Friday, December 09, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
This just emphasizes the need for DOOH to go online. From DailyDOOH » Focus Media Group Accused Of Fraud
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
‘Focus Media Sinks in Muddy Waters’ writes the Wall Street Journal, ‘Focus Media Shares Crater; Analyst Alleges Fraud‘ writes Forbes (there are many more) and there have even been regular bulletins on CNBC.
There seem to be three main allegations: -
A “significant overstatement” of the number of screens in its LCD network ”Olympus-style acquisition overpayments” Focus Media insiders selling at least USD 1.7 billion worth of stock since its 2005 IPO On Monday at one point, shares in Focus Media Holding Limited (Nasdaq: FMCN) fell well over 60% in trading.
I know it is easy to be wise after the event but there is a reason why the Greater Fool Theory has never been proven wrong.
With keywords like ‘China’ and buzzwords ‘digital’, ‘advertising’ there were many who (literally) bought in.
However many screens they are (finally) proven to have or have not, it will be interesting to see how they count them all as the whole network is run by Sneakernet.
If we remember correctly their CFO was a speaker (via the web, not in person) at one of the Digital Signage Investor Conferences many years back (at least 4 years) and we don’t remember him coming across particularly well.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2011 at 19:37 @859 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
This is inspiring. From SFGate via JPJ: This 28-Year-Old Is Making Sure Credit Cards Won't Exist In The Next Few Years
advertisement | your ad hereThis 28-Year-Old Is Making Sure Credit Cards Won't Exist In The Next Few Years
Alyson Shontell, provided by
Thursday, November 10, 2011
There's a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa that most people have never heard of.
Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne, and it's an innovative new way of thinking about online payments that sidesteps credit cards completely.
Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month, or about $350 million per year.
We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.
I'm told you're pissing off credit card companies. How are you doing that?
Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal. We're building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work. The current model needs to be blown up.
Dwolla started out of my old company. I owned a speaker manufacturing company and we sold everything directly through a website. I got really obsessed with interchange fees and how not to pay them. Every time a merchant gets paid with a credit card, they have to give up a percentage. In my case, I was losing $55,000 a year to credit card companies. I felt like they were stealing from me -- I was getting paid and somebody was taking money out of my pocket.
So I thought, how do I get paid through a website without paying credit card fees? We pitched a bank, and amazingly enough they said, "We'll give it a shot."
That was three years ago, so we've been working on the project for a really long time. In December of last year we figured out how to legally do what we do.
How many transactions are you doing?
The average transaction volume for Dwolla is right around $500 dollars. We move between $30 and $50 million per month
What's your story?
I'm 28. I started my first company, Elemental Design, when I was 18. I dropped out of University of Iowa and built that.
I started college because I thought that's where I was supposed to go. I applied to one college, I got in, went, and realized it wasn't for me. I had customers so I stopped going to class.
We grew that company from a $1200 investment to over a million in revenue in 4 years with 3 or 4 people without outside investment. We were doing a million and a half a year and the company was running itself; I wanted to work on another project.
You don't have a finance background and yet you built Dwolla?
It's been helpful in some strange ways. I think the first financial institution we went in to only listened to me for entertainment. They let me get in and pitch the full executive team at the bank.
I don't look like a banker, they knew I didn't have a banking background. They actually agreed to work with Dwolla after two hours of arguing with me and me scribbling on a whiteboard about how the whole thing could work.
Had I been more typical, maybe they wouldn't have listened to me. In that respect, I think that probably not knowing how the mechanics work is good -- we just know the way we want them to work.
What did you do for the first two years when it wasn't technically legal?
For the first two years we built out the platform. We did a sh*tload of testing and did it small scale because legally we couldn't do it nationwide. We spent two years inside of Iowa fine-tuning Dwolla with the financial institutions, building out some of the initial models, and trying to figure out how to legally do what we do.
How'd you find a legal loophole?
Moving money is an exceptionally regulated business. We're in Iowa, which is sort of conservative -- I don't know if that helped us or hurt us, but long term I think it helped us. We figured to do this legally, we had two options: We could take in a tremendous amount of money and go out and get licenses, which is how most people do it. But we didn't have access to that kind of capital here. The other option was to bring in really strategic investors, which is what we did. One is a financial institution, one is a financial services company.
Our investors do credit and debit processing for banks. So when you get a credit card from your bank, it's being issued by companies like this. Our investors are also distributing our product to financial institutions. So we've been building a network, and we can do it legally because of who our investors are.
We launched in December of last year and started moving $50,000 a week. Now we're hovering around $1 million a day now. We hit that milestone in June or July. Now we've quieted things down. We had to tap the breaks because the way you handle money needs to be managed correctly. We have some new partners on board and we're going to hit it hard in December again. We've got some stuff coming out in December that we think should be really big.
How does Dwolla work and how is it different than PayPal?
With Dwolla, payments are made directly from your bank account. No credit or debit cards are allowed. And because they don't exist in the system, we don't have to bring the fees into the system.
You can spend any amount of money and when you do that, the person on the other end doesn't have to pay 1, 2, 3 or 4%. They only pay $0.25 a transaction, which is especially helpful when it's $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000 transactions. Obviously PayPal becomes very cost prohibitive with those larger transactions.
The biggest difference between ideas like this and a PayPal -- and PayPal is a phenomenal idea, Square is too -- is that those are built on top of networks like Visa and Mastercard. We're building our own.
Can users only send money to Dwolla members?
No, you can send money to anyone. Only the person sending it has to have a Dwolla account to initiate the transaction. The person receiving it will have to sign up for an account, but we've been surprised at the conversion there. It's worked relatively well. We leverage social networks really heavily as contact lists, which is one thing we do really different. You can send money with an email address or with a phone number, but the most popular way to do it is to connect to Facebook and type in a friends name.
We think, in the long term, sending money should be as easy and effortless as finding a friend on Facebook. That's really a behavior we try to mimic when it comes to peer to peer payments. When someone does not have a Dwolla account, they get a wall post that says, "You've got money." If a friend sent that to you and it was their name and their face, you would have a different emotional connection to that than an arbitrary email from hellokitten32@aol.com. It's a totally different interaction and one that's been really helpful for us in converting users into the system.
What kind of purchases and money transfers are Dwolla being used for?
We do pretty well in B2B; 11% of our business is person to person, and the large majority is business to business, consumer to business, and business to consumer. The platform was originally built for taking in payments through websites, and we have APIs that allow you to do that. We haven't experienced the scale on those quite yet.
Where we've seen a ton of transactions right now is with people paying monthly rent. If I'm a landlord and I want to collect it, taking a credit card payment means missing out on 3% of a $1800 charge. Dwolla is $0.25 cents.
The average Dwolla transaction is right around $500. PayPal takes 2.9% plus $.30 a transaction.
Why hasn't anyone side stepped the credit card companies before?
I think a lot of it is timing and luck. And a little bit of getting your foot in the door. One of our investors is a $1.8 billion financial institution. That's atypical anywhere, let alone in Iowa. Having them on board allowed us to get into a lot of rooms.
We serve everyone from the landlord taking in one payment to the individual buying a coffee with their cellphone, to billion-dollar corporations. Because we're so atypical and look at mobile payments differently, we got in the room with the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury who allowed us to have a conversation, not only from a corporate standpoint, but from a government monetary distribution standpoint.
All banks are connected by one APH system. Credit card companies utilize that same system to pay off your credit card charges. Banks internally set along that same system to move money in their own banks. This system in it's own right is riddled with flaws -- tons of fraud issues and waste and delays. If you've ever had a payment take a few days to clear, its because they're waiting on that APH system.
We want to fix that system between the banks, take out the delays and make it instant. If we can create this ubiquitous cash layer of distribution between consumers and merchants and developers and financial institutions, that actually fixes the problem.
No one has built a payment network in 30 years -- since credit cards. Everybody has concentrated on how we build a portal for credit cards, from digital wallets to Square.
