On May 12, 2008, TechCrunch incorrectly reported our death. The report was written by Erick Schonfeld. For those who think Erick got the story right please read this letter from our counsel:

The letter is dated Oct 8, 2008. It has been almost 5 months since we were added to the deadpool and haven’t yet, as claimed, had a fire-sale of assets. However, MJ is selling his 24 DVD Collection (seasons 2-5) if anyone is interested.

We’ve had so many questions regarding this awkward debacle, we’ve selected the most frequently asked to answer below.

Q: A lot of people have asked us why we haven’t posted about this sooner?

A: It just seemed like another distraction away from building the business and we’ve had too many of them. It has taken time for us to develop our business model. However, this isn’t uncommon or unexpected when you enter new waters (painful as it may be). If you think differently you may want to read F@W.

Furthermore, the odds are against startups winning. We felt that running around posting we’re not dead is like standing on an aircraft carrier with a ‘mission accomplished’ banner before the job is done.

Q: Why are you posting today?

A: Everyone is talking about the death spiraling economy and how startups better get *real*. Well, we’ll be cash flow positive this lovely fourth quarter, Gwabs goes to private beta on Halloween (sign up!) and FilmRiot submitted its first film to Sundance. We like these apples.

Q: Wait a minute! Wasn’t Michael *your CEO* quoted in the article saying the model failed?

A: Indeed he was. Yes, the *original* model failed. We expected to have many iterations on our model before we got it right. If this surprises you, it didn’t surprise us. For those counting: we’re on #4.

Q: Doesn’t it seem silly TechCrunch would predict any startup hits the deadpool? It seems about as insightful as standing at a lottery ticket counter and declaring each customer a loser - you’d only be wrong once for every 14 million people?

A: Yes it is silly - predicting who is going to hit the ‘deadpool’ is easy. Being able to predict who won’t is where analysis and talent would come into play.

Q: Isn’t deadpool a comic book character? You’d think ‘journalists’ from TC would put down their snacks and comic books to do some research?

A: Yes, Deadpool is a comic book character, considering Shelley, our President and Michael, our CEO have never spoken to anyone at TC we’re not sure how much/little comics they read.

Q: Why would TC want to post anything about you guys anyways?

A: They need stories to make money. Why are we interesting? I’m not sure, but we’re taking that as a compliment.

Q: Is TechCrunch owned/operated by the same people who publish Valleywag?

A: No comment. However, you may find this post interesting.

Q: Didn’t Jeff Howe also say in his crowdsourcing book that you guys sold off a majority of your assets?

A: Yes, he did. It is on page 278 and he uses this incorrect fact to kick off Chapter 11.

As you saw from the letter above he got it wrong. This hurt because we really like Jeff. Jeff - in case you forgot Michael’s phone number: it is 1.403.617.8836.

If you’re looking for a good book on crowdsourcing, we’d like to recommend: E-Preneur by Richard J. Goosen, Ph.D.

Q: Didn’t TC just post about WeAre.Us? Didn’t they get funding from VenCorps? Isn’t VenCorps using Chaordix (your crowdsourcing technology)?

A: Yes, Serkan just posted about WeAre.Us. Somewhat funny, as in the same article, they are promoting a site built by a company they call defunct. It seems fact checking isn’t a top priority at TC. You might want to sign up for Vencorps and double check to see if WeAre.Us actually won .

For those who love irony: Erick Schonfeld and Jeff Howe who got their facts wrong are quoted here about the ills of citizen journalism.

Q: WAIT: The original TechCrunch article also said ST walked away from you? So, this isn’t true either?

A: We don’t kiss and tell, but we can tell you this: it became obvious to everyone involved in this venture that we had the best crowdsourcing platform. We stand behind and promote those that we have partnered with.

Q: Isn’t the guy who posted the iReport that Steve Jobs has been rushed to the hospital with a heart attack under SEC investigation (you know, posting false news while shorting the stock to make money)? What regulatory body looks into journalists that make money by posting untruthful stories?

A: Good question. We don’t know. Anyone?

Q: We like Crowdsourcing, can Cambrian House help us?

A: Of course, drop Shelley or MJ an email @cambrianhouse.com.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving,
Team CH

If you live in Calgary Centre-North you might have missed the 2008 All Candidate Debate. (You may have missed it because it took place at noon on Tuesday.) Here is our coverage which is about one million times better than the Calgary Centre-North debacle.

A transcript of the 2008 Calgary Centre All Candidates Debate has been crowdsourced via Mechanical Turk’s CastingWords. An audio-only version is available as an MP3 download of Calgary Centre Candidates Debate.

You can use the following chart to locate topics of interest. Clicking on a timecode will play the content from that point forward via YouTube.

Calgary Centre is Cambrian House’s own riding (our office resides in it as do many of our staff) so this is the riding we’re covering. Please check back at this blog post for updates as we consolidate technology positions, and their thoughts on how today’s internet technologies impact democracy in Canada.

Also, affordable housing, the economic downturn, war in Afghanistan and global warming will be touched on.

Just kidding. We don’t know anything about those things. Just technology.

CANADIAN PARTY PLATFORMS vs THE INTERNETS

If you’ve got any data to add to this table, leave it as a comment and we’ll throw it in.

