Earlier this week, at (*) The Guardian’s Activate NYC 2012 conference I shared some of my thoughts about the future of media. Craig Kanalley of The Huffington Post has a good summary of the day, but here are some of the key points I was trying to make during my chat with Max Robins of the Paley Center.
- If you had no history and asked how a gourmet food/travel magazine would look today, I would say it would be like Foursquare
- I love things like what Paul Berry @teamreboot is doing w/ @lererventures + what @BuzzFeed is doing.
- Media industry innovation won’t happen at big companies.
- We need Madison Avenue to start innovating. the whole ecosystem needs to be revamped.
- Media mergers don’t work out because the person who does the deal leaves, and their replacement doesn’t share the vision.
- Short term thinking is pervasive throughout American society and business.
If you want to watch the video, Fora.tv has proceedings from the day.
* The parent company behind the Guardian owns a small stake in GigaOM as a result of our acquisition of paidContent. The invitation to speak came long before we made the deal to buy paidContent.
A whole bunch of smart guys (sadly not women) on GQ India’s list of most powerful digital Indians. I am not sure why I am on the list that has folks like Vinod Khosla and Mukesh Ambani, but thanks for including me team GQ India. However, no list is complete without Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior.
Arindam Mukherjee of India’s Outlook Magazine met me for a coffee when I was visiting my parents. In a wide ranging conversation, I talked with him about Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia. We discussed the future of privacy, SMS, email and blogging. My comments are consistent with what I have been saying for a while. Thanks Arindam for finding my comments worth writing about. Now I do wish, I had shaved 
.
- Google: “It’s doing unnatural things, a terrible example of a company forgetting its core value system.”
- Facebook: “It is growing at a speed no one has seen before. They’ve to stay relevant in the mobile world.”
- Microsoft: “Always in a catch-up mode. That worked in the 1990s when competition wasn’t intense. Not today.”
- Apple: “The magic of Apple is that there is no magic — you just buy their product, bring it home and start using it.”
- Nokia: “Half the people around have some Android device and half some other phone. Where is Nokia?”
Here is the article.
The folks from Dataquest, one of the largest technology publications in India has just released its list of Top 20 influential global Indians in technology.The list includes folks like Vishal Sikka (CTO, SAP), Padmasree Warrior (CTO, Cisco), Satya Nadella (president, server & tools business, Microsoft), Sanjay Jha (CEO, Motorola), Sundar Pichai (SVP, Chrome, Google) and Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures.)
They have all spoken at GigaOM events in the past and frankly I am just bowled over to be on a list with these luminaries. These folks have contributed so much in this world and to be mentioned on the same page is amazing. Thanks Dataquest!
I am on twit.tv in 30 minutes! Tune it at twit.tv!
Update: Leo just posted the show for all to download – you can watch or listen
