Chris Sacca's 'What is left?'

Fortune Brainstorm Canceled

I learned last week that one of my favorite conferences of the year, the Fortune Brainstorm, has been discontinued. I have heard a few varied explanations for why this happened, but none seem to convincingly answer why the powers that be at Fortune magazine would end this storied event, arguably the impetus for Fortune's continued relevance in today's attention market.

Brainstorm was notable for its incredibly diverse yet influential participants. Too often these days I find myself deafened by the echo chamber of technology-only conferences. Brainstorm merged my silicon geekdom with social and political actors, the hard sciences, law, and those oft-neglected brick and mortar businesses. 

Notably, virtually every participant at the conference was asked to share some time on a panel discussion during Brainstorm. This, combined with the intriguing and meaty subject matter, ensured that some real heavy hitters would make the trek to Aspen each year to join in the compelling dialog.

I sincerely hope the management at Fortune will reconsider their decision.

Charging for air . . .

I am spending this week at Said School of Business at Oxford University as part of their annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event. Much more on this entire experience later.

Right now, however, I am in the midst of 50 MBA students from around the world who are being led through a fascinating process by innovation and creativity consultants Synectics to brainstorm and collaboratively problem-solve.

I was asked to pose the problem to be tackled by this eager group. I called upon these bright minds to arm the "good guys" in the Net neutrality debate with a metaphor/analogy/catchphrase which will help the masses quickly and painlessly understand the importance of an open and neutral Net. Up until now, the efforts of Google and its many allies on this issue have not succeeded in making this realm one around which the average layperson can wrap their head.

Nevertheless, it is vital that non-technical Net users understand the stakes here and be empowered to ask their representatives to protect the Internet. Similarly, the lawmakers themselves could no doubt benefit from concrete illustrations to help grasp the underlying concepts (look no further than the "Series of Tubes").

All told, this has been an exhilirating, eye-opening, and frankly inspiring session. The student body here at Said is wildy international and the diverse perspectives have been nothing short of moving.

Just a moment ago, one student, hailing from the developing world, said with all sincerity, "Charging for Google is like charging for air." Wow. A sentiment soon echoed across this room by students from the far reaches of the globe as they recalled life without the Internet and Google. Tales from Kazakhstan, India, and from across Africa each charged with such compelling energy and passion. The Internet is an escape, a laugh, an education, a weapon, it is medicine, it is family, it is resistance to oppression.

I need to jump back into the fray and work over some of these ideas with the students, but in the meantime, this is one of those days that reminds me of how lucky I am, and how lucky we all are. The Internet is nothing short of a gift.

Postcard: Necker Island

If I have been even harder to usual to reach, it is because I have spent much of this week as a guest on Richard Branson's private island in the British Virgin Islands, Necker Island. This has been a wonderful time, jampacked with every imaginable watersport during the day, then spontaneous roundtable discussions about the future of the Internet at night. I also learned all about the space rides being planned by Virgin Galactic, was taught the finer points of film financing, and even got to wrestle in one of those fat sumo suits. I feel very lucky to be here especially among a group of frighteningly intelligent people.

From here, I leave tomorrow heading for Oxford. While the English climate will likely shock my system after being on Necker, I am just as eager for this next leg of my journey and the engaging conversations I hope to have with many of you.

(By the way, this post would be replete with links if I were not accessing the Internet from a cripplingly slow Iridium satellite connection.)

Youth Speaks

Spent last night at the 2006 Annual Youth Speaks Friendraiser in San Francisco. I feel verbally inadequate trying to describe the power and poignancy of the poetry these kids spit, as well as the admiration I have for an organization that works so passionately to encourage intelligent and positive expression.

Last night, I heard a plethora of very young poets and emcees eloquently and rhythmically tackling the most difficult themes of our day with insight, humor, irony, and always a touch of style.

Though they were all very moving, Rafael Casal's piece about tossing out the existing Bill of Rights and replacing it with seven proposed amendments of his own earned the most raucous standing ovation. No rookie to this scene, he has filmed some spots on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam, so keep your eyes peeled for this guy.

