Oh Canada! - MIPCOM’s Country of Honour
MIPCOM, the flagship event for the entertainment industry, is shortly descending upon the Croisette. This year’s country of honour: Canada. As part of this tribute, Quebecor Inc.’s Pierre Karl Péladeau & Bell Canada’s Wade Oosterman will deliver two keynote addresses. Canadian master classes, business matchmaking events and screenings will be held throughout the entire event. Eagerly-awaited is the “Fresh TV from Canada” presentation of the hottest and most innovative content from Canada, hosted by The WIT’s CEO, Virginia Mouseler.
MIPCOM’s Media Mastermind sessions will see heavyweight producers Harvey Weinstein and Mark Burnett take to the stage, alongside Hulu’s Jason Killar and YouTube’s Global Head of Content Partnerships Robert Kyncl.
Harvey Weinstein’s keynote speech comes on the heels of the launch of The Weinstein Company’s (TWC) International Television Sales Division and we can expect Weinstein to announce the company’s new slate of TV shows for 2013.
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We will continue our series Media Masterminds from mipcom.
D! - Dare To ASK: Media MasterMinds
“ What’s important when you graduate today is not what you know, but your capacity to think. Your knowledge-base is sort of a milk carton. It will get sour really soon if you don’t constantly renew it
We meet Don Tapscott, the author of best-sellers like ‘Grown Up Digital’, ‘Wikinomics’, ‘The Paradigm Shift’ and the most recent ‘Macrowikinomics’.
We talk about why his teacher thought he’d never graduate from high school, why he loves Airbnb and why we should learn from Einstein, who was once famously quoted “I only remember things that I can’t look up.”
Don is currently leading the definitive investigation into Global Solution Networks, examining the rise of new multi-stakeholder models for global cooperation, problem solving and governance.
More on Don Tapscott: http://dontapscott.com/
Follow Don on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtapscott
“ Essentially, People Buy People. Would you buy something from a person that you instantly didn’t like? — Science tells us that it takes 2-3 seconds to subconsciously like or dislike a person. So, the art of the pitch is to establish trust with people in the shortest possible time.
During the Entertainment Masterclass we sit down with Paul Boross, better known as The Pitch Doctor.
We talk about trust issues, comedy, Richard Branson and why asking questions makes all the difference.
DESIGNERS OF THE OLYMPIC TORCH: Interview with BarberOsgerby
London design studio BarberOsgerby are the creators behind the iconic Olympic torch that is currently being carried to Olympic Stadium after the 8,000 miles (12,800 km) torch relay, criss-crossing the country since 19 May and passing London’s biggest landmarks.
“The 8000 holes represent the number of people who will take part in the Relay. For us, the Torch had to have symbolism - to represent the relay and the nation, and also to reflect that London and the UK are at the forefront of design and manufacturing,” says Ed Barber.
The journey ends this evening as the final Torchbearer lights the Cauldron, when the Dany-Boyle-choreographed London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony descents upon 80,000 people in the stadium — and an expected audience of over 1 billion across the world. Kindled from the rays of the sun at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, the Olympic Torch has spent 70 days travelling 8,000 miles around the UK, carried by 8,000 Torchbearers chosen by their own communities for the light that they bring to the lives of others.
History fact: During the ancient Olympic Games in Greece, a fire was kept burning to symbolise and remind people of the Olympic Truce. The Torch is therefore a living, vulnerable reminder that the true ambition of the Olympics is not victory but peace. The first Torchbearer was Prometheus, who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it as a gift to mankind.
Good Luck!
//INTERVIEW: Brett Martin, Co-Founder & CEO, Sonar// — Brett Martin “knows people” — and their hidden connections. To be precise, his popular mobile location app Sonar does. It takes in Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds to navigate you through the urban jungle and find those people who you should really meet — right here, right now. Some call it ‘engineering serendipity’, for Martin it’s all about having more face time with people that matter to you.
Our first Sonar encounter was at TC Disrupt 2011 when Brett’s team made it through to the Battlefield finals. Sonar was an absolute favourite with the audience. What better place to launch this app, than at a crowded tech conference where everybody is eager to connect with a ‘relevant set’ of like-minds. One year on, Sonar was back at NYC Disrupt 2012 to launch their biggest product update since its launch: the Here-Now Network. By adding Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging features, it allows for a more targeted connection with the people in your vicinity.
We meet Brett at Sonar’s Intergalactic Headquarters in NYC and talk about how growing up in beach town Ocean City inspired him to create Sonar, why impatience is the toughest thing to tame for an entrepreneur, who he would love to bond over beer with, and what he loves and hates about New York.
Here are some sound-bites:
Head over to unlike.net for Brett’s 25hrs collection of his favourite New York Hangouts.
//NEXT12 — Interview RjDj// - I remember the first time when playing with RjDj, the ingenious music app that puts you literally inside the music by responding to your movements and mixing sounds from the environment into the music you are listening to. Yes, it’s trippy. RjDj are also the studio behind the award-winning “Inception: The App”, a collaboration with the movie’s screenwriter Christopher Nolan, that reached 4 million downloads, as well as augmented sound adventure game ‘Dimension’. RjDj “don’t do apps” - they “craft sonic experiences” - and their technology was always a little bit ahead of their time. However, RjDj’s newest release Project NOW focuses very much on the ‘Hier und Jetzt’. We sit down with RjDj’s creator and CEO Michael Breidenbrücker to get a first look of Project NOW (and bump into a seemingly impressed Mike Butcher). The app (currently in private beta) detects your current situation and delivers the perfect soundtrack from your iTunes library. You can tune the emerging “situation graph” by giving song suggestions a #fail or #win. When first firing up the app, it matched Bowie’s German Version ‘Helden’ to my situation ‘Home in Berlin’. That’s a #Win
“Right in the middle of the conversation between fans and artists - that’s where we want to be.”
At New York’s ACE Hotel, we meet for breakfast with Beverly Jackson, the Director Marketing/Social Media for the GRAMMY Awards. This year’s show famously broke records with social media and mobile programs playing a major role. TV audience numbers soar to over 39 million people (The last time the GRAMMY’s even topped 30 million was 1988. It’s the second most watched GRAMMY telecast since 1984 when 51.67 million people watched Jackson take home eight trophies.)
In our interview, we dive deeper into the mechanics of the ‘GRAMMY 365’ campaign ‘We are all fans’, discuss how the collaboration with brands, tech partners, agencies and artists works, and get an inside into how the Academy dealt with the tragic death of Whitney Houston on the day before the show.
Last but not least, we learn what ‘Big 3’ songs will never get deleted from Beverly’s iPod.
//Where 2.0 - Interview with Will Wright// - Last time I met the creator of The Sims was for the launch of Spore, and I took my friend Yoav along to speak from “artist to artist“. We ended up less talking about the game than about Charles and Ray Eames, childhood toys and illegal car racing.
Now, 3 years on, we meet at Where 2.0 in San Francisco. Wright has since left EA and founded the rather secretive Stupid Fun Club to devote more time to robotics and fusing game mechanics with real life. The power of mobile devices that act as sensors make the real world Wright’s new playground.
Although he kept mum about what exactly he is working on right now (and when we can expect to play with it), he revealed that it has broadly to do with predictive models of user behaviour. To “really understand the user” remains the toughest and most enticing challenge for Wright. This goes far beyond Facebook profiles but concerns predictive moods, emotions and schedules. Basically, Wright is trying to crack the code of “what users really want to do - before they even know they want to do it.” Be prepared, it surely will be legendary.
//Where 2.0 - Interview with Bradley Voytek from Uber// - After speaking with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in London, we meet the company’s Data Evangelist Bradley Voytek at Where 2.0 in San Francisco. Originally a neuroscientist, Brad “gets to play with the Uber data all day long” to figure out how cities move, because as he tells us “How different brain areas communicate and how people move around cities are very similar patterns”. Uber’s amazing data model includes everything from car densities to demographics, birth and crime rates, flight patterns and Foursquare check-ins. The meticulous data driven analysis lets Uber practically create a living personality of each city – a value that could be put to use for a whole new line-up of urban on-demand services. But for now, Uber’s focus is on international expansion of their townhouse . In Europe, Uber has landed in Paris – with keen plans to bring “Everybody’s Private Driver” to London very soon.
//INTERVIEW x SOUNDCLOUD// — At the DLD conference in Munich SoundCloud Co-Founder Alex Ljung just announced that they hit the mark of 10 MILLION REGISTERED USERS, 7 million of those have only joined over the last year. The recent financing round in January - which is believed to have pumped another 50 million into the Berlin-based company - was already a testament to the expected dimension of growth.
In this excerpt from our interview, SoundCloud Co-Founder Eric Wahlforss talks to us about the “inevitable trajectory” towards building SoundCloud, why sound will be bigger than video and how launching the ‘record button’ has fueled the vision of unmuting the web everywhere.
//DARE TO ASK: Team EyeEm// — We visit the 4 founders of mobile photography startup EyeEm in their Berlin studio and talk stolen cameras, data cubes and meeting perfect strangers (through images).
Source: vimeo.com
DARE TO ASK: Erik Wahlforss (Co-Founder SoundCloud) / Henrik Berggren (Co-Founder ReadMill)
We meet the 2 “Swedish Imports” (and good friends) at the Readmill HQ in Berlin where they talk about Stockholm clubbing days, advice for young entrepreneurs, favourite sounds and (social) trust issues.
//INTERVIEW PIX: READMILL// - We meet Henrik Berggren, Co-Founder of ReadMill in Berlin to talk about socializing the reading experience.
//INTERVIEW PIX: AMEN// - “The Best Office Ever?” We interview Amen Co-Founders Felix Petersen and Florian Weber in Berlin.