We don't believe in credit cards. We believe in authorization and in lower cost transfers. Our generation actually understands that when you buy sh*t, it comes out of your bank account and you have to pay for that.
Since you're hooked up to bank accounts, users don't have to have money in a Dwolla account to make a transfer?
You can hold money inside of Dwolla but you don't have to. We're finding a lot of consumers want to hold it there. There is actually a positive average balance inside of Dwolla for each consumer. We also have businesses that use Dwolla to do payroll, so they'll keep a balance in there to cover the cost.
You could have an account of $0 in Dwolla and their would be no fee?
The only fee would be if someone paid you. We take a quarter. We really want that quarter. It's all we want!
How do Dwolla's mobile payments work?
We built out mobile facing system; your mobile phone is just a different view of a website, so a mobile payment is just an authorization on your cell phone.
We take the website, plop it into the cell phone, start adding proximity solutions so you can to see what Dwolla merchants are close to you, and then make it easy to pay once you go into a store that accepts our system. Dwolla uses the GPS feature and allows you to make a payment in real-time.
So you're saying if a Starbucks accepts Dwolla I'll be able to see that on a Google Map, go there and charge the coffee to my phone?
Yes, you'll just walk into the store and pay. It's like checking in on Foursquare, you're just paying instead of checking in.
We started in one coffee shop and now we're working with 400 or 500 merchants. Part of us scaling out is we have to pick inflection points and then do some hiring to actively pursue those communities and integrate with them. We'll be beginning that in December.
Do banks have to pay to be integrated with Dwolla?
No, we just give them the service and then your bank account comes with Dwolla. There are 16 banks across the country that come with Dwolla. We're talking to some huge financial institutions about doing the same thing.
Banks are going to have trouble being relevant in mobile. The fundamental issue with mobile payments is: how do you get to your cash regardless of where you bank? No one has cracked that nut. I truly feel like we've not only cracked that nut but we're already selling it into financial institutions.
You don't have to pay the banks anything to log in and access accounts?
Nope. We built a web service that connect with the financial institutions and we do not have to pay them to work with them. We're a service provider to them and we work at the same time to make their customers happy.
Who are your investors?
We've raised $1.3 million.
You ever hear of John Deere Tractor? They have a bank, Verdian Credit Union, but essentially it's John Deere's bank, Verthian Credit Union. Verthian is one of our primary investors. The other investor is a company called The Members Booth which provides credit, debit, and security solutions to banks and credit unions.
How big is the Dwolla team?
We're about 12 people -- that's a beast of a startup in Iowa. We were smaller last December, about 2 or 3 people, so we've had pretty good growth. Most everyone is in Des Moines.
We've experienced strong early stage validation and have generated revenue that says "Hey, this thing can work well." We've got this little fire and now we're trying to figure out how to pour a sh*tload of gas on it, and really make this scale out. The beginning of that is in December and right now we're trying to ensure we have the right partners to really kick that thing off really hard.
What happens in December?
Oh, it's going to be good.
What is it?
We've got this product coming out in December that solves a whole bunch of really big problems inside of the ACH system, which all banks are connected to, and it does it in a way that's never been done before.
Are you raising capital?
We have a lot of really positive conversations going on at the moment and we're trying to figure out who the right partner to work with is. We're fortunate that our current investors are very supportive of what we're doing.
How are you doing all this from Iowa? It seems like this company should be on Wall Street.
Maybe. Right now Des Moines is the right place for us to be. In the future there's going to have to be a lot of business development outside of Des Moines and there are some things we won't be able to do from here.
If we can convince people in Iowa, who are more conservative by nature, to use Dwolla then my personal feeling is we've really got something there. Had we been outside of Iowa, maybe we would have tried to scale things up too quickly and maybe it would have blown up in our faces. Maybe not.
In my own naive way, I would never build a company anywhere but Iowa so maybe I just don't know any better. My personal feeling is, if you want to build it, where you are is just an excuse. Figure out ahat the area has to offer you and then leverage that. Hustle your ass off and make it work.
