Here is a new video with my keynote at the BDigital Apps Conference, November 16, 2011, in Barcelona (my part starts at 02:04). You can download the PDF with my slides here.
The topic: "SoLoMoVi": apps and the future of content, business and communication" Wireless broadband, mobile applications, smart mobile devices, social networks and over-the-top video are exploding and will dramatically change how we communicate, how we buy and sell, how we create and consume content, and how we do business or run our governments. Pre-mobile & social, the Internet was just in its infancy, now it's a rebellious teenager testing the limits and pushing relentlessly. Where will the mobile Internet - and apps in particular - take us, in the next 3-5 years, what opportunities will emerge, what will happen in sectors such as education, media, politics and culture, and what can we learn from how this is already unfolding in the developing countries?
This is a self-recorded video of my keynote speech on 'TeleMedia Futures: Making the most of the Content Opportunity' at the recent Total Telecom conference in London, Nov 7 / 8, 2011. Apologies for the somewhat less than perfect recording quality (note that the crackling sound that starts at about 2 mins into the video will seize a minute later:). You can download the PDF of my presentation here: Download TeleMedia and Content Gerd Leonhard Total Telecom Public
More presentations (100+) can be viewed and downloaded via Slideshare
This Quickfire Storytelling session brings together some of the world's leading futurists (see below) to share bold ideas and conflicting predictions of how the world might look in 10 years' time. This video (which we shot ourselves using a Kodak HDCam and Sony bluetooth mic) shows the first 10 minutes i.e. Gerd's introduction, the 5 minute talk and brief discussion with the other speakers and the audience. Twitter buzz is here
You can download the 10MB PDF of my presentation (unfortunately, the slides are not visible in the video), here.
Today is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:)
Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.
This review is from: The Future of Content (Kindle Edition)
"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.
This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative. Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"
ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT" Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”
This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.
Kevin Kelly is a major influence on my work, and this video from Wired's Network conference is one of his best. Dive in and you'll see why. All of his books are worth reading, as well.
Here are both parts (90 minutes plus 35 minutes) of my keynote speech on The Future of Content at Colombia 3.0 October 7 2011 see http://www.colombiatrespuntocero.com
The panel discussion afterwards can be viewed here, as well (all in Spanish). Note: even though I am actually presenting in English the overdup is Spanish and very much in the foreground. I will try and get an English version, as well - stay tuned.
El suizo GerlLeonhard, líder futurólogo experto en modelos de comercio electrónico, medios de comunicación e innovación fue el encargado del cierre de la Primera Cumbre Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, Colombia 3.0, realizada por el Ministerio TIC entre el 5 y el 8 de octubre. Después de cuatro días de análisis en los que se reunieron emprendedores, inversionistas, animadores, desarrolladores de aplicación y representantes de la industria de los contenidos digitales del mundo terminó Colombia 3.0. En la cumbre participaron 30 conferencistas nacionales y 50 internacionales, quienes se reunieron en 14 eventos simultáneos.Las distintas actividades y conferencias fueron seguidas en línea en 23 ciudades del país y 15 países. De igual manera se tuvo la participación de Siggraph, una asociación mundial de animación gráfica y técnicas interactivas, espacio en que 19 expertos en animación compartieron sus experiencias exitosas en las firmas más importantes del mundo de esta industria. Bogotá 7 de octubre de 2011.En su intervención GerlLeonhard, realizó un detallado análisis de los cambios que han sufrido los medios tradicionales al migrar a los medios sociales como Facebook, Twitter y otras redes sociales. Además,Leonhard anotó que en la actualidad se vive una cultura de la banda ancha y son los “prosumidores”, consumidores activos, los que producen contenidos digitales.
Mencionó el experto suizo que el mundo digital está regido por la relevancia y no solamente por la distribución, según Leonhard, los contenidos digitales deben ser depurados antes de ser distribuidos a los distintos públicos y subrayó que la nueva economía digital que se está viviendo en la actualidad debe iniciarse desde Internet y especialmente desde los dispositivos móviles. Anotó también Leonhard, que el usuario es quien genera los contenidos digitales en la actualidad através de distintos dispositivos móviles. En su intervención, señaló además que la tendencia actual se desarrolla a través de lo móvil, lo social y lo local. Ademásindicó, en este sentido,que para el 2015se esperaque 7.1 trillones de dispositivos móviles sean usados en el mundo.
