Richard Florida @ Google & Banff

I was really lucky to watch a CBC National video report and “discovered” Richard Florida tonight. (smile) I am going to pay attention to Rich’s ideas and I have subscribed to his blog. Check out his latest book - “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.”

Here is a video of Rich interviewed by George on The Hour.

The following is an hour long video of Rich speaking at Google, NYC.

And if you are really keen and have nothing better to do (smile), then check out another hour long video of Rich speaking at Google, Headquater in CA (essentially the same speech but with a different set of Q&A starting at 48:45).

P.S. On a personal note, Rich reminds me of some of the great U of Toronto professors that I had. Great job in bringing Rich to Toronto. And I am looking forward to listening to Rich live at Banff World TV Festival.

P.P.S. Here is one of Rich’s recent blog post on Jane Jacobs.

P.P.P.S. I wonder if Rich gets some money from this BMW ad? (smile) By the way, I think I actually first read about Rich here in this UT magazine article.

Chief Design Officer - Johnson & Johnson

In the current issue of The International Design Magazine, Chris Hacker talks about his job as Chief Design Officer of the $61 billion Johnson & Johnson. The article is not the engaging but the pix and the captions are worth a scan.

Bill Buxton to deliver opening keynote at nextMEDIA

It is wonderful to know the insightful Bill Buxton will be delivering the opening keynote at nextMEDIA (June 6 - 8th, 2008 at Banff),

Bill Buxton, Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research will deliver the opening keynote address at nextMEDIA - The Future of Digital Content. In his keynote address Bill will speak to emerging trends around physical computing and a human-centered approach to technological design and innovation.

I consider Bill Buxton one of the Great Minds of Our Time and have featured him in the series. I look forward to attend the keynote.

Here are two of Bill's recent work,

• A Familiar Problem. BusinessWeek.com, February 6th, 2008.
• Surface and Tangible Computing, and the "Small" Matter of People and Design. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers, Vol. 51, 24-29.

Creative capitalism by Bill Gates

First of all, here is Bill Gates’ World Economic Forum 2008 speech where he introduced his concept of “creative capitalism” (full speech linked directly from Microsoft press release area). Incidentally, by chance or by design, I can’t stop thinking of the term’s similarity with “creative destruction“, a phrase popularized by the economist Joseph Schumpeter.

Here are some news report on “creative capitalism”,

1. It takes a capitalist to change a capitalist - SiliconValley.com
   
2. Re-Thinking Social Responsibility - Forbes
3. Face-off: Is Gates right on creative capitalism? - CNet
4. What Bill Gates should’ve said at Davos - San Jose Mercury News (You can watch a video replay here.)

I will take some time to read and digest Bill’s speech before I comment. Incidentally, by me taking some time to comment, there is a good chance some insightful economists will have come out and comment on the ideas in Bill’s speech and then it will be easy for me to appear smarter than I am. (smile)

A Brief History of ideas Cloud

Inspired by A Brief History of Time, I promise to not include even one equation in this blog entry. (smile)

A Brief History of ideas Cloud

The following is a short creative journey in the naming of this blog.

The idea of "ideas Cloud" originated from the term "Tag cloud". The word "ideas" has become a core part of any brands/lovemarks that I create for my own use. For example, ideas Revolution for the group name, ideas Vacuum for the film and video division, etc.

To me, Cloud is so versatile as it can rain, snow, hail, etc. And we have Chinook cloud/arch in Calgary that just looks spectacular (my title photo is one example).

The term "ideas Cloud" is new and unique enough that,

1. As of this morning, there were only 2,890 Google search results,
   
2. No one has used it in the way that I plan to, and
   
3. I am getting the 9th Google ranked search result for "ideas cloud" (as a pair of quoted words) at the moment and I haven't even started. (smile)
   

Once I settled on the name of "ideas Cloud" for the blog, I went about to create a catch phrase that will go well with it. I started with "ideas Cloud rains ideas" and liked it for a few days until I played around with a few other phrases a bit more and looked at the following,

• ideas Cloud makes ideas
• ideas Cloud creates ideas
• ideas Cloud dreams ideas
• ideas Cloud generates ideas

and then a friend suggested the most scientifically correct one (thanks Gwen),

• ideas Cloud precipitates ideas

At the end, I realized I love this phrase the most and I am using it,

• ideas Cloud dreams ideas

The word "dreams" evoke a lovely feeling and also this quote to me (emphasis mine),

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
- Thomas E. Lawrence

As it has been with my company blog for the last 17 months, I plan to blog about Business, Sci. & Tech., Law, innovation, Film & TV, Medical Science, Politics and whatever interests me. Just so you know, I aspire to make mistakes faster.

My friends, welcome to ideas Cloud!
It's turtles all the way down!
I hope you will have fun
exploring,
learning,
and
making mistakes
with me.

P.S. I actually started writing this post on Jan 3, 2008 but I backdated it to January 1st, 2008 so it flows and explains things better. I am in no way trying to create the same option backdating SEC problem as Steve Jobs. (smile)