I had a wonderful discovery at LeWeb this year, which was the unique opportunity to chat with someone about one of my passions outside technology: holistic health and vitality.
The Artisan Nature founder (I called him the Juice Man) talked to me about his freshly squeezed juices, which was on offer to bloggers in the media/blogger lounge throughout the conference.
Since he still has family in Madagascar, he is able to tap into the vast number of pure essential oils and flower water from his home country as well as from Europe and other parts of the world. In his juice, he uses 33 essential oils, 20 of them coming from Madagascar specifically and they include oils like sage, tea, mint, lavender and others. Have a listen.
I had an opportunity to chat with Azeem Azhar at LeWeb last week and get the latest demo of PeerIndex, which is a useful tool that tracks and measures people’s social and reputation capital online. They look at social signals from social media platforms people are actively using online, the primary one being Twitter, with tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and others in line.
What’s interesting about their tool compared to others in the same category such as Klout for example, is their ability to drill down into specific areas of expertise. Focused on relevance, Azeem says, “it’s about understanding your personal brand and whether it’s developing in the right areas that matter to you. In other words, you could be increasing your score in one area, when your ‘real’ area of expertise is in something else.”
It’s a free tool today and since privacy matters to them, you can keep your PeerIndex profile private if you choose. Below is a short video clip of our exchange in the LeWeb Yahoo-sponsored blogger lounge.
Gary Vaynerchuck in his typical form was on the LeWeb stage in Paris last week talking about entrepreneurship to an audience of largely European start-ups, venture capitalists, media and bloggers. As always, he exuded passion and broke all the rules, asking Loic Le Meur to pull down the Twitter board during his talk since he wanted to focus on the "people who showed up" first, suggesting that the board was only a distraction from being present to the "hear and now."
I couldn't help but agree since while having a back channel is useful, I was distracted by the energy on stage with a trailing stream of comments to my left and right as well. He encouraged people to rethink how we view our customers…..he views customers and 'interested fans' as equals and says he tries to respond to everyone. When someone asked about balance, he was 'all for family/work/life balance, yet at the same time, suggested we have to be always be available to respond to the people who give us life. (my words, not his). Translation – customers give us life. Fans give us life. Without those supporters, our voice can easily be lost in the noise.
I've met Gary twice (it was in Paris in fact, a year ago at the Microsoft Biz Spark party — and once at a Tony Robbins event in Vegas) and heard him speak a number of times, and while he is always inspiring, the most interesting response to a question about how to respond to clients who want the social media ROI was this: What's the value of your mother?
While corny on the surface, here's the gist of where he was going with the comment. How do you truly value the ROI of great customer relationships? How do you value a brand who has focused all of their attention on providing great service to customers, their primary attention on giving back, i.e., Zappos? Rather than focus all of our attention on numbers (which investors and the board always want), if you do NOT value time and effort spent on engaging customers, listening to customers and responding to customers, he says, "you shouldn't "fucking be in business."
While so damn simple, here's the sad thing about how I felt about his response – it's the way I was molded and frankly, it's in my DNA, yet it's NOT in the DNA of the majority of companies I've worked with or observed over the years. And as for the clients who have been a huge success, they have either gotten that at the core OR they were simply on a road to a quick exit and didn't really care about the longevity of the business anyway.
Once again, thanks for your most authentic share Gary. Below is the video I shot from the front of the room and it's also posted on our YouTube channel.
Foursquare's Dennis Crowley talked to the massive LeWeb audience about Foursquare from its birth to where they are today. He says that many people think they're so much larger than they are, yet they pull off new feature updates and support with only forty employees.
Sadly, my Blackberry didn't seem to want to acknowledge that I was in Paris since every time I did a refresh, a system update and a reboot, Foursquare still had me listed in the Bay Area. I guess all that means in the short term is that I didn't become the mayor of some of the more quaint, boutique bistros and chocolate 'houses' in the less tourist areas of Paris. I am still the mayor of a cafe in Munich a year later so I guess they should get on the bandwagon and start doing promoting themselves to Foursquare users in Germany.
Oh yeah, and I challenged Dennis to a "text bake off" at a dinner – he on his trusty iPhone and me on my Blackberry and let's just say the "man" is FAST without a keyboard and he won, but I might add, only by one small word. I want a re-match :-). Perhaps at SXSW.
As always, I loved his energy and what they're trying to do. Location is hot and Foursquare is primed to take advantage of a very enthusiastic and passionate user-base, which is currently about 60% US-based and 40% international. Below is the video I shot from the front row.
