Recently Edelman Digital launched a brand new web site, which features rich insights from across the organization as well as interviews with different people inside and outside the firm. Definitely check it out. One of the cool things we're running are interviews. 

For one of the first installments, my colleague, Blagica, conducted an interview with me on some of the latest trends. It's follows beow and on the new site...

Blagica Bottigliero: Let’s start with the basics. Your last name. Is it pronounced like the Russian currency? I’ve heard multiple versions, so help us set the record straight.

Steve Rubel: Actually it isn’t – it’s pronounced Roo-Bell, rhyming with “blue bell.”

BB: As a lifestreamer, you spend quite a bit of time online digesting content. How much time per day do you spend doing this? How do you break up your day to consumer such a large amount of data?

SR:I would say that on average I spend two-three hours a day “studying.” How and where I fit this in really depends on my schedule in a given week. If it’s a particularly heavy week and I am traveling or in lots of meetings, it’s whenever I can steal a few minutes during the day. If it’s a “normal” day then it’s often over breakfast, lunch or at night when I get home. But I make it a commitment to keep current since our teams and clients look to me to help them do the same.

My workflow here, however, has changed a lot over the last few years. Until fairly recently I was a heavy user of Google Reader. Now, however, I find myself relying more on Facebook, Twitter and reading email newsletters from my favorite blogs. Also, I am increasingly using my mobile device to consume much of it as well.

BB: In the last few weeks, you’ve put a stronger emphasis on utilizing Facebook as your epicenter for news and communication. With Facebook’s history of sharing its TOS, along with concerns around privacy, do you think more users will shift their attention to Facebook? The addition of Facebook’s new settings come in handy, but do you feel that users don’t feel like adding privacy settings to every single action?

SR: Facebook is at a pivotal moment in its history. All of the data points are trending up – time spent (a staggering seven hours/month in the US), total users (400M worldwide), mobile use (100M users), traffic patterns (one of the top drivers of views to news/broadcast sites), etc. This makes it impossible to ignore.

What’s more, I believe we have passed a key tipping point where a network effect takes over. Randall Stross summarizes this nicely in his New York Times column, comparing it to similar situations like Microsoft Windows. So I don’t see the train slowing down here in any way.

Still, there’s no doubt many have privacy concerns. Facebook needs to make this easier to manage so that an individual can really more easily separate personal and professional circles – if he/she chooses. The settings they have now help. But they have a long way to go.

The other trend to note is how businesses are starting to use Facebook as a hub. There are more than 1.4M Facebook Pages. Some 700,000 are small businesses. This also creates a network effect the way that Google did with Adwords. Also, I have noticed that more brands and movies are prioritizing their Facebook page in ads over their own web site. This is controversial, but in many ways it makes sense.

BB: You just created a fan page on Facebook. How will you decipher information that appears in this stream versus your blog?

SR:I have been on Facebook since 2007 when they opened it up to all users. At first, I was skeptical of their prospects for success. I saw a scenario similar to what AOL did back in the 1990s – e.g. a walled garden. So while I have been on Facebook for years and I was engaged there, I didn’t see a real opportunity, at least for me, to use it to connect professionally with our customers.

However, the statistics I mentioned earlier and my own use recently have evolved my thinking. I began to see that, professionally, there is a real opportunity there for any business to deeply engage their customers in a way that perhaps is not as easy to do elsewhere – and to build thought leadership. One key reason is that clearly people I care most about like our clients are spending time there. It’s easier to go where the people are than to get them to come to you. What’s more, it’s a broader audience than the people who subscribe to my blog or follow me onTwitter.

So as of right now I am largely creating exclusive content there. I am finding Twitter is better for link sharing but that Facebook is more ideal for short bits of insights that spark a larger conversation. My blog will probably evolve into just a place for essays. But I am syndicating the posts into Facebook as well. It’s all evolving right now.

In short, I believe that Facebook will become my primary content platform in the next few months. But I will continue to do it all. As should businesses that have stakeholders scattered on other networks like Twitter.

BB: Your opinions on Google Buzz are pretty strong. What do you think they could have done differently at launch? Do you think it was wise they launched the tool in Gmail?

SR: Google Buzz suffers from complexity because they only tested it within Google, which has a very tech-savvy engineering driven culture. Facebook and Twitter are simple. You get it right away. Buzz feels like something Google is forcing on millions of users to catch up in an area it’s not strong in – social. It would have been better if they launched in in beta or Labs.

Still, I see Buzz remaining an important niche player for the time being. But I would never count Google out. They can get it right.

BB: It seems that there are new tools popping up every second. Whether it’s checking in at a local bistro with Foursquare or taking a picture of a sunset and sending it to a larger network via Yfrog, there is a hefty amount of information to keep track of. Will there come a time where a mini social ‘revolt’ will occur?

SR: I feel there’s way too much focus in marketing on the venues and the technologies – even in the recessionary climate. Businesses must focus first on their stakeholders and the trends and then figure out how to leverage the technologies. Many still go about it in reverse.

In terms of the consumer, I believe we’re already seeing a winnowing down. Facebook is tops for the broadest group. Twitter is loved by a smaller, yet arguably more influential crowd. And YouTube meanwhile sits in the middle. The others, even FourSquare, are more niche.

In the end there’s only so much time in a day and everyone will need to make choices on where to invest. I see Facebook being the big winner and Twitter sitting in neutral for now. The others may eventually just become features of the big sites rather than stand alone entities.

BB: In the 90s, consumers may have sent a complaint via written letter or email to one of their favorite brands. Today, it may be a Facebook status message, YouTube video or tweet. What do you think this says about consumers’ expectations when it comes to corporate two-way dialogue?

SR: I don’t see it being an expectation around dialogue as much as it is power. People now know they have it and that some businesses will bend over backwards to meet the legitimate gripes in real-time. This creates a virtuous or some would argue a vicious cycle that just exacerbates the situation further.

This means that every business needs to understand what they will address and when – with the expectation that it will scale.

BB: With web sites incorporating tools like Facebook connect, video and real-time tweets, do you see social media being more ingrained in a digital strategy, instead of being an after-thought?

SR: Yes, I believe that we’ve passed an inflection. Everyone is looking at the data and the hype in the media and they realize that this is where our time and attention are flowing so they need to front-load social networking into their budgets. This is not just limited to consumer marketing but b2b as well.

BB: You are a big gadget fan and need to be connected a good portion of your day. How do you plug in? What is your go-to gadget that you can’t leave home without?

SR: Without a doubt my mobile phones. I switch back and forth between the Blackberry (a client) and the iPhone depending on what I plan to do in a given day. There are days or even weeks when all I use is a mobile device. I often travel without a computer – sometimes for 10 days at a time and internationally as well. It’s amazing what you can do with these devices. And both fit the bill nicely.

BB: You are a man on the move, visiting many up and coming tech start-ups. ExacTarget recently purchased CoTweet. Do you see more consolidation happening?

SR: Absolutely, I believe that integration between various systems will be key – especially for those providers who serve enterprise customers. It’s no different than how we saw similar consolidation in the desktop/enterprise software markets and for web-based platforms in the early 2000s.

BB: I know you are a big Yankees fan. If you could be a Bat Boy for a day, would you do it?

SR: Wow, I definitely would. I would love to travel with the team and and ask Derek Jeter all kinds of questions about his work ethic and efforts to be a better ballplayer every day. That’s what I hope to do too in my field. Jeter is a rare yardstick of professionalism and quality in a sports word that increasingly lacks such role models. And I find lots of metaphors in sports to inspire me in business.

BB: What is your newest tech obsession?

SR: I would have to say any tools that I an use for free that give me data. My favorites are Google Insights and Ad Planner, Facebook Insights and YouTube Audience Insights.

Image credit: Laughing Squid 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Le camp de réfugiés de Nahr al-Bared ne s'est toujours pas remis de la guerre dévastatrice de 2007, au cours de laquelle il a été détruit. L'armée libanaise a maintenu le camp et les 20.000 Palestiniens déplacés qui y sont revenus à ce jour sous une poigne sévère. Le siège de l'armée entrave la reprise économique du camp, parce que l'accès est restreint et que tout le secteur a été déclaré zone militaire. Une étude récente montre que la présence et les mesures de l'armée sont considérées comme une difficulté (...) - Infos globales / Conflits armés/guerres, Culture/contre-cultures, Orient

This year's Emerald City Con was... an extraordinary experience.

Truthfully, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around some of it. Doing our Artist's Alley table as a fundraiser for the Cartooning Class was very much a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment decision, we weren't organized about it at all... and I was very moved, and a little awed, at how well the kids came through. Not just the current students but many of our grads, as well.

The experience could be summed up in this exchange between our friend Lorinda and myself. At one point, I shook my head and muttered, "This is so amazing... I mean, teaching, it's like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean, you never really know how it's going to work out."

Rin replied, "Well, you sure had a lot of bottles come back this weekend."

We took a lot of pictures and I think I'll just run those for you and talk a little bit about each one.

*

This is what it looked like before we opened.

And another.

This is the last time we would experience quiet until Sunday evening. LATE Sunday evening. My ears are still ringing a little.

Outside, the crowd was milling around panting to get in.

Clearly, convention security was going to be overtaxed so the stormtroopers thought they'd assist with crowd control.

And then we were off....

This may give you a little bit of an idea of the swarms that descended once the doors were open. Saturday, in particular, was Hell Day.

Fortunately, we had a great crew. I honestly don't know how Julie and I ever used to do this by ourselves. It takes a teenage metabolism to keep up with the Saturday hordes at a convention.

