Senses: A blog about the Thirdi Software perception

Reaching your potential means reaching the global market through eCommerce

Wes — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:21:32 +0000

As business has rapidly adapted to capitalize on the infinite potential of the global marketplace, software as a service has grown from a luxury to a necessity. These aren’t platitudes, these are entrepreneurial truisms. Running a small or medium sized business today is more competitive than ever, and to maximize their market potential companies have to overcome time and geography. Online components of storefronts can often times comprise as much of a company’s cash flow as their physical space itself. And the potential they offer far surpasses the physical storefront.

Take John for example. John runs a second hand store specializing in , instruments, sporting goods, game consoles, cameras etc. He has a lot of stock so he starts posting these items on EBay. Increasingly, he finds that people are contacting him to ship some of these things across Canada or abroad through that platform. The market potential of 30,000,000 other Canadian or 300,000,000 American consumers means his potential for sales has gone from the local maximum of say 2,000,000 to an astounding 330,000,000. Of course, his market share of that potential will only be fractions but a fraction of two million is far less than a fraction of three-hundred and thirty million. Let’s say 1% of people potentially want something John is selling. And John, wanting as much control over his business as possible, starts maximizing the ecommerce potential of this own website- EBay doesn’t take a cut anymore, the middleman is eliminated. He is selling direct to a vastly larger market now.

1% of his immediate geographical market (a city or region of about 2 million residents) is 20,000 people 1% of his national market (Canada) is 300,000 people, and 1% of John’s U.S. and Canadian Market (which thanks to progressive trade laws is relatively harmonized) stands at 3,300,000 people. That’s just 1% of the population looking for the products he offers. If we consider the online component of his business could reach a global population then his potential 1% market is 60 million customers. Even a fraction of that, let’s say .5% of the population equals his potential market size (1 out of every 200 people), this means 30 million customers could potentially want one of the items he is selling. John has gone from 1% of his local market population = 20,000 potential sales to .5% of a global population = 30,000,000 potential sales.

The importance of having an online component to your company, no matter what it might be, CAN’T be under-emphasized. John’s example might be elementary, very simplified and idealized, but it demonstrates how anyone not engaging potential customers online denies themselves the opportunity to reach exponentially more consumers and thus increase their income dramatically. It doesn’t take vast amounts of capital and labor, it doesn’t take years and years of strategy and patience. It takes a relationship with a service provider who understands the online marketplace, and who can help you create the ecommerce solutions that you need to reach your potential.

There is value in every corner and crack of your company. Products, services, information, even opinion, are commodities with value. Look at your business, look at what you offer and what you can offer online. If you aren’t offering something online, you should be.

For more information about ecommerce and how it can help your company reach its potential contact Thirdi.

How To Market A Unique Product Online

Matt — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:16:58 +0000

What do you do if you are selling something new and original: like a hoodie designed to look like a monster. Even if you captured 100% of the people looking for “Hoodies that make you look like a monster”, you likely aren’t going to have a substantial business. Search advertising can’t capture that intent. Display advertising is too easily ignored, and lacks the necessary credibility, to sell someone on a radically new idea. To make someone take the leap into buying something silly the best way is to have a personal, human recommendation.

Unique products require a human touch and a personal connection. Unique products must fit into communities or they will not be appreciated. Here are 3 questions we ask ourselves, at Thirdi, before starting to market a unique product:

1. What specific groups would enjoy this product?

Don’t cop out and say that your audience is ‘everyone’. Some groups will always be better suited to your product than others. Are you looking for kooky soccer moms or under-18 scenesters. Maybe your audience has an obscure profession, like cartographers or jugglers. You have to have a clear idea of the answer to this question before you can proceed.

2. Where do these groups congregate online?

Start doing Google searches for key terms related to your audience. Make lots of bookmarks using tools like Delicious or Faviki and keep them organized. You’ll also want to qualify these groups by their scale and influence somehow as well, to make sure you aren’t wasting time on communities of 20 people. Two easy ways to do this are to use the Google Toolbar to measure the a site’s pagerank or a service like Alexa.com to measure (rough) size. The details aren’t important, you just need to establish a set of priorities.

3. Who are the most important members of the group?

Every group has a leader. Spend a bit of time digging through each of these crowds and a clear leader will start to emerge. Usually, you can just look through 20 or 30 random posts and start to notice that one name keeps popping up over and over. These leaders will write 10X the post of average users, and command 50X the influence. If you can win them over, the rest of the group will take notice.

