February 2012
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What's Hot According To DLD12 Delegates
The ultimate trend whirligig: In partnership with SurveyMonkey our DLD team developed a survey, just two weeks before the start of the DLD12 conference in Munich, asking delegates about what comes next.
Exclusively for Wired.co.uk David Rowan displays the results.
Just to give you a taste, questions tackled for instance Facebook’s post-IPO prospects, thoughts about disruption and...
January 2012
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Facebook Adds Over $15 billion to European...
Facebook added 15.3 billion dollars in value to the European economy last year, mostly by driving 32 billion dollars in revenue, said the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg.
This, she said, according to a report released today by accounting firm Deloitte and Touche at the DLD Conference in Munich.
Sandberg appeared as the closing act of the DLD12, and had attracted...
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Digital Bosphorus: Opportunities and Innovation in...
Pictured above, from left to right, Sina Afra, Alemsah Öztürk and Cenk Bayrakdar.
As Turkey is rapidly becoming a global power, the growth of its online presence is equally fast-paced as it is impressive. Turkey has now 35 million internet users who spend an average of 32,7 hours/month online - ranking 3rd in Europe behind the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Consequently, Turkey is in...
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"Hold on Tight Europe, Turkey is Coming to Your...
There are many adjectives you can use to describe politicians. “Entertaining” is not generally one of them. Egeman Bagis, Turkey’s minister for EU affairs, proved to be an exception during his chat with International Herald Tribune editor Alison Smale.
Mr Bagis started with a typical politician’s speech. Turkey is growing, children in villages have email, broadband...
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News Corp: What's Next?
Jon Miller from News Corporation started his session with an uplifting message. “New devices are allowing us to better enjoy the video content…I would say we are now just entering a video age.” Miller has been working in internet and TV industry for three decades and now oversees the digital strategy of News Corporation, the international media conglomerate.
Miller says the biggest change...
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Trend-spotting: What the Society of Tomorrow Will...
Fifteen years ago, trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort predicted that men would change their roles in society and become more involved in the family.
Today, men are fathering their children, and making the most progress in society.
“We now entering the period of the emancipation of men”, said Edelkoort, who studies the links between design, art, fashion and consumer culture and...
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Don't Let Bad Customer Reviews Ruin Your Brand
A successful brand is made when its creators know how to react to a negative comment from a customer online and avoid disaster, said Bernd Beetz, CEO of global beauty company Coty.
“This notion that we go out and we listen to the consumer who tells you what your brand should be is a disaster”, said Beetz to a packed room.
A company, he explained, needs to know what the brand...
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Conversation with Mike Fries of Liberty Global
Rushing in for a brief one-hour visit, Liberty Global CEO and President Mike Fries took the stage of the Maxsaal to discuss the outlook for cable TV and new opportunities in the German market.
Liberty is the second largest cable TV operator in the world and the largest outside the U.S. with over 29 million subscribers and more than $10 billion of revenue.
No wonder Mr. Fries is a busy man.
The...
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Female Start-Up Competition
HypoVereinsbank’s Anne Gferer alongside S&L Medien Gruppe’s Maria-Theresia von Seidlein and DLD’s Steffi Czerny called upon the female participants of the #DLD12 to help nurture start-ups and to apply, on the initiative of the HVB Women’s Council, for the HypoVereinsbank’s mentoring programme.
The idea is that experienced businesswomen support selected...
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EBay is Not Competing with Retailers, But Enabling...
EBay has no intention to compete with retailers on the street or online, but to enable them to succeed, explained the CEO of the company John Donahoe.
Just days after the company posted 35 percent increase in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011, Donahoe spoke to investor Sonali de Rycker on the DLD Conference stage.
EBay and Paypal, said Donahoe, work to enable retailers, big and small, and...
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BREAKING: Duran Duran launches HereRightNow.org
In a fitting finale for the DLD12’s long list of talks in the Maxsaal, John Taylor of Duran Duran offered a highly entertaining and interesting conversation with the New York Times’ Nick Bilton and Josette Melchor of GAFFTA.
