Five stories about our new fixations This week I was invited to give a presentation at Social Strategy Talk in Amsterdam. The theme was "bizarre stories" and I was amazed by the inspiring (and personal) stories that were shared by my fellow...
What's up with TEDx in 2010? This week at a partnermeeting I had the pleasure to announce that the second edition of TEDxAmsterdam will take place in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. On 30 November 2010, the stage of this beautiful...
Future of publishing Last week I was one of the keynote speakers at InCTformatie, the annual conference for publishers in The Netherlands. As part of my talk was this video about "the end of publishing".
Lot of people felt...
My talk at NEXT10 in Berlin Last week I was in Berlin attending and speaking at the NEXT-Conference 2010. Other speakers included Stowe Boyd, Andrew Keen and Cindy Callop. I was in the track "openess" together with Steve Rubel.
Some...
This week The Gates Foundation and TED released their website for the TEDxChange. Events that will be taking place across the globe this year on 20 September. It’s my pleasure to give you some more information about the Dutch chapter of this event:
TEDxChange in Amsterdam A life changing dinner party with an unforgettable exchange of energy
On September 20, to coincide with the United Nations summit on the Millennium Development Goals, there will be a global event organized by TED and the Gates Foundation. In Amsterdam, a remarkable group of individuals will join the live video broadcast from the Paley Center in New York and after participate in a TEDxChange event. This will be an interactive dinner with 8 people who, with their businesses or projects, are working towards achieving the MDGs in their country. They will share their desires and passions, their ideas and achievements, and then ask for support. The event will be a massive call-to-action to back these people and their businesses. Money will not be requested. The currency at this event will be skills, knowledge and time.
The handpicked guest list to this event will consist of one hundred people who are chosen on account of their ability to effect change and bring unrivalled skills to the table.
Part 1: Listening
This extraordinary event will bring together people who want to be inspired; who are ready to make a difference – young innovators, and established, successful businessmen alike.
Many emerging countries are growing faster than ever with young, dynamic local business-people building up their economies and creating jobs. The event will focus on the energy, positivity and creativity around change in developing countries. There will be inspiring stories and triumphant tales from people who are making a difference.
In 3 minute mini-talks, 8 guest speakers will lay out what their businesses needs to grow. This could be help with business modeling, building a website, getting in touch with universities, setting up a communications plan, accessing an effective international network or securing an introduction to relevant stakeholders – anything is possible.
Part 2: Participating
After hearing these requests, the guests will have an opportunity to dine, in groups of 10 with the speaker they were most inspired by, or feel they can most contribute to. The meal will be an opportunity to hear more and actively match requirements with skills. By the end of the evening, guests will leave having made a pledge of action, knowing their next steps and that they have already made a positive difference. The person behind the best idea/action will even get the opportunity to share their progress at TEDx Amsterdam on November 30 2010.
Last week I was in Berlin attending and speaking at the NEXT-Conference 2010. Other speakers included Stowe Boyd, Andrew Keen and Cindy Callop. I was in the track “openess” together with Steve Rubel.
Some of you may have watched the live-stream but I got some questions about the slides, so I put them up on Slideshare and wrote down a version of the transcript: .
It’s an honour to be here on behalf of the Virtual Happiness Institute. I have a short presentation. Gonna give you some updates on our research and then tell you how we can prevent the next epidemic. But first, I may not be the next Uri Geller, but I know what’s on your mind right now: “Why would we need an institute for Virtual Happiness? ”
And the answer is so obvious! Just like the government of Bhutan uses Gross National Happiness (instead of GPD) to measure the success of its policies, we –as an Internet community –should focus on our digital well-being more than ever! The Virtual Happiness Institute keeps track of this research in Internet psychology. Basically what we do is to write about anything that a bloggers finds too boring and study everything that a scientist finds too much fun.
It’s all based on a simple research question: does the internet make us happy?
We asked people how they would rate their own happiness . And it turns out Western Europeans are moderately happy. They rate it a 7,11 on a 10 scale. In the American system this would have been a B right? But how would this live satisfaction change when they had to live without the Internet for a full month? And then you see their happiness drop straight to a 6.3.
After we published these results we got some complaints. People said: “Well this sounds nice, but there something wrong with your method. You can’t live without the internet, so that’s not an option.” So we designed a new experiment. We found someone (me) who was quite an internet fanatic (yep, that’s me) and we persuaded him to go unplugged for more than a month. Mind you. Until then this hadn’t been not done before. The experiment has had a lot of following , but until then this was the first time.
So, I went completely offline for a whole month. Nearly 40 days without the Internet, no Google, no Email, no surfing, no twitter, Nothing. The most fun thing I ever did, at least in the first week. During this period I kept a diary. (you all know what that is right? Sort of an offline weblog) And this was eventualy published as a book in Dutch with the title “how to survive your inbox”. Because my conclusion at that time was that living without the internet was awful, but living without email was fantastic.
Europe’s leading Internet conference will be held in Berlin. The motto of next10 is “Game Changers”, and the conference will offer 40 hours of events with international speakers over two days on three stages at STATION-Berlin.
My talk on Wednesday will be an update on the Virtual Happiness Project, which was launched on the PicNic-Conference in 2008 (Does the Internet make you happy?) and about which I spoke at TED 2009 as well (Can you live without the Internet). My theme for this year will be “How can we avoid the next epidemic?”
It’s basically the end conclusion of the project. We’ve gathered enough information to know what drives virtual happiness (online social interaction) and we know what frustrates our virtual happiness (the inability to handle digital information we were used to in the fysical world). So, what is left is a call for action to take way this last barrier towards a better online well-being. Let’s see if we can stop the impending epidemic of infobesity.