In the rear we have Rachel, Aja, and that's Katrina under the mop, with our friend Rin in the front. Rachel decided to be Rogue again this year, as you can see. Katrina wanted to dress up too but couldn't decide on an outfit (she'd brought a couple.) This is the one she started with, a character of her own named Connor, but Connor only lasted till noon or so.

Once again this year, we won the lottery by having awesome neighbors. One one side we had Jeffrey Ellis and the crew from Cloudscape Comics, a small-press artists-collective outfit based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

I bought their anthology book EXPLODED VIEW partly to say thanks for putting up with us but it turns out that I really like it.

It looks a lot like a grown-up version of what we do in class, actually -- every member of the group contributes a few pages' worth of work and then there's bios in the back. Same basic format, just with real production values. A lot of good stuff in here.

On the other side we had Two Percent Solution.

They do a raunchy humor self-published book and a podcast as well.

I'm so embarrassed I can't remember their names -- I know I introduced myself at some point, but I couldn't really hear them very well. The echo chamber in the hall, once the crowds were in, made it nearly impossible to converse on Saturday. But they were great, swore up and down they loved being next to us and claimed we brought them a lot of extra traffic. They were especially hilarious about pretending to almost-swear in front of the kids but they never actually did.

Since we were doing a for-real fundraiser, and thus actually accepting money, our setup changed a little this year.

The idea was that we had students on the left, alumni on the right. As people would approach, the kids would offer them a giveaway book, and if they stopped, then they'd volunteer to sign it.

Ben, Marie, and Eileen, working hard.

Then Katie or myself would explain about the budget shortfall and collecting for donations, and add that anything over $10 got you a custom sketch from an alum. More often than not, they'd at least stop and admire the sample sketches we had up, and put a couple of bucks in the box.

Here's a customer getting The Spiel. Marie, especially, was really good at explaining to people what we were doing.

Many did in fact commission sketches.

Once we were set up it went fairly smoothly despite being a bit cramped, up against the wall as we were.

That's me and my boss, Katie. For the last seven years I've exhorted my various supervisors at school to come to the convention and really see how hard the kids work, but this was the first time anyone took me up on it. It really was a lot of fun having Katie there as she knew nothing about comics, conventions, or geek culture in general. But she adapted quickly. Watching her take in the experience was a lot of fun, and by the end of her day there she was a complete convert. At one point Katie was even speculating on the possibility of doing this kind of thing more often and wondering what other shows there were that we could attend as a class. The Stumptown Festival in Portland, especially, was a possibility we talked about quite a bit. (Katie was also interested in hearing about WonderCon and APE, but I told her, "Baby steps. I'm only just now getting to a place where I think I know how to get us to THIS show.")

The alumni were kept very busy sketching all day both days.

Fortunately they love to draw but my GOD they worked hard. I wish I'd gotten more shots of their work, it was of an extraordinarily high level, especially the high school kids. I was so proud of all of them and the way they've all kept learning and growing as artists, years after leaving my charge.

I did get a few. Here's one of Aja's.

And this is one of Katrina's custom commissions. She asked the lady what she wanted and the woman said, "Well, I like octopuses." (Yes, I know it's octopi but that's what she said.)

For a second I thought Katrina was going to be stuck but then she blew out this caricature of the woman herself with an octopus on her head. Yeah, the kids are THAT good.

Some people were kind of crass about it. This mother, especially, was really annoying. First she wanted to know what she'd be getting for her ten dollars.

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to haggle with a sixteen-year-old volunteer over your CHARITABLE ACT.

Katrina rather helplessly pointed to the samples, but it developed that this woman wanted to see the actual sketch before she would pay for it.

And this woman wanted something special, too-- a caricature of her two boys... an action pose of the two of them in their martial arts class. Geez lady, demanding much?

Here's Katrina working on the commission -- I cropped her out, but cheapskate Mom is hovering just out of frame, watching like a hawk to make sure she gets her money's worth.

Katrina was amazingly diplomatic about it. I thought Rin was going to go ballistic on the woman and I had to squelch a few sharp remarks myself. She deserved some kind of smack.

The two boys with the final product. I think they were a little embarrassed over how their mother treated Katrina.

Fortunately, the finished product satisfied everyone and we got the ten bucks.

But most of our visitors were much nicer. You remember Rachel's shot of the X-Men at the beach?

Guess who got that one.

Yeah, that's Matt Fraction, proud new owner of Rachel's X-Men Beach Party. This may be my favorite photo from the show. Only in comics do moments like this happen: my former student Rachel, the world's most ardent fan of the X-Men, posing with Matt Fraction, current writer of the X-Men comic, who's just told her that her cartoon is brilliant, that he would love to do a scene of the team at the beach and that she's caught all their personalities perfectly.

Matt was great with all the kids. He signed autographs, talked with them about comics, and generally was awesome. Here he is signing an autograph for Emma.

It was only a couple of minutes out of his day but I know how hard it can be to get away from your table when you're working a show, and it really meant a lot to the students to have a pro take such an interest. Even my students, whose comics fandom usually begins and ends with manga, know who Iron Man and the X-Men are. They were thrilled that he stopped by.

Michael Alan Nelson also visited our table briefly.

The kids loved him too, though they had only the vaguest idea of who he was -- I explained he worked for Boom! Comics and I think many of them had the idea he worked on the Muppets or something, since that was always where the line was over there. I enjoyed getting to meet him at last -- I interviewed him here a while back, but it was via e-mail and we'd never met in person. I am a big fan of his Fall Of Cthulhu series, and I got Swordsmith Assassin at the show as well, since Chip Mosher sent us the first issue for review and I liked it quite a lot, I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while now... though I forgot to ask Mr. Nelson to sign it. Too busy chitchatting.

I was mostly at our table all weekend, but Julie got out some. There was no way she was missing Leonard Nimoy.

She was actually in panels for most of Saturday, she also went to see Wil Wheaton and Stan Lee. Of them all, I think Julie was the most impressed with Nimoy's, she said he was "inspiring."

As for me, well, I was enjoying my time at the table because it was turning into old home week. We had many visitors from past classes -- Amethyst, Jessica, Shane, Andrew, and Jay, among others. Some I hardly recognized because they're, you know, adults now. (The last time I saw Jay he was a scrawny little soft-spoken kid. Today he's in his twenties, six feet tall and ponytailed, very outgoing with an infectious laugh. And of course his voice is an octave lower.)

Some even volunteered to put in some time sketching for us, which melted me. Lindon popped up out of nowhere and immediately wanted to put in some table time. Of course I agreed.

A lot of the kids dressed up this year, too. Saturday Lindon was in street clothes, but Sunday she was Pikachu.

I took this one just because it made me laugh.

That's right, Pikachu supports Cartooning in schools!

This is Lindon and Devon. I shot this because when Lindon has her head down -- even today, she always draws with her nose to the paper like that, it can't be comfortable but she always has to get way down there -- anyway, it tickles me because it looks like Pikachu is sitting at the table.

Lots of parents volunteered time too.

That's Marie, Ben, and Eileen, under the watchful eye of Gus' mother Marilyn. She looks a little annoyed, not because of the three kids but because her own son has abandoned his post again.

I get three kinds of students -- the ones who want to write, the ones who want to draw, and the ones who just want to geek out and be surrounded by comics. Gus is one of the geeks. He will produce drawings if you lean on him, but for him the point of being at a con is to get cool stuff. All I ask of the kids is to put in a ninety-minute shift at our table on the day they attend, but Gus could hardly bring himself to even do that much, he'd brought money and it was burning a hole in his pocket. First it was Leonard Nimoy's autograph -- even if you brought your own item for him to sign it was still a wince-worthy forty dollars -- and then he negotiated an advance on his allowance to go buy some comics.

Marilyn has always been one of my favorite parents and her reaction to this was completely charming. She ordered Gus to stay at the table and do his job. Then she went off to go get her son's comics herself. Naturally, not being an expert, she consulted me.

"Randy's Readers," I told her. "He's your guy. He sells comics that aren't collectible, just in average shape... his market is people that don't really Collect with a capital C, but only want to read comics. If I ever get a chance to take a break I was thinking of stopping over there myself, to be honest."

Marilyn agreed that was the place to go and the girls were exhorting me to take some kind of a break, and Marie wanted to come too, so off we went.

Marilyn explained that Gus wanted war comics. "So violent," she said, ruefully.

Gus did the tank for the group poster. He's all about the war comics.

I laughed. "Well, I grew up on blood and thunder myself, it's not all that damaging really. The key is that there has to be a story, I try to make sure they aren't just doing a videogame shoot-'em-up. There's a fine old tradition of war comics that did great stories, Sgt. Rock, G.I. Combat, Unknown Soldier.... we'll find him some of the good stuff."

Marilyn perked up. "Yes, I know Gus liked that Unknown Soldier book you loaned him. I was going to try and find some of those."

I brought this to class to show the boys that even hardcore shoot-em-ups still had to have a STORY. For Gus it was love at first sight.

Mission defined, we now moved with a clear purpose. Once we were at Randy's booth Randy himself stepped in and was very helpful, explaining to Marilyn that there was the Unknown Soldier series from Star-Spangled War Storiesand then there were the ones in his own book.

"What's the difference?" Marilyn wanted to know.

"Later ones are probably cheaper," I told her, smiling. "But I don't think Gus will care that much, he'd enjoy any of them."

As for me, in showing the various war series to Marilyn I stumbled across this one and decided I couldn't pass it up for six bucks.

Sorry, Gus, I got this one.

Our Army At War #269, a reprint of stories featuring work by Joe Kubert, George Evans, John Severin, Russ Heath, and even Mort Drucker (!) I could spend hours just looking at the pictures in this one.

