DLD - Digital, Life, Design Conference in Munich

mPedigree wins Global Security Challenge Start-Up prize

Lukas Kubina — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:56:30 +0100

At the GSC Summit 2010, which took place in London on November 11th and 12th, Bright Simons mPedigree Network came in as Best Security Start-Up and was awarded a $200.000 investment from the TSWG (Technical Support Working Group) of the US Department of Defense as well as mentorship from Advent Venture Partners.

The mPedigree Network is a Ghanaian initiative to fight fake and counterfeit medication. It enables medical staff and patients to verify the authenticity of their medicine with the help of a simple text message. A unique product code, which is embossed on each medicine packaging, can be sent to a central database where it is verified and validated by a text message answer.

This simple procedure of verification has proven to be far more secure than holograms and less cost intensive than similar procedures involving RFID technologies. It has subsequently caught the attention of several multinational pharmaceutical companies who plan to introduce mobile phone based pharmaceutical authentication. mPedigree now works closely with Hewlett Packard - DLD friend Gabi Zedlmayer is in charge - and aims to extend it's service across Africa in the coming years.

Bright Simons, President of mPedigree said "This is a clear sign that African technology has come of age and also that innovators in Africa addressing complex, difficult and unique challenges can, notwithstanding limited resources, deliver world class results."

FTD ranks Germany's most influential business women

Lukas Kubina — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:58:24 +0100

For the third consecutive year a distinguished jury has identified the 25 most successful business women in Germany for the Financial Times. The newspaper stresses that the selection of candidates is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more female decision makers move into top positions - but still lags behind and is far away from a satisfying situation. The FTD ranking "Germany's most influential business women" also lists DLD Co-Founder and Managing Director Stephanie Czerny.

FTD justifies this decision with the following lines: "In the conference intense German media industry, the conference "Digital Life Design" (DLD) provides glamour. Each year the Hubert Burda Media publishing house brings the German digital scene together with the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley. Stephanie Czerny has invented the event together with Marcel Reichart. Ms. Czerny has held various positions at Burda since 1995. With DLD she has pushed the traditional print media house into the digital age.

Xing focuses on E-Recruiting

Lukas Kubina — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:37:18 +0100

Xing announces to increasingly rely on the recruitment functionality. The professional network wants to use its database of more than ten million members as a means of recruitment. "I foresee good growth opportunities in e-recruiting," CEO Stefan Gross-Selbeck said at the presentation of the new quarterly figures.

"Especially in light of skills shortages, companies must find new ways to get their required personnel." With a special "Recruiter-membership" HR managers or recruiters can scan the Xing database - if members have shared their information to do so. "We also have developed a kind of job ad 2.0," the DLD friend said. "We are able to connect a particular ad with a profile that meets the professional requirements perfectly. This way, we reach professionals who are only latently interested in a new position. "

Please find out more about professional networks on the DLD 2010 panel "Linkvalue" with Stefan and fellow panellists Marc Cenedella (Theladders), Reid Hoffman (Linkedin), and Nazar Yassin (Forticom) below:

Airline Online

Lukas Kubina — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:58:47 +0100

When a pilot strike provoked flight delays and cancellations, the affected passengers who expressed their discontent on Facebook and in the blogosphere were responded to and handled by official Lufthansa spokesmen online. Their Facebook page - followed by 100'000 fans by now - was turned into an updated itinerary of the flight changes as well as their Twitter feed was intensively used to get into contact with concerned passengers. Lufthansa's innovative step to pick up the discussion where it is taking place indicates the future of customer relations.

Check out this interesting comment on Lufthansa's social media strategy and its role during the recent pilot strike below.

DLD Garage: Apply for the startup program now

Artur Schmidt — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:50:00 +0100

We are happy to present our new startup program DLD Garage.

Chaired by Yossi Vardi, DLD Garage aims to identify the top 20 most disruptive and promising startups on a global scale. Selected startups will each receive a free 3-day conference pass to DLD11 (Scheduled for 23-25 January 2011 in Munich).

