Travelling Geeks in Cambridge

July 10th, 2009

The Travelling Geeks came to Cambridge today, hosted by the EEIA - founded by Jeff Saperstein and Renee Blodgett

who are:

Its a bit like the Magnificent 7 – but there are more of them. Jeff Saperstein invited me along to their event in Cambridge today. Thanks Jeff.

Mid-morning was a round table event on models of funding for innovation in; technology and communication technology from university to spin out to full blown commercilisation. Fascinating for me for many reasons: thought frankly we could have had a whole day of this. Jeff Saperstein observed that feedback he had from Europe on the UK’s ability to foster, nuture and feed innovation was not conceived nor operated as a complete ecosystem.

We were he said, missing the necessary grants from government to ensure creative innovation thrived in universities, that there was still a disjointed relationship with big business, and the ability to patent innovation was still lacking behind Silicon Valley capability. Where was, Jeff asked, the real and true capability in co-development of tech transfer (co-creation)? And the UK’s ability to link that innovation into the global economy. As much as Julie Meyer says the UK does “big”, I tend to disagree rather strongly. LastFM.com has been one of the few to play out there with the big boys!!! And how they struggled for investment, and support.

There was push back from Teri Willey of Cambridge Enterprise on these raised points. To be fair Cambridge is a little unusual to the rest of the country.

The Travelling Geeks in the Pitt Building Cambridge

Perhaps what shocked me a just a little bit, was the introduction of the idea that silicon valley knows best in how to really launch and market hi-tech – and perhaps we in Cambridge should be importing that expertise! If its come to that, we have so far to catch up!! However the point made was also a valid on in my opinion.

The Q&A session hosted by my friends at Omobono, was fascinating, however, no-one on the panel mentioned mobile, except Scoble when he mentioned iPhone kicking the ass of Europes mobile technology. Ahem!! Too often the phrasing, references were to online, not mobile. But I do think that we are racing towards a converged eco-system where mobile will play a dominant role, and don’t even get me started on Augmented Reality.

Some nice examples though like Zappos – where everyone Twitters, and I did find this fascinating. Everyone said Scoble was a representative of the company, which reminds me of Jonathan Schwartz’s quote,

“My 1000 bloggers at Sun Microsystems have done more for this company that a $1 billion ad campaign ‘ever’ could have done”.

Why? Because its about: truth, trust, transparency and the relations of one human being to another.

There were 10 quick fire presentations on new businesses, and some were mobile – the ones that really caught my eye were Patients Know Best – Pocket Places – Taptu and Alertme

I wondered if we took some UK travelling geeks to Silicon valley, would there have been so much interest – or indeed any interest at all? And what does that tell you? But I think it was valuable to have the connection. For once, I did not have to travel very far to see some people I respect and admire.

Bookmarks: