It is time again for the MESH conference, it is just around the corner from what I can see everything seems to be rolling in high gear. If you have read this blog before you know what I think of MESH and the guys running it. Top notch all the way. I am continually impressed with the stuff that these guys are doing on top of the daily stuff they are doing. (Remember this isn’t anyones full time gig) They have pulled a great line up of speakers, workshops, networking and purely social events. If you are reading this on my blog … you should be attending MESH. 

I think this years event is going to be much better then the previous. Here is why:

Mesh U: A new addition to this years line up is the extra day for the Mesh U. 

A day jam packed with great presenters that can really help you take your game up a notch. MeshU is not included in the conference package I think that if you are serious about learning and leaving with a broadened skill  set then this is the day you want to be at. I know there are those who will bitch and complain about the added costs ….but if you have ever run an event …it is not cheap. 

Look at this as an investment in your business, career, project or what ever reason you are attending. The smaller size and tight workshop environment is great. Here are 3 great examples of sessions you won’t want to miss. 

• Spend some time with Daniel Burka and listen to his tips on iterative design strategies….This guy has creativity to spare. Try to soak some up.
• Jon Lax is going to teach you how to run better creative projects. Don’t miss this one! Jon is one helluva guy and you will be informed and entertained! 
• Leah Culver is the co-founder of pownce. She is the lead developer and is heavily involved with a all aspects of the direction and the development of the product.  

Great Keynotes: I really like the line up for this years keynotes. I think that these are going to be informative and entertaining. Here is the quick summ up. 

• Ethan Kaplan- I don’t know if you got a chance to check out Ethan last year, he is funny, intelligent, working on some of the cool projects. His is incredibly well versed in the all aspects of the technology and I am excited to see him on the stage.  
• Lane Merrifield- Club Penguin might mean nothing to you but your kids know it. From a Kelowna Startup to a acquisition by  Disney …There is a story there that I think everyone should hear. 
• Garret Camp- Stumble Upon has been a huge success allowing people to stumble across cool sites that others have liked. Stumble upon was acquired by Ebay in 2007 for a tidy little sum of $75 million. 
• Matt Mason – This guy has done a lot of really cool things, has a wealth of experience all of which he has penned into the book “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism“

Session Speakers: I like the line up of people they have this year. It seems to be quite a few new faces and some faces that we have seen before in front of the audience. I think it depends on the format that the guys choose and the makeup of the panels. I have grown less fond of panel discussions as of late ….i think it is usually due to the poor moderation. Lets hope they have this taken care of and put on some great sessions with great moderators ……or what ever formats they choose. 

Lets Get Meshing: I am going to be at the MEsh meetup on Monday …..hope to see you there.

When: Monday, April 21

Where: The Irish Embassy Pub & Grill, 49 Yonge Street 

Time: 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Facebook it

Looking forward to seeing all the ususal suspects at MESH and meeting new people …..lets mesh it up people @!@#$%#@$%!!!!!!

Cheers 

Scott 

http://www.meshconference.com/

http://www.meshconference.com/meshu/

 

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I guess there isn’t much sense in leading into this article with elaborate lead up to a big announcement, as my title has thrown off the covers. We are excited to announce that our full API is being released to all those who have been patiently waiting on it.

ConceptShare API link 

http://api.conceptshare.com/API/API_V2.asmx

The release of the ConceptShare API signals a new era in our company history. We want to enable our clients large and small to leverage our platform to further improve their projects. The API will allow users to customize the ConceptShare experience for their organizations, teams and clients. 

Implementation

An early API implementations include automated workspace generation from a web form. Our client wanted to create an automated way to get their customers to submit projects via the website. We worked with them using the API to build this functionality. The system allowed customers to setup new project spaces from a public web form on the corporate website. Customers submit a project brief via web-form and upload associated project files. The system automatically creates a new workspace for the customer project. Information from the project brief is presented as the first concept and associated files are saved into the workspace. The system will then bring the proper people into the project space and notify them. 

This system reduced: time spent getting projects setup, missed opportunities and communication problems throughout the project. This resulted in increased project capacity, happier customers, reduced time between design iterations, and over all better project flow.      

Support 

We are here to work with you and support your development and integration projects. We will be providing support for the API via our webforums as well as direct support at our (support at conceptshare dot com) email address. 

I look forward to hearing about the ways that people would like to work with this. A big thanks to our faithful users who have supported ConceptShare since our inception. We appreciate all the people we have talked to about this, we have listened to what you wanted and put it in the very comprehensive API. Thank you for the support that you continue to give to us as we grow.

