Startups should collaborate, Wozniak tells Business Leaders

Greetings WOW members and Web Professionals everywhere.

Whether you’re an enterprise level Web professional within the technical, creative or business side of the profession, working for yourself or small to medium sized Web companies, please take a minute consider some *really* sound advice regarding collaboration that came out of an IT event in California last week.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak brought his upbeat message about the power of innovation to Sacramento, CA last Friday, saying collaboration, not cutthroat competition, is a key to the growth of the region’s high-tech sector.

Speaking before 600 local business and community leaders at downtown’s Hyatt Regency Hotel, the high-tech pioneer urged local startups to build networks and alliances within their community.

“It’s not so much ‘Oh my gosh everybody is a threat,’ ” said Wozniak, the keynote speaker for the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance’s annual Tech Index luncheon.

“Try to get more and more of the networking or threads … between your company and some other companies,” he said. “Even if you’re going in the same direction, make the good things happen for the world and you’ll all have huge successes.”

Wozniak’s message comes as Sacramento’s tech sector remains a niche player in a regional economy dominated by big government and real estate.

But in recent years, it’s become one of the area’s faster growing sectors.

SARTA said its technology index – which measures sales, employee growth and investment activity at 50 local tech companies – grew about 25 percent during the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2010.

During the third quarter of 2010, the companies that make up the index added a total of 100 new jobs, added Meg Arnold, SARTA’s CEO.

“This shows remarkable strength during a very difficult time,” she said. Some of that growth can be attributed to the type of collaboration advocated by Wozniak.

Examples include local software maker Synergex International Corp., which helped “incubate” a number of promising local startups at its Gold River headquarters in recent years.

In 2002, the company agreed to lease excess office space and provide administrative support to Altergy Freedom Power, in exchange for company stock. Altergy is now a leading manufacturer of low-cost fuel cells.

Glue Networks Inc., a locally based cloud networking firm, credited support from SARTA for introducing the company to investor groups that have recently raised $4.5 million for the company.

“You can create success in Sacramento,” said Jeff Gray, Glue Networks’ CEO. “The only thing we need to do is believe in ourselves.”

During his speech, Wozniak talked about how innovation at Apple helped usher in the revolution in personal computing.

Wozniak and Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with the proceeds of the sales of Wozniak’s Hewlett-Packard calculator and Jobs’ Volkswagen bus. The duo initially tried to sell a low-cost personal computer to Wozniak’s then-employer Hewlett-Packard Co., but Wozniak said they were turned down five times.

After launching the Apple I computer, they received $50,000 in orders, for which they built the computers in 10 days with parts that they received on 30 days’ credit, he said.

Wozniak said experiences from Apple’s early days provide an important lesson for today’s startups.

“Look around for what you can do with the money you do have and … don’t think you can go to the moon on Day One,” he said.

IT Savvy – What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain and What Top IT Professionals Need to Know About the C-suite

Greetings and Happy Holiday’s Web Professionals!

Today’s podcast is an extended interview with Dr. Jeanne W. Ross, Director and Principle Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management Center for Information Systems Research and author of a recently published book entitled, “IT Savvy” what Top Executives Must know to Go from Pain to Gain.

I reached out to interview Dr. Ross in response to and interview with Cia Romano CEO, Interface Guru last week regarding her take on the state of the Web and frustration with the lack of education of those providing and contracting for Web services.

If you ever wanted to better understand the mindset of the folks in the C-suite regarding the topic of Information Technology, (IT) you owe it to yourself to listen to this thirty minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute.

Dr. Ross’s research centers on the organizational and performance implications of enterprise initiatives related to enterprise architecture, governance and new IT management practices. At MIT she lectures, conducts research and teaches public and customized executive courses on IT management.

I’ll have a full transcript of this podcast shortly. In the meantime, here is what I asked Dr, Ross to respond to.

* What prompted you to write IT Savvy?

* What is the role of IT from the perspective of the C-suite?

* How does the Internet fit in to that role and that definition?

* How can companies strive to convert IT from a strategic liability to a strategic asset?

* A lot has been said about the potential divide among and executives and IT and you refers to this in your writings. For example in your book you recommend that executives become IT Savvy. Does that mean that executives are solely responsible or should IT professionals become more business savvy?

* What effect if any did the tech bubble bust have on the reluctance of some companies to invest in IT?

* Many in this industry talk about a talent and a skills gap? What are your thoughts?

* Is outsourcing contributing the reluctance on the part of some executives to embrace becoming IT savvy?

* Is their a role that education can play in improving the synergy between IT and the executives?

* What role should business and industry play to encourage parents and youth to see the opportunities IT as a profession? Second part of that question what role if any should business and industry play in promoting the benefits of IT both from employment productivity point of view.

* What kind of foundational knowledge should future IT and business professional’s posses and what will they need to succeed.
* In the book you talk about the importance of IT empowerment. Can you expand on the benefits of this?

* In the book you talk about empowering the digital culture? Can you summarize that and can you provide with a summary benefit statement on Why IT Now?

WOW participated as an exhibitor and a media sponsor of Interop 2009 that took place last week in Las Vegas, NV. Participation in this year’s Interop marks a milestone of sorts since WOW celebrated our tenth year anniversary of participation on the Interop exhibit floor.

In celebration, WOW invited Verio, the global leader in Web hosting to participate in the WOW booth and to participate in the launch of the IT Buyer Guide initiative connecting IT buyers and sellers.

Previously known as “NetWorld+Interop” the week long event is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. Conference tracks and expo covered a wide variety of IT topics including data center and communication technologies, storage and security, enterprise 2.0, virtualization, VoIP and unified communications, networking, wireless & mobility.

For today’s podcast, I’m pleased to present an interview with Tony Byrne, Founder of CMS Watch, .a vendor-neutral firm that evaluates content technologies and publishes reports comparing different solutions head-to-head. Tony is a long time collaborator with the WOW organization and just so happened to be exhibiting in the booth next to WOW’s. Tony shares his thoughts on the overall event and his take on the IT economy in general.

I’d like to give a special shout out to Tony for the interview, Janine Soika and Scott Schafer at Verio Inc. for their support of the WOW and for helping us celebrating our tenth year anniversary at Interop 2009 Las Vegas. If you can spare a few minutes, please check out the interview with Janine Soika, Director of Channel Marketing at Verio Inc. as well as a dozen or so of the initial interviews on the IT Buyer Guide Also, be sure to bookmark this site for the many more interviews to follow.

Today’s Web professional minute is sponsored by the IT Buyer Guide. When you need IT resources, be sure to check out ITBuyerGuide.org. There is something there for all skill levels and disciplines and be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.