The talk was lighthearted, oozing with atmosphere, and circled around both the past, present and future of the iconic band.
Speaking about innovative ways of...
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"Will the car become a smartphone on wheels?"
This special round moderated by Heinrich Wefing, editor of the political section of the Hamburg-based weekly newspaper Die Zeit, discussing the future of cities and mobility under the descriptive title “mobile metropolis”.
At this round the ideas of the automobile, city and mobility future were discussed by Mark Wigley, professor of architecture of Columbia University in...
“I want to give Wikipedia one million dollars, if Jimmy will accept it.”
– Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte, live on stage at DLD12
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Google Vice-President on Digital Business' Future
The boundary between digital business and traditional business is vanishing, claimed Nikesh Arora, a vice president of Google. By saying that, Arora meant that the impact of digital revolution has been so penetrating that the technology industry can no longer be separated from other business.
Nikesh Arora is on DLD’s stage to talk about the future of the digital business. “2012 is a new start...
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Wales v/s Hollywood
Wikipedia has always been subtly political, said Jimmy Wales in a conversation with Pavel Durov. But last week’s blackout of Wikipedia in protest of America’s proposed SOPA bill was possibly the overtly political thing Wikipedia has ever done.
Mr Wales used his time on stage to keep up the conversation about America’s misguided attempts at legislation. Speaking directly to the...
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The Secrets of a Huge Success
As the founder of the Rakuten conglomerate Hiroshi Mikitani is perhaps the most successful Japanese businessman of all time. Still, the soft-spoken industry icon is aware of the importance of always looking ahead.
Hiroshi Mikitani’s brief talk on the successes of his Rakuten e-commerce conglomerate, moderated by FOCUS Magazine’s Holger Schmidt, quickly demonstrated just how important...
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The Secret to the Indian Market: Authenticity
Soon after 9/11, Sonny Caberwal became the first turbanned Sikh to model for a western brand. Kenneth Cole wanted a man in a turban to remind Americans that turbans did not mean the same thing as terrorism. The ad was only shown in the US and Europe but Indians took notice of it as well. That was when Indians first looked at themselves and realised that global fashion didn’t only have to...
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Building Brands Around Great Content
For today’s first session, young media makers Dan Zappin, Jesse Draper and Yoel Flohr sat down for an eyeopening conversation with Mark Read of WPP, one of the world’s largest media holding companies, which represents a staggering 326 out of the Forbes 500.
Tying the conversation together was a motivated and enthusiastic moderator in Constantin Bjerke of Crane.tv.
The discussion...
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The Big Question: What Next?
It was always going to be a weighty session. With a title like “The Big Picture” and panelists such as Greg Greeley, Dmitry Grishin, Paul-Bernhard Kallen, Arkady Volozh and Niklas Zennström, it could have been little else.
Arkady Volozh started by reminding the packed hall of ancient history: those bad old days when we all got online with dial-up modems and the internet was little...
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The Road to the Social Entreprise
JP Rangaswami, the chief scientist at salesforce.com gave an dense and technical speech about his conception of the Social Entreprise.
Technology, he started, is used to speed up evolution. But he insisted that there must be a business value behind this technology. In addition, Innovation alone is not engouhg, it requires adoption.
Rangaswami articulates his demonstration on the dualistic...
Social Entrepreneurs Face Tough Challenges in the...
For digital ventures whose mission does not include profit, the challenges to thrive range from the hurdles of regulation to the scale of their impact, a panel of social entrepreneurs in the digital world agreed.
Led by The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, the discussion at DLD highlighted the need for better and more extense infrastructure available to social entrepreneurs, who face tight...
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This Time is Africa
Africa is generally negelected by the internet technology industry as it is perceived to offer few innovations and opportunities. However a DLD session in the second afternoon led by a mix group of artist, businessman and activist,made us think different.
”Because of the lack of infrastructure, Africa’ renewable energy sector still has a vast potential.” said Jamie Drummond,...
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Believing in Abundance
For one today’s final talks, Peter Diamandis took the stage to speak about the concept of Abundance.
