Reblogged from VentureBeat:

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Nobody talks about games as lucidly as Will Wright, the creator of blockbuster franchises from SimCity to The Sims. He discussed the future of games at the Game Horizon Live event in a live webcast this week. During his Q&A session, he talked about a wide variety of topics about where games are going.

Wright said that he was inspired by the “Cambrian” explosion of games (as in the meteoric growth of life during that epoch in Earth’s history) that has come from indie game development on app stores for smartphones, tablets and other platforms.

Read more… 3,210 more words

Reblogged from VentureBeat:

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Will Wright, the creator of blockbuster franchises like SimCity and The Sims, discussed the future of games at the Game Horizon Live event in a live webcast this week. During his Q&A session, he discussed a wide variety of topics about where games are going.

Wright said that he was inspired by the “Cambrian” explosion of games (as in the meteoric growth of life during that epoch in Earth’s history) that has come from indie game development on app stores for smartphones, tablets, and other platforms.

Read more… 2,892 more words

The guys who came to Colorado from Chicago – Harper Reed, Dylan Richard, Jason Kunesh and Chris Ganson – were like troops returning from Afganistan to a hero’s welcome. Which is fitting. After all, these guys are war heroes, albeit in a war of a very different kind. They’re the guys who put in 14 hour days 6-7 days a week in a battle to reelect a President. And they won.

They were smart, focused and determined. But they weren’t cocky. Far far from it. Given several opportunities to glory in their success (vs. the misfortunes of their counterparts working for Romney), they flat out refused to be critical. “Technology is hard.” That’s what they said. They knew they could have had things happen to the Obama effort that they  didn’t expect and couldn’t control. As Harper says in the Atlantic article:

“I know we had the best technology team I’ve ever worked with, but we didn’t know if it would work. I was incredibly confident it would work. I was betting a lot on it. We had time. We had resources. We had done what we thought would work, and it still could have broken. Something could have happened.”

That generosity of spirit was evident throughout the conversations I witnessed – during their lunchtime panel hosted at Newsgator, during the dinner at Cholon Bistro and afterward when we were just hanging out together at The Kitchen.

And here’s the real thing: they cared about making a difference, about making the world a better place. And because they really really do want to make they world a better place, they were clear that they weren’t willing to sacrifice what is most important – integrity and honor – to ensure a victory that could only have been hollow if it had to be achieved by compromising their values. Call me crazy, but I like that. No, I love that. Maybe I feel that way because I identify with a certain midwestern purity of heart that I thought I saw in them. Or maybe I just like connecting with folks that I think are the real deal, folks who really are making a difference in the world and who choose to use the talent, experience and drive they have to “be the difference.”

Any way, you can learn a bit more about the team’s visit here: http://www.disruptcolorado.com/2-uncategorised/27-ofaco

And you should check out J.B.’s blog post, “Stuff – an extensive and heartfelt “thank you” to all the people who helped make the visit so compelling – and there were many people involved to be sure. I’m just grateful I got the chance to connect for a few moments. A huge thank you to the dream team, J.B Holston and everyone else who made this happen.

I’m hoping we can get them back again soon. Maybe in the fall for Denver Startup Week or 10.10.10.

Erik Mitisek, Chairman Built in Denver

If you haven’t seen it yet, please check Built in Denver, the new website that focuses on the staartup and entrepreneurial activities happing in and around Denver, Colorado. Members, events, companies, blogs, jobs and more come together on the site as a go-to resource for those living in or near Denver and those outside Denver who want to know more about the City of Denver, Denver entrepreneurship, Denver startups and more.

A great thank you to Erik Mitisek, Built in Denver’s Chairman, for the legwork that went in to pulling this together.

Why “Built in Denver?” Why not “Built in Colorado?” Or “Built in America?”

For me the answer to this question goes to two key issues. First, focus. We want Denver to have a resource that allows the entire community to pull together and amplify the voices, opportunities, entrepreneurs, startups and supporting resources that make Denver one of the best places on the planet to live and work. A different, “Built in Colorado,” theme could accomplish only a part of that and “Built in America” rather misses the point – of focus – entirely.

The second issue is promotion. In Brad Feld’s recent book, Startup Communities, Brad describes his Boulder Thesis. (It’s a great book and a great read, by the way.) Brad didn’t choose “‘Boulder’ Thesis” to diss Denver (or Palo Alto). But he acknowledged that by using this term, he was promoting Boulder and the great entrepreneurs and startups in Boulder.

Teaching Lean – Thinking Like and Agilist

“Built in Denver” operates in that same spirit. We want to promote Denver – not at the expense of other great cities in Colorado – but in a way that proves beneficial to the entire state and this regional ecosystem.

What’s happening in Denver that warrants this focus? Many, many things. Denver Startup Week, from October 22nd – 27th, has to have been one of the biggest most compelling events for startups in the Denver’s history. More than 70 events. Incredible events that were so well attended they often required larger venues to accommodate all the people who signed up.

And during Denver Startup Week, Galvanize had its coming out party. With capital, a curriculum, community leaders, a beautiful, well designed space, and a great team to support it, Galvanize captured even more attention that it had during the i4C campaign.

Before Denver Startup Week, I was fortunate to serve as a judge as ten teams delivered their Denver Startup Weekend pitches. Jon Rossi did an incredible job pulling this together and is to be commended along with each of the organizers, teams and judges who devoted their time and energy.

Jon Rossi

But the real story of what’s happening right now in Denver is about the entrepreneurs and startups that have embraced the City of Denver as never before. Lodo is crawling with them! Built in Denver is a great way to call attention to this and give credit where credit is due: to the founders and entrepreneurs who are building new companies and the supporting institutions – including the academic institutions (MetroState, CU Denver, and DU); Michael B. Hancock, Mayor of Denver; Paul Washington, Executive Director, Office of Economic Development, City and County of Denver; and Tami Door, President & CEO, Downtown Denver Partnership.

It bears mentioning that we still have a lot of work to do. Startups – like infants – are dependent and in need of care and feeding. Without this, they don’t survive and certainly don’t realize their full potential. I’ll leave to another post a discussion of the list of things that startups require, but among them are entrepreneurial leadership, mentors, sources of capital, an affordable pool of talent, and a supportive community that includes academic institutions and state and local government.

It is my sincere belief that the future of Denver and of Colorado is being shaped right now. Think of it as the new frontier, perilous and not for the faint of heart, but offering the promise of an amazing future.

By now, many of you have heard about the debacle faced by Facebook / Instagram over changes to Instagram’s terms of service. The blowback from this change was so substantial, so pervasive – across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and more – that Instagram’s Founder, Kevin Systrom, was compelled to do an extensive blog post apologizing for the confusion. As Kevin says in the post:

Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

But there are two important things to note here.

First, Facebook’s acquisition has a very clear historical parallel in Google’s purchase of YouTube. Like Google’s purchase of YouTube, Instagram represented for Facebook both a huge opportunity and a way to neutralize what might have become a substantial threat. Recent reports have indicated that Twitter tried to buy Instagram only a short time before Facebook mounted its successful bid.

But Facebook is not in the same position as Google was when Google acquired another exploding startup, YouTube. At that time, Google had its own video service (just as Facebook had its own photo sharing service when it acquired Instagram), but Google also had very very significant and growing revenues from its core business. As a result, Google was under far less pressure to turn its acquisition into a revenue-producing contributor to its bottom line. That gave YouTube time to experiment. And plenty of time to continue to build a huge audience.

Facebook is not in the same comfortable position. Yes, it has been a juggernaut. Yes it has completed an IPO and has lots of cash. And yes it has enormous numbers of users. It also has substantial pressure to generate revenue. It cannot afford to take its time with Instagram. That is why it moved, as it did, to make substantial changes to its privacy policy and its terms of service.

But there is a second important issue in the Instagram TOS debacle that has not been widely referenced in the media. Both Facebook and Instagram have been built with consumers in mind first and foremost. And the mantra has always been about connecting people. In a letter accompanying its IPO filing, Mark Zuckerberg extended this mission to businesses:

We hope to improve how people connect to businesses and the economy.

We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.

But here’s the thing.  Instagram wasn’t built for businesses. And this shows up plainly in its recent misstep. The TOS changes that Instagram made might have been far more tolerable were the service only focused on consumers. These days, however, some very significant brands are using Instagram. National Geographic, for example, warned yesterday that it was seriously considering shutting down its Instagram account, and today SFGate reports that it has actually taken the step of suspending its Instagram account. Why? Because the policies that might work for consumers are fundamentally intolerable for businesses.

National Geographic cannot continue to create content that would be owned and controlled exclusively by Instagram. Forbes writes:

National Geographic has announced that it will stop posting pictures to Instagram. The move comes after the photo-sharing social network introduced a controversial new terms of service agreement that sparked fears it would be able to sell users’ uploaded images.

To be fair, Kevin Systrom points out clearly in yesterday’s blog post that this is not Instagram’s position or intention.

Ownership Rights Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period.

But the implication was there, and the fear about this was great. No major brand can suffer its content to be included in advertisements without prior approval.

I think Instagram understands this. It will certainly do whatever it can to address these issues as is evident from another excerpt in Kevin’s blog post:

Advertising on Instagram From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

To provide context, we envision a future where both users and brands alike may promote their photos & accounts to increase engagement and to build a more meaningful following. Let’s say a business wanted to promote their account to gain more followers and Instagram was able to feature them in some way. In order to help make a more relevant and useful promotion, it would be helpful to see which of the people you follow also follow this business. In this way, some of the data you produce — like the actions you take (eg, following the account) and your profile photo — might show up if you are following this business.

The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question. Our main goal is to avoid things like advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience. Instead, we want to create meaningful ways to help you discover new and interesting accounts and content while building a self-sustaining business at the same time.

Here’s the bottom line. Instagram successfully harnessed the enormous enthusiasm users have for capturing interesting photographs and using those photographs to communicate with others – friends, family, strangers with similar interests, or customers of a business. At some point, businesses will be able to take full advantage of the kind of power that Instagram delivered for the benefit of consumers. That may happen through Instagram (as a part of Facebook), or it may happen because another service delivers on the promise that Instagram presents to businesses and their customers. We’ll have to see. In the meantime, Instagram will have to be very careful about how it communicates with its customers. It isn’t just about consumers anymore.

Yesterday Vokl submitted its application, Vokl Business, to Apple’s app store. We’ve been working on this iPhone app since mid-July, and I have to tell you I’m excited to see it in action.

The idea behind the app and the business is simple. We wanted to build an iPhone app that could be a kind of “show and tell” for businesses. As you might expect, the immense success of Instagram was certainly part of the inspiration. A seemingly simple app, Instagram let people take photos, apply filters and post the result – instantly – to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more. Instagram was so good, it actually made my lame photos look good.

Even before Facebook indicated its interest in acquiring Instagram, the company had acquired 30 million active users. By the time the Facebook acquisition had closed, Instagram was at 50 million users and growing, and today it boasts 100 million users (while Facebook itself just announced that it had reached the 1 billion user mark.) Clearly Kevin Systrom and his team had hit upon something powerful.

I had been thinking for years about location based services and consumer engagement, particularly as smartphones and apps began to become location aware. (At one point I probably had downloaded and used iPhone apps for 100+ location based services.)  I have also believed for a long time that harnessing the power of the “camera in your pocket,” would give rise to significant opportunities for app developers on both the consumers and the merchant side of the aisle.

Still, in all of this research, testing and mental processing one thing became glaringly obvious: merchants and consumers were not taking full advantage of the smartphone and the apps created for the smartphone. Location didn’t matter very much. Most local merchants didn’t see the iPhone or Android phone as a conduit for building an intimate relationship with a customer. And most of the more innovative app developers were focused more on building their own walled gardens than on delivering the tools that merchants might use to deliver value to customers.

