daily news

I will be reading from my forthcoming book, The Shallows, a week from today at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. The reading is scheduled to take place on March 16 at 11:30 am on the Day Stage. If you are in the neighborhood, and are properly badged, please stop by....

YITIS Quarterly Board Meeting, December 14, 2010 - 12:00 pm at Subvert

YITIS/ICT Quarterly Meeting, December 08, 2010 - 11:00 am at ECO

YITIS Quarterly Board Meeting, September 14, 2010 - 12:00 pm at Subvert

YITIS/ICT Quarterly Meeting, September 08, 2010 - 11:00 am at ECO

YITIS Quarterly Board Meeting, May 18, 2010 - 12:00 pm at Subvert

YITIS/ICT Quarterly Meeting, May 12, 2010 - 11:00 am at ECO

“Ripeness,” Shakespeare told us, “is all.” The Bard did not anticipate the realtime web. On the New Net, ripeness is nothing. Nowness is all, as David Gelernter tells us in his essay "Time to Start Taking the Web Seriously." Web 2.0 was supposed to bring us a creative outpouring of “social production.” Instead it's tossed us into the rapids of instant communication. The Web has become a vast multimedia telephone system, where everyone is on the same party line, exchanging millions of bite-sized updates and alerts with every tick of the clock. Google, Facebook, Twitter: the Net’s commercial giants are...

On March 3rd, It was announced that Section 116 will finally been fixed in the most recent Canadian budget.

Many US venture firms or angel investors are not even aware of the reporting requirements under Canadian section 116 of the Income Tax Act.  But those that are, have often foregone investing in Canadian private companies because of it.  It’s been a big barrier, and it’s finally been removed.

In a nutshell, section 116 required that, upon a share sale, the purchaser must withhold 25% of the purchase price from non-resident shareholders until the shareholder obtained a clearance certificate from CRA, which could take many many months.

Special thanks to Steve Hnatiuk at Yaletown for his work via the CVCA for working so hard to get this issue resolved, who emailed me this:

The fact that US VCs would have to file clearance certificates for every single one of their underlying fund investors was a massive disclosure and administrative burden that significantly complicated distributing exit proceeds to the investors.  This was simply too big a deterrent and tax risk for many US venture investors to take on, and resulted in complicated and expensive structures often being put in place for Canadian deals as a work-around.  All of these things impaired the ability of Canadian companies to access venture capital from the US.

And, I will quote Keith Spencer from Fasken who put it simply:

Practically speaking, US vc’s can now invest directly in Canadian technology companies, pay no tax in Canada on their gains, and not be subject to any filing or withholding requirements. We’re open for business baby!

This is a great step toward helping capital flow across the boarder in both directions. Since, The more deals that are done by US VCs in Canada, the more deals Canadian VCs are invited to participate in south of the boarder. The circle life is complete.

David Gelernter peers into the ineffable nowness of realtime: Nowness is one of the most important cultural phenomena of the modern age: the western world's attention shifted gradually from the deep but narrow domain of one family or village and its history to the (broader but shallower) domains of the larger community, the nation, the world. The cult of celebrity, the importance of opinion polls, the decline in the teaching and learning of history, the uniformity of opinions and attitudes in academia and other educated elites — they are all part of one phenomenon. Nowness ignores all other moments but...

Over the last few days, I've been involved in an email discussion on "The Crowd," which will be excerpted on PBS's Digital Nation site. One thing that has long bothered me about discussions of online crowds is that they tend to yoke lots of different sorts of groups together under a single rubric. Important differences end up being glossed over. With that in mind, I've been trying to think through the various forms that online crowds take. As a rough starting point, I came up with four: "Social production crowd": consists of a large group of individuals who lend their...

Bootup Labs is in the midst of raising it’s next fund.  If you’re an Accredited angel investor, and would like to learn more, I’ll be presenting the Bootup Labs investment opportunity at the VANTEC Angel Forum this Tuesday March 2nd. Bootup Labs is managed by experienced entrepreneurs, and is exploiting an emerging asset class that is greatly underserved and highly lucrative.

