Digital Crema

Microsoft Has Lost Its Way

The Empire has fallen. Yes, that is a radical statement when referring one of the few truly dominant companies of the computer age, but Microsoft appeared at SXSW as a directionless, poorly orchestrated mass of unrelated products. More than their marketing efforts though, the truer measure was their complete absence from the conversation.

In presentations, except their own sponsored speakers, in the hallways of the Austin Convention Center, and among those of us that observe and comment on this industry, Microsoft was completely missing. The people that brought you Bob and Zune and powered Bill Gates to victory in the richest man in the world pageants of the 1990s are now an afterthought. They have serious work to do before they capture the imagination of the world’s most talented recruits, before they pre-sell millions of units of a new product based on reputation alone and before they turn core services into a widely used verb. Yes, that is the case for Apple and Google, and they now perceived as now. Microsoft? They now perceived as then, as IBM before them.

I have no stake in this opinion, and I own no stock of the above mentioned firms, dammit. But as someone that started my career as a Microsoft assimilator - converting Novell networks to the new game in town and informing hapless NetWare geeks the train has left the station with their gig - I was struck by how the cycle seemed complete. Microsoft products are now apologized for - my office makes me use this or that - and its clear their old cash cows - Office, Windows - are under attack from firms large and small. In the new world order of technology, people have is corporate computing. A company built on brutal licensing deals and copycat design cannot grow in this environment.

Microsoft doesn’t do their own products, when those products are new and vying for attention, any favors either. A fine example was the Blogger Lounge. This room full of Mac users banging away at their OS X laptops while talking and twittering on their iPhones was symbolic of the problem. I had to ask someone, “so, who paid for all this food?” because the sponsor wasn’t immediately obvious. The answer was Windows Phone.

Windows Phone is based on what is being called Windows 7 Mobile. WinMo 7 - not to be confused with WinLarry or WinCurly - follows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista, if you are still counting. Regardless, as a mobile developer and consultant on all things digital, I wanted to give the new mobile platform its due and ask a representative in attendance a very basic question.

What do the developers on my team need to know to build games and applications for Windows Mobile?

The answer was shockingly stupid. They, Microsoft, have someone here, SXSW, that knows this information but can’t say until after a press release that was happening soon.

So this room full of Mac users is sponsored by a device that will appear in 6 months and will offer applications built with, well, something.

Awesome. Sign me up.

The Microsoft trade show booth didn’t fare much better. They were giving out hats for some product called Windows Azure. I admit I don’t keep up with Windows versions, but I don’t like being out of the loop, so I asked around for explanations. Pointing at the logo on my hat, I asked no less than 10 other attendees, including some real geeks hanging out at the various web hosting booths, what Azure was all about. The 10th person, admittedly, could tell me something about it. Up to that point, I was 0 for 9 and given mostly blank stares.

Yes, its two minor examples, but considering that this show was full of people ahead of the curve and steering the trends of their respective industries, Microsoft is not in a good place right now. A few hits could turn the ship around, but at least in the spring of 2010, the annoying and uncanny ability of Bill Gates to capture the market and crush adversaries seemed a distant memory.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Tim Ferriss and the Cult of Celebrity

I was walking through the trade show floor at SXSW and was blocked by a long line of people holding the same book. The following conversation took place with a person in line.

“What is this line for?”, I asked.
“Porn stars signing autographs.”
“Seriously? For what company?”
“No, just kidding. We keep getting asked that, but we are waiting to meet Tim Ferriss.”
“Well, you aren’t too far off then. He publicly strokes himself. But hey, have fun with that.”

I was obviously referring to Tim’s well known ego - you only have to read his acclaimed best seller The Four Hour Workweek to know Mr. Ferriss is really in love with his own opinions. I have nothing to say about his personal life, and don’t pretend to know the guy. I don’t begrudge his fame either, as plenty of people that didn’t know about virtual companies, outsourced secretarial help, Inbox zero concepts, and Google AdWords probably benefitted from his work. But I don’t get - and never have - why people must create celebrities.

