May 2009 Archives

Prominent Arabic region magazine Trends did a special issue to accompany the MegaTrends conference where I delivered a keynote last week, incorporating interviews with the three major speakers: Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al-Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourist Authority, and myself.

My interview is in the document here. I've also posted it as text below (pre-editing) as it may be easier to read.

Interview with Ross Dawson for MegaTrends conference -

TACKLING THE TRENDS
Ross Dawson, CEO of international consulting firm Advanced Human Technologies, talks to Ehtesham Shahid about the nature of the Middle East's economic stability and systemic risk.

While our annual Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum is the biggest Enterprise 2.0 event in Australasia and Asia, the global landmark event for Enterprise 2.0 is definitely the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, coming up on June 22-25. As I am a blogger partner of the conference, you can get a 30% discount by registering through the button on the right of this post.

Notable keynote speakers at the conference include Andrew McAfee of HBS and Matthew Fraser, co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, as well as a host of senior executives from companies that are implementing Enterprise 2.0.

The White Paper produced for the event has some interesting statistics from a very recent survey, as below. The other key statistic, not surprising but certainly gratifying to vendors, is that 65% of respondents expect spending on Enterprise 2.0 by corporates to increase in 2009 compared to last year.

Yesterday evening water got cut off to our house, and then the electricity went out. There were sounds of roadwork outside, so I presumed that as had happened before they were digging up pipes in the road and hadn't bothered to let us know.

In the morning my wife Victoria got up and then rushed back in the bedroom saying I had to get up and look. I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and beheld a big hole in the ground in front of our house. A landslide had taken away part of the road and a couple of cars with it. The photo below (click for large version) is taken from our balcony.

We in fact have the absolute best view of this in the city, as we live in the penthouse of the tallest building around, right in front of the hole. Exclusive access to TV crew available by bid in sealed envelope (or email).

Last night we had a conversation with Juliette Powell in Sydney. A small group of local digerati gathered for an informal conversation on social networks, taking advantage of Juliette being in Australia for the first time as she tours the world promoting her new book 33 Million People in the Room.

Below are the unedited notes I took during the conversation, reflecting what was said by the participants. It was a fascinating discussion, with just a few fragments captured here.

Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell

After her book came out Juliette got invitations from around the world, including from X Media Lab for a keynote and mentorship program in New Zealand. There were limited opportunities to connect with her peer mentors in the busy schedule, so the only way to connect was online – the brief initial contact will be followed up on social networks.

@webtechman just posted this:

For connoisseurs of geek porn who haven't seen it before, click on the image below for my full Twitter background, comprised of four of our more well-known frameworks, or go to the full pdfs of the frameworks here: Web 2.0 Framework, Extinction Timeline, Trend Blend 2007, and Future of Media Strategic Framework. I've been intending to do a compilation of some of our frameworks - will post that soon.

Continuing my live blogging of the MegaTrends conference before my keynote this afternoon, there are two sessions on the economy: a presentation from the Ministry of the Economy, and a panel of the chief economists of leading banks.

The UAE Minister for the Economy couldn’t make it, so the Director-General of the Ministry presented his speech. Most interestingly, he said that they believe that the worst of the crisis is over. Government spending is up 30% on last year, and infrastructure spending is continuing as planned. A new government body will be established this year to provide more consistent and accurate economic data.

Views from the panel:

Mr. Marios Maratheftis, Chief Economist, Standard Chartered Middle East, UAE
While things seem to have been bottomed in UAE and the worst is behind us, not prepared to call a quick recovery. Apparently 70% of projects in the country are real estate related, which is not appropriate. The downturn could be a blessing in disguise if it shifts investment into infrastructure that will drive productivity, away from a focus on real estate. There will be limited negative impact from UAE’s decision not join the GCC monetary union.

Below are my slides for my keynote at the MegaTrends conference at Abu Dhabi.

As for all my presentations, note that these slides are designed to accompany my speech and not to be viewed on their own, though may still be useful to people who didn't attend.