Finding these individuals may seem like a lot of work, especially since these efforts may only lead to a handful of immediate sales. What they do offer you is a great place to test your marketing messages. Start a conversation with these individuals and see if your message is resonating. If they like it, they’ll tell their friends and your product will start to catch on. If they don’t, you will have received free marketing feedback from your exact target consumer. Either way, you will have gained some valuable data and possibly a few helpful allies.

Tax season is around the corner, two things that will make your year

Wes — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:57:13 +0000

Congratulations Bill! Now you're a write-off. Oh Yeah!

I’ll also tell you how you can write off 100% of any new computer you buy if you’re self employed (in Canada) and not over a 3 years period, I’m talking get it ALL back after this April. But first, I want to talk about your book keeping and tracking expenses because a new app just hit the market that’s as convenient as they come.

Here in Vancouver money is flying out of pockets while the Olympic party rages on, I’ve seen it firsthand, I’ve been a part of it. With tax season coming soon it’s more important than ever to track all our expenses and have everything organized and ready to go, unless you enjoy spending hours at the home office or kitchen table sorting through receipts. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just take a photo of your dinner or gas or office supplies bill with your phone and have it upload automatically to your book keeping program? That’s exactly what these guys thought, and so they created Just the Bill.

Just the Bill is a great example of the old adage “Necessity is the mother of invention”. It’s a simple, effortless service and is compatible with your Blackberry, computer, and soon with iPhone, cell phone and mobile web. Simply take a photo of your receipt from your camera-phone and expense it through this mobile application. Your receipts will then be tallied in your book keeping program- I prefer simply accounting.

Though this app is great for a business of any size it’s no surprise that in a city like Vancouver, a cornucopia of entrepreneurial enterprise, new applications particularly attractive to small business owners are now thriving.

NOW, about writing off 100% of your new computer.

Computer equipment and software purchased for business have just become a lot more affordable. Changes to the Capital Cost Allowance rules for such equipment purchased after January 27, 2009 and before February 1, 2011 (Class 52) are aimed at helping small businesses in particular. The Capital Cost Allowance rate has been increased to 100% from 50% and the standard half-year rule does not apply temporarily. You can fully write off a computer and systems software in the same year you purchase it.

I hope that these two little bits of information help you and your business to grow. For more information about custom small business application development go here. Oh and what was the second thing that was going to make your year as far as taxes are concerned? Well if you’re a small business in BC it’s this, in case you didn’t already know.

How To Launch A Web Service

Matt — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:19:43 +0000

Photo Courtesy Of Anirudh Koul

Every client who comes through our doors with a new service asks our opinion about how they should launch it. Everyone wants attention for the project they have been working hard on, and everyone disagrees over precisely how they should get it. Most of these opinions fit into two main groups.

The first group believes that exclusivity is the secret to building buzz. They are usually thinking about the highly successful, invite-only, launch of Gmail, where people were paying more than $50 on eBay to buy an invite code for the free service. The problem with this example is pretty obvious: there is only one Google. The Gmail launch has been imitiated ad nauseum by startups, but nobody else is finding their invite codes sold on eBay. Google had 300 million devoted users when they launched Gmail and they were the #1 brand in the world. It takes a lot of hubris to think that people will treat your launch the same way. Customer excitement is not something you should ever take for granted, and for every person who is intrigued by the super-secretive launch there will be 10 who couldn’t get in and will never come back.

The second group believes that they should do a big, flashy, website launch. They talk about PR campaigns, news coverage, and even a physical party. These people want to bring in Jon Bon Jovi and have fountains of champagne to get attention for their launch. This approach has an obvious problem too. An efficient development team launches early and improves the product based on customer feedback and bug reports. If you are throwing a big launch party as soon as your website goes up, there is a good chance you will find yourself embarrassed by the end of the night. If you are launching a site that doesn’t have flaws, rough patches, missing features, and bugs: you are launching it too late. Many people who will be attracted to your launch will find one of these problems and never come back. And no, sticking on a tag that says ‘Beta’ will not help.

There is a sane solution, and it is the one we practice with our clients and internal products. We just put the website up. No invite codes, no secret passwords, no big parties. The odds are, your new site is not going to be flooded with traffic (no matter how great it is). We then talk to a few hundred of our friends, family members, advisors, and possibly Twitter followers and encourage them to start using the site actively. These are people we know: they are far more likely to provide useful feedback and far less likely to take offence over a bug or missing feature. Over the next few weeks we collect this data and improve the site.

