disclosure: this is a cross post of something i did for landmark ventures' "doing it for good" group on linkedin...

How would you go about building a better future by leveraging the power of the Internet?

That was the question my friend Matt McAlister brought to his employers at the Guardian and from that question was created the Activate ’09 Summit. I attended the inaugural event held at the Guardian’s headquarters in London on July 1st. As one of their editors so ably states, "The Guardian has a clear purpose to deliver high quality independent liberal journalism in the pursuit of social justice.” The summit was designed to get into the heads of the people (activators) driving the most important changes in politics, society, technology and the economy. It was a day meant to balance technological achievement against developing world need. There were a number of fascinating talks and panels, but related to philanthropy and social change, a few were truly inspiring.

Dr. Sugata Mitra spoke passionately about his “hole in the wall” experiments in learning methodologies, underway in rural areas and urban slums of India and Cambodia. The driving force behind this effort is the concept of minimally invasive education. Children learn computer skills on their own without direct intervention from teachers via self-taught methods such as exploration, discovery and peer coaching from other students. Highly motivational learning environments are fostered which leverage a child’s natural curiosity and helps to develop their problem solving skills.

Dr. Richard Baraniuk of Rice University spoke about the open source education platform Connexions that he founded that provides free textbooks and course materials to millions of students yearly. There is a mentoring aspect to his initiative, which is fascinating; some basic skills that our western civilization takes for granted when exposed within developing communities are helping to dramatically transform these communities. Programs such as Connexions would not be possible without earth flattening technologies such as the Internet, web and emerging media innovations. 

There were many other topics discussed on this great day. I’ve included links to some sites mentioned above and some very good write-ups others have published regarding the summit. At the end of the day Matt and I were discussing the potential agenda for Activate ’10. His initial idea was to bring together developing world opportunities such as the two I mentioned above (and many others available via the links below) and attempt to partner them with solutions providers such as philanthropic individuals and organizations. Now this is not all about throwing cash at problems. It’s also about providing exposure to issues that skilled folks can contribute to personally by sharing their knowledge. I thoroughly look forward to the event next year and beyond.

Primary site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/activate
Dr. Sugata Mitra: http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com
Dr. Richard Baraniuk: http://cnx.org
Matt McAlister: http://twitter.com/mattmcalister
Roo Reynolds: http://rooreynolds.com/2009/07/01/guardian-activate-09/
Martin Belam: http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/07/guardian_activate_1.php

finally here's an audioboo snippet i did at the end of the day at activate:

MODERATOR:
Steve Bastasini, Cerebra

PANELISTS:
Eghosa Omoigui, Intel Capital
Peter Rip, Crosslink Capital
Michael S. Dunn, Hearst Interactive Media
Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures

After a period of caution about the viability of semantic technologies, investors seem more willing to fund semantic start-ups right now. And even with the economy in distress, semantics is managing to create excitement amongst the VCs. Semantic search has been hot for a couple of years - the possibility of finding the next Google being just too enticing - but the focus seems now to be shifting to enterprise and consumer apps where as Jim Hendler famously said "a little semantics goes a long way." Money is going into enterprise software, such as business intelligence tools, and innovative consumer apps based around social networks, smarter information filtering and productivity enhancement.

So what do the VCs want to see in the business plans for semantic start-ups now? Are there still plenty of good opportunities out there for entrepreneurs or have the best ideas already claimed their share of available capital?

Panel: Venture Capital Outlook from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

IT Conversations | Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators | Michael S. Dunn (Free Podcast)

i've been friends with jon for years, so it was nice to catchup with him at the guardian's activate summit in london on july 1st - one of topics we discussed over lunch was the semtech 2009 conference i spoke at in june...

in this podcast for doug kaye's fantastic it conversation network jon and i speak about the state of semantic technologies and linked data related to the media industry...

one of the panels i participate in at the semantic technology conference held in san jose...

MODERATOR:
Greg Stuart, gregstuart. com

PANELISTS:
Keith DeWeese, Tribune Company-Tribune Interactive
Evan Sandhaus, New York Times Company
Paul Berry, HuffingtonPost. com
Jim Stanley, CBS Interactive - Technology & News
Michael S. Dunn, Hearst Interactive Media

the discussion featured representatives from major media companies who are seriously investigating or presently using semantic technologies in their sites. the conversation focused on the business and operational benefits of using semantic technologies in publishing and media sites.

Publishers Panel from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

Semantic Advertising Panel from Morton Swimmer on Vimeo.

