TED TALK – Ethan Zuckerman “global voices”

International Panel: Seesmic, Ubergizmo, l’Atelier, CoolIris

Internationally Cool and Plugged In
02/27/09

On Wednesday, February 25th, we witnessed the latest and greatest in cool innovation and gadgets during Internationally Cool and Plugged In, the high-tech event we co-organized with GABA and FACC.

With a panel gathering such famous Web 2.0 entrepreneurs as Loic Le Meur (Seesmic), Eliane Fiolet and Hubert Nguyen (Ubergizmo), Soujanya Bhumkar (Cooliris), and Dominique Piotet (L’Atelier BNP Paribas), no wonder this networking night was a tremendous success with 150 guests!

Asked by Daniel Zimmerman from Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, and Angelika Blendstrup, Ph.D., Professional Business Communications,  the speakers gave us an original insight on the challenges, good and bad experiences, and even personal issues they faced while developing their start up.

This exciting talk was an opportunity to gain inspiration, and network in the heart of the Silicon Valley.

[from FACC write up]                                                                                                                                                                                           Photos by Karsten Lemm

CNN Money Chronicles 21 Dumbest Moments in Business in 2008

Image via Wikipedia

21 Dumbest Moments in Business 2008 (CNN Money)

This post was just too good to pass on. CNN. Money discusses the dumbest business moments – and probably some of the most difficult  -in 2008. Will we learn from them for 2009?

1) Detroit execs flying to D.C.: The chief executives of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), Chrysler and Ford spark outrage when they fly their corporate jets to Washington D.C. to beg Congress for a multi-billion dollar bailout.

2) Detroit execs driving to D.C.: Given a second chance after the private-jet fiasco to plead their case before Congress, the Detroit 3 take to the road.

3) Henry Paulson’s initial $700 bailout proposal: All of three pages, the Treasury Secretary seeks carte-blanche access to government funding with scant details on how or where the money will be spent.

4) The final bailout: When Congress is done with it, the measure balloons to 451 pages and is loaded with pork barrel spending – including, unbelievably, a cut in taxes on toy arrows and an extended tax break on “wool products.”

5) The Mozilo e-mail: The now former Countrywide CEO mistakenly broadcasts his thoughts on a customer’s plea for help with a home loan.

6) The iPhone ‘I am rich’ app: Eight people download a $999.99 screen-saver for Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone.

7) Paulson’s ‘bazooka’: The Treasury Secretary tells Congress in July he thinks he won’t actually need to use the funds he’s requesting to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

8) Tough talk from Fannie Mae: In May, CEO Daniel Mudd says his company will “feast” on weakened competition in the mortgage market.

9) Scandal at the Department of Interior: The agency’s Inspector General finds that staffers were taking gifts, having sex and engaging in illegal drug use with employees of some of the oil companies they oversee.

10) GM’s Lutz on global warming: The General Motors exec behind the Chevrolet Volt electric car hands environmentalists another twig to beat GM with when he reportedly calls global warming “a crock of sh-t.”

11) Hope for Homeowners – er, not really: Congress passes bill to keep hundreds of thousands of troubled borrowers in their homes. A whopping 321 applications get filed.

12) Ban the short-sellers: To head off a market onslaught, the SEC outlaws short-selling on 799 financial stocks. Remarkably, investors find other ways to punish the group and the sector sinks another 25 percent.

13) McCain on economics: On the morning of Sept. 15, as Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy, Republican presidential candidate John McCain declares “the fundamentals of this economy are strong.”

14) Obama’s tough talk on Nafta: A top economic adviser privately assures Canadian officials in February that his candidate didn’t really mean it when he threatened to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

15) Microsoft bids for Yahoo: The $31-per-share offer represents a 61% premium over Yahoo’s (YHOO, Fortune 500) price at the time of the February overture.

16) Yahoo turns down Microsoft’s offer: If Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) offer for Yahoo was wrong-headed, Yahoo’s opposition to it was downright bone-headed.

17) The Madoff miss: As news reports reveal that the Securities and Exchange Commission had probed Madoff and his New York City investment firm over the years, chief Christopher Cox cops to the embarrassing screw-up.

18) Oil speculator scapegoats: Are speculators to blame for $37 oil too?

