod for instance, and how many accessory companies and products are out there that focus around the idea of protecting your iPod and especially the scratch prone screens. Basically its product designers who pick up the pieces that the original designers or engineers may have dropped. If you are looking for opportunities, flawed product designs that have solid market share may be a good place to look. However there is the question of sustainabiliy with this strategy. If the iPod was protected out of the box would these products have to exist? If they updated the xbox 360 with better cooling, does this Nyko cooling station stop production?Â
Bernie
Posted in Business, Innovation, Product Design, Technology ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie
