Startup Life
Technology. Startups. Venture Capital. My Life.
Posts tagged 2010
TEDxToronto 2010 Coming Soon
Jul 8th
This year I got involved with TEDxToronto2010, an independently organized TED event held in the great city of Toronto. If you’ve never seen a TED event, go watch a few talks online. You’ll be inspired.
The theme for Toronto’s 2nd annual TEDx conference is “A Call to Action”. We, the organizers, want to see real change come out of the event. We want speakers to challenge attendees and we want attendees to challenge themselves and each other. A Call to Action is our challenge to everyone who comes across TEDxToronto to be passionate, excited and driven to make positive change happen.
So far, we’ve got an extremely good lineup of inspirational speakers who are doing magnificent things. The line-up (so far) includes:
- Bruce Poon Tip, Founder of GAP Adventures
- Tonya Surman, Founding Executive Director of the Centre for Social Innovation
- Dr. Catherine Zahn, President and CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
- Trey Anthony, Creator and Star of Global TV’s “Da Kink In My Hair”
My role in this event is to help drum-up some sponsorship activity. After all, what company or organization doesn’t want to be affiliated with thought leadership, passionate and driven individuals and folks that change the world?
We are currently seeking sponsors for the following categories:
- Innovation Sponsor: $10,000+
- Inspiration Sponsor: $6,000+
- Conversation Sponsor: $4,000+
- After-Party Sponsor: $2,000+
Most companies and organizations choose to sponsor TED events because they want to leverage ideas, technologies, design, and education to help create a better future; because they will be investing in the creation of a community who believe in the power of ideas worth spreading; and because they believe in bringing together corporations and individuals who want to be change agents surrounding remarkable thinking and ideas.
Please contact me or leave a comment below with your contact details if you’re interested in sponsoring this year’s TEDxToronto event. I’ll make myself available to answer any questions, concerns or comments that you have and make sure that your organization gets the spotlight it deserves at the conference!
More info @ TEDxToronto 2010 Announcement
2010 Mobile Trends via Forrester
Jan 22nd
I finally had the chance to review the 2010 mobile trends predictions from Thomas Husson, a Senior Analyst at Forrester. The report hit on a fundamental concept: mobile performed exceptionally well during the 2009 economic recession. To reflect on this, the industry has really been bullish from an M&A perspective. As the year came to an end, the M&A market began to pick up with a number of acquisitions including the now-over-hyped Google purchase of AdMob as well as the Apple acquisition of Lala (music streaming service). Thus far, 2010 has seen continued M&A activity, with emphasis on mobile advertising companies including Quattro Wireless being acquired by Apple and Ad Marvel being acquired by Opera. Larger industry players are plucking companies to secure their seat at the table to reap the profits that the mobile industry is beginning to offer maturing companies. There is also a flurry of investment activity surrounding mobile games companies (which I will leave for another post).
The 2010 Mobile Trends report offers these high level statements:
- More brands will start taking the mobile web into account in their strategies.
- Innovation in mobile payments will accelerate.
- Google will shake up the mobile navigation business.
- Location will start enabling richer mobile experiences.
- Social Computing and mobile phones will expand their love affair.
- Live mobile TV will be hyped again.
- The OS arms race will heat up.
- Application stores will continue to flourish, but none will replicate Apple’s success in 2010.
- Some operators will want to reduce their increasing dependency on Apple.
Read the Forrester blog for a deeper dive into these trends.
My $0.02 on the “Live mobile TV” Trend
If you’re a die-hard TV fan, getting live TV to your mobile phone has been around for a while from Slingbox, which allows you to stream shows from your PVR/DVR at home to a BlackBerry or iPhone. In 2010, I believe much more than live mobile TV is going to heat up in the mobile video segment. Since mobile carriers are now extending the capabilities of their networks beyond 3G, such as the multiple WiMax network deployments by Clearwire/Sprint, higher-quality mobile video finally has rails that can support its intense-bandwidth needs. This means more services that will bring consumers music videos, concerts, plays, festivals, live sporting events, tv shows (live and archived), movies (full length and in bite-sized snacks) — and my personal favourite — video-calling. I’m quietly keeping my fingers crossed that the iPhone 4G supports video calls! One last thing, mobile advertising networks will likely be the default solution to monetizing “lite” apps; as mobile video continues to build traction, watch out for hype surrounding mobile video advertising to heat up.
Personal Metrics for 2010
Jan 14th
In the early days of 2010, I have undertaken a few new year’s resolutions. One of these resolutions is to record and track a number of daily activities and fitness metrics. I was incentivized to do this by Brad Feld, whose 2009 metrics were pretty impressive! In 2010, I am going to be tracking the number of books and magazines I read (and their genre, of course), workouts (broken down by type) and logging net time as well as unique instances, daily mood (or “feeling today”) and number of hours of sleep logged. I’ve also set goals in each of these categories and I’m excited to see how the presence of a tracking mechanism affects my net performance and my choices of what I do with my ever-decreasing spare time.
There are a few tools that can help to keep track of this data for you such as Daytum, but that requires a $4/month fee; I simply created a Google Spreadsheet with inputs on one tab and a dashboard of progress on another – an economy version of sorts. Let me know if you want a copy.
Some more granular tools can keep track of some specific details if you are really into this stuff. For example, a company called Zeo has a product for $249 that tracks minute details of your night’s sleep such as time in REM and disturbances and can upload data to it’s website for further analysis and coaching on how to get a better night’s sleep; I’d love to try it, but I heard it was only semi-effective. There are also plenty of tools to track running including a suite of pedometers, GPS-enabled units and embedded heart rate monitoring to ensure that you maintain an ideal cardiac output during your workout. No need to venture into more detail here. Let me know your favourite tools that you use to track your life, workouts and whatever else you track!