Swisscom in Palo Alto
“Swisscom in Silicon Valley? Really? Sensational! Our Swiss leader in telecommunication has an office in the world’s capital of innovation.” -Me (5th of february 2018 at 10:02) That day, we were walking down the streets in Palo Alto, waiting for the time to discover the Swisscom office. We were so happy to be at those typical American neighborhoods that we only see in movies or series like Desperate Housewives. After walking past the garage of IBM and having imagined a dozen times Clint Eastwook getting out of a house with a rifle (with a Gran Torino parked next to his house) we suddenly sow a Swiss flag on a small house. No, that did not immediately shock us and yes we had arrived at our destination. When we are talking about “Silicon Valley”, a lot of people are immediately thinking about big and modern offices like Google, Facebook or Apple. They’re half right : Innovation is not always coming from that big and modern environment that everyone has in mind. The proof below! After walking next to the mailbox, walking along a small path with colored bicycles along a wall of the house (there was even a pink one), we saw a “Swisscom” sign on the ground. We then arrived in a nice garden. There were garden tables, garden chairs, cold drinks, beach umbrellas, barbeque, plants and a TV (please find the error). A coke in hand, we met the team who then made a presentation. We learned a lot of elements that were helpful in analyzing our study; New canvas, models and illustrated theories. We then had the opportunity to work in teams to apply those models to our own cases with the help of the team. We were happy with the open-mindedness, the applied theories and advices we received from Swisscom. A surprising but rewarding experience.
CA Technologies workshop
One purpose of our trip to San Francisco was to present a Fintech project to CA Technologies. This company is one of the largest independent software corporations in the world. On February 7th, we went to Santa Clara to participate in a workshop organized by the company in their Silicon Valley Technology Center. We arrived around 9am and received a very warm welcome from the team. A large breakfast was waiting for us before starting the workshop. Peter Matthews who we already met a few months ago in Switzerland introduced us to Sinéad, Tammy and Heather who hosted the workshop. We did different exercises to help us get to know ourselves as well as to promote ourselves in front of other people. We had to find out our personal value proposition and I think this was a very good training for our future. At noon, we took a break to have a delicious meal in their restaurant. After lunch, the team also taught us what makes a great founder and helped us start our own lean canvas for our personal project. It really helped us start our work in the right direction. Then, we got introduced to Howard Abrams, a Distinguished Engineer and SVP at CA Technologies who made great presentation about the company and the startups of CA. At the end of the day, we left CA Technologies with a brain full of new knowledge and went back to San Francisco.
DAY I – SWISSNEX & SWISSCOM
First day visiting the Silicon Valley, amazing experience! Despite our jettlagged brains and minds, once our stomachs had been properly fulfilled with coffee and bagels, we started our journey by visiting swissnex. We were looking forward to discover where the HQ were, since Vincenzo had told us that words could not express how amazing they were. And he was right. Who could have imagined that the docks of SF’s marina had been transformed in a huge, impressive and unbelievable industrially designed place becoming the nest of Swiss innovation in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Christian Simm – founder of swissnex – told us the story of swissnex, their goals as well as the current challenges of the Silicon Valley, which was a great and rewarding experience! Benjamin Bollmann, Head of Science at swissnex, gave us a tour of the offices. Many thanks to them for their commitment and enthousiasm! The second part of the day was a trip to the heart of the Silicon Valley in order to discover the offices of Swisscom, acting a bit like a satellite aiming to exchange information and innovation between SF and Switzerland. We were given an intensive and interactive course on the main facts that have to be taken into consideration through the innovation process. Another great experience that immersed us in the way business modeling and product developing is thought in the Silicon Valley. Once again, many thanks to Grégory Leproux and Stefan Petzov for their energy and all the precious hints they gave us! So – to conclude – our two-week journey started amazingly well with great encounters, lots of good advices and amazing chicken wings and potatoes at noon, which brought the smile on every eating face.
