meshwest

When Technology Struggles to Find a Solution

By Mark Evans in Startups 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

In the wake of Zite’s success and sale to CNN a few month ago, Zite founder Ali Davar made an interesting comment at the meshwest conference earlier this week when he said the company spent “five years in start-up hell” as it searched for a solution to take advantage of its technology.

For Zite, it was the emergence of the iPad that finally delivered the platform the window of opportunity. When asked how Zite was able to last so long before the iPad came along, he said having a low burn rate was a key consideration.

Having worked for a startup that fell into the “technology looking for a solution” category, Zite was lucky to have been able to hang on for so long until the iPad became its salvation.

For many startups, however, this scenario doesn’t work out as well. Instead, they spin their wheels for too long in the expectation it can develop a service that will resonate with users. In the startup in which I worked, this approach involved adding more features to provide the service with better usability. In the end, it didn’t attract enough users even though you could do a lot of things.

Putting Zite’s success aside, the reality about the “technology look for a solution” scenario is, for the most part, it doesn’t work. While the technology may be interesting and the entrepreneurs involved remain optimistic about its potential, it doesn’t matter much unless the technology can be leveraged in some way.

This isn’t to suggest this type of technology should be ignored or an attempt shouldn’t be made to capitalize on it, but startups need to determine fairly quickly whether something interesting enough can be developed to get the technology into the hands of people.

More:

- A Smart Bear has a good post on how a bad idea can eventually resonate as it evolves into something people actually want to use.

- TechRepublic also has a post on the technology looking for a solution scenario. It suggests the solution is to “continually ask yourself what problem the technology is solving, and if the cure is better than the disease.”

meshwest: See Ya Next Year, Calgary

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

Screen shot 2011 06 07 at 8 23 00 AMEven though mesh has been around since 2006 and established itself as one of Canada’s leading Web conferences, there is always some anxiousness when we (aka the mesh gang) launch a new event.

Some of the questions we ask ourselves is whether there’s room in the market for a new conference, can we put together compelling programming, and will people pay for something with no track record. It was with some trepidation that we launched meshmarketing in 2009, particularly given the economic downturn had pounded marketing budgets. With some luck and great content, we’ve established a pretty strong foundation for meshmarketing.

So when we decided to pull the trigger on meshwest, there was a combination of excitement and trepidation. We always wanted to take mesh national, and the time had come to either do it or shelve the idea. In the end, we decided it was a good idea, and we launched meshwest last week in Calgary.

With a mixture of happiness and relief, meshwest got off to a great start. We had a full house at the University of Calgary that were engaged and enthusiastic. And we had a great line-up of speakers – people such as Tobias Lutke, Keith Boulis, Danny Robinson, Dan Debow and Mark MacLeod that came in from out of town, and a local crew led by Doug Lacombe and Greg Hounslow.

As important, we met lots of interesting people and made some great connections that will only help us make the next meshwest in Calgary even better – along with meshevents in Edmonton and Vancouver later this year. From a personal perspective, it was insightful to get a handle on the local high-tech community.

Some of the highlights from last week include:

- The keynote conversation with Shopify.com CEO Tobias Lutke. Shopify is one of Canada’s most successful Web companies with an e-commerce platform that has more than 15,000 customers that generate sales of about $250-million. Lutke provided some great insight into how to start a business, the ways to maintain a healthy corporate culture, and how Ottawa-based Shopify has financed its growth.

- The panel featuring Leigh Himel, Sarah Dickinson and WestJet’s Greg Hounslow, which was focused on how companies can establish a strong foundation to succeed with social media. Hounslow provided hands-on insight into what it’s like to operate a corporate social media program, while Himel and Dickinson

- The Twitter panel with Allyson Simpson, Tony Rino and William Bakker. Rather than talk about the strategy or the tools, the panelists offered up first-hand experiences in using Twitter to drive marketing campaigns and business. In particular, Simpson charmed the audience by talking about how the Melrose Cafe has used Twitter to build a community and attract business.

Here’s a video of Doug Lacombe talking about the social media landscape in Calgary:

Doug Lacombe Talks About Calgary’s Social Media Scene from Mark Evans on Vimeo.

Calgary, Here We Come!

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: , ,

Screen shot 2011 06 07 at 8 23 00 AMFive years ago, five guys walked into a bar….

It may sound like the beginning of a good joke but the punchline is the five guys decided to create a conference so people could talk about all the exciting things happening on the Web. The conference, mesh, has become a lot bigger, and we’ve branched out by adding more events (meshmarketing and meshU) but the core of what we set out to do in 2006 still holds true today.

As much as mesh has turned into a business, what motivates the five of us is being able to feed off our enthusiasm about new trends, development, start-ups and interesting people to put on conferences. These events are a lot of work but terribly satisfying.

We always thought about mesh as being something for Canada, even though none of us imagined holding events in other cities. After all, we were five guys with no conference experience. Tomorrow, however, mesh takes a big step forward with the launch of meshwest in Calgary. It’s a one-day event that we hope will help us establish a presence in Western Canada and, as important, make mesh truly national.

In some ways, it feels daunting to being adding more events given we all have full-time jobs. On the other hand, it’s exciting to watch something grow and evolve into something you never imagined.

We’ve got a great line-up of speakers at meshwest, headed by a keynote conversation with Shopify.com co-founder Tobias Lutke. What’s nice about meshwest is there’s a good balance of speakers coming in from out of town, along with local talent such as Greg Hounslow, Doug Lacombe, Tony Rino, Allyson Simpson and William Bakker.

We’re looking forward to a great day of conversations and new connections tomorrow. If you’d like to join us, tickets can be purchased here.

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