Keynotes from Day 1

Last night's keynotes were the highlight of yesterday. All but one were really good. Ben Huh (I can haz cheezburger?) talked about becoming one with the internet culture and the effects that this culture has on the media. The main point was that the media controls things and feeds what it believes is important to the people. Individuals within the internet culture, on the other hand, use the power of the internet to feed the masses with what they feel is important.

The second keynote was by Lili Cheng, from Microsoft. She introduced some new tools that harness the power of search and social networks. Interesting stuff, but not really. Okay, I'm biased. It was actually pretty cool.

The third keynote focused on rethinking the way startups go about ther business. Most startups fail. It's just a simple fact of life. However, if startups could embrace the idea of the "pivot" (new buzzword du jour) and change the speed with which they bring products (that people actually want) to market, there would be less failure. Both Gamage and I agreed with almost everything this guy had to say and we both think that the methodology he introduced can be applied to projects within our department.

The final two keynotes were really good and have really ignited some ideas that I need to flesh out before I talk about them and present them. June Cohen, one of the organizers of the amazingly popular TED conferences, talked about what they are doing with TED and their open marketing model. She also talked about some of the initiatives that are taking place that are spin offs of the TED conference. One of these is TEDx, which allows organizers outside of TED to put together a conference and utilize the TED branding. TED TV was the last thing on her agenda. It's new, it was introduced to the public here at Web 2.0 and it looks like it could be a lot of fun.


The final speaker blew everyone away. Ge Wang is a professor at Stanford University and he's doing some pretty amazing things with the iPhone and iPad and music. Basically, his group has created apps that turn the iPhone or iPad into unique musical and social instruments. The bottom line is that this is the type of thing that we need to be doing within Research and Extension if we're going to stay viable in the long run.