One of our favourite videos. I first saw this in 2007 on Youtube. It stopped my thinking in its tracks. If you haven’t seen this, you must watch it. If you have, check it out again.
Visualisations of CORUS
In 2007 whilst conducting classes at RMIT University we had architecture students create visualisations of CORUS (formerly named Quick-Links).
The purpose of the exercise was to bring spatial thinking (3D) to what is principally a flat text based environment (the web today).
Here’s one of them.
Quoting Creatives…2
Michael Wesch and here, uploaded the following video in early 2007. After almost 11 million hits, you need to see it. If you haven’t already. It’s one of our favourites.
David and Goliath [D & G]
A Philosophical Difference
Around 8 years ago a partner and I developed a software platform for a very large company. Another very large company approached us to use the platform for their very large business. My partner and I discussed how to approach this. Agreeing to disagree, we parted amicably. He wanted to be Goliath and I wanted to stay David.
You know the story. David fearlessly engages in a battle with Goliath, the strongest of enemies.
David has a staff and a sling, Goliath a sword and a shield.
In the world of IT, David is two guys in a garage whilst Goliath is the Microsoft’s of the world.
My partner wanted to create a software business along the Goliath philosophy path.
I chose to stay light and nimble….
Remember who won.
Our World
We live in Melbourne.
One of the many reasons we choose to be based here is that we truly get to experience 4 seasons in 1 day.
We refer to our city as an all encompassing multi-cultural hub of creative exchange.
Our offices overlook the culinary buzz of the famous Queen Victoria Market, bustling with gourmands 5 days a week.
A brief saunter in any direction loads our brains with superb contemporary architecture, the Italian community landscape of Carlton, 2 university campuses, RMIT and Melbourne University. Melbourne is seen as the departure point for broadening minds, horizons and experiences.
We are in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Central Business District.
A little background. Part 1…
May 1999.
I was working on a complex software project with one of Australia’s big banks. The software enabled the bank to take a home loan application, approve it and produce the relevant documents for the applicant to sign. Our objective was to develop a smarter and quicker way of processing the information and approving the loan. The quicker the bank processed the application, the faster they were able to make decisions. The development of this platform enabled the bank to take a market leadership position in home loans. Prior to this system a loan application could take four days to be processed. The new system shortened this to two hours.
For me this was a big “AHA” moment.
Shorten decision time = make more decisions!
Meanwhile in 1999 broadband was beginning to get traction and web browsing was principally a read only experience.
I realised that in the future, the web browser would enable people to actually input information. I saw the future of the web browser as a blank canvas where individuals would input data and share it with others via the Internet in ways never thought of before.
Excitedly I began to research who else was looking at the opportunity. Around that time blogging had commenced, allowing individuals to publish thought and ideas to a broad audience. Blogging is a one to many communications medium. I was visualising a one to one and many to many world.
My research fell upon Ray Ozzie. The creator of Lotus Notes in 1984. By May 1999 his firm had received funding from several big venture capital firms. Not wanting to enter a David and Goliath struggle, I put the idea on ice.
Think about it!
Ray Ozzie. Clearly a smart guy who had previously created a whole new class of software, known as Collaboration software. Millions of users, owned by IBM, and received an enormous amount of funding from a number of venture capital companies on the planet….
How could anyone possibly compete?
In 2003 [four years later] after completing the bank project, I had time on my hands. What next? With the original idea still ruminating, I jumped online to investigate what Ozzie had done with by then, over a $100 million in investment. Ozzie had created a collaboration solution – Groove Networks.
Essentially it was a 37 megabyte application you had to download and install and only ran on the Windows platform.
“Oh My God”.
He missed the browser!
Four years had gone by. I took the idea off ice and went to work….