More information about NEXT10
“Over the course of five years, the next conference has become the most important European conference for the digital and creative economy,” said Matthias Schrader, founder and CEO of interactive agency SinnerSchrader. “We are coming to Berlin to take the next step in our development, and we’ve found the right partner in STATION-Berlin, the organiser of the international PREMIUM fashion fair.”
Last week I was one of the keynote speakers at InCTformatie, the annual conference for publishers in The Netherlands. As part of my talk was this video about “the end of publishing”.
Lot of people felt inspired by this clip, so I would like to share it with you also. Please watch the entire three minutes
This week at a partnermeeting I had the pleasure to announce that the second edition of TEDxAmsterdam will take place in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. On 30 November 2010, the stage of this beautiful city theater will be reserved for the new ideas of revolutionary thinkers and innovators in the field of technology, entertainment, design, art, science and business. For one day, this monumental city theater turns into “a theater of the mind”.
In the words of Sasha Naod: “TEDxAmsterdam was the city’s sleeper hit last year. The conference attracted much media intention and there was a waiting list of more than 4500 people.” We were indeed surprised by the amount of positive reactions and the great interest. This is why we are moving to a larger location and also having some new surprises in store. Including a special children’s TED conference, similar to TEDx but for and by children.
At this same meeting Monique van Dusseldorp then revealed this years’ theme: “Science & Fiction”. Her interpretation:
Mankind is able to imagine great things which push the limits of science. Through the interplay of fiction (a dream that makes the world better) and science (the actual test-run and execution), we are getting one step ahead. “Science & Fiction” is therefore the central theme of the second edition of TEDxAmsterdam.
Top speakers from various disciplines will discuss their innovations, visions, perspectives and realizations in the area of technology, urban life, nature, the human body and more.
This week I was invited to give a presentation at Social Strategy Talk in Amsterdam. The theme was “bizarre stories” and I was amazed by the inspiring (and personal) stories that were shared by my fellow speakers.
I chose to tell 5 little anecdotes and then end with a worry. The five stories obviously had to to with my favorite topic “Living with or without the Internet”. Here are my slides:
If you are a returning reader of my blog then you probably knew these 4 stories allready. But the fifth one is the one that keeps me busy at night. The fact that the amount of information we produce and consume goes up and up… is inspiring for any online professional. But that at the same time the numbers of our National Productivity haven’t changed during the last 10 years should worry that very same professional.
Dear listeners, It’s been a while since I uploaded my last podcast episode. Therefore I’m happy to tell you that Klaas Weima invited me to do a show together… and as a result I have a new MP3 waiting for you!
Klaas is one of the few Dutch podcasters who puts in enormous effort to bring you interviews and insights on digital marketing and inspiring (business) people. (And we can’t thank him enough for that!)
In this interview Klaas asks me questions about TED, Virtual Happiness, Podcasting and Social Grazing. You can subscribe to his podcast here and you can look at the website of his company Energize (boosting brands).
Klaas, many thanks! And it’s my honour to pass on the stick to Mitch Joel
This morning I presented at the morning session of TED University. Lots of people asked if I could mail them the presentation. So I decided to upload it and make it available for download. A little transscript is below the slides.
Transcript: 8 ways to create a succesful TEDx
When you’re part of this community that strongly believes in “ideas worth spreading” and you give them this wonderful format of TEDx, no wonder these TEDx-organizers also want to share their ideas about what makes these local events so special. So, in the next couple of minutes I would like to present to you the 8 most important learnings that we as a TEDx-community have discovered this last year.
1. Don’t do it on your own
First of all: Don’t do it on your own. Form a team. You need people who are better than you on so many subjects. Don Levy said: “… we are making this as much of a community effort as we can.”
2. Try harder on the location
This is a picture of the European Parliament. Who would have thought that you could organize a TEDx Brussels over there? Or this one. A TEDx-event at Nasa. Space for Ideas. And it’s not that bigger is automatically better.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of spending some time with Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter. In 2007 his biggest concern appeared to be hardware: “How can we keep on growing like this when everytime we plug in another machine the website is down?”
Few years later it’s amazing to see how fast the website has grown and how little downtime their is nowadays. A series of smart moves (among them: buying summize.com instead of building their own search application) later, Twitter seems to have shifted from “What are you doing” to “What’s happening”.
My guess is that this is the result of Twitter becoming mainstream. It used to be a tool for modern -look at me-marketeers, but it’s becoming more and more a tool for civil reporting. Thus, the question: “what’s happening?” can be easily answered -in realtime- on Twitter.
That’s why I like to state that Twitter became mainstream on 9 December 2009, the moment they changed from What Are You Doing to What’s Happening.
When I was at TED earlier this year in Long Beach, the other founder (Evan Willliams) gave this presentation. Which eventually lead
Last night I slept well for the first time in weeks! What a relief that TEDxAmsterdam could live up to the (mega) high expectations. It was an amazing journey and a fantastic climax with warm words, splendid people and perfect ambiance.
Right now we’re releasing one talk each day (first one from Frans Timmermans, about ‘fear’) and I will give you my personal take-aways soon. But first a list of other people that have paid attention to our event:
It’s been a while since I uploaded my last podcast episode. Therefore I’m happy to tell you that Klaas Weima invited me to do a show together… and as a result I have a new MP3 waiting for you!
In this interview Klaas asks me questions about TED, Virtual Happiness, Podcasting and Social Grazing. You can subscribe to his podcast 