Amazingly enough, tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of the start of Rough Type's Realtime Chronicles. Time flies, and realtime flies like a bat out of hell. Since I began writing the series, I have received innumerable emails and texts from panicked parents worried that they may be failing in what has become the central challenge of modern parenting: ensuring that children grow up to be well adapted to the realtime environment. These parents are concerned - and rightly so - that their kids will be at a disadvantage in the realtime milieu in which we all increasingly live, work,...

There was a fight on the roller hockey rink this morning. Anaheim bumped into Philadelphia at speed and Philly didn't like that so he elbowed Anaheim in the chest -- hard. Anaheim pushed back, shoving Philly into the goal where he tripped and fell. Swearing, more shoving, and then we spent the next five minutes keeping them separated.

This hockey rink is a remnant of first Internet bubble. Built by Netscape, the rink has held a game every Saturday since 1998. A majority of the folks who show up know each other, so the game is mellow. Finesse, not fighting. A fight is an unusual once a year thing.

When Philly, who I believed was at fault for this whole situation, got the bench, someone asked him what happened. His answer, "Anaheim ran into me and I protected myself."

One Eighth of a Second

I want you to think of the last time you were surprised. Good, bad, I don't care. When was the last time you were really surprised? Got it? Ok, now think about the very first thing that you thought about the surprise. I don't want to know how you eventually handled it; I want you to think about your instantaneous first reaction.

How do you react when you're surprised? Is this how you always react when a surprise lands? My guess is yes.

On the hockey rink, Philadelphia puts up his shields when he's surprised. It's a natural reaction, protecting yourself, but what's interesting isn't Philly's very sensible reaction to the perception of being attacked, it's everyone else's interpretation. We all saw him hold up his arms in defense of Anaheim's unintentional attack and we all thought, "Man, Philly. What a goon."

In any group of people larger than one, these instantaneous reactions to unexpected situations happen a lot, and understanding their range and impact is important to navigating awkward, tension-filled, and professionally tricky situations.

The Jerks

These are knee jerk reactions, and the first thing you need to know about them is that they should be first viewed without judgement. I'm not a psychologist and I don't know why some people are aggressive knee jerkers and others are passive. I don't know if these reactions are a function of upbringing or genetics, but I do know that we as a species have little control over these initial reactions and there are many of them.

In my head, the complete set of reactions fit on a spectrum that is labeled Fight or Flight. The first step in understanding a knee jerk reaction is first figuring out where on this spectrum the reaction lies. Is this a person who is going to take on the surprise or are they going to let it wash over them? Will they bolt? Will they wilt? If there is one thing you want to know quickly about those around you, it's their penchant to fight the surprise or flee it.

Again, no judgement. A person who automatically has the fight instinct is not necessarily a jerk -- it's just the default instinct when the world unexpectedly and rapidly changes. I know who on my team will attack a surprise. They'll leap on it. I also know the ones who will silently digest the surprise. I know who is going to come back three hours or three days later with a totally different attitude because they'll have actually processed the surprise.

The base assessment of fight or flight gives you a starting point regarding what might first happen when a surprise lands, but there are other instantaneous reactions that occur and understanding them gives you an idea of what you need to do next, if anything.

For the sake of this article, my assumption is a surprise has landed and it's bad news. These reactions apply regardless of the type of surprise, but let's assume it's professionally bad news with negative consequences and it's being delivered in a group setting. Here's whom you might see across the table:

Dr. No. Denial. That's the reaction. Doesn't matter if the surprise is reasonable, understandable, or well explained. Dr. No's only reaction is a fighting "No".

• "No, I'm not going let her go."
• "No, I'm not moving organizations."
• "No, we're not shutting down this group."

Remember, knee jerk reactions are not rational, they are not considered, and while they are tactically interesting, they are not strategically useful. Dr. No's denial is not her actual thoughts on that topic, it's her reptilian brain reaction to a surprise.

No.

If this is a group surprise and Dr. No is sitting in a conference room full of people throwing down the No, there's a chance for everyone to go off the rails. Well, Dr. No said no and I agree, so NO AS WELL. The time immediately after the surprise goes down is not the time to take any action except to allow folks to react. There are going to be Nos as well as a bevy of other reactions and your job, if it's your meeting, is to let folks talk -- let them react. The goal with Dr. No and everyone else in the room is to get their reaction out so that we can figure out what to do next.

