It’s interesting to see the comparative growth of three rival online communities in the multi-billion dollar medical imaging industry.

The established player is AuntMinnie, originally set up by started by Dr. Phillip Berman, CEO of Lumisys, in 1999 and for a time owned by Eastman Kodak. Currently owned by IMV with a popular old style forum, it’s a tried and tested model which is obviosuly successful with the following key fact:

29604 Registered users have made 223898 posts in 13 forums. There are currently 27278 topics.

Then in 2006 came along Medicexchange backed by Medicsight (which itself IPO’d in 2007 for around £30m).Originally launched with a similar old style forum it’s improved its community offering, and reached out to the wider community with a prescence in the three staple social media tools of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Finally from the medical imaging community itself came the ning-based radRounds community, which as you can see has done remarkably well from the compete.com chart above.

Medical imaging online communities

So as the former content manager of Medicexchange.com which is now billed as a ’social network for healthcare professionals to exchange knowledge’, what lessons can I glean from these rival developments now that I’ve been working in the community management sphere for a couple of years, currently at SiftGroups? My first step is to use a selection free social media measurement tools, to assess their effectiveness within their online community, and in reaching their wider audience using the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

News from Xyggy – their patent search service is now live. Forget keywords, this is about item searches.

Strikes me this would be of interest in the medical imaging world. So I tried ‘MRI’ as the item search. Then selected the top of the list return. Usefully the search engine then delivers a list of similar patents, as Xyggy’s Dinesh Vadhia explains:

Imagine you want to find similar patents for a given patent. Now you can with Xyggy Patent. What’s more, you can query with multiple patents (selected by patent number or title) and Xyggy will find all similar patents in ranked order. Go ahead and try it (and its free).

Patent Baristas wrote about Xyggy here and the IPKat said this.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It appears they did see some improvement in service when it appeared the BBC TV consumer programme Watchdog was about to take the company to task, though recent posts on the website suggest the improvements are not consistently applied.

Interesting as the Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, started following me on Twitter today, he’s at @grantshapps btw. I wonder if he’d be interested in delving deeper into this sense of grievance, as I suspect that many leaseholders happen to be (a) In marginal constituencies (b) compose of a large proportion of swing votes.

Anyhow just a thought.

Disclaimer: Solitaire owns Freehold Managers PLC, with has yet to sort out my ground rent properly after two years since purchase of my property at the Cotton Mill in Leicester. Luckily my other (converted maltings) property in Bristol is rented off a v. friendly commercial lawyer!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

No doubt plenty of wise folk will say this is a good sign but maybe Facebook are the exception in a recession?

I’d probably agree except that I’ve noticed some other encouraging signs, both at the very large (Facebook) end of the business spectrum and the not so large, in comparison, from the UK. For starters the news on 2 September that European social software specialists Headshift, had been bought by the Dachis Group based in Austin, Texas, in a move described by the Guardian as the ‘Facebookification of business’: “The London-based social media firm Headshift is the first acquisition of Jeffrey Dachis’s newly formed Dachis Group. Dachis’s former agency, Razorfish, was a huge success with a value of $5.5 billion at the height of the 2000 bubble. With his new company, the entrepreneur plans to invest in the corporate social networking area and will focus on making customer participation a big business: “Social business is the new way of working, not just new technology.”

Thirdly, that London-based social media agency FreshNetworks, doubled in size in 2008, are doubling in size again this year and moving to new offices, by all accounts.

So perhaps a trend? Prediction is, as I think they say, an uncertain science, but with online community specialist company SiftGroups in Bristol, who I work for, also moving into new offices things look brighter for sure. For me personally I have one further indicator, which is my own private confirmation of this upward trend, and for sure  there remains the lack of cash for investment in the system at large. But finger’s crossed that while ‘one swallow does not make a summer’ that enough swallows can make something happen. Chaos theory anyone?

PS: And even as I sit here watching French Wednesday evening football at 21:02 news rolls in from TechCrunch: “Twitter Closing New Venture Round With $1 Billion Valuation”.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“Classic argumentative discussions can be found in a variety of domains from traditional scientific publishing to today’s modern social software. An interactive argumentative discussion usually consists of an initial proposition stated by a single creator and followed by supporting propositions or counter-propositions from other contributors, usually part of the same virtual community. Thus, the actual argumentation semantics is hidden in the content created by the contributors. In this article, the authors describe an abstract model for argumentation, which captures the semantics independently of the domain. Following a modularized approach, the authors also take into account additional important aspects of the argumentation and present a possible use of the framework in the context of virtual communities.”

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below (costs $30).
http://www.infosci-on-demand.com/content/details.asp?ID=34158

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Pointers on designing and delivering a technical presentation Dr. Christopher James From: PGBioMed 2009 2009-07-13 03:17:29.0 Electronics Channel >> go to webcast>> recommend to friend

About the presentation
This informal discussion will deal with some of the issues surrounding what can make or break your technical presentation. Some general guidelines are given about designing your presentation such that it is serves its function in delivering the message you hope to convey. Pointers are given on good and bad practice in presentation delivery with some examples of both.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

1. You cannot “manage” community, you need to participate in the conversation and engage your community members on a personal level
2. You need to engage your users wherever they may be socializing on the Web – not just on your site – and so we are active on Twitter (@bwbx) as well as LinkedIn (more on that below)
3. That business oriented users of our site act just like others social media participants do, with clear Key Influencers, Active and Passive users

Full piece here.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Over the last few years, China and India have emerged as the twin hot spots of emerging tech innovation. Now IBM (IBM) is betting that one of the next big technology stars will be Brazil.

In the latest sign of Brazil’s rising power, Big Blue is announcing on Aug. 18 (actually today) a new initiative to stimulate the development of the country’s technology sector. To kick off the effort, IBM is hosting its first-ever forum for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in São Paulo along with FINEP, the Brazilian government agency that finances technology development. The daylong event will bring together more than 100 investors and dozens of new companies looking for investment and business advice.

IBM is also launching a Portuguese version of its developerWorks Web site, which provides free programs and online teaching guides that help programmers build skills in the Java programming language, the Linux operating system, and IBM products such as Lotus. To host the event, IBM has dispatched Claudia Fan Munce, managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, and Steve Mills, senior vice-president and group executive of IBM’s $20 billion Software Group, a clear sign of the growing importance of Brazil to the IBM portfolio.

“We have been watching Brazil for a while,” says Munce, who grew up in Brazil. “The time is right.”

Eyeing Opportunity

In the past, Brazil has been hobbled by hyperinflation, rampant political corruption, and failed fiscal and monetary policies. But with a growing and stable economy in recent years, multinational corporations such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and venture capital and private equity players now see additional opportunity for technology innovation in the sun-drenched nation. “That potential is there,” says Mills. “The university systems are strong. There is a level of interest in entrepreneurship that is growing.”

Investors increasingly see Brazil as an attractive destination. As of the end of 2008 nearly 150 local and foreign investment firms had committed $28 billion in venture and private equity capital to Brazilian companies, according to the Brazilian Association for Private Equity & Venture Capital. That’s up from $6 billion in 2004, amounting to a hearty 50% compound annual growth rate over the last four years. Investors have financed 500 Brazilian companies to date with venture or private equity capital, and there’s $12 billion left to invest over the next few years from that $28 billion kitty.

Still, the country’s business challenges, including high taxes and restrictive labor laws, could hamper growth. And native businesspeople say a Silicon Valley-like ecosystem where risk and creative thinking in technology are the norm remains elusive. “We do not have an ecosystem in place,” says Berthier Ribiero-Neto, head of Google’s (GOOG) Latin American research and development center, which is based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. “Most of the students go to work for the outsourcing companies. I would like to see more product development.”

The IBM initiative is designed to help remedy some of those issues. The idea is to serve as a matchmaker and coach to the growing number of companies IBM works with in Brazil. In fact, IBM’s Munce says that among the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), Brazil is seeing the highest growth in business partners that IBM works with, averaging 150% year over year.

Tapping into Brazil

To help its partners raise money, IBM will introduce them to dozens of local and foreign private investors at the forum, including Intel Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Rio Bravo, and Darby Overseas Investments. And to design, build, and market new technologies for their businesses, IBM will invite its several thousand Brazilian business partners to visit its Innovation Center in São Paulo, which opened in February. At the center, entrepreneurs can gain access to training courses, consulting services, and technical seminars. “The center will help us tap into this huge growth market,” says Munce.

Humberto Matsuda, founding partner with Performa Investimentos, a new Brazilian venture capital firm, says the IBM forum is a significant event for his country. “We are very excited to see how IBM will become a player in this industry,” says Matsuda, who is closing an $8 million fund, with 40% of its capital coming from FINEP. “It is a very significant event, given the size of the players.”

Matsuda, who helped IBM draw up a list of companies to invite to the forum, says startups have been hobbled in the recent past by a lack of capital and experienced entrepreneurs. But he says the IBM event is important because it will help foster more investment, training, and networking in the technology community. “They will make introductions to potential clients and offer training and services,” says Matsuda. “You have to use a key player like IBM to teach companies.”

Bookmark It

Hide Sites