After 3 days of army reserve training, just before heading home, I stopped at IDC Herzeliya, to lecture on The Next Net – What it means to your business, to the members of The Israeli Innovation Forum – an academic program for executives, run at the Arison School of Business.
The forum aims at creating a community for executives to promote innovation in Israel, while fostering the knowledge and expertise of its members. For full disclosure I’ll mention that the forum is run by IDC with sponsorship from IBM Haifa Research Lab.
There is at least 1 video in my lectures, and on this I had 2, although I had only 30 minutes.
The first video was The Facebook Song, which I saw at Lior Zoref.
This song provides a good intro and ice-breaker to the subject of social network – there are many disciplines, topics, focus areas – 30min was quite a challenge.
Just before slide 3 I did a quick survey, to see if social networking and web 2.0 era had any effect on business leaders – so I asked how many track blogs, write blogs or members of any social network. I liked what I saw – over 60% of participants had their hands up on all 3 questions, which shows social networking and social software is not overlooked, and business leaders are taking it seriously, looking for business opportunities.
In slide 6 a small shiver crossed my body – I noticed that I’m obsolete – not part of the NetGen.
I’m almost 30 (presents are welcome), started working with computers in high school, and had my first cellphone only 10 years ago. The members of the forum reassured me that I’m still very relevant, so it’s cool. For now.
Despite the time (8pm), the members were very cooperative and we had some interesting discussions, on facebook, viral marketing and innovation at the business. To wrap us my lecture I pointed people to BusinesWeek Special Report, Social Networking with the Elite, which I wrote about earlier this week. When I referred to the CIA as the Central Intelligence Agency, one participant told me which CIA is the “important” one – the Culinary Institute of America. I should start cooking more… Gabi, thanks for the tip. Now I know.
You can view my presentations over at slideshare.net/snowmaster.
As a (bit long) side comment, I must say Lior is a business colleague/competitor I value – he holds a unique vision on digital media and true to the ‘try it yourself‘ rule, was responsible for several breaking marketing ideas in Israel. The latest being Yossi and Lior‘s Test Broadcasting, a 15min clip, on technology and marketing.
