I just returned from attending my third Google Zeitgeist. This event is simply phenomenal on every level: the content, the speakers, the attendees, the entertainment and the food!
For those of you unable to attend, I've attempted to summarise the key points in this blogpost (with maximum fact and minimum personal opinion ;-). Where detail is thin, I do apologise – I was tweeting, working or networking.
The evening before was kicked off by a Welcome Reception with a range of cuisine from Japanese to BBQ offered in various rooms at The Grove Hotel, Hertfordshire. There was a Heston Blumenthal-esque theme to the event with a scientific room of experiments to create drinks and the most creative desserts I've ever witnessed!
- Imagine a 'toothbrush' consisting of a long biscuit with a selection of flavoured pastes (chocolate anyone?) to squeeze on top from toothpaste tube.
- The other highlight was a chocolate bar involving the selection of a type of chocolate and then biscuit, to then be inserted inside the chocolate like sim card!
- Finally, I found the gadget I'm missing from my kitchen. The reverse grill – which is frozen to -44 C and can create instant ice-cream. Now where will I find the space in my kitchen?!
There were other exciting ancillary events such as a cooking workshop and running club by Dean Karnazes (who I embarrassingly assumed was just the 'running instructor' until he was invited up on stage on Day 2).
Day 1
As top business leaders were gathered in one room, the day kicked off with Nikesh Arora (Google SVP) announcing that this was the "Women's Zeitgeist" attended by the top 50 women in Europe. The power of social media immediately kicked in as I tweeted this, and was then retweeted by Nikesh himself to nearly 12,000 followers.
hroughout the 2 days there was lots of emotion and humour around Chelsea's win over Bayern Munich – nothing like some good inter-country competitiveness to remind us that even top businesspeople are human too.
Beyond the Euro Crisis
Niall Fergusan (Historian) kicked off the first session of the day with an economic history lesson enlightening us that about 12 European governments gave fallen since the inception of the EU. He compared the current global economic crisis to the last 2 depressions and gave his advice for using the past to learn from the future. He reminded us that the whole point of creating a monetary unit was to get Europeans into a federal economic system.
George Papandreou (ex Prime Minster Greece) then followed off with a pro-Greece PR speech and myth debunking. Check out the video here.
- Myth 1: Debt is a symptom rather than a cause. The cause is a badly managed country that has lost competitiveness.
- Myth 2: Greeks are the problem but it's a European problem. It is a precedent of the European structure, showing some of the missing links in the euro
- Myth 3: Greeks are not lazy!
Regarding the third myth, Niall Fergusan commented that the Germans work the least hours out of every other nation which is why when you go in vacation – the Germans are already there! :-)
Stephanie Flanders (BBC Economics Editor) moderated the discussion and question if Greece should never have joined the Euro.
Next up were Jim O'Neill (senior exec Goldman Sachs) & Diana Farrell (McKinsey). Jim was very optimistic and commented that 'the world isn't falling apart' as he sees lots of improvement and positivity. You will always get volatility when you join 17 countries together who are different. He then quoted various positive stats such as 20% of apple revenues per quarter are from China and Germany having a record low unemployment as a result of large production of cars for China.
Finally, Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO WPP) closed with his views that this is a process of readjustment - it's simply a cycle. Since politicians are in the business of getting re-elected and elections are very frequent, it's no wonder they have such a short term view whereas we in business must take the long term view. Sir Martin felt that the discussion was "depressing, distracting and off strategy" and pointed to China, the 2nd largest economy in the world, and the changes and impact happening there.
Beyond the Rational - moderated by Jon Snow
This session was moderated by Jon Snow (Channel 4 News Presenter) and the first topic was kicked off by Professor Dan Ariely (Professor Economics and Behavioural Economics, Duke University). He spoke about the many experiments into people cheating. Watch the clip here.
- The best time to cheat is actually on the way to confession as people 'reset' at confession though they generally do continue to cheat. He suggested that confession should be broader than simply religious e.g. banks and politicians should ask forgiveness.
- Since the conference is attended by more women than before, it was interesting when the discussion turned to the big difference between men and women in how they view competition e.g. men enter competitions regardless of skill and women don't enter at all.
- He said that people ingested in technology have to be optimistic as technology is about fixing the things that we do badly
Laurie Santos (Assoc. Director Psychology – Yale) talked about her work with monkeys to better understand human. For example, monkeys can learn to use currency and operate a market with risk, discounts etc. that exactly replicates human markets. I'm left wondering if monkeys are super intelligent or if we human just have the intelligence of monkeys …? Watch the clip here.
Matt Ridley (Author and Economist) also talked about optimism and mentioned that child mortality has fallen in Africa by 5%. He cited lots of other optimistic facts (faster than I could type) but I did pock up that there is less equality, the poor getting richer faster than the rich getting richer. Watch the clip here.
