1. Sound like a human
2. Be a human
3. Engage, don´t defend
4. 5.6.7.8. and 9. be transparent
10. Link, link, link    

I am just back from my interview with David, whom I met at Edelman´s Blue hour in Hamburg. I was just enjoying the lively atmosphere and informative dialogues when my babysitter gave me a call to let me know that she´s only available til 7:30 pm tonight. Grrrrrrrrrr…

So I turned up the speed of my conversations and talked to a dozen people whose names I´ll probably mix up at some point in the future. Sorry for that in advance!

Names and impressions of this evening:

David Weinberger – He´s brilliant. He´s precise. And he knows exactly what he´s talking about.

The fantastic Guillaume du Gardier, Edelman´s Director Online Communications Europe who did mobblogging during the evening (and speaks much better German than he pretends).

One of my favorite bloggers, Heiko Hebig from Burda Media, who held a very entertaining presentation that caught the interest of bloggers and non-bloggers alike. Not an easy challenge

…and smart people like Mario Sixtus, Björn Ognibeni, Thomas Knüwer, Martin Röll …and many, many others.

A big thank you goes to Björn from Edelman PR/Frankfurt. He (supported by his colleagues) arranged my interview with David. Everything ran smoothly, the event was very friendly and I had fun from the moment I entered Edelman´s door. Perfect organisation! Looking forward to meeting you again in the future.

Oh, and on my way home I bumped into Robert Basic. Robert, it was good to see you and I hope you had a safe trip to Bremen!

Whew, made it!

Welcome to The Comfy Sofa – the place where thought leaders, internet revolutionaries and ground-breaking entrepreneurs from around the globe can take a break, sit back and get things off their chest!

I am on a mission to find out what makes these fascinating people tick, what inside knowledge they have to share and what their plans are for the future. All will (hopefully) be revealed on The Comfy Sofa of truth.

So curl up with a coffee and stay tuned!

Upcoming guests:

David Weinberger
One of the most respected thought leaders at the intersection of technology, business and society…and former comedy writer of Woody Allen. Also have a peek at his blog. Can´t wait to have him on The Comfy Sofa and entertain you with a nifty podcast.

Naomi Simson
Australia’s most successful female entrepreneur and inspiring business woman. Interesting business (RedBalloon), philosophy on life and mother of two. Wow!

…watch this space for future guests.

Daniela

the TED conference is really the best conference I have ever been to. The only downside is, I had to skip the planed ski-trip with Daniela and dearest friends of ours to Wildhaus, Switzerland. TED is like the DAVOS of the Internet and New Media. The place where 800 thought leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists come together. You hear the latest ideas in Technology, Entertainment, and Design. This unique breath of content, and the quality of the people who deliver, are what makes TED special. After the four days, I gained an understanding of how my own work fits into the larger web of knowledge. It’s invitation only event by the legendary Chris Andersen.
I had the chance to speak to extraordinary people like, Sergey Brin & Larry Page of Google, former vice president Al Gore, Anthony Robbins, Jeff Bezos, Nicholas Negroponte, Meg Ryan, Tim Brown of IDEO,  Dean Kamen,  Burt Rutan to just name a few.
The speaker highlight was for sure Al Gore with his speech about the global climate crisis, best technology was multi-touch interaction display from Jeff Han, best activist was Majora Carter with her green Bronx initiative.

San Francisco is a great place – even when it rains. Together with Zhiyi Yu, Bill Liao and Andreas Weigend and a few friends of Andreas we ended our trip to the TED conference at the famous Rubicon restaurant in downtown. We had just too much fun, lot’s of different red wines from all over the world. Now sitting at SFO Airport looking at the 747-400 I am really looking forward to the flat bed and some rest. The last days have been quit exhausting.

One of the amazing things about the TED conference is that you are guaranteed to see something astounding that changes your view of the world.

Now I considered myself fairly well informed on the environment as I do like to keep up to date on the literature.

Last night and this morning I had the extraordinary experience of seeing a tour-de-force about global warming presented in brilliant style by Al Gore, who clearly has amazing access to the best climate data and experience and who presents the whole story with such clarity,  simplicity and veracity that you just get it that we are all in serious trouble RIGHT NOW!

