It seems having a camera is as essential to a modern protest as the bongo drum probably was at my father’s protests in the 60′s (sorry dad, was that a low blow?). Independent media is the glue of a movement and in some cases – a moment.

Last Friday in the aftermath of the Johannes Mehserle trial Oakland Local, The Bay Citizen and myself (representing Spot.us) met up at Tech Liminal to cover Oakland’s reaction.

Tech Liminal is great. Susan Mernit and I have used it several times now for various events. It is located just 3-4 blocks away from where protesters were gathering after the verdict was announced. There is lots to write about this from the perspective of new media. It was an adrenaline filled night where various organizations and groups working together to produced fantastic coverage. I played the smallest of roles, but was honored to be there.

But that’s not what I want to write about here. Instead, I want to write about the ethos of the event itself. About race, riots and the media.

Before 8:00pm the event was very safe. There were people of all ages – children and the elderly. There was tension, to say the least, but it was maintained.

After 8:00pm the demographics and mood shifted. After the sun went down, that shift became more radical.

At the same time, however, I could not (and will not) refer to it as a “riot,” although that might be a technical term to describe it. When I picture I riot, I imagine utter chaos. Physical danger in every direction and no group cohesion. I picture a large and sprawling bar fight. April 29th – 1992 in Los Angeles (where I grew up) was a riot. But what happened last weekend was not a riot. It was much too civil and directed.

At no time did I feel threatened by looters. I’m not complaining about this – just noting it. There was anger and there were acts of violence – but they were not chaotic. They were directed at either local businesses or the police. While this may seem obvious – you must consider the potential chaos that could erupt at a protest-turned-looting. If two of the wrong people bump into each other – it could easily turn into a riot. At least – that’s how I imagine soccer match riots start. But even at this scene I don’t think any two participants could have bumped into each other to cause a fight – except a protester and a police officer. All bystanders had peaceful relations with all other bystanders.

Which brings us to the awkward media gaze. This was not a chaotic event – it was staged. As one friend put it – this was a flash mob of violence. The protesters played their role. The police knew their lines and the looters knew their ques. And the whole thing was staged for the media.

“Media” of course is broadly understood. It was interesting to see the blurred lines between protester and media producer. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, had a recording device of some sort.  It seems having a camera is as essential to a modern protest as the bongo drum probably was at my father’s protests in the 60′s (sorry dad, was that a low blow?). Media is the glue of a movement and in this case – the glue of a moment.

The best existential moment for me was when a trash can was set on fire. At that time a dozen photographers, including myself, moved in to take pictures. The trash can was the celebrity of the night and we were no better than paparazzi capturing a photograph of Brittany Spears with a shaved head.

The arsonist knew this would grab attention and photos. I suspect this is part of the reason it was done. And let’s be honest – part of the reason so many media folks were there was to capture that photo (and others).

The whole thing wreaked of a cycle that did not lead to anything other than insurance claims and extra hits on a website.

As one protester put it to me in the later hours of the night, after everything calmed down – “we are like analog watches in a digital age.” The looting is an act of protest and violence – but even those participating know it is not lashing out at those people the protesters wanted to reach. I would be hard pressed to find a community activist who would argue that the best use of somebody’s night during the protest would be to set a trash can on fire or loot the Footlocker. Nor do I believe the looters thought this.

There is no conclusion to this post. No great revelation – just an observation and an ugly feeling that is left in my gut when I think about this event.

Perhaps some day I should write a longer post about race and my relationship to what is arguably the defining conversation of our country. I went to public schools in Los Angeles where being white made me a minority. It was an eye opening experience and one that, now in my late 20′s, I want to take the time to reflect on.

At a Public-Press meeting this last week I discussed it out loud for the first time only to meet another journalist who has had the same idea brewing in his head. I bet others out there have considered this as well. I call it the “Newsroom Cafe.”

Update from comments:

• Jason Krustefek: Media Companies should open coffee shops.
• Steve Outing: Why news companies should go into the Internet cafe business
• Ethan Kaplan: What I would do if I bought a newspaper
  
• Dave Winer: From Networked Journalism Summit and Scripting News
• Jackie Hai: A community driven news model (hat tip Daniel)
• Matt Thompson: Neo in the Newsroom

Newsrooms should be public space.

