Changing times

Grosvenor Square is a small park adjoining the US Embassy in Mayfair, London.  It’s been the traditional home for the official US presence in Britain since the first mission established by John Adams in 1785.  During the second world war, a military headquarters adjoined the square, and the US Naval Forces Europe continued to occupy the premises until recently.

Today, the park holds various memorials to the war and to American presidents with particular resonance for US / UK relations: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan.  I stopped at the Eisenhower memorial after finishing my passport renewal yesterday, a casual bronze statue enclosed by a small marble circle.  The plaque set beneath details his accomplishments leading US and European troops during the war, as chancellor of Columbia University, and as two-term President.

I can’t imagine what he would make of today’s politics, or of the populist figure elected to lead the nation.  It’s an enormous change in a generation from Eisenhower to Trump, from the unity of the post-war years to divided identity politics.  

The memorials across the park are meant to celebrate achievements and outstanding leaders with inspiring visions.  What statue, what plaque, could be erected to President Trump, if the first week in office is any indication?

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‘not to end with too much gloom: the Dutch have posted a lovely satirical video that requests that if America’s Frist, can the Netherlands please be second?

 

Moving Pictures

I love to stroll though a new city, walking the sunlit main thoroughfares, dipping into shadowed bazaars and shipping streets, walking through residential neighborhoods rich with street life,  pausing to sit in a café and look at passing faces. 

However, it takes at least a day to meander properly.  ‘limited in the number of 3-day to one-week city breaks I can take, its a rare pleasure. 

And, once I’ve formed impressions of place and people, the experience is difficult to share with others: photos and stories don’t convey the sights and sounds of the journey.

Thus, I was delighted to find the works of Dutch videographer Kees Colijn, an artist specializing in ‘single-shot’ city videos.  Up to two continuous hours long, his ‘Walking in…’ project consists of slow walks through the streets recording everyday life as it happens.  Shops pass by, people exchange glances, scenes open up around corners and onto open spaces as you would experience them.   He’s working his way east, around the world, and has posted recordings made throughout Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Walking in Varanasi

A bit like watching Bob Ross paint or reef fish swim,  his journeys are calm and relaxing to watch, not at all rushed or ragged. I exchanged a note with him, he uses a simple Canon Legria wireless camcorder which captures a nicely stabilized and balanced image during his walks.

His street photography is also good, and I’ve learned lots by flipping through his travel portfolio.  But his videos are, for me, his most compelling work.

Kite-surfing the Harbour

The spring storms are starting to arrive from the southwest, sweeping across Dorset and delighting the watersports people.  Poole Harbour is always home to a variety of wind-sailors, board-paddlers, and dinghy-pilots, but the kite surfers are the most exciting to watch

They always look like they are  skimming right to the edge of disaster, but folks who love it say it’s a simple and forgiving skill.  Unlike a sport parachute, there are no vents to open or close.  Instead, surfers spill air right/left to turn, up/down for velocity.  The tug is fairly constant in force and direction, and balance isn’t much harder than waterskiing.

A good blow last weekend was a chance to sit along Sandbanks peninsula and enjoy the show.  You can judge how easy it is:

Kite surfing–Poole Harbour, March 29 2015

Or, for the more idyllically inclined, check out the sport, same location on a sunny day, from the kite’s perspective.

Rebranding the company

Stone Bridge Biomedical BV was founded in 2009 in Maastricht as a medical software developer for global markets.  I had some ideas for improving tools for remote patient monitoring, simplifying the task of aggregating, analyzing, and visualizing data from many patients.

My original business plan was to partner with a company making a sensing unit for cardiac problems, first aiding in fundraising and business development, then coming alongside to co-develop.

We pulled a $12 million deal together with a funding group, but it had too many conditions and took to long to complete, and so it died.  Fortunately, I had two other startup opportunities got funded in allied medical fields, so Stone Bridge became a hub to manage those ventures.

While the company has been successful and profitable, it drifted a bit, becoming a consultancy instead of a developer.  When Microsoft dumped the Stone Bridge web site last fall as they divested their small business unit, I used the website rewrite as a chance to redefine the business.

It’s hard to do.  What business am I in?  Who is my customer?  For what problems am I the best solution?  My web-site developer quickly grounded against the problem of writing content when I didn’t have a clear product or single vision. 

“Anything-for-a-buck, Inc” is not a business plan.

I was approached by a friend on Facebook, asking whether our businesses were looking for help with branding and messaging.   We’ve started a very fruitful collaboration that has enabled me to focus and direct my thinking about what I want to do and become, what messages the business has to project and to whom, what who values what I can bring.

