by JAK | Mar 19, 2015 | big ideas, TED
TED 2015 is on right now in Vancouver and while I am not there (one day:) I have been watching the various media streams when I have a moment. What I was struck by on the first day was what I think is a profound dissonance between a couple of presentations on the...
by JAK | Feb 19, 2015 | culture
So there I was at 9:30am and the water is freezing cold. It had seemed like a good idea a few weeks earlier during the summer heat. And in I went because – after all it was my birthday and I had promised myself a swim/snorkel at Goat Island. How often it seems...
by JAK | Jan 8, 2015 | big ideas, culture, industry futures
Back in September last year at the 2014 MORGO conference I was able to try out the Samsung Gear Oculus VR device and I was very impressed to see a swim by of a Blue Whale and more on the screen. VR as a concept; has been around for quite a while and like many others,...
by JAK | Dec 5, 2014 | culture, video
Someone wiser than me once said that “life is wasted on the living” (Douglas Adams) and I know what he meant. I’ve also been lucky enough to meet people who have had near death experiences and one side effect is to make sure that every day counts and...
by JAK | Oct 22, 2014 | big ideas, culture
Today I heard 3 economists discussing the Piketty book with regards to the NZ economy. The Piketty book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” is I suspect a mostly unread best seller that many of us think we should read but where to start… And more...
by JAK | Oct 1, 2014 | big ideas, culture, TEDx, video
Back on August 16th, we in Auckland celebrated TEDxAuckland # 5 with another series of inspiring talks from locals with big ideas and great stories. Now a number of those 2014 talks are online and you can check them out. One of the talks I was most looking forward to...
by JAK | Aug 17, 2014 | culture, TEDx
Today is the day after TEDxAuckland 2014. It is almost too soon to tell how good it really was. That may not make much sense but every TEDx talk has at least 3 lives. These are: 1/ On the day – impressions & impacts from the live audience and secondary...
by JAK | Aug 11, 2014 | big ideas, culture
One of the ironies of culture is that it is often invisible to those swimming along in it (in a manner of speaking.) By that I mean when we want to see change in a culture the first step is often quite confronting to those who see their “norms” and in many...
by JAK | Jul 25, 2014 | big ideas
Popular location based mobile app FourSquare has made itself a case study on how not to communicate or manage its users. A few days ago they stopped their legacy app from working and insisted that all users download a new app called swarm. That new app has all kinds...
by JAK | Jun 19, 2014 | big ideas, general business, industry futures, WordPress
Last night Matt Mullenweg told the story of WordPress and how it had all happened. It was a kind of a one man solo theatre performance with a stream of anecdotes counterpointing each step along the journey. I have been lucky enough to hear Matt speak a few times over...