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Tags: Google, Taptu, mobile phone, Bob Last

Tags: Brandy Schaffels, C. Scott Miller, Donna Schwartz Mills, John O’Dell, Mark Durham, Kristin Underwood, Laura Burstein, Bob Lutz

Transcript:

Guest: Win J. Neuger - AIG Global Investment Group

Announcer
It is my honor and privilege to introduce to you Win Neuger of AIG Global Investment Group.

Win J. Neuger - AIG Global Investment Group
Thank you, Bob and Good Morning to all of you. At this conference you’re going to hear from a lot of speakers who know much more about Cleantech than I do. In fact in the two sessions that we’ve already had, you’ve learned more about Cleantech then I know, but what I am going to try to do is put some context around Cleantech in an over all investment portfolio and to talk about social responsible investing as an integral part of any investment decision. I would promise that no investment should be made without taking into consideration, social responsible issues. Why is that? There are really three primary reasons.

The first is risk. Socially irresponsible companies are bad businesses and bad businesses are high risk businesses. Secondly, as we’ve talked about already today, there are huge opportunities in social responsibility in terms of return potential and not only in new technologies but in repackaging. Thirdly and finally, more and more people care and as an Investment Manager, it creates business opportunities for us to pay attention.

So, I’m going to talk about all three of those to try to put some context into this. Now I noticed as I was sitting down there and I saw my cover slide come up, you will notice two things here. First of all the building that has AIG on it, is a brand new building that we built in Hong Kong, it is a clean building, a highly successful clean building and of course we have the Wind Power there in the sale. So, to complete, I didn’t choose this slide, but I would have if I’d thought of it. So, let’s start by talking about risks.

As we all know, when we’re looking at investments, there’re many risks that we consider on a regular basis. We talk about financial risk, what’s the business plan, what are the operating risks of the company. I think all of us as investors have generally considered these risks in everything we’ve done. We do extensive modeling on those risks. We look at various sensitivities. We grow our companies both public and private on their business plan and on the degree of leverage, but most of us historically have ignored the social risks. I mean we start by saying well it’s not our job as main stream investors to look at the social risk.

That’s the job of social responsible investors, as SRI Funds, that’s what they do. They look at those risks. That’s not my job, I’m supposed to pick the best companies and pick the best return from my investors, so I don’t have to worry about those risks. Now, I’m no more of an expert on Global Warming that I’m on clean technology, but at least my risk criteria are rapidly evolving relative to these kinds of environmental risks. Companies that are irresponsible carbon emitters are paying a price for that or will pay a price for that, in fact in most of the world they do pay a price. US I think eventually they will pay a price.

Now, people who emit excess carbon in Europe, pay a true price and people who are — who generate carbon credits get paid for it. So, that’s our true dollars and cents or I guess in this case Euros and cent, transfer of wealth and in fact I believe even in the US that transfer of wealth takes place. I as an investor have to start to look at that potential legislation, that will put that tax on, for me and if I’m going to have that potential risk, I better start to factor that into, to my return equation.

So, in fact I will do that. Just as importantly, industry is pushing towards greater environmental responsibility and accountability. There’s no question in my mind that green buildings receive premium rents and a premium price on sale. This becomes even more so, when that high energy price and high energy consumption is tied in. You get that double whammy of a dirty building and a high priced rent because of energy cost.

Lastly, of course the risk of fines and other sanctions can be significant cost for companies that follow environmentally on some practices. GE, as we all know has paid something around $80 million so far. Many people think that will go to $150 million for dumping glutens into the Hudson River and just this week I received a publication called Executive Council which is on legal issues related to corporation and you see the two headlines here that were two articles in that journal, for those who can’t see it in the back. They’ve talked about criminal charges and criminal prosecutions. So, not only are we running the risk as polluters of civil sanctions, but also criminal sanctions.

So this is a very real risk to us as investors. Okay, so you say — okay maybe environmental issues, we really should take environmental issues into consideration. I’ll accept that as a risk, but that’s kind of the end of the line, I mean don’t talk to me about these other social risks.

Okay, where do you want me to start, I’ll start as I’m doing this slide with child labor. Now, I get two excuses that people use in terms of why they have child labor that produces product for them. The first is the three monkey defenses, hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. I outsourced this, I didn’t know that my suppliers were using child labor. So that’s not my fault. The other — which I think is equally bad, well it actually is a good thing because it’s bringing up the living standard in XYZ country. If it weren’t for the fact that we had cheap labor and child labor, we wouldn’t produce this good in that country. We will produce it somewhere else, so in fact that country and those kids would be worse-off.

So we’re actually doing a public service by hiring these kids. Now, I think they’re both equally bad, but in reality it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what consumers think? When you show up on 60 minutes with child labor, when you get experience and the revulsion of your clients or your customers, it has a real bottom line impact and you just have to ask Nike, who showed up on CBS with labor problems in Indonesia and in Life magazine with this 12-year-old boy in Pakistan sowing a Nike soccer ball. What the impact was on their sales, their margins and their stock price and what the impact was ultimately on the company and the changes and practices that they had to put in place.

GAP is another example, I’m sure all of you’ve read about the report that GAP did on their social responsibility report, where they reveal terrible working conditions in several countries in which they operate. Mexico, China, India and Russia. GAP actually had to cancel contracts with 136 different suppliers around the world in order to become compliant, a very true cost in terms of implementing that. In addition, I really belief that unsafe, unclean, working conditions ultimately have an impact in terms of social unrest and labor unrest in the country and eventually as people’s living standards come up to a certain level, lets say, I’m not going to take this anymore and you end up with labor unrest, you end up with strikes and certainly you have poor quality merchandise from that.

The Limited, which has made a commitment to a high quality working conditions and its suppliers and a commitment and forcing them to make a commitment that they will impose that all the way through the supply chain, is absolutely convinced that the net result of that, even though they pay a little more, the net result of that is high quality merchandise and far fewer returns and far more satisfied customers at the end. So, they make sure that all of their strategic partners have these processes throughout, as I said throughout their supply chain.

The final risk that I’ll discuss briefly is corporate governance. I think we have enough examples in the past couple of years of companies that have met there demise in the US, in Europe and in Japan, just to pick on the developed countries and a lot of that has been driven by poor corporate governance. Companies that have greater transparency have greater stability and predictability of their financial results and that’s not just greater transparency in terms of financial results, but also social, environmental and governance. Organizational stability as I said leads to predictability of corporate profits, which leads to risk reduction on their investments.

So, now I want to turn to the opportunity side of the equation. You will hear a lot about new Cleantech ideas at this conference, but it’s clear to me that between Kyoto and high oil prices, great opportunities are being created not just with new technologies, although I guess — if I look at that earlier slide, I guess it’s still considered new, things like wind and solar, ethanol, roughage to energy and carbon devouring forestry. All these are great new if you will, investment opportunities.

Furthermore, if you ought to respond to whole new trading up market in carbon emission. So, Co2 emissions are now an actively traded commodity. New social responsibility and concerns are also bringing new customers to green products. I presume that there’s a reason that BP and GE are using the themes of beyond petroleum and Ecomagination in their ad campaigns. I don’t think it’s just because they want to show themselves in a good light to the government or to the people that might prosecute them, they do it because their customers care is my belief. Their customers truly care.

So, while GE recognizes its past wrong doings, the company also recognizes the opportunities presented through climate change initiatives. Plans to double its revenues to $20 billion in 2010 from the sale of environmentally friendly products and is committed to double its annual investments in Cleantech to $1.5 billion by 2010. Even Wall-Mart, as the earlier slide shows, has gotten the message that being social responsible matters to their clients or to their customers and that people won’t show up in the store if they don’t take a better stand.

