In September 2009 I had the opportunity to give the keynote speech for the opening of the Academic Year at my Alma Mater Maastricht University. At the beginning of this speech I talk about the fact that I still remembered the keynote during the opening of the Academic Year 18 years earlier when I started my studies (given by prime minister Ruud Lubbers), but the the text was not available anywhere online. I then said that I expected that if someone would try to find the text of my speech 18 years later, they would probably find it online. Well, until a few days ago that was not the case, but I just saw that Maastricht University uploaded part of their archive onto YouTube, including my talk.

Although the speech is a bit dated, I was surprised to see how many of the points that I mentioned are still the same today. The topic is New Leadership, where I put a lot of emphasis on using social media as a leader. Even the services that I mentioned 2 years ago are still the main ones that I think a (business) leader should use today: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I had never seen this footage, so it’s nice to find it back online.

If the embedded video above should not work or if you want to watch it in a larger window, here is the link to the original on YouTube.

The Opening of the Academic Year is a very traditional event, if you have never seen it is also nice to watch the arrival of the cortege (all the professors in traditional robes) before the official Opening here on YouTube (this one is from 2011).

KPCB Internet Trends 2011

Yesterday KPCB partner Mary Meeker once again gave one of her famous talks at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. I always look forward to her slides, she has access to amazing data and manages to find great angles to explain her vision of the future. Just reading her slides inspires me to think about where the world – and especially my own businesses – are heading. I embed her presentation above, in case you can’t open it you can also find the presentation here.

Yesterday’s talk focused for a large part on mobile. Mary Meeker is extremely bullish about mobile and I fully agree with her. In my opinion every company has to work on mobile sites and apps in order to stay relevant, not only for the future but now already. Should you make iPad apps or Android? Well, you may hear a lot about Apple iPhone & iPad apps, but Android phones are bigger than the iPhone already (152 million vs. 129 million sold). Of course iOS users are generally more wealthy (Android also offers cheaper handsets), so you should not ignore them, but the real growth will take place with Android. Having an HTML5 solution would be even better of course, something Spil Games has been evangelizing for over a year already.

You can even make good money on mobile devices now, because mobile advertising is taking off and showing huge growth. According to Mary Meeker’s data 250 companies out of the Forbes 1000 launched mobile ad campaigns already! Combine that with the fact that doing micro-payments on a phone is not that difficult and that many people are more willing to pay for mobile content than for PC content (how many apps did you buy on your laptop recently vs. apps on your mobile phone?), and you will see the huge opportunity mobile presents.

Several Internet companies now already see more than half of their traffic coming from mobile devices. Music service Pandora for example, but also Twitter gets more than 50% of its traffic from mobile. Facebook ‘only’ gets 33% of its page views from mobile, but if you realize that this was just 1% 3 years ago you can see the shift that is happening in the market. Did you know that now already more phones and tablets are shipped every year than laptops and desktops?

When you don’t live in the US it is clear that there is a lot of activity happening in the Internet space outside China. But many US companies don’t seem to realize that. It happened so often to me already that I wanted to book a ticket or a hotel room, but that I could not do that without a US address or credit card… Lost opportunities, because I am sure I am not the only one. Luckily Mary Meeker also points this out by sharing with the audience that 81% of users of the top global Internet companies are outside the US. She also pointed out that China added more Internet users in the past 3 years than there are in the whole US of A.

Another interesting part of her presentation is about interfaces. These have transformed from text only in the early 1980s to graphical user interfaces in the 1990s and 2000s. And now touch screens are taking over. My kids already don’t understand why my laptop has no touch screen like their iPads, but very soon they will also not understand why my laptop does not answer when they talk to it. Because according to the presentation online audio might be the next big thing. Apple timed the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S well it seems, and also Spotify’s integration in Facebook was also at the right moment!

Mary Meeker also talks about some global trends that she sees. One slide has stayed on top of my mind since I read the presentation a couple of hours ago: More people now have access to a wireless signal (85%) than to electricity (80%)! That’s how fast the world is changing. The global information flow is truly global now, and it’s extremely fast (check out her chart on Tweets from Japan 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after the earthquake).