Once the most obvious flaws and missing features are addressed, and people are happily using the service, then it is time to start doing PR and getting attention…but that is the subject of another post.

Vancouver, the pros and cons of our splendid isolation

Wes — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:23:31 +0000

This is the 2^nd post in a series of 3 that look at Vancouver’s position relative to other major centres of innovation and development. In it I draw from the perspectives of experts at Vancouver’s economic think tank the VEDC (Vancouver Economic Development Commission) and from a growing software development and internet marketing firm based in Yaletown, Thirdi. The first installment looked at availability of office space and inter-city economic competition as factors in firm location. Today we look at the broader implications of our business climate as it relates to our overall geography.

Vancouver is an entrepreneurial hotbed. We have one of the strongest and diverse entrepreneurial sectors of any city in North America, but there’s a dark side to this statistic. We have little in the way of large management structures, the kind that major companies and government offices offer. This means that graduates from SFU, UBC, BCIT and other schools often have no clear-cut career path and difficulty even finding entry level positions. In a city like New York or Chicago the abundance of large employers means more opportunities for graduates right out of the gate. A few years with these companies and the large scale projects they tackle, means skill sets can be developed that enable workers to either advance within the large management structure or build upon their accomplishments by starting their own thing. A city like Washington DC, with a massive administrative pool of government offices also offers similar opportunities for career growth and lifelong learning. Vancouver however, has comparatively far less in the way of large management structures from the private or government sectors found in these kinds of cities. To make up for this, in typical west coast fashion, we do our own thing. And our business culture has a big impact on what kind of companies begin here and stay here. It’s one of the key reasons for our strong entrepreneurial sector and for our position in relation to other major centres. As Matt Friesen, founder of Thirdi puts it:

“Business in Vancouver is shaped by the West Coast lifestyle. No other city in North America puts as much emphasis on live/work balance as Vancouver does. That is great for small businesses like Thirdi, where our culture can accommodate unconventional hours and telecommuting employees. Many large corporations, however, don’t have the flexibility to work like this and fail to attract the best talent because of it.”

Vancouver, she's a beauty. Photo from National Geographic.

It’s hard to argue the fact that Vancouver is indeed perhaps the awesomest place on the planet but our location also has distinct challenges that shape the business climate. Because Vancouver is so stunningly beautiful (with amazing restaurants and lifestyle options) the cost of living for both individuals and companies is extremely high. High rents, severely unaffordable housing prices, and the fact that an average glass of wine in an average restaurant can go for $11 all add up. Cost of living is a major factor to a company deciding where to put itself or a company trying to grow, the costs of doing business is another. Once again Vancouver’s geography is both a blessing and a challenge here too. Nick Molnar, Thirdi’s Web Strategist and resident economist, emphasizes the challenge of cost. “Vancouver’s high cost of living can be a killer for small companies. New businesses grow at an intermittent pace, and sometimes the difference between survival and death during the lean periods is literally a few hundred dollars a month in rent or a few thousand dollars in taxes. Subsidies, grants, and incentives do not solve this problem; in fact, they make it worse through their corresponding tax burden. A lean startup is a healthy startup, and it is incredibly difficult to run a lean startup in this city.”

Though a corresponding tax burden is often a reality of subsidization, BC has one of the most competitive taxation structures of any province-despite recent outrage over the new HST. Our general corporate income tax rate has been reduced from 16.5 % in 2000 to 10% in 2011. Our combined federal and provincial tax rate will be at 25% by 2012, well below the average US rate of 35% and further reductions in small business taxes will bring them down from 3.5% to 2.5% (VEDC). We should be swimming in large corporate offices if we just took into account those numbers, but we’re not. Clearly we’re beautiful and fun to be around, our taxes are competitive and welcoming to businesses. So why aren’t large corporations flocking to us with their thousands of cubicles, pods and boardrooms? They can afford an $11 glass of wine after all.

Our location clearly impacts not only the business culture of the city but the cost of operations. And it’s not just for small companies trying to run a lean startup as Nick points out. Vancouver is also a relatively isolated city, in some ways splendidly so, and while many innovative and young companies might value that it can be an issue for large companies in particular. As I spoke with Jonathan Kassian, Manager of Research & Communications at the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, earlier this week he used an example from close to home, Boeing’s decision to relocate to Chicago from Seattle.

