Accelerating Technology Commercialization

As we approach the end of the first year that this blog was initiated by the Technology Commercialization Centre (TCC) and Techcom Program at the University of Alberta Business School, it is a good time to reflect on the value of this communication medium and how it can be utilized more effectively. The promise of the Techcom Program at the School of Business is to address the Provincial talent gap of business savvy entrepreneurs that understand science and technology--in order to facilitate and accelerate technology commercialization. Our students are actively involved in facilitating technology development and company creation through the Ingenuity Enterprise program supported by TEC Edmonton and the TCC at the School of Business as well as other initiatives. The TCC has, for instance, also been active in assisting researchers at the National Institute for Nanotechnology evaluate options for commercialization as well as supporting the development of major new technology initiatives in biomedical engineering (through the BERRI effort). We are also actively pursuing a more aggressive Science to Business training strategy. Such initiatives provide opportunities for our MBA students and facilitate technology commercialization in the Province. This blog can provide a key mechanism for more interactive learning by MBA students, as well as a very instrumental network and information sharing forum for those interested in technology commercialization in Alberta. My hope for 2008 is that this blog will pick up momentum and will be actively used by UA MBA students (current and past) and facilitate dialogue between University scientists and business people and the community at large--government, industry and capital. One of the deficits in the Province is the lack of a forum for communication that links disparate efforts and forms of expertise. To wit, we are in the process of making this an open access forum and encourage everyone to responsibly contribute to making this a generative venue for technology commercialization talk and knowledge.

All the best for the holidays and for an innovative and entrepreneurial 2008!

Michael Lounsbury
Director Technology Commercialization Centre
University of Alberta School of Business & National Institute for Technology.

EzSeer Meets The Money

The Meet The Money (Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs) Boot Camp was held on November 2, 2007 at NAIT. James Ortlieb from EzSeer was one of nearly a dozen entrepreneurs invited to participate in the workshop. The purpose of the event is to help young companies hone the skills necessary to successfully secure financing from Angel Investors and Venture Capital firms.

Meet The Money is produced by a dynamic team of four female entrepreneurs, each successful in her own right. Angela Armstrong from Prime Capital, Johanna MacDonald from Johanna MacDonald & Associates, Carissa Reiniger from Silver Lining Ltd., and Laura Schuler from Trevoy LLP Lawyers.

Participants in the Boot Camp got a realistic insight into the expectations and requirements associated with new venture funding. At EzSeer we would like to commend all four of these ladies for presenting an interesting challenge and a compelling opportunity to this cadre of eager entrepreneurs. Good luck to all of the participants. For more information go to www.meetthemoney.ca.

EzSeer: See what you want easier.

EzSeer Invited to speak at Celebrating Ingenuity 2007

On November 16, 2007 the Alberta Ingenuity Fund will be hosting their annual event, Celebrating Ingenuity 2007, to honor Ingenuity Award Recipients. The event will commence at 6:00 pm. and is to be held at the Telus Centre for Business located at the University of Alberta.

EzSeer has been invited to say a few words to address the contributions made by the Alberta Ingenuity Fund and TEC Edmonton towards the advancement of the technology industry here in Alberta. EzSeer President Dr. Tingshao Zhu and COO James Ortlieb will be in attendance at the event.

The EzSeer team is grateful for the opportunity to appear at this prestigious event and looks forward to meeting other delegates.

EzSeer: See what you want easier.

EzSeer at TRLabs NGI Workshop

TRLabs held their first Next Generation Internet/Networks (NGI/NGN) workshop on November 9, 2007 at the University of Alberta School of Business. TRLabs is a leader in Canada's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. The focus of the workshop was to address the technical challenges associated with transmitting the ever increasing volumes of data, voice and video across the planet's Internet system.

EzSeer, was invited to present its cutting edge artificial intelligence and machine learning technology as it pertains to Online Advertising and Social Network Sites. Although the workshop was largely focused on Web 2.0, Wikipedia.com describes artificial intelligence systems as being in the Web 3.0 domain and EzSeer's COO James Ortlieb was able to enlighten delegates on the latest trends.

