chadkoh

This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information by Andy Greenberg

NOTE: Originally posted on Medium.

So far this has been an explosive year for the Kelowna startup community. For the past few years the community has been germinating inside the Kelowna Innovation Center, which served as the single hub for all startup activity. Now we are seeing more and more happening beyond those walls — a positive development and a signal of maturation.

Local startup legends Vericorder and Vineyard Networks (now part of Procera) scaled out of the KIC years ago. Many of the early stage startups in Accelerate Okanagan have been hoping to do the same. Last month Syndicate Theory left with Cityseed to join another stealth startup at the new Rocketlaunch space. This past week FreshGrade moved into a new space called Wheelhouse and Just be Friends set up their new office space. Soon Hyper Hippo will be moving into a brand spanking new building, and I suspect taking with them one or two other small outfits from KIC. Furthermore there are rumours of two more startup-centric spaces on the horizon. This might just be #startupkelowna’s Big Bang moment.

All of a sudden we have transitioned from a single to multi-hub community network. Such a distributed system is great for innovation, but we must remember that it is an ecosystem. As a community we must double our efforts to keep the communication lines between the hubs open to prevent isolation. We at Rocketlaunch intend on hosting events for developers in our space, and you will always be able to see the Syndicate Theory boys at the various tech meetups in Kelowna. I implore the other hubs to do the same or better. There will be growing pains, but we have the lessons of many other communities that have followed this path before us.

What are you going to do?

In just over two weeks BC goes to the polls. Political franchise is one of those hard-won privileges that Canadians take for granted, choosing mere words over actions. This is the first time I have been an eligible voter in BC and I am taking my civic duty (and civic right) seriously.

Voting is multidimensional. Some people vote based on ideology, toeing the party line. Personality is important to some — remember how George W. Bush was someone “you could have a beer with?” Demographic similarities such as sex, age, race etc. can make a difference. Issue-based voting accounts for the 19 political parties in BC. Strategic voting is often related to values or issues-based voting. Prejudice and personal bias can play a role too, limiting the viable choices. Of course, there is the idea of “the greater good” which is an oft-cited if subjective reason for voting a particular way. Finally, for the politically savvy is levels analysis: how do local voted affect things at a provincial and federal level?

Considering all of the above I have been trying to learn more about the candidates in my riding of Kelowna-Mission. They are:

• Tish Lakes, NDP
• Mike McLoughlin, CON
• Steve Thomson, LIB (incumbent)
• Dayleen Van Ryswyk, IND

Tish Lakes does not have much info out there. This was obviously a last minute nomination with the resignation of Dayleen Van Ryswyk from the NDP. Lakes’s Twitter feed is filled with inanities and her website is brutal. As a web-connected voter, appearance on the web is an important indicator to me. Especially when the candidate has a web-presence beyond the election. It helps me to judge the authenticity of the candidate.

Mike McLoughlin does well in that respect. He has been maintaining a sort of blog for a year. He has a good Twitter following and was the only candidate who replied to my request on Twitter. Furthermore he is an entrepreneur and has listed “Listening to Audio Books” as one of his interests. Sounds like I have a lot in common with him. Too bad his religious activity rubs my bias the wrong way.

Steve Thomson (who didn’t engage on Twitter) is also a business guy and helped establish the Okanagan Innovation Fund which is now the Southern Interior Innovation Fund, something that we in the startup community are very familiar with. His position on fiscal responsibility is also promising, but other than this and his grandchildren, I can’t find much about him.

Finally, the wildcard: the well coiffed Dayleen Van Ryswyk, formerly of the NDP and now running as an independent. She is really the only one with her principles stated on the front page of her website which is admirable. Her promise for advocating shortened wait times for FOI requests actually jives with my federal party affiliation, and her stance on lowering small business taxes would be good for local entrepreneurship. Having an MLA who does not simply parrot the party would be a nice monkeywrench to throw into Victoria. However, she has two strikes against her: she is formerly NDP (there’s my prejudice showing again!) and of course, she is crazy.

So it comes to this: do I vote for the incumbent, who I probably know the least about as a person and whose only negative attribute seems to be his pallidness, utterly lacking in strong political convictions. Or do I try and pull a strategic maneuver? I have no particular love of the national Liberal Party, and as the The Tyee predicts Thomson will win maybe I should overcome my personal prejudice and vote for McLoughlin in the hope of achieving some sort of “balance”. I have yet to decide, but I welcome your arguments either way. See you on the 14th!