I mentioned earlier that tenants care about their carbon footprint and are willing to pay for green space. Mentioned earlier, customers are paying for premium — are paying a premium rather for hybrid cars. Furthermore, cleaning up the environment is good business. At AIG, we were able to take a — an environmentally contaminated site in Atlanta, Midtown Atlanta which is — if you know Atlanta is prime infield location and turn it from a brown field into a green field and a truly green investment. Green both in terms of the environment and green in terms of the profit to the investors. We talked — if you look at the insert or the cover page in the packet for today’s meeting, it talks about the second industrial revolution.

Well, in the first industrial revolution, great productivity produced by a wonderful steel plant outside of Atlanta which, of course, now is pretty much in the middle of Atlanta — very important to the growth of the region and to the country. By 1999, that old steel plant was an environmentally contaminated, blighted, urban location that no one would touch and today it’s a thriving green development that has in this fabulous location, close to Downtown Atlanta with a multi-use project with office, retail and residential. Atlantic Station received recognition from various organizations including the EPA’s 2004 Phoenix Award for the best national brown field development, the U.S. Green Building Counsel, LEED’s prototype credits, developments within buildings within Atlantic Station and the first high-rise building that we built was the first office building in the US to receive LEED’s Silver Core and Shell Certification, our second high-rise building was pre-certified as LEED Gold and the Sierra Club identified this as America’s best new development project in 2005.

Now, I’ll just run through those not to toot our own horn, but really decide that building a project like this, taking a blighted site, re-mediating it and building a quality project, enables you to not only do good but to do extremely well from an investment point of view. Social responsible investing socially responsible companies have also done well in the market. Nick talked about his new Cleantech index. I mean there are a couple of other industries that we have looked at that show this. For example, the Dow Jones sustainability index has significantly outperformed the general market. Over the past 12 months, the Dow Jones sustainability index outperformed the SNP by over seven-and-a-half percentage points and over the past 3 and 5 years by 16% and 10%, respectively.

So it’s paid again to make these investments. In Japan, the Morningstar Japanese SRI index has outperformed the Nikkei 225 over the past year by almost 2 percentage points and again for 3 and 5 year periods has significantly outperformed as well. So, there clearly is not a social responsible investment penalty, in fact it’s been clear up side. Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about what’s in it for us as an asset manager. The first thing is, as I said, it does matter, it matters to the results, I mean in terms of your investment performance and if you think about it, that‘s our product, that’s what we are outselling to our clients and selling to our affiliated insurance companies. These are investment results.

But, it’s also important in terms of other factors, for example, retention and hiring of people. A lot of studies have been done in terms of employees wanting to work for companies that are socially responsible. It’s interesting, I learned recently that Google as an example will pay any employee who buys a hybrid car, $5000. I’m sure they do that because of their concern and their commitment about the environment, but I’m sure also they do it because it’s a great recruiting tool, because again as I say, people want to work for a company that cares. So, the reputational advantages for SRI are also important. It’s clearly been a success or been an indicator of success as I said for hiring, for retaining, it reduces absenteeism, improves work and productivity and the quality of product. The flip side is also true. People don’t want to work for companies that have poor records in terms of social responsibility. They don’t want to have to go tell their friends, “Oh I work for this dirty company,” it’s just not where people want to work.

As we all know hiring and retaining quality workforce is one of the biggest challenges I think we have in every industry in this country and around the world. Our position on sustainability, which I’ll talk about a little bit more, in fact, was developed by an employee task force. I mean a lot of our position was developed by taking a group about ten people and saying, “Look I think this is important, you all develop what you think our practice strategy should be.”

So couple of years ago we put this team together and they came up with significant recommendations, most of which we have implemented at their recommendation. Some of the things that AIG has done you may have read, AIG has a clear policy now on environment and climate change, we have established an office of environment and climate change which is headed by my colleague Alice LeBlanc who’s here. We have worked to minimize our own green house gas emissions and we have committed to communicating and monitoring the results.

Furthermore, we have developed risk management and derivative products in Co2 trading. Again, there are clear business opportunities in all these areas. We have insured a project’s ability to generate tradable carbon credits and we have provided consulting and technical services for energy in carbon reduction programs. Within AIG Global Investment Group, I’ve already talked about our green building. All of our buildings are green. We’re committed to remediation and recoupment and brown field projects. We use environmentally sustainable construction materials, energy efficient design, etcetera. In our public and equity indebt products, we’re committed first to finding companies that meet the dual objectives, but also committed to evaluating the social issues on every single company in which we invest.

In our private equity side, we make investments in emerging markets that develop those countries, in Asia, in developing Europe and Latin America. We have a social responsible hedge fund that we sell to clients. We have social responsible equity products in the US and Japan and we have committed a significant portfolio to sustainable investments in Europe, which is run by another one of my colleagues who is here, Julia Balandina.

So, all of these things we think are opportunities for us and for other investors. So, let me conclude by saying that I believe that the evidence is increasingly clear. Any investor who fails to consider environmental, social and governance issues in all of it’s investments, is taking out risks, that it’s not paying — that it’s not accounting for and not getting paid for. Furthermore, they’re missing the upside potential of clean technology, green buildings and other product developments and finally, by missing the reputational opportunities that are important to many of their shareholders, they’re failing to satisfy employees, shareholders, and customers. Investors can in fact do well by focusing on social, environmental and governance issues and by doing good, they can do very well, so thank you very much.

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Tags: Cleantech Venture Forum, AIG, Win Neuger

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Transcript:
Host: Eric Smith - Control4
Guest: Bob Metcalfe - 3Com

Eric Smith - Control4
I’m Eric Smith, CTO and Founder of Control4 and I am here today at the CES show with Bob Metcalfe, doesn’t need that much introduction, inventor of Ethernet, Founder of 3Com and many other things.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
…and Chairman of Ember.

Eric Smith - Control4
And chairman of Ember?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
A ZigBee supplier.

Eric Smith - Control4
Who is one of our best providers and we’re here just kind of talking about technologies and kind of the future of automation and what’s happening and it’s exciting for us to be involved in this kind of a business.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
People talk about the future of Home Automation, you have to be careful, it’s here already that what we’re really talking about, it has to do with very large numbers, but as you — we were talking earlier, Home Automation has been around for 20 years and it’s beginning to develop some scale now.

Eric Smith - Control4
We founded Control4 on two fundamental technologies, which are Ethernet and Zigbee and really we wouldn’t be the company we were without those things. We need those connectivity standards and honestly for a startup company, like us that’s focus on this kind of product to develop our own networking standards, just wasn’t feasible. And the main reason we needed too, is we needed some things for high throughput, higher bit rate, user interface and things like that and so certain things I mean that kind of thing did, but we also needed kind of a low bit rate, but high reliability, very inexpensive control network. Spent a lot of time looking for a solution, we even looked at putting Wi-Fi in light switches at one point, but it was then that we discovered ZigBee and got pretty excited about it.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, there’re different kinds of networks for different purposes and there’s large numbers of them in the notion that they’ll be in one emerging standard just doesn’t fly because of what you just said, there’s just such a diversity of the requirement.

Eric Smith - Control4
I think this is why people ask me sometimes when Home Automation standardize, will Windows PC just talk to it all, would it just — how’s it all going to work together and there has been this kind of dream of a plug-and-play home, you put in a light switch, put in a thermostat and it just works. And I often tell people, “Well, look at your PC today. How many different ports are on the sides of that PC?” So, why is there an Edge Modem in it and a Wi-Fi modem underneath in that port and a traditional 56K modem and a USB and a FireWire and a parallel port and a serial port and a mouse connector and a cable connector, or a keyboard connector and a video connector, why so many ports? And that’s a pretty standardized area, it’s we’ve been working on it for a long time and that to think there one standards is going to do, everything seems pretty strange.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well the problem with that suggestion that the Windows PC would be the center of everything is just how what a bad starting point Windows is for something that supposed to be easy to use and transparent and user friendly. I mean we live in fear at our house that something will break with the computer and then we’re going to have to call somebody to come in because we can’t fix it ourselves.

