Last night over 100 Social Media enthusiasts gathered at The Hard Rock Cafe in the Byward Market for yet another Third Tuesday Ottawa. The evening kicked off with a brief presentation by Simon Chen of Ramius discussing their organizational community software Sixent which is, as he puts it “Facebook for your business”. After a quick overview of Ramius’ solution, Simon passed the mic off to Google’s Jacob Glick.
Glick set the humorous tone early by asking the crowd “By a show of hands, who uses Gmail?” About 95% of us raise our hand. “OK, cool! How many of you use Google Buzz?” All the hands go down, and the crowd erupts in laughter. From there he discussed the Unified Theory of Everything and how the convergence of everything to the Internet is driving public policy. Glick went on to explain how tradition media were “restrictive stovepipes” whereas new media are a “virtuous hourglass” – applications are squeezing the old stovepipes and the Internet is being delivered by all networks.
Through all of the useful, insightful thoughts that Glick shared with us, he always threw in a laugh here are there. “By the way, I don’t work on commission but you should definitely click on the ads” he suggests with a smile.
Glick explained that the web offers the democratization of content production and how YouTube has emerged as a basic platform for free speech. He then hits us with some astounding stats. “35 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and there is more Canadian content on YouTube than any of us could even watch in our lifetime.” He explains that by using video, content creators have the ability to influence people, and change minds – which in turn makes YouTube Google’s most blocked site. Not only that, but content creation is basically free. “All you need is your Mac, some basic software and a $75 terabyte hard drive from Costco!” Glick says. And then you can publish it for free on YouTube and share it for free via other Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Glick then warns that trying to impose the Broadcasting Act upon the Internet would cause inestimable damage to both. Instead of hindering new technologies, Internet policy should be more about protecting incumbents who are being disrupted by these new technologies. Forcing the intermediaries to become gatekeepers is bad for innovation. The Internet will facilitate it’s own innovation.
“There’s nothing that binds you to Google except that we’re awesome. We’re one click away from oblivion every day” – Jacob Glick
All in all it was a great night. We love being surrounded by like minded, tech-savvy, web enthusiasts. Jacob Glick was an excellent presenter. He provided the crowd with laughs, education, inspiration and insight. We can’t wait for the next event!