Mike Dunn at the New York Semantic Web Meetup from Marco Neumann on Vimeo.

disclosure

i am not a journalist (which should be very evident by my writing style), but rather am an emerging media technologist who has worked with and for some of the worlds largest media entities, normally as a cto - currently at hearst interactive media...

speaking at asu

in late march, i traveled out to phoenix to speak to dan gillmor's program at asu, the knight center for digital media entrepreneurship, which is part of the walter cronkite school of journalism and mass communication - i participated in 4 different sessions, a few made up of j-school students and a few made up of students focused on digital media and entrepreneurship related to emerging media - my talk and the conversations of the day focused on the changing nature of journalism, especially from a technology perspective...

since that trip, i've been traveling a ton and very busy (work & life) thus i'm overdue publishing both my thoughts on the day at asu and my presentation for broader consumption, so i wanted to get this post done for those who've asked - sorry for the delay and sorry in advance for the length of this post since it's meant as more of a reference than one of my normal posts...

a little background, while dan runs the program, my friend cj cornell is entrepreneur in residence and a member of dan's faculty - cj and i worked together earlier in our careers - we've stayed in contact so he's the person who proposed that i be invited to speak at the program...

setup

so an overview of my talk and the various sessions in which i participated - i started with some basic assumptions and recommendations: cj was using twitter to both publish soundbites from the sessions and to gather questions from those who could not attend in person - this is a great mechanism for broadening involvement, a natural next step is to show a live stream of the interaction on a monitor during the live sessions, makes it a little more lively for the presenter but creates a nice live feedback mechanism in my opinion - i also differentiated the "i" and "we" aspects of my talk, "i" being my personal opinions and experiences not related to my current role and "we" being definitive topics that do represent my current employer that i am at liberty to publicly discuss, i think this is really important to state, though common sense its rarely in my experience clearly articulated - given my role i also stated that certain not yet public aspects of our projects could not be discussed - that was it for setup...

background

i spent some time providing background on hearst, my role there and my career - i won't go in to the same level of detail here since the sites i linked to will provide you with more detail if desired - so i explained that hearst is a private, mostly domestic focused, diversified media company, one of the nation's largest - its made up of broadcast, newspaper, magazine, entertainment, business-to-business and interactive focused operating companies - my technology leadership role is diverse as well, comprising venture, enterprise, strategic relationships, innovation and emerging media focused responsibilities - all pretty typical of other cto roles i've had during my career, such as corporate cto of time-warner; cto of dell online; cto of encoda and technology leadership roles i've held with other media, entertainment and advertising companies - i went over various board and advisory roles i've held or currently hold and relationships i hold with academic institutions such as mit media lab (sponsor), kellogg (coordinator) and columbia (mentor)...

my role

i then provided some detail on certain aspects of my current role: for enterprise technology i provided an overview of what it takes to foster technology initiatives that are meant to benefit an entire corporation, how to focus on roi when recommending technology initiatives and the challenges that exist for a diverse company who's numerous industries are in a constant state of change due to competitive landscape & customer affinities; for venture technology i reviewed some of the companies we've invested in recently and motivations behind them such as pandora, eink, brightcove, sling media and sphere which were all minority investments and ugo, kaboodle and 1up which were all acquisitions - i then reviewed the scope and methodology behind my technology due diligence process which i won't go through here since it is already well documented via blog posts and supported via my wiki; i then reviewed what strategic relationships mean for a large media entity (some folks call this vendor management) especially related to leveraging scale across numerous digital media efforts: such as embracing best practices for operations and development, commoditizing platforms, developing consistent mechanisms for technology and product feature assessment, and finally how to leverage relationships for traffic growth, syndication, sponsorships and advertising - so instead of lots of silos and one offs, how to instead create uniform approaches that from a cost and revenue perspective benefit all involved...

future of journalism

the following aspects of the presentation are contained in the pdf (at end of post) that i've provided for downloading (or for subscribers it's in the rss 2.0 enclosure) so i'll just summarize here: i discussed the changing nature of journalism and the need to embrace becoming a networked journalist - i recommended that the students follow established journalists who have embraced digital and social media (jay rosen, ryan sholin, steve outing, dwight silverman, mathew ingram and their own dan gillmor are just a few), that they subscribe to beatblogging.org for its excellent posts and podcasts all about the changing nature of covering a beat, moving from traditional print to community building via blogging, i went over my belief (and many others) that all journalists need to start considering themselves multimedia creators and i recommend ryan sholin's post on alternative business models for news from a similar session at syracuse university that he held at newhouse; that they read steve outing's excellent post on digital news production; i recommended a number of emerging tools that they should experiment with for news gathering, research, publishing, distribution and community engagement: friendfeed, social median, yauba, zemanta, filtrbox and adaptive blue were those that i suggested but i also recommended that they develop a proficiency for trying out emerging tools as a way of staying current and find what works best for them; i recommended that they look at emerging online news sites such as hearst's seattlepi, now public and outside.in...