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See Also:
- SHOCKING PENN STATE RUMOR: Jerry Sandusky 'Pimped Out Young Boys To Rich Donors'
- PERRY DEBATE DISASTER: This Is The Moment That Officially Killed His Campaign - For Good
- MAYHEM AT PENN STATE: Rioting Students Flip Over News Van, Take To Streets By The Thousands
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/10/businessinsiderthis-28-year-old-is-.DTL
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A must share in this age, from my PR mentor: How a man should relate to a strong woman - by Ed Tamayo | Inquirer
How a man should relate to a strong woman
By: Ed Tamayo
Philippine Daily Inquirer1:19 am | Sunday, October 16th, 2011 Posted by ryanl-->2 share
All my life I’ve dealt with strong women, starting with my late Nanay, who imposed her will over my bad-boy inclinations, and now with my 2-year-old grandniece Moshi, a mischievous beauty who can command me to play “no pass” anytime.
I write as a lifelong student of women (although I can’t vouch for the quality of my studies on the subject). And I will always be a student who continues to learn, never an expert, since there is too much to learn.
But I must say that a strong woman is one with a mind of her own, gifted with smarts and common sense. Otherwise, she would simply be stubborn and obstinate, a shrew, a termagant.
A strong woman sees life for what it is, and will deal with it on the terms she has chosen. She respects her own person and understands her worth, and looks out for herself and the people she cares about.
Oh yes, she tends to be successful, because she sets goals and works to achieve them. A strong woman will control her desires and feelings, especially if she knows that there’s a dead end ahead.
They have different personalities, strong women, from outspoken and in-your-face to quiet but steely of resolve, to permutations in between. One characteristic that I’ve noticed strong women share is the understanding that knowledge and wisdom are important tools. So they take education seriously, because it represents independence, the ability to earn their own keep, and it opens up different options in their lives.
So how does today’s man relate meaningfully with strong women? It’s a question worth asking, because more and more, the worldwide trend toward the empowerment of women is enabling them to recognize and develop their potentials, making them stronger. Gender norms, parameters and roles are ever evolving.
No rocket science
There’s no rocket science behind it, but first, a man has to understand himself, who and what he is, and be comfortable in his own skin. He needs to define his masculinity and feel secure within his own self, before he can deal with the nature of a woman.
A man insecure about himself can view a woman as a threat and competitor, and cut her down in an attempt to deal with his internal issues. And that’s exactly what a strong woman has no time for. Not uncommonly, men, when they realize the strength of a woman, can feel intimidated, or shy away, or probe her for weaknesses in order to inflict hurt on her.
It’s no wonder that strong women aren’t too trusting, because they know only too well about human frailty and betrayal. So they tend to listen to words with a grain of salt. Men need to earn their respect and trust with their actions. And in every woman, as in every man, lies the wish to be loved truly.
In my inexpert opinion, but one evolved through trial and error, good old-fashioned respect is indispensable in a positive relationship with a woman, whether personal or professional, romantic or platonic, whatever it may be.
As you would wish to be respected, then should you extend respect. Especially to a strong woman. Why? Well, because she is strong, so you don’t want to face the consequences. That, of course, is tongue-in-cheek.
I’ve never believed that men are stronger than women or vice versa, because each gender is made and wired differently. There is just no apples-to-apples comparison. That’s why we partner with and support each other. It’s the best arrangement. And if a woman is strong, why then, celebrate and rejoice in her strength.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that true beauty can never be external. Thus, every woman is beautiful, especially if she is a strong woman. Like my grandniece Moshi, who rocks and rules.
Complete stories on our Digital Edition newsstand for tablets, netbooks and mobile phones. Subscribe and get several chances to win tickets to the Black Eyed Peas concert in Manila as well as tickets to Stomp. Promo details. About to step out? Get breaking alerts on your mobile.phone. Text ON INQ BREAKING to 4467, for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers in the Philippines.
Tags: Relationships , Strong woman
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
(This applies to marketing too.) From Ere.net: Recruiting’s Blunder of Epic Proportions: Ignoring Mobile
Recruiting’s Blunder of Epic Proportions: Ignoring Mobile
by Dr. John Sullivan Oct 10, 2011, 5:51 am ET
by Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett
It’s 5:30 a.m., and Joe McHenry, a 36-year-old international tax manager who works in New York City, wakes up, checks his e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter activity from his smartphone all before getting out of bed. By 6:45 a.m. he’s dressed and walking to the train station for his 40-minute commute into the city. From the moment he grabs a seat to the moment he steps off the train, his eyes are glued to the four-inch screen of his personal onramp to his digital life and the information superhighway. Throughout the day, he’ll spend another 4.25 hours engaging with the world through it.
Now consider this: you’re trying to recruit Joe McHenry. He has blown off your e-mails, your voicemails, and even your InMails. This morning, however, his friend who used to work for your firm retweeted a link to the job you’re recruiting for, and it appeared on Joe’s Facebook wall. While on the train, Joe’s curiosity got the best of him and he clicked the link. The browser on his smartphone opened and started to load a page from your career site. He waited and waited, but the page just wasn’t loading. He figured, “I’ll try the parent domain instead.” He typed in yourcompany.com and up came your company’s WAP site, nicely formatted and clean. He looked for the link to jobs, but couldn’t find it. Frustrated, he abandoned his curiosity and went back to catching up with his friends on Facebook.
Sound like a poor experience? Only eight of the Fortune 100 have a career site that detects mobile browsers, and sadly, few of them optimize content for mobile visitors. Among those companies that have invested in building a mobile website, jobs content is more often than not missing. An infant-sized handful have done something for the mobile audience. They have built a careers app users can install on their phone or built out a mobile careers site. You can check out the progressive few: Raytheon, Starbucks, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Hyatt, and AT&T.
The New Normal
Joe McHenry’s lifestyle is the new normal.
As of September, 40% of U.S. cell phone users carried a smartphone, and predictions show that by year’s end a majority of thepopulation will have one. Around the world, smartphones are quickly becoming the primary means of engaging via the Internet, with the PC being downgraded to second place. Factor in the lack of IT controls on personal devices and you can see why everything that is personal online will soon be done via mobile. Whether or not your firm blocks Facebook doesn’t matter when you carry Facebook in your pocket. Today, a majority of the traffic to Facebook already comes from mobile devices. According to Richard Cho, Facebook recruiting manager, mobile users are two times more engaged than non-mobile users.
A new Global Mobile Workforce Report from iPass based on input from 3,100 global workers indicated that 91% of those with mobile access to the Internet check in with their digital lives during the unoccupied moments of the day. “Not only were they checking their email first thing in the morning, 38% worked before their commute, 25% during their commute, and 22% worked again on the way home — each and every day. And they didn’t stop when they got home either. For many, work is a never-ending cycle; 37% work each evening — 33% work again when they arrived home, 26% after dinner, and 19% said they work again after they put their children to bed at night.”
A Blunder of Epic Proportions
Think of it. Precisely during the time periods when individuals are the most likely to be free, they don’t have access to mobile-friendly career information. If they find out about an opening from a friend on a social network, in most cases the link provided will bring them back to your ATS, which does nothing to support the mobile user. If they want to watch videos or read blogs, their browser will encounter technical challenge after technical challenge. If they are on an iPhone or Android, they may see your site, but they will be pinching, flicking, scrolling, and getting irritated the entire time. It’s important to realize that mobile-capable candidates aren’t stupid; not providing mobile access is an employer-brand bruiser for most companies, but if you are a tech firm, it’s an employer-brand killer.
“HR’s dirty little secret – you can’t get there from here!”
How Bad Is Your Site?
Among the Fortune 100 mentioned earlier, only one allows you to actually apply from a mobile device. That one is Raytheon. Among tech companies, some of the worst performers include Microsoft, Apple, and RIM, all of whom make mobile operating systems and browsers!