I also fell for a couple of Superboy Giant reprint collections from my childhood that I'd been trying to replace for a while. Mostly these days I'm a trade paperback guy, but nostalgia can still get me.

Marie said curiously, "I know who Superman is, but I never heard of Superboy."

"It's like Smallville, only he actually wears the costume," I heard myself say, and suddenly felt a hundred years old as i realized there's probably two generations of schoolkids now who know Smallville as 'their' Superman the way I think of Bates-Maggin-Swan Bronze-Age Superman as 'mine.'

When we got back I told Gus he had the coolest mother ever. "At your age I'd have killed for a mom who said, 'you finish your work, I'll go make sure you get your comics.' That's unheard of."

Gus blushed, grinned sheepishly, and gave his mother a hug. Marilyn beamed and said, "I have my moments."

There wasn't time for me to do a whole lot of shopping -- there never is -- but Rin found a dealer who had a big box full of graphic novels and trades for $5 and I fell for a couple of those, too.

Empire is one of those late 1970s Byron Preiss productions where he was deliberately trying to move comics into a bookstore market -- about twenty-five years too soon, it turned out, but he produced some handsome books when he was trying. This one was an original piece by Samuel Delany and Howard Chaykin, hoping to scoop up some of that newly-minted SF audience that Star Wars created back then. I'd never actually read it and I've always been curious about it. Holliday I've never heard of, but I'm always up for a Western comic, and for a $5 trade paperback it's hard to go wrong.

Most of our shopping, though, we tried to do in Artist's Alley itself as much as possible. We like to support the creators. Julie picked up the new Muppet book from Boom! where Amy Mebberson was -- you should pardon the expression -- doing a BOOMing business.

Possibly the most popular artist at the show this year.

She was kept busy all weekend. A lovely lady, she was great with all the kids that came up to her and sketched Kermits and Animals and Miss Piggys till her hands were raw, most likely. I don't think a single kid went away empty-handed.

And I made it a point to pick up a bunch of stuff from Camilla d'Errico on Sunday morning. I was able to catch her a few minutes before the show opened, when it was actually possible to have a conversation.

Camilla's a favorite with my kids.

Camilla has been a great friend to my students for many years now... they don't remember her name but they all know the Awesome Manga Lady From Vancouver. I bought about $25 worth of stuff from her because A) I can use it in class and B) she deserves to be rich and I do what I can. She had a line all weekend but I did get to chat with her for a few minutes on Sunday morning. Largely on what became the typical Sunday conversation topic in Artist's Alley, "Great to see you, sorry I didn't come by earlier, we were stuck at the table.... My God! Wasn't yesterday hell? How many people did YOU get?" Everyone loved the increase in business but hated fighting through the crowds on Saturday.

Sunday afternoon I did get around a little bit. I got a couple of books signed from Kurt Busiek and Len Wein, and I had a flattering couple of minutes with Les McClaine, original artist on The Middleman. He saw my badge and said, "Hey, Greg Hatcher! I love your column!"

Seriously. I was shocked speechless. I spluttered and fumfuh'd and blushed like a schoolgirl, finally managing to choke out that I was a huge fan of his, that my students and I all adored The Middleman. This pleased him, and we agreed that it was a shame it didn't last but it was great to have something that cool exist at all.

And I got to say hi to Pete and Rebecca Woods, from Periscope Studios. We hadn't seen Rebecca in about six years, she hadn't come to ECCC in a while, so it was great to catch up. Rebecca immediately wanted to know how Brianna was doing, since when Bri was my student years ago she practically camped out at the Periscope Studios table, and Rebecca happily adopted her. I told her that Bri wanted desperately to come this year but she had finals up at Bellingham, she was in college up at Western. Then we had a mutual groan about how old we are getting.

Because Bri couldn't make it to the convention this year, we wanted to at least let her know she was missed.

When I got the idea to recruit additional Cartooning alumni to do charity sketches for our fundraiser, my first two thoughts were Brianna and Nadine. They're both in college now, and they've kept up with their comics work as well. They were pretty amazing in the seventh grade, and they've only gotten better.

Here's what Bri was doing when she was in my class...

...and here's a more current piece.

Sadly, Brianna had finals or she'd have been there with bells on, she assured us.

Nadine had finals too but she did make it down, which delighted me. She was probably the single most gifted student I've ever had. Her serial "Mermaid's Touch" still gets gasps of awe when the kids go through the old books.

In fact, when Katrina joined my class when she was in middle school, she was so inspired by Nadine's work that she took the same pen name, "KittyBell."

Any rodeo fans out there? Having been exposed to the culture a little during my trips to Vegas while the Professional Bull Riding circuit was in town. So I was curious to learn a bit more about it from Meredith Danluck who has made a documentary about it having its world premiere at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival,

Cinematical: The mythos of the cowboy is something suggested during the opening monologue. But what is the idea of the modern cowboy that all these guys are chasing that is either in sync or contradicts the Old West paradigm that we fall in love with as little boys?

MEREDITH: I think these guys arent necessarily "chasing" the idea of the cowboy, but rather are cowboys. Growing up outside of the ranching community, the mythology of the cowboy was propped up mainly by whatever Hollywood dictated; courtesy, pride, strength etc. These guys grew up with those values. I think, like with any archetype, there are evolutions of the characteristics that maybe on the surface seem contradictory. Winning a million dollars might not make sense with our idea of a cowboy, but once you strip away all the superficial layers, the core is the same.

Filed under: SXSW, Interviews

Continue reading SXSW Interview: 'The Ride' Director Meredith Danluck

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Lunch-hour cosmetic surgery – 45-minute boob jabs, nonsurgical rhinoplasty – is booming in the UK. But nightmare stories are also on the rise. So are the treatments safe? We speak to doctors to find out, and take a front-row seat at a no-frills nose job

Cosmetic surgery is changing. One advancement is the use of twilight surgery, where they send you only half to sleep. Clinics are alive with dazed facelift patients, who keep their eyes open, frowning and smiling on demand, who come to after the sedation's worn off, their skin tight but bruised, able to remember nothing of the knife at all. There are other patients who trip in off the street for a half-hour boob job under local anaesthetic, and still more who book a session of Botox in their lunch-breaks. The current excitement, in plastics, is not in the perfection of a newly sculpted nose but in the speed at which patients can recover, and the market for these fast, temporary procedures is growing wildly.

The Knightsbridge Laser Clinic is one of many that has recently started promising lunch-hour transformations, offering laser lipolysis to eliminate fat, the G-spot injection to enhance sexual stimulation, Macrolane breast injections, nonsurgical rhinoplasty and Botox fillers to remove wrinkles. A block away from Harrods, I climb their carpeted stairs to the waiting room as the lunch-time rush subsides. Outside a light rain is falling, and the smell of a wet fur coat, woody and dead, hangs in the air of the clinic's small landing. Its owner brushes past me, straight into one of three white and well-lit offices. In a corner room, beside a sheeted bed, I soon take my seat, an audience of one at a 15-minute nose job.

The patient, a young, elegant woman with jewelled shoes, had rhinoplasty in Harley Street as a teenager but now wants it still straighter. Her first operation, which cost £8,000 and required a week in hospital, had left her with a smaller nose, she says, but slightly wonky nostrils. "You might not notice it," she says apologetically, "but I do."

The doctor, Salinda Johnson, a slight and surgically tweaked woman who studied cosmetic dermatology in Thailand, warns of the possible side-effects of today's procedure as she applies a numbing cream to the patient's face. "Soreness, redness, bruising," she chants, "which will settle down within two weeks and break down completely within a year." Johnson rereads the patient's notes and holds up a pink-nailed hand. "There is a problem – we can't do the procedure on a pregnant woman." Her nose glossy with anaesthetising cream, the patient exchanges hurried words with the doctor, and I look pointedly out of the window. An unwanted pregnancy. A sense that the risk is welcome. Minutes later, she is gone.

"Don't worry!" the doctor chirps. "We'll show you the procedure on our receptionist!" Diane has worked at the clinic for four months and, at 23, has already had Botox to fill in a frown line between her brows. Her nose is small and straight, but she has self-diagnosed – she feels there's a dent. She asks the doctor if she thinks rhinoplasty's necessary. "Nothing is necessary," Johnson says, applying the numbing cream. "So can you do my lips, too?" Diane asks, pouting. Johnson shows me the syringe, prefilled with a mixture of anaesthetic and Restylane filler, a hyaluronic acid. The needle is long, and she pushes it firmly into Diane's nose before using both hands to massage the filler into place. The air-conditioning system screams on, and dies just as quickly – the only sounds are Johnson's gloves, baggy on her tiny hands, squeaking.

I gather myself. Does it hurt, I ask Diane, who's breathing calmly, her fingers gently worrying the sleeve of her sweater. "No, I can't feel anything. I can just smell the rubber gloves." Were you interested in getting cosmetic surgery before coming to work here? "No!" she says, through the doctor's fingers, her nose changing shape, delicately, before my squinting eyes. "But I see so many people coming in at lunch time and leaving looking... fresher, and you can't even tell what they've had done. So I had laser hair removal, which feels like being slapped, and Botox, which was really nothing, and then I saw that you could make your lips look more defined with filler, so I've been pestering Salinda to do me."

Dr Johnson wipes around Diane's mouth with a small antiseptic cloth, and warns her that, on a pain scale, this will hurt a seven. She injects Restylane into the lips, and Diane's eyes flicker backwards. With her fingers, Johnson pushes the filler into a cupid's bow – the effect is that of a mother wiping chocolate smears off a child's mouth.

The Harley Medical Group, the UK's largest cosmetic surgery provider, published figures in January revealing the nonsurgical cosmetic surgery market (which includes the Macrolane boob jab, an injection that increases your bust size, and Restylane rhinoplasty, the injection that straightens your nose) saw continued growth in 2009, with dermal fillers and chemical peels driving the increase by 26% and 306% respectively. Last year also saw a continued rise in the number of male patients (up 5%), with "Boytox" (male Botox) and "Sweatox" (anti-sweat Botox) both contributing to the leap.

"Minimally invasive procedures rule today – and this is what consumers, and especially men, want most," says Wendy Lewis, independent cosmetic surgery consultant and author of Plastic Makes Perfect. "The benefits for consumers are: subtle improvements over time; nothing radical; less risky; definitely cheaper than big surgeries; no need for anaesthetic or going to hospital and catching MRSA; and no scars."

"There are many reasons why day surgery is becoming more and more popular," Dr Johnson tells me after Diane has floated back to her desk, swollen but smiling. "People who thought they didn't want to get surgery because they were not brave enough, or not rich enough, are interested in these temporary and non-expensive procedures – our nonsurgical rhinoplasty starts at £350. And it's so quick! The talking takes longer than the treatment. We have a lot of clients who work at Harrods and really do just pop in on their lunch breaks."

The market continues to swell, imperceptibly smoothing the faces of colleagues, relatives, local hairdressers. A study carried out for the Girl Guides last November found almost half of secondary school girls said they planned to have plastic surgery. "Girls and young women are telling us that they are finding it quite hard to accept their appearance, and it is starting at a much earlier age than we had previously thought," says Nicola Grinstead, a trustee of Girlguiding UK. "The survey shows girls as young as 11 are dissatisfied with how they look and are prepared to use surgery to make a change."

All the women I talk to in the clinic's waiting room flicking through OK! magazines agree that today Botox, and increasingly cosmetic surgery, really is "no big deal". They nod, eyes wide, and reel off names like a BBC3 news bulletin. Last year Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox all gave interviews about their Botox use, while a film critic compared Nicole Kidman's facial skin to melamine. This month Cheryl Cole was photographed walking through a London airport with lips like salted slugs, and reality star Heidi Montag, 23, underwent 10 procedures in one day and ended up looking just like lingerie model Caprice, who is 38.

In a culture that celebrates youth, the appeal of an injection that appears to shave a little time off your age is clear, especially for the famous and often-photographed. As the demand for surgery has grown, academics have increasingly discussed the democratisation of beauty. If everybody could, in the space of a lunch hour, become symmetrical and clear-skinned, would the power of prettiness be weakened? If we accept that we will be judged on our appearance, is the fact that we can control it almost liberating?

Two years ago, Observer beauty journalist Alice Hart-Davis was one of the first women in the country to try the Macrolane breast enhancement jab. "I had never seriously considered having a proper breast enhancement. I don't feel surgery is something to be undertaken lightly," she tells me. "But I've always wished there was something I could do to boost my bust just a bit that didn't involve surgery."

Macrolane, which arrived in the UK in 2008, is a gel filler which is injected into the breast with a long blunt needle. It increases the bust by one cup size, lasts a year and costs around £2,000. "The procedure was amazing," says Hart-Davis, "an instant result. I was beyond thrilled with it." Though clinics advertise boob jabs in their list of lunch-time treatments, and the injections are over in 10 minutes, she warns: "It's by no means a 'lunch-hour lift' type procedure; it doesn't take long, but I reacted strongly to the local anaesthetic: it didn't hurt, but I could hardly speak straight for the rest of the day. And your body and brain go into a kind of post-traumatic shock after any procedure like this. You need to take it quietly afterwards."

Three months after her injections, one breast deflated – she settled for stuffing her bra with a sock – and the other went rock hard. Her surgeon broke up the gel under anaesthetic, then injected more to balance her bra. A few weeks later, she felt a lump in her right breast. She panicked and returned to the doctor, who reassured her that it was nothing to worry about – just a lump of hardened gel. "That experience," she concludes, "alongside discovering that the research conducted on the product was not half as extensive as I'd been led to believe, and talking to several surgeons who strongly disapprove of the procedure, has put me off trying it again."

One such surgeon is Mr Charles Nduka, who runs the not-for-profit patient information website safercosmeticsurgery.co.uk. "There's so much misleading information being published about 'lunch-time' procedures," he says, "leading, at best, to unrealistic expectations and disappointment and, at worst, complications. Facial procedures such as Botox may leave localised swelling, redness and in some cases bruising, even in the best hands. This means that if you wanted to keep your treatment secret, lunch time may not be the best time.

"A major issue in the UK," he continues, "is that because fillers are classified as medical devices – the same as implants – rather than drugs, the regulations about who can administer them are among the most lax in the developed world. The recently introduced guidance from the Ihas [Independent Healthcare Advisory Services] is a mockery. It's a system of self-regulation which means that the very practitioners who should be regulated will not sign up. There have been more than 100 fillers introduced in the UK and in many cases they were withdrawn due to side-effects. Essentially the UK becomes a testing ground for new products."

So would he recommend traditional plastic surgery over the lunch-hour treatments? "Few people have social lives so hectic that they cannot give themselves the luxury of having a treatment in an unrushed fashion," Mr Nduka says, "without the anxiety that swelling might show."

Dr Mike Cummins, a GP and cosmetic surgeon who, after requests from patients, agreed to carry out group treatments at Botox parties, agrees that the "lunch-time" label can be misleading, but says that as doctors' experience of anaesthetics increases, "there continue to be more and more advantages to daycare procedures, both for the patient and the client. Laser-assisted liposuction is getting to the point where it's more than reasonable to do it under twilight sedation and cosmetic surgeons are all working to get the least trauma to tissue under local anaesthetic as possible."

In Jeanette Winterson's novel The Stone Gods, published in 2008 but set in a futuristic dystopia, people alter their genes to preserve their youth and get plastic surgery to amplify what's left. Only the protagonist, Billie, chooses to age naturally, wrinkling slowly among the smooth foreheads and perky breasts. Winterson worries about the normalisation of cosmetic surgery. "What really bothers me," she says, "is that women used to be made to believe that their minds were inadequate, but we were allowed our bodies. Now that we can't be told our minds aren't up to it, our bodies are paraded as defective. It is the same old control. It is not just an assault on women – it is a war on feminism."

She emails me later that day. "I find 'lunch-hour surgery' savage and cynical. An insecure woman is a woman who will pay to feel better about herself. Disguising insecurity and feelings of inadequacy as empowerment is part of the usual twisted message of consumer advertising, but where women are concerned the strategy asks us to fund our own oppression. We pay to feel better instead of asking why we are made to feel defective in the first place... We need to understand that what is happening to women now is part of a disturbing bigger picture and not just a question of: 'Does madam fancy a nose job?'"

How does Winterson see society progressing in this era of perfectibility? Does she predict new lows, new depths? "We'll all get fixed eventually. Parents will do it to their kids. It will become routine. The Stepford Wives world of the 1950s was made impossible by feminism. We are heading back that way by another route. Women made in the image of men."

After Diane's 15-minute nose job, I take a walk through Harrods' beauty hall. I feel a little drunk. I had gone into the clinic expecting gore, or at least tears, but I left shocked only at the dry eyes, lack of fuss, the ease, the speed and gentle effectiveness. The women in Harrods testing the perfumes are largely blondes, largely wrinkleless, and largely slim. I see three people who look like Caprice, but as reflected in varying fairground mirrors. I watch a mother pick out scented candles for her granddaughter's wedding reception, and admire her shiny still forehead as she quietly exclaims over jasmine perfumes. I'm suddenly aware, looking discreetly from face to face, of all the "work" done and all the work yet to be done. It is an awakening of sorts. A half-awakening, maybe, to an odd new twilight world.

QUICK FIXES The most popular nonsurgical procedures

MACROLANE: BOOB JAB Created by Q-Med, the Swedish company behind the wrinkle-filler Restylane, Macrolane was launched in Europe as a correctional filler for body indentations. It wasn't until it was used in Japan in 2004 that it took off as an alternative for breast implants – by January 2008, when it launched in the UK, about 30,000 Japanese women had had the boob jab. The procedure, which takes 45 minutes, involves a gel filler made of hyaluronic acid being pumped into the breast through a flexible knitting needle-sized canula. PRICES from £1,800

RESTYLANE: NOSE JOB Restylane, a water-based filler, is a synthetic reproduction of hyaluronic acid, a substance found in living organisms. Until recently its main use has been to plump lips and fill crow's feet, but the new procedure involves injecting the bridge of the nose to fill in dents, and the tip, so it appears perkier. Effects wear off within 18 months. PRICES from £350

BOTOX An injection of Botulinum toxin A (a diluted and purified form of the bacteria which causes botulism) softens and prevents frown lines. The jab, 22 years old this spring, changed the face of cosmetic surgery, with celebrities including Simon Cowell admitting to relying on it to look younger. Each year it is estimated to make its manufacturers around £800m from more than 60,000 injections. PRICES £230 to £390

JUVEDERM: LIP ENHANCEMENT A series of injections of Juvederm filler around the mouth can make the lips fuller and reshape ageing pouts. Juvederm contains hyaluronic acid which, by attracting water, plumps up the skin. Results last for up to a year. PRICES from £250 

• Women
• Plastic surgery
• Social trends
• Health

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

MichaelSmith writes "I code on the tram, going to and from work and I noticed that there are a lot of wifi access points along the way. So one week I made it my job to write an automatic scanner which runs from a cron job every minute during commuting times. My backup script pushes the new AP names to my web server and you can read it on line. It is a mixture of the straightforward, naive and funny, with a few pop culture references along the way. The first column in the file is the number of access points with that name. The second column is the AP name, in brackets to pick up white space." Why can't "Dress Me Slowly" and "Domestic Bliss" just share an AP?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MichaelSmith writes "I code on the tram, going to and from work and I noticed that there are a lot of wifi access points along the way. So one week I made it my job to write an automatic scanner which runs from a cron job every minute during commuting times. My backup script pushes the new AP names to my web server and you can read it on line. It is a mixture of the straightforward, naive and funny, with a few pop culture references along the way. The first column in the file is the number of access points with that name. The second column is the AP name, in brackets to pick up white space." Why can't "Dress Me Slowly" and "Domestic Bliss" just share an AP?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the next few weeks, the ReadWriteWeb events guide will take you from New York City, to San Francisco, to Portland, Oregon. Along the way you'll find a conference on search engine strategies, a showcase for startups, an in-depth look at the freemium business model, and a day filled with of social media case studies.

How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

22 – 26 March 2010: New York City

Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo

Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:

• Digital Asset Optimization
• Deep Dive Into Analytics
• Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World
• Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons
• Advanced B2B Search Marketing
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

23 March 2010: San Francisco, California

S.F. Beta 4.0

After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.

26 March 2010: San Francisco, California

Freemium Summit

The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.

Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.

March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon

Social Fresh Portland

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

ConnectNow

TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).

The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.

For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia

ConnectNow

ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.

13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas

PubCon South

PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.

16 April 2010: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar: Cloud

Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.

16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan

FutureMidwest

FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.

Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.

April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri

Social Fresh St. Louis

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California

DrupalCon

DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.

Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.

26 April 2010: San Francisco, California

Future of Money and Technology Summit

The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.

Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.

7 May 2010: Mountain View, California

ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010

The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.

An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.

We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.

• 
  
• Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform?
• 
  
• Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
• 
  
• Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices.
• 
  
• Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices.
• 
  
• Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data.
• 
  
• Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR.
• 
  
• Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
• 
  

Click here to register now, or to become a sponsor, or to help shape the conference.

11 May 2010: San Francisco, California

FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.

Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.

May 17 2010: San Francisco, California

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.

25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado

Glue

Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.

ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".

15 – 16 June 2010: New York City

Corporate Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:

• Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
• 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
• A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here.

29 – 30 June 2010: London

Cloud Computing World Forum

The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:

• Co-located with CloudCamp London
• Co-located with Green IT conference
• Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
• Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
• Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
• Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
• Evening networking party for all attendees

5 October 2010: New York City

FinovateFall

FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders(...)

Rhys Ifans will be playing Luna Lovegood's father Xenophilius in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and we asked him what it was like joining that world while talking to him at SXSW for his latest film Mr. Nice. He had a rather unique analogy for the honor of being cast in the series, which you can read below or listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

Cinematical: Speaking of Harry Potter, was that a weird world to step into?

Rhys Ifans: No, it wasn't. It was a rite of passage, in a way. There is no way in English culture that I would be rewarded for my endeavors. I am a bad boy from beginning to end. So, as an actor, being in Harry Potter, you get your stripes. As shallow as it sounds...

That doesn't really sound shallow at all.

It is a beautiful ... I'm really touched. I was really touched to participate in a ... what is a trilogy six times?

I don't even know if there is a word for it.

No. Whatever. I am just happy to have been a participant in the telling of that story. I am really touched. Harry Potter is an amazing brand. I am, you know, really touched. It is like getting a f**king medal. And I am a renegade. It is good. This is not an egotistical thing, but it is like, I guess, Johnny Rotten gets to f**k Lady Di in the tunnel, before she dies.

Reading in the traditional open-ended sense is not what most of us, whatever our age and level of computer literacy, do on the Internet. Books cease to be individual works but are scanned and digitized into one great, big continuous text. The dynamics of the digital are encouraging authors, journalists, musicians and artists to treat the fruits of intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. But what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes metaness and regards the mash-up as more important than the sources who were mashed? The very value of artistic imagination and originality, along with the primacy of the individual, is increasingly being questioned in our copy-mad, postmodern digital world. Remix is the very nature of the digital. But do we now face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock?

In the world of technology, drama is a valuable commodity. Disruptive change may happen in the minutiae of software code or the gradual execution of a business plan, but we see its effects in the dramatic narratives of companies rising and falling, or getting locked in combat with each other. Which is why the rivalry between Google and Apple is such a compelling story.

It’s so tempting to get drawn into the ego battles between Steve Jobs and the Google triumvirate while placing bets on who will win that it’s easy to forget a deeper truth about this rivalry: Google and Apple need each other.

They both have a deep desire to stake out claims on the mobile web, but the mobile web is in a nascent stage. In order to develop, it needs to have both rigid structure and a sometimes reckless creativity. Structure is necessary to provide a strong foundation and a set of standards everyone can understand. And creativity is essential to bringing the innovative potential of the mobile web into full bloom.

This dichotomy was present when the Internet began to develop in the early 90s. Many people who came online then did so through America Online’s walled gardens, a safe little enclave where consumers and content providers alike could create the rules of a new medium. Then the web itself took off and sites like Yahoo and GeoCities offered a much more creative environment to explore what else could be done.

Now it’s happening again, only with Apple and Google. Apple’s stern and unforgiving approach to the iPhone offers the structure this new medium needs to succeed. Cupertino’s control-freak tendencies stretch from enforcing adherence to ever-changing app guidelines to banishing plastic screen protectors from its retail stores.

Google’s approach is nearly the opposite, much more open and free-wheeling. Its Android OS, based on the Linux kernel, has so many versions available the company is struggling to consolidate them. The Android Market is such an unregulated affair that it’s hard for anyone to count the number of apps on sale.

Google’s culture has built into it a tolerance for the failures that come with creative experiments. Its 70-20-10 rule seems rooted on that spirit of tolerance — how many companies require employees to spend time on something that may never fly? — and Google has floated so many failed ideas it’s hard to keep track of them all. Apple, by contrast, starts with an instinctive idea of how consumers will experience its products and fits everything, even the ecosystem of apps that extends beyond its corporate walls, into making it work.

It’s in the tension between these two companies and their respective cultures that the mobile web is being forged. But as America Online found out, the walls eventually come down as consumers grow more comfortable with the new medium and desert the walled garden. That would suggest the balance will tip in favor of Google.

But I would be surprised if Apple isn’t anticipating this evolution. Right now, iPhone owners are experiencing the mobile web through the 150,000 or so apps it offers through the App Store. But Apple has also backed HTML5, which allows a smartphone browser to have rich app-like features without requiring any new software to be downloaded. Just as people stopped downloading AOL’s software and switched to browsers, we may well abandon most of the apps on our phones today.

Both companies will continue to play a major role on the mobile web, but I doubt either will ever gain the upper hand. This dramatic tension between Apple and Google may be around for a long time. So executives at both might as well get used to it.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

With The iPad, Apple Takes Google To the Mat

La Chine renforcera les échanges et la coopération avec les pays étrangers dans les industries du tourisme et de la culture, a déclaré samedi Liu Yunshan, membre du Bureau politique du Comité central du Parti communiste chinois. Il a fait cette...

When I came to the U.S. in 1980, I was young and naïve. I used to think that corruption and ethical lapses were just a third-world ill. Eventually, I became a tech CEO and learned the harsh realities of American business. Yes, standards are much higher, and breaches are punished, but the temptations are just the same here as they are in any other country. Ethical lapses (which are a form of corruption) are quite common.  You watch stories about these on TV every other day and read about them on TechCrunch.  It was the ethical lapses of our financial institutions that threw our economy into a tailspin, and for which we are paying the price, after all.

It is best to be aware of the temptations and to prevent the lapses from occurring. As Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lehman Brothers have shown, it’s a slippery slope. Once you start compromising your values for short-term gains, there is no turning back. Business ethics are not something you need to start worrying about when your company reaches a certain size; they need to be sewn into the fabric of your startup from the get-go. The lessons are the same for tech businesses as they are for investment banks and for third-world economies.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer researched the difference between companies that perform at high levels for extended periods and those that implode when they reach a certain size. When analyzing the spectacular failures in the recent financial meltdown, he found that:

· Of the original Forbes 100 (named in 1917), 61 had ceased to exist by 1987.  Of the remaining 39, only 18 stayed in the top 100, and their return during the period 1917 to 1987 was 20% less than that of the overall market.

· Of companies in the original Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index of 1957, only 74 remained in 1997; of these, only 12 outperformed the S&P 500 in the period 1957 to 1998.

· The average CEO tenure in the U.S. is 4.2 years, less than half the 10.5-year average in 1990.

Beer posited three core reasons for the failure of so many Wall Street firms in the fall of 2008: the firms lacked a higher purpose (in other words, they were focused on short-term gains, profits, and bonuses); they lacked a clear strategy; and they mismanaged their risk. Companies like Charles Schwab and US Bancorp were able to avoid the fallout by having a laser-like focus on customer service and on honesty and transparency. Neither company touched the subprime mortgage securitization market, because they saw it as risky and simply not the kind of business that served the company’s long-term interests.

Even outside Wall Street, companies like Cisco Systems, Southwest Airlines, and Costco Wholesale, with the strongest sense of higher purpose, achieved the greatest success. Take Costco. Wall Street analysts have long chastised Costco’s management for paying high wages and keeping employees around for a long time, because this results in higher benefits costs. But the company’s CEO, Jim Sinegal, lives by his belief that keeping good employees is strategic for Costco’s long-term success and growth. The company’s per-employee sales are considerably higher than those of key rivals such as Target and Wal-Mart; customer service at the stores is phenomenal and fast; and Costco continues to expand, both in number of warehouses and in products and services for business and consumer customers. The culture of the company flows downward from Sinegal and his focus on employees and, by extension, to customers.

One of the problems that Beer found with the failed banks was that their employees lacked the ability to “speak truth to power”. Employees felt intimidated by superiors; the institutions’ internal voice of conscience and purpose was silenced by a maniacal focus on short-term profits and whatever scheme would bring them in. The silencing of employees who sought to challenge strategy and risk-management practices likely also undermined the banks’ moral authority and emboldened those who already felt inclined to do the wrong thing. With a muted internal voice, these organizations lacked a moral compass. As a result, they drove off a cliff with astonishing speed.

The same things happen in Silicon Valley companies.  I asked management guru — and head of the CEO Institute of Yale School of Management — Jeff Sonnenfeld for his advice on how startups can sow the seeds for building a Cisco or Costco. Here is Jeff’s advice:

1)  Create a culture of openness and welcome dissent – Internal constructive critics are your best friends — too often, founders are blinded by their own enthusiasm for their creative vision and then are surrounded by sycophants, kissing up. Founders who fall out of touch rapidly lose their ethical bearings. At Intel, founder Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore did not look for sycophantic followers in selecting the brilliant, contentious, but relentlessly honest Andy Grove as their colleague and successor. Similarly, Craig Barrett and Paul Otellini have consistently fought for different points of view internally — without undermining the enterprise, and always reinforcing Intel’s self-critical core ethic.

2)  Lead by example.  The authenticity of the leader’s character is essential — if colleagues don’t believe you, they will not take needed risks on your behalf — such as training subordinates to be able to do their own jobs.  Startups are often defined by the hip clichés of VC firms, adoring press, and HR consultants — but the startups don’t really practice what they preach.

3)  Learn from immediate peers or distant models. Too often, founders atrophy because they believe that the unique quality of their business or technological mission means that they too are truly unique in leadership values.  Steve Jobs has patterned himself after Polaroid founder Ed Land — and tried to learn from Land’s strengths and weaknesses.  Henry Ford regretfully once claimed “History is bunk” but in reality revered Thomas Edison.  Michael Dell put legendary tech entrepreneur (Teledyne) and educator Dr. George Kozmetsky on his board right from the start to learn from this brilliant then septuagenarian.

4)  Recognize your own fallibility as a leader, know your limits, and beware of the myth of immortality.  Entrepreneurs often are horrified at the thought of leadership succession. The founders of great firms such as Google, Cisco, Amgen, and Microsoft have known that they would need to prepare for a day when they no longer could be the lone day-to-day internal boss, primary external ambassador, and symbolic cultural icon. The founder of the original (pre-Starbucks) coffee house chain Chock-Full-o-Nuts started his first café on Broadway 43rd Street in 1923 and was a great national success.  Sadly, sixty years later, as a dying man who had been flat on his back for two years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he still clung to the job of leader of the enterprise, his full-time physician serving as acting president.

5)  Remember that institutional character — like a liquid cupped in your hand — is fragile; easily lost; and hard, if not impossible, to regain. Egomaniacal moves, personal grandiosity, greed, and deception create impressions that are hard to erase.  Whole Foods founder, John Mackey, sabotaged the integrity of his own exalted brand, damaging the company’s internal pride and customer admiration far more badly than any competitor could have, due to his self-inflating and his misleading “anonymous” blogging, hiding his identity through an anagram of his wife’s name, “rehodab.”

I’ll add another very important point: Establish an independent board. Venture firms often demand a majority of board seats as a condition for their investments. Conflicts invariably arise. The board begins to serve the needs of VCs and management, rather than of the company itself, which loses the independent voice to warn it not to do the wrong things. The inconvenient truth is that all board members have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the company, and not in their own interests. Board members must not engage in transactions in which they or their partners stand to gain. They are legally required to avoid these conflicts of interest.

Finally, remember that in business, you have to make tough choices at every juncture. Though business decisions usually have clear consequences and outcomes, ethical decisions are always hard. Making the right choice doesn’t always bring success, but ethical lapses almost always lead to failure. No matter what the consequence, doing what’s ethical and right is always the better long-term strategy.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Il existe en Chine une culture de surfeurs justiciers: ils constituent une sorte de moteur de recherche en chairs et en os, qui recherche, traque et harcèle les individus par exemple coupables d’adultère ou les officels corrompus. Ces cyber-jus...

NEW YORK—The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. “The music industry is back,” RIAA representative Doug Fowley said. “Not only was Kenny Chesney’s Greatest Hits CD purchased at a Knoxville, TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two songs downloaded through iTunes, and our ringtone sales reached three.” Fowley added that as long as no one returns or exchanges the CD, the music industry would continue to be a vital and creative force in American culture.
Report: Music Industry Made $18 In 2009 | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

La solita fonte “bene” informata

Bookmark It




Hide Sites

Newly released for Apple Iphone

Thirty-Six Strategies 1.0


Category: Books
Price: Free (iTunes)

Description:

"Thirty-Six Stratagems" refers to thirty-six war strategies in ancient Chinese ,which language comes of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the book was completed in Ming and the Qing Dynasty.This books is summarized by the military thoughts and rich experience in the struggle in ancient China and was on of the Chinese culture heritages."Thirty-Six Stratagems" is a masterpiece which fcous on the scheme of the war and the strategies and reveals how to make a right decision correctly and quickly and how to win the enemies in a right way.This book can not only be used in the military war in China and other countries in the world,but also used in political, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, etc.
Thirty-Six Strategies



More...

"Une culture de l’innovation et de la créativité insuffisamment développée

Cette insuffisance se traduit par la difficulté de transformer les idées en produits ou services puis en succès commerciaux : la rencontre se fait difficilement entre les idées d’innovation, émanant d’un chercheur public, d'un salarié de grande entreprise ou d'un patron de PME, et les compétences, notamment dans les domaines du design, de la connaissance du consommateur, du marketing ou du management de projet, nécessaires pour transformer ces idées en nouveaux produits ou services. Trop d'équipes entrepreneuriales restent mono- disciplinaires.

Contrairement à des pays comme la Grande-Bretagne ou les Pays scandinaves, la France accuse un retard dans la prise de conscience de l’importance de l’innovation au sens large. Aucune entreprise française n’est présente dans le classement des 50 entreprises mondiales les plus innovantes proposé par BusinessWeek/BCG. 23 % des entreprises françaises seulement réalisent des innovations non technologiques contre 51 % dans l’OCDE2"

Extrait du rapport des Etats généraux de l'industrie http://www.etatsgeneraux.industrie.gouv.fr/

Le numérique peut-il relancer l’économie française qui souffre d'une si persistante incapacité structurelle à innover? La question, lancinante, a donné lieu à de multiples rapports de grande qualité depuis quelques années et à quelques plans gouvernementaux centrés sur le numérique. Le rapport des Etats généraux de l'industrie, en mars 2010, décrit de façon objective et précise la situation de l'économie française. Il doit être lu par tous les décideurs, car la transformation de l'économie relève d'une responsabilité collective et n'appartient pas aux seuls pouvoirs publics.  Car il s’avère délicat de ne penser que numérique sans prendre en compte l’ensemble des facteurs qui déterminent la compétitivité. Quand toute l’économie devient numérique, il ne s’agit plus d’agir sur ce seul facteur pour relancer la croissance et l’emploi.

La transformation numérique ne se limite plus au monde de l’entreprise, elle couvre tous les usages de toute la population planétaire. Elle n’est pas vertueuse en soi ni naturellement facteur de compétitivité. Elle fait naître de nouveaux acteurs mais en détruit d’autres, et transforme aussi bien la vie quotidienne que le monde des institutions, celui des affaires, de la vie publique, des structures comme l’enseignement et la santé. Elle bouleverse les avantages concurrentiels classiques en accélérant les transformations et en donnant à tous les mêmes armes pour comprendre et agir sur le monde.

Nous sommes désormais entrés dans l’ère de la globalisation numérique, qui tourne la page de l’ère informatique de 1945 à 2000. La donne a changé, les problèmes et les solutions aussi. Il ne s'agit plus de baisser le coût du budget informatique mais d'accroître la puissance de la transformation numérique en développant nouveaux services et nouveaux produits et en inventant des processus nouveaux de conception, de production et de distribution.

De façon très concrète, la transformation numérique imprime ses nouveaux modes de fonctionnement dans toutes les phases de la vie des entreprises. Il ne s’agit plus de mécaniser des processus opérationnels classiques. On peut considérer que ce cycle s'est achevé avec le traitement du bug de l'an 2000 et la vague de déploiement des ERP. Actant la transformation du web, il s'agit maintenant  de transcender les organisations et les rôles des acteurs de l’entreprise pour porter l’information pertinente, en temps réel, sous forme numérique, là et quand se prennent les décisions, et donc à tous les niveaux de l'entreprise.

Concevoir

La conception des produits répond à une évolution des logiques économiques fortes. En période de rareté relative, c’est la capacité technique qui va pousser les produits vers le marché. En période d’abondance, toujours relative, ce sont la reconnaissance, la connivence, les valeurs qui vont emporter la décision du client. Nous passons des modèles classiques du techno-push et du marketing-pull au co-design. Dans le techno- push, l’entreprise produit ce qu’elle sait fabriquer, issu de ses compétences techniques et de ses laboratoires de recherche-développement et sans vraiment se soucier de la demande du client final. La plupart des innovations sont nées par ce puissant mécanisme qui a su faire pénétrer des produits de plus en plus performants dans les entreprises et auprès des ménages. Les trente glorieuses ont été alimentées en mode techno-push, la population absorbant avec délice les innovations qui lui changeait la vie.

Lorsque la demande se ralentit, que les besoins primaires sont satisfaits c’est le département marketing qui prend le relais en affinant la demande, en segmentant les attentes des consommateurs, en diversifiant les emballages et la communication.  Ce « marketing pull » est à l’origine de la diversification extrême des gammes de voitures ou de yaourts... L’offre devient tellement fragmentée qu’elle en est souvent illisible et on pratique alors par essai/erreur en saturant le marché et en abandonnant les références inactives. Cette complexité n’est pas sans conséquence industrielle et logistiques.

Dans les deux modèles l’entreprise pilote le processus de conception  à son propre rythme et en fonction de ses propres impératifs de calendrier.

Le co-design, ou ingénierie  concourante,  est un processus directement issu de la nouvelle capacité des clients et fournisseurs à communiquer de façon numérique sur une base continue. Le co-design permet de collaborer en temps réel sur les spécifications et le design de l’objet à concevoir -produit ou service- en accélérant par le parallélisme les phases classiques du mode projet, traditionnellement séquentiel. Les arbitrages se font à partir de l’image du produit final qui s’affine tout au long du processus, la communication entre les acteurs, souvent distants, se faisant par des outils de management collaboratif. La maquette numérique est au cÅ“ur de ce mécanisme, chaque acteur se voyant attribuer une responsabilité dans la conception de sous-ensembles qui s’intègrent au fur et à mesure dans le produit final. La démonstration de l’efficacité de ce processus a été prouvée par la brillante conception du triréacteur d’affaires de Dassault Aviation, le Falcon 7X. 

 Immersion dans la maquette du cockpit du Falcon 7X image Dassault Aviation

Non seulement les délais de conception ont été réduits à quatre ans pour un appareil entièrement nouveau, mais le premier appareil produit a pu être livré à un client avec des spécifications de qualité nominales.

Produire

Produire dans l’ère numérique c’est bien évidemment s’adapter en temps réel à la  demande par une analyse continue de l’évolution de la demande finale, des stocks et des encours de production. Cet exercice est sous-tendu par la capacité de gérer les approvisionnements en flux tendu grâce à une logistique précise. Passer de la conception numérique à la maquette numérique puis au  process numérique devient naturel grâce aux outils de PLM (« product life management ») qui permet de rassembler dans un référentiel unique l’ensemble des informations nécessaires à la conception, à l’évolution et à la production. Selon Dassault pour son 7X la conception entièrement numérique  a permis des gains considérables dans les phases d'industrialisation et de production : élimination des retouches et problèmes de fabrication, qualité maximale atteinte dès le premier appareil, temps d'assemblage divisé par deux, outillage de production réduit de plus de 50%.

Dans l'automobile, l'utilisation de la maquette numérique tout au long de la vie du produit permet par exemple de produire tous les documents marketing et de mettre en ligne sur les sites des constructeurs l'image numérique des "vrais" véhicules choisis par le client.

Cette logique s’applique également aux produits dont toute la chaîne de conception est numérique, qu’ils adoptent une forme matérielle (le journal papier) ou immatérielle (l’image du même journal sur internet). Cette continuité protéiforme qui conduit d’ailleurs à remettre en cause l’opposition duale matériel/immatériel s’applique à de nombreux produits comme par exemple un prêt bancaire ou un voyage où la chaîne de conception et de décision purement numérique s’incarne dans une réalité physique. L'utilisation tout au long de la chaîne de valeur de messages électroniques standards adaptés au monde de l'internet apporte une efficacité considérable dans le traitement des informations de commande, de gestion, d'approvisionnement. Le programme TIC & PME 2010, lancé en 2005, a ainsi permis a plusieurs filières professionnelles de repenser leur mode de fonctionnement de façon efficace et cohérente et en allégeant leurs coûts d'intermédiation. Ces outils permettent un gain de temps et d’efficacité considérables par rapport aux circuits fragmentés de décision. Leur mise en Å“uvre est de plus en plus simple et accessible, même aux petites entreprises.

Distribuer

Le monde de la distribution est régulièrement transformé par les innovations techniques. Rassembler en un lieu unique le maximum de références a été le long cheminement du progrès de la distribution destinée au consommateur final.  L’hypermarché et le centre commercial marquent l’apogée de cette révolution de la distribution. Mais ce modèle est rendu vulnérable par le développement du commerce en ligne qui apporte un choix infini, beaucoup plus large que n’importe quelle structure physique. Le commerce électronique rend également l’acte d’achat mieux maîtrisé par le consommateur qui dispose de toutes les informations qui lui paraissent nécessaires pour effectuer un choix informé mais également du temps et du recul nécessaire pour prendre la meilleure décision. Le phénomène dit de « longue traîne » permet d’accéder à une offre très large collant aux attentes les plus spécifiques avec un coût de recherche minimale. Ceci offre aussi la possibilité à des producteurs pointus de mettre en marché leurs produits à l’échelle planétaire en limitant leurs frais commerciaux. eBay est devenu ainsi un canal commercial à part entière.  La progression continue du commerce en ligne touche désormais toutes les catégories de la population. Selon le dernier rapport de la FEVAD (février 2010), le commerce en ligne a continué de progresser  en 2009 pour atteindre 25 milliards d’euros dépensés sur le net soit une hausse de 26%. Plus de 24 millions de Français achètent sur internet  et 64 000 sites marchands sont disponibles, soit: + 35% en un an. 28% des entreprises françaises achètent en ligne pour leurs besoins propres.

Longtemps handicapées par une moindre propension que leurs compétiteurs à maîtriser l’exportation lointaine, les PME françaises ont en mains avec le commerce électronique sur le web un outil à la fois accessible et surpuissant qui leur permet de rivaliser sans complexe. Il ne s'agit plus aujourd'hui dans la compétition numérique mondiale de délocaliser le coût de main-d'oeuvre mais de relocaliser le cerveau-d'oeuvre.

La numérisation ne consiste plus à plaquer des solutions nouvelles sur des situations anciennes, mais à repenser l’ensemble du cycle de vie des produits à partir des processus numériques. Cette réflexion doit conduire à redonner à tous les acteurs, internes et externes, une responsabilité réelle sur la production et la livraison des services et le contact client. Pour cela, le management nouveau doit s’appuyer sur la compétence de chacun dans une logique de confiance dans le cadre d’une cohérence globale contrôlée de façon pertinente, c’est à dire non intrusive et non réductrice. 

Il est temps de comprendre que l'économie numérique n'est pas une économie classique, avec ses cycles, ses modèles de management et sa culture du temps, sur laquelle on a greffé quelques ordinateurs et quelques processus informatisés. C'est une économie qui fait de l'information et de la connaissance les matières premières de l'innovation.

A lire une brève et brillante synthèse : "Wired for innovation : how information technology is reshaping the economy", Erik Brynjolfsson, Adam Saunders, MIT Press,, 2010

Microsoft dévoile un système d'exploitation qui représente enfin une véritable alternative à l'iPhone.

La Francophonie désigne un ensemble d'États et de gouvernements ayant le français en commun. La francophonie (avec un f minuscule) renvoie à la langue française en elle-même et désigne le fait de parler français. La Francophonie (avec un F majuscule) désigne une communauté constituée de pays francophones et renvoie aussi à l'Organisation internationale de la francophonie. Quant à « l'espace...

Source : Chantal ou MAMAN NUNU (s'abonner)

Explorer : Culture, Francophonie, High-tech, Internet, Wikipedia

Author : Chris Deal

It’s the only story the news is talking about today: twenty years since the fall, since the wall came down. My boy asked me if I remembered it, where was I when I heard it had come down. Told him I was right where he was, asking my father what it meant, the wall coming down, the people separating. I told my boy, I told him my dad said it meant we could be together again, undivided by petty differences.

My boy, he said my dad sounded like a smart man.

He was, I told him.

What I didn’t tell him was that I was lying. I wasn’t sitting with my father when the wall came down. I was there. I held a sledgehammer in my young hands and I swung that thing over and over, until my muscles ached of acid and my shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging to me in the cold night.

What I didn’t tell him was that I was on the other side of that wall.

That wall wasn’t to keep people inside, but to keep them out.

What I didn’t tell my boy was my father, he remembered the first wall, way across the ocean, the remnant of another war, long before the last one. One country divided from itself, not one country cut off from the rest of the world. Families separated, not entire cultures. He knew his mother wasn’t born in here, but he never asked where I met her. He never asked where we lived before him. There was the way it was now, the way it was before, but he never cared about anything from then. Him, he had an entire life ahead of him, an entire world to see. He would never have to see his homeland tear itself apart, people of a different color removed from their homes, sent to a land they only knew as stories from their parents, grandparents. The war in our borders was a history lesson for him, not real life. He would never have to kill to preserve what was right.

My boy grew bored of the news, and he started surfing the neural-net.

One day, he may ask more about my father. He may ask about the before. He might ask about the wall that ran the full course of the borders, the guards who patrolled in jeeps with gauss rifles, the camps we sat in before being dumped on the other side, the constant broadcasts from the leader, the man who put an end to heterogeneity and proclaimed through homogeneity we would better ourselves, the man who declared war on the other, who defined that there was an other, the man who became a martyr before the revolution was complete, before I held that hammer and brought down that wall.

When my boy asks, I’ll tell him. For now, though, he can keep on as he is.

I’ll remember for him.

Discuss the Future: The 365 Tomorrows Forums
The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
This is your future: Submit your stories to 365 Tomorrows

Bonjour/nuit à tous,

aucun rapport avec le libre mais bon, on a bien du cinéma et d'autres trucs, je me dis que ça doit bien intéresser un(e) ou deux geek/moule.