The follow-up: The good news is that Dr. No has got it out of her system. She's expressed her displeasure, which is half of the game. The next time you chat, there will be residual No, but Dr. No knows that she's been heard and will be willing to brainstorm what to do next about the surprise.

Raging Bull. Perhaps the most dangerous of the reactions, Raging Bull wants to fight. They're taking the surprise personally, they're going to say No, and they're going to pick a fight. The Raging Bull is Dr. No with attitude.

The move with the Raging Bull is to know that it's coming, to know that you've got a Raging Bull on your hands. If you have any control over the surprise, you want to put the Raging Bull in a safe situation where they can react to their heart's content without afflicting psychological damage on others or sparking a mob mentality where they infect a mindless horde of mini-Raging Bulls. If it's a pure surprise and it's a group setting, my advice is to end the meeting as quickly as possible. Like Dr. No, Raging Bull is expressing his shock. Unlike Dr. No, the Raging Bull isn't going to feel complete until they've got the emotional satisfaction of picking a fight with someone else.

The follow-up: Everyone needs time to contemplate a surprise, but no one needs time more than Raging Bull. Each knee jerk reaction scratches a particular psychological itch and in the case of Raging Bull, they believe that getting someone else to participate in their mental and verbal freak-out is somehow going to help.

It's not.

Of all the reactions, Raging Bull's behavior is the one that I've found to likely to repeat itself after the fact. Raging Bull will often continue to pick fights days after the initial surprise, which is why it's your move to get them thinking, as quickly as possible, about what's next. What are we going to do about the surprise? What specific thought does Raging Bull have which is crucial to successfully navigating this surprise?

Still Water. This reaction reads like flight because they're not fighting. In fact, they're just sitting there, but Sill Water is taking it all in. They're not missing a thing and in their complete silence, wearing their poker face, they are meticulously processing, they're evaluating all possible permutations, best and worst case scenarios, and potential impact on their day to day.

This processing results in one of two very different Still Waters. There's the true Still Water who is going to maintain the calm demeanor for the entire duration of the surprise. See, this Still Water's processing has resulted in a comfortable plan. They believe they know what to do about the surprise and this realization has brought them peace.

The second Still Water is mentally losing their shit. Sure, externally they look calm, but internally their processing has resulted in increasingly loony nightmare scenarios regarding the surprise. Without quick action, Insane Still Water will find reason to become a Raging Bull.

The follow-up: You want to get to Still Water as quickly as possible in a safe location after the surprise because Still Water isn't still. Unlike Dr. No and the Raging Bull who had their opportunities to weigh in, Still Water is still in their head and the longer they remain in the head, the higher the probability they'll tell themselves a tale that will drive them insane.

You need Still Water to say out loud how they feel about the world suddenly changing. Like Raging Bull, you need to engage Still Water in the surprise and move the problem out of their heads and onto the table where everyone can take action.

Distiller. This is my favorite knee jerk reaction because the Distiller attacks the surprise with questions. Why did this happen? How come we didn't see it coming? Ok, what's the impact? Right, what are we going to do?

This is a fight reaction, but a constructive one. The Distiller is as uncomfortable as anyone with the surprise, but their coping mechanism is aggressive understanding. They're not going to stop asking questions until they feel they've got a complete understanding of what actually happened.

In a group setting, I let the Distiller have free-reign during the landing of the surprise because their incessant questions are helping everyone in the room contemplate what actually happened. They focus the surprise on facts rather than feel.

The follow-up: You're going to feel you've got a good idea where the Distiller is at because of their endless questions, but now's a good time to explain that everyone comes down from a surprise in different ways, which is why everyone needs that personal follow-up. Yeah, a Distiller can turn into Raging Bull after a night's sleep. Still Water might go Distiller. You just don't know who is going to walk into the building 24 hours after the surprise. This is why most surprises are engineered to occur late in the week; there's a belief that all the knee jerks are going to calm down over the weekend. Maybe. More on this in a bit.

The Handler. The first flight reaction sure doesn't feel like flight. The Handler is not surprised. In fact, they're fired up to handle whatever the surprise might be. They make it appear that they knew this surprise was going to occur. How'd they do that?

The Handler is a calm facade. Where the Distiller understands via questions, The Handler's coping mechanism is the illusion they've got it all figured out -- that they're 10 steps ahead of everyone else. This is a convenient reaction when you've got the Raging Bull standing on the conference table challenging anyone to hand-to-hand combat, but The Handler needs help.

The follow-up: The Handler crumbles hardest. The Handler is actually Dr. No except without the denial. There will be a quiet moment in the middle of the night when The Handler realizes absolutely nothing has been handled and then you'll see their actual reaction.

My Bad. This flight reaction is one of accountability. My Bad's impression is that they've personally done something to incur this particular surprise. They believe that if only they had done just one thing different, no one would've had to deal with the surprise.

There's hope inside of My Bad's reaction. Their empathy regarding the surprise is constructive, as opposed to the destructive social tendencies of Dr. No or Raging Bull, but you don't want them wallowing in their overdeveloped sense of accountability.

The follow-up: My Bad is not responsible for the surprise. While their sense of responsibility is admirable, My Bad needs to understand the actual cause behind the surprise. They didn't cause it, so they shouldn't feel it. They more they focus on feeling responsible, the less energy and focus they have for making progress.

We're Doomed. The most common flight reaction is also the reaction that, I believe, everyone is going to experience as they digest the surprise. Despair.

In a room full of geeks hearing a surprise for the first time, one of their first thoughts is, "How does this surprise fit into my mental system of how things work?" Failure to map the surprise into the mental model results in an uncomfortable realization: "The world does not work as I expected. Therefore, other surprises are guaranteed to happen randomly. QED. I have no control whatsoever. Shit."

The follow-up: A perceived lack of control or understanding of our world is a confidence shattering experience for the geek, and the best way to attack this despair is with a project. Doesn't matter if the project is surprise-related or not, the geek needs something to do. They need the blissful distraction of building something. It's during this constructive distraction that they'll actually figure out how they feel about the surprise.

I Quit. The last knee jerk is our strongest flight reaction. An extreme version of We're Doomed, I Quit does exactly what you'd expect: they threaten to quit on the spot.

They're not quitting. Well, they might, but not right now. You need to translate "I quit" into what they're actually saying: "I am very surprised and I don't like being this surprised." It's unfortunate that this is their reaction, especially in a group setting, because I Quit's attitude can create mass professional hysteria, which means this needs to be handled immediately. You can't wait until after the weekend to explain to I Quit that their reaction at this moment might be vastly different after a night's sleep. You need to hold up a mirror in front of them and ask, "No matter the surprise, why in the world would you eliminate so many options by quitting on the spot?"

The follow-up: I Quit will calm down and land on another opinion, but their knee jerk reaction is a sign of a larger problem. I don't know what your surprise is, but I know if someone wants to quit that, first, it's a big surprise, and second, they value their job second to their peace of mind.

Stages of Jerk

With people, it's never as easy as just a name. These labels for the knee jerk reactions are deliberately simple, but people are conspicuously complex.

As I hinted earlier, I've found it commonplace that you're going to see multiple knee jerk reactions as a corporate surprise is comprehended. These reactions, like grief, have stages, and your job as a manager or a concerned co-worker is actually not comparably complex. Your job is to listen.

The reason there's a knee jerk reaction is because the unexpected occurred. It kicks off the process of assimilation and that's what we care about -- the understanding of the surprise, not the reaction to it. While everyone has a different reaction, they're all going to end up trying to figure out what just happened, and part of that process is having someone they trust sit there and listen to their assessment. Verbally walking through our thoughts is one of the ways we organize and understand them and begin the process of finding a comfortable constructive conclusion.

I'm just as uncomfortable with a Raging Bull as anyone, but I know this knee jerk reaction is not who they are, this is just how they react. Understanding these varied potential reactions is just the first part of digesting a surprise - it helps you understand what to expect so you can begin to figure out what to do next.