The session ended with a beautiful performance by Imogen Heap (who I had never heard of) who reminded us all to breath (ironically she was rather out of breath from being quite nervous!). Watch the performance here.
Google Product Showcase
David Rowan (Editor Wired Magazine) tweeted (@iRowan) some interesting Google facts, which is always good for a room full of folks who love numbers!
- Google activates 850,000 Android devices a day - more than the number of babies born
- Google has conducted 58,000 search experiments in the last year that have resulted in 520 changes to search
- Every minute 60 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube - 50% up year on year
First up was Google Drive, impressively allowing 2 people on different sides of the world to work on the same document in real time. There was a voice to text demo which unfortunately went completely wrong much to the amusement of the audience. Drive can search for pictures by name and recognise content, e.g. pictures of bridges, which can be very useful for searching through thousands of holiday photos. They've also put translation technology into docs.
Next up was Google Plus (Google's fastest growing product), now with 170 million people, although I wonder if these are registered users or active users. The demonstration covered a joint conference call and how to start a 'hangout' even if one user doesn't have a smartphone.
The biggest Search Enhancements included "the knowledge graph" which shows a panel with a range of information surrounding a potentially broad search term (e.g. London) and highlights of pages (+1) endorsed by Google+ friends.
On the YouTube video front, there was head-to-head Apple combat showing the ability to bookmark videos to "view later" and then watch on your phone. They demonstrated how the phone can seamlessly communicate and sling content between PC-phone-TV.
Some 'really cool' Android features were demonstrated such as:
- Unlocking your phone with face recognition, panorama photos and fun video calling effects.
- Transfer of tabs from Chrome browser between PC and phone allowing a continuous browsing experience.
- The NFC chip (also shown last year) was demonstrated allowing you to send information between phones by placing phones on top of one another
We were also shown some mapping picture technology demonstrating an exact location for where a picture is taken, and the ability to follow to visual path on a map as if 'flying'. This is great for folks who struggle to read maps (or the Google Product Manager who demonstrated whose boyfriend lost his backback on the Swiss Alps and needed to relocate it).
The best was left for last as we were shown Google Glasses. A great idea about glasses with integrated voice controlled commands and screen integrating music, maps, information and communication. Check out g.co/projectglass for more. Despite my love of gadgets, I can't see myself ever wearing one of these.
I unfortunately missed the next session on Beyond the Revolution but the interesting anecdote here I picked up was that non-violent protests are twice more likely to succeed. Here are links to the missed clips:
- Moderator: Paul Mason (Economics Editor BBC Newsnight)
- Bernard Kouchner (Founder Doctors without Borders). Watch the clip here.
- Farah Pandith (Special rep to Muslim Communities, US State dept). Watch the clip here.
- Srdja Popovic (Exec Director, Canvas Serbia). Watch the clip here.
- Bassem Youssef (Surgeon & TV Presenter). Watch the clip here.
Beyond Ourselves
This session was moderated by Becky Anderson (CNN).
Lily Cole (Supermodel and Founder of Impossible.com) and Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) discussed the interesting topic of gifting economies. Here are some key points:
- Gifting economies tap into sociological behaviours and technology makes connections transparent. Wikipedia is the biggest example of this as people donate hours of their time because they find it interesting
- Impossible.com (still in Beta) builds on people's desire to have a sense of community, to meet one another and help one another (as does the social media phenomenon). Lily mentioned how gift parading or the economy of regard (gift economy) is worth more than GDP (UK?)
- Jimmy said how the most successful business don't necessarily set out to make money. He cited Mark Zuckerberg who is apparently obsessed with the product.
This is definitely a very interesting concept (and quite change to champagne and catwalks) proving that Lily Cole is clearly a highly intelligent woman! Watch the clip here.
The unforgettable Dame Viviane Westwood followed, talking unstoppably and passionately about climate change. Calling herself a 'freedom fighter', she talked about the financial problem being the symptom and not the cause of the problem. She criticised our current culture of 'consumerism' and praised art as its' not consumption. Unfortunately government are the last to do anything to save the environment so its up to the corporate world to lead change. It would only cost £114 million to save 3 forests…. While many remarked on her monologue, I felt she had a very valuable message for our current materialistic and superficial society where celebrities are the new religion and appearance is the new currency. Watch the clip here.
David Jones (Global CEO Havas & Founder One Young World) talked about One Young World competition and introduced 3 young entrepreneurial candidates which impressive achievements. Watch the clip here.
- Finalist of the Google Science Fair is 16 year old girl from India, Harine Ravichandiran, who came up with a solution for stable voltage for remote villages as her grandparents had to wake up at 3 a.m. for enough light to water their crops.