Energetic as few, Diamandis used the examples of the X-Prize Awards to kick off a discussion about the possibilities of improving the world through fast-paced technological innovations.
The X-Prize taps into the cognitive surplus, and awards its prizes in a number of different categories,...
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Post-Internet Art Blurs Identities, Boundaries...
Pictured above, from left to right: Corey Arcangel, Ed Fornieles and the Daniel Keller/Nik Kosmas duo.
Art critic Karen Archey started up the panel by reading an essay she wrote to share some of her post internet observations.” If digital art is defined by the use of digital technology”, she explained, “Internet art works through the browser”, using elements like .gifs,...
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Bringing Large Venue Experiences To Intimate...
Leonard Brody of the Anschutz Group sat down with moderator David Rowan of WIRED Magazine for a talk about digital innovations in the area of large-scale spectator experiences.
Anschutz powers more than 10,000 live events each year across more than 100 venues around the world, including sports events, concerts, festivals, and much more.
As the head of the group’s digital arm, Brody is in...
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"Entrepreneurs are Salesmen"
Although Niklas Zennsröm, widely known as the co-founder of Skype, and now Atomico, in the near future at least does not intend to write a book about his experiences as an entrepreneur, one could have filled pages full of great advice tonight.
At one of the last sessions at the second day of #DLD12, Zennström gave a lecture to students at the LMU, and thanks to the live broadcasting by the...
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Success 101: Lessons From the Pros
Michael Acton Smith from Mind Candy, (left) discusses the secrets to success with Jenn Lim (Delivering Happiness, center) and Jens Begemann (wooga, right) Jens Begemann, who founded wooga which has 30 million monthly active users and is the 3rd largest social games company on Facebook, defines success as long-term sustainable growth, something to be proud of & a workplace where employees...
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Take Less Vitamins and Eat More Whole Fruit -...
Is it possible to end illness? In a provocative and passionate discussion, cancer doctor and researcher David Agus argued that it is, and the way to do it is not by taking your vitamins.
There is no evidence that proves taking vitamins improves our health and yet we keep taking them, said Agus, who heads the Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine at the University...
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Beware of the 13-year-old App Developer
A combination of young talent and entrepreneurship took the stage for the App World panel, moderated by Hubert Burda Media’s own Patrick Wölke.
With the panel made up from Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio, Amen’s Felix Petersen, Mobile Roadie’s Michael Schneider and Khoya’s Shilo Siv Suleman, there was potential for app-enlightenment, and the audience indeed got what...
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Meet Andrey Andreev
Yossi Vardi, co-chair of DLD, started the conference off yesterday afternoon by telling the audience that you can’t stomp your feet on Facebook. You can’t clap on Facebook. You can’t high-five on Facebook. That’s why we have DLD. This may be true but that doesn’t stop enterprising new companies from trying to approximate real world experiences in the virtual...
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Dropbox: Making Online Storage Simple
Who uses Dropbox? David Rowan threw the question to the audience at the DLD conference, and we can see the five year old cloud storage company has already gained a remarkable brand recognition by the amount of hands raised.
“We started up by making people happy.” said Drew Huston, a MIT graduate and co-founder of Dropbox. Dropbox grants new users 2GB storage space for free and offers additional...
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Technology Brings a Power Shift in World Politics
Technology is changing every aspect of life today and the world politics is certainly not an exception. Young IT experts are getting into the traditional bureaucratic world and they represent a new force that uses IT innovation to improve communication and government transparency. Some of them came to DLD today.
“Technology has brought a great power shift from hierarchy to citizens and...
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Conversation with Naguib Sawaris
Naguib Sawiris turned up for his conversation with the Economist’s Matthew Bishop in a jolly mood. The Egyptian investor, politician and industry powerhouse has found himself in the middle of the recent development in the Middle East, leading him to share a few noteworthy observations about the Arab spring.
Despite his good mood, Sawiris revealed to be in a “pessimistic...
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In the New Economy, "Access is More Powerful Than...
Keeping up with the Joneses is gradually becoming a thing of the past. Now, we’re sharing with the Joneses. At least that’s what CEO and co-founder of Airbnb and Sharing Economy enthusiast Brian Chesky believes.
The Sharing Economy, a movement that encourages and facilitates sharing of products and services as opposed to individual ownership, is one that has been empowered by the...
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Why User Experience Design Matters
The session led this second day at #DLD12 by Dan Maccarone, founder of Charming Robot (a product design company based in NYC) handed over a tool box filled with practical advises on digital product branding.
Under the umbrella of the newly launched DLD Campus and the IBC, General Assembly’s Peter Bell (“Who’s gonna build the future?”), Alexis Ohanian (“Making...
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A Few Mobile Facts and Trends for Businesses
- The smartphone penetration in UE5 (France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain) is 42% when it’s only 39% in the United States
- In 2011, the share for Android Operating System grew by 330%
- However, Apple still has the biggest share of traffic with 30% in the UE5.
- 75% of smartphone owners used mobile media in 2011.
- Only 5% of the whole EU5 Internet traffic comes from mobile devices
-...
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Scaling up the Start-up Nation
Want to start a business but don’t know where to set up? Ron Huldai (pictured, top) and Saul Singer (bottom, centre) presented a compelling case for Israel as the global hub of start-up tech firms. Mr Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, said his city is home to 600 start-ups. More importantly, it also has one bar for every 200 residents. When packing for Tel Aviv, he advised, bring one pair...
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BREAKING: Sebastian Thrun launches Udacity.com
Sebastian Thrun gave one of the DLD12’s most inspiring speeches today, presenting his newest initiative in free online education. By offering free world class education, Thrun said, we can truly change the world.
Sebastian Thrun has long been recognized for his genius work with Google’s driverless cars. However, during today’s speech, the Stanford professor and computer science...
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New Ways Money and Data Mix Online
Moderated by Matthew Bishop (The Economist, left), Errol Damelin (Wonga, center) and Sebastian Siemiatkowski (Klarna, right) discussed how financial institutions online now use data in new ways to learn about the behavior of their prospective borrowers. Erol Damelin created Wonga, an online lender that makes a profit when people repay their loans, contrary to traditional financial institution...
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"For VCs, it's our time, baby!"
If you are a venture capitalist, or an entrepreneur looking for answers to your to your questions about capital, the Entrepreneurial Capital panel moderated by the energetic Henry Blodget was the place to be.
The expert panel consisted of Klaus Hommels of Lakestar, Philipp Freise from KKR, Bruce Aust of NASDAQ and Timothy C. Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson - a truly impressive lineup...
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Andrew Mason Addresses Criticism About Groupon
Much of the criticism about Groupon is unfounded, said the company’s founder and CEO Andrew Mason, in conversation with tech journalist David Kirkpatrick at the DLD Conference.
“We’re not a perfect company and we’ll always be iterating and learning but I think that a lot of the criticism was unfounded”, he said, after the journalist questioned the company’s...
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All You Need is Data... and Analytics... and Maths...
At the dawn of the 20th century, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line and forever changed the means of production. A shift as radical and as significant is taking place today in the accumulation, processing, analysing and sharing of data.
“Companies that don’t use big data will fail,” declared Heidi Messer (pictured above) of Collective[i] at the start of the Socialising...
The Car of the Future Will Fit You Like a Glove
Feeding our imagination, Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of Audi AG, asked DLD attendees to close their eyes and think of the car of the future: it is always configured to your body shape and size, your preferred temperature, and will drive itself to your workplace with the push of a button. Even the music you were listening to before leaving your house will be synchronized...
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Tumblr Founder Shares Insights on Success
David Karp (pictured above) created Tumblr at only 20 after dropping out of high-school. Far easier and more intuitive to use than other CMS, Tumblr is now one of the fastest-growing blogging platforms available.
To become a gobal success, Tumblr’s first feat, according to Karp, was to aggregate a core community of creative users who publish quality content. Then, a huge number of...