David Feldt Proud father. Entrepreneur. Builder. Catalyst. Accelerator. Guide.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Ira Glass, host of This American Life on Storytelling:

What’s up with the Facebook obsession / addiction in Toronto?

The buzz in Toronto this past week is all about Facebook – as of 2pm this afternoon, Toronto has 573,355 people in the Toronto, ON network on Facebook – that’s 11% of the population of the greater Toronto metro area (GTA) and is the largest regional network on Facebook by a significant margin.

(data courtesy of Ryan Feeley at http://ryanfeeley.com)

To put this into perspective, Toronto has more Facebook members than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined (the combined population of those cities is almost 9 times the size of Toronto). This phenomenon extends beyond Toronto to the rest of Canada too – Both Calgary and Vancouver have 8% of their population on Facebook. It also extends beyond the major metropolitan regions to small towns across the entire country.

So, why are Torontonians (and the rest of Canadians) so addicted to Facebook? As reported in the local press, The Ontario government, concerned that its employees were spending too much time on the site, banned it from its office computers last week. Thousands of civil servants came to work only to find that Facebook had been blocked like porn.

CTV reported on the phenomenon and they theorized that its because there are 100,000 students across the key universities in the city. Nice try CTV – that’s not the answer.

A recent post on Facebook’s blog entitled “Oh Canada...” says, “There may not be one single reason why Facebook is so popular in Canada, but rather a combination of tipping-point factors that continue to make networks like Toronto so unique in terms of growth.” Canada has 2 million Facebookers which represents 10% of the Facebook universe.

Any insightful points of view?

2012 : Stories from the Near Future

Want to know what the world will be like five short years from now?

New Yorker Magazine recently held their inaugural New Yorker Conference, “2012: Stories From the Near Future,” which took place last week.

Watch the views of luminaries like Malcolm Gladwell, Barry Diller, Arianna Huffington, Will Wright, and Craig Newmark.

Topics covered include:

• Genius
• Intellectual Property
• Power shifts in society (future of the organization)
• Morality
• Gaming
• Architecture
• Surrendipity
• Solutions
• Design
• Mobile Technology
• The Web

Power to the People

We're continually having conversations across the agency about how to help our clients create experiences that ultimately go beyond advertising and marketing to give something valuable, meaningful and relevant back to the community.Here's a wonderful story that takes this concept a little further, utilizing a simple outdoor billboard at the MC Weiler School in Alexandra Township on the North Eastern borders of Johannesburg.

Nedbank, a national financial services organization, and its agency (Net#work BBDO, one of our sister agencies within the Omnicom family) came up with an innovative idea - utilize the abundance of sunlight in South Africa to generate energy to give school children a hot meal every day.  The school has over a 1,000 students and the majority of them receive their only meal of the day at the school - a hot meal that ensures they are focused and energized to reach their maximum potential at school.

Ms Flaki Ramothata, principal of the school, says that the power generated from the  solar panels attached to the billboard is sufficient to run all the lights and fridges and provides hot water for their kitchens.

“This kind of communication is really close to my heart,” says Net#work BBDO's Creative Chief Mike Schalit. “Why shouldn’t advertising, especially in SA, pioneer ways of putting something back into the community - even more so when it comes to outdoor billboards, the ugly duckling of advertising? Billboards are often seen as the biggest perpetrator of crimes against urban landscapes. Here’s our chance to lead the world in showing how we can convert urban pollution into urban renewal.”

Moleskine Magic

70 Moleskines by international artists, designers, architects, illustrators, and writers

Watch them "unbox" their respective Moleskines - here are my favorite two by Chris Dent.

Balanced Mind

Part 2 to Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” (which you know is one of my favorite books of all time) ...

I discovered this cool survey which lets you test if you’re more left-brained, more right-brained or somewhere in the middle.

Check it out: http://www.blogthings.com/areyourightorleftbrainedquiz/

According to the quiz, I am 40/60 Left brain/Right brain.

How do you score?

Rupert Murdoch on Media 2.0

Rupert Murdoch (media mogul extraordinaire) has been in the news the past few days following his controversial $5 Billion bid for the Wall Street Journal.

I found his following commentary on the changing nature of the media world to be very refreshing, insightful and quite unexpected from one of the "old-guard".

Here's a glimpse into the mind of a man whose News Corp continues to dominate media properties and media channels globally (Source: Forbes.com).

Special Report
Mixed Media
Rupert Murdoch 05.07.07

Traditional companies are feeling threatened. I say, bring on the changes.

Everyone knows that networking--once a face-to-face affair, sometimes captured in a Rolodex--is now worldwide, instant, and impervious to constraints of distance, time or cost.

Those of us in so-called old media have also learned the hard way what this new meaning of networking spells for our businesses. Media companies don't control the conversation anymore, at least not to the extent that we once did. The big hits of the past were often, if not exactly flukes, then at least the beneficiaries of limited options. Of course a film is going to be a success if it's the only movie available on a Saturday night. Similarly, when three networks divided up a nation of 200 million, life was a lot easier for television executives. And not so very long ago most of the daily newspapers that survived the age of consolidation could count themselves blessed with monopolies in their home cities.

All that has changed. Options abound. Fans of small niches can now find new content they could never before. Going elsewhere for news and entertainment is easier and cheaper than ever. And people's expectations of media have undergone a revolution. They are no longer content to be a passive audience; they insist on being participants, on creating their own material and finding others who will want to read, listen and watch.

Consequently the old media are threatened by the erosion of our traditional profit centers. Certainly we can't count on things like print classified advertising being around forever. Similarly, DVRs undermine the mainstay of broadcast television's business model: the commercial.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the age of content is over. On the contrary, people want content more than ever, and there is a role for companies that can provide good stuff--"good" being the operative word. Quality is more important than ever, because the marketplace is more ruthlessly competitive. Options are not merely one click of the remote away; devices undreamed of a few short decades ago are at least as tempting as a change of the channel.

Old media can survive--and thrive--in this new environment, but they must adapt. We must learn how younger generations of consumers prefer to receive their news and entertainment, and we must meet those expectations.

The good news is that we are learning--and fast. Take the type of media I know best--news. News is in more demand than ever, but the vast network of Internet-savvy news junkies want their news with several fresh twists: constantly updated, relevant to their daily lives, complete with commentary and analysis, and presented in a way that allows them to interact not just with the news but with each other about the news. They won't wait until six o'clock to watch the news on television or until the next morning to read it in isolation. This plainly provides a challenge for news providers but also an opportunity to be far more engaged with the audience.

Companies that take advantage of this new meaning of network and adapt to the expectations of the networked consumer can look forward to a new golden age of media. Far be it from me to suggest that either I or my company have all the answers. No one does. But the future of media is a future of relentless experimentation and innovation, accelerating change, and--for those who embrace the new ways in which consumers are connecting with each other--enormous potential.