Other notable speakers were: Bill St Arnaud -Senior Director Advanced Networks for Canarie Inc., and Dr Christian Schlegel - Professor at the UofA High Capacity Digital Communications Lab. Greatly anticipated was the presentation by one of the MIT fathers of the Internet, Dr. Lawrence Roberts - Founder, Chairman and Chief Architect for Anagran Inc.

EzSeer would like to thank Dr. David Antoniuk of TRLabs for the invitation to speak at the workshop. It was a great event.

EzSeer: See what you want easier.

EzSeer: A new UofA spin-off company

Greetings World

My name is James Ortlieb and I am COO of the newly minted
EzSeer software company. Our President and CEO is Dr. Tingshao Zhu. He is also the principal inventor of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Software that underpins our product line. The third active partner in our company is Kevin Jewell who comes to us from the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning (AICML). Lastly, and by no means least, the University of Alberta is the fourth partner in the firm and has exclusively licensed the EzSeer technology to us.

Although Dr. Zhu has been developing this technology for the past 6 years, and our team has been working on the commercialization plan for 1 year, it has only been since October 1, 2007 that we have been incorporated to do business. This milestone could not have been accomplished without the greatly appreciated efforts of TEC Edmonton's Kim Ito and Jayant Kumar. A special thanks goes out to the best Mentor anyone could ask for - Bruce Johnson - founder of Intuit and Quicken business programs. My personal appreciation goes to UofA Technology Commercialization Professor Dr. Michael Lounsbury for introducing me to the TEC Edmonton team and this tremendous opportunity.

November is already shaping up to be a very active month for EzSeer and readers of this Blog can expect to hear more about our public forums and events. For now I will sign off with a short description of what EzSeer does, and our current marketing aspirations.


EzSeer translates user behaviors into user interests and intentions. Essentially, EzSeer uses cutting-edge data mining algorithms to predict the user’s intentions, that is, it looks over your shoulder when you are on the computer, observes your actions, and through Artificial Intelligence Software determines your true interests.

For example, no matter what other actions you may have taken prior to Googling "Paris Hilton", Google will return to you (excluding sponsored links) about 1 million articles on the California Socialite. If just prior to Googling "Paris Hilton" you were observed to visit say, "Hotels.com" you would still get the Socialite from Google. From EzSeer you would get a Hilton Hotel in Paris. Your behavior gave away your true interests.

We have identified three industries or marketplaces for EzSeer technology and they are: Call Centres like those run by Dell Computers, Social Networks like FaceBook or MySpace, and Online Advertising as it appears on most public web sites.

EzSeer is able to predict the user’s intention based on the user’s behavior, to deliver the most relevant information (CRM, Call Centre, Enterprise Search), or connect users to the most interesting community groups (Social Networking), or present users with advertising that actually appeals to them (Online Advertising). EzSeer can also be integrated with any existing search system, acting as a proxy between the user and any search engines, to trigger the search engine to return more relevant information. In short, we can also make Google return more relevant results.

Currently, we have passed a 5 week, 104 participant study program on EzSeer Technology. What we need right now is an Angel Customer to get us well past the proof-of-concept stage. Our focus to-date has been to find a willing Call Centre but we could start in one of the other market spaces aswell.

I hope that I have imparted a clear albeit brief insight into our ambitions. We also have produced White papers which can more fully explain the technical and marketing aspects of our technology.

If I can be of assistance in answering anyone's questions regarding our company or our products please feel free to write to Jim Ortlieb. E-mail address ortlieb.jk@telus.net

Thank you and please look for future articles.

Jim

COO EzSeer
See what you want easier.

Future of open innovation: Linux vs. Innocentive

What is the future of innovation and can it be predicted and predetermined?

