Bjorn Troch is The Social Traveler

Last year I met a Belgian guy who made me insanely jealous. He was traveling the world indefinitely using social media to connect, find places, set his itinerary and generally have a great time.

Along the way he was tackling crazy challenges suggested by the online community he has fostered. Right now he is riding alone on a tandem bike from Kuala Lumpur all the way to Hong Kong. He’s trying to do the ride of more than 5000 km in 3 months.

His name is Bjorn Troch and he calls himself The Social Traveler.

Turns out Bjorn is a really nice guy, which probably explains why his adventure is still progressing smoothly after a few years of non-stop country hopping.
Beyond having a great time and making us office workers jealous, Bjorn is also trying to make a difference to the communities he visits along the way by helping small local charities in each area.

And that’s where you can help. I have chipped in to sponsor a few kilometers of Bjorn’s travels knowing he will help small charities along the way….and I encourage you to do the same. It doesn’t take much to make a difference in some of these communities so help Bjorn help other and then follow his adventures from the comfort of your laptop.

Here is Bjorn’s full story….

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by Craig Wilson

Last year in the wake of a vigorous debate about how to turn Newcastle into a center of innovation I posted my thoughts on how to create an innovative city. It certainly generated some discussion and the wheels have actually started turning.

Central to my plan were the need for high-speed broadband and the idea of holding a prominent tech and innovative event in the city. I can confirm that progress is being made on both fronts but eventual success still relies on the support of the city’s leaders, both government and business.

When you consider that the nascent app economy spurred on by iOS, Android and Facebook apps has generated 466,000 jobs in the U.S. economy since 2007, there is a lot to gain from encouraging innovation.

Meanwhile I have been researching what other innovative cities around the world have been done to get ahead.

What has been consistently repeated is the importance of cities in creating an enabling environment for emerging technology companies.

This was a key topic of discussion at at the first-ever Cities Summit held in Vancouver recently. Mayors of 35 cities around the world joined with executives and consultants to discuss open cities, digital cities, urban laboratories, smart-city financing, and startup cities.

For example, San Jose (California) has created a “Framework for Establishing Demonstration Partnerships” which allows the city to work towards a more sustainable future–including the creation of 25,000 new green jobs–by enabling local companies to use municipal facilities as urban laboratories to test out new clean tech, sustainability, and mobility technologies. Rather than having to jump through the typical bureaucratic hoops, the demonstration allows the fast-tracking of pilot projects from local companies.

The Summit made it clear that smart cities of the future will find ways to incentivise and enable private sector innovation and local economic growth via innovative use of demand-side tools, as opposed to supply-side solutions like tech parks and tax breaks. For example, the feedback was that the emerging companies wanted to find a way to get their pre-commercial technologies tested by the city. This allows startups to get the kinks out as well as increase their ability to sell technology to other markets.

Cities can also use things like new standards or regulations, such as green building standards, to stimulate demand for new clean solutions and innovation.

Talent is another obvious challenge. Attracting and retaining young, educated people to study, live, and work in smart cities is a crucial. The Summit identified that cities first need to increase their livability and grow their enabling infrastructure to support emerging companies, then embark on a city branding campaign that will help attract and retain new talent, startups, services, and the arts.

Seems to me Newcastle has done this back-to-front. Last year the city launched an attractive new branding initiative but we haven’t addressed the key issues of transport, new business support or broadband. We have an incredibly good lifestyle in Newcastle but much of the basic infrastructure that will encourage innovation and growth is still wanting.

If our leaders can address these key issues and then establish programs to support and encourage innovation we can truly become a smart city.

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Tomorrow I am speaking at the Digital Culture Public Sphere consultation run by Senator Kate Lundy and Minister Simon Crean in order to form a collaborative submission on digital culture in Australia to the National Cultural Policy consultation.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

I’m covering “The future of media culture creation in a digital world” but the Public Sphere wiki hasn’t had many contributions. Here’s you chance to contribute to a 10 year strategy for Australian digital culture, and the broader national cultural agenda.

There’s plenty of ways you can get involved via the Wiki, but for expediency and to help me easily deliver your ideas could you please either write a comment here or via Twitter using the hashtag #publicspheremedia so I can collate.

This is fairly urgent. I will be presenting the collated ideas at about 12.30pm tomorrow (6 Oct 2011).

Ideas to address include:

• How do you imagine the sector could look in the future? How could Australia excel? What would a 10 year plan look like?

• What are some tangible ways we could measure progress in this area?

• Ideas to achieve the vision for Australia.

• Add your thoughts and references for where this sector is going, emerging business models, opportunities for commercialisation

• Any additional information you think might be useful, including case studies, success stories, research papers.

• Leading case studies from the sector to help contextualise Australian innovation in this area

GO FOR IT.

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Recently I have been proposing a festival for Newcastle along the lines of SXSW in Austin,Texas. We’ve had some really good discussions about it at The Lunaticks Society events and Newcastle Coffee Mornings.

I am proposing that we call it The DiG Festival (Design, Interactive and Green-tech).

I have told anyone who will listen that Austin during SXSW is one of the most exciting places on the planet, and it’ be great to create some of that excitement here too.

I just came across this excellent little video that really illustrates how exciting SXSW really is. The Interactive section runs fro about 1.45 to 4mins but the whole lot is worth a look and could be inspiration for a larger event in the future.

Could you DiG a SXSW in Newcastle? I know I could.

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(originally uploaded by Triplepundit.com)

My last 3 posts have had a pretty strong theme running around innovation; Think Like a Tech Start-Up, What is Your Gateway Drug? and My Plan for Creating an Innovative City.  So its pretty easy to see where my thoughts are at the moment.

As an agency that likes to work on innovative side projects, like NLYZR and Urban Insider, my team and I are often questioning the role of agencies going forward. I mean, we’re all supposed to be highly creative aren’t we? So why aren’t we getting more involved in creating more new businesses and revolutionising industries instead of just trotting out another 30 sec ad?

Then along comes the always clever Neil Perkin with a new post on his Only Dead Fish blog titled Agencies as Incubators. In it Neil looks at the Cannes Lions (formerly advertising awards), an amazing program supported by Wieden & Kennedy called the Portland Incubator Experiment which has some parallels to the excellent Y-Combinator concept in Silicon Valley and how Apple fund and secure new technology breakthroughs.

You must read this if you are interested in innovation or if you are going to be at the next Lunaticks event Smart and Innovative City Part 2. THIS  is the sort of thinking we need in our industry, not more self-indulgent award wankfests.

It seems to me that the time is ripe for agencies to start challenging their clients to think beyond business as usual and use that creativity to radically interrupt industries in the way new technology is reshaping the landscape.

Is yours?

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Last night we had a forum in Newcastle discussing the desire for this once heavily industrial town to become a center for innovation. Unfortunately much of the panel discussion, and subsequently the audience questions, got bogged down in discussing the past, the limitations of council and old technology. It was a lost opportunity for what is an important and exciting discussion.

Newcastle offers many advantages for innovative companies - photo MattLauder.com.au

Near the end of the night I couldn’t help myself and grabbed the microphone to offer my simple plan for creating an innovative city. Here it is in writing for anyone who cares to take the discussion further or help expand and act on the ideas.

Incremental examples of creeping innovation from existing players won’t be enough to launch a town like Newcastle to national or international prominence as a smart and innovative city. A couple of major initiatives are required to create that catalyst for a dynamic leap forward.

Firstly, universal access to high-speed broadband is essential for a community to compete and indeed lead the way in innovation. In the digital economy we must be connected. It is not good enough to wait for the National Broadband Network to finally arrive in town. It doesn’t give us an advantage, it just puts us on par with the rest of Australia when (or if) it finally arrives.

