For young people graduating from college with mountains of debt, and for workers of any age who have been jobless for long periods of time in the current economy, the picture is ominous: if we are in a recovery at all, it’s a jobless one, and more than likely we aren’t in a recovery except in a technical sense. Whatever the economists say, Americans and Europeans are feeling the earth move in unpleasant ways beneath them.

This is the first summer I’ve spent in Silicon Valley in almost a decade where the Valley didn’t seem like a hotbed of innovation. Things are happening here, but not the kinds of things that attract big venture capital investment. In fact, venture capital as an industry is struggling. Cash is sitting on the sidelines looking for places to invest. And sidelined people are looking for opportunities to apply their talents.
Time to get off your butts everybody. Obama didn’t do it with the stimulus, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. Here are my votes for the biggest business opportunities of the next decade:
1) The smart grid. We leak something like 30% of the electricity we produce. So we can sit around arguing about whether it should come from coal, solar, or nuclear, and we still haven’t solved a couple of big problems: we must get the energy from here to there more efficiently, and we must re-build our outdated power system so it can’t be taken down by the next heat wave. Somebody start a company to optimize electricity, and somebody start one to study what needs to be re-built. Power generation is already being worked on.
2) Water. Our water and wastewater systems are also old. Isn’t there an easier way to transport water than the ways we are using? The Central Arizona Project transports water to the entire southwest from the Colorado River. How much of that evaporates. Are there better ways to transfer and purify water? To get it into the home? To enable people to conserve?
3) Streets and roads. Our highway systems are falling apart. Are there new materials with which to re-build it? Materials that won’t wear out every summer, or get potholes every winter? Or use toxic concrete? Can we use nano materials on roads? Can we make them smart so they will tell us when they need repair?
4) High speed travel infrastructure. Both air and rail need serious re-thinking. Someone with a good idea here will attract all the venture capital she needs. Trillions of dollars are sitting there, waiting for the next good idea.
5) Cleaning up the oceans. I had a conversation with a friend who estimated that 20% of our GDP will be affected by the oil spill and the resulting dead zones in the oceans around North America:
“Nutrient pollution has emerged as the most widespread….effect of pollution on [ocean] living resources and biodiversity,” states NCCOS in their article. NCCOS is a branch of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquartered in Washington, D.C.
NCCOS states that excessive ocean nutrients cause an “explosive growth” of microscopic algae plants. The algae blocks sunlight “needed for underwater grasses to grow.” Ocean plants and animals cannot live without sufficient oxygen. Not enough oxygen causes “hypoxic conditions” commonly referred to as “dead zones.”
These dead zones were occurring BEFORE the oil spill:
The Gulf of Mexico is a major source area for the seafood industry. The Gulf supplies 72% of U.S. harvested shrimp, 66% of harvested oysters, and 16% of commercial fish (Potash and Phosphate Institutes of the U.S. and Canada, 1999). Consequently, if the hypoxic zone continues or worsens, fishermen and coastal state economies will be greatly impacted.
So there’s an even bigger job to do now, to restore some of these regions to life.
These aren’t just jobs for environmentalists. They are the business opportunities of the future. So get going: I want to help.

R.I.P. Francine’s obsession with the shiny and the new.

You can read the story of my iPhone4 disillusionment here. And this week I realized that when my MacBook Air’s business lease is up next month, I have nothing else I want to buy. I will just continue to use the Air. After all, I’m still using my old MacBook and my old Mini, which both pre-date the Air and still work just fine. The iPhones I’ve given away, however, to various needy family members like my grandson, who was too young to know an Iphone from a teething ring when he received this gift.

This morning, on the advice of Robert Scoble, who over the weekend informed the Twitterverse that he had seen the death of newspapers, I downloaded Flipboard, the new social magazine.

Um, not so fast. The interface is pretty, but the content was sucky, and I didn’t like Flipboard’s curation. And because everyone in Silicon Valley is a sheep, the site has been so overloaded that I couldn’t connect it to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, where the “good” (for me) curators already reside. So for me, Flipboard is just another pretty face. John Doerr funding it is like an old guy taking a trophy wife. Interface goes a long way, but it doesn’t replace fundamentals, like the right content curation. If I am adding Scoble’s lists to get the content I want and need, I might as well stick with Twitter. Besides, there’s no healthcare information. Even Vogue has health information. It’s not “my” social magazine without it.

Crank into this simmering stew the fact that Ben Metcalfe has an Evo with the huge screen, the fast OS, and the real ability to run apps in the background, tether, and get reception. He sat next to me at dinner last night, and I couldn’t control myself. I had buyer’s remorse for the iPhone. I should have paid a total of $60/mo for this machine, with its ability to do all the things I have ancillary equipment to do.