In the meantime, check out the Youth Speaks calendar of events for their next inspiring exhibition. While at the site, be sure to drop a couple bucks on this wonderful group.  These can use the help, and in turn, we can all certainly use more of the words these kids are speaking.

Knock, knock. I am coming to visit your blog tomorrow

Don't get me wrong, I love feeds. I use feedreaders to keep up on all of the intriguing things you type, and I can tell that a whole bunch of you, in turn, use feedreaders to visit my site. (I am a loyal Feedburner customer and it tells me so.)

All that said, I miss your actual blogs. This talk of widgets has me realizing that I miss the aesthetic of your sites, especially those of you with swank design and sidebar curiosities. So many of you have delightfully interesting links and photos that you can't/don't syndicate. Your feeds also tend to leave out your book and music recommendations. Harumph.

So, I figure it is time I dropped by. No need to leave out any snacks or anything. You'll hardly notice me. Just thought I would let you know I would be coming by tomorrow to check stuff out.

Did you get the memo about the new cover sheets we are using?

Every time I speak somewhere, people ask me what I think scares Google the most. Is it Microsoft? Abandonment of net neutrality? Some new startup that will out-Google Google? While those are all indeed worth attention, and while I do not speak for Google in this blog, my biggest fear is that Google could become a big company.

I don’t mean big just in terms of headcount. Google has grown at a staggering pace as the company has added amazing talent to offices around the world allowing for even more cool products to get built. Yet, as the company gets bigger, the temptation is to introduce additional layers of management and bureaucracy and these are the enemies of innovation.

I have worked with engineers from a variety of household-name big companies. Like some universal truth that transcends language, national borders, industries, or even market cycles, I hear the same two things from those in organizations that are no longer innovating: 1) They never get to work on teams smaller than 200 people and 2) They haven’t launched anything in years. Why? They are suffocated by myriad processes, hierarchies, templates, forms, and flow charts.

The leaders of Google have realized, from the earliest days, that the company’s own growth would be the biggest challenge and have toiled unflinchingly to build scalable and transparent systems for encouraging the freedom to innovate and collaborate without jumping through some of the unnecessary traditional company hoops.  I deeply respect the team that runs Google for focusing on this from the beginning and emphasizing it as a core company value.

Nevertheless, the potential big company pitfalls are always looming.  As the size grows, I see colleagues, particularly those who join Google from other companies, tempted to carve out fiefdoms and mandate SWOT analyses and extensive Excel spreadsheets littered with three letter acronyms. I have seen a few mid-level bosses evoke the traditions of Japanese management and schedule “pre-meetings” to plan, discuss, and approve what will be planned, discussed and approved at the actual meeting itself. MBA-speak creeps into the parlance and these new managers require the filing of more and more TPS reports.

The good news? Google’s culture of letting engineers and product folks build great stuff that users want is still winning the day. However, the company needs to remain vigilant and never hesitate to clear the way for inspired people to create the products we all love. For those of you from Google who read my blog, thanks in advance for your help in keeping it a place where freedom to innovate is the rule and not the exception.

Mobile Goog Is Where It's At

I tend not to shill for Google products on this site. I think Google builds a lot of amazing stuff, and I love working there, but I am certainly not an exclusive fan and use competitive products from a number of companies. For example, this blog is hosted by Six Apart's Typepad service.

That said, I think two Google teams have hit it out of the park lately:

Google Mobile Maps - I use GMM every day without exception. Built by the team behind Zipdash, GMM is a wonderfully rich client for our mobile device that fuses the best of Maps, Earth, and Local all in the palm of your hand. Whether I am looking for a place to eat, or just lost on the way to a meeting, GMM is a must have. It has bailed me out countless times. They even added traffic info lately! Just go to google.com/gmm from your phone's browser to install Google Mobile Maps.

GMail Mobile - This just launched to the public today. Wow! Such a wonderful way to interface with my Blackberry. It actually makes me look forward to getting messages. The UI is so elegant. Big kudos to the team that put this app together. Visit gmail.com/app with your mobile browser to install this beauty.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blogging.