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Drug dealers in The Wire are sophisticated marketers

Is it possible that drug dealers are smarter marketers than many multinationals?

Consider the two. Multinational pharmaceutical companies sell drugs. They spend a fortune on expensive media to convince us we need their drugs. Their cost per acquisition is high.

Illegal drug dealers also sell drugs. They often start with a free sample of their “goods” to a few key locals in their community. This gets the potential buyers “hooked”, creates a sense of loyalty and obligation and leads to strong word-of-mouth for their product. Their cost per acquisition is low and conversion rate is almost 100%.

Now, while I don’t suggest you move into distribution of illegal goods, I do recommend you emulate drug dealers with your marketing. Make a good product or service, make it addictive and give away a small amount for free in order to generate ongoing sales and word of mouth. Anyone who has ever watched The Wire has seen the sophisticated marketing and distribution of street level drug dealers.

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Evan Williams from Twitter at Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco 2010

I live a secret life. By day I’m a mild mannered advertising agency exec (the manners might depend on who you ask) whilst in my spare time I am building a start-up tech business.

The start-up is NLYZR. Its been around for the last 2 years in various evolving forms but now we’re getting down to brass tacks as it’s large scale commercial release is nearing launch phase.

The interesting thing is that while we’ve been using our knowledge at Sticky to create NLYZR as a business, we’re actually learning more from NLYZR that is helping the agency and our other clients. We’ve learned to think like a tech start-up and its been incredibly liberating.

Tech start-ups require a totally different mindset to that used in the day-to-day running of an agency, or any business for that matter. In fact, tech start-ups are radically different from other (non-tech) start-ups. But, importantly, we’re learning that the defining characteristics of a successful tech start-up can be applied to most industries to create something much more exciting.

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I’m a strong believer in the “innovate or die” approach to business.

We’re in an unprecedented age of innovation and change. Not since the industrial revolution has the world experienced such rapid advancements and wholesale change as technology has freed information and enabled incredible leaps in communication.

Over the last few years much of this blog has been dedicated to the changing nature of media and marketing; two areas heavily affected by 21st Century innovation, and it has allowed me to study business models that need to rapidly evolve or become extinct.

But these days innovation is crucial to most industries and communities. The powerhouses of modern business have been the most innovative companies: Google, Apple and Facebook to name just three. They’re now being joined by companies like Groupon (who are innovating around retail), Netflix (innovating around home entertainment) and Zygna (innovating around gaming or micro gaming). While these companies are pushing innovation previous industry leaders in the same categories are dying.

I’ve long believed that the way forward for an old industrial town like Newcastle is not to look at the past, but to embrace the future. While steel-making might have been Newcastle’s past innovation and technology could be it’s future.

Web and mobile innovation could be the path to future prosperity in Newcastle. If ever there was a town that should lobby hard to have the National Broadband Network sooner rather than later, it’s Newcastle. Running high speed broadband cable down the currently dilapidated Hunter Street could enable smart start-ups to reinvent the area as an Innovation Capital.

Cheap rents, great lifestyle and a large University all combine in Newcastle to create a perfect environment to attract talent and foster innovation.

While this vision may be a little way off, there is already a nucleus of innovation in Newcastle. They’re not making a big noise yet but I think they will soon.

And that’s where the Lunaticks Society’s next event comes in. On Tuesday 3 May they’re holding their first Digital Showcase. Its a festival of innovative ideas where presenters will be offered the chance to give an elevator pitch in a 15 minute session to an expert panel of judges and audience of digital enthusiasts, creatives, entrepreneurs and investors.

If you have a great idea you’ve been working on and want to share then contact the Lunaticks to be one of the presenters. If you’re keen to hear from some innovators then roll up and join the audience.

I’m really hoping this will be the catalyst for a new era of innovation in the area; one where businesses begin to realise they must innovate or die.

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