Eric Smith - Control4
I’ve been seeing especially with the advent of the Media Center PC, which is a pretty fun technology, I really enjoy the Media Center PC, but just like any other experience I’ve had at the PC, it’s a PC and occasionally it falls down and people, I don’t know the last time I’ve had to reboot my Sony receiver, it’s been a long time.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
You have this, as you just said this Ethernet ZigBee combo in your products, so what do you use each of them for? I guess you would use the Ethernet for going up stream into the Internet and you would use ZigBee for going down stream into the control points?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Yeah, generally, we just occasionally use the Ethernet to get between devices when it’s possible to, but what we really needed and Home Automation has been around for a long time. I think most consumers are becoming aware of it recently, but it’s been around for 16-17 years at least. I mean that’s how long I’ve been involved in it, but it’s always been kind of this metaphor you’ve either had these kind of, like your XTen stuffing by RadioShack that works most of the time, but was very inexpensive, or you had these very nice wired systems. The problem is what’s the odds that as you have a piece of 5-wire in a light switch box, it’s pretty low for most consumers.

ZigBee is just amazing and because it gives us a very robust, very inexpensive control network that makes all the devices talk and they talk reliably and I think most of it has to do with the mesh networking capabilities there where every device doesn’t have to see, it’s way all the way back to the controller, just as we’ll see the next device.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I think you underestimated how old XTen is. I mean I think XTen was around in early 80s, so that be 20 some years ago. It’s amazing how that has persisted.

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s still around and it’s — but it has been mostly a obvious thing because it doesn’t always work. And so, it’s really hard for someone who makes a business of selling Home Automation to put in XTen, because if a certain light in the basement won’t turn off because there’s a compressor on it deep freeze down there next to it, there is nothing that do, or can do about it. And the consumer is going to say, “Why is that? You’ve said it would turn off the lights, it doesn’t turn off that light; I want my money back.” ZigBee allows us to provide the kind of reliability of the wire systems, but very close to the price points of the old XTen systems.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Have you thought ahead to when every home has every device on a Control4 network whether there’ll be any interference or overlaps or security breaches are in?

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s definitely something that’s concerning that’s one of my favorite things about ZigBee, is the fact that it has encryption built into it, so that your neighbor can’t just hack your lighting system, or even worse, your security system. I love that and I love the fact that there’re different frequencies. So that there’re 16 different channels, so we can move things around and have a house next door to another house. We’re doing quite a few apartment buildings at this point and we’re finding it works quite well, even when you’ve one apartment right on top of another, there’s full security between them and they all tend to work quite well.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
How does ZigBee do in a Wi-Fi environment?

Eric Smith - Control4
That’s always a good interesting question too.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I guess you could ask it the other way around, how does Wi-Fi do in the ZigBee environment?

Eric Smith - Control4
My best example of all of that is this trade show actually — the Consumer Electronic Show is the worst Wi-Fi nightmare on the planet, mean if you walk over the Convention Center across the street and you set an access point in a Laptop, next to each other, they will not connect. There’s so much noise in that 2.4 Giga Hertz Wi-Fi spectrum. What’s interesting is, ZigBee is in the same spectrum, but because it uses different techniques of sending data, it works better in it. We’ve got a booth right over there in the mid of that where Wi-Fi does not work in that building and the ZigBee works great and it’s a kind of an amazing thing.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, all that prior planning and engineering is paying off now.