“Technology changes society” is a truism but it is always worth asking “how?” At last night’s talk to the Okanagan Developer Group I used my trip to MakerHaus last February as a jumping off point to explore this question in light of recent advancements in the Maker Movement.

Photos c/o @jvdwdesigns and @gunsinger. Yes, that is Lenin in the background.

MakerHaus (see my photos here) is a symbol of the democratization of manufacturing. Historically, putting the means of production into the hands of the people has wrought massive changes on society. Digital fabrication and personal manufacturing technologies like 3D printers, CNC machines and laser cutters are the latest iteration of this pattern. To paraphrase Chris Anderson, in the 1980s the Desktop Publishing revolution gave us the PRINT button and changed everything; in the 90s the internet revolution gave us the PUBLISH button and changed everything; now our computers are getting a MAKE button, and it will and change everything.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

NOTE: Originally posted on Medium.

Upon finishing a particularly thought-provoking book or film I will sometimes spend a few days mulling it over before writing a review on this blog. Sometimes I just dash off a quick review on Goodreads or Letterboxd. For the sake of completeness, I thought that each quarter I would post my list of off-the-cuff reviews. Below are my 2013Q1 media missives. As always, my full reviews can be found here.

From Goodreads (2013)

★★★☆☆ Conservative Tradition (lecture series)

★★★★☆ Crime and Punishment

★★★☆☆ A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing

★★★★★ A Fire Upon the Deep

From my Letterboxd film diary:

★★★☆☆ Dredd

★★★½☆ The Cat Returns

★★★★½ The Rocketeer

★★★★½ Porco Rosso

★★★★☆ Wreck-it Ralph

★★★★☆ Argo

Eviscerating pundits who use boatloads of clichés is akin to shooting fish in a barrel (I took a couple of shots myself recently). But that doesn’t stop Thomas Frank in the latest edition of Harper’s from lamenting the tiresome and vacuous use of language by the punditocracy. One of his targets is the use of “argument” as a way to distance oneself from a conclusion. He gives the following examples:

“history just argues incredibly strong against it.” “one could argue that Barack Obama’s smartest political move was putting Hillary Clinton in his Cabinet so that she wasn’t outside with Bill Clinton causing mischief.” “Presidents have always been taking vacations and complaining about it amounts to a little more than partisan carping, one could argue.”

Frank calls this usage pattern “an epidemic”, writing:

People in the land of professional commentary no longer believe things or propose things or even assert things; they argue them.

Nice observation, but why is this? The true epidemic here is twofold. Firstly, lack of ownership. Pundits must loudly and reductively state their position in the most indirect way as a matter of job security. In The Signal and the Noise Nate Silver analyzed the accuracy of election predictions made by The McLaughlin Group, a rotating subgroup of the professional pundit class, and concluded that they offer as much predictive value as a mere penny.

The second source of these weasel words is due to the unassailable quality of beliefs. Rampant relativism and extreme individualism create an environment where beliefs are a personal right not to be criticized. Thus, no one is able to assert any beliefs, because they might infringe upon the beliefs of others. If you are not convinced, test this on a nearby creationist.

Certainly a lamentable situation. Although I enjoyed Frank’s observations, I wish he followed his lamentations with some assertions.

Work-life balance is difficult enough to achieve, especially when you must balance your own development with that of your dependants. Like the information diet — limiting the intake “junk” information and information overconsumption — I thought of how my attention is spent, relative to my goal of leading a “considered life”. What are the “food groups” for my attention that require balancing? Considering how I fill each 24 hour period, came up with some categories:

• professional
• physical
• mental
• parental
• entertainment

These categories reflect the current situation in my life (ie. a new parent), so your mileage may vary. Also, I am not arguing that each of these categories have equal distribution. The “professional” category takes up about 50% of my time and attention, and the physical only about 5%. But I digress…

The above categories might remind you of the top bits of Maslow’s hierarchy. Indeed, the first three categories are about self actualization; the fourth is about love and belonging; and the fifth is the stress-reducing “junk food” of attention, which is overlooked by Maslow, but important in itself (and if you look close enough, you will find that even here one can find personal development).

Both your time and attention are a limited resource. If you are to spend them in the pursuit of work/life balance, or living the considered life (or whatever your goal is) consider what the optimal balance should be for you. Think of all you do and how they fit into the above categories, and how much time in total you dedicate to each. It is a simple problem of economics: the allocation of scarce resources.