Using the mobiReady testing tool that tests the suitability of site design for mobile devices, you can see just how poorly the recruiting professions effort has been to court the mobile audience. The tool performs numerous tests, but assigns a score of one (horrible) to five (excellent) based on the total experience. Among the Fortune 100 the highest score for the primary career site was achieved by McKesson (AT&T’s site did not redirect the tool to its mobile website or it would have received a 5.0.)
Among the top ten Fortune firms, the scores looked like this (click to enlarge):
Why You Must Embrace Mobile NOW
The dominance of the mobile device has been a trend barreling toward us with considerable speed for some time. I first wrote about it just over three years ago when I proclaimed the mobile phone “The Most Effective Recruiting Communications Platform.” The recruiting profession has had more than ample time to prepare, but the stat’ prove few took action. Some of the reasons you can’t wait any longer to embrace mobile include:
- Mobile communications receive response rates unheard of for other communication channels. Well-designed SMS campaigns can achieve 100%-plus response rates!
- Smartphones provide ubiquitous access to digital communication/engagement tools. Global research by mobile advertisers found that 67% of smartphone users are never more than three feet from their device and NEVER turn it off!
- When people get bored or need a distraction, it’s what they turn to!
- The smartphone does what no other device on your desk can do: it unifies all communications, including voice calls, video calls, text messages, recorded videos, pod asts, social media messaging, email, instant chat/messenger, and Internet content. This range of message options allows you to cater to your prospects’ lifestyle versus forcing them to engage in your administration-centric process.
- The current generation is so hooked on them that messages not accessible from a mobile device may never be seen.
- If you’re targeting innovators and first adopters (both of which prefer Android), and the technology savvy, you have no choice.
- If you’re recruiting for a temporary or contract job, the rapid response rate of mobile makes the mobile platform the ideal choice.
- Personal phones are not subject to idiotic IT policies. The employees of your competitors can engage with while on the job without fear of being snooped on!
- Referral conversations happen in the field. It’s only logical the process should start there!
- As QR codes (quick response) become commonplace, the mobile phone will become critical in driving people to your information.
- If you are successfully messaging or posting jobs on Twitter, you are already aware that your audience is hooked on the mobile platform.
- Nothing shows the candidate quicker that your firm isn’t an innovator or a technology leader than ignoring the mobile phone platform.
- Google has already started to improve the ranking of sites that support mobile in search results over those that do not. Other engines will follow.
- The application capabilities afforded by the smartphone enable a perverse world of opportunity to make the recruiting process personal, local, engagement-centric, media rich, real-time, etc.
A Grander Opportunity
While the vast majority of recruiting professionals are primarily concerned with closing requisitions as quickly as possible, there are a significant portion who also consider the impact of their efforts on the greater productivity of the workforce. If you embrace mobile for no other reason, do it for this one: workers capable of work-shifting — i.e. working while mobile — are more productive, so stuffing your pipeline with candidates who have proven their mobile adeptness will positively impact your firm’s long-term productivity. Don’t take our word for it. Read the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report and learn that among mobile workers:
- 75 percent worked more hours because of the increased flexibility in when and where they could work
- 55 percent worked at least 10 or more hours each week
- 64 percent felt they were better able to balance their workload with personal commitments
- 54 percent felt their productivity was substantially improved
Final Thoughts
Kat Drum was working as the global employment brand manager at Starbucks (she is now with RIM) when it launched its first mobile e-commerce application which had a tab for Jobs at Starbucks included. While presenting at mRecruitingCamp in September, she indicated that “Starbucks produced hires within a few weeks of launching the app.” While PepsiCo’s efforts are just a few months old, Chris Hoyt, who leads talent Engagement & marketing, presented evidence of mobile’s value at the same conference, juxtaposing PepsiCo’s mobile efforts against more traditional sourcing channels. Hoyt elaborated, saying that the early evidence justifies the initial investment and that mobile will be a considerable part of PepsiCo’s strategy for sometime.