19) Steve Jobs’ obit: In August, Bloomberg News accidentally releases an obit for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who – despite a well-publicized brush with pancreatic cancer – is still alive and kicking.

20) Phil Gramm and the “nation of whiners”: In early July, as the financial crisis spreads to Main Street, McCain campaign co-chair and former senator Phil Gramm appeals to voters and their economic anxieties by calling them a “nation of whiners” and dismisses a troubled economy as a “mental recession.”

21) Bill Miller comes up short: The fund manager’s contrarian bets on Bear Stearns, AIG and Freddie Mac cost his investors plenty.

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Conversation with the CEO of Silicon Valley’s coolest little plug-in – CoolIris

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Soujanya Bhumkar,  CEO and Co-founder of the coolest browser add-on around – CoolIris!

On February 25, 2009, at the law offices of Cooley Godward in Palo Alto, he and other inspiring entrepreneurs will tell us about their start ups and what it takes to make them successful.

Immigrants are beneficial to US – myths explored

According to a recent blog posting, where the bloggers put together myths and facts on immigration, the facts they quoted (and to which there are government links) resonated for me; I have been working and talking with high level high-tech executive immigrants or foreign-born professionals who bring incredible benefits to the US; however, we shouldn’t forget the immigrants who are taken for granted, especially here in California, because without them, many of our industries would not work as effortlessly or “cheaply” as they do now.

Let’s review our understanding of immigrants’ positions and what are facts versus myths that we often buy into.

1. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan has pointed out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven’t spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years.
(Source: Andrew Sum, Mykhaylo Trubskyy, Ishwar Khatiwada, et al., Immigrant Workers in the New England Labor Market: Implications for Workforce Development Policy, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Prepared for the New England Regional Office, the Employment and Training Administration, and the U.S. Department of Labor, Boston, Massachusetts, October 2002.
http://www.nupr.neu.edu/1102/immigration.PDF..search=’center%20for%20labor%20market%20studies%20at%20Northeastern%
20University%20studies’)

2. MYTH: IMMIGRANTS TAKE JOBS AWAY FROM AMERICANS…

FACT: This, the largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth.

· In Arizona, unemployment is currently 3.7 percent; a figure that is considered full employment. In the back-braking fields of meat-packing and farm-work, owners say that even if they offer $50 per hour, they could not fill these jobs with American workers. We have depended on immigrant labor to fill these jobs for decades. As the crackdowns on immigrants spread, fields all over the west are lying fallow because the farmers know they will not be able to find workers to pick their crops. In places where raids on meat-packing plants have chased out immigrants employers find that citizen workers do not want the jobs, or they quit after a short period of time because the work is too grueling.

· Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers, and foreign-born students allow many U.S. graduate programs to keep their doors open. While there has been no comprehensive study done of immigrant-owned businesses, we have countless examples: in Silicon Valley, companies begun by Chinese and Indian immigrants generated more than $19.5 billion in sales and nearly 73,000 jobs in 2000.
(Source: Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Stephen Moore, Immigration and Unemployment: New Evidence, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Arlington, VA (Mar. 1994), p. 13.)

3. MYTH: TODAY’S IMMIGRANTS ARE DIFFERENT THAN THOSE 100 YEARS AGO
FACT: The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born now stands at 11.5%; in the early 20th century it was approximately 15%.

· Similar to accusations about today’s immigrants, those of 100 years ago initially often settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their native languages, and built up newspapers and businesses that catered to their fellow immigrants.

· They also experienced the same types of discrimination that today’s immigrants face, and integrated within American culture at a similar rate. We forget that the slur “wop” stood for “Without Papers,” and that “Paddy wagons” were so named because whenever there was crime, the police would go out and round up the “Paddys,” a slur for the Irish. Caucasians from Eastern Europe often anglicized their names so that they would not be profiled or suffer discrimination. This practice continues today–John Stewart’s real name is John Stewart Liebowitz.

· If we view history objectively, we remember that every new wave of immigrants has been met with suspicion and doubt and yet, ultimately, every past wave of immigrants has been vindicated and saluted.
(Source: Census Data: http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kprof00-us.pdf,http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf )