e-G8 Forum: the G8 of Digital Leaders

I am honored to be invited by French President, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, to an invite-only gathering of global digital leaders, right before this year’s G8 Summit in Paris. The e-G8 Forum will include heads of state as well as key tech personalities like Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg all expected to attend. The event is hosted and chaired by Publicis Groupe CEO, Mr. Maurice Lévy.

President Sarkozy is currently heading the Group of Eight (G8) with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The major topic of the upcoming summit will be the state and the future of the Internet and the digital ecosystem on a global level. The goal of the e-G8 is to provide the G8 leaders with fresh-ideas and key insights.

Well, fresh ideas and digital know-how is something I can definitely bring into this diverse gathering in Paris. Since the publication of the Vision of Mobile Media for the year 2020 (Mocom2020) and several innovation projects at Ahead of Time, this is someting I had been asked before, but not by a President of a state. Exciting.

Discussions at the two-day Forum will be a mixture of plenary sessions and in-depth workshops where a wide variety of themes will be addressed, including:
- The Internet as key driver for economic growth
- The emergence of global digital citizenship
- The digital technologies of the future
- How best to promote innovation clusters
- The mobile revolution and its impact on commerce, media and advertising
- Privacy and IP protection

President Nicolas Sarkozy will himself deliver the opening keynote address.

Speech by DONOVAN & Monty Metzger: “The Social Web is The New Sixties”

The Social Web is The New Sixties!
How to catch your community and start a movement.

Legendary singer-songwriter Donovan and the social media expert Monty Metzger hold a collaborative keynote at the Artist Day of the Reeperbahn Campus, 2010.

The impact of social media on the music industry is fundamentally changing the profession. Your reputation is now defined as the sum of all conversations taking place amongst users and it’s happening now regardless of whether or not you are part of these conversations. Millions of blog posts. Viral videos. Reviews in forums. Sharing and remixing of music. Status updates via facebook, twitter and co. It is disruptive. It is distributed. It is in the hands of users and communities. And if you are an artist, producer or music professional it’s your responsibility to manage it.

“The dream of the Sixties, of me and the Beatles, was: how do we speak to everybody on the planet at the same time?” said Donovan. “Now we realize that the internet fulfills that dream of communicating with everyone. The Social web is the new Sixties as far as I’m concerned.”

Milestone: 1 million views on my YouTube Videos

I started to produce videos for my YouTube Channel in December 2006 and now I realized that I have reached over one million views, exactly 1,039,903 views today. Amazing!

Since the start I kept producing videos whenever and wherever I had time – at conferences, during business travel or at exciting events. So far I have published 136 Videos and most of them are business related or feature executive interviews. Although the videos are not as funny as Fred’s or exciting as Lady Gaga’s, people do like and watch them.

I met fascinating thought leaders, such as Lawrence Lessig, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jim Gilmore, Arianna Huffington or Jimmy Wales, inspiring business leaders, such as Hans Vestberg, Jonney Shih or Edward Borgerding, and published some provoking ideas, such as Mobile Future 2020 or the Global Cocreation Model.

It is interesting aswell to look at the most viewed videos – so here is my top ten:

• 163.000 Views: The Power of My Generation – World Economic Forum
• 141.000 Views: MOCOM 2020 – The Future of Mobile – Teaser
• 100.000 Views: MOCOM 2020 – The Future of Mobile Media and Communication
• 92.000 Views: How to become WEF Technology Pioneer?
• 68.000 Views: Tokio Hotel live in New York – Through the Monsoon (There is a long story – why I actually had been at this concert
• 51.000 Views: Best of U2 360 Tour concert in Toronto 2009
• 27.000 Views: Alvin Wang-Graylin on the status of mobile search in China
• 26.000 Views: Global Cocreation Model – Davos 2010
• 26.000 Views: Lawrence Lessig: How did Creative Commons start?
• 25.000 Views: Arianna Huffington, Monaco Media Forum MMF09 “News is not Beer”

Last but not least I want to thank all my viewers and readers for their support and feedback!!!

“Monty makes the extraordinary look simple”

THANK YOU Charles, for writing this eloquent recommendation for my LinkedIn Profile.

Dr. Charles Savage wrote:

Monty makes the extraordinary look simple. If the Future has significance for you, he has his finger on the pulse and knows how to help others see quickly the important trends that will impact all our business lives. In addition, he has an ability to take international groups of CEOs and other executives to other parts of the world, and in a relatively short time, give them a deep understanding of the dynamics of this part of the world. How he does it, I am not sure, but after seeing him in action, I know it’s real.

Slideshow of the Day – Mobile Media

My presentation yesterday about “Mobile Media” became the Slideshow of the Day today at Slideshare.net
Nice