For some more detail on the Driving Forces section, see my post on The MegaTrends of Technology, Business, and Society.

In preparing for my keynote at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi this afternoon I have distilled my thinking into a new visual representation.

To gain insights the future we need to understand the intersection of three domains: Technology, Business, and Society.

In each of these domains we can distill one driving force that brings together the vast diversity of trends in these domains. These are:

Exponential Drivers. The most important technological drivers are all exponential: increased bandwidth, greater processing power, more storage, and the development of richer man-machine interfaces. These are driving a wide variety of fundamental shifts, not least an intensely connected and increasingly interdependent society and economy.

The biggest highlight of the MegaTrends conference for me (other than my own keynote :-) ) is the presentation by Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel prize for economics last year, on the state of the global economy. I have a lot of respect for his outlook. Live notes from his speech:

The volume of world trade has fallen off a cliff – down 15% over the last year, the biggest since the Great Depression. In fact there are many similarities to the Depression, but that doesn’t mean that it will be the same. The global economy is stabilizing, but not recovering. Things are getting worse, but more slowly. It *probably* won’t be another Great Depression. Extraordinary declines in output, employment and more. There have been no havens.

So how did it happen? The crisis was far more global than those that point to US mortgage lending as the source. European debt losses will probably be as large as those in the US. There was an epidemic of excessive borrowing across all domains. The IMF now predicts $4 trillion of bad debt.

I’m at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi where I will be giving my keynote this afternoon. I’ll be live blogging the morning sessions.

The conference was opened by His Excellency Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, a member of the Al Nahyan Abu Dhabi royal family, and chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and several other government bodies.

He said that they have recently re-examined their forecasts, and still predict 15% growth in tourism each year over the next years. Yesterday the local newspaper reported that Abu Dhabi airport arrivals in April were up 12% from last year, suggesting this is feasible despite the downturn. This is strongly supported by the success of Etihad, the Abu Dhabi based airline that was established in 2003, and provides strong connectivity from Europe to Middle Eastern and Asian centers.

As mentioned the other day, one of the critical issues for the UAE is establishing itself as a hub in this time zone. Dubai and Abu Dhabi, despite their strong relationship, compete for regional activity, particularly in financial services. The UAE pulled out of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) monetary union because Riyadh in Saudi Arabia was selected as the home for the union’s central bank.

More soon.

Keynote presentation: Profiting from Accelerating Change - MegaTrends in Abu Dhabi

Next Monday I do the closing keynote at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi. The opening keynote will be by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, while I will close speaking on ‘Profiting from Accelerating Change in a Downturn’.

While I will be speaking from a global perspective, I will also be addressing some of the specific issues of the Gulf region and particularly United Arab Emirates

These issues include:
* Reinvesting oil wealth with a limited lifetime into the long-term growth sectors
* A very strong construction component in the Dubai and Abu Dhabi economies among a global real-estate and credit downturn
* Strong divergence in the last six months between the Dubai economy which has slumped dramatically and the Abu Dhabi economy which is still strong
* A highly polarized labor force, with a large very low-cost employment sector populated from the region, and also many global professionals
* Taking advantage of the location between Europe and Asia

Yesterday’s Dubai Chronicle did an article titled GCC Economy could reflect strong over-performance in next economic boom, based on a pre-conference interview with me, as below.

Tomorrow morning I am doing the second day opening keynote at ITAC09 – Information Technology in Aged Care conference.

Here is my presentation – as always these are intended to accompany my speech, not as stand-alone slides.

I hope to write some more on this blog on this topic before long, though it depends what I can fit in…

Fantastic news! Juliette Powell, author of the freshly launched book on social networking 33 Million People in the Room, founder of The Gathering Think Tank, and leading broadcaster and media entrepreneur, is coming to Sydney for the first time next week.

To take advantage of this there’ll be an informal gathering:

'Conversation with Juliette Powell'
27 May, 6:00pm-7:30pm
Bar 77 (Mezzanine), Grace Hotel
77 York Street, Sydney

Juliette will share some thoughts on her book and where social networking is heading and then it will open out to conversation.

Juliette is particularly interested in learning about the implications of the National Broadband Network for her next book.

Everyone is welcome – just turn up.

Feel free to let other know. Event hashtag is #jpsyd

Juliette will be available for media interviews while she's in town

Juliette Powell and 33 Million People in the Room
Check out the website for Juliette's new book 33 Million People in the Room. It includes free excerpts, including an analysis of Obama’s use of social media in the presidential campaign.

Also see the Wikipedia entry on Juliette for more on her fascinating journey.

Here are a few of the fantastic reviews that Juliette’s book has received:

Here continuing our series of visual representations of social media tools inside organizations, taken from our Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report.

The diagram below was used in the chapter on RSS in the enterprise, to illustrate how RSS can support effective information flows in the organization.

Go to the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 downloads page for several free chapters.

More Enterprise 2.0 visualizations coming soon.

The Power of Influence lunch was run earlier today. This was in fact the inaugural event of The Insight Exchange. The quality of the event and the feedback augur well for The Insight Exchange future's, and particularly for the value it will create for participants. It was a highly interactive event, with deep content and great discussion.

Below are the notes I took during the event.

I initially presented the Influence Landscape framework we launched yesterday, after which the three panelists spoke and the event then progressed to a highly interactive discussion among all participants, from which I have taken a few notes as well.

BRIAN GIESEN - OGILVY PR
75% of people don't believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
In the US 81% look to word of mouth (WOM) for decisions.
Trust in media Editorial is 56%.

Continuing our series of free chapters from Implementing Enterprise 2.0, here is Chapter 7 on Governance. For full details on the report and all the sample chapters go to the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 website.

Within the Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework above, governance is an absolutely critical and central issue, as I have written about many times before. I have included the chapter on governance because it is so central both to implementing Enterprise 2.0, and to generating business value in a fast-paced environment. Change entails risk and opportunity - governance provides a structure to enable this.

Chapter 4 on Key Risks and Benefits , also available as a free download, examines the risks and benefits that must be considered in the governance process.

The Governance chapter contains:
* Conceptual illustration of social networks in the enterprise (see as a standalone image)
* The importance of the governance
* Six steps in a typical governance process
* Worksheet on stakeholder interests
* Professional service firm case study

You can also just download the pdf of Chapter 7.

Implementing Enterprise 2.0: Chapter 7 - Governance

Today we launch our Influence Landscape framework! Click on the image to download the pdf.

This continues our tradition of creating frameworks to elucidate where things are going, including extremely popular visuals such as Future of Media Strategic Framework, Future of the Media Lifecycle, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework and many more.

The Influence Landscape framework is launched in a Beta version that will be refined and developed over time, as influence is now one of our major research and content directions.

Tomorrow 19 May The Insight Exchange runs The Power of Influence luncheon in Sydney, which will cover how to create value in the emerging influence landscape. We are also preparing our landmark Future of Influence Summit (evolving out of the Future of Media Summit), due 1 September - details very soon!

A few quick comments on the framework:

DRIVING FORCES:
A wide array of forces are shifting value and attention to the influence landscape and from traditional media, advertising, and marketing.

A review of what had happened to the Web 2.0 poster-children prompted me to review what had happened to the companies featured in my Web 2.0 Landscape dating from May 2007. This was one of the elements of our Web 2.0 Framework which has now been downloaded over 150,000 times.

In the diagram below the green circles indicate the companies have been acquired, while a red cross shows the company has joined the dead-pool. (This was a quick review so I may have missed things - let me know if so.)

If you compare this with the review of the companies in probably the most famous overview of Web 2.0 logos and companies below, my list seems to have been quite a lot more successful, I suppose since I was selecting these as representing a particular aspect of value creation rather than being randomly selected.

[UPDATE:] I've just worked out that this means 32.7% of the companies in our list have been acquired in the last two years, which is pretty significant turnover.

