Over the last month – in between all the other things I do – I have delivered five keynotes in San Francisco, Perth, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi, which has meant an average of over 2 hours each day on airplanes. This morning this sequence of keynotes ended, and I now have a bit of a break from speaking commitments.
One of the things that will be taking a lot of my time and attention is the arrival of my second child in the next week or two. Moving from a family of three to one of four is a big thing – I expect! Soon after we’ll head off for a holiday in Fiji to get over all the excitement and have a rest.
Other than that in coming months there will be lots of business building, including working on the Future of Influence Summit and related content, creating some new web properties, and putting energy into developing a couple of the companies in our group. Hopefully I will be able to keep up a reasonable pace of blogging along the way, at very least by spinning off part of the content from our reports and research…
US Internet ad revenue down 5% on last year – expect a shorter downturn than post dot-com
By Ross DawsonThe US Interactive Advertising Bureau has just released 2009 Q1 figures, showing US$5.5 billion for a 5% fall from first quarter of last year.
This has to be put in the context of overall advertising revenue. The Newspaper Association of America recently announced that first quarter newspaper ad revenues were down over 28% over last year, while Barclays Capital early estimated that total US advertising revenues would fall 13% this year.
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Internet advertising per capita highest in UK, Denmark, US, Australia, Sweden
By Ross DawsonTechcrunch has updated its analysis of the valuation of the major social networks globally, based on new usage and advertising spending figures.
As last year when I did the same analysis, the most interesting part of this for me is the relative advertising spending per internet user across countries, and the very strong differences in what are sometimes quite similar economies.
The relative ranking has changed little from last year, though the absolute figures have fallen significantly. Internet advertising spending has essentially been flat over the last year or so, while there has been a solid increase in the number of users.
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Video interviews with J.B. Holston of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd before Enterprise 2.0 Conference
By Ross DawsonThere is some great content on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference blog, including video interviews with J.B. Holston, CEO of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd. These give a flavor of some of the great content we can expect at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 22-25.
I’m due to have a call with J.B. Holston soon in which I will be very interested to hear his views on what I call the ‘RSS Enterprise’. He has some great insights in this video, including on the current pace of uptake of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and the legal issues relating to privacy in different countries. A summary of some of the points he makes in the interview is available here.
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Back in one place and onto new things…
By Ross DawsonOver the last month – in between all the other things I do – I have delivered five keynotes in San Francisco, Perth, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi, which has meant an average of over 2 hours each day on airplanes. This morning this sequence of keynotes ended, and I now have a bit of a break from speaking commitments.
One of the things that will be taking a lot of my time and attention is the arrival of my second child in the next week or two. Moving from a family of three to one of four is a big thing – I expect! Soon after we’ll head off for a holiday in Fiji to get over all the excitement and have a rest.
Other than that in coming months there will be lots of business building, including working on the Future of Influence Summit and related content, creating some new web properties, and putting energy into developing a couple of the companies in our group. Hopefully I will be able to keep up a reasonable pace of blogging along the way, at very least by spinning off part of the content from our reports and research…
Keynote: The Global Health Economy – Today and Beyond
By Ross DawsonTomorrow morning I give the opening keynote at Cerner Corporation’s Leadership Forum, which brings together a select group of senior executives from hospitals, healthcare and government.
Below are my slides for the presentation. Note that these are designed to accompany my speech and are not intended to be useful as a stand-alone presentation. However a few summary thoughts on the topic are presented below.
A few quick reflections on the global health economy and where it’s heading:
1. The health industry has been largely immune to the price drivers of other industries
Health spending as a proportion of GDP is on a long-term uptrend in all developed economies. Many of the drivers of lower prices in other industries, such as supply chain efficiencies, globalization, transparency, and new entrants have had relatively little impact, largely due to the systemic nature of vested interest in the status quo. However the pace of change in the structure of health economy is accelerating.
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Interview on the global and Middle East economy
By Ross DawsonProminent Arabic region magazine Trends did a special issue to accompany the MegaTrends conference where I delivered a keynote last week, incorporating interviews with the three major speakers: Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al-Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourist Authority, and myself.
My interview is in the document here. I’ve also posted it as text below (pre-editing) as it may be easier to read.
Interview with Ross Dawson for MegaTrends conference –
TACKLING THE TRENDS
Ross Dawson, CEO of international consulting firm Advanced Human Technologies, talks to Ehtesham Shahid about the nature of the Middle East’s economic stability and systemic risk.
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Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston coming soon!
By Ross DawsonWhile our annual Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum is the biggest Enterprise 2.0 event in Australasia and Asia, the global landmark event for Enterprise 2.0 is definitely the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, coming up on June 22-25. As I am a blogger partner of the conference, you can get a 30% discount by registering through the button on the right of this post.
Notable keynote speakers at the conference include Andrew McAfee of HBS and Matthew Fraser, co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, as well as a host of senior executives from companies that are implementing Enterprise 2.0.
The White Paper produced for the event has some interesting statistics from a very recent survey, as below. The other key statistic, not surprising but certainly gratifying to vendors, is that 65% of respondents expect spending on Enterprise 2.0 by corporates to increase in 2009 compared to last year.
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Landslide in front of my house!
By Ross DawsonYesterday evening water got cut off to our house, and then the electricity went out. There were sounds of roadwork outside, so I presumed that as had happened before they were digging up pipes in the road and hadn’t bothered to let us know.
In the morning my wife Victoria got up and then rushed back in the bedroom saying I had to get up and look. I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and beheld a big hole in the ground in front of our house. A landslide had taken away part of the road and a couple of cars with it. The photo below (click for large version) is taken from our balcony.
We in fact have the absolute best view of this in the city, as we live in the penthouse of the tallest building around, right in front of the hole. Exclusive access to TV crew available by bid in sealed envelope (or email).
Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell
By Ross DawsonLast night we had a conversation with Juliette Powell in Sydney. A small group of local digerati gathered for an informal conversation on social networks, taking advantage of Juliette being in Australia for the first time as she tours the world promoting her new book 33 Million People in the Room.
Below are the unedited notes I took during the conversation, reflecting what was said by the participants. It was a fascinating discussion, with just a few fragments captured here.
Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell
After her book came out Juliette got invitations from around the world, including from X Media Lab for a keynote and mentorship program in New Zealand. There were limited opportunities to connect with her peer mentors in the busy schedule, so the only way to connect was online – the brief initial contact will be followed up on social networks.
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A purveyor of Social Media-Web 2.0-Geek porn
By Ross Dawson@webtechman just posted this:
For connoisseurs of geek porn who haven’t seen it before, click on the image below for my full Twitter background, comprised of four of our more well-known frameworks, or go to the full pdfs of the frameworks here: Web 2.0 Framework, Extinction Timeline, Trend Blend 2007, and Future of Media Strategic Framework. I’ve been intending to do a compilation of some of our frameworks – will post that soon.