This initiative will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to meet and talk with investors and key communicators out of the global DLD community. Some of the startups will be integrated into the DLD11 program.

DLD Garage is supported by nternational friends and partners of DLD network, including Sonali De Rycker (Accel Partners), Mike Butcher (Techcrunch) and Stefan Winners (TOMORROW FOCUS AG).

How to become part of the DLD Garage initiative?

Anyone who introduced a consumer internet-related startup to the market in 2009 or 2010, or who will do so before January 22, 2011, can apply. To submit an application, please send an "Executive Summary" of not more than two pages introducing your business, product description, competitive environment, business model and your team. Applications can be submitted via email to dldgarage@burda.com by December 1, 2010.

Please also describe your business using maximum 140 characters in your application e-mail and suggest who of the founders would be ready to represent your start-up at the DLD conference.

We are very much looking forward receiving your applications.

Carsten Höllers' SOMA

Lukas Kubina — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:26:08 +0100

How do we achieve enlightenment? What role is science given in our society, and what role myth? Do we need to find alternative categories for experience and alternative approaches to awakening consciousness? These questions are all raised by the artist Carsten Höller in his show in the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin.

The DLD friend explores the myth of 'soma' - a drink with healing properties known among Verdic nomads in North India in the 2nd millennium BCE that promised enlightenment and access to the divine sphere, which was commonly used in rituals. The drink's main ingredient is no longer exactly known to us; ethnomycologists and philologists generally posit the fly Amanita mushroom as the substance responsible for its effects. Set against this backdrop, Carsten has devised a fantastical scenario that stands at the crossroads between art and science, laboratory and dream, supposed objectivity and heightened subjectivity.

An oversized, three-dimensional tableau vivant unfolds before the viewers' eyes as they look down from a tribune. In the middle of this set-up, a hotel room is perched on a mushroom-shaped platform, giving guests the opportunity to spend the night in the museum and to dive into the world of soma.

For more background information, please watch Carsten on the DLD 2009 panel "A Blackmountain College for the 21st Century" with fellow panellists Hans Ulrich Obrist, Piero Golia, Rem Koolhaas, Thomas Demand , Maja Hoffmann, and Lauren Bon.

The Nightmare of Participation

Lukas Kubina — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:02:49 +0100

In the third part of the Participation trilogy, Markus Miessen advocates vigorous cross-disciplinary intrusions - a universe of butting in where one isn't necessarily invited - to willfully generate alien and unexpected new spaces and ideas.

In "The Nightmare of Participation" he criticizes that the term "participation" has become increasingly overused over the last decade. The DLD friend finds that when everyone has been turned into a participant, the often uncritical, innocent, and romantic use of the term has become frightening.

Supported by a repeatedly nostalgic veneer of worthiness, phony solidarity, and political correctness, participation has become the default of politicians withdrawing from responsibility. Similar to the notion of an independent politician dissociated from a specific party, this third part of Markus' Participation trilogy encourages the role of what he calls the "crossbench practitioner," an "uninterested outsider" and "uncalled participator" who is not limited by existing protocols, and who enters the arena with nothing but creative intellect and the will to generate change.

Markus argues for an urgent inversion of participation, a model beyond modes of consensus. Instead of reading participation as the charitable savior of political struggle, he reflects on the limits and traps of its real motivations.

Delta Conference @ Stanford University

Lukas Kubina — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:52:03 +0100

On October 27th, 2010, Accel Partners and Stanford MediaX hosted The Delta Conference: The 16th Stanford Accel Symposium on Digital Media and Technology. The conference tackled questions such as the changing nature of media, technology and investing. After a personal introduction by Joe Schoendorf, Hubert Burda Media CEO Paul-Bernhard Kallen participated in the panel "Incumbents and the Disrupters in Digital Media". The panel focused on the great changes in the media industry in the past five years. Whereas new entrants are launching every day to disrupt the incumbents, traditional print publishers are driving a transform to the digital age. Given his stewardship at Hubert Burda Media, Dr. Kallen shared his expertise on the media industry from this perspective.

