you've just had a tremendous hit on Indigogo with a new project, do you want to tell me

about it?

Mark: A brilliant day one for the project, but there's a marathon still to come as we

push through to the finish line.

Simon: Well, you've cleared 10% of your 32 million dollar goal in 12 hours or something

Mark: Broke the record for time to $1million, broke the record for time to $2million, broke

the record for a 1st day, but we have to smash the total record to succeed.

Simon: Yes, there's still 90% to go. So what is this project about?

Mark: The project is really about the dynamics of innovation in the mobile industry. Through

no fault of their own the big players are essentially extremely conservative about how

they bring new innovations, new components, new technologies into phones, and similarly

for PCs. The reason for that is they have no clear signalling from the market as to

what's really exciting, what's really interesting, what people are really going to want. So they

rely either on mystical genius a la Steve Jobs or luck, or generally they end up being really

conservative. So the idea is to use crowdfunding to take a concept of stuff that might be really

amazing in a device, validate that concept by seeing if there's enough people to back

the project and then being able to test the new technologies and components at moderate,

modest production volumes, but thereby bringing forward the time when those sorts of technologies

will be widely available on the mass market.

Simon: So you've compared that to the way that Formula One feeds innovation into the motor industry,

it's that sort of an idea.

Mark: Sure. Todays there's a huge gap between the lab and mass market automobiles, and we're

all driving the mass market automobiles. In the car industry you have Formula One which is really

cutting edge, then you have the premium segments which is where those technologies would go

next and then you have the mass market. What we're trying to do is show that innovation,

selection and proving can happen through crowdfunding.

Simon: So you're trying to get the best of breed technologies into the physical device

as well as trying to produce an innovative operating system in the shape of the Ubuntu

phone software which you've put out

Mark: Right. So we're working with phone manufacturers, that's kind of how we got interested in this

idea of the innovation cycle. We have a particular passion which is convergence, the idea that

your phone could also be the heart of the PC and that is stretching a little bit beyond

what phone manufacturers have on their horizons for the next 1 or 2 years. We think it's totally

possibly, but there's no mechanism to test that out today. So in this case the concept

phone essentially is capable of being a desktop as well as a phone, it has dramatically more

RAM, its also testing some new components, some new battery technology, new screen technology,

and other capabilities. If its green-lighted then the technologies in that device, if they're

successful will be widely available a year ahead of where they would otherwise have been.

Simon: So what's this device going to be like?

Mark: This is a physical model of it. I present the Edge. you go through an intense design

process thats actually selecting technologies, then its actually working with the design

manufacturer to get a sense of whether the things feasible to make then looking at the

industrial design. We're fortunate in Canonical because we're so focussed on design of software

we were able to reach out into the design community and work with some really great

guys who've done this. It echoes a lot of the software design stories that we have but

it introduces a really nice industrial edge to it.

Simon: and that's going to end up being a smart phone when its a phone and a desktop

PC when there's an HDMI monitor plugged into it?

Mark: that's exactly right, it has image out and docking, connecting that up to any HDMI

monitor with a Bluetooth keyboard gives you a full PC experience, either with android

in the form of an Ubuntu desktop which is running off your Android phone and and has

access to all of those files and contacts and so on or in the case of Ubuntu where you

have Ubuntu on the phone and giving you the desktop environment simultaneously.

Simon: So when is this going to be ready? I admit I've actually ordered one, so when

am I going to get my phone Mark?

Mark: if its greenlighted - May 2014

Simon: Well, congratulations on breaking the world record for crowd funding in a single

day. You've got a long way to go. I saw you put up some more offers up today.

Mark: As we figure out what works, what people are rallying to we'll tweak the perks and

offers. The credit sits with the team that led this idea, and also with the people who've

backed it, who've been incredible and with Indigogo which is a really great crowdfunding

platform, they've been super to work with. you can imagine behind the scenes we've had

to work with Paypal and clear alot of regulatory and other hurdles to take on something like

this.

Simon: So what's going to be in there? That's all going to be free software?

Mark: Yes, we'll ship this with Android and Ubuntu, no plans to put proprietary applications

on it. We haven't finalised the silicon selection so were looking at the next generation silicon

from all major vendors. I would like to ship it with all Free drivers. What's really interesting

is how this is driving the evolution of the free software desktop in the form of Unity

and Ubuntu and also how the work thats going into the phone is trust forming the cloud

as well so if this ends up with an arm processor it will be running exactly the same version

of ubuntu that's running on the arm moonshot service from hp, which is kind of incredible.

Simon: So anything else you want to say about the project?

Mark: No, other than thank you very much to all the folks that have backed us and if greenlighted

we will work our guts out to deliver an incredible device that makes all sorts of new possibilities.

The thing that really excites me about this is the hardware angle of essentially inverting

the innovation process. So instead of having 10 product managers who sweat it trying to

decide what's important we crowdfund innovation, we crowd select innovation. But what's really

amazing is that this will be a phone which can do things that no other portable device

has ever done. Imagine what some student at MIT is going to do, the great thing about

open source is not the things that we dream are possible but the fact that other people

can turn around and do things that we didn't even think about. that's pretty amazing.