Growing the energy side of the internet of things

Last July, I met Sam Lowe at the Internet of Things meetup I organise for Xively. He was working at British Gas at the time and we got talking. British Gas has a product development group called Connected Homes (they just launched their own #iot product called Hive) who were interested in organising a hackday but I really wanted them to do something else entirely: give money away to startups in the home energy sector. I figured if I was having trouble finding funding for Good Night Lamp, I was probably not the only one. But unlike a consumer product that’s a little blurry in its market space (part tele health, part social) an energy startup is a pretty clear offering.

I didn’t exactly know how many people had startups in that space, so I started working with Mark Lowther  and we started planning a series of events called Connecting Homes which started with a startup competition for home energy startups where a cash prize was given out to the 3 most innovative startups. We were also fortunate enough to have Martha Lane Fox deliver an amazing keynote and stay for the day to join the panel of judges who went around the room. I roped the wonderful Ana Bradley into helping organise the day as well as SuperNova studio who share my office with me.

We had over 50 startups apply from around the world who were all squarely in #iot territory but for home energy which was great. 25 of them showcased on September 28th and 3 of them ended up with a cash prize. We’re not stopping there though as we move towards an online community for the startups where they can share knowledge and opportunities as well as Office Hours where startups in the home energy space who want to talk to British Gas about a technical problem, testing opportunities or funding can sign up.

I’ve been working with energy companies since the Tinker days, and it’s a real pleasure to help startups get the best of large corporates in this space. The glue between the 2 is really essential and that’s how greener homes will happen.

The Inventor, the Designer and the Maker: 3 different ways of getting things done.

I’m giving a talk at the Centre of Fine Arts in Sydney today and last night worked on 3 ways of visualising the evolution of making in the past 10 years with the emmergence of Arduino and crowd funding particularly. I’m trying to work this into a small publication on the subject so really work in progress but thought I’d share it.

The Inventor Model

The Designer Model

The Maker Model

Web Directions 2013

I’m sat in the darkest room since the LIFT conference days and I think the first time I’ve spoken at a proper web conference in some years. It’s kind of weird. Lots of talks about front end development techniques I have never heard of which I guess is a sign I’m hanging out with back end developers mostly. I’m about to give my talk which I think will be a good primer for Golden Krishna who is right after me. Here are the slides.

Pour boxer, il faut avoir faim: my thoughts on design for design students

Written for an exhibition put on by Middlesex University as part of London Design Festival.

I graduated from a McSc in Industrial Design 2004 and here’s what I wish they’d told me.

You won’t design this way ever again.
If you work for someone else, you will spend 100% of your time designing 10% of a product. In famous design studios, you will only get involved in a fraction of the whole process, either the artistic direction, or the CAD drawings, or the user interface or tiny snippets of each. You’ll spend half your days in meetings and wonder “wow, I used to be so productive before”.

But working for yourself doesn’t make it easier.
If you work for yourself you’ll spend 10% of your time designing 100% of the product and 90% of your time selling it, begging for money or filling in paperwork. You’re probably never going to pay off your student loans this way, but you might be happier. I am.

Keep Learning.
In the digital age, to be a product designer is something you have to justify to yourself and others. It’s not a popular field of practice anymore as we live in more and more digital worlds and we’re moving towards a society of access & rental models rather than ownership. I learnt how to code in my MA because I hung out with programmers and I can safely say it saved me. It gave me an edge and an understanding of a field I would always have to interact with. I work in the fuzzy world between products & the internet (called the internet of things) and I can safely say what I learnt between 2000-2004 is obsolete, but that’s ok because I continued to learn and develop my skills.

Fame is never fortune.
The greatest disappointment of your early years in design is to realise that when you make the pages of a magazine, blog, newspaper, or show your work in a museum your life doesn’t change. You are fodder for some poor journalist/curator who has a 4 o’clock deadline. That’s it. Never pays the bills, never increases sales. Never.