Joe talked about the mission behind Causes, how and where it started and where it’s headed. Causes was founded on the belief that in a healthy society, anyone can participate in change by informing and inspiring others. They build tools for people to mobilize their friends for collective action, spread the word to friends of friends and acquaintances, and eventually launch movements that span local communities or even the globe. And for those active on Facebook know, Causes is popular, widely used and growing.
At this year’s LeWeb in Paris, they held a start-up competition where companies submitted their pitches to a panel of judges which included some of the top VCs and investors in France and Europe. August Capital’s David Hornik moderated the session.
None of the winners were from the states btw, and each one presented on-stage following the announcement after which the judges drilled them with tough questions. The winners included Super Marmite from FRANCE (food/cooking), Waze.com (traffic/location) from ISRAEL and Paper.li (publishing) from SWITZERLAND.
Their presentations are below in a two-part video I shot from the front row.
Among other fabulous photographers, I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from celebrity portraitist Brian Smith at the recent San Francisco World Photography Festival.
Based in Miami, he came to the event to share some of the things he has learned from photographing celebrities, CEOs and models over the past thirty years.
A few things I took away from his style, which is very different from my own, yet he makes it work so well, you can’t help but admire his work in the same way you’d admire a Salvador Dali but may not want to hang it on your wall.
There’s a fabulous shot that doesn’t look like much when you first look at it, but note the careful selection of white against white yet his shoes nearly match the floor; natural earth tone next to natural earth tone. And….it just works.
Whereas this one combines a natural look with a little glitz in the background, but glitz in a solid color making the whole thing feel unified and balanced.
A few other takeaways.
Use contrasts. If you’re shooting a boring subject – a traditional conservative CEO for example versus a Las Vegas singer, set him in a dramatic environment or change his / her clothing dramatically, i.e., outside the office and against a large gold pillar background or his example of putting Bill Gates in a black turtleneck.
OR combine the look of deep rich contrasting colors with contrasting images that don’t appear to go together — on the surface, such as what Brian did below. I LOVE THIS PHOTO btw.
You can also put celebs or other subjects you’re shooting in different clothing, different backdrops (tennis player in a suit on the top of a large building or an athlete in a graveyard showing their strength/that the rest of the industry should fear them because they’re so good). He made some really interesting points about getting creative with ‘how you depict’ something.
For example, there are several ways outside of traditional thinking you could visually represent wealth or academia or entrepreneurship or design or glitz or fashion or beauty or health. You get the idea.
Other tips on speed….he says, “you don’t always need to shoot 10 frames a second or more, you can do it one shot at a time with a strobe.”
Apparently he uses strobes frequently and on touching photos up in the post shooting process, he had this to say, “I like to touch people up so that they still look real, but perhaps just left a really fabulous spa treatment – in other words, it’s not so dramatic that someone wouldn’t look at the subject and say it’s an unrealistic representation of them.” I thought it was great advice.
The keep it simple message kept coming up, which frankly is a message that works for most things in life. He also suggested not skimping on production or background since the environment (next to lighting) could make or break your shot.
I found him inspiring and down-to-earth, not to mention an easy listen. What I loved about his “show-and-tell” approach was the human part of the shot, i.e., not just what light or lens he used for the shot, but what the environment was like, the situation and occasionally adding funny add-ons throughout. Below is some video that I shot during the session.
Check out his work over at www.briansmith.com, where you can see countless images, ranging from travel, lifestyle and celebrity portraits to fine art and athletes.
Below, Ford’s head of social media Scott Monty on the TWTRCON stage, says, “People don’t change, they want you to think and feel and be just like them.” Globally, trust is down year after year and less than 40% of people trust ads. “Who people trust are third party experts and people like themselves.”
Transparency and authenticity are key when you’re dealing with human emotions and rather than use robotic language that won’t have an impact on people’s emotions. He says, “we’re training people to talk like humans again.” He also emphasized the importance of relevance.
Says Google’s Avinash Kaushik at the recent TWTRCON Conference in San Francisco, don’t get caught up in sheer numbers – whether it’s followers or hits. He also says don’t spend a ton of the time on positive, negative versus neutral sentiment, but focus moreso on people’s emotions. He says with humor, “HITS stand for How Idiots Track Success.” In other words, HITS alone equate to a ‘glorious datapuke.’
What’s even more critical, he says, is to understand the behavior behind tweet purchases & data links.
