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Silicon Valley Envy

29 Apr

My ex-business partner Maf and his wife Tara came over from LA this week and it was fantastic to spend an evening with them reminiscing about getting drunk in various cities around the world and talking about the various business pursuits we’ve both been involved with since closing the record label down.
I had a real burst of “Silicon Valley Envy” (although it was strictly speaking “California Envy”). I’ve written before about the superior environment and attitude that exists for entrepreneurs in the States. And while I’m in the enviable position of having good contacts at the likes of Creative Business Wales, nothing really makes up for the general positive atmosphere that exists over there. I run a network for creative entrepreneurs and businesses in South Wales (new website being built as we speak!) and as far as I’m aware it’s the only one of its kind. And yet in pretty much any area surrounding San Francisco, Silicon Valley or LA that’s an equivalent size to South Wales there will be countless networking opportunities for those of us that sit outside the mainstream of business. I’m not a huge fan of networking (in the traditional sense) but, provided there’s an opportunity (online or offline) for people to get mutual support and ideas, I think it’s essential to business success.

In related news, Project Pinewood is “one of the most unique and ambitious projects ever undertaken in the UK for the creative industries. It’s a living working media community, set within a collage of permanent film and TV locations”. Apparently it will have permanent sets of all the world’s major locations. I just hope it fosters young talent and gives opportunities to up and coming film makers, and doesn’t just become a playground for the big studios. I also hope it avoids the curse of the beleaguered Valleywood. More projects like these (and smaller ones like the fantastic hub DigitalCity) are just what we need to keep the creative industries growing at a faster rate than the average for the UK economy.
p.s. The last Bond movie was shot at Pinewood studios, hence the Daniel Craig pic…. :)

Top 100 Startups

24 Apr

- Apologies for the lack of updates. I have lots of things I want to write about, but they don’t seem to lend themselves to quick and pithy posts. Normal service will be resumed soon.

- Startups.co.uk have just published their top 100 startups for this year. It makes interesting reading. Lots I’ve heard of, and lots I haven’t. Many of them are based in the financial sector, but there’s a reassuring amount that are creative, or creative solutions to traditional problems. But it’s still a shame to see that only a quarter of the entrepreneurs are female, and the majority of all the businesses are still London-based. I’m not sure if this is because London based startups get more exposure, being in the hub of all things media and publishing, but I don’t actually think there’s any in there from Wales. Let’s hope we can change that soon!

Edit: I had a closer look at the list and it appears there is at least one company from Wales in there (Afan Films). I think any stats for Wales must be lumped in with the South West, or just not reported at all.

Ikutaro Kakehashi

4 Apr


I’ve just met Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Instruments and the man who “invented” MIDI (he initiated discussions between electronic music manufacturers to develop a universal communication method). For anyone who’s ever been involved in music production you’ll know what a massive influence Roland and MIDI have had on technology over the past few decades.

Mr Kakehashi’s a kind of foreboding looking character but, at nearly 80 years old, he’s an impressively forward thinking, charming, charismatic and witty guy. I was priveleged to be invited to his receiving of a honorary professorship at Glamorgan University’s creative industries school, which is sponsored by Roland. It’s an impressive site (and sight!) which should hopefully push forward the future of the creative industries and music in Wales.

I was pretty spell-bound by Kakehashi’s hour long “lecture” about music technology that he interspersed with slides and videos. It was fascinating to hear what he had to say about his past (orphaned at 2yrs old in Osaka, hospitalised for four years as a young man), his business (setting up his own electronics store in 1954, designing Hammond organs, cajoling the defiantly anti-electronic Oscar Peterson to appear on one of his adverts) and the future of music technology. This was the area where he had the most passion. He talked at length about Roland’s audio visual products and how he sees this as a big area for the future. Especially with much of the technology being instinctive and easy to use. Full audio-visual sets from us musicians, without the need for world-class VJs may not be too far away….

Anyway, suffice to say that it was a very interesting afternoon and after his lecture i was lucky enough to swap a few words with the man himself and get given a copy of his book. Not a bad buffet afterwards, either!

