Following on from the Leadership Forum yesterday, had a great, information packed Pacific Northwest Wireless Summit today. The conference theme was around Ideas, Innovation, Insight and Investment.

The morning started with keynote speakers from a cross section of the wireless industry, including researchers, venture capitalists and companies.

Tom Huseby (SeaPoint Ventures, Seattle) said this is the best time to start a company. Investment funds, he said, is still available for the right companies. Problem is that people are too concerned about the current economic climate, when they should be focused on creating for the future. Companies that are developing for the upcoming boom in the mobile market will be the winners in 2010 and beyond.

Video courtesy of Bruce Sharpe

Interestingly, Dr. Gerry Chan (Communications Research Centre, Canada) mentioned one of the frustration for his team has been that not enough academics are commercializing their research. Dr. Chan is passionate about changing that in Canada and his organization is encouraging funded researchers to become more entrepreneurial in their outlook.

Keynote session was followed by several intense specialized forums throughout the day and the Summit ended with an upbeat Award Gala dinner

Pacific Northwest Wireless Summit 2009 kicked off today in Vancouver, Canada with an amazing Leadership Forum. The Forum was held on the 29th floor of Fasken Martineau‘s offices in downtown Vancouver. During the conference, the fog lifted momentarily to give us a great view of Vancouver waterfront with the Grouse Mountain in the background. Vancouver is a beautiful town, no doubts there.

But back to the Forum. The lineup of speakers was great. Steve Morley (20th employee at Qualcomm and its former VP Technology) stressed that start-up companies should not focus on their technology, but rather their customers. A common sense idea which unfortunately is not very common in the technology start-up world. Reminded me of a phrase Silicon Valley VC often used: technology is only a ticket to the game, not the game itself. The game is business, unfortunately too many companies get wrapped up in the (perceived) greatness of their technology that they forget all about the customer.

Dr. Wang Jing (Secretary-General & Senior Advisor at TD-SCDMA Forum, China), provided a great overview of the telecommunications industry in China. The market leaders, players and most importantly where the current and future opportunities are. Chinese market is growing by leaps and bounds and while major players dominate certain markets (carriers, for example) significant opportunities still exist for start-ups and smaller companies.

While Dr. Jing did not discuss the content space in the Chinese market, I believe there are great opportunities in that space, not only in China, but globally. Specifically, locally relevant content, especially when combined with user selected location based content. This market is ripe for explosion and quite a few interesting start-up companies are working in this area. Canpages, for example is working on the mobile version of their yellow pages. The demo on the iPhone was quite impressive.

Anshu Agarwal (VP Marketing, Keynote Systems) took us through his crystal ball and what the future holds for the next few years. The interesting part of his presentation was how he arrived at the future prediction based on recent innovations in the market place. If Anshu’s predictions are correct, the mobile industry is ready for a major surge, with innovative products hitting the market over the next 18 to 36 months.

Besides the presenters, there were several panel discussions, including a thought provoking panel led by Tony Fish (Co-Founder, AMF Ventures, UK) on convergence (sorry Tony, I owe you a dollar for using the C word) in the mobile industry.

All in all a great Forum. Thank you Michael Bidu and Christina Chowaniec of WINBC for putting together a great event.

Social networks are creating a buzz among the marketing folks who are trying to understand how to engage with the various communities online. Many marketers incorrectly assume that traditional marketing (i.e. advertisement) would work just as well on social networking sites as they have elsewhere. They happily go off spending money on that channel.

And they fail miserably.

Social networking is inherently about socialising.  Marketing, therefore must be about the social experience. Members of the site aren’t there to buy widgets, they are there to engage with their friends and colleagues. Take, for example, Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign. Specifically targeted to Facebook members. A great example how to market to the community while allowing them to engage with their friends. Burger King could have opted to simply place an advertisement banner offering free burgers. Some members would have taken opportunity of that offer. But from the community’s perspective Whopper Sacrifice isn’t about free burgers, its about engaging with their friends in a fun way.

Result – not only is the campaign more successful than a banner advertisement would have been, Burger King ended up getting plenty of free publicity too.

Interestingly enough would this same campaign work on LinkedIn? I suspect not. Facebook and LinkedIn, while both are social network sites are used in very different ways by the members. Active LinkedIn members work hard to develop relationships on the site. They will not “sacrifice” a connection for a free meal. So what would work on LinkedIn? Lets see if Burger King can come up with something interesting.

More to the point, if social networking demographics are the right kind for your product, how are you engaging with that community?