We certainly live in challenging and exciting times. Disruption is a constant companion; permanent beta the default. Tablets, now-ness, social commerce, alternative currencies, multi-platform story-telling, augmented reality - every week something new may end up remixing our business plans.
Globally, telecoms and mobile operators are moving up the food-chain into media and advertising (someone coined this development 'TeleMedia':)), and social networks are quickly becoming the next global broadcasters – but without owning the cables or the satellites.
Soon, most of the world's Internet traffic will be generated by a huge variety of mobile devices instead of computers, and 'the other 3 billion' users aka consumers in the BRIC countries are coming online at a very fast pace. Remember: 10% more broadband and / or wireless equates to 1% growth in GDP – but also a 1000% percent increase in disruption:)
Give it another 3-5 years and it's very likely that almost 5 billion people will be connected with fast and very cheap (if not free) mobile devices - and they will not 'consume' media and so-called content in the same way that we did when renting a movie still meant getting a piece of plastic that embodied it, or becoming a faithful and constant visitor to the quite beautiful but nevertheless super-walled iTunes garden.
Most importantly, these digital natives, those pesky millennials, the inadvertent micro-pirates of our cherished digital files, are people of the screen, not people of the book, as Kevin Kelly right summa-rises. To them, the world looks and feels different and many pre-screen, pre-networked rules seem hopelessly antiquated - they won't buy if we don't change how we sell.
To add to Kevin's meme, I think 'people of the screen' are people that increasingly prefer access (i.e. not copies); they are people who want total and unfettered control over when and how they use their media and who they share it with, and they are people who often co-create and participate, as well.
We must embrace the reality that we are at the beginning of a global shift from copy to access: many of us will be happy with just having access to content, anytime, anywhere, on the best screen available, rather than wanting to 'own' (i.e. download) it. If 'the cloud' proves that it works we will make the switch - just like we switched from printed maps to navigation devices. Sure, it may take longer if you don't live in a major urban centre, but we are going from broadcast to broadband - or better, plus- broadband, from wired to / plus mobile, from 'the network' to / plus 'the networked' - and our world is no longer linear, it's not yes or no, it's… an ‘it depends’ world. Fragmentation, aggregation, curation - but not mere distribution.
This shift is impacting all media, starting with music (see Spotify, Simfy, Rdio etc), movies and TV shows (see Netflix, Amazon, Youview etc), to books, newspapers, magazines, games and software. This 'from ownership to access' trend is even visible in the physical domain of ‘stuff’ such as in the rise of car-sharing, home-swapping and 3D printing: if we can use it why do we need a copy of it, for ourselves? I believe that the switch from 'owning to accessing' will be an extremely lucrative turn of events for creators and their various middlemen and industries.
Once we have overcome the need to package media in expensive physical formats we will see tremendous growth here. In a digital world, our costs will be much lower, marketing will be done via those that love what we do and are yearning to tell others, and many new revenues will be generated via many new combinations of I Pay, You Pay, They Pay (to quote Shelly Palmer). We just need to allow it.
Be ready: value is shifting from distribution to attention, and while this is happening we are also swiftly moving into a complete reboot of advertising, i.e. to with-vertising not @vertising, to engagement rather than interruption, to conversation rather than yelling. I predict that between 30 - 40 % of the entire global advertising, marketing, PR and promotion budget (currently approximately $1 trillion) will merge to digital, mobile and interactive means of reaching consumers: advertising and marketing (and selling!) are being reinvented along with media. Exciting times.
In a totally networked and always-on society, skills, creativity, curation, filtering and expert-ship will be more important than ever before - and if we keep our eyes on what the 'people formerly known as consumers' really want rather than follow our own assumptions and outmoded orthodoxies, the media business has a great future.