Eric Smith - Control4
It is and it’s — companies like Ember that have made it happen for us, we’ve been very excited about that.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, introduce a long term standard like Ethernet was, like ZigBee will be, you do a lot of engineering, thinking of scalability in the long turn and then when you first come out with products, they’re too expensive because they’ve all that functionality, multi channel, encryption, frequency this, frequency that, speed and the initial instantiation of the product that you compare that to the junky proprietary things and they look better.

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely.

Eric Smith - Control4
So, if there was Ethernet in the early 80s at 10 mega bits per second and put up a little ARCNET look better because it was much, much cheaper, it didn’t have all that rigmarole in it. Of course then it’s the networks scaled up and as the Ethernet got cheaper then the frailty of the proprietary things faded.

Eric Smith - Control4
I remember when the concept of an Ethernet card built into a computer was just absurd. I mean no one would think about building that in because how many people really need that with network anyway and so you buy a NIC card and put it in the PC and make it work together. And it was a pretty neat thing and I think it was like about 95 or 96, when I first started seeing Ethernet card standard in the PCs. And I think the problem was, as I said earlier we looked into it for control systems, but it was in the neighborhood of $80 to $90 back in 1995 to put Ethernet on a device, now it’s $5 or $6.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, the first Ethernet card I sold cost 5000.

Eric Smith - Control4
I can imagine?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
But ZigBee has a similar problem in that. It is — because now we’re down to some $5, way below $5 single chip solutions and that’s continuing to go down. So, as the network scale up and as the Control4 networks get bigger so that the features of ZigBee are more appreciated and then as we manage at Ember to get ZigBee to be cheaper and cheaper, a little take off.

Eric Smith - Control4
Volume plays the game almost everywhere in the — we’re seeing it happened already and I think when you get to. If you go right now — Control4 sells dimmers their $99 and that honestly shocks regular people, $99 for light switch? Because they’re used to that $2 home depot that a rocker and that seems expensive, but if you look that as compared to the other technologies, they’ve historically have been the lighting systems, they were $350 - $400 and so people in this industry tend to go, “Wow, $99 dimmer? That’s just as affordable as anything I’ve ever seen.” But I do believe, we’ll get down to where they were at the $25 to $29 dimmer, which is about the price of a decent dimmer, home depot right now. If you want to go buy nice dimmer that you can put on your wall, that’s would it cost and I think that’s when it becomes ubiquitous. I think we’re on the right curve to get there.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
It’s all inevitable really just at the moment — it sort of feels like it’s coming, but it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen. Those curves always happen.

Eric Smith - Control4
The one I’d like to look at is similar I talk about is, one of our evidences that Home Automation will hit the broad market, is that rich people and regular people are the same, they want the same things, just rich people can afford them. And high-end homes tend to have these systems. They’ve been for at least for last five years most high-end homes that are being built, have a Multi-room Audio System, have a dedicated media room, have lighting control, have an integration system.

If you look back 30 years ago, how many cars had power locks and power windows? It was only the very high-end cars because it’s quite of an expensive feature. Well I just read something a couple of months ago and one the papers saying that, Apple-Ford and Chrysler aren’t going to offer crank Windows anymore because that mechanical crank is more expensive than the power window motors,” because they’ve gone into a volume now that that’s less expensive and I think we’ll get there.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, look at the GPS I am never going to buy a car without a GPS.

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
How long will it be before all cars have GPS in them, five years, two years, eight years?

Eric Smith - Control4
I don’t think it’s very long.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Not very long.

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s the best thing for men because we don’t have to ask for directions ever again.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, Eric, I have been — as to ensure the expert in Home Automation and I’m just the expert on networking. How do you see things rolling out over the next 10 years, so you can use our networks in your Home Automation systems?