Other participants include Qi Lu (Microsoft), Cadir Lee (CTO, Zynga), Raymie Stata (CTO, Yahoo!), Mike Schroepfer (VPE, Facebook), Andrew Mason (CEO , Groupon), Drew Houston (Founder and CEO, Dropbox), and Paul Jacobs (Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm).

For further background please watch Dr. Kallen on the DLD 2010 panel "Strategy" with Tom Glocer (Thomson Reuters), David Drummond (Google), and moderation by David Kirkpatrick.

Zaha Hadids first project in England

Lukas Kubina — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 11:46:32 +0100

Zaha Hadid Architects' have completed their first project in England, the Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton, south London for ARK Schools. It presents itself as an open, transparent and welcoming addition to the community's local urban regeneration process. ARK Schools was founded in 2004 to work with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and local authorities to create new schools offering exceptional opportunities to local children in inner cities through their academies programme, with the aim of helping to close the achievement gap between children from disadvantaged and more affluent backgrounds.

Designed for 1200 pupils, the Evelyn Grace Academy maintains the educational principle of smaller 'schools-within-schools'; with Evelyn and Grace Middle Schools each housing 270 pupils and Evelyn and Grace Upper Schools housing 330 pupils per school. Each of these four smaller schools are contained within highly functional spaces that give a distinct identity both internally and externally. These spaces present generous environments with maximum levels of natural light, ventilation and understated but durable textures. The collective spaces - shared by all schools - are planned to encourage social communication within each school and eliminate problematic zones that require supervision.

'It is very significant that our first project in London is the Evelyn Grace Academy' said Zaha Hadid. 'Schools are among the first examples of architecture that everyone experiences and have a profound impact on all children as they grow up. I am delighted that the Evelyn Grace Academy has been so well received by all its students and staff.'

Read Zaha Hahids biography here and watch her in an on stage interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist at DLDwomen below:

DLD Dinner in Palo Alto

Lukas Kubina — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:35:45 +0100

Over 120 guest followed the invitation of DLD Chairmen Yossi Vardi & Hubert Burda as well as Hubert Burda Media CEO Paul-Bernhard Kallen to attend a DLD Dinner at MacArthurPark Restaurant in Palo Alto.

DLD Founders and Directors Steffi Czerny and Marcel Reichart welcomed friends from the Bay Area and discussed about topics & trends for the upcoming DLD Conference which will be held in Munich, January 23-25, 2011.

Guests included Google's Marissa Mayer, Shaklee's Roger Barnett, Hunch's Caterina Fake, GLAM's Samir Arora, Gary Lauder, Stamen Design's Eric Rodenbeck, Esther Dyson, Tencent's David Wallerstein, Microsoft's Alain Rappaport, Facebook's Dan Rose, Jyri Engeström, Demand Media's Shawn Colo, Richard Cooperstein, and Ann Winblad.

Please find some pictures of the event below.

FTD ranks Germany's most influential business women

Lukas Kubina — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:04:31 +0100

Zaha Hadids first project in England

Lukas Kubina — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:17:32 +0100

Read Zaha Hahids biography here and watch her in an on stage interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist at DLDwomen below:

Marissa Mayer Takes New Role in Location

Lukas Kubina — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:45:33 +0100

Marissa Mayer, Google Inc.'s vice president of search products, is taking a new role overseeing location and local services - markets that are strategically crucial to boost the companies sales, according to Bloomberg.

In 2005, she was the first winner of the Aenne Burda Award which is meant to honour exceptional women and thus encourage and inspire other women to believe in what they are doing and dare to be successful. She joined Google as the company's first female engineer. According to sources that prefer to remain anonymous the long-term DLD friend will also join Google's elite operating committee.

"Marissa has made an amazing contribution on search over the last decade, and we're excited about her input in this new area in the decade ahead," the company said.

Google is putting more focus on local businesses and location services as it looks for areas of growth outside traditional Internet searches. The effort may help the company get more advertising from neighborhood stores and restaurants. More than 90 percent of the company's revenue comes from online ads.

Marissa designed and developed the company's search interface and expanded the site to more than 100 languages, according to Google. She has helped introduce more than 100 features and products on the site, including a faster Web search last month called Instant that gives users results as they type in queries. Google rose $2.55 to $541.39 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have dropped 13 percent this year.

For more background information read the Bloomberg article here and watch Marissa at the DLD 2009 panel "Women Power" below. Also, find her on the DLD panels "Cloud Computing" (2009), "Exploding Media" (2008), "The Billion Dollar Bubble" (2007), and "The Next Big Thing" (2006).

Tina Müller is CMO Of the Year

Lukas Kubina — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 16:55:35 +0100

Tina Müller, responsible at Henkel for the global retail business of the company's hair cosmetics, skin and oral care segments, has been awarded "Chief Marketing Officer of the Year". This is the fifth year that this award has been made. It is specifically conferred in recognition of outstanding and innovative marketing achievements that have made a major contribution to corporate success.

The "CMO of the Year" award received by Tina Müller is the culmination of a number of years of exceptional achievement. Schwarzkopf, Syoss, Taft, Diadermine and Theramed are just some of the brands in Henkel's Cosmetics division for which Tina Müller is responsible. The success of these brands is very much based on innovative and creative marketing strategies developed and implemented by the DLD speaker and her team.

Watch Tina's keynote "The 3 P Concept: Performance-Power-Publicity" at the 2010 DLDwomen conference here.

DLDwomen Brand Lunch with Symantec

Alexandra Schiel — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:06:22 +0100

Last week, we hosted a brand lunch with DLDwomen partner "Symantec" at Burda Bar to talk about safety on the internet.

Norton Chief Cybersecurity Advisor Adam Palmer, Security Expert Stefan Wesche and Symnantec Consumer PR Manager Antje Weber presented Symantec's "Norton Cybercrime Report 2010: Faktor Mensch" to journalists from CHIP, freundin, ELLE and experts from Burda Digital Systems.

Norton's researcher have interviewed people from over 14 countries - with some alarming results: 62% of German Internet users have been a victim of cyber crime. Only 5% feel at all safe when they go online. 88% believe that those crimes will never be prosecuted as such. Crimes are very divers - ranging from fake software, spying out keyboard input or from botnets down to credit card fraud.

Discussion points during the lunch were e.g. What does cybercrime means for each individual? What are potential measures? What can we learn from concrete examples like celebrities on Twitter, Facebook or Google Street View?
"A major issue is not only a good virus protection on your computer - but it is at least as important as just being attentive," said Wesche.

The full study may be accessed here.

The International Network Crisis Mappers

Lukas Kubina — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:27:09 +0100

The International Network of Crisis Mappers was launched by 100 Crisis Mappers at the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2009) in October 2009. As the world's premier crisis mapping hub, CM*Net catalyzes communication and collaboration between and among crisis mappers with the purpose of advancing the study and application of crisis mapping worldwide. Under the motto "Haiti and Beyond" the 2nd ICCM takes place in Boston, October 1-3, 2010.

For further background information read this blog entry about Ushahidi, check out the ICCM online and watch Juliana Rotich (Ushahidi) on the DLDwomen 2010 panel "Women on a mission."

How Hormones can cause breast cancer

Lukas Kubina — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:29:38 +0100

Austrian scientists shed light on the relationship between the use of hormones, such as those for the pill and hormone replacement therapy used in menopause. A drug for bone loss supposedly has a preventive effect against breast cancer.