For developers – and others…
You may have read the blog entry from February 10, 2015 «Where passion meets curiousity». Did you every think of the personality standing behind a blogpost or any other article? IBM watson contains a tool in a beta version, but open for everyone to use it, of a text analyzer to do user modelling. Analyzing at least 1000 characters can give an accurate result – were we told by Salil Ahuja. So the user model created on the text written in the earlier mentionned post looks like this: Watson was one of three demonstrated products. the two others were Cloudant and Bluemix. Bluemix is the framework to use the cloudant and watson services. Developers, check these tools out! So have a look at developercloud and bluemix websites. There is so much to discover. Useful things and the promise, that for low numbers of requests the ibm service stays free. And using the IBM services promises also, that developers will can #sleepmore. The happening was going on in a co-working space with free food and drinks, so all people were put in a good mood. Once again a great occasion to network, share, learn and percieve, how silicon valley spirit feels like. And again, thank you Vincenzo bringing us to this place, thank you DGES making this journey possible.
Team SMC: A day full of challenges
Part 1 – Emerging trend: Check We were looking for an emerging trend in the food field. As we stopped by for a coffee break at a cafe with a wifi connection, there we discovered it seems to became a trend to order your coffee and your cookie online and then just pass by to take it. Bags with the orders were ready in a shelf, waiting for the customer who ordered it. It was a little bit like in a library. Posters and ads across the city – especially in the bart stations – are attracting customers to order meals and food online. So it is a service to avoid queuing when you are in a hurry. Orders can easily be made while commuting to the working place and picked up just at the right time. There is a high chance that this model will also be adapted in Switzerland soon: the technical devices needed are all there (everyone has his smartphone), restaurants, cafés and take aways have just to set in place a tight workflow to handle the orderings and to create a place where food is placed to be picked up – with a certain control that the right person is picking up the right thing – and that food is paid in advance when placing the order. Finally: everybody hates queuing, so if there is a way to avoid it, we should propose this service to the clients. Part 2 – Try different food: Check As we are close to Chinatown, we decided to discover this district and the typical atmosphere. We spend time in the shops where we found typical Chinese stuff. It amazing to see how you can switch from San Francisco to a China city within a few second, only by crossing a road. It is like a county in the country. It was lunch time ! We found a typical Chinese restaurant with plenty different menu. Finally we go for the day menu that was composed of a curry and rice bowl with a famous miso soup, which was by the way excellent. Even for the drink we tried something new, a lychee lemonade with strange bowl on in, which seems to be called buba guy (we are still not sure what it really was). It’s now time to continue the challenge. We had a very nice lunch break all three together. Part 3 – How is work life in SFO: Check Working in San Francisco doesn’t mean to live in San Francisco. Like Filipe who is working in a Hilton Hotel as a Laundry worker. For the rents are way too expensive, he is making a one-hour trip to go to work. That is quite a common thing. Keisha, a school bus driver, can’t afford a place to live downtown. She told us though, that her work allowed her to spend time with her little boy Douglas. Long trip, time consuming, might be the price to be paid. Entering in a FedEx office, we got to meet Kevin. This young boy is one of the exception. For a 9 on 9 feet room he spend 900$ a month. These three people work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. As Swiss people, how much can we relate to them? Do we drive that much to save money and tend to “survive”? Or do we make such distances only for good money? Part 4 – Swissness in the USA: Check On that part we tried to understand how swissness is perceive in the USA and especially in California. Chocolate, watches and swiss army knife are the most common word people think when we ask them what swiss product they know. Swiss products are mainly perceive as high quality product which last long but the consequence is that the products are expensive or at least are perceive as such. When we talk about innovation, swiss made is not what comes out of the discussions. Switzerland in perceive as a traditional country with hand made and quality manufacturing but not as an innovating country. If we sum up, swiss products are high quality, made with precision and will last longer than products, which are common in the USA. People are proud to have and show off that they have Swiss product… Part 5 – Find innovative entrepreneur: Check “Find entrepreneurs and ask them what innovation is in their perception”. What an easy task. How come can we even guess who can they be? Especially in a city like San Francisco