Eric Smith - Control4
I believe the prices will go to the point in the next 10 years that most consumers, almost all consumers will have, like the same kinds of consumers that have TVs, will have Automation. I think we’re going to get there because the price points are going to get there and…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Yeah, but there’s another point, there’s price points and I take your — I’m not just agreeing, but then there’s usability points, that’s right now a lot of our systems they’re as like my Honeywell Thermostats that I have on that, which are very old. I still can’t program those things. I go through the manual pressing all those silly buttons, so when you’re going to reach a — when do you think, or have you already reached the usability price point where things take off?

Eric Smith - Control4
Well, fundamentally when you look at Home Automation, it’s about two issues. It’s about networking all devices so they talk to each other and then building up a common user interface to all those devices. And the thermostats is a very good question because programming a setback thermostat with a little cryptic buttons and keys, trying to figure out what you’re doing is almost impossible, it’s a real pain. And one of the things we do because we talk to the thermostat whether it be one that we build or someone else does, we can present that UI on your home PC, which is a much better user interface, you have a much better ability to do things on that.

Can you imagine trying to do — like buy a new computer on your thermostat, but buying it on a Web page isn’t that hard. If you can program your thermostats through a Web interface, you can give them a better user experience. If you can do it through your TV and things like that. The other things that happens, if we have a setback thermostat, I know you live somewhere it’s kind of cold, in most of the year. Most people have their thermostats setbacks so that in the evening, it turns out that sets back to heat a little bit, then brings a backup in the morning at 6:30, say, but have you ever had to catch a flight earlier than that? Did you actually reprogram your thermostat to bring out the heat? No, it’s too difficult.

But if you have an automation system, your alarm clock could be integrated to your thermostat. So, now when you set your alarm clock to wake you up an hour earlier, because you’re going to go catch a flight, they track automatically adapts to turn on 20 minutes before that wake up and that really makes a great experience for the consumer.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I need that, absolutely. Because my situation is so bad that when Daylight Savings Times comes, we just let the heat come on an hour earlier or later depending on (voice overlap) we can figure it out.

Eric Smith - Control4
It is too difficult to program this stupid thing. It is very difficult and that’s one of the benefits of automation. And another one I’d like talk about a lot, is people say why automate things? I mean I’ve got all these separate systems, but there’re real synergies to come when you integrate the systems. The best example I can think of is, if you have a smoke detection system, that’s integrated with your heating and air conditioning system and that’s integrated with your lighting system and that’s integrated to your motorization, like motorized blinds, or garage door and that’s also integrated with your audio system, there’re some really interesting synergies that can come.

Let’s say the smoke detectors go off, when people are in a fire what kills them? It’s usually not the fire, it’s the smoke. Well, a heating air conditioning system is a perfect mover of smoke in your house, so I call it the equal opportunity killer. Doesn’t matter where the fire is in the house? The HVAC will make sure that the smoke gets to every room; it also provides fresh Oxygen. So, if the smoke detectors could immediately turn off the heating systems, the fan doesn’t blow. That has some real tangible benefit for a consumer. Usually when fires kill people tonight…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Turning the lights on.

Eric Smith - Control4
…dark, turn the lights on. Maybe not full blast — though because it might do the fog light a whole, but bring up 20% so you don’t blind yourself in the middle of night. How about making the motorized blinds in the garage door, automatically pop open so you get quicker escapes, so you don’t have to wait for door to go. How about having the audio system announce over the house, system where the fire is? By law, all smoke detectors have to go off, even if one senses the fire, but if the audio system could say, “You know the fire downstairs in the office, or the storage room,” that would be very helpful to people getting out of the house.

Another the problem is, fire trucks come at down the street at night. It’s a little bit hard to see address numbers on a house and truthfully if the flames are coming out the roof, it’s too late. The fires usually are hidden if you could have your front porch lights and yard lights are flashing that has some real tangible benefit, that kind of shows how you feel — integrate all those systems. That really has benefit because there’s so much…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, there’s three sort of triggers, there’s price point, there’s usability point and then there’s systemic value point to connecting everything together. Those three things are driving adoption I’m guessing.