Five years ago, in early 2005, I wrote an article for the MIT Sloan Management Review called "The End of Corporate Computing." The article, which predicted an imminent shift to "utility computing," was the seed for my book The Big Switch. Usually, the article lies behind the Review's paywall, but for the moment it is freely available to read. Here's a bit from the beginning of the piece: [Information technology] is beginning an inexorable shift from being an asset that companies own in the form of computers, software and myriad related components to being a service that they purchase from...

The New York Times has published a debate on the question "Do school libraries need books?" I am one of the contributors, along with Cushing Academy's James Tracy....

Some followup on my earlier post: In today's New York Times, Jenna Wortham reports: It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they...

YITIS AGM, February 08, 2010 - 9:00 am at Edgewater Hotel

The Editor and I don't argue, we discuss.

We're arguing... discussing over a glass of red wine my concern over our collective attention spans. Not just she and I, but everyone. The whole damned planet.

I say, "Information just keeps getting smaller. We're sharing our bright ideas in 140 characters now and no one is taking the time to construct a strategic thought. All these micro-ideas are free and everyone is taking them for granted. We're just tactically stumbling through a day full of intellectual sound bites stuffed with shortened URLs. There's no deep now. Just shallow passing seconds."

"No one is learning. There's no work involved in knowing a thing, so we're becoming mentally flabby. I want people to read more."

To which the Editor retorts: "I don't think you know what information is."

Hmmmm.

Information has a Hierarchy

So I looked it up. According to Ray R. Larson at Berkeley, information has a hierarchy that looks like this:

• Data - The raw material of information
• Information -- Data organized and presented by someone
• Knowledge -- Information read, heard or seen and understood
• Wisdom -- Distilled and integrated knowledge and understanding.

If you ignore the fact that the word information is used to define a hierarchy about information, this hierarchy makes sense, but it dances around a key point.

Another version of this hierarchy describes the same categories as above but focuses more on what happens to information once we get a hold of it. Not just consumption, but synthesis.

• Data -- Raw material. Facts. Got it.
• Information - Organized data. See what happens here? Someone showed up and organized the data into something else. Why'd they do this? How'd they know it was the right thing to do? Let's keep moving.
• Knowledge -- Information seen, heard or read and understood. To me this is when information is transformed by the understanding of why. Our data is organized into information and that is passed onto someone else who can now recognize the value in the information and thinks, "Oh, wow. Now I understand how a trash compactor works. Slick."
• Wisdom -- Distilled, integrated knowledge and understanding. The idea here is that higher order constructions of information are based beyond our ability to consume, combine, evaluate, and interpret information. The information becomes a catalyst for creation. Think of it like this: maybe a lot of people understand trash compactors, but you know so much about trash compactors that you could build one yourself and perhaps advance the art of trash compacting in the process.

Still with me? This is going to take more than 140 characters and there's a point. Just wait a tick.

Take a look at this list:

• New York is a city.
• It takes me about five hours to fly to New York.
• I've been to New York three times this year
• I never believe I'm in New York until I'm in a cab or smoking a cigarette.

Is this data, information, or knowledge? Or just four boring tweets? That would depend on whether or not you're interested in my experiences in New York. But what I provide in this list is the opportunity for increasing amounts of understanding, and understanding is the progression through, and synthesis of, increasingly complex pieces of information. Right?

There's another thread that ties this information together, and you may not initially see it, but if you've started mentally asking questions - Why does Rands go to New York? What does he do there? Did I know that he smoked? - you have started to find it.

I've begun to tell you a story.

A Shattered Narrative

The reason no one watches or cares about the evening news anymore is because there are a great many other ways to find your news. A weblog here, a Twitter status update there. In the deluge of information variety we've realized that the evening news is just one set of facts and just one carefully constructed story, and increasingly one with its own specific agenda. Who wants to be spoon-fed 30 minutes of ad-infested evening news when I can figure out what my world thinks is important by glancing at The Daily Show, Twitter, and NetNewsWire?

The traditional narrative has been shattered into bits of well-indexed information. Google wasn't the first indexing tool, but it's certainly the best. Still, Google is powerfully dumb. Yes, I can find whatever piece of information I'm looking for, but what's more interesting are all the related pieces of information. How do you query for knowledge via Google? How about wisdom?

