Connect the unexpected
DLD09 live
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January 28, 2009
01:10 AMDLD Resumee by Thomas
First, you can get an overview of all articles published on this live blog here.
After three days of intense blogging, live blogging(!), there should be a little resumée. Must be a personal one, naturally, although I aim to grasp some of that spirit hopefully many people sensed in these days of Digital, Life, Design 09.
In the position of being confronted with so many ideas, witted people, diverse subjects, opinions, trends and conversations I felt intectually challenged almost all the time. Plus, trying to find my own "art of live blogging" I was in a constant state of concentration, in search of the essence of the panels I focused on to cover. Now I feel tired and inspired, with the "Black swan" beside my bed and "What would Google do" on my desk. And with many images still in mind that make it hard just to say "DLD was awesome!". But it certainly was.
We had economics, design, psychology, neurobiology, architecture, technology, education, fashion, music.. DLD was so diverse and at the same time deep in concern of the arguments of the people and mostly entertaining by the performance. And this inspirationally broad deepness certainly had effects on the talks in the hallway which I personal did not have. Because I had to blog. Because I was honoured to blog!
My thanks go to the whole team, all those fast and motivated people who made this conference so smooth, so you would not notice the organization, just the flow. And especially to my blogger colleagues Nicole, Oliver and Andrea. We came up with some nice techniques to cover people's talk with live writing which include Google Docs, hand signs, twitter search, mobile photo uploads and the help of people who plug the laptops, know about details, give comments.
So thank you all, team, speakers, participants and especially to the cute coffee machine in the team room.Before I go and polish my posts and clean up all the typos, here are my personal Top9::
9. With the Zuckerberg appearance I found the controversial twitter conversation as interesting as what was said on stage.
8. The Varsavsky - Obermann talk
7. Simplicity (mostly)
6. Fashion
5. The paddle symphony
4. Internet politics
3. Reflection on a crisis
2. The robots!
1. Predictably IrrationalAnd here are fotos! We love fotos. (all Flickr pics tagged with dld09)
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January 27, 2009
03:00 PMBye, Bye DLD09 from OliverG
dld· dld09· goodbye - 0 comments
It was both strenuous and great to be part of the Liveblogging Team with Nicole Simon, Thomas 'Stylewalker' Praus and by new digital brother Andrea Vascellari, the only Italian Fin I know ;).
Great people, great panels, great food and great parties (including the Blogmeet done by Klaus Eck) made for my best 3 days in a looong time.
Thanks to Heiko Hebig for including me in the blogging team, anytime...
Hopefully: CU all at DLD10.
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January 27, 2009
03:00 PMDLD Thoughts
andrea vascellari· DLD· DLD09· germany· munich - 0 comments
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January 27, 2009
02:59 PMMarissa Mayer (Google) on Cloud Computing
cloud computing· marissa mayer - 0 comments
- Data sharing security
- Cloud computing, roadblocks & solutions
- Scalability issues
- What will take cloud computing to the next level
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January 27, 2009
02:21 PMUpdate on the photo session
On Sunday attendees where introduced to the idea that artist Jürgen Scriba will use a kind of hidden camera to take a lot of pictures during the event in order to make one great collage.
"There are all kind of people there, doing marketing for their products, some people are more happy than other people - it is good they all have badges so you can find out who that was."
Jokingly he said four members put in "150 hours of 'photoshop slave labour' powered by chocolate cookies." to make everything happen. The short presentation on the screen already looked intruiging, and once we do have the photographs to give you an example, we will update you with them!
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January 27, 2009
02:02 PMMarc Zuckerberg as surprise speaker - live comments
dld· dld09· zuckerberg - 0 comments
David Kirkpatrick interviews Marc Zuckerberg - company growth, philosphy, privacy.
Here is the twitterfeed for "Zuckerberg+DLD" for a lot of interesting and controversial comments. I tried to pick some out.
"Zuckerberg: over 2 million Facebook users in Germany. +75% in 3 months"
"Mark Zuckerberg on privacy: It's in our interest to give people control on their data. There will be stronger and stronger policies"
"Zuckerberg claims users have total control of their data. Bwahahaha! Needed: FB user Bill of Rights, esp right of habeas corpus."
"I think zuckerberg has said the word share 1 billion times. Time for a zuck drinking game"
"share sharity share share"
"A double share! 20 points!"
"it's interesting how zuckerberg is transfering the privacy issue to user behavior and the options the users are having to control sharing."
"Even though I knew before but Mark Zuckerberg is so smart, so young. And facebook grows and grows - 1 million users p.d"
"Zuckerberg sounds like Cruise talking about Scientology, too. Unauthentic to the bone."
"Let me summarize this talk with zuckerberg at DLD: Mark, what makes you so great?"
"it's impressive how Mark Zuckerberg has reached rock star status at #dld. Captivates the audience. He's a fast-talker, low-tone voice"
"Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) : our aim is a globally standardized communication platform, a one worldwide platform"
"mark zuckerberg. he is doing his technical product pitch again instead of giving the audience something inspiring"
"Warum hacken alle auf #Zuckerberg rum?"
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January 27, 2009
01:40 PMMark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook @ DLD09: More than 2 Million users in Germany
dld· dld09· facebook· mark zuckerberg - 0 comments
(all quotes only roughly verbal, video will follow as soon as it is available)
Facebook is trying to make its way into Germany, fighting the almost-monopoly of StudiVZ as a student network.
So it is no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg makes frequent visits to German at the moment and also visits the most prominent media, communication and technology event: the DLD in Munich.Mark is being intervieved by David Kirkpatrick of "Fortune".
David is writing his book on Facebook and has been talking to Mark Zuckerberg several times. It will be called "The Facebook Effect".
Comscore 225 million unique users. Myspace has far less. Is FB in a battle with Myspace?
Mark: We have less users (missed the number, 150+ million accounts). The defining thing for Facebook is that we want to make products that help people share information and make the world more transparent. So people will move to the service that is more efficient. It will be the same with out competitor here.
In order to succeed you have to be the most effective. I was here in German in October and we had 1.2 Million users here at that time. Everyone was asking about the lawsuit. Now we are over 2 million users (breaking news). We ant to make sure to offer Facebook in any language. People can help us to translate in their own language. 20+ languages we have 60+ are in translation. We are spreading all over the world. we are growing like crazy.
It is crazy that it took us the first 10 months to the first million of users but now e add that in one week.
