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This week sees the start of WebMission 2009, bringing together the best in new web 2.0 companies. Artesian CEO Andrew Yates provides the inside information with the WebMission diary:So here I am in the city of San Francisco as WebMission rolls into town. Being a Brit and stuck on UK time, predictably the human clock decided to kick in at 5am, which saw me out of bed by six and strolling the front by seven. We are staying at the Harbor Court which is situated in the CDB, or as the Americans call it ‘down town’. Approximately 750,000 residents live on a 46.6-square-mile tip of land between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean and it is not entirely reassuring to find out that the famous Old Ferry Building which I am currently staring at was built upon thousands of Douglas Fir piles roughly 41 metres in depth.
It's Saturday morning and the market traders are setting up their wares so we take a pew outside a small coffee shop to watch the day go by. Instinct tells me to open up my Netbook and explore, to see if there is a Wifi I can hop on. Again, the Brit in me is not optimistic. Imagine my surprise to find out not only does the tiny coffee shop have one which is freely accesible, but every other business in the immediate vicinity does too! BETTER STILL the SF Guest Wifi, which I assume is provided by the city, also prevails which means it doesn't matter who you are, or where you are, access to the web is free.The San Franciscans get it! They understand that connectivity is the precursor to making the web happen. The market is a conversation, the city is a buzz with Twitter, Wifi is your birth right. Not like at home in the UK where the merest dalliance is a £7 expenditure item. Give it away for free, every city should have one. Along on the trip is the right honorable Mark Prisk a knowledgeable Conservative MP with a business background, travelling with us to insure we benefit from his experience. Rest assured ears will be bent. Vie va la WIFI revolution in our cities. Kicks for free is the only way forward otherwise we will get left behind and it turns out Prisk agrees.
Strong opinion on Web 2.0
“They have taken an encyclopaedic definition of meaning, by which, for example, Anyone can call themselves a French speaker if they can use words like Paris or Marseilles, when, of course, actually knowing French is far more complicated”The above quote, aimed at pointing out weaknesses of the semantic web, probably strikes a chord with anyone who has seen an English tourist in a quaint little French bakery ordering, with the most British of tongues, “un jambon sandwich s’il vous plait”. In this case, the argument is quite correct. Knowing a couple of words does not mean you've mastered a language.
Let’s face it, the tourist ordering from the bakery is not kidding anybody. They clearly haven’t been raised in the chateau down the road, they obviously don’t see the beret as the right fashion statement for them and they evidently wouldn’t know that 1974 was a cracking year for Cote Rotie.
But then the objective never was to convince the locals they were French. The objective was to get lunch and therefore, knowing what to say, no matter how simplistic the language, is surely better than going hungry? (Or worse still, ending up with the tripe baguette, that was otherwise destined to remain untouched until its inevitable arrival at the bin outback.)In business terms, this makes the above statement on web 2.0 look rather brutal. It is of course true that saying a French word doesn’t mean you speak French; to understand the language and its many ins and outs would take years of study and dedicated practise. But in the business world that is not always possible, time never appears to be on your side. Sometimes you need to know solid facts fast and to get as much knowledge as possible on any given subject in order to successfully and efficiently execute the job in hand. It’s not always about knowing a company inside out; it’s about knowing what you need to know to achieve your aim. In this sense the semantic web is an exciting concept for almost any industry. It may not be able to teach you French yet, but it can act as the perfect tour guide, enabling you to find the best French attractions, eat at the finest French restaurants and sleep at the comfiest of French hotels. In other words, you may not be a local but you’ll certainly be an expert on everything local.
People are always quick to put down innovative ideas and dismiss them as impossible aspirations (everyone remembers the genius who confidently predicted the world would only ever need six computers) but these people fail to recognise that pioneering initiatives develop with practise. Right now it is surely better to be a tourist in the know, than a tourist lost at the airport. ----------------------------------------Next week - Artesian Solutions’ CEO Andrew Yates will be jetting off to San Francisco for ‘Web Mission 2009’ an event to support the best new web 2.0 companies. Follow his progress with the Web Mission diary.