i then went over the differences i'm seeing in communication methods leveraged by social tools which i've blogged about previously so i won't rehash here but i thought it was important for students to experiment with a variety of tools and platforms and understand that they aren't all created equal nor universally applicable to every interaction or requirement - so pick the right tool for the job...

semantic technologies

given the audience i thought it was important to provide an overview of semantic web technologies and why learning about emerging content publishing capabilities such as these are so important not only for those already in the media but especially for those seeking to enter the industry, namely what it'll mean for the changing nature of journalism and the newsroom of the future (pointed them to an excellent post by john cass, formerly of forrester research) - simply stated semantic technologies provide a way for information and services on the web to be defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines desiring to utilize web content systemically - for future journalists it can give them the ability to leverage social media mining tools to determine which stories are of most interest to a community, giving the journalist the information and metrics to incentivize investigating in greater detail as well as enter the conversation proactively - i'm a member of the semantic web community in nyc, having hosted a well received semantic web meetup at the hearst tower in april and then the following week meeting up with tim berners-lee and other research focused semantic web technologists at mit in boston, the consensus seems to be that these technologies, while nascent from a broad business perspective, are extremely active amongst computer scientists, researchers and the w3c.org - for those in the media it can and will be a valuable tool in our kit, both as aspects of the content management systems used to publish and as seperate research and collaboration tools used to gather information and interact...

entrepreneurship

i finished up with a session for the students who are part of the entrepreneurial program, allowing about a dozen teams to first pitch me their startup ideas, then i ask them a few followup questions and then i provided them feedback and gave some recommendations - i heard some great ideas and had a lot fun interacting with these very passionate students, as a parent of a college student i can safely stay that these kids are getting a solid educational foundation that they'll be able to leverage immediately upon graduating...

overall, i was really impressed with the way dan, cj (i had a nice dinner with them in downtown phoenix after the packed day) and the rest of the faculty are preparing these young journalists and entrepreneurs for their future - they're getting the traditional grounding of j-school but layered with a strong influence from digital media creativity and startup innovation skillset, hence their future's bright but different than those that preceeded them...

download pdf of presentation

in today's highly social online world i've noticed a trend over the last few years that i think will really change the way we seek, receive and share our experience and knowledge with others - i refer to it as open sourcing our experience...

last summer i posted the technology due diligence process that i've developed after years of being responsible for performing venture and acquisition related analysis of the technology and product development utilized by companies seeking funding or for sale. i originally posted the process in advance of a venture related media summit that i was hosting at my building (hearst tower) but i'd been sharing it with start-ups and other vc's for years. by posting it to my blog though i basically open sourced my experience so others could both leverage it as is or take it as a starting point and add to it in a way that makes sense for their specific needs. since posting it i've gotten lots of positive feedback and some start-ups coming to visit us have even shown up with answers to my tech dd questions already prepared in advance of our first meeting...

another aspect of open sourcing your experience is mentoring, something i've been doing for years, both through formal programs and informally upon request. mentoring has been around forever, but today's online social tools make it easy and convenient, both for those with knowledge to share and for those seeking a mentor...

social tools such as friendfeed, twitter and facebook make it very easy to ask questions, provide answers and generally share your experience in a very straight forward way...

"Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices."

i'm pretty apolitical by nature, when pressed i usually state that i'm a libertarian, the passive non-freak show kind - i stayed out of this discussion when it happened online awhile back but being a cto for the latter half of my career and now that barack will be putting this into action, i felt the need to chime in along with the various reactions (scoble, riley, wag, rizzn, riley to rizzn & others) to the obama campaign's statement that if elected he would appoint a cto of usa...

in reading his technology page there really are multiple areas that need focus and not all of them are well suited for a traditional cto - btw, this is a great well meaning list of concerns that should be bipartisan, i couldn't find anything similar from mccain regarding the need for a cto however his campaign did have a good technology focused section on his site that was also worth reading...

this cnet article is a little more current and does a pretty good job of breaking down some of the issues and concerns, whether the cto role is more of an adviser or an active change agent...

of all the proposed candidates, i like vint cerf best - but i also think the role needs to be more clearly defined before the person filling it can be identified...

i also don't think it'll be an active cto in the prime of their career, commercial compensation is always better than what the government can afford - seems obvious but i haven't seen anyone w/ that take yet...

the government is a federation of entities that utilize technology in a wide variety of ways and degrees of competence (much like any big complex company btw) - for the cto to be successful they will need to understand how to motivate effective change via more than just the authority their role will grant them but rather via the ability to influence the various diverse organizations to want to change, its a subtle difference but a very important one in my experience...

who ever ends up being chosen, i wish them well and will enjoy watching them tackle the challenge...