How is the product evolving?
Mark: There is a huge trend online to post huge amounts of smaller pieces of data. First there was movies and blogs, now they post Photos and status updates. They post photo by photo from their phone instead of albums. If it is easier to do more people participate.
[Sounds like FB is attacking Twitter - OG]
In Facebook Connect people can build apps inside Facebook and access them from the outside, there are also mobile apps being developed.
?: What about privacy and the contrast between the US and Europe? Poelpe are more worrdied here.
Mark: We have always been giving users control over their information and privacy. People in Europe care abut this a lot. We enable people to share for example to share your phone number with only the 100 people around you. privacy and control have always been important for us.
?: Can we trust FB to be consistent with its policies and trustworthy with our data and commercial interests.
Mark: People feel that the company could do something bad with the information, but the world is too transparent for that, we would damage our company this way. There are new kinds of infos shared every time, we will add more controls so that you can decide the range of what you share.
We have a lot of people who use the privacy controls. We see good success with that, peple Do have a sense that they can control that. They know that their information is not public but only visible for their peers.
On Facebook you are your real self, you have your own name and this creates a trusted environment that makes peple share more information.?: Even though you can control your own data, but you cannot do anything about photos of you uploaded by others besides untagging.
Mark: The question is: If I share information with you, can you share it with someone else? In FB this is blocked. For example with contact information. Di I have the right to share your phone number with another service or person.
?: The question to whom my photo belongs is not answered. What about someone who was photographed smoking pot. This has been sent to the principal.
Mark: The issue is trust. We cannot police all this. you have to know who your friends are. The other person can post the photo and you can control what is linked from your account.
?: Do people really connect only to people they know - which is your idea about Facebook. Should ppl be more ridgid about friending.
Mark: People should decide what they do. We display the social graph. If I had information that people should not know this did not spread 15 years ago. But now it can spread a lot quicker.
? Can you block people from tagging photos with your name?
Mark: If you don't trust someone block or unfriend them.
About Apps:
iLike and Causes have a big reach. They are metacontainers. There are thousands of different causes maybe soon millions. Connections to your assents on Facebook are a valuable thing. This is different from Page Impressions, it is about longer periods of time.
?: Facebook connect is a fundamentally new environment. It leaves any commercial company with the choice to build a page with connection to FB or build an app inside Facebook.
Mark: We promised to have FB apps outside of Facebook from the beginning. You can get more sharing and use within Facebook, but Connect will also grow. It will be a big focus for us in 2009.
?: Revenue. IS FB affected by the downturn?
Mark: FB is a long term thing. We are still growing long term. we have brand advertising and are working with the top 2/3rd of advertisers and we ware working with advertisers in all countries we spread to: France, GB/London and others. "Downturn" is an understatement, but we keep opening those new channels. We also concentrate on performance and clicks, not only branding. The ad system we launched grew massively.
?: Is your aim a standardized systems, are there going to be multiple platforms?
Mark: It will be distributed, you can see that with Facebook connect. But there is value in standardization. If you look for a name it helps if people are part of one system. If we can build one world wide platform hat is a really valuable system, we are aiming for that.
?: Should Obama use FB for governing, should he continue using FB like during the campaign?
Mark: He communicated very democratically, he has 4 million connections on FB. I imagine there imes where he wants to use that reach. It would be a valuable tool to implement his agenda.
?: People use FB in protest, does this surprise you? Was it intended
Mark: That is great to see. We did never expect to reach this scale. But people want tansparency, so it is not really surprising. It is a more direct connection between people than reading the newspaper.
?: What about Al Qaida using Facebook?
Mark: Transparency is the answer to that. If people want to decide on the future course of their lives while they are in a camp and are using facebook they can get a more global perspective on their lives. If we know what peple are doing it will help us prevent what happens on the other end.
?: Is Facebook a waste of time?
Mark: Efficiency is th e point. People do simple things. Look up a restaurant, share a photos, they can also understand better what goes around them, economy, government, friends.
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Sidenote: Mark Zuckerberg at the end of his talk shook hands with Ehssan Dariani off stage, Founder and ex-executive at "StudiVZ", Dariani had brought the idea to do a 'German Facebook' from a stay in the US. There is a lawsuit between Facebook and the new owners StudiVZ - Dariani had sold StudiVZ to a mediahouse and left the company shortly afterwards.
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January 27, 2009
01:09 PMReflection on a Crisis
dld· dld09 - 3 comments
Thomas is providing a more summarized view of this panel over here. This is a very complex panel and as Nassim says during it, fragile system do break as in the live blogging is not as easy as some of the other panels. I encourage you to come back once the video is up and really watch this one for a better experience. ;)
- Nassim Taleb (Author)
- Daniel Kahneman (Princeton University)
- Moderation: John Brockman (edge.org)
Notes from from the session:
- Ideas are bad for you
- rationalism affected medicine for a long time
- medicine was theoretical
- whenever you have theory you despise evidence
- when you practise you work on experience
- how can medicine fool people for such a long time
- just look at the data
- it is a profession which makes claims - and what is the difference to astrology?
- look at the data and the data messes up at rare events
- rare events are like a pilot which does not know about storms
- financial profession where made aware of the storm
- How would you know that a rare event is going to happen?
- he looked at data for island and said "oh my god they are going to blow up"
- hidden risk taking: take a lot of risk on a rare event
- I had to get a phd so people would listen to me
- society is going to be way more exposed to rare events in the future as we create more and more complex (but efficient) systems
- anything fragile will break and bust up
- did take his intuition of mother nature
- mother nature build us to have backups, you do have spare parts
- economic system does not have spare parts too costly
- explaining why useless models are actually use and why they are so hard to get rid of
- think of the weather forecast which does a very good job of forecasting the weather
- one thing it does not do: it does not do hurricane
- even in areas where there are a lot of hurricanes people use weather forcast
- famous organisational psychology example of the swiss army sending out a patrol which goes out for three days out and gets lost, they come back and say thankfully we had a map, but this not a map of the alps but something else, yes - but we had a map! = a useless map still contributes to confidence
- I like to take on new challenges
- I want to change to world so it is resistant to these forecast errors
- wants to nationalize the banks because they cant be trusted - they make make bets on hurricanes
- "the world is gonna break and establish itself in a way to resist forecasting error"
- the ancient world did not like debt
- debt makes you a lot more vulnerable
- Internet introduces a new layer of complexity, making it again more fragile
- mismatch of timescale between a person and society
- banks cannot be trusted on risk taking
- have the freedom for people to take all the risk they want but we should make sure that society has never to bail them out
- why are we bailing banks out?