It seems to me as if the technology is way faster than our rate of adaptation to it or our capability to foresee and respond to its implications. The arena in which the game is being played has changed but it seems as if the rules still have a lot of catching up to do and will perhaps never be able to catch up to it. Are we playing a global game with local rules?
I will state my case by considering the differences in the open innovation models and their implications in the case of Linux and Innocentive and I don’t claim to have read many books on the topic but this is what I understand so far.

Looking at the case of Linux (or others like MySQL, or Apache, Firefox), all these products have been created by the independent innovators and have proved to be mutually beneficial, but what about the model of Innocentive? It is being hailed as a great change a great concept that will make the companies more competitive more profitable and so on. But is it really a win-win situation??may be and may be not.

The implications of obtaining solutions through websites such as Innocentive :
- The companies don’t have to hire a full research team, or invest in up gradation or long term investments. It is in a way a quick fix solution for companies.
- One lump-sum payment is given to the innovator, no need to provide benefits and other perks, which means again huge cost saving for the companies.
- The number of supporting staff that is hired for the R&D teams is not needed any more.
- So one can actually run a virtual company with a staff of 5-8 people in a small office space or just from home, by outsourcing, R&D, manufacturing, and admin. Support.( various companies are already doing it, such as Point Therapeutics ( recent news ref. www.Biospace.com)) both as a cost cutting measure and the core model.

This may result into:
- Lesser permanent jobs
- Lesser jobs for the local populations ( esp. in countries like Canada where the min wage is $8 per hour…that’s in Alberta, can we compete with countries with R&D capability of same calibre and wages 1/10 th of Canadian wages?)
- An overall reduced private R&D base ( due to lesser incentive for investment in long term organizational R&D capabilities)

And wait a minute…what about other government policies such as temporary worker policies? The Canadian laws require a foreign worker to have a clearance from HRDC to the effect that the person being hired is not taking away a job from equally qualified Canadian. Recently US senate debated (I am not sure if it passed a bill yet) on limiting the outsourcing, the question is do these regulations apply on companies based on the model of Innocentive?

I know I sound sceptical, when most people are upbeat about the future of open innovation, but either I am grossly misinformed or there is an urgent need to limit the expanse of the open innovation, because we still don’t have completely porous borders and a min wage of $8 per hour (and same labour laws) throughout the world. Waiting to hear your comments.

Report card on Canada gives it "D" for innovation

Nothing too surprising here as plenty of topics in class revolved around how innovation could be better fostered and encouraged. Article here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070613/wl_canada_nm/canada_reportcard_col_2;_ylt=At9pCvuZ9uVVp2CN6kxVu5QE1vAI

Canada's socio-economic performance is mediocre and it lags other developed countries when it comes to innovation and the environment, the Conference Board of Canada said in a report card published on Wednesday.

Reasons given in article for lack of innovation:

In innovation, the report said Canada doesn't invest enough in knowledge and not enough students graduate with science and technology degrees. As well, it relies too much on its natural resources and has a shortage of skilled labor.

Not sure I know what the government could do to increase science and technology degrees. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. If there were more innovation in private sector, there would be more demand and higher wages for those types of degrees, hence greater enrollment. But I know a chemist who was earning $30k/year with a BSc. and 5 years experience working with hazardous chemicals, while a teachers starts with over $40K/year and 2 months holidays a year. Who wants to be a chemist?

The part about relying on natural resources makes it sound like Canada uses them like a crutch, where I would argue that free market made that the economic driver of choice. Sure exploration and extraction aren't as glamorous as high tech, but Canada is renowned for its expertise in those areas and should be proud of it. Not to mention there has been plenty of innovation in those fields as well.

Stephen Harper boosts funding for tech commercialization by $1.9 billion to $9.2 billion

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070517.wscience0519/BNStory/Science/home

“Our strategy will seek to expand government and business partnerships so new
investments can move quickly out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. We
will focus our efforts on Canada's inherent strengths and Canadians' primary
interests, including preserving the environment, improving public health,
developing natural resources and producing new information and communications
technologies.”