Ahhh, maybe I’m just getting old. But maybe, just maybe, I’m coming to my senses. I sure hope it’s the latter.

This past week Michael Markman (@mickeleh), a friend of mine who was on his way up Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco, honored me with a visit. But although we were set to have coffee when he got to Half Moon Bay, neither he nor I knew exactly when he would arrive. I had to wait for him. So he sent me a Glympse.

For those of you who don’t follow the vicissitudes of Apple and the iPhone, Glympse is a small application that sits on your iPhone and allows you to send an email or a text message to someone, telling them exactly where you are and locating you on a map. So far, it doesn’t sound too exciting, but when you realize that as the traveller moves the app follows him/her on the map and automatically updates your visual in the same text message so you can track hiis whereabouts, Glympse becomes both convenient and transformative.

On the convenient side: if I had sent everyone who thought I couldn’t safely make the trip from Phoenix to Half Moon Bay a Glympse, they could have followed my trip and not had to call me to see how I was or worry about me.

On the transformative side, this is another of those features that makes one’s life more transparent. I am no expert, but the new iPhone has several new features, like an accelerometer, that must allow it to know where you are all the time. Blended with Google maps, this makes Find My IPhone work when your phone is missing (but also when it is on the nightstand in your paramour’s apartment). It also allowed a clever developer to invent Gympse, or someone to spy on you.

Basically, with Gympse, you don’t have to check in anymore. You are checked in by the phone as soon as you send a text message or an email to someone. Which means Apple and AT&T know where you are even if you never send the text message.

Personally, I am okay with all this, in fact I love it and gladly adopt it. But then, i am also okay with most people knowing all about me; I am whatever the opposite of paranoid is. But as people write to me and ask me if they should get an Iphone, they’re thinking about dropped phone calls and antennas, not privacy, and we all ought to know about the slippery slope I have chosen to slide down so we don’t all follow me:-)

__._,_.___

I hope I can wait until tomorrow before I throw my shiny new mobile phone back in Apple’s face.
I stood in line 6.5 hours in 100 degree heat for this phone on Day 1. I’ve had every previous iPhone. Trust me, the antenna is not the only problem. I wish it were.

Here’s my list of pet peeves with this version of the iPhone.

1)It turned itself off yesterday right in the middle of a conversation and wouldn’t turn back on. I thought it was dead.

2)When if finally came back on, my selected ring was gone.

3)When I attempted to download app updates, the Apple Store made me give my credit card information again and would not let the form be submitted until I had not only re-added my security code, but also filled in my “Salutation.” Of what use is it to them that I am Dr. Hardaway, except for unwanted marketing communications?

4)I have the antenna problem when I don’t use the bumper.  When I do use the bumper, I can’t get the phone to charge on it’s charger, so I have to keep putting the bumper on and taking it off all day. As a result, it has stretched a little.

5) The phone also has crummy blue tooth, which means it doesn’t work too well with my car, the 2009 Honda Accord.

6) Only some apps really run in the background.  The NPR app, for example, turns off its stream if I try to tweet.

7) Video’s not as easy to edit as promised.  You have to buy the iMovie app.

Battery life is not better.  If anything, it’s worse.

Why bother telling you more? Coupled with the obvious issues with AT&T, I find this iPhone a big disappointment. Yes, it’s got FaceTime, which is fun with my family, although only one of them has an iPhone4. I FaceTimed once with my business partner and we felt like we were violating each other’s privacy (well, maybe that’s because the phone takes screen shots and I tried to put one on Twitter). And yes, it definitely has a better camera.

I like good industrial design as much as the next guy, but I’m getting sick of paying a premium for Apple design and winding up at the Genius Bar.

Long before I went to China  and got to know Mark Suster, I read and admired his blog.He’s one of the new generation of open, transparent VCs. So it’s not surprising to hear him come out in favor of co-location for startups. He’s right. Distributed teams may work, but co-located startups work faster, quicker, better.  And if there is only one founder, they may be the single best way to get a good business idea the resources it needs to get off the ground (which is often a co-founder to begin with).

I’m not talking through my hat here. Stealthmode works out of a collaborative work space in Chandler, Arizona called Gangplank, and also run a startup incubator in Mesa, a town nearby. The Chandler startups are mostly creative and geeky, (Authority Labs is one of them) and the Mesa ones are health-related, retail, and web services.

In every case, the businesses have made huge strides by “living” together, using each other’s talents and services, learning from each other, and being exposed to the same group of educational resources and mentors.