In the past I’ve complained that the SF Chronicle treats the newsroom like a fortress (see “Culture Change” section in this post). As a test one time I walked up to the Chronicle to see if I could drop by and meet a reporter. I was greeted by security before I even got into the door. I didn’t play the role of a reporter – I was just a 20-something citizen who wanted to visit the newsroom and perhaps offer a story tip.

Access denied. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

What I imagine is a newsroom that is also a cafe. Of course the reporters would have desks somewhere private to do work (a 2nd floor would be ideal), but the front of the newsroom would be a public space where people could get coffee, eat a bagel, use the wireless, etc. At least one reporter would be on-hand to talk with members of the public during business hours. These would be publicly announced “office hours.” We wouldn’t make a big pony-show of it, it would just be a part of the cafe’s appeal. You may just be hanging out – but perhaps you’ll end up in a news story!

Aside from being a revenue stream (coffee, bagels, etc) it would create a deeper connection between the news organization and the public. Could story tips be garnered this way? Perhaps it would be a great way to meet and encourage citizen journalism partners. Could a “Newsroom Cafe” take on MediaBistro in the workshops/training department? Could the space eventually be used to organize civilized public debates? Is this something that could be franchised and repeated in the following cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, etc?

Sometimes you want to read a news site where everybody knows your name (sha-na-na-na). What better way to foster that then by having a space where citizens can feel like they own it? (Two journo-points to whomever guesses the music reference in my head. Hint it’s NOT the theme song to Cheers).

If I were MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, Public-Press (all nonprofits) the HuffPost‘s local satellites, SFist, LAist, Chi-Town-Daily, The Windy Citizen, etc, or any other small journalism startup with a stake in location – this would be an interesting play. It would require a lot of capital and a partner in the food-service industry, but I suspect could be very lucrative, both for the business and the journalism.

Afterthought: I don’t use the Chronicle as an example to beat up on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a need for security. Then again, the more you tighten control the more you need to have it. If the Chronicle started “office hours” – the first few weeks might be intense but if the attempt at opening up was earnest, I bet they’d get earnest (and constructive) feedback. Also – as we lose more newspapers and become reliant on smaller news organizations – there is less of a need for security and a stronger need for community.

That idea, to create a high speed bullet train system through major metropolitan cities has received over 800 votes on Change.org, propelling it into the next round of voting (original votes wiped away). The top ten ideas from this next round will be presented to the Obama administration. I wouldn't presume anything after that, but just that the president of the United State's cabinet would be briefed on ideas proposed by the citizenry is reason enough to celebrate.

Considering the opportunity – I decided to give my idea a third cent and a second thought.

I'm sensitive towards public transportation. Having grown up in Los Angeles and lived in New York I've seen the good and the bad. Now living in San Francisco I welcome the day when a high-speed bullet train might connect me and my fellow Los Angelinos in under three hours, for less money, less emissions and more comfort.

But why stop there? Why not connect Seattle and Portland? Then stretch from Portland to San Francisco, down to Los Angeles and San Diego.

I envision a future where one could get from Seattle to San Diego or Las Vegas in 8 hours by train. The same should go for the East Coast: Fro Miami to New York – we should should cut down on air travel and invest in a railway infrastructure.

Like my idea? Go vote for it. With enough votes we can pass on the idea to the Obama administration. Check out the other ideas too. I don't claim mine is the best – it was just how I decided to participate. Lucky for you – voting only takes… two seconds.

From the video below, I think you’ll see that this is more than just a proposition on the California ballot – this is about civil liberties. Why should I have the right to marry a person of my choosing if a homosexual can’t?

That’s just as absurd as me being able to drink from a certain water fountain or having first dibs to the front of the bus because of my skin color. It just seems wrong to me.

As I see things, it’s only a matter of time before gay marriage becomes legal. That’s how civil rights movements go. Does anybody really believe passing a law making gay marriage illegal will squash the desire of homosexuals to marry. That their fundamental desire to be together will just disappear? Like anybody else they love their partners and if they are lucky enough to find somebody they want to spend the rest of their lives with, they want a legal ceremony to recognize that union. Making it illegal is stalling the inevitable.

Maybe if you aren’t exposed to gays in your daily routine you think the issue of gay marriage will just disappear. That is naive. I just walked out my apartment and saw the following. If you watch the video below then try and leave a comment below that all this is a fad and it will disappear. I’m all ears.