I am convinced that so called "global warming" is in fact a climatic catastrophe that is unfolding around us due to rising  CO2 and methane levels  and that this  is the most important and urgent issue facing humanity today by far.

I am sure that the  climatic catastrophe will be (apart from the end of the wold as we know it)  extremely bad for business as, frankly, it is in the interest of all businesses that our customers stay alive! (Given the recent super storm activity we have had I am sure all re-insurers already agree)

So, I am committed that we do something right now about this and that for a start the best thing we can do is raise awareness in the world and particularly in the business community.

I call on everyone to follow my lead and post links to  the www.climatecrisis.net web site as a start as Al Gore has made a compelling movie that is frankly undeniable and everyone needs to see this.

I am also looking to get a concise message from Mr  Gore  so that the entire business community can share this vital message on their home pages.

As this critical message is dispersed and accepted we need to focus on practical steps we can all take to turn humanity from this pathway to disaster.

We broke it so lets fix it!

The man who in a parallel universe is President of  the USA

is on the left

This was a looong day. Bill and I traveled today from Hamburg via London Heathrow to San Francisco. Had a good meetings at the airport an then we started to our last journey to Monterey Airport. At SFO airport the TED Conference already started: I met Nicholas Negroponte, the famous author of “being digital” – brilliant book about the Internet. Nicholas will present tomorrow about his initiative about the 100 Dollar Laptop. Then the scary part of this trip started. We flow with a 30 seat turboprop
regional airliner EMB 120 Brasilia. The flight attendant was the highlight of the day. A real comedian. Her name is “Hello Miss” because we don’t care about her name anyhow. We should switch off all Ipods, Bpods, Cpods Dpods and if we can’t get the seat-belt fasten we should go out more often. One joke after the other.

I am very happy to announce that openBC acquired, as a wholly owned subsidiary,
First Tuesday AG Zurich, a company specialising in building networks of experts
and clients, as well as producing executive think tanks (such as Thought
Leadership Forums and Summits) for multinational clients and syndicates.

The company was founded by Susan Kish and Amir Suissa, two outstanding entrepreneurs. We are excited to have them and their team join us in key positions.

First Tuesday Zurich´s clients include Cisco, Reed Midem, IBM, Ericsson, Credit Suisse and PricewaterhouseCoopers. openBC will enrich the offline offerings for existing and new corporate clients, thus expanding the overall benefits to all our users and clients.

Watch this: The daily show

Find out the hottest new trend online and what it really means to be connected with people all over the world.

It only takes 6 min and 12 seconds….awesome!!!

(Thanks Heiko!)

Not a few weeks ago we invited to take part in openBC´s second international survey on “Communication & Networking”! The objective of the survey was to learn more about B2B communication and networking behavior around the world.

Our poor little servers worked up a bit sweat because more than 25.000 people participated. Brrrrrrrrrrr, that was like Christmas, sales and promotion on one day. We are up to our eyeballs in numbers at the
moment and we can already see that there are some interesting and surprising results.

…keep you posted…

We’ve created a very unique and special home for openBC. It’s called Melrose Place. It’s hot! And it’s happening. To the point that it’s almost booked out 2 weeks in advance! It’s were we welcome special guests that visit us in Hamburg from all around the world. We thought that rather than an impersonal hotel room, we’ve setup 6 rooms in a 250 square metre apartment only 10 minutes from our head office. Saturday night we turned the temperature up with our house warming party. We gifted the neighbours with a small bottle of champagne and a ‘warning’ note to excuse the chatter & lively music until the early hours. So far, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed many defining conversations at 2am in the kitchen, hallway or bathroom.

Just a short note. Monday appeared to be a very busy day on openBC:
within the space of just 24 hours we hit the 10 million page
impressions mark.

Have a successful week in business!

I just wanted to share one of the many examples with you of when openBC members get together offline and make a difference.

The English Theatre here in Hamburg is feeling the effects of yet more budget cuts this year. Sarik from openBC and The Hamburg Connection got wind of this and decided to help out this great cultural cause.

The openBC networking machine kicked into action straight away: An event was organized and over 120 openBC members gave up their evening at short notice to go and watch the current Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie) play running, enjoy an evening of socializing, and make a donation for the future of the theatre.

A great time was had by all and the theatre was given a much-needed financial boost as well.
So a big thank you to members and to the Hamburg Connection!

For me, that’s what makes openBC so worthwhile. It’s not about growing and managing a defunct network – it’s a dynamic community where people really do get together in the real world and really get things happening!

Business week online reminds me of that special day of the year just around the corner. That’s right: Valentine´s Day.

Jeez, I am torn. I love to give and to share 365 days a year, and I love to love 24/7 – and I don´t mind in the slightest if I get given a beautiful bunch of flowers once a year

I am also quite taken with Business week’s concluding bit of food for thought, which I’d also like to share with you:

“When you´re doing something you love, who even cares if you have a Valentine or not?”

I’m looking forward to reading people’s thoughts on this…

This morning I read a well written German article about the dark side of Web 2.0 and the end of privacy. Call me a jerk, but who thinks they can stay anonymous on the net? The privacy settings on openBC protect your privacy on openBC, not on the entire internet. On openBC you decide what information is seen on a peer-to-peer level.

But, and this is a big “but”, if you once entered the internet you are always a bit more transparent than you think. I would not say you are x-rayed, but you are quite visible. I am absolutely transparent online and offline. I grew up in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic) and probably all the people around me knew me much better than my parents. Instead of focussing too much on the dark side about Web 2.0, I try to take care of my online profile, or brand , with the support of blogs, social networking platforms, flickr and others.

Maybe that is a big comfort: At the end of the day all the information we can access online doesn’t mean anything. It’s the mashup of information that seems to give us an impression about others.If we have not met in person, curled up with a coffee and shared our life stories I can still say: you don´t know me.

A message from Daniela that was.

“Die dunkle Seite des Webs”, Fiete Stegers

Yesterday evening when my little daughter decided she had discovered enough of this world…and happily fell asleep, I took the chance to read a book. This was a big mistake. It was a book about branding. And maybe this is fate because when I flipped open the book it was the chapter on “Your personal brand”!

OK, do I have a signature token or gift that I reward or recognize people with? Nope. Have I documented my professional short- and long-term goals with accountable measures? Hmmm … nope. Do I have action plans with strategies and tactics to achieve? Well, maybe … nope.

Let´s count how many times I said “yes” and see what my score is. Alright then. My brand is not working for me. I don´t have one. I basically go with the flow. My virtual identity management needs private lessons. Without question. I buy my books online, same for flights and hotels. I look up my horoscope in the net, listen to podcasts, vote against or for something, I purchase by auction and I am an active member of several social networks. Online of course.

Does that sound familiar to you? Who am I in the net?

Who are you?

Technoratis David Sifry recently posted his report about blogosphere growth. Take a peek at some key figures (Thanks Joi!):

The blogosphere is doubling
in size every 5 and a half months

It is now over 60 times bigger than it
was 3 years ago

On average, a new weblog is created every second of every
day

13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are
created

Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the
total daily pings Technorati receives

Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005,
increasing by 400,000 per day

This is hot off the press!

Just a minute ago Martin Varsavsky told me, that Google, Skype, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures invested 18 million Euros in FON. For Martin a dream comes true.

Only 90 days ago Martin started FON, 3.000 so called Foneros are registered by today and the big target, having 1 million hotspots around the world in 4 years, is just around the corner.

We believe in the power of communities and in Martins idea to make broadband internet access widespread and low cost.

Congrats to Martin! Let´s start the FON revolution!

Jeez, what a fantastic evening! Two days ago I had the chance to
interview one of the most intelligent and inspiring people I´ve ever
met: Dr. Andreas Weigend.

At least I was so inspired that I took courage to produce (drum
roll) my first podcast ever. It took half of the day to cut out all my
giggles (plus ehhmms…) and the noises Lars produced whilst preparing
and eating sandwiches.

I hope you´ll enjoy it as much I did!

Thanks Alex for support

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Dear Members and Team,

I am very proud to announce that we passed the 1 million member mark. It is a significant step in our journey of creating sustainable value, in social (business) software, for our existing and future members.

Exactly 822 days ago, we launched our product publicly. At that time I could not imagine this scale of  success nor all the great people that I have met along the way.

Thank you all for making the dream that is  openBC come true.