Dot Com to Dot Bomb

Andrew Fry talked to us about his experience in this moment in time. Andrew had a front row seat to the Internet explosion. His company Free Range Media was one of the first website design companies. During the Dot com explosion he wen from 2 employees to 30 and continued to grow. Andrew said it was insane. The only thing that seemed to matter was that you made money.

Andrew used Dinosaurs to illustrate the first internet providers: Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe, Delphi and Genie. The reason he used dinosaurs is that they are large slow moving and extinct. These companies where owned by larger ones except for AOL. Prodigy was owned by Sears and IBM.  Genie was owned by GE. CompuServe was owned by H&R Block. As the internet took off these companies slowly died because they failed to innovate and adapt. Much like the dinosaurs. The ones that did where taken out by the meteor or the dot com bust.

This moment was so crazy that these companies with .com on their names became instantly worth a lot of money. InfoSource was worth more than the Boeing Corporation. The wise man looked at this and thought there was something wrong. A company like Boeing that has been in business for 90 years and the largest exporter by value in the US would be worth less than Infosource. The insanity just kept going as AOL bought TimeWarner. But like all bubbles they finally burst and lots of people lost their jobs and money. One of the fascinating things is the companies that survived. Yahoo came out of no where and became a major portal for information. Amazon.com made money and is now the largest internet retailer in the world. Google came after the bust, has risen to lead the way into the future. 

South Sound Technology conference

Sharon Wong

Director of Business Incubation, Emerging Technologies Group

Cisco Systems

Sharon talked to us about the Emerging Technologies Group and the Internet of everything. It was fascinating to hear her place at the company and what she sees happening. The Internet is not just about information it is about connecting things. “Today more than 99 percent of physical objects in the world are unconnected. By 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected. As the number of connections between people, processes, data, and things continue to grow” Sharon discussed the opportunities that are available for businesses to be a part of connecting everything. One of the fascinating topics that she discussed was the power company in Canada that has brought its grid online. All of its meters are IP connected and can report constantly. Cisco has been working on software that will help the company predict the amount of energy needed and capacity that it has. Another point that Sharon made was that when we connect these devices they can give us feedback on how much energy we are using. They can gives us real time information on how much money we are saving. This can help us to conserve more. 

Michael Hamilton

Chief Information and Security Officer

City of  Seattle

Michael talked to us about security and the real threats. One of his points that stuck with me was when he asked us who gets hurt when credit cards are stolen? Well not the card holder, it is the Credit Card company. But the real valuable target is the power to turn on the flood gates at a Dam 2 states away. This is what needs protecting. He also stated that antivirus is not the solution it is not going to keep them out. They are already in. We need to work on finding them and getting them out of our systems. Too much of the expertise is spent on prevention. How do we combat this? Michael is leading the way with the Public Regional Information Security Event Management (PRISEM). What this can do for us is get everyone involved. Business does not have the means to fight it. Here in the South Sound we have a lot available to us. The Military is close by at JBLM. We have the FBI who is there to help us. These are things that PRISEM can help to orchestrate. It is like a central place where threats can be managed and the right people can be notified. 

Jim Kastama

Jim Kastama is a Washington State Senator and has been for the last 16 years. Jim talked to us about his work with the IPZ’s in Washington State. IPZ stands for Innovation Partnership Zone. Jim stated that 2/3’s of GDP is directly due to innovation. Innovation is different than invention. Invention seeks to create something where there is a perceived need. Innovation on the other hand seeks to improve upon what is already there. The Boeing Corporation has an assembly plant in Everett where they assemble 737’s. It took approximately 23 days to assemble a plane.  Boeing got the engineers and the guys on the floor together and had them discuss ways that they could improve the assembly process. One thing that stood out was the installation of seats. One worker suggested that they use a hay elevator to lift the seats into the plane rather than carry them one by one up the stairs. This and other innovations cut the assembly time down to 11 days and they are working on getting it down to 9.

 Jim has been working with IPZ’s in Washington and he gave us some insight. The IPZ’s bring the business sector, a research university, and local government together to see how they can help each other. Business has the labor, the university has the research and government has the capital. This model has been very successful in our state. In Walla Walla there is a huge wine industry and the local community college is leading the way in developing young talent to work in this industry.  One thing that stood out to me was the need to work on growing our own innovators and not look to steal them from somewhere else. If we can grow our own talent then they are more likely to stay here and have a much bigger impact.  Another program that he is working on is the Stars program. This program brings in known innovators and builds them a lab or surrounds them with what they need to get their ideas to work. This has been hugely successful with the IPZ’s.