I am happy to anounce the release of a special report that my colleague Stowe Boyd has recently written, Social TV and The Second Screen, developed cooperatively by his company 'Work Talk Research' and The Futures Agency, as part of an ongoing series on the future of media. You can download the whole thing (yes, for free) here, via Stowe's site.
I wrote the foreword (excerpt):
The overlap of social media and TV represents a huge opportunity for those that truly understand and internalize, embrace and partake in these changes, and that welcome this dawning networked, interdependent and many-to-many society.
I will be working with Stowe Boyd to produce quite a few more reports and white papers in 2012. In addition, we will be doing a lot more work together offering Media Futures events, workshops and seminars.
This is the complete (approx 80 minutes) video of my keynote at the HBR Poland conference in Warszawa March 16 2012. The slides are sometimes a bit hard to see as the video zooms back and forth so if desired you can download the complete PDF (high-res, 26MB) with my slides via http://db.tt/JmKiJyQh (creative commons non-commercial attribiution licensed, as always).
Topic: "The future of business: how to benefit from the global shift to a networked society" The Internet, or to be more precise, the mobile and social 'Internet 2.0' that has exploded in the past 2 years, is dramatically changing the way we find and are found, how we relate to our customers (and vice versa), and by extension how we buy and sell. In a networked society, the-people-formerly-known-as-consumers are becoming more powerful by the minute; transparency rules and more often than not, interaction comes before transaction and attention is the currency. In this digital world, data is indeed the new oil, brands are publishers, and ecommerce almost entirely becomes mobile and social - and this has significant impact on B2B sectors, as well. Gerd will share his foresights on where things are headed in the next 3 years, provide examples of best practices and illustrate the biggest opportunities and how to prepare for them. The future of business is interdependent, real-time, social, local and mobile - get ready.
US consumers lead the world trend, here, surely, but this is happening everywhere: Speed and Nowness are 2 trends that are changing the way we live, buy, create, communicate (and not always for the better, either). Read what I have said about these trends why these links: http://gerd.fm/nowandhere Found via my futurist buddy Stowe Boyd (http://www.onlinegraduateprograms.com/instant-america/ for full version)
A new survey of business users by ChangeWave Research found that nearly one-third of the companies expecting to buy tablets in the next few months are using them as replacements for PCs for at least some users.
Gigaom has some good comments on this topic, see below. I personally believe that curation is content, as well, and that meta-content ie content about content will become extremely valuable going forward. What do you think?
"Traditional media critics attack the Huffington Post for its aggregation, but as Nieman fellow David Skok pointed out recently at the Nieman Lab blog, aggregation is deeply embedded in the DNA of the media industry, and always has been. And as we’ve tried to point out before at GigaOM, aggregation and particularly curation are two of the skills that modern media companies need the most — or readers overwhelmed by information will go elsewhere, whether to apps like Flipboard and Zite or to new services that give them the tools they need to filter that growing ocean of content..."
Umair Haque sums it up well in his new book Betterness: Economics for Humans: “The bigger picture of twenty-first-century competition is richer, more nuanced and complex. Companies are beginning to be judged against a whole new set of criteria by customers, governments, communities, employees, and investors. They’re already saying, so you made a profit. Yawn. Did you actually have an impact? Did what you do have a positive, lasting consequence that was meaningful in human terms?” A responsible brand can no longer hide behind a company that doesn’t factor in this new set of criteria. Get my free iPhone & Android apps http://mobileroadie.com/apps/Futurist
Some smart stuff by Audi, see below. Clearly, a car than can be both self-driven or driven by me, and maybe does not have a tailpipe (it would be crucial, in my view, to be fully electric rather than hybrid), and is fully connected to all kinds of digital services, will be very popular. Just think of the possibility of facilitated car-sharing using social networks - how much traffic reduction could we achieve with that? And better yet, maybe the car becomes our small private office and we don't actually drive much in it, at all;).
Either way, car companies are becoming lifestyle providers, in a way. And selling stuff becomes... selling a service.
Within that time period, or within the next decade, Audi also hopes to be able to launch so-called ITS-G5 or automotive WLAN technology into something it calls “street preview”. Using a 5.9-GHz wireless radio, cars would talk to themselves in clusters, reporting their own traffic information. The technology also could improve safety, warning other vehicles automatically as cars approach an intersection. Audi executives also said that they’re showing off a dual “contact-analog” heads-up display at CES, which provides an augmented-realit view of the environment - for example, painting a directional arrow directly over the intersection, and adjusting its size and positioning as the car gets closer. Pedestrians would be shown using night vision mode, and the distance to the car ahead would also be shown.
The passenger, meanwhile, will have their own heads-up display, a more conventional model. Audi said its prototype allows the passenger to “swipe” the driver’s display over to the passenger, allowing that person to see what the driver sees. Not surprisingly, Audi’s vision also includes a self-driving car, of sorts. “Our vision is piloted driving,” Hudi said. “Whenever I don’t [want] to drive, I allow myself to be driven.” “We don’t want to crate an impersonal body moving machine,” Hudi added. “When I want to have fun, I drive for myself.”
Some great findings and real morsels here - very nicely done. Check it out if you want to know where things are going in 2012 (or download the PDF via slideshare)
A few days ago, I did a fairly lengthy and deep skype interview with Toronto-based Marie Germain from Branding 2.0 (see her Twitter channel here), touching on many issues including the future of commerce, selling, marketing and branding, so-called social media (I much prefer the term Social OS), current issues in technology and the Internet (such as SOPA - the deeply disturbing but nevertheless impending U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), and media / content trends.
There are some quite juicy snippets in this interview, such as:
"In an truly digital society we probably don't need marketing as we know it"
"We are moving from a society, and an economy, based on EGOsystems to a society that is based on ECOsystems (i.e. INTERDEPENDENCE)"
"The old days of commerce were based on handcuffing consumers, now it's all about attraction, engagement and conversations (being a magnet rather than using handcuffs)"
This video uses an interesting format in that it is based on an audio track that was recorded on the phone, and superimposes some related images over it. Interesting. If you just want the audio track, here it is:
From the TribeRadio Youtube post: "World-renown futurist, Gerd Leonhard, in this interview speaks of the very serious challenges businesses and brands face; he offers solutions. On a more sombre note he exposes the ploys of controllers on internet freedom, SOPA to be clear. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges Gerd as one of the leading media futurists in the world. Powerful! Incisive! Gerd is simply delicious to the ears. Keynote Speaker, Founder of The Futures Agency, Advisor to top corporations and governments, author of five books, "The Future of Music", "Music 2.0", "The End of Control", "Friction is Fiction" and "The Future of Content". Gerd's background is in music; however, today he is a top game-changer, inspiring entrepreneurship and guiding us into a prodigious digital world. To reach the Host of Tribe Radio, Marie Germain: at her blog, http://Branding20.wordpress.com or her biz site, http://MarieGermain.com..."
Be sure to check out the other audio / video interviews on here channel as well, including Jeffrey Hayzlett ('Running the Gauntlet' book, former CMO of Kodak).
I just found this via Marie Germain and Branding 2.0: video of interview with Seth Godin on George Stroumboulopoulos “Strombo”, Canada’s leading late-night talk show. Some really great soundbites here - Seth is one of the people who always, without fail, inspire me.
Check out this video interview with Seth on BehindthebrandTV - it's a very good fit with the topics above, as well.
"A car used to be the ultimate symbol of freedom and independence but increasingly consumers view ownership as an expense and a burden. Often considered the gateway to other forms of Collaborative Consumption, Car Sharing is becoming increasingly popular with its...
...promise of personal convenience and social improvement. It is time to explore this new age where access is better than ownership..."
De-Gadgetisation – 2012 will see a drive to recalibrate our reliance on digital communications. New studies will emerge showing the impact of Absent Presence and Constant Partial Attention, which limit human ability to interact meaningfully in real-time.
Watch the whole thing and you'll understand what the world - and in particular, America - is up against in 2012. And check out his book "The price of Civilization" - I just got it for my Kindle and will share my public bookmarks soon, here.
If you own a Kindle you can follow my Kindle note-sharing here.
From Youtube: "As he has done in dozens of countries around the world in the midst of economic crises, Sachs turns his unique diagnostic skills to what ails the American economy. He finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, offering shortsighted solutions such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to address complex economic problems that require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we have profoundly underestimated globalization's long-term effects on our country, which create deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty, and the environment. America's single biggest economic failure, Sachs argues, is its inability to come to grips with the new global economic realities.
Yet Sachs goes deeper than an economic diagnosis. By taking a broad, holistic approach—looking at domestic politics, geopolitics, social psychology, and the natural environment as well—Sachs reveals the larger fissures underlying our country's current crisis. He shows how Washington has consistently failed to address America's economic needs. He describes a political system that has lost its ethical moorings, in which ever-rising campaign contributions and lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the citizenry. He also looks at the crisis in our culture, in which an overstimulated and consumption-driven populace in a ferocious quest for wealth now suffers shortfalls of social trust, honesty, and compassion. Finally, Sachs offers a plan to turn the crisis around. He argues persuasively that the problem is not America's abiding values, which remain generous and pragmatic, but the ease with which political spin and consumerism run circles around those values. He bids the reader to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and one another. Most important, he bids each of us to accept the price of civilization, so that together we can restore America to its great promise...."
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
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.
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
Recent Comments