Yesterday ABC Radio National's Future Tense program did a special feature on the future of conferences.

Beth Etling, CEO of The Insight Exchange, was one of the three panelists interviewed, along with Matt Moore of Innotecture and Katie Chatfield of Jack Morton Worldwide.

You can listen to the future of conference program here as a podcast.

It provides a great overview of where the events industry is heading, with some excellent insights from Beth and the other panelists, particularly on the specific things that The Insight Exchange will be doing to push the boundaries on the industry, making events that are far more valuable to participants than traditional models.

In particular there was a great discussion on the role of blogging and Twittering at events. This is something that event organizers must understand and work with effectively to add value to conferences. Beth also spoke about the role of online community building before, during and after events. This is about combining the rich value of face-to-face interaction with the potential of online discussions.

If you want to experience real innovation and value-creation in events, attend The Insight Exchange's inaugural event, The Power of Influence luncheon, in Sydney next Tuesday!

Tomorrow I am doing the closing keynote for the CPA Week Conference in Perth, on the topic of The Future of Global Business: Implications and Opportunities.

The slides from my presentation are here - as always these are intended for people who are attending my session as they are not designed to be meaningful on their own.

I'll write a few additional thoughts on my speech topic soon - on the run right now.

An overview of my keynote is here .

I wrote the article below for Tech Marketing magazine. It is intended as a quick guide for marketers who are looking to engage with social media.

It is now impossible to ignore the power and reach of social media. Yet the rules of engagement are very different to traditional marketing and PR. Here are a few guidelines to how to tap the power of social media without stumbling into the many pitfalls:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

This is the year influence shifts to center stage. Wherever I go people are talking about influence. Meanwhile companies are rapidly shifting their marketing resources to tap the power of influence.

There are several primary drivers for the rise of influence:
* The democratization of media, which gives everyone a channel to propagate theirs or others’ opinions.
* Peer trust, which places far greater faith in individuals than corporate advertising and marketing.
* The ongoing fragmentation of mass media, which takes away the power of traditional marketing channels.
* The aggregation of social media, which gives a far stronger voice to the many individual conversations.

At last!!! It is literally over five years now that I have been wanting to revamp the website for my core company Advanced Human Technologies. In the meantime we have created many new websites, but the size of the task of reworking my original website, combined with the reality of an always-overfull list of pressing priorities, meant that it never quite made it to the top of the agenda. Click on the image to see the new website.

On Tuesday I spoke at the TEDxAdvance event in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise.

Photo credit: Andrew Mager, magerleagues

In short, it was a great event, with close to 80 very interesting people in attendance, and excellent energy during the presentations and ensuing conversation over drinks.

I won't replicate the fantastic write up of the event by Andrew Mager on ZDNet's The Web Life blog - check it out for a great overview of the proceedings and some of the ideas that flowed through the evening.

A video of my presentation was taken - I hope to post it up here soon.

May is going to be a very busy month for me – lots of interesting things on. In a few hours I fly to San Francisco where among other things I will be presenting at the Future of the Enterprise TEDxAdvance event and generating momentum for our Future of Influence Summit to be held August 31.

Next week I will be in Perth to do the keynote at CPA Week on The Future of Global Business: Implications and Opportunities, a speaking topic which I am experiencing a lot of demand for at the moment.

The following week is a packed week in Sydney, including launching The Insight Exchange Lunch Series with The Power of Influence on 19 May, which promises to be a very exciting event, and the keynote at Information Technology in Aged Care conference.

At the end of that week I fly to Abu Dhabi to do the closing keynote at the MegaTrends conference, with Paul Krugman doing the honors for the opening keynote. My speech will take similar themes on opportunities in the global economy in the next months and years, tailored to a Gulf States audience.

A lot happening in between all this – announcements coming soon.

And my second child is due on 13 June (!), so there will be a slowdown from travel for a bit, though we’re planning to all go to Fiji or somewhere equally nice for a bit of a relax a few weeks after… It’s quite a year!