The Power of Innovation keynote in Luxembourg

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I recently gave the opening keynote at the Golden-i Awards in Luxembourg. Luxembourg for Business has produced a five minute video about the event, including an interview with me and also the organizers talking about my “very inspiring” keynote. Click on the image below to see the video (start from 1:00).

The video provides some more context to my recent post on How Luxembourg is playing to become a technology hub. It was fascinating to see the energy and innovation in this small country in the heart of Western Europe.

How Luxembourg is playing to become a technology hub

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A few weeks ago I gave the keynote at the IT Nation Golden i Gala and Awards and earlier in the day ran a CIO workshop on Creating the Organisation of the Future.

In my brief time in Luxembourg I learned about some of the many things that are happening in the tech scene in nation. As a tiny country of half a million people, it has the highest GDP per capita in the world, currently based primarily on its strong financial services industry, facilitated by its strong banking secrecy laws. Luxembourg is the second largest funds management market in the world after the US. However an economy dependent on financial services is not necessarily the best position to be today. As such the government and business sectors are seeking to build Luxembourg into a technology hub, with ICT named by the government as the third of five pillars for national development.
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Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds

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TheNextWeb produced a good quality video of my keynote at TheNextWeb Conference 2012, shown below.

It doesn’t show all of my full motion graphics presentation, though it frequently cuts to show segments of the visuals through my keynote. I will create and share a full video of my motion graphics presentation along with the audio of me speaking, however as I’m travelling it may take a little while to complete.

Here is a brief overview of the structure of the presentation:
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European speaking tour: What, where, and what else

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I am currently in transit in Hong Kong on the way to London for a few days with my and my goddaughter’s family at the beginning of a five-week speaking tour. Below is my itinerary in case you’d like to get along to any of the events. My schedule is jam packed in almost all of the locations on the tour. However there are two gaps in my schedule 5-9 and 11-14 May, so do let me know if you are interested in discussing engaging me on any of the days that I am currently free, for example for executive briefings on the future of business or business transformation.
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Future of Crowdsourcing workshop at Crowdsourcing Summit in Cologne

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On April 28, immediately after my keynote at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam, I will travel to Cologne to run a workshop on the Future of Crowdsourcing. Unfortunately I will miss what looks like an excellent Crowdsourcing Summit on April 27 as I will be speaking in Amsterdam that day.

I’ve made a short video to introduce some of what we’ll be covering in the Future of Crowdsourcing workshop.


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Entrepreneurship becomes global: the top 25 startups hubs in the world

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The Startup Genome project setup a year ago to gather comparative data on startups around the world. Its Startup Compass allows entrepreneurs to compare statistics on their companies with others in their locality and around the world.

A post on Techcrunch provides a great summary of some of the data gathered in the almost 12 months since the launch of the project.

I was particularly interested in the rankings of startup cities around the world, reproduced below. There is no question that the US is no longer the predominant startup country in a world in which economic and entrepreneurial activity is increasingly global.
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Explorer le futur en France et en français

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Ceci est le premier billet de blog que j’écris en français. Je suis Australien, né à Canberra, mais mon père travaillais pour l’ONU et j’ai passé presque tout ma jeunesse à Genève. Je vivais ainsi à quelques kilomètres de la France et j’y allais tous les samedis pour skier. Cela fait bien longtemps que je n’ai pas vécu dans un pays francophone, mais heureusement je n’ai pas trop oublié mon français.

Je vais passer de la fin avril à la fin mai en Europe, commençant avec un keynote à The Next Web à Amstersdam sur The Future of Crowds et enchaînant par la suite avec diverses conférences et ateliers, entre autres, à Londres, Luxembourg, Cologne, Moscou et Milan.

Durant cette visite, mais aussi dans les années à venir, j’ai l’intention d’augmenter mon visibilité et de travailler beaucoup plus en France. La France et le français ont joué un rôle très important dans mon passé et je voudrais qu’il en soit de même pour mon avenir.
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The inexorable rise of work markets

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The role and prominence of online markets for work have soared dramatically over the last few years, but this is just the beginning.

I have been following the rise of online markets for work since Elance was founded in 1999, writing about them in my 2002 book Living Networks and dedicating a large chunk of Getting Results From Crowds to how to effectively manage work markets.

Prominent VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has just written a post The Nature Of The Firm and Work Markets, referencing, as I did in both of these books, the seminal work of Ronald Coase. Wilson writes:
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Debate: The Ethics of Crowdsourcing

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For many who come across the idea of crowdsourcing in its many forms, their first thoughts are about the ethical issues. As such, in writing Getting Results From Crowds, it was important to address the ethical domain rather than ignoring or glossing it.

We address the ethical issues of crowdsourcing in Chapter 5 on Relationship Value, offering Points and Counterpoints on a number of the major ethical issues in the field.

To bring the debate to life we have created a video providing some of the arguments on each side.


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Facebook’s IPO and its plans for China and global domination

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Yesterday I was interviewed by Radio Australia in a piece titled Facebook IPO filing reveals China plans.

Their website includes a podcast and transcript of the segment. Below are the parts where I spoke.

BAHFEN: The question I put to Ross is…what do these excerpts from Facebook’s IPO filing say about its intentions, with regard to China?

DAWSON: Facebook has global ambitions and the biggest potential market of all is China. So Facebook has been very keen to get into China for some time, yet it is blocked inside China. In fact Mike Zuckerberg has been learning Mandarin which seems to probably reflect his ambition to get Facebook into China. At the moment there seems to be no possible way in the short to medium term that China will open up to Facebook, but it is possible and it’s certainly something which is high on the long term strategic agenda for Facebook.
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