While this type of funding certainly is useful and has its place, I'm not sure how it's going to increase enrollment in computing science and mathematics. Comes back to the usual issue of how do you encourage business to set up shop in one locale over another. Targeted funding like this seems to me like a bandaid fix and ends up giving only temporary boosts until the money is gone.

Maybe the government would be better off fixing our capital markets by consolidating regulatory bodies and improving enforcement to gain some international respect, thereby improving access to capital for companies.

Brazil Takes Steps To Import Cheaper AIDS Drug Under Trade Law : Chilling Signal to Researchers or Heroic Action to Save Lives?

Brazil does it again, read the whole story on

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=614&res=1024&print=0

"The government of Brazil has issued a license that will allow the importation of cheaper versions of a patented HIV/AIDS drug after negotiations failed to bring about agreement on price reductions with Merck, the US company holding the patent. Merck said it was “profoundly disappointed,” as Brazil’s action sparked a flurry of positive and negative reactions. "

"Thailand offered three compulsory licenses in late 2006 and early 2007 for two HIV/AIDS drugs (including efavirenz) and a heart disease drug (IPW, Public Health, 12 March 2007). Among other countries that have issued CLs for pharmaceuticals are Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia and Mozambique, the Brazilian Health Ministry said. "

Remember Canada did it in the times of Anthrax scare, when Apotex manufactured huge stocks of Ciprofloxacin (patent held by Bayer) ...

Seems like other countries might follow the suit....Novartis is fighting a court case in India for another patent violation...The IP battle in pharmaceuticals is really heating up....

Pharmaceutical sector In Edmonton: Is the glass half full or half empty??

The Pharmaceutical sector in Edmonton has still to realize its full potential. with population expected to double in next 3-4 years (at the rate of 10% growth), the need for drug products is going to increase significantly. In addition to that the intensive research at the drug molecule level will demand the formulation of such drug substances, in order to take them from labscale to clinic for trials and market. this represents an opportunity for people in field of Pharmaceutics, Analytical sciences, regulatory fields and training institutions.
Talking of profits, the pharmaceutical sector has always been a very profitable venture with very steady growth rates rivaled only by IT in term of magnitude (not steadiness).

As a personal interest, I am looking into specific opportunities in the field and perhaps prepare a report that can then be used by interested parties. If any of my fellow bloggers are interested in partenering on such a project, please give me a shout......or let me know if such a report already exists...

Alberta invests $130-million in ‘the science of small’

What are your thoughts on how these resources should be most effectively used??

The following is part of press release by Alberta Advanced Education and Technology on May 2, 2007. ..

Investing in ‘the science of small’ will help generate huge returns for Albertans, said Premier Ed Stelmach, unveiling the province’s strategy to capture a $20-billion market share of the world’s burgeoning nanotechnology market.

“Our $130-million investment today will help Alberta represent part of the competitive nanotech market by 2020,” Stelmach said. “That investment can grow to an estimated $20-billion in new economic activity, helping build a stronger Alberta.”

Doug Horner, Minister of Advanced Education and Technology, said the three-pillar strategy to grow new nanotech businesses, garner nanotech talent and build nanotech infrastructure will propel Canada to be among the top five countries in the world for nano-based economic activity.

“Nanotechnology lets us discover the unique properties of materials and how we can manipulate them at molecular levels to develop products that are stronger, faster or smarter,” he said.

The province already enjoys a solid nanotechnology base because industry, government and academic institutions collaborate on research and innovation. A new $5.5-million entity called nanoAlberta will further that collaboration.“nanoAlberta will guide partnerships with industry, post-secondary institutions and government, and it will look for opportunities to make the biggest economic and social impact for Albertans,” he added.