Ikutaro Kakehashi

4 Apr


I’ve just met Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Instruments and the man who “invented” MIDI (he initiated discussions between electronic music manufacturers to develop a universal communication method). For anyone who’s ever been involved in music production you’ll know what a massive influence Roland and MIDI have had on technology over the past few decades.

Mr Kakehashi’s a kind of foreboding looking character but, at nearly 80 years old, he’s an impressively forward thinking, charming, charismatic and witty guy. I was priveleged to be invited to his receiving of a honorary professorship at Glamorgan University’s creative industries school, which is sponsored by Roland. It’s an impressive site (and sight!) which should hopefully push forward the future of the creative industries and music in Wales.

I was pretty spell-bound by Kakehashi’s hour long “lecture” about music technology that he interspersed with slides and videos. It was fascinating to hear what he had to say about his past (orphaned at 2yrs old in Osaka, hospitalised for four years as a young man), his business (setting up his own electronics store in 1954, designing Hammond organs, cajoling the defiantly anti-electronic Oscar Peterson to appear on one of his adverts) and the future of music technology. This was the area where he had the most passion. He talked at length about Roland’s audio visual products and how he sees this as a big area for the future. Especially with much of the technology being instinctive and easy to use. Full audio-visual sets from us musicians, without the need for world-class VJs may not be too far away….

Anyway, suffice to say that it was a very interesting afternoon and after his lecture i was lucky enough to swap a few words with the man himself and get given a copy of his book. Not a bad buffet afterwards, either!

The Demise Of Facebook…

14 Mar

Of course Facebook isn’t facing demise. That would be ridiculous. But for the first time since their launch their audience number in the UK has dropped. While they’re still hitting a staggering 8.5m unique visitors a month, this might be the first sign that there might be a saturation of the market. I know I’m certainly finding it difficult to stay on top of everything (4 email addresses, a blog, 2 social networks plus some business networks and a bunch of casual forum memberships). I’ll be deleting my Myspace account shortly (I never use it and find it so clunky in comparison with Facebook) because I just seem to be the target for being a new friend of millions of bands. But despite us reaching this stage there seem to be more and more social networks every day, with platforms such as Ning.com offering everyone the chance to build their very own networks for free.

So, what’s the future? Either people will retreat to ever more specialised networks according to their personal interests, or more sites such as Moli.com will spring up. Moli allows you to manage profiles on various social networking sites from one place. Sounds like a dream for those network addicts. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m looking for a little simplification in my life. Shame I’m a sucker for signing up and trying uot every new site, app, service and technology!

It’s worth noting that despite my moderate predictions of doom and gloom AOL (a branch of the Time Warner juggernaut) has got into the social networking game by spending $850m on Bebo. Not a bad deal for the 3rd biggest social networking site in the US (after Facebook and Myspace), especially when Microsoft would only have got about 10 percent of Facebook for that when they invested in a small 1.6 percent stake last year. But Youtube sits at the top of this tree. It’s latest figures show it as the world’s most popular social media site , with a massive 10.4 million visitors in January alone.

2008 Rank….Website…………Unique audience (m)
1……………YouTube……………..10.4
2……………Wikipedia……………9.6
3……………Facebook…………….8.5
4……………Blogger……………..5.1
5……………MySpace……………..5.0
6……………Bebo………………..4.1
7……………Slide……………….3.4
8……………Yahoo! Answers……….3.3
9……………Windows Live Spaces…..3.1
10…………..TripAdvisor………….2.4

Blimey…

19 Dec

It’s been nearly a month since my last blog. I’ve just been so flippin’ busy I’ve barely had a chance to think about blogging.

So, just as a recap (for myself as much as anything!) I’ve been…(deep breath)…

- Graduating from the Insight Out training course.

- Writing my first article for Enterprise Magazine.

- Holding Pollen #3.

- Making some good progress on Dizzyjam.

- Starting a new interesting project with Kevin and Keeran.

- Realising that Facebook does actually have some worthwhile apps (such as Chess, Risk and Scrabble) which I’ve been playing while ignoring all the requests for vampires, pirates, snowball fights and all that other crap.

- Seeing some cracking films (The Darjeeling Ltd and Heima being the picks of the bunch).

I’ll try to get a “proper” blog entry up by the end of the year. But if not, have a great Christmas and New Year.

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