Just do.
The Internet has created a society where we’re constantly fixating on what other people are doing. Back in the days, you might meet your peers once a week or a month, not every second of the day, which left plenty of time for the doing bit of design. It can be easy to stay stuck in a mode where you’re just spending your time in research and not actually designing. Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, the distractions are enormous, but nothing trumps just doing, designing, working.

Meet non-designers.
Spending time with people who aren’t designers is really important. There’s nothing worse for your career of developing a closed sense of what you’re interested in and what you’re not. You don’t know what you might be interested in…that’s the point of life in design. Inspiration can come from anywhere, so you literally have to go to random events, meet scientists, talk to politicians, because you might find you have something to contribute in their field too.

We have enough chairs, but not enough wheelchairs.
Design should be about empathising with a foreign problem and trying to solve it, not doing the same thing over and over again. I go around the Milan Furniture Fair and I despair at the number of pointless additions to the built environment young designers are producing when our grandmothers are being sold ugly products that are hard to use. Dare to work on un-popular topics because you’ll find you become an expert and you’ll make a great career out of it. It takes courage and if design isn’t about courage, then we should all have become accountants.

Against the culture of “meh” and the internet of things.

Two weeks ago I nearly lost my shit. Gartner, a trends research group (or science fiction that costs a lot more to subscribe to) published their yearly Hype Cycle Chart, describing the Internet of Things (which they’ve only started adding to their chart in 2010 after “mesh networks” was doing rather well) as being “more than 10 years away” for the third year in a row. Well I sincerely don’t know what they’re smoking in Connecticut but they should come to Europe more often. Trends researchers have a disproportionate influence on the tech sector and C-suite executives who don’t have time to keep up with what’s going on outside their organisations and rely on outside opinion. This is totally fine, unless that source is living under a rock.

I seriously doubt we’re 10 years ago when:
- There are monthly meetups with thousands of members across the world
- The EU has been discussing and integrating #iot in its discourse for about 5 years
- The UK technology funding has invested millions in demonstrator projects (one of which, EyeHub, I’m involved with)
- Large corporations like IBM, Cisco & GE have used the term to brand their activities
- Startups are mushrooming everywhere (see the map I’ve been building)
- Incubators are present worldwide (see my friend Peter‘s writeup)
- The UK Parliament hosts advisory sessions around the topic (which I attend and try to contribute to).
- I can fill my office with #iot products
- My friends are writing a book about #iot
- Products are getting funding on crowdfunding platforms because investors don’t get it.

We should remember that the people paid to write reports for the C-suite executives in technology will breed the type of opinion that Ken Olson had in 1977.

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”

August 28th, 1963.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Source

Creativity & Collaboration in the 20th century.

I gave a talk a few weeks ago at Creat_ED and talked about entrepreneurism, fearlessness but really, I suppose I was talking about collaboration in hindsight. I’m reading Prague: Capital of 20th Century Surrealism and what’s immediately obvious is that artists were (maybe still are, I’d have to ask James about that) much better at collaboration than designers are. They put the effort in. They visited each other’s countries, would write surrealist pieces, poems, would create art that nodded towards those travels. Not un-related, a band from my youth, Les Rita Mitsouko had their first hit singing about the death of their mentor, a 32 year old un-googlable Argentinian dancer and choreographer called Marcia Moretto. I’d be impressed if Lady Gaga ever sung about Orlan. We should be good at this, but we really aren’t. I don’t think the internet has helped particularily, I think it’s just made it easier to be influenced by but not engage with others and their work. Steal an image here, pin it, put it in a deck and move on.

There’s been a return to good old fashioned salon-type dinners recently in London (I got invited to two in the past month) and maybe that’s a way to go back to a deeper form of engagement with others, but so far the dinners have had “themes”. Nothing worse than mixing food with homework as far as I’m concerned. At least drinks and nibbles never pretends to be anything else than a networking event, noone would want to network with a great meal. All I’d really want to see is a proper absinthe-fuelled fantastic dinner for less than £20 with people I don’t know but whose work I like or might have heard of. Anyone?

What the UK government should think about the Internet of Things.

I was invited to attend the Digital Policy Alliance Internet of Things scoping meeting at the Houses of Parliament last month and put my hand up to try to help write up some part of a possible report to MPs about the Internet of Things. Here are some loose notes I wrote down on 2 strands (business & funding/dissemination) of what was a very rich discussion with some extremely senior people in technology. (This might seem a little simplified for most tech-savvy professionals but this is meant for politicians mostly.)

How is the Internet of Things good for UK business?

Historically, the UK have been leaders in the roll out of innovative methodologies to industry. Regardless of the press, there are a lot of centres of manufacturing expertise, along with a strong high tech sector that came with blue chip manufacturing and a competitive telecommunications industry. The Internet of Things embodies an active collaboration between these sectors. As the potential for traditional products and infrastructures to be embedded with connectivity is explored, the UK has a unique opportunity to be the frontrunners of this development. When a smart product (let’s pick an internet-connected clock) is developed, the product can be made with UK plastics manufacturers in Wales, the chip designed around Cambridge, prototype circuit boards made there, a cloud service designed by developers in East London and a GSM service provided by a telco’s M2M (Machine to Machine) service.

Why would we need an internet-connected alarm clock? Well The Internet of Things hints at a new wave of consumer products currently best found in the Apple store or on crowd-funding platforms but will probably soon be available in larger retailers under the descriptor of “Connected Home” (Argos has a page in their catalogue with that heading already). It will start with wifi-connected TVs and sound systems and swiftly move on to connected scales, fitness arm bands, washing machines and more.

At an industrial scale, buildings will be monitored and controlled more efficiently instead of on pre-set programs. Lights could be switched off as people leave a building, decreasing energy expenses. Supermarket goods could be re-ordered automatically as a shelf empties and a sensor is exposed instead of manually taking stock. Industrial farming could be done more effeciently as humidity sensors in the ground show the farmer where the ground is in more need of watering and watering could be targeted, decreasing his water bills. As we walk the streets, our footsteps could generate electricity, or smart meters could tell us when we could be selling energy back to the grid and help us map this online and share it.

The Data implications

Connectivity in everyday objects will lead to the development of mobile apps that connect to those products and help us use them better, maintain them better, troubleshoot, or gather data and visualise it. We will see data being gathered by small sensors (sound, air quality, movement…) and we will see data being pushed to small actuators (microphones, motors…) Data will influence our daily life and we will produce data with our daily gestures.

The Internet of Things will therefore affect the understanding of where data is coming from for future versions of the Communications Data Bill as data can be produced, gathered or broadcast by objects, buildings or any physical infrastructure. Data concerns will extend beyond that of a device (laptop, tablet, mobile phone) to become a more ubiquitous activity which will call for more public education to be produced to explain the consequences of this. As we find that large corporates are responsible for most of the public education around privacy, perhaps there is the need to return to a Ministry of Information-like campaign to educate the public about these new uses of data. Anonymity of data, data ownership, openess of systems will become heavily debated subjects as the user experiences extends into the streets of cities and not just in homes or offices. The meaning of “things” will have to be well defined to prevent misuse or confusion and the differentiation between the owners of the data, the gatherers of the data and the producers of the data will need to be fleshed out as their rights and responsibilities will be defined.

Funding the Internet of Things

Invention and innovation will come about from a mix of SMEs and large corporations collaborating & working together. Right now big (often American) businesses like IBM,Cisco,Intel, and GE have been putting a lot of their efforts in owning most of the PR conversation around the internet of things, but UK companies like ARM, Neul and more importantly, SMEs have to be actively championed, showcased and exhibited. This means connecting the creative industries, high tech and telecommunications providers as well as larger players and the defense sector is key to fostering innovation. The Technology Strategy Board’s demonstrator programs have had a positive effect on increasing the visibility of the internet-of-things but like EU-funded projects do very little to support the commercialisation and the opportunity for an idea to subject itself to market forces which is the next big step. With a high street in crisis , there is a great opportunity for the UK to showcase the most innovative connected products considering it is the host of the most startups around this area at the moment.