For nearly 90 years Boeing had been a major employer and technological innovator in Seattle, a driver and supporter of the aviation and high-tech industries in the region. But in 2001 the company moved their offices to Chicago, while some manufacturing and design facilities remained behind. Access to both government and markets were the main factors. Chicago’s O’Hare airport was the busiest on the planet at the time and a two hour flight from Washington and New York. So no matter how small we’re told the global village is getting, geography is still a major factor, and that wasn’t all. The State of Illinois offered nearly $50 million in incentives while the City of Chicago also put in about $20 million. It was impossible for Boeing to say no basically. The lifestyle and beauty of the pacific NW lost out in the end to the better integrated and positioned Chicago (and Scrooge McDuck bags full of money).

Chicago enjoys closer proximity to domestic and international markets with some of the busiest transportation hubs on the planet. But guess where I'd rather be spending my winters?

To begin with, Vancouver has even fewer large corporate offices than Seattle and is comparatively restricted to the American market by our international border. Restricted is perhaps a harsh word, but despite the barriers that have been broken down over the past 20 years international borders still mean transaction costs, politics and paperwork. So if Seattle can be hustled by Chicago then Vancouver can too (or by Toronto or Montreal). In Keeping with the aviation theme, Vancouver’s connection to international destinations i.e. markets and centres of production, is also affected by our protective airline regulations that favor our own domestic carriers. High-tech goods are most often shipped by air rather than ocean liners and if YVR is less integrated with certain important locations (Taipei,The Benelux, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Singapore) then the costs of transporting goods both internally within a company structure or externally to markets, of which once again Vancouver is geographically removed from, means increased time and increased costs; neither of which make a company more competitive. So when thinking about why we have fewer large offices and management structures in comparison even to our pacific NW neighbours just down the road, the answer is clearly more nuanced than one might first think.

So what’s Vancouver to do? What’s BC to do? And what have we been doing? Aside from being beautiful…

Well a lot actually. The City of Vancouver has been focusing on increasing density and allowing more housing to come on the market (STIR, Laneway Housing and other initiatives) and hopefully this will help to bring down home prices and the cost of living. Taxation policies have been increasingly favorable to businesses and incentives have been introduced. Just last week the BC government announced a package of industry incentives supporting video game, film and television production. According to Phil Heard, CEO of VEDC “The Province’s move is well-timed, and helps make BC and Vancouver one of the most competitive jurisdictions for digital entertainment, one of the cornerstones of our growing knowledge economy.”

That growing knowledge economy that Herd acknowledges, and that Mayor Gregor Robertson recently recognized at the opening of W2 Culture and Media House, is comprised of thousands of startups, innovative entrepreneurs and even a few big fish that know the value of lifestyle as a “Second Paycheque”. Vancouver will likely never be like New York, Chicago, or Toronto. But that’s precisely what so many people out here like about it. We’re fresh, we’re young, we do our own thing, we innovate, we cluster and network, and frankly we like it. But can we, with our high-tech, biotech, greentech and software industries, get to the top echelon of globally competitive cities on fresh thinking, good looks, networking and innovation alone? Will not having the large management structures that government and corporate offices create hold us back?

Though we’ve looked at some of the factors influencing why our business climate is the way it is, and why when it comes to major technology and software production we’re positioned this way, we still haven’t found the answer we’ve been searching for. What will it take to put us at the top? We’ve addressed a few of the reasons why we’re not quite there yet perhaps, but many more still remain. Taking into account what we’ve looked at in the past two articles, my third installment will go out on a limb and attempt to answer how we might just get there.

Wes Regan is an industry trends blogger with Thirdi and the Communications Liaison at Building Opportunities with Business, a community economic development non-profit in Vancouver.

Be Here Now…by writing about it later

Nick — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:37:21 +0000

Most of my online presence is focused on the work of others. I am so frequently in awe of what is being created on the web that I could spend my whole life paying homage. There is, however, the potential to get caught in this non-stop barrage of awesomeness and lose perspective. The pace of interaction accelerates each year, and there is a real danger of burning out trying to stay ahead of it all.

I believe the secret to avoiding this fate is to focus on the present…on what is immediately in front of you. My mother imparted some powerful advice from her late-60s, Ram Dass reading, college years: ‘Be Here Now’. I just have to figure out how to apply it in 2010.