Scientists at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) clarified the association between the use of synthetic sex hormones and increased breast cancer risk. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, nourish the hope of preventive measures against hormone-dependent breast cancer. A new drug for osteoporosis could be the key.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in Western societies. In Europe, one in eight women is affected in the course of their lives. Only a small proportion of the patients has inherited the predisposition, the tumor is usually acquired through external influences. Extensive long-term studies such as the "Million Women Study" (UK) and the "Women's Health Initiative" (United States) have shown the connection clearly.

An international team led by IMBA director Josef Penninger has now clarified the mechanism of how synthetic sex hormones can cause breast cancer in mice.

The DLD speaker is overwhelmed by the directness of the studies. "I'm really surprised of how massive the influence of RANKL-system on breast cancer is. Considering that millions of women take synthetic progestins, the results have an immense importance."

Now that we know the mechanism of the tumor development we can focus on preventive measures. Drugs that block RANKL could reduce the future breast cancer risk signigicantly.

The original research paper "Osteoclast differentiation factor RANKL controls development of progestin-driven mammary cancer" by Schramek et al. was published in Nature, 29.9.2010.

DLDwomen as co-host of Regine Sixt's Ladies Wiesn

Alexandra Schiel — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:07:38 +0100

This Monday, 20 September 2010, DLDwomen Speaker Regine Sixt hosted her traditional „SIXT Ladies Wiesn" at the Oktoberfest in Munich.

Over 800 great women from society, business, science and culture attended three hours filled with joy, exciting surprises and lots of fun - boys had to stay outside.
As Sixt is one of the closest DLDwomen Founding Partners, Steffi Czerny and the DLDwomen Team were able to add their network to this outstanding Ladies Lunch. Thanks again to Regine and her wonderful team for this great opportunity.

Picture to the left: DLDwomen Speaker Christine Haderthauer, DLDwomen Founder Steffi Czerny and Uschi Dämmrich v. Luttitz

Dorothee Ritz (Microsoft), Susanne Kloess (Accenture) and Steffi Czerny DLDwomen Founding Partner Regine Sixt and Friends

The labour market in transition

Lukas Kubina — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:31:04 +0100

A special insert of the past FAS edition addressed the question, why there are so little women in top positions. Amongst others, the piece mentions Catherine Hakim. The DLD friend correctly labels theories that are based on discrimination and patriarchies as anachronistic.

She further explains that these theories already neglect the impact of the anti-baby-pill which empowered women to decide themselves deliberately about the timing and whether or not they want to have children (the first time in history). The risk of sudden pregnancy that forced women out of their job has nearly disappeared.

The American social psychologist Alice Eagly sees a change in the working environment (especially in the service sector) that absorbs more and more female work force and eventually results in a broader class of women in top positions. It's about brainpower these days, the machines take care of what was done by muscles. Some numbers actually could suggest that men have had their best moment: In the US, 51 percent of the better paid jobs in the middle management, the administration and the services are taken by women. That is a truly new development!

Please watch Catherine's keynote on "Erotic Capital" at DLDwomen 2010 below:

ComScore acquires Nedstat

Lukas Kubina — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:35:46 +0100

ComScore announced the acquisition of Nedstat, an Amsterdam-based provider of web analytics and video measurement solutions for approx. $36.7 million.

Nedstat has a proven track record of helping companies improve the effectiveness and profitability of online marketing programs. ComScore says the purchase will help the company accelerate its global expansion strategy, particularly in European markets and strengthen its Unified Digital Measurement (UDM). "The Nedstat platform helps us deliver substantial additional value to clients, expand existing customer relationships, and broaden the scope of our addressable market by adding new and unique digital business analytics to comScore's offerings," said Magid Abraham, comScore President & CEO.

For more background information, check out Magid on the DLD 2010 panel "Data & Identity" here and read a related blog entry on TechCrunch.

Additionally, please find Linda Abraham's introduction to the DLDwomen panel „The Future of Media from a Female Perspective" where she presents first findings of the „Women on the Web" DLDwomen & comScore study below: