Press Recognition & Government Support

Our connections in Brunei, and the region, are ever growing. It's been quite an exciting month of development for us, one that has seen our network of partners seriously expand.

Just last week, in a meeting between Canada's High Commissioner and the Ministry of Home Affairs, His Excellency Wendell J. Sanford discussed Plantiga's technology and its applications for the Brunei Prisons and the Fire and Rescue Departments (this meeting and our Company's mention was reported on in both The Brunei Times, and at BruDirect.com). Plantiga was mentioned alongside a global powerhouse in intelligent satellite solutions, Norsat, as two shining examples of how Canada and Brunei are developing ICT relationships.

Just yesterday, at an APEC event in Singapore, our President and COO, Brian James Tracey, got to discuss our company with Canada's Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, the Honourable Stockwell Day. During Mr. Day's address, he pointed to Plantiga as a example of a young company that is making innovative inroads in global security. He highlighted the fact that a company, such as ours, with such an entrepreneurial spirit, can continue Canada's global reach and further the cooperative nature between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region.

Updates on Brunei

Where to begin....the past month has been exciting for the whole company. Brian James Tracey, our President (of Plantiga International) and COO (of Plantiga Technologies Inc.), has travelled to Brunei for some very interesting visits. The result of the this trip, which took place back in early April, has proved to be promising and extremely valuable for the future of Plantiga.

Representing the Company, he met with high officials inside the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB), who were more than receptive to our plans. We are aiming to move our research, development, manufacturing and beta deployments to this fair country. He met with them to explore mutually beneficial opportunities between Plantiga and Brunei.

During this trip, we established a good working relationship with Teleconsult Brunei, represented by Lord John E. Shazell (a new picture of Brian James Tracey, Lord John E. Shazell and Julian Johari will soon be seen). Teleconsult Brunei will play an instrumental role in the growth of Plantiga; we are so pleased by the opportunities that will arise from this relationship. 

We want to take a second to thank H.E. Wendell J. Sanford, the Canadian Trade Commissioner, and his entire office, who have been ever so helpful during every step of this process (from leftt to right: Nural Salwani, Julian Johori, H.E. Wendell J. Sanford, and Brian James Tracey).

We are currently in the process of establishing working relationships with both the Unversiti of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and the Institure Technology Brunei (ITB). It is important to our plans that we establish strong ties with these institutions, as we feel their contributions, especially on the technological and business sides, will provide growing value for their institutions, and our company.

For us, Brunei presents a vast array of opportunities, and over the next little while we are confident that Plantiga will prosper in Brunei Darussalam.

Securing Critical Infrastructure?

We all need to begin thinking differently about how we secure our critical infrastructure, no matter what country you're in. It's the center of gravity in any future conflict, implies Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. Everything about the Internet has changed security needs, and, for a fact, the way that it now works has made securing everything more difficult. 

Any high-value asset in any country, everything from an electric grid or a uranium processing plant to a hydro dam or a government research facility, will be targeted in future conflicts. To put it simply, our current methods for securing these areas are not only outdated, but they are being undermined on a daily basis. Just last year Los Alamos National Labs, which is arguably the most important and influential research facility in the US, reported 13 computers lost or stolen and another 67 missing in the past year. One can only imagine how much intellectual property and national security information was lost. How is this possible? It's because the systems they have in place are plagued with systemic problems. 

The new security system that we are presenting to the world will attach a biometric tag to all activity, creating stronger ways to audit personnel. This will fix the problems that are so apparent in current practices, specifically the problems surrounding Identity and Location. We have designed a user-centric identity system that is both mobile and persistent. Wouldn't you want to know what everybody is doing inside the nuclear facility, at any time you choose, no matter what work is being done by that person? We would, and not only that, we would want to know where they did it, what files they opened, and what changes were made to them. To our company, this should be a basic requirement for all critical infrastructure, no matter the country.

The ideas here represent a response to "Hiroshima, 2.0" which came out in WSJ, April 24, 2009. It's worthwhile reading this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123966785804815355.html

If we have anything to do with it, this world will look at lot different 5 years from now.

Opportunities in Innovation

Nylon, synthetic rubber and the fluorescent light bulb were innovations that came out of the Great Depression of 1930's. It was these technologies that brought the US out of its deepest downturn ever. These are a just a few examples of how innovation can drive growth, especially so in recession times. 

Tom Nicholas of the Harvard Business School wrote last month that "although deep downturns are destructive, they also have an upside. The Depression-era economist Joseph Schumpeter emphasized the positive consequences of downturns: the destruction of under-performing companies, the release of capital from dying sectors to new industries, and the movement of high-quality skilled workers toward stronger employers. For companies with cash and ideas, history shows that downturns can provide enormous strategic opportunities."

The next blockbuster innovation is any one's guess, but here at Plantiga we see the perfect opportunity for our technology. Really, we are reinventing a product and service that is extremely useful, and basically indispensable (in footwear and in biometrics). We will drive down the cost of shoes for consumers, making it affordable and environmentally sustainable. It's times like these where our technology has a real shot at tearing down existing inefficient, damaging practices. We will affect footwear manufacturing and overall function, as well as develop the next generation biometric authentication technology. There has been no better time for us than now.

In no way are we happy with the current economic downturn, but we do see this as a immense opportunity for Plantiga.

TED, Kevin Kelly, and Us.

There are countless predictions for what the future will be like; throughout history this has been so; but most all agree that there will be increased connectivity of everything, now that we have the Internet. I watched a video that sums this up, with many illustrations, both through visual means and audio reporting. As well as all this we're finding 'within it' that our company's technology can be found. The ideas here, those that might be considered inspiration for this video report, are right where we ourselves stand, front and center. We're talking of a talk given by Kevin Kelly at a TED conference, called "Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web". Here's the link: 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

In this video, Kelly gives an almost perfect explanation for where we - we the connected - are going, from the Internet of Things to the semantic web. His approach is simple and concise, with no dumbing down of any one point. We find he's pointing to our technology about mid way through, almost talking about it literally: footwear that connects to the whole web, itself one part of a massive information cloud. 

Kelly talks about 'the one', which basically is the name he gives for the Internet of Everything, focusing on how it will bring about more efficiency and transparency.Plantiga is, in our opinion, a part of this future (not that we've mentioned this to either TED or Mr. Kelly; not knowing, really, how to do this in a 'righteous' manner), and, as Kelly predicts, we are all just-beginning at the knee of the curve here. Things are, historically speaking, at take off, and this is where the last ten years will look nothing like the next ten. We think, as does Kelly, that tagging and searching; for literally anybody, anything, and any activity is where we are all headed. 

One significant difference between Kelly and us: both privacy and security are enhanced when people are using the new shoes, not threatened. For instance, every one and every thing will have unique ID (every file, every situation, every noted instance of almost everything). And still, each individual ID is uncompromising; steadily pointing to it's owner, albeit constrained by time.

Although we are just a start-up building footwear as an information tool, in this world of connectivity we have the potential to be an essential part of every connected human.