On Creative Leadership. Leading Like the Great Conductors.

Mai 9th, 2012 • Underway
Tags: Creativity, itay talgam, leadership, Presentation, TED, Truth

Not too long ago I had the pleasure to get to know Itay Talgam after a presentation in Berlin. Itay Talgam is conductor, scholar of Leonard Bernstein and he conducted many orchestras in Europe. He was the first Israeli conductor to perform with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Leipzig Opera house. In Israel, he has conducted and recorded with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Israeli Opera, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Plus he is a very interesting and charismatic guy.

So why do I get to know a conductor? Itay was presenting his vision as part of an agency event. And even though I had no clue what a director actually does, and even though I embarrassed myself more than once with my lack of knowledge, I have to admit this was one of the most interesting and inspiring presentations I have ever seen. Here is Itay’s TED talk on leading like the great conductors – a must see.

Even if you don’t want to see the whole 20 minutes. Check out the last 5 minutes…and you will want to see the rest.

TED. How Algorithms Shape our World.

September 3rd, 2011 • Knowledge
Tags: Algorithms, Mathematics, People, Presentation, TED, Truth, World

Actually I am convinced TED talks are not ideal content for this blog. This time I want to make an exception. Kevin Slavin argues that we’re living in a world designed for — and increasingly controlled by — algorithms. And if you read this you get the impression he is right.

Brilliant presentation. Take the 15 minutes to watch it.

Thanks to Jeroen Matser for the link

Wikileaks. The Revolution has Begun and it is Digitised.

Dezember 1st, 2010 • Interview, People, Underway
Tags: assange, Interview, People, Politics, TED, We like, wikileaks, World

While the whole world is discussing Wikileak’s impact I am currently more interested whether Julian Assange is going to become Time’s Person of the Year or – alternatively – will be assassinated, disappear, face prison because of ‘sexual assault charges’ (LOL). But no matter what you think about him and the way Wikileaks works – it is extremely disturbing to see how many inhumane, deeply anti-democratic barbarians hide behind the faces of western politicians. As Noam Chomsky put it – the latest outcry over WikiLeaks cables reveals a profound hatred for democracy by U.S. government officials. Just think of Sarah Palin yelling for Julian Assange to be “hunted down with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders” (which means he’s safe for a decade at least). No, in western civilizations we don’t usually murder people on the street. But indeed, I may be wrong here…

The best comment I have read so far on Wikileaks was published by Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald.

His thesis ‘Wikileaks reveals more than just government secrets‘. According to him no entity by now that produced as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks, for authoritarian minds. Strangely enough, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.

And the economist says:

The careerists scattered about the world in America’s intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America’s unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.

The new Leak this button

Whatever happens to Julian Assange – the genie left the bottle. Wikileaks will clone itself and will be copied. It’s not a fight against a site that our Politicians are pretending to wage. It’s the same old crusade against free speech that business organizations have already lost – let’s call it the socialization of political processes. To simplify the inevitable I would like to introduce a new button to lower entrance barriers for future internal document releases – if anyone can please add an embed code to the design top right?

But you know what? It probably won’t matter if Julian Assange disappears or not – the concept will prevail. Starfishes have become more persistent than spiders – and WikiLeaks clearly is a starfish.

Wikileaks must be uncomfortable because that is its mission. A mission that traditional press has not taken seriously anymore for decades, living comfortably under the safe cover of common sense. A little humility is long overdue for these people. But one more thing is stunning – the shock about the inferiority of (not only) U.S. diplomacy. We simply like to believe that the ones who are running our systems know what they are doing. Bad news – they don’t. And that’s a key motive behind the smear campaign against WikiLeaks. Wartard thinks…

The leaks made clear that world diplomatic relations between countries are no different from our own shitty relations with each other in regular society, like that contractor who disappeared with the deposit I gave him for my sink repair or the dodgy mechanic who swapped out my tires when he fixed my brake pads. (…)

My favourite leak is that US and UK diplomats are shitting bricks about the current state of Pakistan and the fate of its ever growing nuclear arsenal. Oh really? I’ve been shitting about that since 2003. It’s only a shocking revelation because the media never reports it. So when we find out that diplomats have no idea who controls the nukes there, that 100,000 Pakistani personnel are involved in the nuclear program there and the Taliban captured the Swat valley with collusion from Islamacists in the Pakastani military and government, you know that smuggled chunk of highly enriched uranium is gonna go on the market in some scumbag Albanian dive bar very soon.

Read more »

SixthSense. Redefining Man-Machine-Interaction.

November 18th, 2009 • Experimental, Tech, Tools
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Gesture, innovation, Interfaces, Interview, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, TED, Touch, Trends, World

The latest series of Ted takes us to India. Pranav Mistry is a student at the notorious innovation factory M.I.T and inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. In this demo he explains this new type of men-machine interaction – including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. Fantastic stuff.

TED. Stefan Sagmeister on leaving everything behind.

Oktober 3rd, 2009 • 2 comments Allgemein
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Design, Ideas, Philosophy, Presentation, Sabbatical, Sagmeister, TED, visual, World

The most recent TED session features design god Stefan Sagmeister talking about his time off. Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. Pretty cool, but why does he remind me of Arnold Schwarzenegger?