Niv Calderon

VC CAFE BREAKFAST

I came from a VCCAFE breakfast* that was held in the port of Tel Aviv where some VC's, entrepreneurs, and Hi Tech people met in order to meet and share ideas. This good idea was of Eze Vidra of VC cafe.

why am I telling you this, because I had 2 or 3 conversations there I wanted to share with you.

One was about the future of social networks ( I like calling them "social utilities" or "social nets"), the other was about "user management" and "fakebooking" which you'll probably hear more about when security companies or private experts will realize there is a new fraud industry they can "explore".

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL UTILITIES

In my opinion the future of social utilities like Facebook lies not in making money from ads but from businesses getting into them, once realized the value they can get of it. In my conversation I gave the example of studios opening profiles and other pages and groups to the movies they produce and the stars they promote. They are not there yet because they haven't yet concluded processing the last revolution they had to "undergo" with the P2P inter-connectivity between people. So for them, it may take some more time.The money will come when businesses will join the party.

USER MANAGEMENT

We're headed towards User management systems. Open ID is the first fruit of the garden in what cannot be other than open orchards of open gardens of decentralized ID's running wild. I don't think it's going to be a mess, I think it's going to be a celebration of democracy.

FAKEBOOKING

Fakebooking is opening new usernames on social utilities and creating fake social networks of people which know each other around a persona who does not exist. My opinion about it is that I don't let any fake ID get near me and I report it to whatever address is needed. Fakebookings will open ID's in networks in order to write blog posts, in order to comment, in order to do guerilla marketing and I think it's polluting the net in general and social networks specifically.

*The word Breakfast was first used by Jeff Pulver to name his social media face to face gathering for business networking purposes.

Read about the future of blogging
Read about the power of blogging
Read about the evolution of the user, in Hebrew

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Last night I went to participate in the Rock Band party of the Garage Geeks. The Garage Geeks events' atmosphere is of social and of business networking. A place where you can meet people you've read about on the internet-business parts in the news papers and in the big sites on the web. It's an atmosphere where it is fun to meet, great to collect ideas and to get to know people. i'll get back to that later.The last game I seriously spent my time playing was called "Sim City 2000", and it was back in the 90's. I used to play for hours a day, full days, and I remember once I had nothing else to achieve in a city I built, it was all made of the mega ultra buildings of the 23rd century (with time fast forwarded). I called this city :"The Enterprise". since than I stopped playing games in general, 10-12 years ago.

Now, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are great games to play, alone and togater, but there are few things about them that are counter productive socially, and remember, I'm talking about a party and about a networking event-
First of all, when you're playing Rock Band you need to concentrate, there are rules you need to follow, as in every game. The game makes the player play for the total score of the team, but really, who cares about the score, the most important thing for you is to finish the song. So, it's not really about being social, it's about doing the best you can, and handling the hand and eye coordination obviously (except for the singer, of course).
Second, when you're in a party where some of the people are playing computer games and some of the people are eating/talking/dancing than there are two groups in one place that do not communicate.

Few weeks ago I went to another party by FunTactix. About 8-9 people played games all night on the computers there and there were about 30-35 people, maybe less. how much is that in percentages and how do you think 8-9 more people could have donated to the atmosphere of the party???

Third- last night they had 2 sets of Rock Band and one set of Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero is anti social in definition. You might have some fun playing it and becoming better, but giving it in a party where other people are involved is like standing in the corner of the class, as a punishment, where no one can speak with you for the time spent, and if you're standing on the side and want to play, wait in line.

So of course, nothing there was even like punishment, I myself tried to sing Roxanne for 3 times with guys i've never seen or talked before, but really, I think attractions in partties are great, but video games, even when they are meant as a group game (wii included) have anti social elements in them that made me think about all of that last night.

For conclusion, games for me, when I was a teen, were a way to spend my time, they were a way to explore this new thing called computer, there was nothing social about them, nothing. Games for me were something I do with myself, having fun, alone.
Even today, if I play a game with other people, how much of it is really about provoking the interaction afterwards? What interaction will be left after the game is over, after elvis has left the building?

a photo I took of a group of people playing Rock Band at the Garage Geeks party

Last, but not least, my own version of Creep, originaly by Radiohead, with my friends: Oded, Hagai, Roxi and lotem at the camera (creep)

I went to the Pulver Breakfast this morning in Aroma in the Tel Aviv Port, and although I was there at ten to nine, people were already there, getting their names on tags, already doing live pokes and mingling. I love it when people show up in time.
I think the atmosphere is was great.
Personally, I knew many people there, whom I really enjoy meeting at events like this and getting live updates, which are almost like Facebook updates, but with faces and smiles attached to them. But also, I made it my business to meet and talk to new people and to familiarize myself with what’s going on with them and with their businesses, cause you never know when and where you’ll need this information, so when you make it your business to know about people, whatever they tell you is extremely interesting and your mind (my mind) is getting busy in building puzzles (personal, professional and in general), so I had fun.
Also, in my talks I got exposed to several interesting projects in the social media domain (blogs), in the educational domain (camp) and in the music advertising domain (games). I found them tasteful.
About the live social networking event- it’s a great project that Jeff is doing where he’s travelling; we can and need to learn few things about how to do it and how to create the atmosphere, so:
a- Name tags, personal taglines and “live status notes” are the ice breakers for people to interact. It’s a must.
b- We can make these events more frequently and I think there’s a demand for it as well. Local events like iDrink are perfect, but
1- no need to bring startups to talk in front of the crowd, and
2- they have grown enormously fast and suddenly it became too big and highly crowded. The event today was with about 70-100 people in an open outdoor space and was perfect.
c- It works when people bring their still and video cameras. It makes the event go beyond itself into the virtual.