If you are looking to expand your business to the UK, look at the West Midlands region, perhaps the perfect place to setup your British venture. With easy access to the London Metropolitan area, West Midlands’ cost of doing business is 30% lower than London’s.

And the Bridge to Growth initiative makes this deal even sweeter. A unique public-private sector partnership, you can quickly register your UK limited company free of charge.

But the offer doesn’t stop there. Free UK limited company is only the first step. To ensure your British company is on the right track, you will also get free advice on general tax and finance issues as well as general legal matters. These could include initial consultation, setup of an accounting system, taxation, etc.

While the above services will help you navigate the legal requirements of setting up a UK business, getting the business going quickly in a new market would mean finding a suitable office space.

Bridge to Growth got your covered there as well. The program provides either free office space for several months or a substantial discount, depending on the location you select. You have a choice of several locations throughout the West Midlands in one of the several participating science parks.

To top it all off, you also get access to discounted lead generation service, potentially allowing you to start selling right away.

So let’s see. Free UK Limited company, free consultation from accountants and lawyers for general finance, taxation and legal issues. Free or discounted accommodations for a few months and access to lead generation.

But wait, there is more. Advantage West Midlands, the regional development body and the organisers of the Bridge to Growth program, can also introduce you to an extensive network of regional partners. These partners can provide further help at no or very low cost. Partners like the National B2B Centre, Manufacturing Advisory Service, MediLink, and IT Futures to name a few.

So if you are looking to expand into the UK, setting up in West Midlands makes sense. You can setup your UK company quickly and at a very low cost, but with easy access to the British and indeed the European markets.

(I just realised, I sound like a commercial in this post. Wonder if there are any opportunities for me to work in one of those late night commercials).

The Year of the Rat. That was 2008, all gone and in the past now.

The Year of the Ox is upon us. In the Chinese zodiac, ox is the sign of prosperity through hard work and resilience. We may have to work harder this year to overcome some of what we lost to the rats last year, but as the Chinese say “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up”. So it would be our resilience and persistence, qualities of an ox, which will get us through this year and into prosperity.

I hadn’t intended to have a Chinese theme for this post, but as it appears that I have, I will throw in one more wisdom from the land of dragons.  Wēijī, the symbol of crises in Chinese. While there is controversy on how one interprets this symbol, there seems to be a wide acceptance that the first part of the symbol represents danger, while the second can be loosely interpreted to mean opportunity. Hence it seems that while there is danger in any crises, there are always opportunities. So are their opportunities in the current economic crises? I sure hope so. Happy New Year.

Watch the video from Japan and …

Its Christmas in the middle of an economic blizzard. Money is tight, credit is crunched. Banks are not lending, angels are not investing, VCs are not funding. So how does one go about getting dough to make cookies for Santa?

Why not learn from Santa himself. If Santa was looking to raise money, here is how he would pitch his business:

Santa’s Perfect Pitch

And what do you know; there are businesses out there that reward good behavior.

Thanks Santa.

Watch the video.

So says Guy Kawasaki. This may seem surprising coming from a former uber Apple evangelist, but it is one of the core philosophies Guy hones into every start-up company he has founded or funded.

One of the reasons why start-up companies fail is because the management insists on making their product perfect before shipping. A fatal mistake, especially in a technology industry. Technology changes rapidly and a product can always be made better. If you wait to incorporate all the new features, someone else will probably beat you to market.

But, before you go off and start shipping crap, take heed to the next suggestion from Guy:

“Churn, baby, churn. I’m saying it’s okay to ship crap–I’m not saying that it’s okay to stay crappy. A company must improve version 1.0 and create version 1.1, 1.2, … 2.0. This is a difficult lesson to learn because it’s so hard to ship an innovation; therefore, the last thing employees want to deal with is complaints about their perfect baby. Innovation is not an event. It’s a process.”

So there you have it. Start shipping your products now. Keep innovating and let your competitors play catch up with you.

Went to the Research in Motion Alliance Tour yesterday at the Canada High Commission in London.  RIM and CHC London hosted the event to showcase some of RIM’s partners to the mobile and wireless community in the UK.

There were some interesting products, but the demo from Unify4Life was downright amazing.  They have developed a series of products that would allow you to control variety of home appliances with your BlackBerry.  For example, you can use your BlackBerry to change TV channels, get TV guide on BlackBerry, change music on iPod or other stereo systems.  Control your garage door and your home lightning system, heating and air conditioning equipment.  The list goes on.

Future plans include developing these products for other mobile devices, such as iPhone and Windows PDAs