where the following statement rules: ” do not trust appearances. “. We should not only look for people wearing a suit and drinking their starbucks coffee. Therefore, we decided to call them, hopping one would answer. A Cardboard a pen and here is a tool to look for them “Innovative Entrepreneurs?” talk to us! The first lady that stopped by, got curious on our way of doing. We chatted for a little, but her lunch break was getting to an end. Have a look at the video: Find innovative entrepreneurs. Terris, but call him “little” even though he is very tall, was the second person we talked to. He was an entrepreneur, back in days. He opened a place to eat chicken and fries. That man for sure loves Chicken by the way. After a few words on his life he summarized entrepreneurship as trying and falling, and trying and falling… We asked him how he perceives innovation. “Innovation is change. ” He gives us the example of a smartphone, where he got to change his whole way of doing thing to gain a new habit. There we thought that the same example is definitely the one that explains disruptive innovation all around the world. After some good talk (and good laugh) with Small (yes we got quite intimate after a few minutes), we continue our way. When suddenly, out of nowhere, those three Spanish guys jump in
Find innovative entrepreneurs
Where passion meets curiosity
The Mission district, a bit less glamourous than the downtown district, but in the same time as well animated and in a way «more real» than many façades here in SF. In the heart of the Mission district a place for hackers exists – and this place is open for everyone. The professor on the image? (Not sure if he really has the title or if he just looks like the professor of «Back to the future»…) His name is Mitch Altman. He’s the right person at the right place. And he’s totally credible with every word he says. It’s not only informative but also quite humorous what he was telling to the people who visited the tonights workshop at noisebridge. He is living his passion by creating and hacking simple electronical devices and even more when teaching people how to do things (…you need person who helps you to quit your boring job? Ask him.) – 45000 people learned how to soulder from him. The place itself seems to be a creative space. Computers, books, tables, gadgets; everything unaligned, everything seems improvised. And exactely this chaos may help to be more flexible in eachone’s thoughts. And maybe also the only idea which Mitch transformed into a real business was created in this kind of open space zone. He created a remote control with the functionality to switch of any TV without defining it each time individually. The remote control just works at nearly every TV. So he used it to switch of TVs in public! He’s not the kind of person who keeps things as a secret. Nearly every plan and a lot of his knowledge are available on Open Source platforms. This philosophy also fits with the image of this personality we got to know. Learning how to do things A biomechanical engineer was part of the group doing a workshop this evening. A young entrepreneur, originally from Texas, doing her second Master degree in Copenhagen and actually also looking for business partners to develop her own business with: intelligent clothes. Therefor she is doing a lot of networking already for a while to find the best partners. To know a little bit more how it could be done, and to be able to create simple prototypes herself, she did the workshop to get precious tips (I’am sure they were) from Mitch. So soon she may have a finished, good looking and reliable prototype of her first product: a temperature sensitive sock which can send an alarm signal when foot temperature changes too quickly (often the case for diabetes patients as a alarm signal) Unfortunately, as the day for us – the IIM team – was long and intensive, there was no time left to participe ourself at the workshop. But … Personal challenge For sure, facinated by Arduino-like kits for a while, it was clear that I could not go home without a little kit to built something nice. Fortunately the tv-b-gone gadget does not only exist as a «fully equipped» version but also as a Do-It-Yourself-Kit. Well, there is actually no soldering iron at home, but the purchase of this $20 puzzle is a good reason to finally get one – I think it will not be the last electronical workpiece. But yeah, let’s start small. And when my own Switch-Off-TV remote control will be finisched. I’ll have a look again at the arduino website… If you want to know more about … Check out the website of www.noisebridge.net. Well, the website isn’t as appealing as the workspace of noisebridge was. So there is only one right thing to do: go and visit it once in real! Also Mitch Altman highly recommended it! So where can you find it? Go to 2169 Mission St, San Francisco, go up the stairs and you’ll be there! And for all of you, who would like to stard soldering: There is this famous comic from Mitch Altman, named «Soldering is easy» – because it is easy, he told the participants. As it is a piece of knowledge from which the public can benefit, also this document is freely available because it is shared under the Creative Commons Licence BY-SA. Download the comic here: Full Solder Comic