A large part of helping companies is simply mentoring.  Well, maybe that’s not so simple. I’ve done it for the past ten years both privately and for four municipalities and part of job generation and retention programs. It is VERY labor-intensive work, and there are only three of us at Stealthmode. If we didn’t aggregate groups of entrepreneurs and allow them to learn from each other and us simultaneously — as well as from the resources who donate their time to the collaboratives (investors,lawyers, accountants, and yes, social media gurus), we couldn’t scale what we do. Because of the collaboration programs, we’ve been able to help over 400 businsses get started, grow, or stay in business during this downturn by changing their cost structures, product offerings, or marketing techniques.

After all, there are only 24 hours in every day. Even the best-intentioned VC, agnel, or attorney can’t give all the time they’d wish to give. So a colocation facility, where the resource can be brought to the facility for an hour of answering questions, can go quite far among ten companies.

In times of scarcity like the one we are in now, it’s important to form new businesses. Most hiring is done by businesses less than five years old. Those are the ones that gravitate toward the acceleration programs we are part of. They’re the best, the brightest, and the bravest of entrepreneurs. There may not be bank lending for them, or VC money (most companies aren’t eligible for VC money), or even seed money, but lowering their startup costs by sharing resources can make it possible for them to succeed.

We try not to call our co-location or collaboration “incubation.” My long-time business partner says “incubation” has the connotation of sick babies.  The companies that self-select to come into the Kauffman Foundation Fasttrac programs we offer at the co-location facilities every fall and spring are not sick: they’re companies that have decided to take advantage of every resource the community has to offer, and not to pre-judge their competitors or their complementors.

After ten years, our network of businesses have formed a “trust” network and often buy from each other or use each others’ services. I’ve never led a program that didn’t have a web developed as a participant, and two or three businesses that had web site issues:-)

In Mesa, where the businesses are less technology-centric, we have had businesses that needed graphic design services, and people who needed massage therapy. And surprise: we had a massage therapist, a yoga travel business, and a graphic designer. Also a gentleman who raised money for health related businesses, a woman who spoke on defeating cancer by natural methods, and a real estate specialist. None of them could have attracted a dime of bank financing or venture capital, and yet they are all off the ground and generating revenue.

This co-location idea works, both in technology-specific businesses and in unrelated random groups of small neighborhood businesses. To get ourselves out of this Recession/Depression, we need both. So I’m bullish on co-location, collaboration, or whatever else you want to call it:-)

More from Stealthmode

• Social Media Analytics for Small Business: Still Missing in Action
• Why Entrepreneurs Aren't Hiring
• Why Bloomberg Should Run
• Why I Love Entrepreneurs
• Why GeoLocation is so Addicting

Stealthmode Recommends

• Apple has lost the magic (Tyler Hurst)
• Why I Deleted Foursquare and Gowalla after SXSW (Chris Conrey)
• Decisions should not always be made by the people (Tyler Hurst)

There’s been almost too much conversation about brands and social media. How to build brands, how to monetize them, how to monitor them — there’s an article (or 5000) about everything.

Sometimes the customer on a social media site feels assaulted by the presence of brands trying to market and draw attention to themselves. Some sites, like Facebook, have been absolutely corrupted by brands and fan pages. For every piece of actual, important communication I receive on Facebook, half a dozen others are from brands asking me to “like” them. On Twitter, it’s not much better.

Being in the presence of brands all the time on social media has forced me to think about what I want and expect from a brand, and whether its presence on a social media site has anything to do with my expectations. Three examples: Comcast, Starbucks, and Goober Pet Direct. I’m a customer of all these brands, and was a customer before the advent of social media. Two out of 3 are on Twitter, and probably all three are on Facebook, although I don’t “like” their pages or follow them there.

I don’t want to be “friends” with my brands; I only want them to perform as promised.

1) Comcast is my benchmark for how a brand should behave on Twitter. Although it doesn’t offer me specials because I’m the Mayor of anything, and it doesn’t send coupons to my Twitterfeed, it is there when I need it, for customer service only. Frank Eliason, who has grown legendary for doing something beyond what most brands do — fix problems via Twitter, was out there from the very beginning to keep the brand promise. You didn’t have to know him, and he sure didn’t know you. He just sat out there and listened. He’s not in India. He’s not a bot. He doesn’t try to sell me something. He just tries to make the service work for the customer.

2)Starbucks has a huge social media campaign, in which I never participate, although I am happy to be able to reload my Starbucks card via their mobile app. They tweet up a storm, but although I go to Starbucks all over the world, I don’t follow them. Why do I like Starbucks as a brand? Because people bitched about the lack of free wi-fi, and now they’re giving us free wi-fi. And people must have bitched about the breakfast selection and the lack of healthy foods, because they’ve added a great many food items to the menu, especially wraps and gourmet stuff. Whatever “Artisan” sandwiches are, I think I’m going to like them. And because Starbucks is dependably “there,” whether you are in Rotorua, New Zealand, Bejing, China, Seoul,Korea, or Blythe, California.