“Alberta has shown a commitment to the future of the province by taking its investments in nanotechnology to the next level,” said Dr. Peter Hackett, President and CEO, Alberta Ingenuity. “Alberta Ingenuity is strongly aligned with the province’s plans, and we are looking at this as an opportunity to transform the research landscape in Canada by recruiting exceptional people to the province, providing exceptional support and creating exceptional results that benefit all Albertans.”
The province expects nanotechnology will accelerate innovation in Alberta’s traditional sectors of energy, agriculture and forestry as well as environmental, health and medical technologies.

Candace Toews, Communications
Alberta Advanced Education and Technology
Candace.Toews@gov.ab.ca

THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE AND MORE EFFECTIVE NETWORKING

There is an important conversation happening about technology commercialization in Alberta. Doug Horner, the new Minister of Advanced Education and Technology recently established a task force on Productivity, Value Added and Commercialization to evaluate how to accelerate economic diversification via technology commercialization. While this task force is reaching out to many key stakeholders, we need wider democratic participation on these issues.

What are the key issues and what are some possible solutions? Many emphasize the problem of the lack of capital. Perhaps it would be useful to create a government sponsored venture fund. Perhaps we do need more angel investing. But this Province has a great deal of wealth with many latent angels--so perhaps the techcom community has not figured out how to cultivate enough attractive opportunities that are being developed with experienced managers and entrepreneurs?

We have a lot of great science and technological development at universities such as U of A, but much of this sits on the shelf and never gets connected to people with business experience to move it towards commercialization effectively. How can we catalyze such processes and enable knowledge flows and entrepreneurialism to occur at the interstices between university and industry, scientists and graduating MBAs, nascent organizations and patient capital.

While I believe that there many gaps in the techcom infrastructure that need to be addressed, we also have many valuable resources in the form of great scientists and technoscientific ideas, small and medium enterprises, and seasoned managers and entrepreneurs. We also have many diverse initiatives across various institutions. Much could be gained by harnessing these extant resources much more effectively through the creation of denser networks of interaction. Perry Kinkaid's efforts in creating the Alberta Council of Technologies is ememplary in this regard, but we need many more such initiatives and many more Perry Kinkaids. In addition to industry development via cluster building, we need entrepreneurial opportunity development through networking and efforts to create networks of networks, fostering the creation of brokers who act as links across different networks.

A key problem is information asymmetry and the ability to link, for instance, the scientist with her useful technological idea to the right business mind who can see how to translate that upstream idea into an application and product. Organizations like TEC Edmonton and UTI are obviously key elements in this translation of idea to product, but have limited capacity. We need to build a broader networking infrastructure to make this happen. Communication modalities such as this blog can help to seed this, but the community needs to crescively emerge. It cannot be forced or strategically managed. DIALOGUE IS THE STARTING POINT! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

TEC Student Entrepreneurship Program

Today was the official launch of the Ingenuity Enterprise Program which includes the TEC Student Entrepreneurship Program supported by the Technology Commercialization Centre (TCC) at the University of Alberta School of Business in collaboration with TEC Edmonton and Alberta Ingenuity. We identify technologies around campus and form teams with MBA students to conduct analyses and develop technology commercialization plans to move science and technology into the marketplace. This year was our first pilot program and we had many MBA students involved in technologies including a new software search engine based on artifical intelligence, an eco-sensitive wood preservatives, mobile telecommunications hardware, and a new method for the introduction of genes into plants via cholorplast transformation. My hope is that the students and other stakeholders involved in these projects will contribute to this blog to discuss their experiences, but also that this communication modality will be used to construct a broader dialogue about technology commercialization in the greater Edmonton and Alberta-wide community.

Technology commercialization is absolutely crucial to spur economic growth and development as well as diversification of the economy. We have great science and a great deal of government money has helped to build this resource. Much less attention has been paid to how we can build on this science to foster economic growth and development--that is how to enable commercialization of science and technology. To do this requires the creation of a broad infratsructure as well as a change in cultural understandings that make technology commercialization an appropriate focal point for our star scientists as well as for our taxpayer dollars. While I have many ideas on this topic, I will leave this post purposively short and encourage others to contribute their ideas and foster a dialogue on these issues. My hope is that this blog may be used as a central point for such a broader dialogue between university, industry, government and others as well as a place for network building and solving practical problems related to technology commercialization. Let the interaction begin!