Although talent is available from the creative industries, the technology sector & financial services, access to capital for SMEs around the development of internet of things products for the consumer market specifically is difficult and pushing companies to relocate to the US’s Silicon Valley or sell their IP to large, often European or Asian consumer goods manufacturers. These are missed opportunities for the UK which has the largest number of startups in this area in Europe (see this map I’ve put together) and the only incubator program for internet-of-things startups (based between London & Cambridge). Funding these consumer-facing SMEs through government-supported venture schemes would be a great way of keeping those ideas and talent locally and championing an environment of collaboration & innovation that is unique in Europe.

What I’m up to (no not weeknotes)

It’s always nice to let people know what you’re working on right? Otherwise people will think I’m spending my days on Twitter scanning the #iot hashtag (ok, I do that too).

I’m the founder of Good Night Lamp, a family of internet-connected lamps. We’re in the long ramp up towards good partnerships to kick off production, that side of things is long and thankless and sadly not something I can talk about right now. Needless to say, it’s one of those things that will get better for everyone with time. This takes up 60% of my time.

As for the 40%:

1. Mapping the industry
Recently I’ve put together a map of #iot startups / consultants which is light on the service provision side of things as I’m more interested in the application / product / startup side of things.


View IOT companies (UK & Europe) in a larger map

2. Retailing the Internet of Things
The Good Night Lamp and all the other projects on that map need a space in traditional retail environments. Big Box retail. Paul & I are putting together a proposal for a pop-up shop in Boxpark, a trendy container mall in Shoreditch, where they can be showcased and we can have a discussion with buyers about the place of these new tech products in traditional retail. I’m not in a position to fund this myself, so we’re looking for a sponsor. This isn’t about making money, it’s about getting a point across and opening up opportunities. Maybe your company likes #iot. Get in touch.

3. Eyehub
I’m going to be helping out Eyehub, a TSB-funded internet of things project by blogging a little on a topic I want to learn about more, which is safety and asset security in #iot. I’ll be helping them organise a couple of hackathons based on an API they are building for a campus and city! Smart smaller cities. It’s a thing you know.

4. Lean startup
Since mid-2012, I’ve been involved in a long piece of lean startup work with a client I can’t talk about. It’s mostly fun and interesting and also challenging. This is all mostly digital and a little #iot but it’s made me think that lean startup methodologies don’t work particularily well with hardware. I might blog about that at some other point.

5. Events
I’ve been helping Xively organise the London internet of things meetup. it’s the biggest one on the topic and there’s always space, you should come along. I’m going to be helping another client with a startup competition in the autumn, more on that soon.

6. Internet of People
Last summer, Rob (who has been a friend and a peer since I started the now defunct Tinker) Martin, Lorna and I met up in Amsterdam and started planning what was announced last week: Internet of People. The idea is simple: there are lots of consultants like myself out there working on various aspects of the internet of things, and lots of companies trying to understand the potential of iot for their business. We act as a matchmaking service based on a few core services. I was involved in helping set it up as a UK company (it’s easier you see) and shaping the general messaging. If you’re a freelancer in iot topics, you want to have a look at this. If you’re a company looking for someone to come in and give a talk or workshop about how iot affects your business (yes I know you only just got round to thinking “digital” but this will really blow your mind) say hi.

7. The Perfect IOT conference
I’ve been scheming with a few people about what the perfect iot conference would be. More on that soon too, but put Berlin in your calendar for February 19th to 22nd 2014. (I know, I know, we just got out of winter).

8. Mentoring
I’m a Bethnal Green Ventures mentor (as well as an advisor to Technology Will Save Us) starting next week.

9. Speaking
I’m also doing my lion’s share of public speaking, mostly about GNL, but you know it sometimes actually pays bills :)