Go to any concert and you will find a sea of fans (myself included) taking photos, BBMing their friends, recording video, tweeting jokes, and maybe even livestreaming the whole thing. They are all contributing to the shared mosaic of the experience. Each of these acts, however, takes the individual one step further from actually engaging with the music and breaks their attention into ever-smaller chunks. I don’t think we should stop sharing – experiences are more enjoyable when shared with friends – but we need to learn to cope with this reality. This constant adrenaline rush of new stimulation and interaction is killing my ability to carry a feeling beyond a few seconds, and I doubt I am alone. Constantly trying to process and fit my thoughts into this mosaic of other people’s perspectives dilutes them further.

Part of my job is to stay at least 5 years ahead of mainstream society in my relationship with technology. For example, I haven’t had cable since 2004 and have been using the Internet as my primary source of moving pictures ever since. I am not alone in living this way. There are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of us explicitly trying to live way ahead of the curve. We are the canaries in the coal mine, and some are already dropping off.

Paradoxically, I think the solution to these problems is to dive further online. Technology is not just changing how we communicate, but also how we think. We need to learn to think clearly in the face of these distractions, to sustain attention long enough for deep contemplation and powerful emotions. Reflection is the one way I have found to do that.

In my experience, the times when I am most ‘present’ are when I am looking back on the recent past. I regularly write long Facebook messages and emails to old friends, former lovers, and other people that I trust. They are just short stories about something that had happened to me recently. Responses were explicitly meant to be optional. It is when I am writing these messages that I am my most lucid and honest. I now look back on them the same way someone looks back on an old diary. The messages are my memories.

These messages are important to me and they will only get more important as the neurological memories fade. All of us are going to be remembering 2009 through old status updates, Flickr photos, blog entries, and Facebook messages. Do yours convey the true depth and complexity of that year? Mine don’t. It is time to start making better memories: to experience things more fully, and reflect on them more deeply. It is time to double down on personal transparency and openness.

This is why I am – for the first time ever – starting a truly personal blog. I know, I’m definitely not ahead of the curve on this one. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, and I hope no more than a dozen people do. It will be as uncensored and as honest as I can force myself to make it. It won’t have a public URL, or comments available. You won’t find a link from here. It will simply be one coherent thought or experience, written in the 20-30 minutes before I go to bed each night. I hope that knowing I will have time to reflect on things later will allow me to enjoy them in the present. I hope that by doing this online, instead of on something hidden in a drawer, my thoughts are more forward compatible with how I am going to be accessing them next year.

What do you think? Is it possible to fight fire with fire?

Don’t worry, this will still leave plenty of time for me to tweet on @nickmolnar and @thirdi

How to Scare the Crap Out of Your Kids at Christmas

E-marketing tips for 2010: Click statistics vs consumer behavior

Wes — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:09:47 +0000

Online marketing can sometimes seem like casting a fishing line into a deep lake. You feel you have the right bait, the right line and rod, the boat seems to be in a good position, but what lies deep beneath? Companies like Thirdi help you to see what’s in the lake, who’s nibbling on your tackle and tugging on your line, and where all the good catches are.

Let’s continue with the fishing analogy. Just like in fishing you might drop the line down into a school of fish, but if you don’t have the right bait they won’t go for it. Conversely, if you drop the right bait down for the kind of fish you want but it’s nowhere near enough to them you won’t catch anything either…maybe a boot. And just like you can feel nibbles on your line, clicks act in the same way. It may seem like a lot of people are seeing your ad, but nibbles don’t catch fish, and clicks don’t mean you’ve made customers. So how do we interpret click statistics and consumer behavior online?

If a lot of traffic is coming through your site via an ad then you know that it’s doing its job as far as getting eyes on your site. However, we have to look deeper than that. These numbers tell us a lot, but they don’t tell the whole story. When you buy ad space from another site make sure you are able to get the analytics too. Find out how long people are looking at the ad if it’s a pop up- if it’s one second it usually counts as a click to your ad space provider even if users closed the pop up right away. As far as the provider is concerned, someone saw your ad and that’s the name of the game.

Quality clicks are what you are looking for unless you just want to generate blind, rapid site traffic. Many sites do this, and generate impressive ad revenue from it. But if you own an actual product or service and want to connect with a consumer base you need more than ads, you need content. Potential customers need to be engaged. Attention spans have shrunk and we don’t notice traditional ad media anymore- not to the extent that we used to. Even banner click through rates have been declining. Being able to advertise without people knowing that they’re being advertised to is the trick today. Some may find this underhanded, but in the marketing biz it’s seen more as subtlety. Social media has created new terms of engagement that have helped consumers and companies connect in a more fluid and continuous manner, sticking has begun to replace clicking. This is really where understanding consumer behavior online happens, in the dialogue played out in words and actions online. But for a small business it’s hard to imagine the kind of social media presence that a major company with a large consumer base enjoys (or is conversely beholden too as Forrester researchers often stress) There are some basic and simple things that you can do though, to better understand how your web marketing is working.