If you have a question call us. If you have a suggestion tell us. If you want to talk about how this can help your organization call me. 

Show us what you can do!

Cheers 

Scott 

 

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Posted in ConceptShare, Development, Innovation, Tools ~ 7 Comments
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I am a big fan of Michael Geist…. he seems to be the only one really looking out for our rights as Canadian members of the digital community. He has sounded the alarm on one very interesting case of Bell Canada throttling DSL connections. I started to think about this …. why would ma’Bell want to throttle connections …..and why now   From where I stand they have absolutely nothing to gain from stopping torrents. What if this move was something more insidious, something that they had everything to gain? What if this is a play that surrounds the olympics … the last bastion of open competition? I had mentioned previously that NBC is going to have the most kick ass offering for the olympics.  2200 hours of full HD coverage of all sports. Presented to you on your desktop. Watchable when you want.  Would that give Bell the incentive to cap DSL? Well I guess it would if they had interest in a TV station that was presenting the olympics …… oh wait they do ….What if this play was nothing more then the first steps in making sure you turned to CTV to watch the next olympics? While CBC still has the rights for this olympics …the next ones belong to CTV …which is conveniently owned by Bell. So knowing that there is going to be a loss of revenue thru Canadian channels and that more people will watch the online coverage how can we ensure that people watch our ads on our TV stations. After spending 210 million on the rights I would have to assume that every eyeball will count. So in preparing for the sale of next olympic sponsors they want to be sure that there is going to be good data to show advertisers how many people watch the coverage on TV. So it was very easy for the sale of this years olympic advertising. Here is what people did, here is what they watched , here is the growth over the last events.

 Salt Lake City 

Global consumption of the Winter Olympics reached record levels. In the USA each of the 187 million people who tuned into the event, watched on average 29 hours over the two weeks – astonishing considering the choices available to American viewers. In Norway (29 hours), Finland (22 hours) and Canada (19 hours), consumption was also huge, made more impressive by the fact that the audience reach in these countries was in the region of 95% of the population – almost every person in those countries spent most of their television time watching the Olympics in the two weeks. 

 

Salt Lake City  

Canadians were treated to almost 700 hours of Salt Lake coverage, equating to 41 hours of Winter Games broadcasting every day of the Games on three channels, more than anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. A decision by the broadcasters to show this much coverage was vindicated by a very successful Games for the Canadian Olympic team and record television audiences. Canada’s thrilling victory over the US in the Men’s Ice Hockey Final on the final day of the Games, which attracted a peak audience of 10.5 million viewers and a massive 36 average rating was the all time highest  television audience for a single programme in Canada. 

 

Athens 

In Canada, the Athens 2004 Olympic Games broadcast was a great success as viewer hours exceeded those from Sydney 2000 by 7%, establishing a new record for summer Olympic Games.  

 

Torino

Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games coverage in Canada was extensive,with broadcasters CBC,TSN and RDS offering a combined total of 557 hours of programming. The experience of the Games was eagerly anticipated,with each television viewer in Canada consuming more than 11 hours of coverage.   

 

 

All facts and figures provided by the olympic website.

 

So now what happens when this years stats come out and they indicate that a overwhelming number of Canadains watched online live coverage on NBC.com? How does that help the Ad sales? If I was an advertiser I would want to find out how I get on NBC.com. So could this be the first steps of ensuring that your audience wants to watch on TV? Providing you with the data you need to sell adds at a premium?  Could this throttling be nothing more then an ad revenue play under the guise of stopping file sharing? I guess this is the long tail problem of convergence.  As the largest (I think) provider of internet connectivity in Canada this gives them the power to ensure that people don’t find the online experience as fulfilling as watching your good old TV feed. I guess we will have to wait and see the stats on the coverage that NBC is going to deliver. Will the Canadian viewership rise as in the past or will it go online? I know that I will be watching all my coverage on NBC’s online coverage. Sorry CBC … you just aren’t flexible enough for my lifestyle.  CheersScott  ÂÂ

    

   