Vasily (Vokl’s CTO & Co-Founder) had been working with me since the Pavlov Games days, so he and I spent many hours discussing and working through these things. The two of us concluded that Vokl should build the tools and capabilities that could create a kind of bridge between merchant and consumer with an emphasis on creating a kind of “Instagram for Business.” But our larger goal is to facilitate the transition from the merchant-to-customer communications channels of today and those that will drive commerce tomorrow and in the years ahead.

If you built an “Instagram for Business,” what would it look like? How would it work?

Well, a few of the essentials are obvious: access to the iPhone’s camera, the ability to filter photos to make them look great every time, and an instant publishing capability (to your business feed, a chosen Facebook page or a designated Twitter account). But what else would businesses want?

We knew they wanted at least one thing that Instagram didn’t have. Text. They wanted the ability to add a message, a product name, a business name, store hours, a date.  You can’t do that with Instagram. But you can do it with Vokl Business.  And they wanted the text to look good. They wanted to be able to change the font, the color, the placement, the size. So we built that into the app. With Vokl Business, merchants can do all those things.

That might have been the end of it. But we discovered something even more compelling. Merchants want to be able to create great look content fast. They’re busy. They have a lot to do and little time in which to do it. So the app we gave them had to get the job done well, but it also had to do the job fast. How could we speed up the content creation process? We discovered the answer: templates.

With Vokl Business templates, your business can create content in seconds (rather than hours). Tap a template to replace the existing image. Tap the text to replace or edit the text. When you’ve finished, hit “Publish,” and pick your social network of choice. The idea here is simple, if it takes you far less time to create great content, you’ll be inclined to do it far more often.

And why would your business want to do this? You might do it because you want to show a new product to your customers. Clothing. Food. Autos. Houses. Furniture. Performing artists. You name it. Publish a photo (or several of them), with the product or business name, the date of your special, the name of the person they should talk to, and see how many “likes” you get on Facebook. Notice, too, how many new people come through the front door.

The entire Vokl team is very excited about the app, and we hope you like it too. It should be live in the app store the week of October 22nd. Please check it out, and let me know what you think.

From the Boulder Reporter: a packed house of guests heard local climate experts.

On a personal, very human level, Dan’s offer of friendship was expressed in a dozen ways. He and his wife Diane would invite Nanette and me to a play, a movie, a party or an art opening. We would celebrate Chinese New Year together. He more than once suggested we should move next door so he could come over to cook for us. I know how silly that sounds, but he meant it. I wish we had.

Dan was an artist. Check out danfriedlander.com to catch a glimpse of some of his work. It inspired me. When he was still working in marketing or sales for tech companies, Dan used to take his clay with him and create while he flew from one city to the next. He produced hundreds, no thousands, of these utterly remarkable kiln-fired tiles.

If he had only been an artist, he’d have accomplished more than most in his too short life. But Dan was much much more.

Dan was a guy who made things happen. He helped start several important groups and initiatives that took action to fight global warming including photographer and filmmaker, James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey and Clean Energy Action (CEA).

CEA describes Dan as a “planetary hero,” and that is exactly how I think of him.

Dan was also deeply involved in Shanahan Neighbors for Climate Action (SNCA), a grassroots neighborhood organization dedicated to creating a strongly connected community working together to foster a sustainable future.

In a phone conversation years ago, we talked about whether the systems and institutions that support and sustain could be tweaked and managed to drive the planet down a sustainable path. If so, what tweaking would be required? If not, what then? What if the survival of the planet necessarily meant the undoing of some of our most established ways of thinking, acting and being in the modern world? So we formed a small group to discuss some of these things, and in that group I learned over the next several years from some of the smartest people I know about coal fired power plants, work, political initiatives, grass roots initiatives, publications.

