This might not come as a total surprise: I’m starting a company.

Hints came up all over this place, but today we’re ready to announce a bit more. By we, I’m talking about Peter Bihr and a third person whose name we currently can’t disclose because of his continuing contract. Both guys are my friends and really, really good at what they’re doing.

The idea to do something together came up during Peter’s and my trip to New York and Austin in March of this year. We’ve known each other for a while then and also appreciated each others work, but most importantly we just knew that there aren’t many people with whom we would want to start a company, but we knew that it would work out for us. I still remember quite vividly how we sat down in Austin at Cafe de Paris, a French place with great Crepes near the Austin Convention Center to write down the names of who we would like to invite into the venture. The one name that we can’t disclose right now came up first and although we talked about one or two other ones as well, there was never a doubt that it’s really going to be only the three of us.

We didn’t have to do much convincing after coming back to Germany. We started brainstorming, shaping our ideas, writing down what’s important to us and creating an identity for the company that we wanted to start.

Now that the launch of the company is almost imminent (October), we’re quite pleased with what we’ve accomplished so far. So, what’s going to be, you might ask? The most vague and accurate description at the same time: it’s going to be a boutique, trend and strategy agency. We all have a background in Social Media strategy, so that’s obviously going to be one of our main topics. We also will help to organize events and create some of our own, we also will try to make us visible by taking up on those speaking engagements and we’re hoping to help international startups to establish themselves in Germany and Europe. We’re surely will experiment with different topics like Cognitive Cities. Trying, failing, succeeding will be in the nature of this company.

Another big change – beside founding a company – will be the move to Berlin, since that’s where we will be located. Our office will be located in Kreuzberg and if you’ve seen the new office of Yourneighbours you already know where we will move in – very exited to be sharing an office with some kick ass people.

All is coming together, it’s exciting and frightening at the same time, but it made me smile about the future.

Here’s what Peter wrote on that matter.

Seems like I’ve been wrong. Really, really wrong.

The announcement of Google Wave was huge PR splash for Big G. In fact, it was so huge that every media outlet was looking for a statement by somebody who can identify what exactly Google Wave is and when exactly it will releave old Dr. E-Mail from its duties. I’ve been one of those people who stepped in front of a couple of microphones. I never promised a soonish switch from E-Mail to Wave, but I did promise that Google Wave is more than the client that Google released and most everybody didn’t like. From my perspective, Wave was for Google mostly the technology in the background.

As I said, I was wrong.

I never spoke to anybody from Google about their plans about Google Wave and by now I almost believe that the media frenzy wasn’t planed and indeed turned out to be a problem for the product and the technology itself. The expectations bar went through the roof and made it impossible to succeed.

The fact, that most people didn’t like Google Wave didn’t help either, although I’m very sure that it was indeed much better than most people are saying. It required a bit time – more then the usual tech blogger, who is required to write 50 blog posts a day to make rent in either New York or San Francisco could afford to spent with. And that was that.

Sure, there are some grave usability issues and Google Wave isn’t really the kind of web service that calls itself self-explanatory. Again, this was mostly based on the fact that it didn’t wanted to be a single purpose machine – it was whatever the user wanted it to be (in the range of its technological limitation). This again is in a world of curation, where Apple tells everybody how to hold an iPhone is not really something that people understand.

Let me put it this way: I’ve managed a dozen different project in Google Wave. There is a complete conference organizing thing going on in my account and … oh … I’m planing a company complete with Google Wave. For me it was the best tool for collaboration out there, mostly because indeed it was not only a Wiki, a chat, etc. – it was a complex instrument that delivered.

You might think, that I indeed blame all the people who didn’t like Google Wave. Not at all. I find it a bit frustrating, that so many lack the ability to confront themselves with technology for a bit longer then 30 seconds, but the problem is really not there.

The problem is, that Google doesn’t seem to know what they want. After Google announced the fact that they’re not going to continue develop Wave anymore, Eric Schmidt told a bunch of people that that’s the way Google is doing things. It releases them to the public and follows the adoption curve.

Well, crap.

First of, there are a lot of products at Google that have been released to the public, which practically nobody uses and somehow don’t get shut down. That’s of course, because most of them don’t have a huge development team sitting in Sidney, I get that. But the problem isn’t the cost either, it’s the lack of vision and Google’s ability to execute new ideas till the end. With that kind of attitude, it will be very hard for Google to compete on anything beside its cash cow (search) and it will be harder for them not to be seen as a single purpose company that covers the basics (release early, release often), but doesn’t seem to know how to go beyond that.

In future, I will have to measure this into the equation, if somebody asks me something about a new Google product.

Going to see a movie has a lot to do with managing expectations. A movie can be great, but if the person who is watching it comes into the dark, sometimes strange smelling room and expects something else, there is really nothing a movie can do.

That’s partially my problem with Inception. My timing was bad, I guess. I shouldn’t have waited a week to see the movie. That gave me enough time to see all the hype on the internet that has surrounded the latest installment by Nolan. Especially Cory Doctorow’s “it’s one of the best scifi movies I have ever seen” kinda blew my mind. I also like Jeremy Keith’s review of the movie, who so eloquently highlighted the fact that the movie lacks any product placement. (I actually did looked out for that and only detected a pattern in the selection of the cars: they’ve used quite a few Mercedes-Benz, but the camera never tried to place the brand into the foreground.

My whole problem with the movie comes down to this: I’ve expected Science Fiction.

It really is that simple. SciFi is my favorite genre and I watched and read a lot SciFi, so I have a very clear expectation towards it. SciFi is, contrary to the common believe, not about space ships and technology, but about hope, exploration and gazing into the future. It’s about new frontiers. Mostly, it’s about curiosity.

None of that is in Inception. Sadly so, I might add, because it actually starts outs with a certain taste of gibsonesk endeavor. Big, global corporations, entangled in a fight to become the real super powers of the world use mercenaries to wander between cognitive levels … there is a taste of Neuromancer there. But very soon the whole story comes down to one, very boring, very selfish and very conservative point: the main character, played by the ever trying, but not really succeeding Leonardo DiCaprio, wants to get back to his family. Moreover, the whole plot is based about something that is rooted in the past instead of the future. Everything is based on whatever Dom Cobb is keeping in himself, in his past instead of what might be coming. That’s rarely enough for any good plot, but especially in a SciFi context is just sucks.

Moreover, there are a lot of unnecessary cliches in the movie. My highlight, and I really laughed during the scene, is the part where Robert Fisher – the son who gets all the money, but never got the love of his father – pulls out the wind wheel out of the safe. Something screamed Rosebud! Rosebud! in my mind and it all came down to a simplified Kafka moment. Cillian Murphy succeeded to transform himself from being hunted down by zombie’s in 28 Days Later to embody Robert Fisher, who really is nothing more then a shell of a man, a zombie of some sort.

Murphy isn’t the only actor who is being reduced to less of what he really is. Marion Cotillard, after receiving the Oscar for bringing Edith Piaf back to life, was downsized to being Mal, the ideal wife who was broken by her husband. Her character is really only driven by her wanting to spend all her life with her husband. I’m all for romance, I really am (big fan of Sleepless in Seattle), but these days it’s just not enough to be that simple.

Ellen Page was the all clever, teenage looking student of the Master himself and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I adore in Brick and 500 Days of Summer was actually only cast, because Keanu ‘I have no emotions in my face’ Reeves was to old to be Arthur in Inception. That kinda bumped me out a lot, because I have this image of Gordon-Levitt being the indie guy, who is a real actor, but he really doesn’t get the opportunity to show what he actually can do in front of the camera.

All of this leads of course to a total linearity in the storyline. The three levels are being reduced to a one way highway down one road. First the chase in a city, then the obligatory hotel scene and a rather James Bond like show down in a snowy paradise, which is of course just there, because somewhat thought that it would impress somebody. It didn’t really.

The action is – of course – very well made. The effects, the setting, the whole craftsmanship is impeccable, but to expect something less from the best professionals in the world with a huge budget would be wrong either. Nobody is impressed by VFX anymore.

In the second half of the movie, I’ve started to think to myself that Inception would have been a great game. It would have worked story wise better, because we aren’t quite used to expect from games a complex story. The whole architecture of the movie would also make a lot of sense as a game design. Unfortunately, there aren’t quite a lot good games based on a movie, so I’m not exactly holding my breath on this one.

All in all, it’s really about how one frames this movie. My expectation was to see a new a great new SciFi film, instead I got … well, whatever it was.