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I am a big fan of the stuff that is going on over at Joost. A while back they were looking to do some testing on the newest addition to the Joost player. The ability to stream live to the world from the laptop using Joost. They were looking for people to help them test this new cool addition. I gladly obliged and became part of the test which lasted for most of the day.The test was nothing more then some videos being streamed live from a camera pointed at a monitor. As the day wore on you would see people walking by and then at the end of the test a hand reached in and thanked the participants and reminded people to take the time to do the survey. The survey was a quick documentation on our feedback through out the experiment ….and it had a tidy little offer of a gift certificate. 75 gbp to be exact.I did the survey as I know that is sort of the point of these beta experiments.  Well as it turns out I was one of the people who got a gift certificate….yah me.   So I am really looking forward to the release of this new feature from Joost. Should prove to be even more disruptive. Cheers Scott

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How do we as Canadian tech community members spread far and wide across this great country connect and become part of a cohesive community that is there to help foster the innovation happening any where in Canada? I feel that I can speak with some sense of expertise on this as we has been digital commuters for the last 3 years or so.  We are prime examples of why we need to build a community that is going to span beyond the borders of 416/514/604 area codes.  I would much rather make Canada a Silicon Valley vs one specific area holding that title.  There have been a few interesting pieces written lately about a Canadian Tech Community Jevon’s post from startup north and David Crow had a great post … even Rick from JLA had an interesting prespective from a VC standpoint.  I wanted to take the notion a step further. How do we do it? Actually bring about some sort of ecosystem into existence? What needs to be done so that a company from Sudbury, Ottawa, Halifax, Moncton, Lethbridge or any points between can be active within a national community. I think the initial frameworks has been established through all the *camps that have been conducted across Canada and has gotten us to this point. How do we continue this on and span the country in an always on kind of way.   Here are things that I think if brought together in the right way could lead to something cool.   

Who is who – I think that a collective raise your hands in the air “Hi my name is Scott I am an ….” is really needed. We need to have a social network that can will allow for the base of communication. There needs to be a place where we can find Canadians who:

• might  be interested in what we are doing 
• might be doing something interesting, 
• have a rad technology
• want to beta test 
• can give UI feedback 
• might be able to introduce us to someone who can help 
• have been there before  

Video – This seems like a Herculean task but I think as a group we can figure out some way to make it happen. There are lots of great things going on all over this country every single day. We are holding different camps for RoR, Drupal meetups, ajax and flash camps …. all great to the people who happen to be in the room but of no value to the people that are not able to be there. I can only imagine the great bits of knowledge that is being shared and could really be useful to people whom aren’t able to muster the support for a barcamp or tech meet-up in their own community.  How can we as a group compile a digital reference library of these talks, presentations , barcamps etc. Make them available to the members of the community?   

Showcase –  Where is the listing of tech companies in Canada? I think there should be a place where we can showcase what we are doing, a quick reference for all cool tech’s that are Canadian. This would help companies make connections with others located north of the border. 

Collaborative Spaces - We are a part of the Toronto Tech Skype Group which is a place where all the people that are part of the Toronto Startup Tech community can drop into to ask questions, give advice and generally be part of the community. We are also part of a skype startup chat with 8 or so company leaders that give us a place to share ideas, ask questions and get feed back. This has been a valuable resource for us. Being located off the beaten path this has allowed us to be a part of discussions that we would have never been privy to.    

Physical Events – Physical events are required and are going to happen regardless example: Barcamps, Democamps, casecamps. Being part of the community prior only makes the importance grow. I am also more likely to hop a plane to Vancouver if I am familiar with some of the people that are going to be there, have interacted with them and listened and watched talks they have given, read stuff they have written… etc.  

This is certainly a 50000 ft view of what I think. Is it the answer? Who knows. All I hope is that someone out there will agree with me and tell someone else and it will spread.  I have a few people in mind that I think could certainly help. Need some feedback from across the country.  Am I out to lunch or is this a viable thing? It will require you to your civic egos aside and think from a nation wide perspective.  

Cheers Scott

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Written by Scott

I am having a real negative reaction to the whole Kelsey’s new campaign. How dare you defile my memories of a great show and try to slide in and be the place where everyone knows my name. I was there last week …. you weren’t glad I came nor did you know my name. I looked around and I didn’t find anyone with problems that were the same.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is wrong ? I mean I know from the marketing departments point of view it is a coup of monstorous proportions ?  Personally I think that this is a cop out for real creative. How can this be called creative ? Ok so we have this song from a famous show about a bar …. lets sub in our restaurant for the bull and finch and nobody will be on to us. I have been to the Bull and Finch in Boston. I didn’t get the same feeling when I walked into Kelsey’s. There seems to be a lot of people feeling the same way about the ad. 