- look back at Rome
- why do people buy insurance for cars and house but not on their other assets like a portfolio?
- "because it is too costly" - but please explain the inconsistency
- people without insurance will blow up
- What are you going to tell the people in Davos?
- What did banks did with the bailout? Payed their bonuses to their "key employees" plus doubled up and increased the risks
- We have enough evidence of people misusing the system: profits are theirs, losses are ours
- this is why he wants to clean the system
- second: he does not like governments
- third: he is here because he cancelled another event, they teach portfolio theory like they always did although we know it is bad
- like with
- in case of an airplane crash: first you stop, then you investigate, not continue to do so
- calling for a boycott which still teach portfolio theory
- there is a short term appeal of what you want people to give up which is hard to do without giving them an alternative
- religion works because in ancient time anything what takes you away from your doctor prolongs your life
- therapeutic nihilism: killing is better than doing nothing
- Nassim Taleb (Author)
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January 27, 2009
12:51 PMReflections on a Crisis: the Impact of the Highly Improbable
dld· dld09 - 0 comments
Nassim Taleb (Author), Daniel Kahneman (Princeton University) and John Brockman (edge.org) try to reflect crisis, decision making, psychology in a conversation.
With "The black swan" Nassim Taleb wrote a book that surprisingly describes the current financial crisis with the phenomenon of the "black swan". These phenomenons have three components:Thy have huge effects, they happen totally unexpected and people try to explain them afterwards to make sense. It is about the Impact of the Highly Improbable.
The following is more or less a summary of what Taleb says, we are hearing a very enganged and insightful monologue.
Taleb describes the irrationality of human decision taken different examples into account: E.g. people rather make a hundred times a dollar than one time 100 dollars. The other way round they rather miss one time a lot instead of losing small amounts over a long time. Decision alternatives might be the same but changing only little details, statistics of decisions would change immensly.
Kahnemann then describes the phenomenon that people expect the same things to happen again and that things will go on the same forever. Both examples have seen experimental evidence.But empirics as a method is exactly what is being questioned here. Especially in medicine there is a history of failure in empirics because it totally ignores rare events. Rare events are so hard to model, so scientists don't look at them. Like the drunken man who looks for his keys in the obviously wrong place, just because there's light.
All of these form the basis for economic bubble bursts. People just expected it to go on like that forever, whith all the growth, with all the risks, with all the hybris of top managers.
The financial system is too fragile. It is interwoven and built on very high risks. In contrast to nature: Mother nature does not like to be sensible to rare events. We have two kidneys, two lungs - the economic system has no spare parts because it is too costy. It became more and more fragile because capitalism tells us to reduce costs.
The problem is that society relies so much on the financial system. It's a utility, like water in your house, it's like an army. But banks cannot be trusted with financial markets because of the said risks they are taking ignoring the rare events. Next problem is the responsibilty of everybody in the end. The only ones who took back bonuses from mangagers where the Swiss from UBS. In all other countries, the losses are brough back to society who has to bail out banks. It is continuing: Profits are theirs, losses are ours.
What would Taleb advise the new secretary of treasure?
What did the bank do with the bail out? They keep on overpaying people, they pay investors and they double up, they even increased risks! I think we have enough evidence: I would like to have banks nationalized and have everybodyd fired. I want everybody involved taking these immense risks out tomorrow! I want business schools to stop teaching portfolio theory.Session ends and I really encourage you to watch the video since it was impossible to summarize all that was said while writing it down live.
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January 27, 2009
12:09 PMTelling stories
dld· dld09 - 22 comments
- Julia Allison (Nonsociety)
- Fernando Sulichin (Central Films)
- Ora-Ïto (Artist)
- Loic LeMeur (Seesmic)
- Moderation: Constantin Bjerke (TheCrane.tv)
For this panels you should not miss the live tweets!
Notes from the moderator:
- Who has been affected in their live with a story?
- it is the oldest form of communication
- people like to hear and tell stories
- they bring us emotions
- diverse round of storyteller
Loic Le Meur
- tells a story directly from the stage to his seesmic account, records at the same time [see it here]
- founded seesmic to make it easy to tell a story online
- wants to check if there are replies from the room later
- shows an interview with Yossi Vardi about his catastrophe conference
- shows example of the BBC
Julia Allison
Traditional media background. Now working at Nonsociety which is a Lifecasting company.
What's lifecasting? 3 girls sharing their everyday dating, tech and fashion experiences with a wide online network of friends.- Lunch table conversation
- Soap opera without directors
- Reality show without producers
- Magazine without editors
- is liveblogging from her iphone during the presentation of the video
Ora-Ito
- he created one of the first virtual brands
- had customer ask in the store for the virtual good, chinese now produce it
- this is how he started he created his career
- people thought that he was japanese due to his name but he is not
- was asked not to tell that he is not japanese - said that might be difficult
- awkdio.com you can listen to the big clubs of the world, 24 hours music - if you are living somewhere it is not cool, this is your chance.
Fernando Sulichin
- considers him to be a traditional storyteller
- has produced many different films for example Tran An Hung
- really enjoys being a storyteller
Notes from the panels
- C: What makes a good story?
- F: When I feel it is a good story for me
- J: thanks the panel for giving her a description for what she is doing
- does not depend on what you think is a good story
- we are interested in peoples live, we want to know what is happening
- uses herself as a guinea pig, now you can go from your own experience
- C: Would your stories have been possible without the internet?
- F: No, not without that kind of technology
- C: What are the key elements for stories which come up on top
- L: we have them bubble up through replies count
- similar with twitter - how many people retweet it
- if you are boring, nobody talks to / about you
- video installation got hundreds of replies
- it is awesome when you have someone from Australia replying to someone from Germany to someone from the USA
- the greatness of sharing stories from all over the world
- for him it is about how it spreads
- it is very international and very human
- F: This is a dangerous thing, because there is a lot of marketing trying to spread movies, commercials
- J: interesting from one to many storytelling, broadcast to what is there today
- has changed her life
- got mails from people during the DLD conference right away
- "I am sorry, I am not asking for your opinion" but by putting it up people assume
- C: would you agree that the internet transports greater transparacy? do you have a responsibility as distributor to filter them?
- L: video is more human than other platform, it is a human network, not just by text
- when trolls use the stage, there is a limit
- they have a flagging system in place
- L: what is the difference between humor or not?
- J: we talk a lot about the lack of manors
- there is this period of chaos when there are not yet rules in place
- she does not have comments because she does not like anonymous comments
- until we have real names and accountability it will not stop
- L: let's talk about good stuff instead
- C: Challenge of how to get your audience to listen
- O: tell a story about their story
- C: Public life has impact on personal life - why do you let people into your life?
- J: it is a huge experiment, had some wonderful consequences
- started of as a columnist, which is per definition more personal
- was the one I was most comfortable with, so I do not have certain filters like others do
- by sharing she was able to have a conversation with readers
- talked about her own experience with bulemia in telling that in first person experience and got tons of feedback she claims you would not have had if that would have been a third person account
- C: this new form of story telling has had a big effect, for example the Obama campaign
- L: politician enhance reality all the time
- each time they say something which is not true or overstated, it will be commented
- F: Great danger for using the internet for political campaign
- there are a lot of media who try to demonize a person and repeat a story over and over again
- stories where the facts and reality have nothing to with one another
- fantasies are created all the time
- there is so little time to fact check it - and just because it is on th NYT people believe it
- later erasing is nearly impossible
- J: has seen a huge transition with the Obama campaign
- we should rather talk about what it does to politician
- when politician get more successful, they get more blander all the time and she now sees this happening to normal people
- you only get one choice as there is only one you online
- what if is not lies, but how you react differently in different situations?
- my father reads my web page - awkward
- everyone is going to have an internet persona, the one where they are going to piss of the least amount of people
- question from the audience to Julia: with growing popularity and power, how do you plan to use that to get ahead in life or have more things than getting better at sex?
- Lisa: "Loic shut up - you get the question about how you plan to make the world a better place"
- you can be either interested in fashion, beauty OR feminist rights, science etc. She likes to be both.
- young women need to know it is possible - my success does not come at the expense of you
- C: but don't you open up yourself to that by putting yourself out there? are you a product?
- J: yes. and obviously this comes with disadvantages
- Oprah is able to speak to people
- yes it is hard to be that way sometimes, but there is no other way to be able to effect people like this
- Question audience: What story are you telling next
- F: I don't know but I am in my revolution phase
- Question Gabemac: Aren't we getting tied up in technology changing stories?
- there is this famous book with a lot of stories, you know the bible - what if Jesus would be a blogger?
- J: you are right there are universal story, these are old stories
- we have the same human emotions, how to find love, happiness, closure, they are constant
- different methods of story telling work with different people
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January 27, 2009
11:45 AMEducation: Olek, Reshef
dld· dld09· education - 0 comments
This session will be covered by me and Oliver who covers José Ferreira and Calvin Chin, I'll cover Shai Reshef and Alexander Olek.
Introduction
The panelist introduce theirselves shortly: Shai Reshef represents the University of the people which is a place for students from around the world and embraces peer-to-peer teaching. (read a New York Times article about the University Of the People.)Alex Oleg is from Phorms School which is supposed to be global school system. It is expanding world wide - China, US, South Africa and others. The aim is creating a curriculum that is universal, a global school. They are using tools in online teaching: Online broadcasting, online data bases and invested in internet platforms that support that.
Levene: Education is a significant industry, it touches most people's life, 15-20% of the population is currently learning in school, university and elsewhere.
Olek: I don't believe in online only but teachers have a hard time to use tools and to travel, no media competence and no travel budgets. I am trying to find out why teachers are so resistent to change.
Social Networks
Reshef: Social Networks will make a big difference. Students come online and teach others voluntarily. Social Networks will change the way people learn. All young people are online there, using eductaion in this context will be something that is liekable to them.
Olek disagrees because he is missing the face to face aspect. Real life interaction is what schools are and what is most important to learning.Olek: The job of the teacher needs to be more attractive. It's hard work and in most parts of the world badly paid. If we manage improve their work with online teaching we make a big step towards more education for everybody. Still, with online tools teachers will not be replacable. Even if we broadcast a teaching lesson for example without having at least an assistent in the classroom where it's transmitted, the learning effect is zero. With online only we just increase the gap between the motivated and the others.
Reshef: Teachers often are the best de-motivators you can find. Often online better sources for teaching can be found. Teachers need to apply changes in media use amongs students as well, but often they are averse to change. And as long as governments and teachers do not hire teachers that are motivated not much will change.
Relationship in between for-profit and non-profit schools
Olek: The schools theirselves are non profit but the Phorms holding is a profit organization that makes money with licensing the system and offering management services. The profit aspect is important because the pressure and initiative is higher.Reshef's University of the People is non profit for two main reasons. First, he has enough money and does not need to make more and second he needs so many volunteers which can only be motivated for a non profit business. He still believes that education can well be a profit business. Looking at other initiatives of all non profit universities in the 90ies: all failed. They systems live side by side and benefit from each other.
Media competence and motivation
Olek: I have not seen a single online tool to learn mahtematics, but I have seen a lot! To my opinion it's only the people who can educate, not the computer. The parents and the teachers are the most important factors for successful learning. The feedback for young learners is hugely important. We need to educate and motivate these too.
Disagreement from the audience: He mentions the Indian teacher from DLD08 who told the story of Indian children in rural areas who with little help taught themselves with the help of a computer.Public discussion
I would like to give out some of the questions from the room out to the blog audience:What are your views on education, especially on the very interesting question of the right mix between online and offlin? Especially: How can education be brought to people who have littel chance to learn now, how can digitalization help with that goal?
Second: What is the position of commerce and profit in education? How shall the success of schools be measured?Here is the full video from the education panel at DLD09:
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January 27, 2009
11:45 AMEducation: Jose Ferreira, Calvin Chin
dld· dld09· education - 0 comments
(all quotes only roughly verbal)
The panel:
Jose Ferreira (Knewton)
Calvin Chin (Qifang)Shai Reshef (University of People)
Alexander Olek (Phorms Schools)
Moderation: Simon Levene (Accel)I will concentrate on Jose Ferreira and Calvin Chin while my co-blogger Thomas will feature the other panelists. (link to his post follows)
(I have massive problems hearing, sorry,a s soon as the battery is full I will move to the main room.)
