To business model or not to business model
I just posted a huge comment over at David Crow’s blog, then realised this might be a classic case of ‘get your own blog’, as it happens I do have my own blog so I’ll post a slightly modified version here.
These thoughts are in response to Jerry King’s thoughts (3rd comment down) about directions the DemoCamp/TorCamp ‘movement’ could go in, and various reactions.
There’s a very strong case to be made that there’s lots of cool tech stuff happening in relative commercial obscurity in Toronto. And taking some of those projects and encouraging and supporting them into successful businesses would certainly be a good thing. Getting more involvement of ‘grey hairs’ with real experience in this stuff can only help that.
Jerry King asks ‘if the folks presenting at MaRS on Tuesday evening can’t speak intelligently about the commercial aspects of their very own ideas, who can?’. I think there’s an obvious answer to that, people like Jerry himself can speak intelligently to the commercialisation of ideas. Jerry demonstrates this point by suggesting several fascinating business models for the hacked digital camera idea, which Randy Glenn (who gave that demo) self-proclaimed as being business model free. I should note, Randy’s was one of the most encouraging and inspirational demos I’ve seen at TorCamp yet, it wasn’t perfect but it was fascinating, to me at least.
I guess what I’m saying is that there is room for both hacking for hacking’s sake and a more focused, business directed approach to development. In fact I’d argue that neither can thrive without the other. Personally, I’d be really sorry to see the business angle nudge out the for-it’s-own-sake stuff in the TorCamp ‘movement’. Perhaps there’s room for two streams? ViableBusinessModelTechCamp and CoolButTotallyUncommercialisedCamp perhaps?
Sorry for the run on comment, but I felt particularly strongly about this after contrasting my impression of this week’s DemoCamp (passionate and real) against iSummit (corporation heavy and the passion largely missing, or at least focused on cold hard cash).
I should note, I’m not taking some anti-capitalist stance, I just feel that there has to be room for both the pragmatic business approach to tech and the non-commercial ‘because it seemed like a good thing to do and I could do it’ approach. Blending those two worlds (done right) can only be a good thing. I definitely wouldn’t want to see business savvy as a criteria for DemoCamp, I’m not there for business savvy, I’m there to see technically cool and socially inspirational stuff people are working on (could be just me though).
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Comments (6)
Pingback from Remarkk! » iSummit Wrap-up:
[April 1, 2006]
[…] I would like to point all iSummit attendees to pay attention to the emergent community and agile innovation approaches coming out of the web development community in Toronto and elsewhere. DemoCamp is one spinoff of the BarCamp unconference phenomenon, which began in Toronto with TorCamp. It is a nascent community of software innovators, programmers, geeks, entrepreneurs and other interested parties that is completely self-organized way that follows agile principles. DemoCamps have been happening more or less monthly and attendance has been growing at an exponential rate. The future of DemoCamp is being discussed right now: here, here, here and here. […]
Pingback from My Own Pirate Radio » Tech Entrepreneurship in Canada:
[April 1, 2006]
[…] Having read many of the follow-up comments, I see two definite themes emerging. (1) A desire to add an entrepreneurial education / business feedback element to DemoCamp, or to create a related forum that offers same. (2) A desire to keep doing the good stuff that DemoCamp already does. Patrick Dinnen says, “…there is room for both hacking for hacking’s sake and a more focused, business directed approach to development. In fact I’d argue that neither can thrive without the other.” I’m down with that - let’s try for both. […]
Comment from David Crow:
[April 1, 2006]
Patrick, I would too. I’d love to see Lego MindstormsNXT. I’d love to see the telescope hackers that look for and track military satelittes. It is the sharing of ideas that is important, those might be technology, business or other. I personally like the mix of topics.
Comment from debhart:
[April 2, 2006]
I think it is important to maintain an open place for anyone to say “hey, check this out”. The DemoCamp criterion is stringent: it must be working code (no powerpoint, wireframes, demoware). Beyond that, it’s open to serendipity. If DemoCamp decides to go another direction, I suspect that this informal “place” will just change address… we’re hooked now.
deb
Comment from Randy Glenn:
[April 4, 2006]
Just to be clear, what I meant was that I had no business model - that this is something I do for fun. The company selling the cameras certainly has a business model (which I conveniently sidestep), and I’m sure others could commercialize this work, but I have no commercial interest myself.
Comment from pdinnen:
[April 4, 2006]
Randy
Yes, I wasn’t very clear in my post, but that’s the impression I got from your demo. I’m a big fan of just for the hell of it hacking and someone else’s business model sidestepping, and was arguing that whatever changes happen with DemoCamp we should be careful to encourage demos like yours.