Veezyon

Last week I attended the Open Coffee event at the Santa Fe Complex. We had a good crowd and it was fun to see friends and meet with new people. Since we launched our company there, it is pretty difficult for me not to like an event taking place at the Santa Fe Complex. I am not sure when and where the next Open Coffee will take place, so if you would like to get a notification become a member here. Below are couple of poor quality pictures that I took with my BlackBerry, enjoy and see you next time!

I believe many of you will agree with me that networking events provide tremendous value for startups. I am a huge believer in face-to-face interaction when possible.  Local networking venues create opportunities to form partnerships, get to know future employees/employers (who knows right?), to test concepts, to better understand current technology trends, you name it.

However, social gatherings are especially important in technology regions, which are just mapping out their human capital and local resources, such as the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area.

I attended the BarCamp Albuquerque 4 this weekend. You can search for “#abqbarcamp” on Twitter to learn what went on. It was a small group in an intimate setting.  I enjoyed every minute of it and learned a lot. There were exciting presentations about HTML 5, Collecta real-time search engine, web design fundamentals, Google Analytics, ArtSpark, Google App Engine, and more.

I am 100% sure that BarCamp Albuquerque will get bigger as more people will talk about it. Reid and Chris did a great job of organizing and handling the details and our host Eric opened the doors of UNM ARTS Lab to us.

I think we need more events targeting various segments of innovation and technology crowd in the region.  Here is a list of the networking events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe region.  The list captures most of the main venues; feel free to add more in comments.

-          Coronado Ventures Forum : All things Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Technology

-          Ignite NM : We  presented our thoughts on future of learning at an Ignite event, you can view the presentation here

-          BarCamp Albuquerque

-          Webuquerque

-          Animotion NM : Everything animation & motion graphics

-          ABQ WebGeeks

-          New Mexico Technology Council

-          Open Coffee Club : Informal gathering time & place for NM entrepreneurs, VC’s, and related people

-          NNM Connect : Organizes various events

Veezyon.com is an online social learning platform; education, professional development, curiosity, hobby, you name it!  Our motivation is to optimize online learning and create an ultimate social learning platform.  Veezyon enables information sharing, workgroup formation and discussions around the content and makes it more meaningful therefore increasing the effectiveness of learning.

“Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (2009)” by Department of Education shows that students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The study is a meta-analysis of the research, and it notes that caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population since the results are derived mostly from studies with adults such as medical training and higher education.  The study notes that the benefits of online learning especially apply to undergraduate, graduate and professional learners.

The research suggests that elements such as video or online quizzes do not appear to influence the amount that students learn in online classes. Quizzes at the end of a video segment could be categorized as static learning. One key statement in the research addresses this issue: “online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection”.  This is exactly what Veezyon aims:  to transform static learning into a dynamic and interactive one by merging branded content with collaboration tools.  It is very encouraging to see that the discussions are around how and where online learning should be utilized rather than the usefulness of it.

This was expected and now we have data to prove it.  According to a study, jointly conducted by Arbor Networks, the University of Michigan and Merit Network, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing took a very significant dive. P2P traffic has gone from 4% of all Internet traffic in 2007 to about 0.5% in 2009. Based on what I have read on Arbor Networks’ site this undertaking is believed to be the largest and most extensive global Internet traffic report since the start of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990s. And the ATLAS Internet Observatory 2009 Annual Report Presentation introduces the study as the “First global traffic engineering study of Internet evolution”. The total Internet traffic monitored over the two-year long study was more than 256 exabytes, gathered from 110 large and geographically diverse cable operators, international transit backbones, regional networks and content providers. By any measure these numbers and credentials are very impressive and the study should be examined closely.

The fall of P2P is not a surprise because we, as Internet users, have been experiencing this. Watching a video on YouTube, listening to Pandora at work or depending on CNN’s short clips to catch up with the day are all part of that experience. Simply put, streaming is much more convenient than peer-to-peer sharing. Why would I want to hassle with peer-to-peer to watch the last episode of Mad Men while I can watch a high quality version of it on AMC’s website, securely and instantly? I am not saying peer-to-peer will disappear. My point is that from consumers’ digital media consumption point of view, it doesn’t make sense. That is why Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are doing pretty good. For instance Akamai’s market cap is about $3.7B. A couple of confirmations for CDN market’s bright future are Microsoft’s announcement of canceling its free Silverlight Streaming service and introducing a new paid service hosted on Azure platform by the end of 2009; and Sorenson’s entrance to the market with Sorenson 360, a video delivery network.

Another Internet trend that is negatively impacting peer-to-peer use is the explosion of social media.  On Veezyon you could watch the video of Gordon Moore as many times as you would like. But for most of us that might not be enough, you might want to share it with your friends and colleagues. A link to that video is all you need. Well, if you want you can insert the link and share that video in a research note that you created on Veezyon, but how we engage with the digital media is another blog post.

image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catorze/293011175/

On September 10 we launched Veezyon at the Santa Fe Complex. We could not be happier with the turnout and the feedback that we got from an engaging crowd. I started off the event with a brief presentation explaining our vision and why we started the company. Josh took over and demoed the product. Finally we took some tough questions from the crowd and listened to their feedback and ideas, which were very helpful. We thank our audience for showing up on a rainy day and supporting us! Special thanks go to our friends Shandra and Gail, who organized the event and spread the word and to the Santa Fe Complex crew Simon and Susan for making sure everything went according to the plan. And thanks also to my friend Norah for the photos from our launch event.

Today, we are launching Veezyon.com.

Few years back, I decided to start a company. I didn’t take this decision lightly, neither any entrepreneur should. Having worked with inventors, entrepreneurs and investors in my entire career, I had the privilege to observe how challenging it was to create and manage a high growth company.  I can now unquestionably say, while “observing” really helps, nothing could prepare a first time entrepreneur for actually “doing” it. It is much more challenging than I thought, but thankfully it is also much more fun and rewarding. Regardless of how the story will unfold, my biggest accomplishment was convincing my partners Lale and Josh to join me on this journey.

The idea for Veezyon had begun formulating partly because of personal frustration and partly observing the rapid growth of rich media content online. While researching online, I wanted to have quick access to credible rich media content (videos, images, documents), which were/are available but fragmented. However, it did not end there; I wanted to be able to organize and share my research on the same platform. In time, we completed our team, gained the trust of great organizations, prototypes have been built and with our content partners’ input we morphed the idea into what you are seeing today.

Veezyon is a social learning platform. We are building Veezyon based on the principles that we believe will define the future of learning:

-          Student/Learner centric

-          Participatory (social)

-          Dynamic

-          Location independent

-          Cross  institutional

Why are we doing this?  I can assure you it is a lot of work, stress, and of course a massive risk. We believe in the idea and in each other. We want to build something great and really valuable to its users. Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll find value in what we are building.