Calvin Chin: We at Qifang are doing Peer-to-Peer student loans in China. [There was something about t-shirts that I did not get.]
Jose Ferreira: We do a online video platform and enrich that with textbook editors content. (Knewton)
Education costs about 4.3% of global GDP. 15% of the global population is involved in education as a teacher or student.
(I am in the main room now.)
Shai Reshef: The problem for teaching online is that the teachers are still oriented towards 'teacher speaks , everyone listens'. For some students this is great but many students would prefer to 'rewind and listen again', talk to peers, read books, have study groups or others. This is possible online.
Calvin Chin. It is not about the students, it's about the content. Other forms of learning need facilitators and this cannot be well delivered online.
Calvin: Maybe I hope hat in 20 years with computing and access to the Internet there will be access for the 'pyramid'. Maybe you can teach basic knowledge that way.
Jose: I don't think that replacing classical teaching with computers is good. we need both. But we mainly need to make the teachers better. The access problem cannot be solved in the schools. But we can take the top teachers and professors and connect them and make them accessible to inner city school kids.
Jose: In 20 years we will have fewer schools with fewer but better schools and a blended model with maybe also holographic technology. The best teachers will be 'broadcast' to neighboring districts.
Calvin: The transition from this 'legacy system' will be gard. How do you move to fewer teachers and broadcasting?
Aleksander: That is political work. Pay teachers better. We need to flush out the old generation and bring in the ones that use online tools. We broadcast lessons and have an assistant in the other classroom - if there is no one present nothing is learned. Without (direct) human interaction there is no learning. Live teachers motivate, the knowledge can be fed online.
Jose Ferreira: Nobody is intrinsically motivated to learn a multiplication table by heart.
Calvin: I agree with your zero-learning thesis. But as tools get better we we might improve that factor.
Aleksander: All online learning attempts are stillborn. But we have found a way to teach teachers how to be better teachers.
?: What about non- and for-profit models? Is money the factor? Is the student the customer or partents or the government?
Jose: (very short statement, missed sorry)
Calvin: Profit makes sense for tertiary education. But education is a human right, so for the 5 to 7 year old it is not a good solution.
?: Show us a glimpse of the future.
Jose: I'd take the OLPC-initiative, they have paved the way and others try now to develop similar programs, like Microsoft and Intel. Maybe a OLPC-Kindle hybrid that would not need electricity would be helpful.
Calvin: The most interesting thing online is Google. This is how you learn: by searching, by queries.
?: What is the role of education in the 21st century? What are the new competencies? Innovation? Teamwork? Publishing? Does this have to start in kindergarten? Preventing teachers and students from participating is a sin.
Calvin: In China many are consumers of technology, many are not trained to be publishers and producers. education has to focus on the needs of the many. (?)
?: If teachers are empowered by technology, how do we prevent 'false learning' for a whole generation?
Aleksander: We have to take it slow.
Calvin: If change is fast feedback will have to be fast, too.
Jose: Sometimes feedback can be also almost instant. There is analysis possible of homework that directly is used to decide what you work on the next week.
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January 27, 2009
11:17 AMVideo summaries from Monday
dld· dld09 - 0 comments
Monday, Day 2, morning panels, summary 1
Monday, Day 2, morning panels, summary 2
Monday, Day 2, afternoon panels summary
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January 27, 2009
10:30 AMCloud Computing
cloud· cloud computing· dld· dld09 - 0 comments
(liveblogging in progress , quotes only roughly verbal)
Panelists are:
Marissa Mayer (Google)
Werner Vogels (Amazon)
Russ Daniels (HP)
Moderation: Spencer Reiss (Wired)
Marissa: Cloud Comouting is a buzzword, but it is the buzzword that hits. It's abut providing really reliable server parks. It also is good or consumers as they have a safe backup option. The data is reliable and accessible.Russ Daniels: It is impportant to think about application, not only about technology. You can not only capture photos or videos but also your calender. It is a new way of doing things. You can create new experiences and move through a range of different devices.
Werner: There ar e3 different layers: Infrastructure, platforms and applications as a service. Each of them could be massively scalable. Thta is my definition.
Is CC the ultimate globalization, what about jurisdiction.
Marissa: Technology has gotten in front of juristiction. In general the laws of the country which the data is stored in applies.
Russ: Legislation is based on the concept of the public good. As a government wou would want to be the data to stay withing your legislative boundaries. Also for job reasons. When I was working at Apple we had a big train wreck because we did not take into account current behaviors or business models.
Werner: Bittorrent for example can run on our cloud. But it's just technlogy. The question whether you use it legally or illegaly is another matter.
Russ: People have to understand very complex questions that make the technology unavailable to people. As long as you stress technology instead of applications this will remain a problem.
Werner: You have to provide the technology so that developers can obey local laws if they chose to do so. I assume that that (most) what runs on our cloud services is legal.
Marissa: Search is how we built our cloud. If you wanna store copies of the web and replicate it you create a low cost secure storage mechnaism. Then we could also offer Gmail and our other services like Docs and Spredsheets.
?: What about adding more and more layers of information to the cloud. Like location data. where is the next frontier, what will be added to the cloud next?
Werner: You assume that we just released 1.0 of Cloud Computing, this is not the case. e continuously evolved in during thelast years and we will continue to do so. [It is more a continuum.] The question is for example: What is the impact on the media world?
Russ: It is true that Amazon lows a lot about me and can cross reference it with other demographic data about where I live. You could youse this rich profile of yourself FOR yourself, but this is not yet possible. It could be one way technology creates value.
Marissa: What Facebook or Amazon do with their data is very specific to those companies. The value of the cloud is in software. Why would you buy so many computers or run an exchange server? Webmail has 15 minutes downtime per month, an exchange server morelike 50 minutes.
Werner: The cloud is an environment that can create platforms that others can build upon. It's not only more agile, cheaper or efficient, but to offer services to others in the cloud.
?: Will the clouds of Google, amazon or Facebook be separatte or connected? Will we end up with a few separte clouds.
Marissa: The cloud supports scalability. If you have for wait for servers to be delivered you lose efficiency.
Russ. You can be a consumer or a provider of the cloud, will there be 2 providers, 5 10, 1,000 or 10,000). There is alot of economical interest to provide this. Telcos have a lot of capacities that they can provide, or IBM. To compete you had to buy and build data centers. Now you can rent a container with everything in it. We will see decentralization here. (?)