I am incredibly touched by how people have pledged for the SF Election Truthiness Campaign. We have raised 64% of our goal and if we raise another $880 by the end of this month, Spot.us will have a HUGE proof of concept before our launch. So far the entire endeavor has worked on the “gift economy.” People are distributing the cost of hiring this reporter. There is nothing else I can call it – but a donation.

Being humbled by it all – I decided to do a little donating myself. Yesterday I volunteered at a computer learning center for underprivileged adults. In the lower Haight on Buchanan street you’d never know it, but there is a community center. This serves the residents who live in the housing projects in the surrounding neighborhood. The computer facilities are used for afterschool purposes – but on Tuesdays it becomes an adult learning center.

It was an incredibly eye-opening experience. It’s easy to forget that the way I (and probably you, dear reader) interact with people online is unique. It is a result of being in a very privileged position. Through it we have the power to communicate and connect (and with it responsibility).

One of the adults I was working with is also very active in the Hayes-Valley neighborhood. He goes to community association meetings, is helping to plan a block party and is generally active and social. To help plan for the block party we showed him Craigslist – where he could put out a call for volunteers. To help spread word, we created a new entry on a blog with a link to an article from the Western Addition newspaper that put out a blurb.

These action steps are second nature to me. I’m confident I could do them while cooking myself a nice lunch. I don’t say that to be cocky, but to contrast, if only to myself, the experience that these individuals have using online tools. It is not seamless – it is difficult, somewhat unpleasant and requires deep concentration (not unlike how I feel figuring out my taxes).

All this was very enlightening. If anything else – it was a gentle reminder not to take these tools for granted. Not to assume that this is how everyone interacts online.

If we can raise another $2,100 by the end of August, the residents
of San Francisco will have collectively hired an independent journalist
to fact-check the political advertisements that will inevitably be hurled
in their direction. If we don’t reach out goal, the $400 will
go back to the original donors. No harm, true – but nothing gained.

And I play for keeps. And this pitch, to have a reporter fact-check
the banner and TV advertisements is perfect for Spot.Us. So I’m
drawing a line in the sand to see “who’s coming with me.” (yes, I put down $50).

It’s hard to argue against this pitch’s merit. Who doesn’t want
fact-checking for political advertising? If you have a moment’s of
hesitation, just watch this video with Josh Wilson from NewsDesk.org who is spearheading the project. (NOTE: the “pitch” is only going to get more refined – Josh Wilson and
I are currently honing in on what SF issues will need to be
fact-checked, details to come).

We have one month, JUST ONE MONTH
to make it happen. If you’ve been waiting on the sidelines, now is the
time to jump in and add to the pot. Instead of complaining that we need
better media coverage of important issues – ensure it will happen!

Why?

1. Your pledge is only enacted IF we reach the final goal. So you know it will be a meaningful donation or won’t happen at all.
2. You will help voters make more informed decisions when they step into the voter’s booth.
3. The money will go directly to a freelance journalist – Spot.Us won’t take a cut.
4. The content will be licensed under Creative Commons, which means your own blog or organization can use the data too.

How you can help?

1. The best way (and probably the easiest) is to donate $10. Or
heck, if you think it’s worth more – go crazy and give $25. I’d easily
argue this pitch is worth that much. Based on the amount of readers for
the spot.us blog – if everyone put down just $10, we’d be well on our
way. Think of it this way. Instead of buying that last beer (which will
only make you suffer the next day anyways), donate $10 towards this
campaign. Then you can go to bed feeling good about yourself – knowing
you are helping to keep our democracy strong.

2. Spread the word. Go back to the video above and click that little “share” button, or visit ThePoint’s campaign
and do the same. Tell your friends on Facebook, your blog, your
community organization. If you know people at the League of Woman
Voters, a local political meetup, etc – bring them into the fold.

Spot.Us is NOT a for-profit. We stand to make no money off this – we
only aim to serve. So we need help reaching out to the organizations
and civic leaders that might benefit from this collaboration. In the
end that’s all Spot.Us represents: A meeting ground where communities
can distribute the cost of hiring a reporter who will “work for
everyone.”

I will spend the rest of my day sending out emails to local leaders.
If you know civic minded individuals in San Francisco, please share,
twitter, email, or just shout this call out: We need your help!
Together I know we can raise this money and for the first time ever we
will have a journalist who has no connection to advertising. That
reporter will work for nobody but the public and that’s who he/she will
serve first and foremost.