3) And then there’s Goober Pet Direct. They haven’t tweeted since Oct. 14, 2009. But they don’t have to. They don’t need a social media campaign. They ARE social, and they don’t have to bombard me with messages on Twitter to tell me that. I feel like I know them. If I order online, the dog food arrives at my door as promised the next day, with a doorhanger containing dog treats. If they run into a problem (they’re out of something), they call me and solve it with me. They are personal, friendly, and don’t seem as if they had “outsourced” their customer relations to another country.

These are three brands who keep their brand promise. They deliver what I expect when I expect it. They have customer service I admire. And unfortunately for social media gurus, I’m not so sure their customer service has much to do with social media. Social media is JUST A TOOL they might use to enlarge their customer service reach. But not necessarily their marketing reach.

Conclusion: I’m going to bet that brands aren’t going to be able to show much ROI for their social media marketing, if by marketing they mean lead generation or sales. However, if social media is used correctly to serve the customer, it will be a great enhancement to a brand.

More from Stealthmode

• The Social Media Starfish
• How to Evict People With Compassion
• Social Media and the Customer
• Pownce and Twitter for Business
• Facebook and Plaxo and Scoble=Controversey

Stealthmode Recommends

• Why I Deleted Foursquare and Gowalla after SXSW (Chris Conrey)
• Luxury brands and social media (Tyler Hurst)
• The First and Only Rule of Social Media for Salesmen (Chris Conrey)

Yahoo has changed for the better. I went there for the first time in a long time today, and found a dramatically re-formatted MyYahoo, as well as a host of new ways to be social. I connected my Facebook account, and was able to reach my Twitter account from the dashboard. And I can drag and drop modules to configure my own home page (although I no longer use any home page except maybe Twitter and Gmail). Brizzly has also changed for the better. Now I can make a private chat group with my friends, and see who has tweeted to me lately. It also supports multiple accounts. Between Brizzly, HootSuite, and Seesmic, why would I ever go to Twitter.com?

Buzz has also changed for the better. It’s a lot cleaner, less noisy, and you can see who is following you and who you want to follow.

And then there’s Gist, which sends me an email every morning about my friends, and Nutshell mail, which aggregates Twitter and Facebook. Nutshell Mail sends me an email every few hours.

When I look at these, they all look good to me, and yet I spend most of my time using Facebook, Twitter, and the Facebook and Twitter mobile apps. I do switch off every once in a while on my phone, but rarely at the laptop. Why? Because the AppStore notifies me when my iPad or IPhone apps update, and I can update them and am reminded to try them again. On the computer, I never know what has been updated without reading an email.

I’m trying to figure out when the convergence will come, and some of these will merge with the others, or go out of business. But which ones? And when? Yesterday I read a post by Paul Kedrosky about the coming super-seed crash, and I knew it was right. All these companies have been seed-funded, along with numerous geo-location apps, and they are all wildly trying to grow. How big can they get? After all, we’re not China, and China and India have their own versions of these apps, customized to their users with their localized language and cultural conventions. Most social apps will not go global in a very big way. (I learned this on GOAP-ASIA this year.) Developers in those countries with big potential populations are quite capable of building their own.

So what I’m thinking is that we’re on the verge of a slow decline in the growth of these apps, which had better coincide with the “next big thing” for developers and entrepreneurs. That’s what has always happened in the past. I tried all these sites, as well as Nutshell Mail, when they were new, and then abandoned them. How about you? What have you abandoned? What will survive?

More from Stealthmode

• Social Media Analytics for Small Business: Still Missing in Action
• iPad is Better Because of some Great Apps
• Is Social Media a Waste of Time?
• The Social Media Starfish
• Legal Ramifications of Social Media in Enterprise 2.0

Stealthmode Recommends

• Apple has lost the magic (Tyler Hurst)
• The First and Only Rule of Social Media for Salesmen (Chris Conrey)
• Social Media Isn’t Just on the Internet (Chris Conrey)

Here it is, my keynote from the Business of WordPress Conference in Atlanta this week. I had an awesome time doing it, so I guess I will try to do more of them. I haven’t put myself out there as a speaker, just as I never put myself out there as a “social media guru,” but I really liked this!! Mike Schinkel and Marna Friedman ran a great conference, and that was part of it.

So now that I want to be a speaker, give me feedback. I already know my slides suck, but how’s my story?

More from Stealthmode

• My Family
• Part 3 of My Vlogged Life
• My Fifteen Minutes of Fame
• In a queer twist of
• My Link Blog

Stealthmode Recommends

• Rules of Sales: Rule #2 (Chris Conrey)
• Rules of Sales: Rules 4 & 5 (Chris Conrey)
• The Rules of Sales (Chris Conrey)