Trying to find a transcript of a video of Tim O’Reilly’s opening keynote at the 2007 Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin isn’t as easy as it sounds. Which disproves the saying that Google doesn’t forget. If the Ubernerd is talking in front of over a thousand nerds and you can’t find it on the net merely three years later, there is seemingly a chance for privacy after all.

The quote I’ve been looking for had something to do with centralization. O’Reilly was telling the crowd how everything in the Web 2.0 biz is starting out as fragmented community of startups, but eventually there will be a tendency towards centralization. I’m not a 100%, if that’s right, but that’s how I remember it and if by any chance remembers it correctly and the right quote doesn’t make my point obsolete, please feel free to post it in the comments.

My views on centralization are very clear: I’m not a fan. In some cases I do understand the need for it, but in the end we should always work towards solution that aren’t making us dependable on one or few providers of a specific service / product.

Do you remember the time we started blogging? The ability to do so wasn’t accessible to everyone at the same time, but during a very short period of time, we came to realize that having the ability to publish content, freely, openly, without political or financial agendas and without censorship is a big step towards something good. We’re today less dependent on information from few sources then before and we’re able to prove the still very influential elites wrong, if they’re actually wrong. Some people even called that a revolution and although no real blood was shed, it’s in fact a abrupt and hefty step towards freedom of information. Most of the readers of this blog are enjoying the fruits of this revolution in one way or another.

I didn’t agree with O’Reilly back in 2007. It didn’t make any sense for me that the fragmentation that helped to produce so many fantastic ideas would actually turn back on its principles and go towards centralization. But O’Reilly being the Ubernerd and me still practically a rookie … well, you know, I’m wrong.

Today we seem to have more centralized products with great influence on the whole ecosystem then in 2007. Apple’s iTunes platform is just one part of the equation. Look what happened after Amazon announced the price drop for the Kindle. Everybody stopped breathing for a second and actually started ordering this thing. Sure, the price is hot and who really cares about the fact that you can’t take your books out of the Kindle store. After all, who would switch from it anyway, right? Remember how that worked out with Windows?

But it’s not only those two. I’ve only recently started buying applications for my Nexus One and during this process I found myself wandering about the fact that I’m actually buying software that I can’t give away or sell it after I’m finished with it. I’m used to buy games and give them to my friends, but not on the mobile platform, not even with Google’s ‘open’ Android.

The internet, the so called revolution … we gained a lot of freedom in the process, but somehow we seem to lose a bunch of it to those new gate keepers. We’ve maybe striped the power of people like Rupert Murdoch, but we are slowly and quietly giving it to different people. Mostly, because right now it’s so convenient and pretty.

The title is from my money quote out of this video I’ve just seen about two brothers that are in the business of doing incredible chocolate. Look for yourself.

The Mast Brothers from The Scout on Vimeo.

The whole line was: “ … we’re looking for an inconsistent product.”

It might be one of those quotes that seem only remarkable for somebody who is soon starting his own business, but I think it captures in a great way the idea of how we want our products to be. Maybe not all of them, but in some cases that’s the truth.

This inconsistency in a product is pretty expensive and not everybody can afford it. Big companies want always to release the best, non-individual product. They don’t like to say it, but fact is that it’s cheaper and they can earn more per unit or whatever it’s that they’re selling. Fact is, it’s hard for them to create mainstream, inconsistent products.

Agencies, the ones who are actually selling consulting, are trying to create products. Why? Because they can spent less time per client, if they have stuff they just can sell. Press releases, Social Media Press Releases and how much does a website actually cost? The reason here is the same as everywhere: costs. Big agencies always lack personal. They don’t usually hire so that they’re prepared to take on a big client, but let the already over worked crew do the pitching, get the money into the house and then start hiring. Which makes it even harder for the project team to concentrate on the deadlines, because they now not only need to do the job, bu also hire somebody and get them up to speed on what is going on.

This might not come as a surprise: it’s not working very well.

And especially in a consulting business is a standardized product a somewhat ridiculous idea. Sure, one can define the standard press release, but try to define a website or a blog or how somebody should launch their Facebook presence. Those things need a close relationship to the client and an inconsistent product that is completely and utterly created for the client in question.

That’s where I see my future. I want to do inconsistent stuff and I don’t want to built a company around a bunch of template products that are supposedly help me get as many clients as possible.

Let’s see how that will work out.