Forgive me now as I break down each of these categories using personal examples.

Professional

Obviously work, and the types of R&D, Meetup groups, and extra-work study you do to better yourself professionally is important. Having a work environment that supports your personal development gives you a great sense of well being.

Physical

This one has been a challenge for me since having children. When you do have a spare minute, who wants to go to the gym? I just want to sleep. I look forward to my kids becoming more independent so that I can get back on this. Walking or riding to work, having a good diet, going to the gym and doing some jujutsu are what I wish I were doing.

Mental

For many, mental development is closely aligned to professional development. For me, it is exercising my brain in ways that my professional environment does not. This usually means reading, specifically non-fiction (politics, science, philosophy, etc) or challenging literature. Writing about my thinking is also important to me and my mental development. It is why I dedicate so much time to this blog, despite having a very small audience. ;-) To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, “Those who cannot speak, cannot write.” Engaging in enlightening discourse through different types of talk clubs are a great way to exercise the brain. The internet — being asynchronous — does not count.

Parental

Developing as a parent is important, since your kids will only have one childhood and it is your duty to give them the best one you possibly can. I mix this a lot with Entertainment, since it usually also involves play, outings and watching movies together. Another important part of parental duty is being a spouse. Don’t skimp on the husband+wife time, especially if your spouse is stay-at-home.

Entertainment

Life without fun, isn’t. For me TV, movies and reading (eg. genre fiction or comic books) fall into this category. I also watch the occasional football game, and recently was invited to a D&D group which is about as escapist as one can get. That is not to say any of the above categories cannot be fun. They should be. (In fact, “husband time” can be a highly recommended form of escapism, wink-wink, nudge-nudge).

Taking stock of each of these categories in your life and arranging your activities for optimum balance, even on paper, is a brilliant exercise in self-evaluation. If you are a subscriber to the idea of “the quantified self” you already understand the value, even if this is more of an abstract/subjective approach. A constant struggle, and like a diet you must occasionally return to first principles, periodically taking stock of how your spend your time and attention is rewarding.

It has been a week, and I think I have finally recovered from Startup Weekend Okanagan. I had a total of 7 hours sleep over the three days of taking a product from concept to pitch. The team was a powerhouse with 5 devs, a designer, 2 biz/cust devs, and me (a product dev). Throughout the weekend, we never thought we had a chance of winning, and were in it for the love of the product, the love of the tech, and fun. In the end, our enthusiasm prevailed and we were able to take home top prize, even though I think half of the audience still had no idea what it was we made.

Champions, with AO CEO Jeff Keen on the left, and city councillor Colin Basran on the right

I presented my idea of the Software Tree of Life at #LeanCoffeeKL #74. It was a pretty high concept session but I think it challenged everyone that attended. It certainly challenged me as the attendees brought up a number of interesting points I had not thought of. If you look at the full-sized whiteboard photo you will notice on the right a list of “Other Factors.” Other than the industry specific factors of which I alluded to in my last post, most of the points can be summed up into two considerations: 1) competition, and 2) capital.

I mentioned the red ocean of competition in my last post, but it was brought up that in the Regulated Enterprise Kingdom, there is are often very few competitors. The market is yours if you can get into it. If you already have an in, this will seriously impact your opportunity assessment calculus. Further to this, it was proposed that there is such a thing as a Regulated Consumer Kingdom, for example customer-facing software for banking or telecoms. An excellent point.

Capital wise, some branches of the tree take much more initial capital in order to enter. This could mean cash, physical capital and even knowledge capital. R & D costs to understand the domain before building a solution can be exorbitant for some industries. Having domain expertise on your team will be a must, and could be a high barrier to entry for you in these cases.

The final point that I would like to highlight from the session is something that I have talked about at length previously (eg. Getting customers in the enterprise) but did not make the connection with regards to the Tree of Life. It is the consumerization of the enterprise. This is a recent trend in technology and it is still far too early to determine whether or not will be all encompassing. However it is intriguing to consider the possibility of all of the top level branches of the Software Tree of Life merging into a single hybrid (note the green dotted lines on the whiteboard).

As entrepreneurs it is always beneficial to share stories and discuss the intricacies of daily startup operations. I maintain that it is also worth examining how the innovation ecosystem works as a whole from time to time. I think that is the part of being an expert in the field.