(continued)
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January 27, 2009
10:29 AMCloud Computing
cloud· computing· DLD· DLD09· germany· munich - 0 comments
Marissa Mayer (Google)
Werner Vogels (Amazon)
Russ Daniels (HP)
Moderation: Spencer Reiss (Wired)To offer you a better live coverage during this session I'll focus on Russ Daniels (HP) and Spencer Reiss (Wired). Oliver Gassner will cover Marissa Mayer (Google) and Werner Vogels (Amazon).
Spencer Reiss (Wired): Cloud computing and data security.
Russ Daniels (HP): It depends a lot where the data is, then of course we might be aware that in digital data exists manipulation. It's also important to have data available in different formats and from multiple locations.Thoughts on search as cloud function.
It's not about computation and storage, these can be done without the cloud, cloud computing is about communication.. The cloud is gathering elements. Interesting is the fact that now we can access the cloud from mobile devices too, so where is this taking us? Which applications we will see in future? And which kind of data we'll upload/share?There's more commercial application entering the cloud-sphere
Russ Daniels (HP): Today we have the possibility to better target our audience thanks to data that is in the cloud. So this enable us to provide a much wider range of services. Technology is taking more responsibility.Is there an imperative to scale?
Russ Daniels (HP): You can look at the cloud as consumer or provider. There's a lot of economical interest in providing cloud services (think about HP, Google, etc.). Cloud computing can be seen as a scale issue but technology innovation will make this less true.Today we have data that is fragmented across multiple platforms. Will we move to a more open access to information?
Russ Daniels (HP): Software design plays an important role in this. When we think about services we have to keep in mind that the service has to serve your needs and not own you/your data, this is a very good starting point. -
January 27, 2009
10:28 AMHispanic Markets
Mariano Amartino (Uberin), Joaquin Cuenca (Panoramio), Eduardo Arcos (Hipertextual), RJ Friedlander (Planeta), Enrique Dans (enriquedans.com), Moderation: Martin Varsavsky (FON)
Panoramio is introduced as the company who got bought buy Google and now integrates pictures into Google Earth. Planeta is one of the biggest publishing houses in the spanish speaking market.
Varsavsky: "Is the Spanish market really a market?"
The panel agrees more or less that it's a collection of markets with a common language. The countries all are very different in terms of law, administration and culture.Varsavski: "Telefonica has the largest market capitalization of all the European telcos. So some manage obviously to take advantage. They do everything right in South America. The richest man in the world is Mexican and he makes most of his money in the Spanish speaking world."
Amartino: "We live in constant crisis in South America, so they buy businesses cheap."Varsavsky: "E-commerce does not really work in South America. Panoramio is one of the few success stories from Spanish speaking market, except Orkut which is extremely successful in Brazil"
Success factors for online business in the Spanish speaking markets seem to be very random according to the panel. In one country there is a cooperation with a big telco, in the other the tipping point is never reached. Some sites are surprisingly successful, like Fotolog.
Enrique Dans: "Are herding effects in Spanish speaking markets stronger? The biggest sites have a bigger market share than in other countries, e.g. Google more than 90% of search in Spain." Varsavsky: "True, maybe Spanish twitterers are the most followed in the world. Maybe it's when Spanish people fall in love, they fall in love."
Varsavsky: "Do you think there was negativity to American sites and will change now?"
Ardos: "There is some kind of friction in Mexico, but I don't think that is the same in other countries" Amartino: "Yes, I think, now there is more sympathy."
Abela: "I think people do not care:"As a common point the panel agrees that language is extremely important. People need to have content or user interfaces in Spanish. Especially in Spain, according to Varsavsky, people fight against other languages, it is less extreme in Latin America.
General successful factors for Hispanic market
The panel agreed that there is not really ONE market. Still there are things to be done especifically wrong or right, as well as there are opportunities.Friedlander: "In ecommerce are opprtunities, but there is still a lot to do: Customs, logistics, taxes. As well as in advertising are a lot of challenges: The infrastructure of agencies that handle the big brands in different countries is very inconsistent in South America. In Europe you can at least run Pan European campaigns but there is no player who would do that in South America."
Amartino points to another business opportunity in Argentina: Low cost and well educated people. Many offices open in Buenos Aires to handle international business, also in advertising and online business.
Here is the full video from the Hispanic market panel at DLD09:
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January 27, 2009
09:26 AMWomen Power
dld· dld09 - 0 comments
- Monika Wulf-Mathies (Deutsche Post)
- Silvana Koch-Mehrin (EU Parliament)
- Deborah Berebichez (NYU)
- Aude Zieseniss de Thuin (Women's Forum)
- Marissa Mayer (Google)
- Moderation: Maria Furtwängler-Burda
Notes Maria Furtwängler introduces the panel on Women Power:
When we have the biggest chance to make career, it is the same time which is best to have a familyAenne Burda: Gender Equality? I always took what I wanted!
Great question on how many women in the audience did have career and childreen and to the guys who actually took parental leave (3 men standing in the end).
Deborah Berebichez:
- We were encouraged to marry early.
- she asked to be an apprentice and was laughed at
- learned to hide this side of her
- it was always a challenge to be feminin and be in the male dominated science aready
- mother told her to hide that she liked maths, otherwise no man would ever be interested in her
- started the project "science of everyday life"
- result from surveying girls about the scientific field: it is uncool, you cant be a nerd
- has special videos like the "physics of high heels"
Monika Wulf-Mathes
- pregnant women in her 8th months plus an excecutive past his retirement age made the deal for Postbank
- only 16% of 900 excecutive are female but this is the biggest employer for females in Germany
- no woman on the board of management, board of advisors has one through the trade union
- has the role changed? yes, change is very visible
- companies cannot afford any more to just leave the job to men as they need the employees
- most women are higher qualified
- research from "women matter" - if you have more women on board, your company is more successful
- seeing change and success over the last 5 years especially since code of conduct encourages this now, as well as some mentoring programmes to foster relationships and encourage networking
- additional work life balance programme after maternity leave
- in her view the best familiy service: kindergarden (4 months to 3 years), special programme tailored for women
- Maria: Deutsche Post does send kids around?
- Rolee models are highly important
Marissa Meyer
- does technology promote and enable diversity?