And Dan and his wife Diane hosted more fundraisers than anyone else I know. Their home was so frequently a key meeting place, open to all sorts of people who came to learn, connect, mingle, share, and contribute to the cause.

The Washington Post reported on July 17th, 2012 that a chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan had separated from Greenland’s Petermann glacier.

Andreas Muenchow, an associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware, said the glacier’s end point is now at “a location where it has not been for at least 150 years.”

Jim Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey addresses an important question: “What can I do?” To Jim’s great list, I’d add this. Do what Dan did. Talk about the problem. Get involved and connected. Organize. Host a discussion. Help raise some money. And give. Give to two of the organizations Dan helped start: Earth Vision Trust, funding the climate change education and outreach efforts of James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey, 4780 Sterling Dr., Boulder, CO  80301; and Clean Energy Action (CEA), accelerating the transition to a post-fossil-fuel world built on clean energy, Leslie Glustrom, P. O. Box 1399, Boulder, CO  80306.

The great thing about a hero: a hero inspires the heroic in others. That’s what Dan did.

I happened upon an interesting bit of writing this morning in Annie Murphy Paul’s blog “How to be Brilliant.”The post, “How Virtuosos Get So Good: ruthlessly root out your errors to achieve mastery,” is focused on world-class musicians. As Annie Murphy Paul points out,

The difference between ineffective and effective practice means the difference between mediocrity and mastery. If you’re not practicing deliberately — whether it’s a foreign language, a musical instrument or any other new skill — you might as well not practice at all.But much of the thinking here applies to startups and entrepreneurs.   

She points to a groundbreaking 1993 paper by Anders Ericsson that highlights the difference between practice and deliberate practice, a critical distinction. Ericsson clarifies the distinction in a Harvard Business Review article, “The Making of an Expert,” excerpted below:

To people who have never reached a national or international level of competition, it may appear that excellence is simply the result of practicing daily for years or even decades. However, living in a cave does not make you a geologist. Not all practice makes perfect. You need a particular kind of practice—deliberate practice—to develop expertise. When most people practice, they focus on the things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well—or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.

This, of course, is precisely what entrepreneurs and startups must do. It is often the case that startups are trying to do something that no one does well – or does at all. And the entrepreneur in such a startup is at nearly every point confronted with the challenges that attend learning to do something that the entrepreneur and the company cannot possibly do very well. Yet.

For this reason I think entrepreneurs should look closely at the the notion of “deliberate practice,” a concept that has found a wider audience through Gary Marcus’s recent book, “Guitar Zero.”

In Guitar Zero, Marcus a cognitive psychologist who applies his expertise in language, biology, and the mind to an interesting new objective: learning to play the guitar.

On the eve of his 40th birthday, Gary Marcus, a renowned scientist with no discernible musical talent, learns to play the guitar and investigates how anyone—of any age —can become musical.

The theory here is not that practice makes perfect. Rather, “practice makes permanent.” And it isn’t possessed of any bias. It makes permanent what you do well. It also makes permanent what you do badly.

This is where things become especially difficult. Most of us know how to do a few things very well. It is those things that have helped us achieve the measure of success we’ve experienced so far. Some people know how to do quite a few things very well. And to make things even more complicated, deep domain knowledge (not just things I can do, but things I know and have a deep understanding about) is often in shorter supply than basic skill (programming, marketing, finance, sales). The universe of things we can’t do very well and things we don’t know very much about is vastly larger than the universe of things we do well and understand thoroughly.

So when it comes to the entrepreneurial version of “deliberate practice,” how do we pick the things that should occupy our focus and attention? In other words, which of the many things we can’t do well (or at all) do we actually focus on? Do we apply some form of the 80/20 rule? Do we invest our energies and attention in the things we’re most passionate about?

And once we’ve decided what we’ll be deliberate about, what we’ll practice, how do we measure our progress?  How do we know our practice isn’t a matter of doing something badly – and doing it badly over and over – until we’ve managed to thoroughly bake it in?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.