A story about Connected: The Film and why you must see it

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I saw Connected: The Film by Tiffany Shlain last night at its Australian premiere, organized by Annalie Killian.

The first thing I have to say is that the film is absolutely fantastic. It nails how we as humans live an intensely interdependent world, and how our recognition of and response to that will determine our future. I think the more people that see it the better, so I dearly hope it will get a healthy – or even massive – audience.

I have to say I am not an independent reviewer, and that in itself is a highly relevant story.
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Crowdsourcing among an awesome speaker line-up at Australian Business Congress

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The Australian Chambers Business Congress on 1-2 June is shaping up to be one of the top business conferences of the year in Australia, with an awesome speaker line-up. The Congress is organized by the Australian Chamber Alliance, a consortium of all the major business chambers across Australia.

Speakers include Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Porter, Steve Wozniak, Tony Abbott, Anna Bligh plus an array of some of most interesting people in business in Australia and worldwide.

I will be speaking at the Congress on Friday 3rd about Crowdsourcing.

I will do my best to pack in as many practical insights as I can on how to grow your business using crowdsourcing tools. This topic will be a major focus for me for the rest of the year, so stand by for plenty of content on how to get results from crowdsourcing – the scoop will be at the Congress!

The rise of participative TV (hint: that’s better than social TV)

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The opportunity for television is to become a truly participative media.

Over the last year or so my views on the future of TV have significantly shifted, to be far more optimistic for the media. Last year I gave the opening keynote at the Regional TV Marketing conference, and subsequently wrote how The Future of TV is community. In my keynote I reflected on how the power of big screen will remain truly compelling. However TV must transcend the classic broadcast mentality that implies a passive audience. It needs to create participative experiences, from which comes real community. Which, incidentally, will lead to the most powerful business models for the future of television, as I mentioned in some thoughts on TV in 10 years from now.

After a very slow start, TV channels appear to be getting the message and getting on board. The latest is What’s Trending, a “new kind of news show” from CBS News. Here is the trailer.


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Keynote slides: Building Success in a Connected World

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Tomorrow morning I give the breakfast keynote at Think Business 2011, making it my third keynote this week.

For those attending the breakfast, here are my slides, which go through and flesh out our recent Success in a Connected World framework and also touch on related issues such as personal branding. The usual disclaimers apply: these slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone. However you may still find them useful!

Beijing social media/ future of media meetup on May 19

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I’m in Beijing next week to do the keynote at the AICD conference on How Technology is Transforming Business and guest lecture at Beijing Foreign Studies University on The End of Newspapers and Future of News.

While I’m in Beijing I’m keen to catch up with any local folks on Twitter/ Weibo/ social media and those interested in the future of media. As such I’ve set up a Beijing Future of Media/ Social Media meetup on Eventbrite. Please register on the page if you can join us.

Date: May 19
Time: 12pm – 2pm
Location: Union Bar and Grille
S6-31, 3/F, Bldg 6, Sanlitun Village South, 19 Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District
朝阳区三里屯路19号三里屯Village南区6号楼3层S6-31

If you’re in Beijing next week would be great to see you there, or if you think there are people who might like to come along, please pass on word.

Thanks to @beijingboyce and @benjaminjoffe for the pointers and support!!

New Prezi: The Transformation of Business

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I am always trying to get better at using visuals to support my keynotes and presentations. I use many videos, and we have created quite a few Flash animations that I embed into Powerpoint to make them more dynamic. I have been aware of Prezi as a dynamic presentation tool for some time now, though have never yet taken the leap to move my entire presentation into this format.

The launch of our Transformation of Business framework has provided a great opportunity to use Prezi. The entire story is laid out on a page, and Prezi enables me to zoom in, pan across, and illustrate they key points in the framework. I first used this on Tuesday for an executive team strategy session, and will be using it in a number of other presentations and keynotes over the next week.

As usual my disclaimer is that the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone, however they might be of interest and value even if you haven’t attended one of my keynotes.

Transformation of Business 1 on Prezi

New Framework: The Transformation of Business

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Our latest visual framework is The Transformation of Business.

Many of my keynotes and client workshops at the moment are to high-level business audiences such as boards of directors and top executive teams who need to understand the essence of how the business landscape is changing and the implications. While you can never capture the rich diversity of change on a single page, this framework seeks to distill the issues in a meaningful way.


Click on the image for full-size pdf

[NOTE:] Also see the presentation in Prezi format for more detail.

I’ll soon provide some more detailed commentary on the framework, particularly on the vital point that this framework leads to: Governance for Transformation.

Here is the content in text format:
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Beijing lecture: The end of newspapers and the future of news

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When I’m in Beijing next week I’ll be doing a guest lecture at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China’s premier international studies university, where many of the country’s foreign ministers have studied.

I will be speaking on The end of newspapers and the future of news. While many are familiar with my Newspaper Extinction Timeline, that is just one aspect of what I consider a far more interesting topic, the future of news.

Here are full details.

Date: May 19, 2011
Time: 4:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: 北京外国语大学东院日本学研究中心三层多功能厅 (Multimedia Hall, 3rd Floor, Japanese Studies Center, East Campus, Beijing Foreign Studies University).

Please do pass on word to people in Beijing who may be interested. I’ll also be doing a Beijing Social Media Meetup at lunch same day – I’m keen to meet interesting folk while I’m in town!

Where news website traffic comes from: Google vs Facebook

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The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has recently released some very interesting research on Navigating News Online, digging into how people navigate to news sites and what takes them away.

Among the interesting insights was data on how news website traffic comes from Google and Facebook, shown below.

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5 Driving Forces of Global Professional Services

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A little while ago I co-authored a White Paper for SAP titled Service Delivery Innovation: Creating Client Value and Enhancing Profitability, focused on large professional services organisations.

Later today I’m running a strategy workshop for a large technology vendor with a significant professional services arm. In the course of preparing for the session I looked back at this paper. While I would probably frame my views somewhat differently now, I thought the section of driving forces was worth sharing.

DRIVING FORCES

Faced with increasingly sophisticated clients, market globalization, and evolving technology, professional services firms must evaluate their business models to ensure they can delivery the greatest value to every client on every project. If firms continue to do business as usual, they will face eroding margins, increased operational complexity and risk, and underleveraged partnerships. Let’s take a moment to look at each of the five fundamental driving forces at work in the professional services marketplace today before we explore how firms can proactively address these trends.


Source: Service Delivery Innovation SAP White Paper
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