If you're buying my definitions of the informational hierarchy, there's no replacing the process of understanding if you want to delve into more interesting forms of information. There's no replacing a human being combing through seemingly disparate pieces of information to evaluate, interpret, and combine it into something unexpected; into a new work. Into a story.

Those frustrated with Twitter are frustrated because they have a belief that a story needs a beginning, middle, and end. And that it should have all of those parts before it's presented to them. What the hell am I supposed to learn from a tweet? The point of Twitter isn't knowledge or understanding, it's merely connective information tissue. It's small bits of information carefully selected by those you've chosen to follow and its value isn't in what they send, it's how it fits into the story in your head. There are great stories to be found on Twitter, but you have to do the work.

This is what is going on all day. It will start with a random tweet about conferences and you'll think, "I don't understand why everyone goes to conferences". You won't act on this thought; you'll leave it buried in your head until you see that link on del.icio.us where someone important rails on the lack of women presenters at conferences. And in that moment, you'll remember that drunken thought you had at that conference last March when you discovered the basic truth about conferences: it's not what you learn, it's who you find.

From a disparate set of information, you continually find your own arc, your own story, and my question is: What are you going to do with it? You're an information nerd, you're adept at consuming massive amounts of micro-information, and those who watch you do this are saying you've got a short attention span, and you might.

But I think all this micro-information has macro-story potential.

Rands' Story Hierarchy

As we've established, there's information. Like everywhere. You, as a consumer of information, fall into one of three progressively complex buckets regarding this data:

• You can understand the information -- What does it mean? Why is it important? How does it relate to other things I care about?
• You can explain the information to someone else -- Hey Bob, this is what this means. I can explain it to you and impart my understanding.
• You can create more information, building something new and telling a story - Hey Jim, actually, we discovered a better way to do X. Bob and I were working on Y one time and realized that...

But Rands, I'm not a writer.

This is a poor excuse and the death of many a worthy story. The construction of a story has very little to do with writing. It has to do with the semi-magical process of you taking disparate pieces of information, combining them into something new, which includes your experience and understanding, and then giving them to someone else. Look around the walls of wherever you're reading this and pick two random objects. Got 'em? Ok, now tell me how they relate. No, you can't say, "They're both in the coffee shop". What's the first novel thing that crosses your mind about the intersection of these two items?

But you don't have a story, yet. Just like information isn't knowledge until it's understood, your tale isn't a story until you give it someone else -- until they have a chance to see what they think about your inspiration.

But Rands, my thought is really, really stupid.

I understand what you're saying but I don't think that's what you mean. I think what you're saying is, "I don't think that anyone will find anything of value in my thought," and you're wrong. You've got two things going for you. You've got the inexplicable moment of inspiration that created your idea, and it's the closest thing to magic you'll experience in your life. Second, you've got the entire planet listening and there's just no telling what any of those folks are looking for.

The value of the idea is one part that it is yours and one part that you gave it to someone else. It's you and something new.

Information Is Getting Smaller and Faster

Look at the historic progression of popular personal written information containers over the past 10+ years:

Home pages > Blogs > Lists of Links > Tumblr > Twitter

I see two symbiotic trends. First, I see a reduction in the average size of a piece of information. I see information that feeds our short attention spans. Second, and more important, I see our tools increasingly removing barriers from producing information. Remember when you needed a nerd friend to set up a weblog? Did you have any issue figuring out how to publish a thought with Twitter? I hope not.

Yes, these frictionless tools make it so anyone can say anything about any topic, but these tools are built with you in mind and I do mean you. Imagine if Twitter forced you to follow certain people. What if Facebook randomly added folks to your friends list? You know what you'd have? The evening news. Random stories from folks you don't know and probably don't trust.

We're in a share everything world and you get to choose your role. You can be overwhelmed and sit in the coffee shop with your friends and say, "Twitter: what's the point?" Or, you can jump in with both feet, grab those three random ideas and tie them into a story that no one has ever seen.

