Monthly Archives: August 2009
Throughout all our events, including among others Future of Media Summit, Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, and now Future of Influence Summit, our intention has been to have top-level participants who are themselves creating the future, and generating useful insights from interaction with their peers. This is not supposed to be about the audience coming to
Continue reading The quality of the audience is the heart of Future of Influence Summit
Once Future of Influence Summit finishes in San Francisco on August 31 at 6pm, we will go to the nearby 111 Minna bar for drinks and the After Party. The conversation on where influence is going will continue with a little lubrication See here for location and full info on 111 Minna If you’re in
Continue reading Future of Influence Summit After Party: San Francisco – August 31
I just got off an interview on the future of influence on 2SM radio which lasted almost 15 minutes – close to a record for my interviews on live AM radio, which tends to do 3-5 minute segments. The talk show host was clearly fascinated by the issues of how influence is shifting away from
Continue reading Five key trends in how influence is transforming society
One of the most exciting topics of Future of Influence Summit next week is exploring the business models for influence and reputation. This is an issue which is better addressed in San Francisco/ Silicon Valley than anywhere else, and we have an extraordinary panel lined up to address the topic of Business Models for Influence
When we started organizing Future of Influence Summit, our minds turned immediately to Brian Solis, who is himself one of the most central influencers and thought leaders in this rapidly emerging space. So it’s awesome that Brian is speaking at the Summit, providing his insights on Influence at the Center of Marketing and Advertising. Brian’s
Belatedly launching the hashtag for Future of Influence Summit: #foi09 FOI is Freedom of Information as well as Future of Influence, so putting the year in will help us stand out… I have been remiss in not using the hashtag in my Twittering yet, but now we have quite extraordinary cast of attendees as well
Continue reading Hashtag for Future of Influence Summit is #foi09
In finding the quote from Marshall McLuhan on professionals and amateurs I used in my last post, I dug up a file I created a dozen years go with some quotes I was collecting. Here are just a few that are still worth bearing in mind today: “The empires of the future are the empires
I was just asked “what is a social media expert”? Marshall McLuhan is still the oracle. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the master. “Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society.
Continue reading Marshall McLuhan’s view on the “social media expert”
We weren’t the first to use the phrase ‘Future of Influence’. Most prominently Nate Elliott of Forrester wrote a report ‘The Future of Influence‘ (though you’re better off going to Future of Influence Summit than buying the report ) and has done a number of presentations on the theme. Nate summarizes the topic: * As
Continue reading The changing nature of influentials and the role of the social graph
You (or your favorite charity) can benefit from your influence! To find out how, read on… One of the key themes of Future of Influence Summit, on next week in San Francisco and Sydney, is ‘business models for influence and reputation’. There are many angles to this particular topic, including: * Will it be possible
Ellipse by Imogen Heap is my current new favorite album – absolutely delightful! Very generously given away by Imogen a few days ago on her website, and also available as an embed, as below. Have a listen! I discovered Imogen Heap when listening to the Kate Havnevik channel on Last.FM – Kate’s music is lovely.
Continue reading This is my current favorite album – listen to it here!
Last night media futurist Gerd Leonhard , Richard Watson, author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, and I caught up for dinner. Gerd is in Sydney for the first time for a couple of events, including The Insight Exchange’s Creating Value With Content on Tuesday (see the event review), and Richard
Continue reading A futurists’ dinner: the future of content and remote engagement
The Insight Exchange’s Creating Value With Content event on Tuesday was a fantastic success. As so many of the attendees observed, this topic is at the heart of many businesses today. While content in the broadest sense is more and more central to the economy, there are many challenges, not least with pricing and distribution,
Continue reading Insights and notes from Creating Value With Content event
We continue our Influence research series, paving the way for in-depth insights and breaking new ground on the topic at Future of Influence Summit 2009 in San Francisco and Sydney. See the Future of Influence Summit blog for the full series. Earlier this year Bernardo Huberman and colleagues at HP’s Social Computing Lab did an
CMSWire has just published a nice review of my Implementing Enterprise 2.0 Report. Here is an excerpt from the review: Ross Dawson has written a report on Enterprise 2.0 that should be a valuable tool for any organization implementing or thinking about implementing Web 2.0 tools in their enterprise. Called Implementing Enterprise 2.0: A practical
Continue reading CMSWire review of Implementing Enterprise 2.0 – A Practical Guide
Leading up to the Future of Influence Summit held on August 31/ September 1, we will release a ranked list of the Top 50 Most Influential Media Industry Journalists in the world. The list will analyzed and created using the platform of influence ratings startup Repyoot. However we need to provide a list of candidates
There has been a lot of talk lately that the VC model is broken – here is a small selection of what has been being said recently on the topic: Forbes: Venture Capital’s Coming Collapse EarlyStageVC: Traditional Venture Capital Sure Seems Broken – It’s About Time VentureBeat: The VC model is broken Fred Wilson: Is
We continue our Influence research series, paving the way for in-depth insights and breaking new ground on the topic at Future of Influence Summit 2009 in San Francisco and Sydney. Duncan Watts is one of a handful of scientists instrumental in developing the study of networks as a key scientific discipline. He tells his story
While online technologies have transformed the media along many dimensions, one of the most important ways of understanding this is in how the news cycle has changed. In the old days news was broken on real-time channels such as radio and TV, reinforced and pushed out to a broader audience through newspapers, discussed again in
Continue reading Twitter’s impact on the news and media cycle
Twitter has just announced the first of a series of changes to how retweeting is incorporated into the Twitter platform, called Project Retweet. This is significant in how influencers make content popular, one of the key themes of the upcoming Future of Influence Summit. Retweeting (forwarding someone else’s tweet to all of your followers) has
Continue reading Twitter’s Project Retweet will amplify how influence drives content
Awesome! Tara Hunt, renowned author of The Whuffie Factor, will be doing the opening keynote at Future of Influence Summit in San Francisco. Below is the video where I first saw Tara in action, speaking at the Web 2.0 Conference in April 2009 about The Whuffie Factor: The 5 Keys for Maxing Social Capital and
Continue reading Tara Hunt doing opening keynote at Future of Influence Summit SF
How many Twitter followers do you have? One of the reasons Twitter is important is that it is introducing the concept of assessing people’s degree of influence. A person’s number of Twitter followers is increasingly being taken as a proxy for their influence. If the only thing you know about someone is that they have
Continue reading Twitter follower numbers as a proxy of influence
At Future of Influence Summit at the end of this month many of the most prominent people in the influence space will get their heads around where the space is going. Given what I’ve been seeing and hearing over just the last few months, it is clear that an important part of this is the
Continue reading The rapid rise of the sweet, sweet spot where influence meets advertising
One of the key themes at Future of Influence Summit 2009 on August 31 / September 1 will be the emergence of the ‘reputation economy’, and how value is being created in that space. Howard Rheingold, who has been deeply involved in this space since the 1980s, and has demonstrated his prescience by writing –
Continue reading A Manifesto for the Reputation Society: it’s coming soon!
In the lead-up to Future of Influence Summit 2009, we will be pointing to some of the more interesting research into the influence space – there will be a wealth of insights coming up so keep posted even if you can’t make it to the event. Let’s start with one which is a little outside
Continue reading Influence research: what drives people to Digg stories
Some more interesting insights from the UK OFCOM report (in addition to the shift in social networking activity from youths to adults I wrote about earlier today). There has been a 25% slide in newspaper revenue over the four years to 2008 (with the biggest drop in 2008, and likely a larger one coming in
UK telecom regulator Ofcom has released a major study on use of telecommunications in the UK, out of which some interesting statistics on use of social networking have come. It’s not surprising to see the substantial rise in social networking in the 25-54 year old age bracket. Adults have “got it” and piled on board
Continue reading Adults take over social networking, children bail out?
For the last years I have only got to Europe irregularly – my intent has been to focus on USA and Australia, however I have been getting fairly frequent speaking and consulting work in Asia and the Middle East as well. I will be in Istanbul on 21 October to do the opening keynote at
Sponsored Tweets has just launched, providing a sophisticated pay per tweet system. Mashable has a detailed review of Sponsored Tweets, including how disclosure is handled. The Sponsored Tweets platform works by giving advertisers the ability to create campaigns and select, invite, and approve Twitterers of their choosing to participate in their sponsored campaigns. On the
Continue reading Sponsored Tweets opens up the world of monetizing influence
Knowledge and complexity guru Dave Snowden (@snowded) recently tweeted me to ask if I would like to have an on-stage conversation with him to close the KM Australia conference. Apparently the session as originally planned didn’t pan out, so I’m the last-minute back-up plan. In a brief Twitter exchange we decided on a discussion topic
Travis Murdock has a nice blog post: Who influences the influencers? (which, tellingly, I found from @louisgray on Twitter). Travis offers five tips: 1. Check who they are following on FriendFeed 2. Follow Influencer RSS reader feeds 3. Research Facebook events 4. Research ReTweets and @replies on Twitter 5. Follow the social brick road There
This morning I did the opening keynote to the top executive team of a major organization.at their strategy offsite. It’s not appropriate to share the full presentation, however I can share the rough scenarios I presented for the world to 2030. The scenarios were presented after having examined the driving forces and critical uncertainties for
Continue reading The World in 2030: Four scenarios for long-term planning and strategy
Tomorrow morning I’m doing a presentation to the top executive team of a very large organization on the next 20 years. Most of what I will cover will be general societal, business and technological drivers as well as specific strategic issues driving their business. However as part of stretching their thinking I’ll also speak a
Continue reading The best visuals to explain the Singularity to senior executives
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
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