While a few leading-edge firms (check out Verizon, Fidelity, HCA, and the U.S. Army in addition to those already referenced) have tried the mobile platform, most recruiting leaders have delayed the decision to “go mobile.” The lack of action can be attributed to ignorance about what going mobile would require, lack of funding and lack of desire to find it, general apathy, and lack of support from the ATS community. But the time to realize the cost of not going mobile far exceeds the cost of doing so is upon us. The mobile workforce is the future, and the future is what most firms try to dominate!
tags: mobileSubscribe to the ERE Daily for all the latest recruiting news.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to offer specific legal advice. You should consult your legal counsel regarding any threatened or pending litigation.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address (Stanford, 2005)
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Outdoor & Mobile are 2 Siblings that Should Work Well Together, Right? Here's Brand Republic's Analysis.
Outdoor and mobile: a match made in heaven
Whisper it quietly, but 2012 could actually be the year of the mobile for media. Five years ago, and perhaps even earlier, high-profile figures in the industry were proclaiming the year of the mobile.
However, it would seem that the out-of-home (OOH) media sector can wait no longer and next year really is going to be the time of mobile, as it begins to provide a number of profitable solutions for agencies and clients.
As the industry is aware, the key to unlocking the potential of mobile is the growth of the smartphone, and a recent report from Ofcom suggested this penetration is taking place at a rapid pace. The report revealed that more than a quarter of all adults (27%) in the UK now own a smartphone, while 28% use their mobiles to access the internet.
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These statistics are backed up by agency Kinetic, whose own research reveals that 50% of consumers would download promotions from posters to their mobile phones, while 75% expect to carry a smartphone or tablet when they leave their homes.
Coupled with the increasingly hectic lifestyles of today’s consumers, this suddenly makes the prospect of accessing content on the move and out of the home an attractive proposition for brands.
Earlier this year, WPP chairman Sir Martin Sorrell said at the Mobile World Congress exhibition that location-based was the holy grail of marketing, and it can be argued that the OOH sector is the original location-based advertising medium.
Rob Atkinson, Clear Channel chief operating officer, says: "Out of home is complemented by mobile technology, which interacts with our digital and traditional formats while people are out and about."
"We have to remember that mobile and outdoor is a marriage made in heaven."
Mike Hemmings, CBS Outdoor's head of marketing, agrees: "Advertisers can add that extra layer of content that provides the consumer with something there and then on the move, whether it is a discount or just a branded game to bide the time while waiting on a train platform."
Taking this further, Atkinson says: "Outdoor media is arguably the only form of advertising that actually entertains the youth market, rather than interrupting their entertainment."
With regards to achieving this, there is a general consensus throughout the outdoor sector that the content can be delivered to the consumer best via four main pieces of technology.
"Technology will not only revalue OOH, but will forge a far closer relationship with other media, mobile marketing and internet-based campaigns, which will open up new revenue streams," adds Atkinson.
The first, which was launched to a huge fanfare just over two years ago, are QR codes. Although they are big in Japan, QR codes – which are read via a mobile camera and allow the consumer to do something like click through to a particular website, or receive a product discount – have not quite taken off to the levels predicted in the UK.
This could be explained by the fact that QR codes lack that immediate aesthetic level of creativity and perhaps give off an unexciting aura, while most smartphones don’t come with the technology to read QR as standard, and consumers are left to download the right software.
However, one piece of technology that is really exciting the outdoor sector is Near Field Communication (NFC). It works in much the same way as an Oyster card, allowing consumers with an NFC-enabled smartphone to make instant purchases, or to download video content.
Mike Baker, Outdoor Media Centre CEO, says: "The NFC technology is certainly the way forward, as it offers so much flexibility. Up until now, outdoor has only just scraped what is possible with mobile, through limited content like games and ringtones. This new technology will allow genuine interactivity and see media owners build more and more of this type of kit into their offerings, which I believe will not be that expensive and instead, create a powerful marriage between mobile and outdoor."
Recent examples of outdoor using NFC was seen with the launch of the latest 'X-Men' movie. Consumers were able to scan the promotional poster for the film in bus stops and receive preview trailers of the movie.