If you live in Calgary Centre-North and missed the Candidate round table held on 2008-09-30, here is the best coverage we could muster:

If you are looking for Calgary Centre (not Calgary Centre-North) then check out our Calgary Centre debate coverage.

You can use the following chart to locate topics of interest. Clicking on a timecode will play the content from that point forward via YouTube.

A transcript of the debate has been crowdsourced from the MP3 audio file via Mechanical Turk’s CastingWords.com.

Why Calgary Centre-North?

• Jim Prentice is the Minister of Industry, a position which has major impact on Calgary software companies like us. (Too bad no IT issues were presented at the round table!)
   
• It is a riding conveniently located close to CH in Calgary Centre.
   
• The round table was held in a church 2 blocks from Bangkok Noi Thai.

If this coverage was of value to you (or would have been if I’d left camera #4 running) then please comment below. It is not clear how many people miss these functions due to bad timing, or simply don’t find out about them until they’re over.

Old school! (in a bad way)

With the election approaching, there’s been more frequent talk at CH about our democratic process and how it could be enhanced with web technologies. Some of the possible scenarios revolved around combinations of free applications, some were thoughts about how our own technology stack could be leveraged.

My lament from the previous MP debate I attended was that TV News taped 15 minutes of the debate, then took off with their sound bites. What if one of the candidates then bit the head off a chicken on stage? (Or said something interesting?)

It appears that the (average) 125,000 citizens in each of Alberta’s 28 ridings isn’t enough to warrant video coverage or meaningful analysis of candidates. The steady fall in the cost of shooting and producing video doesn’t matter to cable news programs if the audience is too small to warrant TV broadcast.

So never mind all the wonders that crowdsourcing and increased connectivity could bring to democracy. It was low hanging fruit time! Nothing could be simpler than videotaping a candidate debate and posting it online. [Cough.]

There will be an all candidate debate in Calgary Centre riding, 2008-10-07 12:00 to 13:00 at Mount Royal College. Here’s hoping there will be complete coverage.

Barriers are Not Technical

There’s no technical challenge standing in the way of improving our democracy. It has been solved years ago, it just needs to be applied to government.

I think Canada’s slow progress is partially due to our first-past-the-post system which under represents less popular parties. For example, it is common for a Canadian party to receive a minority of the vote, yet form a majority government.

If web technology was leveraged so that citizens could participate in the crafting of legislation then any distortions introduced via our current electoral process are negated. The party holding a majority of ridings might find most of the citizens engaging with them on an issue are opposed to their policies.

There are alternative voting mechanisms available such as Instant Runoff Voting or the favorite of most small parties: Proportional Representation.

Obviously it is not in the self interest of any party holding power to push for electoral reform when that virtually guarantees they’ll lose seats in the next election.

So how do Canadians advance to “Democracy 2.0″?

Well if I was smart enough to know that, you’d probably be enjoying proper coverage of the debate. But here’s what it could look like once it’s here:

Obvious Scenario #1 - Candidate Debate

[Think Ustream] Any candidate debate features live streaming video viewable over any broadband connection.

[Think Google Moderator] A human moderator is assisted in compiling questions and follow up questions by a tool which lets the crowd not just submit questions but rank and consolidate each others questions, so that only the best are presented to the human moderator.

[Think Live Blogging] In parallel to the broader group of citizens who are posing questions, there is also the option to participate in fact checking the debate. An unmoderated chatroom discussion parses the candidate dialog looking for errors. If an error is confirmed by multiple checkers, a very brief correction is written. If enough fack checkers approve of the correction, it is then overlayed on the video stream. This corrective text could also be communicated to the human moderator or perhaps displayed where all candidates can see it. The speaking candidate would then have an opportunity to clarify their statement.

[Think CastingWords] As the debate is taking place, a transcription could be offered to the public. Every 5 minutes, the latest audio portion of the debate is submitted to a crowdsourced transcription service. The transcribed text is then merged together by a single volunteer.

[Think YouTube] Footage of the debate would of course be retained and hosted permanently for public access. The transcription text could be used to offer close captioning for the hearing impaired.

Obvious Scenario #2 - Crafting Legislation

[Think Google Moderator] Overall intent of document can be guided by a set of experts who are in charge of the drafting process. They can kick anyone out of the process they deem disruptive. The crowd can ask questions of these experts, and the questions are also consolidated and filtered by the crowd using a moderator tool so the experts can respond to questions and coordinate activity without being overwhelmed.

[Think Google Docs] An online document which can be edited my multiple people at once.

[Think Reddit] Any segment of the document can be selected, and flagged as good or bad (quantitiative feedback), with a comment describing why (qualitative feedback). These comments can be voted on, so that any comments already represented by another comment, or considered ill informed can be voted down and ignored. Typically a criticism receives rebuttals, and if the rebuttal is valid then the original criticism is down voted into oblivion.

[Think GPL3] A heatmapped overview of the legislation shows which portions are currently in dispute. Parallel activity on unrelated portions on the document can be facilitated, and related sections can be avoided until activity in that area dies down.

The end result would be a document where the process of creation is completely transparent and everyone’s feedback has been pre-screened by the crowd and then addressed by the experts. The actual work of writing legislature copy is shared between the experts and the crowd, with the experts directing their efforts towards whichever focus is more effective at that moment (coordinating the crowd’s copywriting, or writing the copy themselves).