I like writing blogs about The Fantastic Tavern, especially when we have had a successful evening and there’s plenty of content to share. Last night certainly is a case in point. Check out #TFTLondon.
The plot was a simple one. Get five people to create new brand concepts based on the attributes of cloud computing – agility, cost effective computing, device independence, scalability – that kinda stuff. Then ask them to pitch at three hard-ass Dragons who would tear their business thinking to shreds or ‘invest’ in their idea.
But this wasn’t just an exercise in presentation skills, powerpoint skills (thankfully) or persuasion. It was meant to be a thought starter for our tribe – a least those of us who know less about the cloud and its benefits. I wanted to frame those benefits in real world contexts we could understand and get the ball rolling on having new ideas based on its potential. The cloud is here; we shouldn’t ignore it. And its much more than a hosting solution – it’s a business enabler.
We shifted location from the Katzenjammer bar to St Catherine’s Dock and the Dickens Inn.
Its bigger, we have our own bar and it doesn’t smell of sausages (pizza instead). And we had amplification this time, which gave the dragons the Madonna look, much to one’s delight.
The Dragons were a formidable line up. Firstly, thanks gents for taking on this challenge. As business leaders, I know you’re all busy but making time for the TFT makes our events work.
Adrian McDonald is EMC’s Vice President & General Manager for UK & Ireland and is responsible for overall revenue generation, management and business strategy of the region for EMC.
Ralf Jeffery is a Business Analyst and certified SCRUM Master at Close Brothers with a proven track record of creating e-commerce strategies and Web 2.0 solutions that either enhance existing business operations or deliver new business streams.
Phil Carter is a founding partner of Carter Wong design agency. Founded in 1984, together they are a team of multi-disciplined communications experts working across branding, digital, literature and packaging. I wired them for sound and we began.
Introducing our brave and fearless pitchers
First up, Lee Provoost from Headshift and iLife. Let me say that like all the pitches the content was fictitious and just for fun (Apple please don’t pursue us through the courts…). Lee offered a lifestyle management system that ‘mashed up’ functionality from lots of different sites and vendors, aggregated across the cloud. Lee had a contagious presentation and set the evening perfectly.
Did the dragons like the pitch? In many aspects yes, but the name was a hurdle that they felt they couldn’t overcome – Phil was quick to suggest that there was a proliferation of ‘i’ brands and this shouldn’t need to be another one. There was a suggestion that all the services could be found on Google but Lee held his ground and made the benefits of an aggregation service clear as the point of differentiation.
Second up, Simon Munro from EMC Consulting and his brand concept, Q-Baloo. Simon’s idea was in response to the pain-in-the-*** experience of buying tickets for gigs online, where Simon suggested he is fed up of competing unfairly with touts and bots (I think that’s techies for robots).
While he suggested that cloud computing could in fact help with issues where demand brings servers down, his concept actually inverted that by throttling the accessibility of the commerce service and essentially putting real people into a real time queue. Now we Brits love a good queue so the idea has instant appeal but if ideas are cheap, it’s all about the execution. In this, Simon did a masterful shop of bringing his concept to life. Be afraid UE types, this guy can scamp too! Simon injected playfulness and competition into the user experience much like well known brands like foursquare and this added to the to the engagement model through compulsion and rewarded real fans with a sense of achievement, getting higher up the queue and eventually getting tickets.
The dragons liked the idea but did challenge the financial gain that this concept represented. While it could work well as a marketing tool, there had not been enough work done on thinking about the long tail of tickets sales or premium models. But hey, basically it was a flyer. Simon’s presentation was near flawless except for one thing that Phil picked up on again. He had neglected to tell us the thinking behind the strange alien creature on the logo and this bothered our branding guru, who wanted to understand how it would come into play. Phil, you don’t know the half of it. Simon’s wife created it and he didn’t even thank her!
Jamie Thomson, long time Tavernier and all round techie guru tried to score with Scorepedia (see what I did there?). The idea is that people add both real time scores and historic score information about any sporting event and gain reputation for contributions. It’s a cloud idea because it doesn’t require significant capex and it’s scalable as more user adopt.
Enter the dragons. The issue as they saw it was adoption. Why would people use this crowd source of information over apps and sites from clubs or the big news aggregators? Jamie defended with a suggestion that it would better support the long tail of events. However, the business model thinking wasn’t advanced and the dragons didn’t seems convinced it was going to be that lucrative. Personally, I think Jamie is on to something but needs to look at the reselling data model more closely and shouldn’t neglect the potential of very localized marketing opportunities rather than just thinking big football clubs would pay for it all. I think the potential is in the long tail here.
The next pitch polarized the Dragons. Two loved the logotype while Phil took some offense to it. But what was behind Matt Mould’s Ui2? Matt, a cloud expert from EMC Consulting explained that Unified Infrastructure Intelligence (hence the name), help people manage their private and public clouds in one place. Now this is a problem not many of us have but its an issue for many enterprises – Matt is solving a business challenge lots will have soon enough. In essence Matt was describing a hybrid cloud model that people could subscribe to in a metered model – like pay as you go. It would bring all services, from inside or outside the business neatly into one place.
Matt appeared to have done the most thorough business model and it certainly looked pretty but Adrian doesn’t miss a trick and within seconds had Matt turning a whiter shade of pale as he turned the financials inside out. All this before Phil went to town of the branding elements including the claim “Take Control” – which he suggested was trite and out dated. I should have feed them more.
His presentation, pretty revenue model and all, is here.
And so finally Cheatr. Simon Gallagher from ioko took the unusual tack of asking for no investment, suggesting that cloud ideas didn’t need VC investment as that was the point, simple scalable and low enter price meant he didn’t need cash. In fact Simon was all about breaking conventions, laws, everything. His idea was to start by running online real time in line mass gambling activity. That’s a cloudy idea; synchronous computing power and it’s a sliver bullet for gambling companies. But Simon built on this. He’d then offer behavioural advice on bets based on all the data he had collected. This would be a paid for service. Genius. Cloud card counting.
He recognized that he would probably end up buried in the desert or hiding form the Casino mob on a yacht somewhere but he didn’t seem to care. Neither did the dragons, they could see the potential of a quick and big buck and frankly, I think if they’d had real cash with them on the night, Simon would have been quids in.
Five very good pitches. Some good ideas. But there could only be one winner. As the pizza disappeared the Dragons cogitated and the audience gave their ‘phone in’ vote too.
It had been a great night. We’d covered a bit of cloud computing’s potential without a single virtualization diagram and I think I for one learnt more about its relevance to now commerce. My thanks to all the pitchers – great work guys.
The winner, by unanimous decision and a landslide vote was Q- Baloo. I’m sure for Simon the beer tasted sweeter after that triumph.
Oh, Phil Carter was the volunteer cross dresser (you had to be there) and we raised a little over 30 quid for Hope and Play. Thank you for that. If you fancy joining the bike ride you can find out more here.
See you next time Taverniers; less clouds but no less interesting and just as much pizza.