I’m looking forward to the possibilities.

Background on the idea: CopyCamp – an Unconference for News Organizations.

On Saturday the San Jose Mercury News held the first ever Copycamp. It’s amazing when you get to see an idea become a reality. What’s even better is taking a step back, figuring out what worked and what didn’t, in the hopes that the idea will improve and benefit others in the future.

How it all happened. Pre-planning.

This is probably the most laborious part of putting on any kind of unconference.

1. Organizing Principle: It requires somebody at the helms. That person was Chris O’brien. Without Chris’ dedication to the concept – wrangling in other Merc staff and inviting members of the public, this never would have happened. I’m not sure how many hours Chris put into planning this but I assure you – these things don’t organize themselves. Using the CopyCamp wiki will help – but won’t make it magic.

2. Food. Creativity and innovation require food. The Mercury News was gracious enough to provide bagels, coffee, sandwiches and sodas. Total money spent: about $350. I can imagine a local pizza place sponsoring food in the future, bringing the cost of having a CopyCamp down to $0.

3. Space: The Mercury News had a perfect assembly room space that could easily fit everyone. In the event a newsroom doesn’t have space cost goes up unless a local YMCA or civic-center place is willing to help out.

4. Focus: Unconferences are “unstructured” – but they have a focus. In this case the Merc was inviting community leaders into the newsroom to discuss issues of race and demographics and how the Merc could do a better job telling that story in the bay area.

What happened: The Day Itself

1. Setting up: People arrived 10am. By 10:30am everyone was socializing. Chris and the Merc team did an excellent job of getting a fantastic cross-section of community and civic leaders. Many of them knew each other, but we had nametags and plenty of time for everyone to do introductions.

2. Getting ready: By 11am the 35 in attendance sat in a circle and had already finished quick introductions (Name, affiliation and why they came). Then we asked participants to suggest topics that we could break into and discuss.

3. The topic breakouts: They were (a. Journalism that matters – ensuring that the Merc and journalism stay strong. (b. Racial marginalization – making sure certain topics aren’t overlooked completely. (b. The immigrant experience in the bay area. Each group had a note taker who, after lunch, reported back to the larger group.

Low point: I’m willing to admit the day didn’t go perfectly. The main issue was one of moderation. It was very easy for community members to accuse the Merc of not doing a good job or not listening to their readership enough. Conversely the Merc staff could have made the situation worse by retorting that their job is incredibly tough and the public just doesn’t understand (the later didn’t happen).

There were a few moments where it seemed that, as a paper, the Merc was taking on some harsh criticism. Criticism is good – as long as it’s put forth in a constructive fashion. This whole day was planned to be a constructive event, not a shouting match. Luckily it never got out of control. The community members involved had a genuine interest in seeing the Merc succeed and their criticism had the best intentions and the Merc staff never took a high road in reaction.

Still – the point stands. These situations require the type of moderation that is a developed skill. We could have benefited from somebody with more experience in managing open space technology, especially in highly volatile situations.

The High: The end of the meeting was certainly a high. There was discussion about “next steps.” YES!!!!!

As a group CopyCampers seemed excited about the fact that the news staff was listening to them and had invited them in to get their feedback. The paper belonged to them. They had the Mercs ears. Conversely it was a way for the Merc staff to explain some of the struggles and decisions they face day-to-day. That’s the type of understanding that allows groups to move forward.

Perhaps it will help lead to the Merc becoming the host of community blogs? Perhaps it was just a morale boost – but connections were made, people who want to make a difference were introduced and from that there is no telling what could happen.

Future vision: What now?

For the Merc: Chris will have to spread the word about what the community members said that day. He will have to report back to the collective if there are any responses from the higher-ups at the Merc. Perhaps in 4-6 months there could be another CopyCamp that is twice as large – and will be able to start where we left off this weekend.

For your paper: HOST A COPYCAMP. The instructions are above and at our blog and wiki.

The potential: I would to see a copycamp with a different focus on “lessons we can share” – where local bloggers and citizen journalists can come in and talk about blogging, podcasting, twitter, etc and news reporters can talk about beat reporting. My bet – each part wants to learn from the other.

You name the issue: I think a CopyCamp could be convened.

More reading: Chris Amico got some good video as we were leaving.
Rob Knight’s post: “CopyCamp was Awesome”

p.s. I will try and follow this post with video at CopyCamp.us.

Aside from being good friends, both Tara and Ahmed have written for NewAssignment.net – and I can tell you they deserve this award. They worked their little tushies off – and it shows in their work. Check it out.

The site, Broowaha is clean, sleek and has passionate contributors. But Ariel, who was featured in this Los Angeles Times story (original link not working), has no real background in journalism.

On the other hand, I have no experience in programming. I’ve often talked about my desire to learn how to program – but I still lack it in total. 

The two of us seem to have a Ying/Yang relationship. He has a strong idea about what he wants to get from the site in terms of journalism, and I have ideas of citizen and networked journalism that I would love to try if only I had the programming talent.

My first interaction with Broowaha was as a simple judge in a writing contest, but in fact Ariel was looking for an editor and I think he was testing the waters with me.

As of yesterday – I am that editor. And I couldn’t be more excited.

For now it’s a pro-bono gig. Don’t start thinking I’m an Editor n’ Chief now with a budget and I’m sitting jolly on easy street. I didn’t take the job for money anyways.

Why take on another project?

Broowaha is a space to experiment. If you remember or heard about Assignment Zero, one of the biggest complaints was the subject matter "crowdsourcing" was just too vague and no fun to report on.

I do believe the future of citizen journalism is in networked reporting – groups of people working together on larger investigations. I don’t think the key to unlock that potential has been found. Will Broowaha find it? I don’t know – but Ariel and I are of similar minds and between the two of us we have the skill set to take a good whack at it. One of the reasons I was eager to take the job was Ariel’s insistence that I could use Broowaha to try experiments. I say "Woot!" – I hate blogging about ideas – I’m all about experiments.

Broowaha is already a vibrant community with writers across the world (literally from Los Angeles to Paris). We’ve already started making tweaks to the site together and soon we hope to launch a quit and simple "Assignment Two."

Right now Broowaha writers are centered in LA, SF, NY, Miami and other cities around the country. I hope that we can tap into stories – even simple stories like "the dying 1950′s diners" and report on them in cities across the country.

So – if you believe in citizen journalism, want to start writing/reporting about issues or events in your neighborhood check out Broowaha. It’s a growing network with nothing but potential.

I’ll probably write more about the progress of Broowaha as Ariel and I launch different experiments. For now – join Broowaha, or at the very least, give the site a good strong look. I can admit the content isn’t 100 percent perfect, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was NowPublic.

It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. But there is a way to bring it down. Somebody has to take the modes of production and hand it over to consumers. That’s what Bug Labs hopes to do. To find out a detailed discription of who they are, how they will do it — read on.

Jeremy Toeman paused for a drink of water. His voice was straining and raspy from having talked over the crowd at the Punch Bar in New York, giving the same fifteen-minute presentation for the last two hours. The current group of six onlookers, arranged in a semi-circle around Toeman, remained patient. They had been waiting to get close to Toeman for some time. Everyone on the top floor of the bar was there to gawk at what the young company Bug Labs was getting ready to offer the consumer electronics world and Toeman had it enclosed in his hands. It was Bug Labs first public showing. Nobody outside of the company had seen what the young startup had been working on for the last year and a half, so their eyes remained fixed at Toeman’s outstretched hands.

In it was the standard motherboard to a computer from about two or three years ago, which included USB, Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth. It fit perfectly in Toeman’s open palm. The green plastic and soldered on transistors, the guts of a computer, were only interrupted by four adaptors that stuck out of the green circuit board like tiny pyramids. As Toeman, the marketing director for Bug Labs, continued with his presentation he slowly grabbed two smaller motherboards, one he identified as a functioning like a five mega pixel camera and the other worked as a motion detector. Then he proceeded to connect them to the first motherboard like giant computer Lego blocks.

Bug Labs hopes to do for consumer electronics what Web site mashups have done for the Internet, provide the means for anyone to create their own product. What they will start selling in the fall are the BUGS or the base piece of hardware that can be adapted to include any number of modules that snap into the baseboard like jigsaw pieces. The various add-ons, like a GPS device, a camera, an LCD screen, or keyboard, can be mixed or matched to produce as many gadgets as the consumers can dream up. With 80 potential plug-ins to choose from the BUG could become the foundation for any number of niche gadgets.

But before BugLabs can try to disrupt the multi-billion dollar consumer electronics market, they need to polish the plastic casing that is going to house their gadget. At this event in August, Toeman was only able to showcase the internal organs of the gadget.

