Hello!

It is fall up here in Canada, which means the good times are over and the polar bear skins are getting hauled out of the attic.
We thought this would be a good time to get you caught up on the goings on of Cambrian House.

We’ve been building stuff. We Stealth-launched of our Chaordix Crowdsourcing software and we’re getting good traction on it.

• We built a crowdsourced venture capital site on Chaordix and we’re really proud of the work we’ve done.
• We’ve also started work on Make Good Technologies
• We’ve got some other great partners on board that we will be announcing shortly!

Why have we chosen another name that is difficult to spell (a thousand curses on the squatter that bought Cambrainhouse.com)? It is an ode to Dee Hock, the founder of Visa. He spoke about bringing Chaos and Order together to create Chaordic organizations. With Chaordix software, you can combine the power of crowds (chaos) with the power of your organization (order). We also think it would make an awesome word to throw down in a scrabble game.

2. Gord and Blue miss making videos, so they’ll be posting stuff on a more regular basis now that summer’s over and Gord is finished working on his tan.

3. We’ve had proud moments over the summer

• We placed 4th at the KPMG Pick20 awards, they said nice things about us.
• Greg got a new motorcycle.
• MJ and Blue spoke all over, including Stanford, San Francisco, Vancouver, Banff, and the Calgary International Film Festival.
• We’ve got some awesome new co-workers

Maybe you have questions that our websites don’t fully answer. Feel like there’s no one to turn to? I’m here for you. Drop me an email mj [at] cambrianhouse [dot] com and I’ll be happy to chat.

Last week, we invited Hal Josephson (not this Hal… Hal Josephson is one of CH’s advisors) to hang out with us in our Calgary office. Hal is currently President of MediaSense in San Francisco, lives in New Zealand part-time and helps businesses understand and break into the Asian market. He was one of the founders of 3DO, was Vice President of Infotainment World (producers of E3), was behind the movement of community television, and more. To say Hal is awesome is an understatement.

On Thursday, July 19 Hal presented at a Cambrian House “Lunch and Learn” where we ate tasty Thai food and learned about Business Development – and how BizDev differs from, but isn’t mutually exclusive from, PR and Marketing.

Here’s a copy of his PowerPoint, and video of his presentation:

For most start-ups, finding the mentorship and friendship of successful business leaders is tricky. After all, how do you get into the “club” without being a successful business leader yourself? It’s like trying to fit in with the high school quarterback and his buddies when you’re the young, skinny freshman…

Luckily, Cambrian House has a couple things going for us that have helped attract some amazing people like Hal into our world.

1. We believe in crowdsourcing – thus, the wider we cast our net and leverage our networks and our networks’ networks; the more likely we are to meet wonderful people.
2. We hang out with other entrepreneurs - many of whom have worked with other entrepreneurs from a variety of industries: energy, technology, entertainment, etc. so we meet fascinating folks who provide a variety of advice.
3. We believe people invest in people – so when we first meet someone we want to develop a relationship with, we find it best to “get to know them,” and develop friendships and trust first. After all – the best supporters are the ones we can call friends.

Hal is certainly a friend. And, I think his business development tips boil down to a few key points: trust, reputation and reciprocity. After all, people invest in people.

It’s all about the “crowd” at Cambrian House � wisdom of crowds (such as comments, feedback and filtering of ideas) and participation of crowds (such as finding the perfect team of people to help launch an idea into reality). IdeaWarz is Cambrian House’s poster child of “wisdom of crowds” because top ideas as ranked by community members immediately gain entry into the competition and winning ideas get to bask in fame and fortune. This week we chose to turn up the number of winners by creating weekly mini-tournaments and a quarterly tournament that’ll have Mark Burnett wishing he’d thought of it (well, maybe not quite).

How it works:

1. You submit an idea to Cambrian House.
2. Each Wednesday at Noon, voting starts. Community members vote on all ideas submitted the previous week.
3. Wednesday at Noon the following week, the top idea as rated by the crowds is awarded $100 Cambros (C$100) and secures a spot in the IdeaWarz Tournament of Champions.

Submit your idea and see what the crowd thinks.
May the best idea win!

No wait, I still have questions…

Holy cow batman, my idea is in this week’s voting - what do I do now?

1. Upload an image relating to your idea- pics say 1,000 words, and can serve as an awesome promo for your idea, or even yourself!
2. Complete your elevator pitch- elevator pitches have been a mainstay in the biz world for a good reason: they explain your idea in an energetic, yet concise manner. Want the crowd to vote for you? They better understand your vision.
3. Promote your idea to the world- share your idea on Facebook, your other fav sites, or e-mail your friends. From the My Ideas page, browse to your idea and click the ‘promote this idea’ link.
4. Keep an eye on your idea during the week, people will be posting comments and asking you questions. The more you engage them in conversation, the more invested they become, and the more polished your idea gets.

How do I vote on ideas?
Just go to the Ideas section on CambrianHouse.com and start exploring ideas, voting on ideas and lending your brilliance by posting comments and feedback.

I didn’t win this week’s voting, now what?
Tweak your idea and re-submit for next week’s voting by clicking the ‘Enter into next voting round’ link on the My Ideas page.

Or convert your idea into a business and get cracking. Not being Top Dog doesn’t mean you can’t connect with other members to make your idea better and commercialize it.

If an idea is not in the current voting round, can I still see it and vote on it?
You can view all ideas by clicking ‘All’ on the Ideas sub-nav bar. You can always leave a comment but can only rate the idea if it is in the current voting round.

Will IdeaWarz (ideawarz.com) still run monthly?
No, ideawarz.com will be the new home of our quarterly IdeaWarz Tournament of Champions.

How will contenders be selected for the Tournament of Champions?
The top idea each week (as determined by total points) secures a spot in the Tournament of Champions.

Why only quarterly?
If you’ve heard of American Idol, think of the Weekly IdeaWarz as auditions and the Tournament of Champions as the actual show where the champion wins BIG!

If you haven’t heard of American Idol…do you live in a cave or something?

Huh…I still don’t get it.
Each week there’s an idea competition with one winner - the idea with the highest total points.

Each quarter, the last 12 winners of the weekly competitions plus a few wildcards hand picked by experts (like celeb judges on American Idol), battle it out in the Tournament of Champions.

Why wildcards? What better way to test the wisdom of crowds then to pin the crowd against a few so-called experts?

Why the change?
Our vision is to be a Web 2.0 community where individuals and businesses can leverage the wisdom and participation of crowds for commerce. So we’re rolling up our sleeves and creating tools to unleash the power of crowdsourcing and make it available to everyone.

Weekly IdeaWarz means the crowd chooses to highlight ideas more frequently, the pace is more exciting, and more ideas get time in the spotlight - giving them the chance to attract team members to take the idea to the next level.

The goal is that we’ll release IdeaWarz as a tool available to members for their own projects/ideas. For example, Prezzle should be able to quickly throw up “PrezzleWarz” so people can select the Prezzle they’d like to see created next.

Hence, wisdom of crowds lets you determine the feature/product/idea that is more enticing to a market BEFORE spending energy and resources to build it.

Have your say by voting today and let us know what you think by leaving a comment!