- gives examples of microlending as good model
- we need more role models to show it is cool, it should be more visible what you do with computer science
- it is cool that now you can have an idea what this is when you look at websites like Amazon and co
- she does not reflect on "what does it feel like to be a woman at google" she rather thinks about how it is to be a geek at google (which is the best place)
- she is shy, but feels no need to be shy at google
- technology tends to remove gender from the equation
Maria: World Forum in Davos has 95% men attending
Aude Zieseniss de Thuin
- Papers said: "Davos is the place to change the world"
- she wrote a letter and got no reply, asked a friend why
- two reasons: because she was a women and Davos was not interested at that time and just a little company with 30 company
- which is why she started the Women's Forum
- has 5 sisters, a lot of women around her
- considers is necessary to create a world for women and men
- if we want to change the world and create a new perspective, it needs to be done by both
- her project was considered "too high risk" for the banks
- last october 1200 men (15%) and women from 90 countries
- she is an entrepreneur who is a little crazy
- started this also in China, after inviting 5 women from China who said "we need this"
- first in Shanghai from 35 countries
- she prepares the second edition
- as relation is not good between France and China it is not easy
- how many women are there in chinese politics? just one women, but is retired now
- she is very impressed by the will of women to change the world, especially after the financial crisis
- if there is more women in financial services, the crisis would probably not been have as bad
- I am not a feminist (nods from the panel as in we neither)
Silvana Koch-Mehrin (EU Parliament)
- is the implementation of equality in parliament better than in companies?
- not always been like that but developped
- the more rights women got, the more they demanded
- resulted in more representation in parlament
- one looks at the other countries and compares
- Chancelor being female in Germany had an impact of impression of what women can do
- also changed the perception of women
- yes, you need to have role models, kicks of discussions
- EU parliament required 1/3 of the commissioners need to be women it makes a big difference
- next step: it is of no importance to have children or not
- not an issue for any men if he runs for a job, at tops it is a question of private interest
- for women it is always a blunt question and has impact on career
- visible pregnant women on tour is an important signal
- there was an emotional discussion if a women in high power is 'allowed' to get back to work after 5 days after birth (not discussing the physical constrains, but the issue itself)
- example from Dubai: if you cant convince your husband to wash the dishes you can forget about equality, if you cannot even fight the battles at home
- Maria: I am not sure my husband even knows where they are
- all these challenges are also put forward to men: are you good looking? are you succesful
- but men do not have magazines to find counsel in
Notes from the discussion
- seems liked mixed teams are more successful - what is the gender specific contribution?
- DB: are women more nurturing? questions is wrong: nobody asked if for example females are better doctors
- DB: it is a spektrum of qualities and not a gender thing
- MWM: women are more fact oriented, men are more testosteron, have to show of who is the best, women are more oriented on solutions
- MWMW: are normally better team leaders as they don't try to rule in the old way and being the big boss, but motivate
- MWM: there is the other side as well: men behave differently when women are around
- MWM: it is important to include as many ideas as possible to find the right solution, it involves different skills,
- MWM: not just about men / women but old and young etc, it is about the right mix
MF: are women less likely to take risk?
- MM: we build better products when the people who build them are more like the users they are working for
- it is not about stereotypes
- AZdT: women are more doubtful, except for the US, where does that come from?
- companies need to help women to have more confidence, then women can take more responsible roles
- she thinks it is a genetic problem
- with the arival of Obama it is interesting to see the change in society
- for the women around the world the dream is America but they want not to be similar
- now with economy crisis we assist to the new challenges
- it is an oportunity for women to lead us out of the crisis
- MF about the book "women, the stupid gender" that they behave wrong way and want the wrong things, is it maybe our own fault? Do we do the wrong things?
- SK if it only would be about the circumstances we would still would not be able to vote and have a bank account
- in Germany it is something specific as there is a tendency to pick up jobs like her mum and grandma, having lower paying jobs with not clout
- there is no job a girl cannot aspire to do so, they should be told more often
- the mindset is important: is it my gift or my right?
- boys are brought up with the notion that they are allowed to have success
- MF had a female pilot and for a second thought "uh, time to get out of here?"
- DB: it totally has to do with education, they play just like boys do, but at some point they "get" the message to change and start loosing the confidence
- we should nurture more
- example norway forced public companies to have 40% females in high positions - many companies decided to go private
- MWM in politics it helped to get more women into business, not in favour of quotas but they can help
- sometimes you need heavy measures that women can do the same jobs as men can do
- MM we have been lucky, and a lot of strong role models
- MF: in ten years from now, will we still have to talk about this?
- AZdt: Probably. But it is a responsibility of the women to participate
- if we help the next generation it will become easier
- we need women in science in technology, and maybe it will change, but we need to give confidence
- question from Ben Hammersley for the quote of the parliament "which was the real difference the women on board made?"
- SK: there is no specific male of female politics, but you may have more experience
- audience question: young women are less likely to start company and are more likely to be mean to each other - how did you deal with the fact that women are other women's harshest critics?
- Lisa Sonio: Repeats that more women means more business. Has been said that as finish woman are more bossy as in not attractive
- You should determine if you deal with men if he is a charmer or a chauvinist
- MF: we are good at playing roles, we can do that
- Audience statement: it is time that we have to justify why we have to be on board.
- they should rather feel uncomfortbale
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January 27, 2009
09:25 AMVideo Value
DLD· DLD09· germany· munich· value· video - 1 comment
To offer you a better live coverage during this session I'll focus on Adam Valkin, Jason Glickman and Arne Rees. Thomas Praus will cover Jeremy Allaire and Axel Schmiegelow.
Adam Valkin (Endemol)
Jeremy Allaire (Brightcove)
Jason Glickman (Tremormedia)
Axel Schmiegelow (Sevenload)
Arne Rees (ESPN)
Moderation: David Kirkpatrick (Fortune)Moderator - David Kirkpatrick (Fortune): For digital natives doesn't make any difference between using DVR or watching videos online. We are going
The advertising industry has the interest of keep working with video. It's convenient and easy for agency to work with video.
The challenge would be use video to address more specific messages to out target audience.In this panel will have an overview on this video scenario.
Moderator - David Kirkpatrick (Fortune): State of the art and future of on online video. What's your take?
Adam Valkin (Endemol): we have a very large global platform for production and distribution.
In the digital space we have a lot of activities:
- extending the television brand and programs
- orginal online native programming.
