Oz, Mate

Currently a week into a 2 week trip to Australia. My son is starting school here. Some notes on the trip.

1. Qantas missed the memo on making air travel as humiliating and unbearable as possible. They are a serious airline. 767 from Honolulu to Sydney (10 hours) was full. Service, in economy started as soon as the seatbelt sign went off and never stopped. Two meals. Free booze. Popsicles. Hot chocolate. Nice people. If you want to show your kids what air travel used to be like, fly Qantas.
2. The Australian cities are all cool. Sydney is big, bustling, noisy, fun. Having the worlds best beaches on the local bus routes doesn't hurt. Brisbane is a lot more laid back. Very young. Lots of students. Modern. Both are very international.
3. The world is getting smaller. Fast. Even since the last time I was here, the Amercanization of everywhere appears to have accelerated remarkably. It's the same brands, ads, people, faces, TV programs everywhere. Too bad. The completely distinct feeling that international cities used to have is disappearing/has disappeared. Even the Aussie accents seem easier to understand.
   
4. Internet is expensive here. $20/day in Sydney and Surfers Paradise. $27 (!) in Brisbane. Ouch.
5. The internet is indispensible. For bookings, staying in touch, listening to XM radio.
   
6. Driving on the wrong side isn't so hard as long as there are at least two others in the car to remind you where the lane is, stay left, how to navigate the bloody round-abouts. Happy to have the car parked in the hotel lot!
7. Canada is cold. Minus 14. Hell. I'm staying here. Going kite boarding today.
   

Some pics from the travels here.

The Next Big Technology Thing

My cool friend Paula stopped by the other day.

Paula's cool for a whole bunch of cool reasons. She lives in California. She runs a technology IR firm. She hangs out with big name clients. Coolest of all, every time I see her - like once or twice/year, Paula always shares her "you wanna know what I think the next big trend in technology is going to be?".

I first got impressed - hey, I'm just not cool like her - when a few years ago she got all excited about the idea that video would be a big hit on small screens - like cell phones. Seriously, I didn't get it. Who would ever want to watch video on their cell phone? I was polite. I might have even faked some enthusiasm.

Of course, she was right.

Since then I've become a serous believer. She's always right. And her next big idea makes more sense than TV on my cell phone. Wanna know what it is?

Scrubbing the internet clean of personal and corporate information.....as in, the kids are turning 4 and pretty good with Google...how do I get rid of those pictures of me skinny dipping in front of City Hall?!



Paula compared it to erasing tattoos. Erasing tattoos is big business. I saw this on TV the other day.....over 65% of people with tattoos end up regretting them. Tattoo removal is big.

Internet removal could be huge.

I'm not a techie (really, have you seen my picture?!) so I have no idea what technology will be required to do internet erasure. But I know this - if it's bits and bytes - it's gotta be possible. Further, if Paula's talking about it, I assume some VC somewhere is already funding it.

By the way, I was just kidding about skinny dipping in front of city hall.

I had my shoes on.

Appreciating Tech in Waterloo

I appreciated getting invited to Deloitte's Tech Appreciation dinner last night at 20 King in Kitchener/Waterloo. Waterloo is the home of RIM, Open Text and Bill Gates favourite university - the University of Waterloo. UW has an awesome reputation for maths and computer science. Deloitte are the accounting rock stars of the Waterloo tech space having figured how to stay close to entrepreneurial techies moving out of the unviversity - and how to keep young companies alive through SR&ED tax credits.

The Waterloo tech crowd is - a typical tech crowd - bright and interesting. I was fortunate enough to sit beside an ex-client and good friend Flavio Gomes of Logisense Corporation. Flav is turning Logisense into a serious player in the IP billing space.

Hot off Pubcon last week, I was pretty clear that if there's a threat to the internet as we know it - it's from Google's overwhelming dominance.

Flav disagrees and his perspective makes a lot of sense - the real, and serious threat is from the carriers, and the ISP's - the guys who've layed the road, own the road and control the toll booths - and have stood by to watch Google and others create billions of dollars of value while the highway business has been turned into a commodity. From Flav's perspective the road owners and the tool booth guys aren't going to stand around forever - they're going to claim their share of the action. The technology exists to do it - including categorizing all the different types of traffic, and charging a fee for each. If he's right - and the logic seems compelling - the wild west days of the current internet business boom could be in serious jeopardy - or not, providing you're in the business of helping collect tolls, like Logisense is.

Other interesting conversation was with Tobi Jenkins - banker, VC and wife of Open Text CEO Tom Jenkins. Tobi has gone into property development - setting up a cool spot called TechTown near UW's incubator center. Tech town is high tech offices, day care, banking and a state of the art health club all in one spot. A consumate business person and marketer, Tobi had brochures at hand for anyone and everyone. If I heard her correctly, TechTown is scheduled to open in May 2007. Get your runners ready.

All in all an outstanding evening put on by the Deloitte group in Waterloo for their technology clients.