• We build bridges from concept to commercialization.
• We understand the medical development process.
• We tailor teams to solve problems, from components to companies.
• We support European product development and market entry.
• We are ready to execute on innovative device ideas.

As I was thinking  about how to define and represent my business, I found a link to a wonderful video about Microsoft’s “re-imagining” of their own business and brand.  This is a conference presentation by two of the key people behind the effort and shows a perspective and thought process for understanding and marketing a business.

Bikes, cycles, and automobiles

China moves with a greater variety of vehicles than anywhere else I’ve been.   While subways and airports (left and right, below)  are modern and crowded (just like major cities worldwide), people generally make their way on more placid and personal conveyances for surface travel.

 

A lot of folks ride bicycles, similar to the Netherlands.  There are designated lanes, but they often abut busy streets and occasionally vanish along major thoroughfares. Still, on a quieter road (or along a city wall), it’s a pleasant (if rattling) ride.

 

Most working bicycles are three-wheeled, like the Dutch Bakfiets (left) but with the load in the back and lots more space and versatility.  Often, they serve as both haulage and storefront for vendors.

  

 

Another step up adds a motor, generally electric.  Motorbikes are the biggest hazard going on Chinese streets: they are dead silent, douse their lights after sundown, and obey no line or law.  Check the baby in the center position in the lower picture.

 

Cars and busses occupy the top of the food chain on Chinese streets.  They are large, late model, impeccably maintained.  Trucks, in contrast, are large, ramshackle, and occasionally missing front cowling (maybe it keeps the engine cooler.   

And, when everything plays together, the symphony looks like this (there are corpuscular flow groups who spend a lifetime modeling veins that come together like this).  I especially like the lone policeman trying to whip things into order off to the right.

Flikken Maastricht

Now in its fifth season, Flikken Maastricht is a Dutch police drama filmed, where else, here in Maastricht.  I have to admit that I was slow to catch onto this show; the occasional film crew or river chase didn’t tip me off.  Now, it’s sort of fun to watch the CSI-style adventures passing through the familiar streets until they turn a corner and, well, it’s some other street than what is supposed to be there.

I’m specially fond of this clip, which features Adam Curry’s girlfriend Micky Hoogendijk.  The terrace café where the scene is filmed is about 30 feet from my apartment window (I think the police camera may be in my living room).

Flikken Maastricht (from my window)

Covenants

We’re securing the last bits of money for CamStent, meeting with investors, listening to their concerns, and adapting our governance to protect everyone’s rights.  These debates about promises and covenants are the most difficult ongoing discussions ongoing: what is right, what is fair, what is legal, what is moral?  Two cases illustrate the dilemmas.

Small investors worry about dilution: the impact that larger investors can have on their percentage ownership of the company.  We limit the size of funding rounds to fix their percentage, and put in strong pre-emptive rights to assure that they can maintain their percentage stake despite subsequent fundraising rounds.

Sometimes, that is difficult.  With a third of our round left to go,  an investor appeared to offer double the amount remaining, significantly oversubscribing the round.  Its real money, hard to obtain and extremely valuable to us at this stage.  However, that oversubscription dilutes every other shareholder’s percentage by 10%.  There’s no legal barrier, but is it right to take everything offered when we said we’d stop well short of that?

I consulted with my Board- they unanimously said ‘go ahead’.  They did recommend that we revise the budget to assure that the additional investment generated true asset value by achieving some tangible milestones.  They also recommended that we notify all investors, offering the opportunity to ‘top up’ to their expected percentage.

Not perfect, but good enough: I took the decision to accept (if available) the oversubscription.

Large investors worry about control: they want to be able to veto management significant actions that they disagree with, including:

• Any allotment or granting of rights to subscribe for shares other than as permitted under the Articles;

• Any alterations to the provisions of the Articles;

• Any reduction, subdivision, consolidation, redenomination, purchase or redemption by the Company of its own shares or other alteration in the share capital of the Company or any of the rights attaching to any share capital;

• Any entry into a transaction where any director of the Company has an interest including without limitation the payment of fees or other remuneration or the alteration of the terms of service or remuneration of any director except where such fees or remuneration are in the ordinary course and are reasonable; and

• Agree to the sale or disposal of any substantial part of the business, assets or undertaking of the Company including without limitation the licensing or disposal of any of its intellectual property.

It’s a balance: I need operational freedom to run the company, they want Board-level control of major decisions.  It comes down to trust: Neither doubts the other and promises not to interfere, but want their authority ‘just in case’.

In practice, we grant rights to major investors, subject to their continuing to have significant stake in the company and to putting their veto to a general vote of the minority shareholders if the Board determines that a veto is needlessly obstructive.

It’s all part of the Sisyphean task of securing and protecting resources, a universal issue that recurs throughout nature.  In that spirit,  I close with a video that I took of two Dung Beetles struggling with the task that all.

LipDub

“The coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” exulted University of British Columbia students.  “Pretty close to flash mobs,” advised my ever-cool daughter, while the Independent labeled it  “A phenomenon”.

LipDub videos are now on the radar.

I’m a bit embarrassed that it took this long for me to catch up with the phrase, although I’d known the concept for years: Pick a song, then film a five-minute lip-sync video in one swooping take through mobs of students singing along.  The earlier versions that I knew of featured original works, I remember 2006’s “Cambridge Facebook Song” (referred to as “The Facebook” throughout, betraying it’s origins in pre-Sean Parker days).  Then there was the “That’s why I chose Yale” sing-a-thon last year (and the memorable Harvard response).

LipDub is now a almost a competitive inter-campus sport.  Students are picking up sponsorships, recruiting ever-larger squads of syncers and dancers, adding production tricks and  “Making of…” supplements.   “To get them right takes a level of planning, dedication and perfectionism that is probably only achievable by 20-year-olds looking for something to do instead of an 1,800-word essay on city planning,” is the Independent’s take, while other papers feature casting calls for ongoing projects.

It was a slow evening last night, and I ended up brewing a bit of tea and chaining through YouTube for a couple of hours before turning in.  Among the ‘best of breed’ I found:

2009 Universite Laval –  “Livin’ on a Prayer” – a surprisingly good narrative framework, and nice use of the school football players.

2009 Université du Québec à Montréal – “I Gotta Feeling” – lots of good individual performances and costumes give this more of a street festival feel.  Extra points for their “One year later” mashup of international press clippings.

2010 University of St. Andrews – You Get What You Give” – somewhat spare and restrained by current standards, but this gives the Highlanders effort some charm as well.  Probably the coldest setting; lots of mittens in evidence.

2009 Boston University – “I Want You Back” – This one get’s the geographic stretch award as it lurches through numerous campus buildings and courtyards.  There is a lot of faceless concrete throughout the BU campus: I guess I got spoiled at Cambridge.

2010 Maastricht University School for Business and Economics – of course the Dutch do this too, and with a bit of zombie flair.  Nice for the familiar backgrounds and the inevitable musical choice of Queen.

With a roar and a whoosh

The water levels began rising overnight on the Maas, becoming a roar beneath the Stone Bridge by sunrise this morning.  It is sluicing through the arches, backwashing beyond the bridge, washing lots of mud and debris up from the south.

Rapid snowmelt in the Ardennes is blamed, and it should crest tomorrow without causing any damage.  Still, it’s been a good show today (especially as a tanker got crossways in the current and started sliding towards the bridge).

High water on the Maas

Everything points to Maastricht

Kind of a fun “Maastricht in 5 minutes” video, one of two put out by local civic boosters.  It’s fun to pick out the places I know and wonder about the many I don’t.

Carnivale Video

Two quick videos to give a bit of the dynamic of it all. The first it the band performing the Carnivale Song in Vrijthof Square on Saturday evening, the other is a typical street scene outside the pubs.

Maastricht Christmas Market

I feel like I didn’t really do justice to the Maastricht Christmas Market as it opened a couple of weeks ago. It doesn’t show well in the late November daytime, empty of people and with the booths and the attractions still getting going.

The SkyWheel has been lit and active every night across the river, beckoning a return to the Market this weekend. Friday night was rainy, the Fair largely empty, with only a few skaters sloshing around the ice rink or huddled into the buckets on the Wheel.  Still, it showed promise: the lights and booths were open and the gluhwine was warm and abundant. 

But the following night was dry and pleasant, the Market buzzing and laughing. Skaters were out in force (especially the little learner leaning on her Penguin, below), the sausages were excellent, and the carousel and the weird sinterklaas-themed trains whirred around full of squealing children. It was really a festive evening: the lights, the music, and the decorations for sale really capture the season.

This is how the evenings should be: it’s amazing to me that this hasn’t been adopted in US towns yet. 

I took a couple of minutes of video from the SkyWheel, posted below, which will give some idea of the scope of the seasonal activities in the Market.

Starling roost at sunset (video)

I wanted to get some good pictures back onto the city of Rome from the Ponte Sant' Angelo bridge on Thursday evening after the conference.  A huge flock of starlings gathered east of the bridge, over the trees, and started executing a “Starling roost”, forming fluid patterns of shadow and shape against the evening sky.  It’s an amazing sight, and played out over the river until the light had gone.

The pictures can’t do it justice, but the video (now posted on YouTube and linked, below) does.