Find out who is looking at your ads and who is looking at your site, not individual names and addresses and such, but where they are, how long they are staying, where they are going on your site, what they may be looking for if you can discern it. “How are these people behaving?” is the key question, not “how much are they clicking?” .

If you are able to understand these and other things you’ll see that the water is in fact clear, and not deep and dark as it may have looked before. And you’ll know where to put your line and what to put on it a whole lot easier than when you were when fishing in the dark.

Thirdi

How close is Vancouver to being a global technology and software leader?

Wes — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:53:59 +0000

I don’t know, let’s find out together. This post is one in a series that examines this question from different angles. Today we look at one aspect in particular, the poor availability of commercial office space and the impact it may have on the city down the road.

I was recently talking with Boris Mann of Bootup Labs and he postulated (and I agree) that due to their cost effectiveness and proximity to great cafes, pubs and restaurants, that Gastown and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside have become hot spots for software startups. No offense to Yaletown, for years it’s been the trendiest and most upwardly mobile neighbourhood in the city, but because of this it’s also become quite expensive. And while he was excited that parts of Vancouver’s inner city (the Flack Block in particular) had become magnets for fledgling technology companies, when talking about the city as a whole he seemed a little less sure that Vancouver could be included right now in that top tier of globally competitive cities like Boston or San Francisco. “Vancouver itself must grow up and be recognized as a whole. We *need* to point to universities westwards (UBC) and eastwards (SFU Burnaby Mountain), the Microsoft Dev Center in Richmond, the EA buildings in Burnaby, and so on.”

As authors like Richard Florida have stressed, cities need to attract and retain top talent in order stay economically healthy and competitive. It’s a constant process of keeping up with Boston, with Tel Aviv, with the Bay Area, in amenities, quality of life, culture, safety, aesthetics and other supports, and making sure that companies have access to the best possible research facilities and a highly educated work force. That work force is both created through the quality of nearby colleges and universities and through the gravity that is naturally induced by an accumulation of the above mentioned things. When an innovative or large company appears on the scene it creates gravity, it creates spin-off companies, and it challenges everyone to raise their game. So it’s important to both see those companies develop here , or move here.

Vancouver wins hands down in aesthetics, quality of life, safety (minus the earthquake we’re all waiting for) and other supports (dining, leisure, soft laws concerning marijuana?) but there are some things that we’re lacking. It might be cohesion. Is there a disjointedness caused by the geography and inter-competitiveness of the partner cities in the region? As Boris points out, some collaborative effort between competing clusters or competing cities might just make one big cluster and put us in that upper echelon. But while Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey have either seen some large software companies locate offices there or have announced major plans to create office and mixed use developments, Vancouver has been running out of space fast. Well actually that’s not true, we’ve been running out of space for companies. A slow and steady exodus of tech and software companies out of the downtown core would be a devastatingly bad thing (for Vancouver) if Richmond and/or Surrey started to displace Vancouver as the main cluster of high tech and software companies in the Lower Mainland.

Because of the profitability of luxury residential condos, developers haven’t produced enough commercial office space in the downtown core to accommodate any large companies that may want to have offices there. Microsoft had to locate in Richmond, and some would say so what?That’s still Vancouver right? But that’s millions of dollars a year that local businesses in the downtown business district aren’t getting from coffee breaks, catering, office supplies, etc. And not only that, but if any technology and software companies or other service providers want to do business with a large company like Microsoft, they could have had the convenience of a quick taxi or brisk walk between offices, grab a drink with associates after work and bounce casual ideas around, but now they’ve got to head down to Richmond (boring). SFU, BCIT and UBC campuses downtown or relatively close, Microsoft in Richmond. Thirdi office in Yaletown, Microsoft in Richmond. See the pattern here? It could be argued that Microsoft is not always the friendliest company especially to startups, but I use them only as an example. If a large company with a reputation of working with startups or smaller firms wanted to find a space in Vancouver proper it would be extremely difficult, as Microsoft proved. And perhaps most importantly, if a local company started to experience strong growth and needed to take on more staff and more space where would they expand to? The fact that there is simply no commercial space left in Vancouver and none really being built, means problems down the road if you ask me. And city council isn’t terribly excited to add more commercial high rise space downtown because of the risk of blocking resident’s views by obstructing our “view corridors“. So it’s a bit of a catch 22 in my opinion, companies want to come here for the beautiful views but we can’t offer them office space because it will block the beautiful views. While cheap office space for startups in Gastown and the DTES is great, this large scale component of Vancouver’s ability to attract and retain larger companies may have a very negative impact on our ability to become a true global leader moving forward.