Professor Michael Lounsbury
ml37@ualberta.ca

Patent Infringement

Since working on the ultracapacitor project I have been following the ultracapacitor market a little bit. And low and behold, today there's a news item that Maxwell Technologies, the market and patent leader, got a preliminary injunction against the Korean company NessCap, one of the companies I mentioned that doesn't have any IP:

http://www.sys-con.com/read/360713.htm

Maxwell Technologies, Inc. announced today that
a federal district court in the Southern District of California has issued an
order finding that Maxwell has established a likelihood of its success in the
patent infringement action it filed against Nesscap, Inc. and Nesscap, Ltd.
("Nesscap") in October 2006, accusing Nesscap's ultracapacitor products of
infringing two of Maxwell's U.S. patents. The court also determined that Maxwell
would be irreparably harmed if a preliminary injunction does not issue. As a
result, U.S. District Judge John A. Houston ruled that a preliminary injunction
will issue, prohibiting Nesscap from making, using, selling or offering to sell
its prismatic ultracapacitors in the United States while the litigation is
pending.

...On a related note, after Maxwell brought its infringement action against
Nesscap in San Diego in October 2006, Nesscap filed a patent infringement action
against Maxwell in federal district court in Delaware in December 2006.

So looks like NessCap does have one or more patents, I just couldn't find it. Too bad the patent # isn't referenced in the article.

I wonder if anybody came across some information regarding licensing of technologies. The Open Innovation book talks about most patents being near worthless, but then you hear about IBM's patent portfolio generating over a billion in revenues every year. So what do licensing agreements typically look like? % of revenue? Flat fee?

Developing a Nanotech Cluster

I'd like to try and summarize and open discussion about Tuesday's presentation by Leigh Hill. It seems like EEDC's efforts at promoting Edmonton's (and Alberta's) nanotech cluster was essentially summarized by Alberta Centre for Advanced Molecular Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP). Searching for this on Google only gives you some burried references and maybe the clearest relationship between all the nano-promoting agencies is given on an NRC site ( http://irap-pari.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/publications/pr06_13_e.html ):

NRC-IRAP is engaging key stakeholders in the development of initiatives intended to support the growth of a nanotechnology cluster centred in Edmonton, which includes NRC-NINT, Western Economic Diversification, Alberta Innovation & Science, Alberta Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity Fund, University of Alberta and Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC). For example, NRC-IRAP West is developing a collaborative initiative with EEDC that will strengthen the nanoMEMs Edmonton cluster initiative that is anchored by NRC-NINT.

NanoMEMS Edmonton is a vibrant cluster champion committed to building R&D capacity in 'small tech' not only among local members, but also with similar public-private partnerships around the world. The initiative has led to the creation of the Alberta Centre for Advanced Molecular Nanotechnology Products (ACAMP) in Edmonton and is supporting the development of a collaborative Alberta network of nanotechnology-related organizations to advance the use of nanotechnology in firms. These initiatives will enhance the capability of firms in Western Canada as well as across Canada to utilize emerging nanotechnologies and strengthen the success of up-and-coming companies.

The problem with this excerpt, and with the talk given in class yesterday, is that it is nearly impossible to identify concrete steps that are being taken. Leigh did say progress was slow, but it is not even entirely clear what they are moving towards. From the presentation I got the impression that ACAMP was supposed to act as a sort of incubator by supplying the various tools (physical and knowledge based) to nanotech companies to lure them to Edmonton and help get them up and running. That sounds relatively promising, thought could certainly have been fleshed out more.

Are we talking about a nano-lab/fab that can be 'rented' out to startup companies to save them from requiring large capital investments? Kind of a shared fabrication facility mainly for prototypes? He also talked about three non-physical areas (can't remember exactly what the were): marketing and production services, etc?. Are they consulted out? Subsidized? And where do they expect to get the expertise from?

My feeling is that trying to promote a cluster for such an emerging technology is similar to designing product around a new technology without an identified market. Nobody really knows what the nanotechnology market will look like in 5 or 10 years, and who's to say that once it matures it lends itself at all to a clustered approach? Will there ever be huge application markets for nano devices? Or will they only ever represent niche markets and components to other product?

A technology cluster as discussed in the Costa Rica makes more sense because there are a wide range of inputs that go into designing and manufacturing complete electronic devices. And in that situation clustering suppliers and vendors can streamline the supply chain and get economies of scale on infrastructure investments. Can the same be said of nanotechnologies?

Then again, maybe the nanotech cluster could be based around financing channels, fabrication equipment, research facilities and talent. But for financing and research proximity isn't terribly important thanks to the Internet. Talent specific to nanotech doesn't exist anywhere yet. And equipment can be shipped...

My problem is I'm a free market guy. Subsidies to promote an industry can result in misallocation of resources. Costa Rica had it right with rejecting any favourable treatment of Intel. Make a city/province/country a great place to do business, and the businesses that will thrive in the given environment will move in naturally.

Putting NINT into Edmonton will develop the local talent required for a nano cluster and was probably the most important action in getting the ball rolling. However I would argue that the single most significant factor that will hold back nanotech commercialization, and technology and startup companies in Edmonon in general, is the lack of risk capital. Having a nano incubator with shared facilities and services may be a solution for the nanotech industry as it reduces the need for capital, but doesn't help other technologies and startups and in fact may make risk capital even more scarce for them.

Canadian Government URL's...

... have got to be the worst URL's ever. Seriously, don't they have anybody who can look at their web addresses from a usability/public relations stand point? I was browsing the web looking for relevant links to put in the right column and came across this URL for the National Institute for Nanotechnology:

http://nint-innt.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/home/index_e.html

And believe me, such obfuscation is the norm. Here's the Canada Job Bank web address:

http://jb-ge.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/

I remember one time riding the LRT and seeing a poster for some gov't job site with a similarly obscure URL and deciding to check it out. Of course I could never remember the URL once I got to work (and Google didn't yet exist). I think I tried a half-dozen times before finally giving up...

Good start, Lets invite others

Good start for the Tech Comm community. Thanks for taking the initiative Klaus!

TechCom Blog Launch

Let's get this blog moving and see where it goes. Let's invite all the techcom students and see if it can be made into an effective communication tool to build our community. Thanks Klaus! Mike

Facebook

Spent some more time in Facebook and can see some value in terms of managing a personal network that might complement this blog. Facebook seems broader and is really about identifying and mapping out your networks, and specific groups can be made to categorize each network.

I created a group called 'University of Alberta MBA', which I think would be great for all students and alumni to join. You could also make a more specific tech comm group, but I'd say the MBA program is small enough that keeping it wider open makes more sense. If you want to check that out, create your account on Facebook (www.facebook.com), setup your profile, and then search for the above mentioned group under 'My Groups'.

Cheers,
Klaus

Welcome to the U of A, MBA, Tech Comm blog

Looked into Blogger and Facebook, and Blogger seems better suited for sharing articles, ideas, organizing events, etc. Facebook looks better for just tying into networks and the like. I suppose both serve a purpose.

I would envision all alumni to be authors with Michael and maybe a couple of alumni appointed as administrators. All authors can add postings, administrators can delete. In bottom right corner of the blog is a list of contributors, which link to peoples profiles, which in turn can link to personal blogs.

Visibility can be set to public for all to see, or it can be limited to a specific list of accounts, or it can be limited to authors of the blog. Since technically all students could be authors, we could go with that option if we didn't want a public blog.

I've heard that widgets can be inserted into the blog like calendars and the like, which I'll look into for organizing events.

That's all for now... See you in class.