A few highlights from today’s journey among the best new ideas that intersected my journey around Austin.
Session with Vice-President Al Gore and Sean Parker (think Napster, Causes on Facebook, or the character played by Justin Timberlake in the film The Social Network). (#goreparker)
- Being “liked” by somebody online is not the same level of engagement as connecting with someone offline who is willing to action for your cause.
- There are 800,000 meaningful political offices held in the United States. If we want to alter the current discourse we need to realize the reach is far deeper than Washington, DC.
- Current TV has been the leader in running user generated advertisements
- The internet has been very successful as taking money and market share from traditional businesses
- 30% of the broadband network activity during high usage periods is directed towards services such as Netflix. This is an example of the mismatch between evolving and traditional media.
Dean Kamen (think Segway) spoke about Invention and Innovation (#SXdkamen)
- Be hands on with innovation. We do not lecture about football for nine months and then go on the field to play. We need to be hands on and project based with education.
- Dean co-founded FIRST which aims to make science and math competitions bigger than the Super Bowl. This years competition has 22,000 teams.
- The sustainability of humans is a race between technological advancement and catastrophe
- If we could provide clean water to the 1.6 billion humans who currently have none we would solve 50% of the world wide treatable diseases.
- Dean has partnered with Coca-Cola to instal his clean water machines in places with no clean water. Coke wants to be the stewards of clean water and they have the most advance world wide distribution system.
- In a free society you get what you celebrate. Celebrate what you want.
Just a few excellent points among many yesterday.
What-if-concepts 