Another great slide is about privacy, a concept that I feel is outdated. I don’t believe in hiding who you are, just like you can’t do that when you live in a small village – and because of the Internet and social networks the world is becoming a big village. More and more you can’t even hide anymore, even if you want to(ever been tagged in a picture on Facebook?).

I want to end this post with what Mary Meeker wrote about this (emphasis added by me), I fully agree with her:

It’s hard to hide. The ‘truth’ is often just a photo/click–send away.

‘Clean, well-lighted place to do business?’ ‘People are basically good?’

In a world with tremendous uncertainty – owing to the rapid ramp in always-on, connected citizens of the world, perhaps, the world is on the cusp of being safer than ever?

There are lots of sacrifices. This is new terrain.
Only time will tell how all this plays out.

Ogilvy China updated its infographic showing China’s social media equivalents – or copycats, as Western media loves to call them. Of course many of these started out as copycats, but most evolved into much more than the original Western website, either by adding additional functionalities or by localization of functions.

Interesting is that they now partially merged the SNS and microblogging categories. Services like Sina Weibo are so much more than Twitter is, that they come close to what Facebook offers the Western world.

One of the categories that Ogilvy added was light blogging service Tumbler, for which they suggested China copycats DianDian and Qing. It’s an interesting category that I still don’t really get. Setting up and posting to a blog is so simple, why use Tumbler for that?

Another new category is Purchase Sharing. I believe this might be a major one, especially in China where people love to show off everything they buy or want to buy. Western fashion diaries/blogs like lookbook.nu are a good example of this from the fashion industry, other sectors will probably follow.

I don’t agree with all equivalents (where is Lashou in the Groupon copycat section?), but it gives a nice overview of what’s happening on the Chinese Internet. It’s also a good way for Western companies to check out what their Chinese equivalents are up to, they may be able to learn a thing or two from them.

Click on the picture for a bigger version of the social media infographic, or see the original here. 

This morning my dad and I drove over to the Mao River, between Tianmashan and Dianshan Lake, about 35 minutes from my home in Shanghai. After running for two weekends around Sheshan and Tianmashan we were looking for a place to run with less traffic and people. On Google Maps I found a small road next to a river close to Sun Island, and it turned out to be a good place to run.

Getting up was a bit difficult, even though I did not drink too much at Christine Lu’s Affinity party at CVRVE last night (thanks for the nice champagne and cocktails Christine!). But once we arrived at the river I was fully awake, especially because the circumstances to run were fantastic: a clear blue sky and mild temperatures (around 20 Celsius at 8:30 AM).

The road along the river turned out to be even better than I had imagined. No holes, with nice trees and plants on both sides of the road. There was hardly any traffic on the road, because most entrances were closed off with oil drums. Just a few scooters, an occasional local car and a few peasants working in the fields, most of whom were very surprised when they saw 2 foreigners running by, especially when they were also greeted nicely.

The river was more busy than the road, every few minutes a boat sailed by. It’s nice to see them pass by when you run, I enjoyed watching them. We also saw some smaller boats, but they mainly stayed on the small canals to the villages that lined the river.

The nature around the Mao river consists of a lot of lakes and canals, it reminds me a bit of an area in Holland not too far from my parents home (for Dutch people, the area around Giethoorn). Even the high bridges over the canals were similar.

My dad and I did a 21.1 km run (a half marathon distance) as preparation for the New York Marathon that takes place exactly 3 weeks from today. Although I used to find a half marathon distance quite long, it seems to be getting shorter and shorter when you get in better shape. We took it easy today and ran the distance in less than 2 hours, including some stops to take pictures and take in the scenery around us. We were both not tired at all, I felt like I could have run a bit longer without any problem. A good sign for the marathon, although I know from experience that the marathon only gets very hard after about 30 kilometers.

If you are looking for a nice place to run in Shanghai for long distance practice, this might be a good place to check out. On weekdays it may be very busy on the highways, but on weekend mornings you should be there in about 35 minutes from Hongqiao and maybe another 10 minutes more from downtown. You’ll need your own car though, because finding a taxi there might be tricky.