Other innovations include augmented reality, otherwise known as visual recognition, which allows users to point their phone cameras at a poster and, in return, information is decoded and downloaded to the handset.
David McEvoy, JCDecaux marketing director, reveals: "This technology allows clients to bring posters to life, whether it is playing a movie over the top of it, or running an interactive competition. It essentially allows consumers to connect on the go."
Agreeing with this, Hemmings adds: "This functionality can also be enhanced with the phone's inbuilt GPRS, which allows even more location-specific content of layers to be displayed on the users' handsets."
Making these options even more attractive for clients and media agencies to employ is the increase in the level of Wi-Fi that is available out of the home. Sky’s recent purchase of Cloud will enable consumers to download not only more content, but at a pace akin to their own home broadband.
Aligned to this is the fact that the cost for clients and agencies looking to take advantage of outdoor and mobile does not necessarily have to be high.
Hemmings says: "Investment can be minimal. A simple QR code directing users to a Facebook promotional page can be produced and included on artwork for free."
However, this is markedly different when compared to the cost of augmented reality, which can be anything from £2,000 and seriously impact on media budgets. But on the flipside, the penetration of smartphones with nearly 60% of the UK population owning one, means the outdoor market is becoming a more valuable advertising hub.
McAvoy says: "Outdoor and mobile is still an emerging market, but the tipping point is about to happen and this will result in a lot of trial and testing to see what works best for the consumer in this market.
"The balance between in-home and out of home should shift over the medium term and certain environments such as railway stations and malls will play an important role in this."
Crucially what outdoor and mobile means for brands is that one of the oldest mediums is driving one of the newest.
Hemmings adds: "Enabling the consumer to interact with a poster using mobile technology means that you are opening up a world of possibilities to your brand, encouraging a dialogue between brand and consumer."
What this means is that the mobile and outdoor is being seen as a way to migrate consumers from that initial poster engagement and tracking its ability to drive them to purchase goods, watch videos, or visit specific websites.
According to Atkinson: "The next level for outdoor will be to turn this interaction into a transaction and, as mobiles become payment devices, the ability to buy off a poster in a bus shelter or shopping mall is going to be transformative."
The key for the outdoor industry is not just that it embraces this technology to provide creative commercial solutions for clients, but that it also has the stimulus and owns all the keys to ensuring it produces the right results.
However, possibly the biggest challenge is getting the consumers to understand how the technology works and what benefits it will provide.
Nigel Clarkson, sales and marketing director at Primesight, says: "Looking at the big picture for outdoor and mobile, the technology will only kick off if it provides something cheaper or easier for the consumer.
"At the moment, we don’t have clients crying out for billboards with augmented reality. They are a great PR stunt and people like them, but at the moment, they are being used for one thing."
However, Clarkson admits that by its very definition, outdoor is the perfect medium for mobile.
This is backed up by some research carried out by Primesight and Hitwise, which proves that online searches on mobile significantly increase when outdoor campaigns are on.
Clarkson adds: "Once we learn the benefits for the clients and the prices come down, we will start to see more of the technology used. For instance, I don’t think any clients can afford to run an augmented reality campaign nationally at the present moment."
Ultimately, the technology is there and the outdoor industry is poised ready to take full advantage of mobile, which will provide clients with a variety of exciting solutions to interact with their consumers. But until that tipping point is fully realised, the cart will continue to lead the horse.
This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk
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An FB invasion w various tribes trying to ward it off? Infographic: Asia-Pacific Social Media Statistics | Digital Buzz Blog
Internet usage is sky-rocketing throughout the Asia-Pacific region, obviously making the growth of social media the fastest in the world, as you’ll see, it’s not all about Facebook, but it still leads the way across the region, at least for now. This is a nice collective Infographic from Burson-Marsteller.
The social media statistics cover the most popular social networks in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam at a top level, but also lists a few basic internet statistics per country, like the total number of people connected to the internet and the top 5 visited websites…
Make sure you save this post for later, I’m sure you’ll need to reference these stats at some stage in the future! (Thanks Alex/Carly)
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