Eric Smith - Control4
People have been looking. I’ve spoken at probably 15 conferences, where the topic was, “What’s killer app of Home Automation,” and they’re looking for the killer app, kind of like the Spreadsheet was for the PC, what’s the killer app for Automation? The challenge I think is that the killer app is the integration itself. It’s the making the things work together that is the killer app, I don’t think there’s anyone item of a Home Automation that’s going to be the reason why people buy it all by itself.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, that’s another benefit of standardized networking. When you have a standardized network, not only does it get cheaper more quickly because there’re a lot of people using it driving volume, but then there’s also the value of being able to connect products from many different companies together, so that you can — “Oh, there’s a light I will use ZigBee that talk to it.”

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely. Well, thank you Bob it’s been great talking to you and it’s been good to spend some time with you.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
It’s exciting being here at CES with you.

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Tags: automated home, networking, Eric Smith, Control4, 3Com, Bob Metcalfe, venture capitalist, ZigBee, Smart Home, Rocky Mountain Voices

My personal favorite from last year is from the Quiksilver Canis Lupus Challenge. As we learn from Dan Campbell-Lloyd and Libby Dowd, videocasting allows for quick and affordable content creation and distribution that makes a great impression.

Armed with his HighDef video camera and wide-angle lens, Dan hits the slopes and documents the mountain, skiers, snowboarders, ski patrol, and more. Video was selected over audio podcasts because of the visual experience video provides — and this makes a lot of sense after learning that three out of every four skiers who book destinations from a resort’s web site select a location based on the photo of the day (powder, blue sky, terrain park tricks, etc.).

Brad Baldwin goes on location just below the Saddleback Express Lift where skiers, boarders and snow patrol are hitting the mountain.

Listen to all the Ski and Snowboard Resort Guides from Rocky Mountain Voices, including mountain insights and secrets from the ski directors at Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, Brighton, The Canyons, Park City, and Deer Valley.

Tags: video podcasts, Brad Baldwin

Reporter’s Notes: Starz is taking the content creation game seriously–just today it announced the formation of a new motion picture studio, Overture Films, which will produce, acquire and distribute eight-to-twelve full-length feature films a year. The new studio will be headed by Chief Executive Officer Chris McGurk and Chief Operating Officer Danny Rosett. Both are industry veterans with significant experience in film production, marketing and distribution at Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios Inc., prior to MGM’s 2005 sale to a group of investors led by Sony Corp.

- Matt Kelly

Click here for transcript.

Tags: Dow Jones, VentureWire, Bob Clasen, Starz, IDT Entertainment, Overture Films

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Word on the web is that “Apple is readying a dizzying amount of new products” (Scobleizer).

As always, rumors and speculation will be in full force with coverage by most if not all Mac enthusiast sites:
RoughlyDrafted, AppleInsider, Mac Rumors, Spymac, The Mac Observer, Think Secret, Slashdot, TUAW, AppleWatch, Cult of Mac, Your Mac Life, The Apple Core, MacSlash, MacSurfer, and others.

And what do you need to know if you’re going to attend the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco? PodTech’s Michael Johnson speaks with freelance author John Martellaro, who has attended the last 13 WWDC events and contributes to The Mac Observer’s Hidden Dimensions series.

More from Apple Voices

Apple WWDC

Tags: Steve Jobs, John Martellaro, WWDC

Gabe kept his project top secret from most of the world up til last month and now it’s changing how people consume the web. Recently Dave Winer called his product an innovation that is changine the web. This week Mike Arrington at TechCrunch was publically called out over a post on memeorandum by a paid consultant to memeorandums competitor (btw: that no one has heard of until now - that consultant should pay Mike). Mike then responded.

FULL TRANSCRIPT - http://podtech.wordpress.com — (Yes Scoble I’m using Wordpress too)

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