Best Practices Not Included

Google Wave Thoughts

Over the past few months I've been using GoogleWave as a communications means with a project team. It’s been interesting using the application and I wanted to share a few takeaways from the experience:

1. Being able to streamline communications by posting and editing content in real time proved to be the strongest selling point of this application. I see much potential for project teams, groups, or any other collective body to obtain value by using this product to increase communication efficiency.

2. You can run into problems if you don't get buy in to use Google Wave as a central means for communication from you group, team, etc. I found some would default to standard email because they didn't want to take time to learn this new tool. This resulted in inefficiencies as messages or questions left on the Wave would often go unnoticed and be left unanswered. It will be interesting to see if Wave can overcome this key adoption problem to attract pragmatic users. At this point, Google Wave is not for everyone, but applications that integrate the feature of email, forums, and chat should continue to evolve and become important interaction tools.

3. Google Wave is still a work in progress. I found beta version vulnerable to crashing, especially if Wave’s become long and there’s a lot of active participation. Some of this could be that I’m running Wave on my netbook most of the time. One positive note though, every time a Wave crashed (to often at times), I was able to re-launch a recover everything I had written in the process of posting. I was thoroughly impressed with this as I still lose an email now and then to Firefox crashing.

In the end, I’m confident Google will work out many of the applications technical short comings. My recommendation is to approach using Google Wave with an open frame of mind. Lastly, if you’re trying to use the application for something important, in which effective communication will be critical, establish from the beginning that Google Wave will be the central means to avoid the abandonment problem.     

Venture Capital A Systemic Risk?

I came across an article in TechCrunch on how the U.S. Treasury is also targeting Venture Capital (VC) in the plans to increase regulatory oversight on all private investment vehicles.  The rationale for this of course is in the name of systemic risk.   Systemic risk?  The entire 30 Billion invested from all Venture Capital nationwide is too small to pose any sort of systemic risk to the U.S. economy at large, not to mention Venture Capital investing involves little leveraging unlike the kind that went on in big financials.  We need to remember the structure of VC has made it one of the most effective and thereby important investment vehicles ever created. 

VC's put up equity under the knowing realization that they could lose it all.  The SEC is clearly moving in the direction of regulating risk taking being made for purpose of economic self interest.  The new administration needs to wake up and smell the roses, for when we examine history, we find that self interested investing aka 'greed' has been the economic growth engine in this country from day one.  How ever socially un-virtuous that my sound, it's the truth and the sooner we stop berating it as "unnoble" and segmenting everyone into two categories (Wall Street and Main Street). Regulating Venture Capital could have the same unfortunate affect as it had on Bernie Madoff's investors by creating illusions of safety in endeavors that are ultimately risky ventures.

But let's not forgot the societal benefits private sector risk taking through Venture Capital has yielded.  Companies like: Intel, Apple, Genentech, Cisco, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter would not be what they are today if they hadn't found funding from Venture Capital along the way.  Not to mention, the millions of jobs and economic growth spawned from this risky investing.  Let's think about, would the government have invested in any of these companies in their early stages?  And how would our lives be different without the innovation that's come out of these organizations.

As far as I can see, the only systemic risk the U.S. Economy faces going forward is for the government to convince the general public that we should let the SEC, Treasury, and Banking Committee put their hands in every privately organized financial decision made going forward. Thus lets continue to expand the size of public regulatory agencies like the SEC, an organization that has done nothing more than create a false sense of security as the suposed umbrella over the financial industry.  Tim Geithner, keep the government's business out of Venture Capital, I don't want the government's hand in innovation.

Homo Evolutis...

This is one of the best TED videos I've seen in a long time.  Very inspiring and forward looking.  Surely cell engineering and generation will see great innovative progress over the next 30-40 years.  Be sure to checkout TED.com if you have sometime, there's lots of good stuff on there, definitely one of my favorite sites.