An Interaction with Euan Semple

On Thursday evening two days back, Bjorn, Anubhav and Justin met up with Euan Semple for dinner. Honestly, here are some thoughts from our conversation ranging from Web 2.0, technology, innovation and credible content management.

Here is something that my Singaporean friends don’t get it. Passionate people like to get together to exchange ideas and synergize on issues that are at hand. So, why are we interested in talking about this meeting? Part of being an entrepreneur is about testing new and crazy ideas on others, and particularly against the experts or passionate evangelists in the area. The theme for the past few days together with the E27 group is about Web 2.0, technology and innovation. For that matter, the web 2.0 trend has not really taken off in Singapore as much as the way that it is going in Silicon Valley or other parts of the world. The venture capitalists in Silicon Valley are already gearing up their investments on the widgets, the content management and the technology springing up from the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

Here are some thoughts on our discussion on these subjects: Web 2.0, technology and innovation:

• Credible Content Management: We bounced off some ideas on credible content management and agreed that the academia has been traditionally the gatekeepers of expert knowledge. Similarly, you can also think of large corporations owning the old media, and how they can influence the kind of news which we see everyday. The emergence of web 2.0 can tip this balance. Bjorn brought up the example about a Berkeley academic using blogging to get his students to give him feedback and challenge his assumptions presented in his lectures. We agreed that the emergence of perspectives from both sides of the house is crucial in shaping the thinking of individuals in the face of information inundating the internet. Think about it this way: the kids of today are getting information overload and I foresee that education has to stop emphasizing on rote learning but to move in the direction in teaching them some basic logic to discern and distinguish between information.
• Consolidation of Bloggers: Most blogs usually start from an individual who want to voice out their opinions on various subjects. Slowly, as time goes by, they may suffer writers block or they may write on topics that intersects with other bloggers. It’s like in business trends, there will be a lot of startups in a new and emerging industry and subsequently, there will be a phase of consolidation (i.e. leverage buyouts or mergers of acquisitions).
• Unique Selling Point: Euan brought up this interesting discussion on how to distinguish yourself from a Web 2.0 or any relevant technology or innovation conference. When you start hearing the McKinsey, Bain and Accenture consultants talking, they will be flashing their slides with 2 by 2 matrices and the standard milestones and timelines chart. They are always in corporate. Of course, Web 2.0 brings about the common day to day people who will bring in a different perspective against the conventional stereotypes in understanding such an industry. It really tells about what makes you different.
• Speed of Information: No one realize how fast information can go. A story told by Euan, which I forgot the details, but here is how it goes: there was a conference where one of the invited speakers fell asleep during one of the seminars. Someone used a mobile phone and capture the person sleeping, and transmit the data to flickr, and within split seconds, someone modify the picture with the logo of the conference and write a blog entry about it. By the end of the lecture, they flashed out a powerpoint slide with that picture of the person sleeping and the logo together to show how interesting this conference was. Of course, the audience had a good laugh. The speed of transmitting and assimilating information is so fast that we have to be sharp and focus. That reminds me not to fall asleep during my conferences with the biologists and physicists.

Honestly, I enjoyed meeting people like Euan, who shares with us about the trends in Web 2.0 and how our world is changed. I feel that his unique perspective from being an old media person to become an advocate of the new media showed the change in how our world is changing day to day. I look forward to see him again in the future here in Singapore.

For more about our meeting with Euan Semple, you can continue reading the blogs of Justin, Mike Lim and Euan Semple.

About Euan Semple: Euan has 21 years of experience and was most recently BBC’s Director for Knowledge Management. He’s now working on his own as a management counsultant, advising corporations on the use of new collaborative tools such as wikis and blogs. You can read more on his blog: TheObvious?. He was here as a speaker for ix2006 Conference held in SMU.

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