JPowers @ IN3.ORG

Dan Bricklin and the Cold Comfort of Experience

I saw Dan Bricklin, inventor of the first PC spreadsheet program VisiCalc, at the NY Tech Meetup last night. The opening acts were some machine vision and robotics researchers from NYU and Columbia showing their new work to a big but under-charmed crowd. Things ran late, and then proto-blogger Anil Dash gave some admiring introductory remarks and brought out Dan.

Dan Bricklin / Image via Wikipedia

Dan brought out his new book, Bricklin on Technology, a compilation of his blogs, podcasts and essays over the last decade.

He read from the book -- from his old blog posts -- and illustrated his talk with pictures from the East Coast birthplace of computing around Route 128 near Boston back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Dan unrolled ancient scrolls from the before-time: DEC minicomputers, dumb terminals, the Apple II, the revolutionary Harris 2200 page layout machine, the first IBM PC and some promo videos for spreadsheet programs that eclipsed VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. The audience roared at the 1980s dweebs in three piece suits dancing to a pre-Windows jingle as Dan told about inventing the spreadsheet in a wet basement in Massachusetts. In the background were Gates and Jobs but also the armies of hopeful start-ups, brilliant programmers, careful CFOs, lucky salesmen and visionary inventors who drove computing onto every desk and into every home in those years.

Dan's been there and done that. While he prototyped his great invention on a minicomputer and coded it for MS-DOS and cashed out before Windows, he got back up on the horse and founded Slate, an early tablet computer start-up, and Trellix, an early blog-enabling firm. Last night, he mused about new opportunities in gesture interfaces, multi-user networked apps and the future of mobile computing.

Throughout his talk, Dan would mention some tech -- like the 2200 -- and ask the audience if they'd ever heard of it. Response there was none. The mixed crowd of greybeard engineers, grasping entrepreneurs and biz dev naifs knew little about the roots of the industry that they serve. For them, the world was born with Windows 95 or Netscape or Google or Facebook or the iPhone.

I've always felt that that reaction was fine. I've always tried to avoid chewing the fat with old-timers about punched cards, mag tape and the good old days of Atex and Wang. Whatever nostalgia buzz you get, it's irrelevant that a terrabyte used to be unthinkable and that a computer used to cost more than a BMW. We're all going to live in the future where none of that old junk matters.

And yet.  Humans have been crafting tools since the beginning, and there's a lot we can learn from the way we did things in the past. (Those who've never read Santayana are doomed to repeat him.) The iPhone didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, it's the evolution of a lot of ideas that have been rattling around for forty or fifty years.

But it's hard to see the big picture when you're struggling in the day-to-day and your head is too full of what is rather than what could be. Friday's payroll or the next quarter or your investors' liquidity event is a mere milestone on a long path. Folks like Dan remind us that it's not whether you make Gates money or Jobs money or Page/Brin money, it's what you invent, what you build and what you leave behind.

On Event Peeps: Time to re-write the manual on live events

This week I've got an article on EventPeeps.com (free reg reqd), the live event industry social network, with a list of five things to do during the recession to make trade shows and conferences succeed.

1. Air travel sucks, so fix it.
2. ROI dominates, so prove it.
3. Virtual meetings encroach, so out-dazzle.
4. Carbon scolds rule, so ante up.
5. Demagogues bluster, so head 'em off.

We all hate the aggravations and costs of travel, and there are people who think live events can be replaced by webinars and e-meetings. And recently, there's been a lot of noisy indignation from politicians and headline writers about conferences, sponsorships and other corporate events booked by financial firms before the Crash, prompting the U.S. Travel Association to churn out press releases and talking points (PDF) about the economic value of meetings, events and incentive travel.

Business is going to get worse before it gets better, but like they say, "When there's blood in the street, there's money to be made.

At SISO: A Twitter Feed for ConferenceIdeas

I'm speaking at the Society of Independent Show Organizers 2008 Executive Conference in Atlanta. (Slide links to come.) In addition to discussing this year's SISO Web Awards, I'm presenting a talk with Carl Pugh of Radius Events on "Developing Your Conference Program for Fun and Profit." Among the things we'll be talking about is live blogging and tweeting from conferences, so I've set up a Twitter account called "ConferenceIdeas". Follow it and send your conference comments to @ConferenceIdeas via Twitter.

Webcast: What's Happening with RSS?

What's Happening with RSS? A Look at How This New Tool is Being Utilized in the Industry

Wednesday. June 28, 2006 | 2:00 pm EDT | REGISTER HERE

Sponsored by the Society of  Independent Show Organizers, this webcast seminar presented by IN3's Jack  Powers and trade show consultant Ted Doyle describes the basics of Real Simple Syndication, analyzes RSS as a marketing tool, and describes how trade show and conference organizers can use it to develop relationships.

See the IN3 courseware page, and enter your comments or questions about this webcast here.

Ultimate Pop-Up Retail: Expoships' Seafair

One of the most interesting ideas at the SISO trade show CEO Forum was David Lester's Seafair Grande Luxe, a custom-built show yacht that will travel up and down the U.S. East Coast with a movable exposition. From the web site:

Targeting 34 affluent markets during an 11-month annual voyage, the world’s   first luxury exposition megayacht, Grand Luxe, will undoubtedly be a spectacular attraction as it visits each port. Prestigious art dealers, antique dealers and jewelers from New York, London, and Paris will welcome collectors and connoisseurs to their individual “galleries at sea.”

The Flash-heavy web site is a little hard to get around, but the idea of a first class retail experience appearing at the local yacht basin is brilliant. Briefings from the excellent trendwatching.com describe the recent occurences of Pop-Up Retail in which sellers like Target, Levis, Sharp, eBay and Crown Royal create limited-time shops that showcase their brands on high-end shopping streets or in buses, minivans or even Hummers. According to trendwatching.com:

POP-UP RETAIL fits right in with the Entertainment Economy, the Experience Economy, the Surprise Economy, with MASSCLUSIVITY, and so on. It's about surprising consumers with temporary 'performances', guaranteeing exclusivity because of the limited time span. It's about buzz, and about new try-out and testing techniques. It provides visibility for e-tailers and allows 'real-world' companies to enter uncharted markets on the cheap. In short, it's one of those trends that should be incorporated in every existing and new marketing and advertising strategy.

(Thanks to JB for the link.)

SISO CEO Forum: Intense, Entertaining, Social, Star-Studded, Aspirational

The Society of Independent Show Organizers SISO CEO Forum this past weekend in Charlotte, NC hit every high point on my list of a successful event's SHOW BIZ features. It was ...

Intense
Two days of well-organized seminars, roundtables and networking opps that kept people busy from 8 am until past midnight  in a venue that wasn't near any distractions.
Entertaining
It'd be hard for people who put on trade shows for a living to be anything less than interesting, friendly, practical, funny and smart, so the audience was at least as much fun as the speakers.
Social
Because it's such a small industry, almost everybody knows everybody else or has worked for or hired or sold to everybody else so it's easy to get a conversation started.
Star-studded
Some of the richest companies -- and several of the richest people -- in the trade show business rubbed elbows with entrepreneurs, investors, start-up teams and famous experts.   
Aspirational
With lots of examples of how to do things right and how to screw things up, how to make good money and how to make good business, attendees could visualize how they'll build their companies, manage their careers, and craft great shows.

Full disclosure: I spoke (for a fee) on "Next Generation Marketing: The Challenge of On-Line Society."  The slides are available on-line in a big PDF file, one of the few legitimate uses of PDF that I described in my section about web design.