Interactivity and engagement are at the center of online activities. About online monetization: Online we have the advantage of including ads in the programs in a much easier way.Why did they hired you?
I'm not sure about why they hired me but before I worked as a VC, so I'm recently fresh to the entertaining space.Jason Glickman (Tremormedia): We aggregate content from multiple channels.
The way that we use to facilitate this shifting to online video is new technology.
Years ago the online video experience was bad, today we can offer a higher and better user experience.
About CPM? 8-15 dollars CPM, but it depends a lot about the CPM.How do we solve the customers confusion? How can we help them to find content they are interested in more easily?
Adam Valkin (Endemol): It's a challenge because on one side companies need to have the capabilities to scale and on the other they need to help their partners to monetize the content.
A good model that works well is subscriptions to exclusive content that is not available anywhere else online.What about the network itself?
Jason Glickman (Tremormedia): In companies there is a mindset shift. It's a recent and quick change towards operating in a much specific way.
Advertisement is changing too, becoming more comfortable with social networks and new generation sites.Adam Valkin (Endemol): What we are doing with
- Bebo: Advertisement integration in the shows.
- MySpace: Higher degree of interaction for the audience.
Is there any possibility for un-traditional players to step in the game?
Jason Glickman (Tremormedia): Probably there is a good opportunity on mobile video, so having a technology and a business model that can easily adapt to the mobile universe it's definitely a great advantage.
About brands and trust
Jason Glickman (Tremormedia): A brand should aim to get the trust of users based on the quality of released content. It's a big challenge, especially if we look at the ability of sales force to present this vision or this potential demographic. It's not easy.Future of online advertisement?
Adam Valkin (Endemol): This year there's a 50% expected growth.
What probably it's not entirely clear to the advertisement world it's the fact that the social interaction power will grow. Social interaction is probably one of the most effective way of reaching our target audience.
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January 27, 2009
09:24 AMVideo value: Schmiegelow, Allaire
Double coverage on this issue, Andrea will cover Adam Valkin, Jason Glickman and Arne Rees, I'll cover Jeremy Allaire and Axel Schmiegelow.
(CPM is mentioned often: the cost per thousand impressions. Google adwords has an explanation for CPM. Further down that currency is questioned.)
Axel Schmiegelow introduces Sevenload which is a German video portal who have an user generated content but also an editor team to create environment around certain topics. They create attractive channels with a social layer with user proiles. They try to make more money in ads than they pay to the content providers. He says in a nutshell they try to be leaders in monetizations with a cpm of 50 EUR.
Here goes an amusing conversation in between moderator David Kirkpatrick and Axel Schmiegelow.
Kirkpatrick "So what is your actual cpm?"
Schmiegelow "Ad sales pricing is complicated, we make 50 EUR cpm"
K: "50 EUR you really get that?!"
S: "As I said, it's complicated."
K: "I did not ask what you say you make but what you actually make. Come on, cut the marketing speak!"
S: "We still make 4 times of what is normal."
K: "Normal being what?"
S: "If you have on average a cpm of 5 EUR..."
K: "So you're making 20."
S: "That's right."
K: "Ok, thank you."Jeremy Allaire introdces Brightcove which is "a software company for online video, with applications for producers, advertisers, and website creators and for people who build video websites. The mindshare is from media business: music, tv, news, print."
Some of the biggest online video providers that work with Brighhtcove are newspaper companies who compete now with tv channels. Their production costs are low, they have less need of infrastructure like tv companies. Says Allaire: "Online video has actually growth, so all media companies go in there now. Many advertisers are still waiting until they have a quality that can compete with television."
Allaire: "The snackable content, disposable content will continue to grow massively, while traditional news entertainment media has a bigger step to go, to the point where video channels online are being used like RSS".
Allaire: "Finding video should not be more difficult than anything else. Everything will be indexed, I don't think the problem is discoverablity".
The CNN / Facebook collaboration is mentioned where live video and chatting about the Obama inauguration was taking place within Facebook. But this idea is not deepened any further.
TV - internet connection
Next topic are home entertainment devices, the problem with these still is how to connect them to online video. TV interacting with the web is still problematic: Many formats, different standards, different usage patterns.Allaire: "All devices have their own approach: Xbox, Playstation, settop boxes, Panasonic, they all hope to find their own, but they need open formats and open standards like web browser emulation. like we see in mobile market. THEN we will see a significant growth.
Microsoft, Adobe are both candidates to build a software stack other companies could build on."Schmiegelow: "Sevenload will be embedded in home entertainment devices, significant traffic already comes from the Wii. But it's still not clear how to connect best to a tv, moreover web videos still need too much time to load."
Allaire: Brightcove now starts to connect iPhones with a web interface and certain mp4 formats
Marketing and advertising
Allaire: "Online video marketing still is not done well by advertisers. A campaign here and there, some times not- a lousy job. Given the economic environment - nobody can afford to leave a penny on a table - this needs to be better, e.g. with targeted advertising over different platforms"
Schmiegelow: "Advertising in general does not work. "As long as we have a display mentality we will change this. CPM is a bad currency, anyway! We need to be more relevant, we need environments and ad formats that convert. Conversion rate is way more important."
Allaire: "Prerolls are a powerful vehicle, for a film to connect emotionally you need some 15 seconds. Flash as an interactive platform allows for some very rich and interactiv things. Really creative and immersive could be done here, that is up to the advertisers."
Schmiegelow: "It's about the social, nothing is more important than your friends. Advertising industry has not understood that at all, it's award driven, not about social interaction".
Marketing money and the crisis
Kirkpatrick "How badly is it going to slow given that advertising has just gone off a cliff?"
How fast is that going to go? Are you worried?"
Allaire: "I actually expect a growth, we will add more customers who probably spend less each but still we are in the right place of the industry"Watch the video of DLD's Video value session:
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January 27, 2009
09:02 AMWelcome to day 3 of DLD.
dld· tuesday· welcome - 0 comments
Steffi Czerny, one of the DLD hosts, chimes in the third and last day of DLD09, the fifth DLD - Digital Lifestyle Design.
She introduces Maria Furtwängler-Burda, the moderator of the first panel: "Women Power", which will be liveblogged by Nicole Simon.***
OK, it's the final day and except for the (probably final) loss of an iPhone in a taxi the Blogging Team is up and running. Join us today for the final sessions and a cool surprise guest today *wink wink*.We'll keep you posted - of course.