"The final product will be cased in plastics and will look like a gadget you would buy, this is what we have to show you right now for demonstration purposes," said Toeman as he pushed the green motherboard towards the center of the circle for the latest group to get a closer look.

The next few months for Bug Labs was a harried race to the finish. They needed to complete their Web site (finished November 1st), any usability issues their product might have, the final aesthetics for the gadgets need to be in place and they have to find a way to generate buzz throughout the consumer electronics industry. If they don’t manage to stay afloat after the full public launch the dream that Peter Semmelhack, CEO and founder of Bug Labs, had back in 2001 will never come to fruition. (click below to read more)

Bug Labs has been working on this launch since April of 2006 after they received venture capital funding from Union Square Ventures,
the same VC company that funded Del.icio.us, Twitter and Tumblr, but
the idea for a customizable gadget that could fit the unique needs of
any customer has been brewing in Semmelhack’s head since October of
2001.

It was one month after 9/11 when Semmelhac, now 41, had his first
son. He had been working as a software developer since 1987 and at the
time was CEO of Antenna Software,
which provided mobile solutions for large companies. Like many people
living in New York after September 11th, Semmelhac was dealing with the
constant fear of terrorism, which was conflated by the natural urge to
protect his infant child.

"Everybody in New York wanted to know where their loved ones were at
all times so if anything happened they could rendezvous and have a
plan, but there was no way to know where your family members were, we
just spent a lot of time on cell phones," said Semmelhack.

What he craved at the time was a GPS device
that would wake up every 10 or so minutes and plot the position of his
loved ones on a map so he would know where his family was instantly
without having to call.

"That gadget just didn’t exist, it still doesn’t exist. The market
for a device like that wouldn’t be big enough," said Semmelhack.

That yearning for a gadget that just wasn’t on
the market stayed with Semmelhack for the next two years. And more kept
mounting in his brain. Next he imagined a security device that
you could stick at your door and would turn on from a motion detector
and automatically take a picture of who was at your door. He didn’t
want an entire home automation system, just a "simple little tool," he
said.

It was in 2003, while playing Legos with his
two-year-old son, that he imagined a way to create all the devices he
wanted at once for a relatively reasonable price.

"I found myself holding one Lego block in one hand
and another Lego block in the other and wondering, why couldn’t this
block be a GPS and this block be a wireless modem and stick them
together to get a wireless GPS," asked Semmelhack.

Eventually Semmelhack decided to scratch his own itch and try to
build the hardware himself. But as he found out, holy smokes, there is
no easy way to build hardware in the same way that you can build
software. He could write software in a day, but building hardware was
out of his reach at the time.

It was in early 2004 when Semmelhack decided to take his idea to the
next level. With his own money he hired three New Jersey engineers, all
ex-Bell Lab employees, to build a prototype. 

An important discovery had been made through the process. There was
no technical reason why his multi-gadget dream couldn’t be built. Electronic
companies weren’t trying it because the idea existed way outside the
current business model for gadgets, which requires large consumer
markets before any product can see the light of day. If the
market is too small then the cost of development gets pushed over to
the consumer — and that cost is too much for consumers to bare — and
the gadget dies during R&D.

At first, Semmelhack wasn’t convinced his prototype was anything
more than a "geeky toy that probably didn’t represent a real business."
How many people could he really sell on his two gadget ideas?

But two important events in 2004 changed his mind.

The first was the launch of Make Magazine,
a popular quarterly dedicated to hardware hacking, which opened his
eyes to the fact that he wasn’t the only person interested in
manipulating existing platforms of electronics. The other was a book,
Democratizing Innovation, by Eric Von Hippel an MIT professor who argued the control over products is increasingly moving from producers to consumers. (See Assignment Zero Interview with Eric Von Hippel).

Figuring that the timing was right to turn his idea into something bigger, Semmelhack began looking for venture capitalists. The
idea was to form a company that wouldn’t just sell one gadget to a
niche market, it would sell the ability to create hundreds of different
kinds of gadgets to various small markets. Bug Labs began to take shape.

It was the summer of 2005 when Semmelhack began a nine-month pitch
to Union Ventures, a small venture capital firm in New York. He met
Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson, the founders, at a coffee shop near their
office in Union Square and slowly engaged them in the idea behind Bug
Labs.