I am delighted to be involved with PressPausePlay, a movie about digital creativity, funded and promoted by Ericsson, featuring people such as Hank Shocklee, Seth Godin, ZeFrank, Sean Parker, Larry Lessig and Mike Mesnick. And it's finally out and available! Here is what it's all about:
"The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era"
From the blog: "we have had so many people ask "Where can we see your film?" and this week we are very happy to say our digital distribution has begun! PressPausePlay is now available online in many countries around the world, with more coming soon. You can now find PressPausePlay on iTunes US, iTunes Canada and iTunes UK. You can also purchase PressPausePlay on Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Vudu.com, CinemaNow.com, Xbox, and Playstation. Or put us on your Netflix cue where we will be coming soon..."
Via the KoreaTimes.co.kr and the WorldItShow, here are some quite possibly familiar-sounding themes and quotes (high-lights added by me) from South Korea Telecom CEO Ha Sung-min:
"I think the following words ― speed, collaboration and openness ― are more than important. SK Telecom’s strategies will be based on these.’’
"Ha is moving into a second arena: from conventional telecommunication-centric fields, and is talking about the importance of content- and platform-related areas"
"We need to push open-based businesses and spend more on platform-related businesses in order to give more value to customers"
"Subscriber was the top word for all carriers, previously, but it’s become the core point whether to provide more distinguished and competitive content to customers amid an era of smart devices... That’s why SK is pushing to lift our mobile platform business with the long-term goal of creating a new eco-system in the telecom industry’
I just ran across this video of my 2010 talk at USI (Paris) and I think it's still quite relevant, so check it out, below. The topic of my talk and presentation is TeleMedia, one of my most popular memes and speaking topics - see the links below. From the USI event page:
"Fast and powerful mobile internet devices, social media, real-time search and location-based services are bringing major changes to how we communicate, connect, interact, share, consume, buy and sell, and learn. The disruption has only just started. Telecoms are poised to move up the food-chain, into content, services and experiences, while TV is quickly and totally converging with the web, and mobile devices will become the way most people will experience the Internet. Soon, data is the new oil, and 'the cloud' is the oil-well.
The traditional EGOsystems are becoming ECOsystems and the big Networks must now deal with 'The Networked'. Where is the future going, where are the biggest opportunities (and for whom, and where), and how can we start to adapt to the future, today? Futurist Gerd Leonhard will present the key trends and foresights as well as the most likely scenarios in technology, media / content, communications and advertising, for the next 3 years..." You download the PDF with my slides here, btw.
I have talked about O3B networks a few times in my presentations and keynotes, and it looks like they are indeed moving forward: "O3b is building a next-generation network that combines the reach of satellite with the speed of fiber. Our groundbreaking services will enable emerging market telcos and ISPs to make the internet a truly global and universal experience. With world-class financial and operational support from SES, HSBC, Liberty Global, Development Bank of South Africa, Sofina, Satya Capital, Google, Northbridge Venture Partners, Allen & Company, O3b is creating a global internet backbone to serve several billions of consumers, businesses and other organisations in more than 150 countries...." If anyone has more information I'd love to hear about it. Nice video illustration, below.
I was invited to do the opening keynote at Ericsson's 'Shaping the Networked Society' event at this year's mobile world congress (MWC) in Barcelona, on February 14, 2011, see my blog at http://gerd.fm/i9Dh9I. Some of the topics I covered include the challenges and opportunities of convergence (TV-Web, Mobile-Fixed, real money - virtual money), new currencies and paying with facebook credits, companies becoming platforms not empires, what is beyond the current social media enthusiasm, the new paradigm of 'interaction before transaction', the tough but inevitabe switch from ownership to access (both in content / media as well as in general), the rise of the 'following paradigm', how the media and content industries are changing, and much more.
Take a look and please spread the word if you like it. Thanks.
Source: AMEInfo (thanks!): 'Data is the new Oil' according to Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard who explains the concept to Phil Blizzard during a discussion on media innovations. The CEO of the Switzerland-based Futures Agency also talks about the need for creating networked societies, social engagement and creation of tribes in order to survive online. Note: this is where I found this powerful meme.
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
Increases brain power for content creators, October 25, 2011
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