An Essential Skill

I wrote, edited, and published an entire book without physically interacting with a single person at my publisher. The t-shirt I produced last year and the one I'm doing this year were entirely designed, developed, and shipped by interacting with two different organizations that I never met. Paradoxically, it's never been easier to share or meaningfully interact with more people with less physical, in-person effort.

Your ability to compose and convey information as well as express yourself through your fingertips is a skill that is only going to increase -- and increase in value -- as people become more comfortable with their place in communities that span the planet, and as the tools to connect them become more commonplace.

In this digitally distant world full of information that appears to only be moving faster and faster, you get to choose: how much will I consume and how much will I create?

After a whirlwind tour of the valley for our first Bootup Demo Days, I’m back in Vancouver and got some great news. I left behind a lot of “homework” for our new Jan 2010 cohort, and Zedmo managed to score an “investment

Read on for the full press release and details.

P.S. Thank you to all the people that we connected with on the trip down to the valley. It was a great visit, more coverage to follow.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – February 4th 2009
John Stapleton, Business Tech, AP

“Thursday was a huge, huge day for us” exclaimed Noah Bloom, co-founder of Zedmo, a Vancouver-based startup developing the universe’s greatest location-based mobile social community.

“I was just going about my day as I normally would – checking my email, browsing the news stories on my America Online portal, and updating my eHarmony profile, when I received a phone call from an angel, who claimed his name was Mike” continues Bloom. “I didn’t believe Mike for a second, so I quickly looked around the room of 2010 cohort enemies – uh, I mean companies – to see who could be playing this evil trick on me. Anthony was sitting in his chair not on the phone, Jamie was busy tweeting his next publishable masterpiece, Mack was under his desk wearing a hood, and Team Romania was hard at work shining their Google pens. Daniel, my co-founder, was busy complaining about his recent ski accident, so it surely wasn’t him pranking me.”

What happened next, forever changed the face of Zedmo. A struggling startup duo of Bloom and Wolfe, who dropped everything to join the 2010 Bootup Labs Cohort, were, until yesterday, surviving off leftover sandwiches found in dumps around the city, and the occasional “fresh” peanut butter and tuna sandwich.

“Being a startup is very tough” says Wolfe. “It’s not like in the movies where you can rub a lamp and a naked woman comes out of it. It’s tougher than that.”

As you can tell by now, the Associated Press mandates us writers to write our stories in such a way that the reader needs to read all the way to the end of a story to find out what the story is actually about. But, because I know my audience is fairly small, I will cut to the chase here.

Nester’s, a top-notch grocer (according to some, but not all… ANTHONY NICALO…) located just steps from the Bootup Labs office in one direction, and steps from Zedmo’s underground home lair in the other, has made a significant investment in Zedmo. Without acquiring any equity in Zedmo, Nester’s has injected $5,200 worth of groceries into the startup. Terms of the deal are still a bit shady, but a spokesperson for Nesters, Mr. Michael Grocerman, has told the Associated Press that, “…the orange juice cannot be diluted.”

So, how did Daniel Wolfe ever score such a great co-founder, with the ability to close investments so early in the game? We asked, and he explained.

“I have what’s called a silver tongue. That’s it.”

And you thought the Olympics were the biggest story out of Vancouver.

When asked what Zedmo plans to do with this influx of food, they were quick to point us in the direction of their appointed PR agency, for reasons of secrecy and not giving too much away to the competition:

“First, they supplied the 2010 Cohort with Odwalla juices, so as not to cause any unfriendly conflict or envy around the office. Further to this, Zedmo hopes to build on this investment by purchasing fancy foods and supplies, such as turkey, cheese and crackers, and non-generic cling wrap. No further comments, my clients are very tired from the celebrations last night.”

Although this recent investment has placed Zedmo founders Noah and Daniel in the spotlight among “everybody who’s anybody” from the Valley up to Vancouver, the dynamic duo promises to remain down to earth, although sources tell the AP that Daniel was spotted drinking Tropicana orange juice, while Noah was seen washing his hands with a bar of Lever 2000 – for all his 2,000 body parts (including hands).

For more information on Zedmo and their location-based mobile application, please contact info@zedmo.com

PLEASE NOTE: Zedmo is still accepting further investment, so don’t be shy.