My path may cross, and has before, with someone of great success, but I don’t have the gene mutation or upbringing or whatever it is to elevate these people to such status. Yes, good book. If a best selling author and I have something to talk about, that’s fine too. But to wait in an hour long line during such a busy time as SXSW to do the flip my iPhone over and try to line it up to take a picture of me with Tim Ferriss and still be able to tap the camera button on the back which I can’t see but hang on I think I got it dance for 15 seconds of conversation is, to me, a giant waste of time. Ironic, of course, since 4 Hour goes to great lengths to encourage people to make maximum use of their time and be efficient.

The most remarkable thing about the Tim Ferriss line was that SXSWi is full of people that are equally, or some cases wildly more, successful than even a best selling author. I met 3 or 4 venture capital people, for example. These people can write checks the size of the annual budget of a small nation. Their opinions make and break fortunes, steer industries, and create jobs of all types. But they are anonymous. I shared a cab with a guy from a Menlo Park venture firm, and while he was reasonably well dressed - in a hipster, on the way to the gym, way - you’d never suspect him as someone that could turn your web app into a Google acquisition target or IPO candidate.

Others you meet are angels in waiting for small startups, like vested employees of popular search engines that are barely old enough to drink but will spend the next 60 to 80 years without any pressure to make a living. These are powerful connections, and when you find them - generally by themselves or in small groups of people - and the last thing they usually would converse about by choice is work, or even technology.

So while its all fine and good to post on your blog that you met Tim Ferriss, it may not be what you need to meet the dreamlines he suggested you create for yourself.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Old Conversations are Social Suicide

At SXSW, the newest new thing is discussed at every turn. This isn’t to be mistaken as a bunch of Apple Fanboys running around waiting for the new 10 Commandants to appear to Steve on an iPad, though you may find a few on 6th Street late at night. The new thing may be in mobile. But it may be a new social network, or a flavor or a use or some mashup that matters for its innovation.

Regardless of what the new thing is, networking with people you find at SXSW requires you have an opinion. Love or hate or be impartial about the iPhone for a reason. Use Twitter or explain why your startup is a better idea. Don’t just complain about the lines at The Apple Store or that outsourcing is bad for American jobs.

If there is a common thread in the conversations I entered and exited, it was that no one has time for the old thing in a familiar context.

Not one Mac vs. PC debate was observed. Desktops are yesterday’s news - a glorified typewriter raised on cube farms. If you enter a discussion with that sort of regurgitated noise and don’t have something new to add, you’ll be drinking free beer by yourself talking to the guy that keeps the buffets stocked. Attention spans are low. Don’t be afraid to talk, but don’t repeat Mashable or what you found on Digg, because we all saw the same post or we wouldn’t be attending SXSWi.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Freelance Nation 2.0: Startup Nation

The last decade of up and down employment numbers made plenty of us give up on finding a job and turn into permanent contract mercenaries. We don’t trust the machine to stay well oiled, and only dream offers from the likes of Google or Apple would pull us away from a life based on an intricate network of micro-businesses and clients and partners.

We had to learn to do our own taxes - or at least ask our accountant the right questions.

We buy our own health insurance, and are fairly certain we are covered. We hope.

We had to partner with rivals and rival partners.

We screwed up our credit routinely during bad months and set everything straight - or least stable - during good months.

It stands to reason that after we learned how to be Me, Inc. with a nine minute explanation of what we do for a living, the next phase would be running We, Inc.

Like growing crops from prepared soil, smart investors are noticing they just have to add advice and capital to multiply that experience. They don’t have to coach the new group of startups on breaking away from corporate America. That process has occurred naturally. The investment people don’t have to judge a founder based on GPA from Harvard unless they already have a patent or a customer base to back it up.

The new standard is doing things, not knowing things. You can’t wait for the right time or the comfortable situation because even the Post Office lays people off now. As such, even supposedly high risk endeavors like starting a business are now relatively sane compared to days past of weighing offers from Big Blue and GM.

Of course, there is one difference from the GMs of the world. If you are a big enough entity, our antiquated government will bail your operation out no matter how awful and undesirable your products have been for decades. For the rest of us, we run our personal corporations without anyone to lean on but each other.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Generation Gaps of Several Months

While the youthful attendees of SXSWi were generally plugged in and busy pitching ideas to venture people, the rest of us were not so easily grouped together. I found major differences between people only a few years apart, as the seismic shifts in the culture in the past two decades show a type of psychological geological record among the people that grew up in these times.

Just five years on either side of my age - I was born in 1974 - and you may be social media savvy with complete profiles detailing your entire life, or you may be uncomfortable with using your real name in an online form from your own bank. You may believe television is fantastic cheap entertainment by fondly remembering Seinfeld or Cheers or the original Monday Night Football, or find it a tired old medium that became turned the nightly news into a bunch of patriotic cheerleaders during Operation Desert Storm or haunted you with images of Manhattan burning.

Age is, of course, not the only determinant, as a person’s views could be much younger and much older on a given topic. I did find, however, there was quite a range  among attendees, ranging from youthfully naive in the glow of Obama’s Twitter-powered ascent to others that were negative and jaded, though they may have been younger than me, and sounded quite old and disconnected after failed businesses, blown stock options, and a lack of understanding of all these people just typing on their phones all day. All these FaceSpaced kids, it was implied, were not really working, like back in the ever changing good ol' days.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Tame Lawyers and UK Startup Incentives

It is common knowledge that each state in the US has a commission or agency that recruits filmmakers, but did you know England will pay your way to locate - even virtually - a business there? The Heart of England, a regional initiative to bring foreign businesses to the Midlands region, was at SXSW throwing out the red carpet for anyone that might possibly create a job one day.

In my examination of their pitch, I used the example of our iPhone development firm, and the list of perks they rattled off was impressive. Free advice from a tame lawyer, as the Birthplace of Top Gear calls helpful attorneys, both for formation as a subsidiary of a US corporation and for IP planning. Free accounting services, presumably from a tame accountant. Free incubator office space for 6 months, lead generation help, and - get this - a new UK credit file for you and your firm. In the bizarro world of modern business, you could be bankrupt in the colonies and lease a Jaguar in jolly ol’ England. Bloody wonderful, mate.

I honestly have no desire to relocate to the UK, much less to an area every other Brit at the conference painted as their Detroit, so the most interesting part of the pitch was that they don’t expect you to do so either. Their hope is that if your UK business takes hold and makes money throughout Europe, you’ll hire someone - one new job created! - to run this thing. If your European credit shelter, er, technology business becomes the next Facebook or Apple, well, all the better. They just ask, but don’t require, that you please don’t move the firm to Brighton like everyone else on the island recommends.

To complete the Detroit similarity, they promoted the region as the birthplace of heavy metal music. So if tax breaks and free services don’t get you excited, there is always Ozzy and AC/DC to inspire confidence in your global plan. Among numerous activities to choose from this week was a Motorhead show at Stubb’s famous BBQ and music spot, sponsored by an economic development board from England. We live in strange times.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive

Austin is Still Weird

I love downtown Austin because of the vibe. Sidewalk musicians playing uninvited backing guitar for loud bands in thin walled bars. Giant guitar sculptures in the airport. Mobile vendors with fast, friendly people and actual food, but no McDonald's in sight. Mechanical bulls for drunken tourists to ride to 15 seconds of YouTube fame. Lines of 20-somethings wearing shirts of bands older than they are - The Misfits, Social Distortion, Fugazi - waiting to hear today’s bands play live. Kamikaze bike taxis weaving through traffic. Segway tours of nerds in helmets.

Austin is a unique place, a hive of nutty artistic liberals in the most conservative of states. Texas may have been ruled by the Bush family, but Austin has weed smoking hippies on every corner either asking for spare change or social change or just playing a live concert to anyone that stops to listen.

Of course, having the biggest names in technology as local employers is a nice bonus too.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive