The Enterprise 2.0 Launchpad is done. Four companies each got six minutes on stage, and two analysts, Stowe Boyd and David Coleman, were allowed one minute each to critique.
Collanos showed an application that was essentially Groove. A peer-to-peer file sharing and workplace collaboration environment, their big announcement today was that they've added voice. Now you can talk as well as share information.
Clarizen showed a collaborative project management solution. Dismissed by the analysts as yet another file and project management tool, I had to agree. Stowe Boyd kindly suggested that this would be a tough row to hoe, given the number of companies out there.
LiquidTalk is like a PVR for business voice. It allows the user to time shift voice interactions by essentially recording short messages, and then posting them online in a folder. Think SnapVine for business. David and Stowe suggested that it probably belonged as a feature of another application.
KnowNow offered a tool for aggregating important information in the business, and pushing it to the user (presumably using an RSS feed, or some other similar technology.
The whole thing was a little underwhelming. The presentations were heavy on PowerPoint, superficial, and somewhat hype laden. A better format would have banned PowerPoint altogether. The presenters would have been more effective if they had focused on what they do, rather than setting up the problem.
This morning I had the good fortune to be part of Enterprise 2.0's panel (chaired abley by Melanie Turek) on Presence 2.0. Five panelists, including myself, Parlano's Nick Fera, Microsoft's Paul Haverstock, IBM's Dave Marshak, and Jabber's Joe Hildebrand. The panelists universally viewed IM presence as an early presence application, and focused on where the future of Presence would be.
Probably the most thought provoking presentation of the five was Hildebrand's. He views presence as a collection of documents describing changes in your identity over a period of time. From that point of view, presence can include anything. I didn't ask the question, but he would probably view Facebook as a presence application.
The other intriguing presentation was Nick Fera's. The Parlano view is that by persisting chat sessions, one can tap into the collective intelligence of the organizations, and overcome many of the current limitations of presence.
My presentation linked here. And a nice writeup from Joe Thornley here.
The team at Jajah is having a little fun at Skype's expense. Their "No Headset" campaign encourages users to ditch their headsets and choose Jajah for inexpensive calling. The premise is pretty simple: make a video of yourself ditching your headset, and submit it to www.noheadset.com. Your video might even run on the new Jajah TV, also launching today. If it does, you can win great prizes, like these awesome t-shirts.
The Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston kicked off this morning with talks from David Weinberger (author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) and Andrew McAfee (Harvard University). The conference is about how the use of Web 2.0 technologies is changing business — the structure of business as opposed to the mechanics of business. Common themes:
consumer technologies are making their way into business. Each of the four speakers this morning has referenced Facebook, for instance. Cisco's Marthin de Beer cited the example of the 21 year old college student who uses Facebook, Flickr, IM and GMail at school and is taking these tools into the enterprise.
the model is shifting from top-down control to mass collaboration. Social networking is becoming a force in business because knowledge, and by extension business, is social. McAfee commented that the IQ of a crowd is far more powerful than the IQ of individuals.
web sites are now created by users. Weinberger wondered what the business network would be like if, for instance, every viewer on the intranet could put Wikipedia style comments on the pages.
Heady stuff. My favorite quote was David Weinberger saying that we, the customers, are the business.
Buddy Ken Camp caught the news yesterday that CounterPath is acquiring NewHeights Software. For those not in the know, NewHeights is the creator of some very innovative desktop software that extends the PBX feature set onto the PC desktop. With NewHeights products you can control virtually all aspects of any kind of conversation from a nice drag and drop interface. It's quite interesting to see a CounterPath, a softphone company, merge with NewHeights.
Even more interesting, perhaps, were the fiscal details of the transaction. Terry Matthews becomes Chairman of the Board, and:
CounterPath will acquire all of the shares of NewHeights through the issuance of 40,250,000 shares of CounterPath’s common stock to shareholders of NewHeights (NewHeights shareholders who are Canadian residents may, in lieu of receiving shares of CounterPath common stock, elect to receive shares exchangeable into CounterPath shares in order to defer taxable income or gains). Immediately prior to closing, NewHeights will be debt free and have $2.5 million in cash to contribute to the combined entities. Wesley Clover has irrevocably committed a further $3.5 million to be invested over a seven month period for 8,750,000 shares of common stock bringing the total cash contribution to CounterPath by NewHeights and Wesley Clover to $6 million. Upon closing, CounterPath’s convertible debenture holders have agreed to convert their existing debentures in the amount of $4 million and invest a further $2 million for 15,000,000 shares of common stock at $0.40 per share.
At closing, CounterPath expects to be debt free, and have an additional $8 million of new cash or cash commitments. Following the investments of the convertible debenture holders and Wesley Clover, CounterPath expects that there will be a total of 101,940,983 shares of common stock outstanding (including shares exchangeable into CounterPath shares). The closing of the transaction contemplated by the definitive agreement is subject to various conditions, including approval by NewHeights’ securityholders, court approval and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close within 60 days.
Hmmm… 102 million shares outstanding at the end, of which 49 million are owned by the shareholders of NewHeights (and I am presuming that Matthews and his holding company Wesley Clover are the majority of those), and the remainder owned publicly and by the debenture holders of CounterPath. What's really happened here is that Matthews has found a way to vend NewHeights into a publicly entity, which he now controls, without having to go through the expense of an IPO.