Semmelhack had been through the investor dance before with Antenna
Software. But unlike some pitches where the VC at the other end of the
table stays stone-faced until the end of the presentation, Semmelahck
says Burnham and Wilson were engaged, lively and asking questions right
from the beginning. They called it an "out there investment" but saw
lucrative potential in the various applications.

Since then Burnham and Wilson have stayed unusually close with
Semmelhack and the entire Bug Labs team, one could say they have been
closer to this investment than any other since first funding them in
April of 2006. That’s because the Bug Labs office is located just four floors below Union Venture’s Manhattan office in the Flatiron district of New York.

"It was serendipity" that lead Bug Labs into the same building as
their funders according to Semmelhack. Union Ventures had invested in Del.icio.us
in 2003 and had recently sold it to the Internet giant Yahoo. As
Del.icio.us was moving out of the building, Bug Labs was on the search
for a space in New York to begin their work. It was a natural switch.
Out with the old and in with the new, but Bug Labs had big shoes to
fill. Del.icio.us had over 300,000 users and was sold for approximately
$30 million. 

Going Open Source with Hardware
Semmelhack
had never worked on an open source project before. While building
software that would make the BUG Base function with modules Bug Labs
was using OSGI (Open Services Gateway initiative), technology released
by IBM in 2001. Unfortunately for Bug Labs, the license for OSGI wasn’t
open source, which meant Bug Labs couldn’t use it and remain an open
source company, a requirement if they wanted to let their customers
modify their gadgets.

Bug Labs would have to re-write OSGI from scratch, a painstaking and
labor intensive project. That is, until they found a lone Ph.D. student
in Switzerland, Jan Rellermeyer,
who had already started doing the same thing, re-writing the software
under an open source license. "It’s a person we never met, we
implicitly trusted, I don’t know why, and we built this piece of code
and released it to the open source community together," said
Semmelhack. If it had not been for this lone developer across the
world, Bug Labs would have been set back by at least four months, which
when you are racing to release a new product with VC money can be an
eternity.

Today the Bug Labs office houses seven full time employees.
Through the hiring process Semmelhack was looking for "the absolute
right people." It isn’t about who has the most Ph.d’s or the greatest
track record, but people who are comfortable taking risks and share his
vision. Bug Labs is on a mission according to Semmelhack, "to disrupt the consumer electronics market."

One of the hires along the way was Jeremy Toeman who lives in San
Francisco and traveled to New York for the first public showing of what
Bug Life is going to offer in the fall.

Toeman has worked under this kind of launch pressure before. His latest project in the technology industry was marketing for Sling Media which produced the Sling Box,
a device that can forward television signals to any mobile device. It
was through that project that Toeman became friends with Peter Rojas
from everybody’s favorite tech blog to hate – Engadget, who Semmelhack approached when he was beginning his search for a marketing director.

Toeman and Semmelhack met in a San Francisco Starbucks and "saw eye
to eye right away," said Toeman. It was an important new role filled,
because a marketing director for Bug Labs wasn’t going to do consumer
research reports. Toeman is going to have to find and manage the
community of users that will use and develop the gadget itself. And
even before the community can grow, Bug Labs still has to prepare.
There is a long road ahead of them before the launch.

The hardware has to be stress tested, the motherboard has to fit in
the plastic housing, the aesthetics have to be good, the software has
to seamlessly interact with the hardware and back again with the Web
site, the Web site itself needs to launch, and all these parts have to
come together so that the customer will get one holistic experience
when they buy a BUG.

At the end of every presentation he gave at Punch Bar in New York,
Toeman would get a feel for his listeners. While the audience was
getting their fill of Bug Lab’s prototype, Toeman was actively looking
for beta testers, and that’s no small order when a pre-requisite for
your beta testers is some kind of software development skills. But itâ??s
the only way to begin stress testing the BUGS.

Beta testing is a stage that all technology startups go through
before their big launch. Del.icio.us had a beta testing stage well
before they were bought by Yahoo. And it’s the only way to ensure that
when Bug Labs is released in the fall they will have a shot at
achieving what Semmelhack views as their ultimate destination.

Before Bug Labs can disrupt an industry it has to develop into a
final product. And for now Semmelhack presses forward inspired by a
quote from Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc. "the journey is the
reward," Semmelhack repeated. "If you are unhappy with something in
your life, make a change. That’s how Bug Labs got born," said
Semmelhack.