Lean LaunchPad. When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. I visited Bend last year and caught up with his progress. This post and the two that follow highlight what Dino has learned about the characteristics of the startup and investing landscape in a regional market, and what it takes to intentionally engineer a thriving regional tech cluster.
Today, with every city, state and country trying to build out a technology cluster, following Dino’s progress can provide others with a roadmap of what’s worked and what has not. Here’s Part 1 of Dino’s story… What’s DifferentThe differences between the Bend, Oregon region and Silicon Valley are obvious. Sickbeard - PVR application that downloads and manages your TV shows. Entrepreneurship Corner: Stanford University's free podcasts and video clips of entrepreneurial thought leaders and innovators from Silicon Valley. Is Amway a Cult? An Analysis. Before I begin, let me say that the word "Amway" refers to the corporation in Ada, Michigan.
In this essay, I refer not to Amway itself, but to the line of distributors: the Amway Motivational Organizations (or AMO's). The question "Is Amway a cult? " can be answered "no. " However, is involvement in the AMO's comparable to a cult-like environment? And do high-level distributors use mind control and psychological pressure without the consent of the people in their group? In all likelihood, the answer is "yes. " To start this section how do I define a "cult? " Two questions can then be asked: "What are the AMO's ends? " If you assume that Amway distributors are in the business to sell products available in the Amway catalogs, then the end result is money for both the corporation and the distributor.
In order for a group to be a "destructive cult," it must meet certain criteria. I would also add to that list: From Amway's "Infocenter"- Questions, Page 13. Persuasive Games: Exploitationware. [In this searing edition of his Persuasive Games column, academic and developer Bogost takes a look at the core tenets of gamification and argues that not only is it not "games" but that the entire discussion must be reframed.] I had been trying to ignore gamification, hoping it would go away, like an ill-placed pimple or an annoying party guest or a Katy Perry earworm. But a recent encounter with the concept has made me realize that plugging my ears and covering my eyes to it is a losing strategy.
Even if our goal is opposition, we need to better understand gamification's appeal in order to practice that opposition more effectively. In early April I spoke at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC, or 4Cs). 4Cs is to the college writing and rhetoric community what the Game Developers Conference is to the video game community. It's almost as large, with dozens of simultaneous sessions. After all, everyone who attends college is subjected to writing classes. Howard Rheingold. Media Lab Conversations Series: Howard Rheingold Thursday, May 10, 2012 | 2:00pm - 4:00pm All talks at the Media Lab, unless otherwise noted, are open to the public. Join us on Twitter: #MLTalks Co-Presented with the MIT Press. How can we use digital media so that they help us become empowered participants rather than passive consumers? Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, and cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time.
There is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. Rheingold's talk will be followed by a conversation with Joi Ito and Mimi Ito, as well as Q&A. Biography: Howard Rheingold, author of best-sellers Virtual Reality, The Virtual Community, Smart Mobs, and Net Smart, editor of best-seller The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, takes audiences on a journey through the human side of the technology-shaped future.