John Battelle interviewed Google’s Marissa Mayer at the one day SIGNAL event in Austin last week. Her answers were thoughtful and as always, her informal and breezy way of addressing a crowd was well received. Her most memorable ‘share’ had nothing to do with Google.
Having hosted the Obama dinner this past month when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area talking to technology visionaries and CEOs, she talked about what it was like to have the President in her home and things she learned about security (aka, oh yeah, there will be TONS of men in black suits standing outside my home which is across from an elementary school), and meal planning. Here’s the Business Insider overview on the dinner recap. It’s a great interview: have a listen.
Facebook’s Emily White talks about the use of social media and social platforms’ value in targeting smaller regions. She gave her talk on “hyper local” marketing and social at the SIGNAL event in Austin last week, which was held the day before SXSW kicked into gear.
At the SIGNAL event in Austin last week, Pepsico’s Head of Digital Shiv Singh gave a talk about the Pepsico Challenge and how they used social media to not just engage with new customers and fans, but how it lead to funding meaningful projects around the world. Shiv also wrote the book Social Media Marketing for Dummies. Have a listen below.
In this very short video clip (the last few minutes of his talk at SXSW this year), Gowalla’s Josh Williams talks about the importance of contribution. If we’re only creating apps and using game mechanics and location-based services (LBS) as a way to increase our social klout and play to our online egos, then the real value of these services will never be realized. The take away is: use these tools for the greater good and to make a difference in the world.
Being a passionate photographer myself and having lived and traveled to some of the pockets where JR shot hundreds of images for a ‘wish’ he had for the world, I couldn’t help but be a little more than intrigued by his project which just won the TED Prize last week in Long Beach, CA.
So, who’s JR? He is a photographer whose career began when he found a camera in the Paris subway. In his first major project, in 2001 and 2002, JR toured and photographed street art around Europe, tracking the people who communicate their messages to the world on walls. His first large-format postings began appearing on walls in Paris and Rome in 2003. His first book, Carnet de rue par JR, about street artists, appeared in 2005.
In 2006, he launched “Portrait of a Generation,” huge-format portraits of suburban “thugs” from Paris’ notorious banlieues, posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in his photos.
His wish for the world? I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.”
Here’s the idea: to participate.create a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone will be challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities.
People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually. Visit www.insideoutproject.net to participate.
Below is an exhibit of some of his work held at a gallery in Long Beach, the weekend after the TED Conference finished.
In the gallery, which was free to all attendees, you could have your photo taken and within minutes, you were given a larger than yourself piece of paper with your mug shot, replicating what he has been doing in developing countries. It’s symbollic of his project and the idea is to plaster your image somewhere to expand his idea and he hopes, to change the world.
The TED Prize is designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources and is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.”
Mashable’s Jenn Van Grove, IDG’s Pat Kenealy, The Next Web’s Hermione Way and ReadWriteWeb’s Mike Melanson do it up with karaoke at late night DEMO in Palm Springs.
And while we’re at it, VentureBeat’s Matthew Lynley, Owen Thomas, Anthony Ha and Matt Marshall can also sing.
Below, Anthony Ha sings while Owen Thomas dances in the background.
Below, I chat with Trendspottr’s founder about their new application, which is a curation tool that brings what’s relevant, compelling and popular around a particular topic at any given time. They are currently in private beta but the goal is for the free tool to consumers to be available by the end of the month.
Nuvyyo’s CEO Grant Hall and VP of Marketing Bob McCallum on the DEMO Spring stage showing off JetStreamHD, announced yesterday. Today, they’re starting to take orders for their new product which streams all of your digital media stored anywhere on a home computer network to the iPad….other mobile devices to be supported soon.