On Friday the kids had their annual Open Day at Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten, where the parents can spend some time with the children in their class rooms. Last year it was fun to see Scott in this regular school environment, so this year I of course blocked the morning in my calendar so I could join.

As usual there were lots of moms and grandparents at the open day, but hardly any fathers. In Scott’s class with about 20 kids I think there were only one or two other fathers. I think it’s a pity for them that they can’t take time off to see their kids play in school. Most of them have their owns businesses or are top business people, so they don’t have to live other people’s agendas. It’s important for the kids to see their parents, but for me it’s also important to see what kind of things Scott and Elaine learn during class and who their teachers and classmates are.

Two kids actually had no parents coming at all, I felt really sorry for them. If both Grace and me would not be able to come I would keep my kids home on a day like this. The two kids were now sitting with a teacher during the morning, while all others were happily playing with their parents.

We first went to Scott’s class, where the kids sang two songs for us (one in English and one in Chinese). Then they had to make a little man with paper, glue and some strings for the hair. The parents could help them, so most were done in about 10 minutes. Then it was free indoor playtime. The classroom has lots of games, books and a big collection of toys to play with. Scott first played with a train and with some cars and then picked 2 puzzles to make. He didn’t need my help, but he liked me being there.

Grace had already gone to Elaine’s class (the times overlapped a bit), and I stayed with Scott until all parents were leaving. Then I also walked over to Elaine’s classroom, where she was playing happily with a puzzle.

When she finished she cleaned up the puzzle (they learn that well in school) before starting to play with a hitting game with a plastic hammer. She is such a sweet girl: when I told her to hit me on the head with her hammer, she said “no daddy, that hurts!”.

It’s nice to observer my kids in the classroom. They really seem to enjoy school. Every morning when I take them to school they are happy to be there and during the Open Day they were proud to show us their skills.

When it was time to go home Elaine actually did not want to leave. Only when she saw that all other kids were leaving as well she packed her toys away and went to change her indoor shoes for outdoor ones. I am happy to see that she is happy in school, and also that Scott is excited to go to school every day.

Hyves has been the dominant social network in Holland since it started, but Facebook is catching up quickly (or maybe they are already bigger now, not sure). The guys at Google Translate seem to know that as well, because if you translate Hyves (with capital H) from Dutch to English you get… Facebook!

Today is my birthday. Every year I wonder what media will be used most to congratulate me. A few years ago it used to be the phone, then it was email (remember the e-greeting cards?) or SMS, then Twitter and this year it’s almost only Facebook. Interesting to observe this shift.

It also reflects the social media I use most for communications – well, not completely true, email is still #1, but nowadays I am more on Facebook than on Twitter. Let’s see if that’s still the case next year or whether Google+ will have taken that position.

Talking about Google, just now I went to Google.com by coincidence (I normally use the Chrome address box to search) and what do I see? A Google birthday doodle. I was really surprised by this and wondered what web celebrity would share my birthday. So I hovered my mouse over the graphic and the text “Happy Birthday Marc!” appeared. Then I got it: when you’re logged into Google and open Google.com on your birthday this doodle will automatically appear. Pretty cool, I had never heard about this actually. Is this something new or has it been around for a long time already?

This morning my wife was shopping at Carrefour and she was looking at some of the Halloween costumes on sale for our kids. She noticed a picture of a girl that looks a lot like Elaine, so she took better look. Then she got a shock because she realized it was a picture of Elaine!

Turns out that a Chinese company had used an older picture of Elaine, badly photoshopped it with their halloween custome and put it on the packaging material of their products. Of course we never gave permission for this. The products are sold in many stores in China, among others Carrefour and Walmart. Not sure yet what we will do, will discuss with my wife when I am back in China tomorrow.

By the way, it’s not only Chinese companies that do this, something similar happened once with Nokia: one of my Flickr pictures ended up in a campaign for the Nokia E65!

Update (Oct. 11, 2011): Grace contacted the company, after some discussions they told us that they used Elaine’s picture for 2 products and agreed to change all the packaging with her picture on it. Let’s see if they will really do it. Hopefully no need for a court case.