Archives for May 2008

post

Why Cambrian House Failed – it’s All in the Pizzaz

Cambrian House, the poster-boys of Crowdsourcing are essentially dead – assets being sold in a garage sale for a fraction of what investors put in. TechCrunch and Mark Evans speculate the House collapsed due to poor execution.

Of course.. in fact they were doomed to fail, and it was obvious ever since the 1000 pizzas episode. This is what I wrote back then:

They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm.
Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free gourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after lunch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus.
Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.

OK, I admit I am being sarcastic. And I liked the concept, too bad it did not work.

post

Blog Silence

I haven’t posted for over ten days – and my feed readership is going up.  Is that a message about my blogging, or what? smile_embaressed

I had a few fun and hectic days @ SAP’s annual conference, SAPPHIRE – am still stuck here, got airplane ears on the flight here, which turned into a full-blown ear infection (hey, I even gave up my Eric Clapton ticket), and now the doc ordered me not to fly, to avoid risk of permanent damage.  Yikes! 

But this is all temporary inconvenience, nothing compared to what others have to go through.  Yesterday an old family friend passed away.  He was originally my Dad’s best friend, I remember seeing him around when I was a kid.  Later he taught me how to drive a car. (He had his car tuned like a rocket – manual shift, mind you –  and I think he got the fighter pilot and driver roles confused.  I only got to the driver level…).   Even later I played with his little daughter, was something of a “big uncle” to her – she is now a Mom herself.   A three-decade, multi-generational friendship, passed from my Dad to me – cut off so abruptly.   Just two months ago I was in Hungary and met him – energetic, dynamic, good-humored as always. Hospitalized a week later, diagnosed with leukemia another 2 weeks later.  And now gone, forever. This is just crazy.  We’re all so vulnerable.

All this put a bit of a damper on my blogging – but I’m coming back soon.  And to all those new readers – not sure what brought you here, but thanks!