C2SV: Silicon Valley speaks up and inspires
If there’s anything Silicon Valley does well, it’s providing the fertile ground for some of the brightest and brilliant minds to invent new ways to change the word. At the recent C2SV: Create. Converge. Silicon Valley conference - San Jose’s answer to the famed SXSW – this proved to be true in spades.
Deemed “Year Zero” by conference founder Dan Pulcrano (of Metro Newspapers), he and a bootstrap team of local talent pulled together a power-packed programming schedule featuring back-to-back tech giants, entrepreneurs, authors, Venture Capitalists and, quite literally, rocket scientists.
After sitting through 3-days of the event, three themes emerged from the collective content:
Technology is disrupting everything
Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, co-authors of “The Age of Context” discussed how technology has disrupted industries in ways we could have never predicted; In wearables like Nike Fuelband or Fitbit; Sensors everywhere and in everything including self-driving cars; and location intelligence, and its ability to put you into physical context in the environment around you. Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, had disrupted traditional currency models and will change the way the world will transact. Augmented reality is now so advanced that using Metaglasses, you can interact with the real and virtual worlds simultaneously without ever knowing the difference between the two. Online privacy has evolved into now a single online “Digital ID” that uses your unique signature to authenticate anything without risk. Technology is even disrupting politics and how campaigns are conducted today, with the emergence of social media reaching new voters where traditional channels had failed.
Technology will never replace humans
In a world addicted to bigger, better, faster, stronger, it was clear during the event that no technology could ever replace the nuance and context of human thinking. Storytelling. “Digital Hollywood” panelists Evette Vargas and Bradley Lautenbach explained that no matter the delivery system, it’s the core story that matters, not the other way around. "You always need to go back to the hook of the story then figure out how to integrate it into many platforms,” said Vargas. “Human beings need to think through the big ideas in the world,” said Steve Wozniak. Even when it comes to raising venture capital, the humans behind the product matter more. “An early lesson to raise VC funding I learned is to put your team as slide #1 in your pitch,” Elisa C, founder of the Blogher conference. “People invest in people, not companies.”
Social will power the future of business
Technology and business go hand in hand and where it’s headed next hinges on social collaboration. In a lively panel with Todd Wilms, Head of Social Business Strategy for SAP, Bryan Kramer, president/CEO of PureMatter and Kare Anderson, Emmy-award winning journalist warned people that if you’re not shattering silos and allowing social collaboration in your business, you’re positioned for failure. “The customer co-owns the brand experience today, and that is uncomfortable for brands," said Wilms. “Social business has to have people, technology and processes in place,” said Kramer. “We have to listen digitally and use this to make the product better.” And it’s not just large corporations that social affects. XXX, founder of NextSpace, a next generation collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs, has proven that in order to be successful today, you must be able to collaborate, communicate and interact with others. “You can work at home, but you can’t work in isolation.” Brian Solis discussed his book – literally title “WTF? What’s the Future of Business” and inspired the audience before even saying a word with his t-shirt emblazoned with “Stop bitching and start a revolution already!” Robert Scoble took a more relaxed approach: “I don't see the future, I just have great friends."
Sitting in the second row, it was not lost on me that something magical and special was happening before me on the stage. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Atari founder – and Steve Jobs first and only boss – Nolan Bushnell shared a stage for the first time since the early 1980s, and did not disappoint. Walking into a standing ovation, they wittily bantered and reminisced about the early days of Apple and the Valley. And despite being titans of technology, it was refreshing to hear them both underscore the importance of humanity amidst it all. “Brute force doesn't solve anything; it's the methods that come from the human brain that can solve them,” Steve Wozniak emphatically explained. Nolan Bushnell retorted by acknowledging this is true, but that he was “disappointed that things weren’t farther ahead then they are.” He joked that he only had a short time left on this earth and he wanted to see technology advance much more quickly and encouraged the audience to “get off your asses and do something about it already!”
Although the room was only peppered with a few hundred people, the conference trended number one on Twitter in the Bay Area, flooding the socialsphere with 140 character recounts about what we were hearing. You can track the hashtags #C2SV and #C2SVTech to read them all, but to close, a quote that summed up the conference best: “This event is genuine, available and authentic – it reminds us of the early days of TED before it got big – that’s the spirit here at Year Zero of C2SV.”
Cheers to the spirit. Until next year, I can’t wait to see what happens next.