The closing line is Cheers to good food ? Come on ….I smell a brand hijacking.    

 

So does it make people look at the TV when the song plays …yes it does ….do they look because they think it is Cheers …I know I did. Was I let down ….yes. Does that make it a success … probably. 

If you want the true experience of Cheers …. i suggest going to the Bull and Finch around the Beacon Hill area of Boston. You will find the true outdoor shots that that were used for the TV show. They also have a true replica of the bar at Cheers Boston. 

Cheers

Scott

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One of the best designers I have had the fortune of working with has decided to step out on his own and take on the world. Let me be the first to say it is about time! Curt Lazure, not only a great guy but a hell of a designer who gets “it”. The interesting part of the story is that Chris Daoust and myself both worked for that same company at one point.   

Curt had been the center of all thing creative that came out of our former employer. Being a mid sized firm it forced all of us to be masters at many different skill sets under the guise of one job title. I truly admire Curt’s ability to move between 3d animation, web-design, traditional print to Large format with incredible ease and expertise. He has managed some incredible projects for Ontario Lottery, MBNA Canada, Ontario Power Authority, Laurentian University and so many more that I would need this whole post to communicate them all.

Curt sums it up with these words “I really like to focus on building corporate brands, it allows me to delve into all facets of the client needs. My broad skill set enables me to be involved across the entire process from the creative idea to the implementation across the all of the various medias.” 

I think I have convinced Curt to also be a guest writer on Thoughtballoons. He will be looking at design tricks, tips and other curiosities of the design world. He was a bit hesitant about the idea, but figures that he has more then a few tricks that he has learned over the years that he would like to share.

So in the mean time if you are looking for a great designer. Please give curt a shout. He is a great guy who would be a great asset to your design project. He is also a fan of ConceptShare, so distance is no problem.    

  

This is one of my favorite 3d pieces that he has done. If you think this is scary you should see the whole dinosaur.      

 

Here is one that is a lot softer. This campaign has been very successful and has outdone the clients expectations!  

So don’t take my word for it, give curt a shout to talk about your project. He can be reached at curt.lazure (at) gmail (dot) com

Congrats Curt ….

Cheers

Scott

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We rolled in to the sin city in the early afternoon.  It wasn’t the hot afternoon we were expecting but after leaving in sub sub zero temperatures it was a welcome relief. This was the third Mix that Microsoft has held. This years event was held at the Venitian think big casino with huge convention space. The location was great although like most conferences I think they underestimate the popularity of some of the sessions and put them in small rooms. 

There was some expectation of a new release or announcement, which turned out to be IE8 and silverlight 2.0. These may have only been new versions they did show a lot of refinement, it is sometimes better to have improvements vs new tools.  Microsoft did a great job of keeping people fed and energized for the long days of sessions, as the days went on there was alot more redbull being consumed. (note: 2 redbulls back to back is one to many)  The sessions times were jammed with interesting sessions aimed at business, creative and developers streams with lots of overlap sessions. Most of the sessions were very well done and I applaud the presenters.  I have also come to the conclusion that panels are boring as hell unless the moderator is great.

It is very interesting to see the evolution of the entire tool mix that Microsoft is putting forward.  They are putting forward very compelling reasons to choose their approach and technologies.  Beyond the initial learning curve the tool set allows for rapid applications deployment. Microsoft has this tendency to enter into markets late and 3 versions later you would swear they invented the category. I had concern over the adoption for the silverlight plugin. This seems to be under control 1.5 million daily downloads. I see this growing was those wanting to watch the olympics online will need to have this installed when the stuff for the olympics is in the wild. What a great deployment strategy! People are going to be watching online, there is more coverage online, the feeds are impressive quality …. they are going to want the silverlight plugin.

I was impressed by the stuff that Microsoft has going on. This isn’t the company that it was 5 years ago. They have lots of smart people working on incredible stuff. There is more sense of community responsibility and are working very hard to be open, illustrated by a number of announcements regarding code release as open source. I wasn’t really expecting that much innovation by such a large company to be honest.  

So the question of the day is .. would we switch ConceptShare to Silverlight?  Today no, V3 who knows. Would we try Silverlight for some of the other ideas that we want to roll out? … there is a good chance. We had a lot of questions answered about what can be done. I think it comes down to wether or not we have the time to spend learning Silverlight and become experts in it. We will be talking to some of the great developers we met and learn more from their experiences. We were very impressed by the leaps forward that Silverlight and all of the showcased technologies have shown.  Keep pushing the limits! 