- Amr Mohamed, Global Winner YouTube Space Lab, came up with an experiment investigating the effects of microgravity on the way the zebra spider catches its prey and whether it could adapt its behavior in this environment.
- Joe Mwale, 16 year old Kenyan boy who started a water purification business from his bed, while sick with dysentery. To raise $5k, he structured a 5 year lease for a piece of unused land in his family. He has sold 2,000 bottles to date.
The conference day ended with Nobel prize winning Annie Lennox, who brought people to tears with her passionate plight to help pregnant woman with AIDS/HIV in Africa. Her talk was so moving that there were people crying in the audience.
Here are some key points:
- 14 million orphans affected by aids across the whole continent
- If children are born with the virus they most likely won't reach their 5th birthday – it's heartbreaking
- Currently there are 34 million people living with HIV, 23 million of these are in Africa
- There are not enough doctors and nurses per 1,000 people when compared to more developed countries e.g. UK
- When she visited Africa, coffins of every size were being sold at supermarkets. She saw tents everywhere, which she thought were for celebrations but in fact they were funerals.
Watch the clip here.
I chatted to her at the dinner and she mentioned that Jakob Zuma was a strong supporter of the programme (whereas Thabo Mbeki had made things extremely tough with his denial that HIV leads to AIDS. She is truly a remarkable woman and I praised her for lending her name and time to a cause that simply isn't sensational enough to warrant media attention, and therefore global attention.
Day turned to Night and the Drinks and Dinner commenced in a spectacular white tent in the Grove's Walled Garden. The décor this year was light, bright and contemporary. The food and entertainment were spectacular with tremendous style and attention to detail. There were performances by Maria Aragon (12 year old internet sensation with 55+ million YouTube views), Paloma Faith and Ed Sheeran. The alcohol fuelled a whole different level of conversation and networking.;-)
The picture below shows Annie Lennox taking a video of one of the performances (and shows the proximity I was sitting to her). The second picture shows the starter 'scientific style' with tube of mayonnaise and test tube vial of olive oil.
Day 2
Going Beyond
This session was moderated by Clare Balding (BBC Sports Presenter).
Sir Ranulph Fiennes kicked off with a profoundly laugh-out-loud funny and borderline unbelievable presentation of his expeditions and their challenges. I've heard him speak before, and yet this time it was even more insightful, inspiring and funny ranging from surviving temperatures up to -132 C to surviving fires, frostbite and blisters. I highly recommend watching the clip here. I since also read that he has also run 7 marathons in 7 days (although that pales to what Dean Karnazes achieved).
Sir Steve Redgrave, an Olympic gold medallist talked about his experiences and the training process to reduce 1/100th of a second. He touched on the importance of mental performance for physical performance i.e. mental process is to believe you will win so even if they are leading, they are hurting. Watch the clip here.
He was then followed by John Eales, international rugby quarterback who talked about the challenge of team performance versus individual performance. Watch the clip here.
Finally, Dean Karnazes came on stage. He has run 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states starting from deciding to run 30 miles one night when he was drunk (!). I nearly fell off my chair as I had chatted to him that morning and mistakenly assumed he was just the running club 'instructor' as our paths collided on the morning run. I was impressed by a gadget he mentioned and later chatted to him about it – check out the MotoACTV. It's a watch linked to a Jawbone earpiece measuring biometric body information during the run which is then uploaded via Bluetooth. Watch the clip here.
Beyond the News
Evgeny Lebedev (Owner of The Evening Standard) kicked off his strategy for his titles. He talked about his youth in Russia as a key driver for his business achievements today. He interestingly mentioned that his strategy for The Independent is to 'lose less money' and perhaps the losses to be funded by The Evening Standard's profit. Watch the clip here.
Joris Luyendijk (Middle East correspondent and banking blogger with The Guardian) came on next with an honest and charismatic style. He raised the valid point how can we expect bankers to have a long term view when they can be fired in 5 minutes! I just love the Dutch! Watch the clip here.
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (host and producer Huffington Post Streaming Network) discussed how social media is the catalyst for change as elimated the use of parachute journalism by offering a new source of publishing. While reading from his Ipad (!), he told the audience about the new streaming network, which now has more page views than the NY times! The social media change is youth led as 70% of the Arab world is under 30 years (50% rest of world). Google assisted the social media revolution when it launched "speak to tweet" allowing voicemails to be transferred into tweets. Watch the clip here.
Paul Conroy (award-winning photo journalist who was with Marie Colvin when she died) concluded the panel. He recounted the shocking events included his dramatic escape after the bombing that killed Marie. It's phenomenal the strength he has shown and it really brings the reality of the tragic story to life hearing it first hand from Paul. Watch the clip here.