Using Social Networks to Screen Employees: good idea, or violation?

Jordana — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:35:08 +0000

It’s an old debate, well old so far as social media news goes, but the debate on where to draw the line between professional and personal lives only becomes more pressing with each new way to expose one’s lives. In a post from the New York Times, an estimated 45% of employers used social networks to screen employees. An estimated 35% of applicants were then rejected because of the results from those social networks. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, the amount of places for employers to find you seem endless. It’s all getting a little crazy. What’s next I ask – will my future potential boss try to search out my FourSquared account and judge me based on where I shop for groceries and drink coffee? Sometimes I ask myself why I even bother writing up a resume when I could just send them my various profiles.

To be fair, networks like LinkedIn are fantastic networking opportunities. Through sites like LinkedIn and Monster, you can connect with millions of others in your industry and search for jobs much easier and quicker than flipping through a newspaper. On the negatives though, there is a very uneasily drawn line between what is legal and what is moral. Legally, a company may have the right to search and find whatever public information you happen to have out there, using it as a means of evaluating you as an employee. The onus is thus on you to control the access they have to your information – but is this belief just?

In an extreme case, imagine that you are a celebrity…say Brad Pitt (or Angelina). You have an entire team of publicists out there whose sole purpose it is to control your image – basically what information is out there about you. Yet despite these people being dedicated full-time to the purpose of controlling your image, there is still tons of unsolicited and incorrect information out there – and much of it is stuff that you are utterly unaware about. That incorrect, or unsolicited information can have dire consequences; for example, rumours that you are a prima donna convinces some director not to hire you, or faked pictures of you and a mysterious person make major trouble for you with the significant other. If celebrities cannot control all their information, then how can the entire onus be on a normal person to control their presence on the web? Yes, you can set your Facebook settings, and yes you should not make stupid tweets about your boss, but is it fair that employers actively search out your private life online? In the NY Times article, more than half of employers stated “scandalous photos” as the reason why they rejected an applicant. What one deems as acceptable can vary greatly. Should we be judged for a simple Halloween costume, or a birthday party? What if the “bad evidence” is years old? Or what if you have a very common name and they look at the wrong profile?

As a professional, when you apply for a job, you present your set of skills and abilities that qualify for you for that position. Granted, your personality is a factor for getting hired, but should only be applied so far as your communication/interpersonal skills and your work ethic. If employers get to search applicants, then applicants should be presented with a detailed report on the personal lives of the persons interviewing them – then at least you would both be on equal ground! Our private lives are called that because they should, and deserve to be, private. Employers do not have the right, in my opinion, to pre-judge and produce biases against our personalities before they even meet us. Whatever information one may find on the Internet, you will never know that person’s full story. I realize that many will argue against me, but in this age where privacy already is beginning to seem an antiquated thing, I think it is all the more important to try to make a stand. All I ask is that we just refrain from throwing stones and instead, sit for a moment in our glass houses.

Earthquake Machines, HAARP, Tesla and Haiti : Chavez strikes again

Wes — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:31:11 +0000

As self appointed Senses conspiracy expert I tentatively choose to embark on this post. While we try to focus on topics of professional interest and of some impact to the industry in which we work Hugo Chavez has once again blown my mind and I can’t resist. A major catastrophe has just occurred in a country that has been spiraling out of control, bandaged and taped together by foreign aid for decades. At a time when compassion and cooperation is needed most from all countries capable of helping Haiti, a world leader takes an opportunity to suggest (thanks to an unconfirmed report from Russia’s Northern Fleet) that the United States, using top-secret technology, caused the earthquake to prepare for an invasion of Iran. Chavez should be ashamed, though something tells me an ego of his stature leaves little room for shame.

The idea allegedly put forth by Russia’s Northern Fleet and espoused by Chavez is that the U.S. has been using its HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) Which according to the official government site is “…to further advance our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth’s ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems” This program has been in operation since 1990 and is a favorite of conspiracy theorists, though it has been overshadowed somewhat by the CERN Large Hadron Collider and its massive space-time fabric ripping experiments. In both cases these are highly advanced technologies employing highly advanced theoretical and applied knowledge, and as the old adage goes “People fear what they don’t understand”

We don’t understand the experiments being done at HAARP and CERN’s Hadron Collider so they must be inherently evil and created to control/destroy/enslave us as they are also funded and supported by the Government…another thing we don’t understand. The logic is relatively straight forward.

If we don’t understand advanced economic theory we like to say the World Bank, IMF and United Nations are enslaving the planet intentionally with debt. If we don’t understand how a disease like AIDS can have no cure we blame the US military for inventing it for population control reasons. (or big pharma or someone else) If we don’t understand why Haiti, a country suffering for so long, can be hit with a devastating earthquake we can conveniently blame the US (again of course) and their experiment in Alaska that focuses on ionic phenomena in our atmosphere. Look closely, there must be a connection. This is fine and dandy for regular paranoid blue collar guys, but when heads of state are talking like this I think we pass a threshold of acceptable conduct.

Technology is arguably the most important and distinguishing thing that separates us from our animal cousins. Yes many other animals use tools, sea otters use rocks, birds use twigs and twine, ravens have proven themselves able to problem-solve with tools as well, but when we’re talking about experiments to recreate the big bang, experiments directing energy through and off of the ionosphere I think we definitely demonstrate a uniquely ambitious trait to understand the construct of our reality- and the rough edges where it may end. But I would prefer to leave that to scientists and philosophers and have the politicians focus their mental energies on more constructive things. What international politics needs more than anything is sanity, and Chavez loves to inject a huge dose of anything but into the mix.

Here are a few thoughts off the top of my head as to why his comments are completely absurd and why thinking like this is potentially very dangerous when considering the future of our already strained geopolitics.

1) Earthquakes happen all the time firstly. It’s not like a major earthquake happened in the middle of some precambrian shield in some highly unlikely place; although intra-plate earthquakes are also possible. Haiti and all the Caribbean countries lie on a complex series of plates and faults. Chavez is an idiot.

2) While earthquakes can be caused by damming of rivers and underground nuclear explosions, the suggestion that HAARP can somehow create earthquakes is a stretch. Video footage shows strange aural clouds over China before a major earthquake struck there in 2008 but before a quake happens it is common for large amounts of gaseous vapors trapped beneath the surface to escape. In fact, Japanese seismologists have successfully predicted earthquakes (though not by any usable amount of time for public safety) by monitoring levels of gas like Radon, looking for spikes in the air. Gasses, as we know, can affect how light passes between a source (say the Sun) and our brains. There were no reported auras or crazy lights and colours around Haiti before this quake anyhow which would help relate it to the supposed HAARP induced quake in China. Chavez is a moron.

3) As far as the middle east is concerned, the United States knows that its greatest asset in Iran are the Iranian people within the country itself. Iran is not just full of Islamic Fundamental extremists, in fact they are the minority. Killing hundreds of thousands of Iranian civilians, many of whom are engaged in political and social activism in a massive earthquakes is likely the last possible thing the US would want. Chavez (and the person who made the alledged Northern Fleet report) are clearly just stirring the pot. A little critical thinking goes a long way.

Why is this dangerous? Because people BELIEVE this stuff. Iran will have another earthquake, possibly in the near future. In fact there is a 100% Iran will have earthquakes. The next time an earthquake occurs we now potentially have an army of paranoid idiots convinced that the US is about to invade the country, which is also unlikely because its troops are preoccupied in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Haiti. The next time there’s a tsunami, it’s the US and their newfangled all purpose natural disaster creating HAARP. A hurricane, it’s the US and their newfangled all purpose natural disaster creating HAARP.

If this kind of talk enters the mainstream, as it clearly has, it becomes dangerous. It’s already easy enough for battered teens living in Kabul and Baghdad to blame the US for their woes, now being told by a celebrated world leader (oh yes he’s celebrated in some countries) that natural disasters befalling their countries are caused by deliberate efforts of the U.S. through its own advanced and misunderstood technologies is just fuel for an already paranoid firestorm. Stoking the flames of paranoia in the world is the last thing any world leader should be doing. Once again I stress my belief that we need sanity, clarity, cooperation and critical thinking from our leaders. Leave the science to the scientists Chavez and leave the paranoid delusions to the rest of us.

For more information on HAARP

For more information on CERN Large Hadron Collider

For more information on global economics

For more information on Thirdi