Je profite de la diffusion du dernier épisode pour vous parler du visiteur du futur: une web-série produite avec quelques bouts de ficelles et pas mal de talent. Je l'aime particulièrement parce qu'elle est auto-produite et sort pas mal des nombreuses niaiseries qu'on peut voir au cinéma (bon au passage Alice in Wonderland est très bien, mais bon c'est un Tim Burton, alors forcément).

Un gars ordinaire glandouille dans un parc avec ses potes, quand un mec apparaît pour lui dire de ne pas lancer sa canette dans la poubelle, que ceci pourrait avoir des conséquences dramatiques !
Les premiers épisodes sont une successions de sketchs, le gars ordinaire ne peut plus rien faire sans que l'autre ne vienne le perturber (pour ne pas écrire l'emmerder), par la suite cela forme une histoire plus construite.

Vous trouverez pas mal d'autre vidéos vraiment sympas sur le site.
Voilà, encore une fois aucun rapport avec le libre (vous pouvez écrire vos 2 commentaires scriptés « mais ça n'a rien à voir avec le libre ! » et « Les journaux sont destinés à des informations qui ne sont pas [...] »), mais ça tourne un peu autour de la culture geek (SF), j'aime beaucoup tout ce qui est auto-produit (d'aucun diront DIY) et j'ai tout simplement envie de faire connaître.

Plus qu'à espérer une seconde saison sous Creative Common :)

PS: j'allais oublier le lien: http://www.frenchnerd.com

The more of ACTA that leaks, the worse it seems. KEI has the details on another portion of ACTA that had not leaked yet, which focuses on setting up new institutions that would manage ACTA after it was implemented. Basically, it would be an ongoing organization tasked with continuing to update ACTA's rules -- sort of a parallel organization to WIPO, which already exists, but which has recently committed the mortal sin of actually listening to consumer rights groups. The scary part is that this group would be allowed to amend ACTA provisions on the fly. And, while this new organization can "extend invitations" to governments, it's still being debated what non-governmental organizations will be able to take part. KEI notes that the "USTR has told members of Congress it is their intention to marginalize the participation by consumer interest organizations in the new forum," though does not provide a citation for this point.

Either way, it seems like the goal here is to create an extra-governmental body that effectively controls copyright law around the globe, with little input from the actual governments or the people they represent. And, of course, if the folks involved in ACTA negotiations are any indication of who will be involved in this group, you can assume that they will be strong supporters of the viewpoint of the legacy industries: that intellectual property law is designed solely to protect those industry's business models, and not to promote the wider progress of culture and the economy.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

ACTA : Le gouvernement français doit rendre des comptes Ce jeudi 18 mars, Act Up-Paris, April et la Quadrature du Net rencontrent Patrice Guyot et Jean-Philippe Muller de la DGTPE (direction générale du trésor et de la politique économique) concernant l'accord ACTA (anti-counterfeiting trade agreement). Act Up-Paris, April et la Quadrature du Net dénoncent cet accord négocié dans la plus grand opacité et les menaces globales qu'il fait peser sur l'accès aux médicaments, le logiciel libre, et les (...) - Infos globales / Culture/contre-cultures, Internet/luttes numériques, Santé

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20237281Authors: Cai, Z. - Feng, G. S. - Zhang, X.Journal: J NeurosciFGF signaling is critical in the development of the vertebrate retina, which differentiates in a wave-like pattern similar to that found in the Drosophila eye. In this study, we investigated the mechanism of FGF signaling in vertebrate eye development by identifying Shp2, a protein tyrosine phosphatase, as a novel factor in orchestrating retinal morphogenesis. Using a series of Shp2 conditional mutants, we have shown that Shp2 is specifically required for the initiation of retinal neurogenesis but not for the maintenance of the retinal differentiation program. By mosaic deletion of Shp2, we further demonstrated that Shp2 ablation did not prevent the spreading of the retinal differentiation wave. Shp2 instead controls the patterning of the optic vesicle by regulating the retinal progenitor factors and cell proliferation. In ex vivo culture models and genetic rescue experiments, we showed that Shp2 acts downstream to FGF signaling in retinal development and that it can be functionally substituted by activated Ras signaling. Together, these results demonstrate that Shp2 mediates FGF-Ras signaling to control retinal progenitor cell fate.post to: CiteULike

Ah, leave it to The Onion to successfully encapsulate the state of the recording industry with a report that is basically as accurate as most of the reports that come out of the RIAA these days: The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that the combined revenue brought in by Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and countless independent music labels in 2009 totaled $18. "The music industry is back," RIAA representative Doug Fowley said. "Not only was Kenny Chesney's Greatest Hits CD purchased at a Knoxville, TN Borders for $12.99, but we also had two songs downloaded through iTunes, and our ringtone sales reached three." Fowley added that as long as no one returns or exchanges the CD, the music industry would continue to be a vital and creative force in American culture.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Christine BOUTIN satanise le Rock L'affaire De villiers, Fillon Christine Boutin et l'Ump se mobilisent depuis quelque semaines et font des pressions pour faire interdire et annuler un festival de metal dans la région loire atlantique Vade Retro Satanas vade retro les fans de métal et les momes qui écoutent du hard rock vade retro hors de " nos terres catholiques « et bien pensantes ces horde de chevelu-es fans de decibels et de grosses guitares Les dirigeants de Kronembourg ont dû faire (...) - Infos globales / Culture/contre-cultures, Répression/contrôle social

Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile Publisher. You can find him on Twitter, and on the Whitepages Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.

While last year’s SXSW seemed to serve as the “coming out” party for location-based services (LBS), maybe this year’s conference signifies the migration of these platforms into mainstream culture. And perhaps the only real “new” concept to emerge this year is the idea that there is finally a real opportunity to make money via “location.”

Here are five things that companies should consider as they look to utilize location-based services (LBS) as part their mobile strategy.

1. Location Shouldn’t be the Only Goal

From finding the nearest ski slope on REI’s Ski and Snow Report to a nearby movie on Flixter, there are plenty of Top iPhone applications that have incorporated a “lead with the offer, not the capability” philosophy into their mobile product offering to provide a better service. Build the best service first, then add the bells and whistles.

With all the hoopla surrounding location, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that location’s real appeal to advertisers is the fact that with this functionality, you can reach the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume. Just because Twitter and Facebook offer location doesn’t make that valuable or new to advertisers. Location-targeting via IP address has been around a while. For the same reason radio is a great advertising channel for retailers, LBS advertising is also valuable: because it can reach the consumer near the point of sale.

2. The “Long Tail” for User Adoption

Foursquare has clearly emerged as the location darling. Consider the fact that after only one year, they’ve reached 500,000 active users (Foursquare recently tweeted they added 100,000 users in 10 days).

However, if you apply any city’s share of the total U.S. population, the results show some pretty low estimates of Foursquare users in individual localities. What emerges is a very “long tail” — a steep, narrow graph — of local user adoption. This shows why it is important to achieve scale if you hope to see return on investment in the location marketing space.

For example, using these rough estimates of a city’s proportional share of the U.S. population, if a local pet supply store wanted to target people in San Francisco, the estimated reach would be 1,310 Foursquare users. Even if you double this audience estimate, the number is fairly small for even a local marketer. We had to hit around 4 million downloads of the Whitepages iPhone app to achieve the minimum scale needed for advertiser geo-targeting. Today, 80% of our campaigns from major brands are geo-targeted.

Editor’s Note: It’s important to remember that these are just rough estimates. Because Foursquare was initially only available in a handful of major metro areas, the geographic distribution of users may not precisely follow the geographic distribution of the population.

3. Mobile Battery Life is Key

Battery life is the single biggest threat to location. With GPS on, the phone is asking the network where it is, and this chatter can drain battery life — anyone with an iPhone knows what I am referring to. Thus, phone manufacturers will play a critical role in the future of LBS. RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, faced this problem early on with the energy-tax of e-mail polling, and as a result, their devices now have some of the best battery life.

Foursquare has helped us move forward here as well. “Check-ins” help to address the issue as they offer efficient geo-triggers without having to keep battery-draining GPS features on at all times.

4. Location Will Be the Battleground of the Mobile OS

Looking forward, I predict the mobile platform wars will be fought with location and maps. This is an important feature that a platform can use as a point of differentiation for consumers and developers.

In anticipation of that battle, Apple purchased mapping company Placebase, and Google is starting to provide unique mapping features like turn-by-turn navigation on its Android devices. The only hope I see for Windows Mobile is if they do something completely revolutionary on the mobile location front. A development like this was alluded to at the recent TED conference with its augmented reality layering of geo-tagged Flickr photos and real-time video integration.

5. Location Pays

At WhitePages, we monetize our mobile services through a mix of premium, national display, and sponsored links for local business. Our effective CPM (revenue per thousand ad impressions) for sponsored local links is $30-$50 — double the effective CPM (eCPM) rate we see for premium display ad campaigns from national brands. The eCPM multiple of local targeted ads over ad network rates is a staggering 10x.

Location-based inventory will also become scarce as Apple recently announced that iPhone apps will not be permitted to access GPS capabilities for advertising alone. There now needs to be some consumer benefit and functionality in order to access a user’s location. Geo-targeted inventory on mobile will continue to be at a high premium with no excess supply or ad networks to drive it down.

Conclusion

It is my hope that by this time next year, SXSW –- the festival of “emerging” music and technology –- will have finally moved on from location. It’s clearly happening now, and if integrated wisely, location will be making companies too much money to be called the “cool kid on the block” any longer

More location-based resources from Mashable:

- 9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing
- 10 Foursquare Apps You Can Use Right Now
- 6 Foursquare Apps We’d Love to See
- 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
- Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
- Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010

Tags: android, business, foursquare, geo-tagging, gowalla, iphone, List, Lists, location based advertising, location-based, Longtail, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, small business