Beyond Today
This session kicked off with futuristic insights giving yet another new and enthralling dimension to the 2-day conference.
First up was Marc Raibert (Boston Robotics) talking about his experiments creating Robots which can run ("Why walk when you can run?"). He showed us clips of Big Dog and Bigger Dog, with humorous demonstrations of house these robot dogs can avoid falling (and sometimes fall miserably). These robotics are already being used for purposes in the military for example with chemical suit testing. Watch the clip here.
Catherine Mohr (Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical) presented to us the usage of robotics in hospitals to reduce recovery time and complications and save costs despite the large upfront cost (as long incisions are eliminated). She demonstrated the cost benefit analysis of high upfront costs versus savings in hospital expansions due to lower bed occupancy (as a result of the significantly shorter recovery times). Amazing how technology in the healthcare sector has such significant financial implications (rather than simply giving patients easier solutions). Watch the clip here.
Mikko Hyponnen (Chief Research Officer for F-Secure) enlightened us on cybercrime. He explained that the criminals are best grouped into 3 categories based on their intent: thieves, activists and governments. He went into detail on each of the categories – especially interesting was Governments as he isolated a clip from a Chinese video showing software which showed they conduct cyber-attacks on the US! Watch the clip here.
Marco Tempests (Cyber illusionist) did a show for us showing showing magic using technology and talking about the art of illusion, turning belief into disbelief. Watch the clip here.
Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO x-Prize foundation, talked about Abundance. He's written a book on the topic, which I looked forward to reading (we all received a copy). He explained how we are heading towards a world of abundance as technology turns scarcity into abundance. Watch the clip here.
Larry Paige, who needs no introduction, came on stage next with his Google Goggles. He talked about how, for many people now, their first phone will be their first computer! Here are some key points from his talk:
- They have made google products much more coherent and visually better (like a little company called Apple?) – "technology should do the hard work for you rare than you doing the hard work"
- People seem confused by Google Plus but it essentially allows people to share things
- You can now take a photo on your android phone and have it shared automatically
- Search has gotten a lot better but you don't always see it though it changes every day. Last week they released knowledge panels
- You can have same tabs open on phone as on desktop providing a seamless experience
- Big bets: their aim to have people use a product as often as they use their toothbrush
- YouTube has been doubling revenue YOY since acquisition for $1.4 billion
Larry has always been motivated by a slogan from a summer university course which said "have a healthy disregard for the impossible" i.e. be very ambitious such as Google's project for self-driving cars. You won't have any competition and you will attract the best people who only want to work on innovative things
He is very excited about the concept of carrying around your health data and data mining based on the data coming out of your body then figuring out why you are getting sick. Watch the clip here.
Beyond Philanthropy
The piste de resistance was of course, ex-President Bill Clinton, who came on stage looking old and frail (and in his eighties). I confess to immediately Googling his age which was a mere 65 years. Just proof that being a president ages significantly! Not meaning to appear shallow here, but some folks I chatted to afterwards said the same thing. He unfortunately did not appear to be in good health.
He was interviewed by none other than Eric Schmidt (Chairman, Google) no less.
Here are some of the key points from his talk:
- He chatted briefly about wanting South East Europe to join the EU (especially Turkey) which could be a bridge to Arab Spring. In his opinion, the best way of managing the Arab Spring is not to manage it!
- He went into detail of the EU and Euro problem showing a tremendously sharp brain for economics and still being quite passionate and a strong public speaker in this area
- Then he talked about the Clinton Foundation and his current work (which I was not aware of at all – I just thought he worked the speaker's circuit for a nice retirement fund as I think Tony Blair does (or I could be wrong here). It's quite impressive and you can read more about it here.
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The foundation is:
- A global initiative
- Its affiliates look at global networks of cooperation
- Instrumental in fighting childhood obesity, HIV/AIDS and Malaria
- Biggest impact has been in healthcare industry, getting HIVAIDS drugs reduced from $900 to $90
- Got a 88% calorie reduction in drinks at schools
- Costa Rica's over capital income is 2.5 x its neighbours because it has a green sustainable economy using hydroelectricity
- Creative cooperative collaboration helped bring down the shoe bomber as all intelligence services between the US and UK collaborated with one another
His appearance went down well (even before he spoke as he achieved a jam-packed room and sell out dinner that evening). In previous years, Zeitgeist had emptied out by the end of the second day, showing clever organisation by the Google Zeitgeist event team. This proves the power of his charisma despite the fact that he's the only US president in history for being impeached for lying under oath (this was conveniently omitted from the session).
Watch the clip here.
With a wrap up by Nikesh, the event concluded. I'm told the Zeitgeist event team now have about a 3 month break before they begin planning again for Zeitgeist 2013. I certainly look forward to next year!