Big thanks to the Microsoft crew and all the support they are showing. the Microsoft Canada guys have been extremely helpful in helping us understand what is different about Microsoft now vs the Microsoft of old.  It is refreshing to see such a dedicated group supporting the innovation that is occurring north of the border.  Keep up the great job guys ! So to all the people that we met from all over the world thanks for making my time in the Sin city a great experience. We left there with our heads spinning with the new stuff that is possible. We have left there with lots of inspiration. 

Cheers ÂÂ
Scott  �

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I have felt the gut wrenching pain that every computer user dreads. It is possibly the single worst thing that can happen to you. Your hard drive fails. In trying to make sense of it I liken it to a mix of loosing your memory, having a girlfirend leave you, your best friend telling you your a jerk and never talking to you followed by a swift kick in the nuts. I put some closure to it with this letter.

My harddrive,
I don’t know where we went wrong. Everything seemed so good between us. I know we have had problems with other parts of our relationship. But we got new screens and I thought you would get along with the new logic board we just installed. I thought everything was working out fine. You seemed happy.You didn’t drop hints to me like the other peripherals did, no flickering screen or odd sounds. You were purring like a kitten, happy with the changes we had made to those other parts.

Did I push you too hard? I know imovie is a pain in the ass but I didn’t think it would be the end of it…. was it too many emails always writing in the same place over and over. I am not a fan of repetition either … but that is life. I know you are only a 5400 but my eyes never wandered to those racy 7200’s. Sure I know they are faster, but I only just looked. Anything I said about wanting a faster drive was only just in jest …… Doesn’t the saying go “it doesn’t matter where you get your appetite as-long as you come home for dinner? I always came back to you.

So now that you are gone I am left to pick up the pieces. Fragments of your former self scattered in a drive gone bad. Bits and pieces of my digital life strewn all over for me to rummage thru and pick up the pieces. I took care of you …never running you on my lap, always keeping an eye to make sure you didn’t get too hot. I did everything right ….but you let me down. You have been relegated to a cheap enclosure now, no more room for you in my Mac. You are now a point of curiosity. Soon to be something we only laugh about.

I knew when I went to see the Genius that things were more final this time. He was more serious then my other Genius encounters. It was Vegas but this Genius wasn’t making any bets that my drive was coming back to me. He said things like “your just rolling the dice, it is a crapshoot revealing with every vegas’esque comment that things weren’t looking too good. He hit me with the stinger comment … like he had been down this dirty road before …….”did you back up?” Of course I had backed up, but was it enough …did I back up my email? contacts, bookmarks …..the questions raced thru my head as I pondered the reality of no harddrive and the backup being 3000 km away.

I am in a new relationship now. This one seems to be as good as you were. But there is a difference this time. Your cruel intentions have jaded me. I can’t trust another one. You have made me so wary of committing my self that I am looking for alternatives, other ways. I am not going to be a one drive guy any more. I am going to be playing around more ….thats right I am going to get around.

I am heading online into the cloud for my fix. You won’t be able to play this cruel joke on me any more. I quit calling my second drive my “backup drive” I realized that gave me a false sense of security, it became external 1. I started questioning all my relationship with your kind, you’re every where, my xbox, ipod, home computer ….i trust you with every thing that is digitally important to me. I am telling others about you. How they could be setting them selves up for a really hard fall. I am telling them names like Carbonite, and Mozy to put in their digital lexicon. They will see the light.

I hope I can look back at these days and laugh at when loosing digital stuff happened. I guess we will have to wait and see. It only makes me wonder ….what if that really big drive in the cloud goes down? See what you have made me …. I am suffering from driveus failureus paranoia.

Screw you hard drive. I hate you.

Sincerely
Scott �

Posted in ConceptShare, Humor ~ 9 Comments
Written by Scott

We had a chance to hook up with Robert Scoble a few minutes ago here at Mix ‘08. We got talking and talked a bit about what we are up to and the conversation came to what do you guys have coming down the pipe. So we told him.

http://qik.com/video/32342 - THE VIDEO

We are just about ready to roll out the ConceptShare Desktop Companion. So we gave him a sneak peak of what we are up to. Check out his video, this is the first peak at this Adobe Air App we are just about to roll out.

We are expecting to have this on our machines for our arrival @ SXSW tomorrow. Full beta release of this will happen next week. So please keep an eye open for our announcment.

Cheers from Las Vegas

Scott  �

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