AFP/File, Emmanuel Dunand

Shailesh Rao, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Latin America & Emerging Markets, Twitter (congrats on the IPO this week!) talks about how Twitter and social media are revolutionizing the way we experience “memorable moments.”

When we experienced them through traditional mass media, we did so as an audience member, a recipient. We just had to receive and accept it. During the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and tsunami, there were 15,000 retweets every minute. What does that mean from the viewpoint of media consumption? Anyone in the world with a mobile For drivers who are not eligible to take traffic driving schools in atlanta ga to satisfy requirements of their court, insurance company, or the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), a course may be the difference between a valid and suspended driver’s license in the future. device or computer could send a tweet and affect the way people thought about and experienced that moment.

Why is that meaningful? Because it represents a change in the power dynamic between media organizations and consumers of media. Today, users have much more control, they dictate the terms about what content they will create, when they will consume it, who they will share it.  And Shailesh posits that this new dynamic is based on mutual respect, because media companies know that  we can shape, share and change the message.

Here is the complete session with Shailesh:

I attended Dan Pulcrano’s extraordinary C2SV conference recently and we are working to get videos of the events online after a period of post-production. There were many great speakers and highlights but the apocryphal moment was surely when Dan got Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell up on stage together for the first time. They waxed eloquently on a wide range of subjects. We will post the videos when they become available.

After the session, I talked to Nolan and asked him what are the most important factors in creating an environment for the achievement of audacious visions. He answered: “…intensity and passion. If you had to come down to one single idea, that is it. I also really believe that playfulness…I think people who take themselves too seriously tend to self-edit too much. If you are kind of willing to be out there a little bit, crazy, that’s a characteristic.”

A story on the event from San Jose, Mercury News here http://www.mercurynews.com/sal-pizarro/ci_24193146/pizarro-fun-times-woz-nolan-bushnell-at-c2sv

And my video moment with Nolan:
 

I spent time with Tamer Ahmed, Seeds Program Manager, Cairo iLab, for the French telecom giant Orange.  We watched events together, hung out at the receptions and talked business and politics. I asked Tamer as someone on a global hunt for new ideas, services and opportunities, how Orange approaches innovation and what he looks for in his seed program.

Tamer suggested that one of the keys is openness, how employees can be encouraged to contribute what they think, and get senior management sponsorship. Accepting failure, even promoting and celebrating it. Tamer believes that when the company talks about innovation, “we have to go to the actual customer and the actual environment. Go to malls and cafes, see how people react to things”.

Orange is engaging in innovation for multiple cultures and places as they serve a big footprint, extending from Europe to Botswana, with people working from the U.S. to Japan, so they get the best from each culture and each country, in a truly global environment and company.

Sometimes a small improvement can make a big difference in the lives of people. Orange has a service called Internet for All, allowing people far away from a 3G coverage area to get connected. Tamer  describes a trial the company performed in Uganda at an orphan school. Previously, the teacher would have to travel miles to Kampala just to get an email. “Innovation is nothing unless you have something that touches the lives of people. Then you feel you have made a difference.”

As an Egyptian, Tamer also talked about current developments in his country and prospects for progress and peace, the value of patience and the need hope in a time of dramatic change.

Here’s a look at the start-up competition that Tamer and his colleagues sponsored at the Summit.

The Orange start-up competition

Love this Ryan Gosling riff in the new HBO film, Seduced and Abandoned, in describing how he got into acting.

“But that’s the best part about Los Angeles. It’s filled with all these Don Quixote type characters. Everyone’s left their families, their homes, their friends, their jobs, to pursue a dream. Where they know that the percentage of them achieving that dream is Never. And they do it anyway. And everyone has shared the same dream. And no one is sure if it is a premonition or a delusion. And there’s only one way to find out.”

One of my favorite sessions from the 2013 Abu Dhabi Media Summit:

Samantha Barry, (BBC World News), Nart Bouran (Sky News Arabia), Jacques Bughin (Director, Media & Entertainment, McKinsey & Co) discuss with Alex Farber of Broadcast discuss the introduction of the second and third screen continuing to disrupt the television industry. Is the TV becoming the second screen as tablets and smartphones become constant digital companions in the living room?

I had the opportunity to accept an invitation to attend the 2013 Abu Dhabi Media Summit. Speakers from Dean Kamen and Tim Berners-Lee to Dan Señor and Andy Bird highlighted the event. The  Summit is “an unprecedented gathering of the people and companies driving the transition to a fully networked new world. The three-day event features a unique combination of high-profile public sessions, closed-door discussions and private conversations, bringing together top-tier global media players and their emerging-market counterparts”. Targeted sectors included mobile, broadband, traditional television, print, entertainment, news, music, advertising; marketing, venture capital; and equity finance, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, East Asia and China.

Here is the video of Dan Senor discussing innovation in Israel, why it has become a hotbed of tech startups and entrepreneurship, and how Israelis and Arabs might collaborate. His book START-UP NATION addresses “the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel – a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources—produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful,and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? How is it that Israel has, per person, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe?”

Buy his book on Amazon here. And what a wonderful experience to have a Jewish, pro-Israel Republican foreign policy advisor and author talk to a mostly Arab audience be so well received, with so many provocative and respectful questions.

MUD Film Photo

A great quote on the American capacity for visioning, in a?review?of the equally great?Matthew?McConaughey?film, “Mud.”

The great American literary critic Leslie Fiedler said: “To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.”

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mud-2013