His first nugget was that at the dawn of the digital universe over 60 years ago it was all of 5 kilobytes in size. In todayspeak that’s about half a second of MP3 audio! It’s purpose was as far away from making music as you could imagine. It was set up to design hydrogen bombs.

Fast forward and as the digital footprint expanded exponentially, its acceleration became reflected in the self replication of computers: the pace today is 5-6 trillion connected resistors being added per second.

George used a brilliant analogy, that as a long time waterman resonates with me – as a kayak builder, he initially emulated the wood-scarce Arctic natives to work with minimum frame inside a skin craft. But (today, we are) in the tropics, where there is a surplus of wood, natives make dugout canoes, formed by removing wood.

According to George, “We’re now surrounded by so much information we have to become dugout canoe builders. The buzzword of last year was ‘big data.’

Stewart Brand, from the Long Now Foundation, defines the situation today as: Big data is what happened when the cost of storing information became less than the cost of throwing it away.

Have you started carving your canoe yet?

Sydney-based Yen Lim has developed Pic-See, an incentive-driven visual communication system for children with early learning needs. She was inspired to embark on this journey by her experience working with a 3 year old boy with autism while she was completing her Honours Degree in Psychology at The University of Sydney.

As a passionate psychologist she believes that research and technology can, and should, be integrated into widely accessible solutions that improve quality of life. Through this filter she observed how special needs teachers were taking many hours to source and create libraries of visuals to use in day-to-day therapy. It struck her that there must be thousands of parents, carers, teachers and therapists around the world laminating paper-based visuals and she thought, “Surely, there has to be an easier way!”

This is so often the catalytic event that launches entrepreneurs into action!

The original concept behind Pic-See was to make it easier to construct and implement visuals, so valuable time and energy would not be wasted. Yen felt that time should rather be invested in what matters most to dedicated parents, teachers and therapists, namely engaging and connecting with those they care for.

In developing Pic-See Yen wanted to utilise touch-screen technology to reduce the long-term labour-intensive, environmental and monetary costs associated with producing visual communications systems.

Pic-See not only replaces outdated paper-based systems, but also captures the imagination of users to make visually-based learning fun. The app is packed with images and animations designed by graphic artists, purposely created sound effects to enthral users, an drag-drop interface to build visual sequences, the ability to customise visuals with imported images, the ability record audio to promote verbal communication skills, an emotions centre, a choice board, and a data centre to capture the achievements of users and areas in need of further development.

Yen’s key lessons learned in embarking on this adventure are:

•  It’s a full time job. Surround yourself with people who can help.

What she thought would be a straightforward app to develop, soon turned out to be a highly complicated technical project. Being new to the world of entrepreneurship she had a steep learning curve. She says, “Be prepared to dedicate yourself as it’s a full time job. Surround yourself  with people who can make the journey easier. If I could go back in time, I would definitely seek out a mentor who can guide me through the app space and the broader ecosystem, not just to survive but to thrive.”

• Once the app is developed it’s just the beginning

The market moves quickly. App-spaces are dynamic environments. You have less than 18 months to take your product to launch, listen and respond to the ecosystem, keep your ideas fresh and turn your brand into a household name. This is a process that requires time, perseverance, a lot of hard work and a willingness to venture into the unknown.

• Marketing is everything

A strategic marketing plan is essential. It’s one thing to have a great product, but if no-one is benefiting from it your app can get swept away by a flooded market.

• You need  a strong business model

Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.” Having a great idea for an app is definitely the first step, but deciding to take the plunge, backing yourself and growing a startup, is arguably the most difficult. A strong financial and business plan is needed for your idea to realise its true potential.

• Secure funding

Passion has driven the development of this app. Yen invested her personal funds into Pic-See. She strongly suggests seeking government grants (if available) and skilling up on how to approach investors.

The talk took place in New York last week at the Council of Foreign Relations 2013 Corporate Conference.

The key take out for me was Ginni’s reference to “data as the next natural resource” and that the winners in utilising this resource base – think of them as the modern (data) miners – will be those companies who embrace three driving principles the best.

The three principles are that data will:-

1. change how you make decisions;

2. change how you in fact create value; and

3. change how you deliver value.

With that teaser I now strongly recommend you watch the video:

And here is a transcript of the discussion.

The guys at Incubate are hard at work preparing for their Demo Day later this month and my recommendation to them and to anyone else getting ready to pitch is to watch this video by Nathan Gold. He walks through a solid, yet simple deck of slides and gives great advice on how to pitch as well:

Here is the deck of slides Nathan refers to:

The Panelists:
Jarret Byrnes
Co-founder of Scifund Challenge
Assistant Prof, Dept of Biology
Uni of Massachusetts

Erica Hermsen
Project Leader of Here Kitty Kitty …Luring Cheetahs for Conservation Research

Ethan O. Perlsein
Project Leader of Crowdsourcing Discovery

Moderator
Adam Ruben
Scientist-Comedian

Adam did an introduction in which he noted that on the most popular crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, in 2012 the public pledged $320m and there were 18,000 successful projects.

From a macro-perspective, both federal and state funding for science is at best flat, if not in a downward trend. Against this backdrop crowdfunding holds huge potential for getting scientists directly engaged with the public.
Jarrett spoke about the Scifund Challenge. Under this initiative scientists come together twice a year to collectively raise funding through crowdfunding. In the lead up they go through a month of training and are provided with a variety of tools and platforms. The training includes how to write a good blog, video creation, how to create a compelling application. The Scifund community also helps in shaping up proposals.

From his perspective engagement leads to crowdfunded science. As such they focus heavily on online engagement and community building. Scifund has a twitter hash tag, a Facebook page and a presence on Google. They also have an existing relationship with Rockethub, a crowdfunding platform.

To date, there have been three Scifund rounds. In total 252,000 has been raised for 159 projects, of which 59 received 100% of the funding they requested. They found that small donations drive Scifund, mainly in the $1,500 to $2,000 range.

Jarret believes that the secret to engagement is to have a strong online presence and create and tap into a scientific fan base. Audience engagement is key. They have found that as more donations roll in, donations grow in size – people like a success story.

Key success factors from his viewpoint:
* Build an audience
* Get trained in outreach
* Work to change academic culture and policy – collaboration with media and arts departments, hiring and promotion practices

The benefits of crowdfunding:
* Build bridges between science and society
* Enhanced science literacy
* Science incubator for new projects
* Key metric to assess scientists ability to connect
* Look at it as funded outreach training

Erica used petridish.org to raise funds for her masters project which aimed to use camera traps to determine effectiveness of bait types at luring cheetahs in Kenya. Her total project budget was $38,000. On petridish she sought to raise $2,500. In 65 days she raised $3,212 from nine backers – 128% of her goal.

Petridish is focused on science-based projects, backers receive rewards from researchers in return, it’s an all or nothing system.

To apply you must be affiliated with a university and must create an Amazon account to receive your funding.

She made a three minute video, posted photos, a project description, put up a budget, and suggested rewards for potential backers. Her rewards included a souvenir from Kenya for a $150 donation, photo prints for $450, and $1,000 naming rights to a photographed cheetah. This last reward was not picked up by backers and in retrospect was not doable.

She found that the more interesting your rewards, the more response you will get.

She promoted her campaign through social media – Twitter and Facebook, and sent out emails to her and her Professor’s network. She also kept a running blog during her time in Kenya.

The majority of her contributors were petridish members. She sent immediate follow ups thanking people for their pledge as she wanted to retain contacts for future projects.

Her lessons learned:
* Do a cost benefit analysis of rewards you promise. The cost of purchasing, labor and international shipping can quickly add up.
* It’s key to maintain communication with backers throughout the project.
* Keep your budget to a minimum.
Ethan Perlstein used to have a lab at Princeton. Today he regards himself as an open scientist and his lab exists in the cloud. He spoke about his 52 day campaign to raise $25,000. He pointed to the lifecycle of a crowdfunding application: the campaign starts with novelty buzz and then fluctuates and you need to maintain sustained growth to reach your goal in time. It is essential to do a countdown in the last 24 hours to maintain buzz.

Essentially he feels crowdfunding is running a marketing campaign utilising social media and general media. For example his campaign was covered by a number of publications including, Scientific American, Wired, The Economist, Forbes and Mashable.

He hussled to get 2-3 donors a day through email and says it is key to activate your following through social media.

A supporter posted a link to Hacker News. This resulted in a spike of a thousand page views and led to $1,000 in donations.

In total his campaign had 390 donors, with a small number giving between $200-$1,000, and most giving between $50-$199.

One of the key benefits he sees to crowdfunding is that it is leading to an unpacking of the blackbox of science. Scientists know it is a choppy process, not always leading to positive results in projects. The added transparency of crowdfunding is educating the public on how science works.

A follow up question was on how does crowdfunding work in terms of taxes?
If funds go to you as an individual you can get taxed, so it is better to have the funds go your university or a non profit entity.

As the year closes, I want to thank all those of you who have visited this blog: over 1 million visits — a huge month on month increase. I will endeavor to post more regularly during 2013 as there is clearly strong interest in the various topics I curate.

Sydney Harbor Bridge

They intend to develop algorithms that will search online “for terms used by active shooters in the past that may be an indicator of future intentions.”

I imagine they would also be looking for online behaviors that fit the mass shooter profile, for example obsessive Google searches on certain terms.

Much has been written already about the mass shooter phenomenon – see this comprehensive list at  Inside Nova, but reducing this into a set of algorithms that can help prevent this ghastly activities would be welcomed.

In fact, a quick glance at this Wikipedia list of mass shootings, and you can see that this is not limited to the United States (contrary to the saturation of the media around the recent awful Sandy Hook shootings). I would hope that whatever is developed by the NYPD can be “open sourced” to other police forces around the world.