Conference Bites

Habit Design Meetup, 2/3/12 San Francisco, Part 2

"Are you sure you want a habit?"
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"I teach mindfulness, which is the antithesis of a habit in a way."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"Overcoming inertia requires something above and beyond automaticity—requires your own resilience."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"We need ‘wantpower'—the ability to remember what you really want. Your big goals."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"Teach being comfortable with uncomfortable experiences—like deep breathing for quitting smoking. Tolerate the distress."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"Recognize the common humanity of failure"
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"Social media is moving towards support for self-compassion, but not with quite the same humanity as in-person."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

"This (mindfulness approach) may not be scalable. This is small scale and it is human."
~ Kelly McGonigal, Stanford Professor

For more info on Habit Design:

Habit Design Meetup, 2/3/12 San Francisco, Part 1

"One of the pathways to change is pleasurable change. You just do it!"
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

"Another path to change is breakthrough or quantum change—heart attack, natural disaster, falling in love."
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

"Incremental change, despite gamification, is a pain in the ass."
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

"What does a litany of failure do to your sense of confidence and control?"
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

"Successful baby steps can boost that sense of confidence and control."
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

"I’ve cognitively reframed that. I used to call it exhaustion (after exercise)—now I call it being alive."
~ David Sobel, Professor/Philospoher

For more info on Habit Design:

TEDx 2/4/12 Berkeley

"One thing that connects us as humans is our ability to laugh."
~ Tiffany Shlain, Filmmaker

"People's resumes should just list their failures... it would be much more interesting"
~ Tiffany Shlain, Filmmaker

"Crying expels stress hormones and stimulates endorphins."
~ Dr. Neha Sangwan

"America is so fixed on the concept that a PILL can cure a disease of the soul (listen to your body)."
~ Dr. Neha Sangwan

"Success is going through failure after failure without losing your enthusiasm (quoting Winston Churchill)."
~ April Rinne, WaterCredit

For more info on TEDxBerkeley:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 8

"When you want to do something totally new that inspires people, you have to be willing to back away from the data."
~ Mike McCue, Flipboard, speaking of the need for 'soul'

"We need white space in order to enjoy the content."
~ Mike McCue, Flipboard

"The continual stream coming off your phone... you can think of it as being data, or you can think of it as being your life."
~ Dave Morin, Path

"In traditional learning what is FIXED is the time to learn. What is VARIABLE is how well you learn it."
~ Sal Khan, Khan Academy, talking about how they turned that approach on its head

"The number of users of Khan Academy is 6 times as many students as Harvard has graduated since 1636!"
~ Sal Khan, Khan Academy

Positing the choice between a nation designed by engineers or a nation by lawyers... "I vote for engineers" especially after dealing with an IPO."
~ Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn

"Every individual needs to live their life the way an entrepreneur launches a company... invest in yourself."
~ Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn

"The really great companies have a vision and a mission beyond how much money they can make... they want to make a better world. Reid Hoffman exemplifies that."
~ Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 7

 "Technology is hand in glove with what we do as ad agencies because it helps us help our clients."
~ Michael Roth, Interpublic

"In 2008, our business stopped cold—I am not seeing that now." 
~ Michael Roth, Interpublic

"Are they skittish in Europe, yes. The benefit of being global is some markets (BRIC) are having double digit growth."
~ Michael Roth, Interpublic

"We’re adding connectivity to people into all of our core products, via skype, etc…"
~ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft 

 "(With information) we are like fish who suddenly after eons, discover water."
~ James Gleick, Author

"We live in a world where we care about data... but we also care about something deeper... which is meaning or knowledge."
~ James Gleick, Author

"I like your idea of information as a quickening…"
~ James Gleick, Author to John Battelle

"Info used to be exclusively human. It now flows through all of our machines. They do well often without our help."
~ James Gleick, Author

"The implication of the word meme is that information can behave like organisms. We have the infosphere like the biosphere."
~ James Gleick, Author

"Now we have the special goggles to see it (the infosphere), but it's always been there." 
~ James Gleick, Author

"(Tweets) are all signal to somebody, but they are noise to everybody else. I feel no obligation to sift this world of dust."
~ James Gleick, Author

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 6

"We live in a healthcare system that I don’t want to be part of--you as the consumer are not part of the equation."
~ Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe

"We want to provide the ability for people to share info, to participate in research that is meaningful for them."
~ Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe

"How are you going to make money if you prevent disease? If you get diabetes, there are lots of ways (the system) makes money."
~ Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe

"It's up to all of us to say 'I’m not afraid, I'm in charge. I own my data'—its the loophole we can all fall through.
~ Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe

"I'm not a very social person myself."
~ Sergey Brin, Google

"The incumbent has a huge advantage. It is hard to win at the same game. We are going to play a different game."
~ Vic Gundotra, Google

"We have always run the company as let 1000 flowers bloom, but once you do, you want to put together a coherent bouquet."
~ Sergey Brin, Google

"We are going to try to make google more of a seemless experience across all the products."
~ Sergey Brin, Google

"Google = search has been true since '98… Your brand may be moving to Google = the OS for your life." (to Sergey Brin)
~ John Battelle, Federated Media

"There is a reason that every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth. To be human is to curate."
~ Vic Gundotra, Google

"So far we shipped the plus part. Over the next couple of quarters we will ship the google part."
~ Vic Gundotra, Google

"We will be adding google+ to google apps within days, and brand pages not within days, but soon."
~ Vic Gundotra, Google

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 5

"81% of world's Internet users are outside the US. We're not in Kansas anymore."
~ Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins

"What happened once in a generation is happening twice to us." (internet and mobile internet)
~ Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins

"More people have cell signals (85%) than access to the electrical grid (80%)."
~ Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins

"We have a lot of big data problems at Amazon, but we're not unique. Big data problems exist everywhere."
~ Alyssa Henry, Amazon, describing how AWS solves them

"Social media gives us much bigger haystacks, which makes finding the needles even harder."
~ Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley Professor

"I've been a data junkie since back before the O'Reilly folks made data sexy."
~ Gil Elbaz, Factual

"Without us doing anything other than building an app, we became an anytime, anywhere network."
~ Tim Westergren, Pandora,on the day the iphone first launched

"Four fifths of the time you spend listening to music is on radio, not stuff you own."
~ Tim Westergren, Pandora

"He (Bill Gross) was talking about monetization—that may be why he was wearing a tie."
~ John Battelle, Federated Media

"Not being thoughtful about competition is crazy—but we don’t have to (deal with every threat)".
~ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft


For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 4

"Any confusion or uncertainty that exists (in HP) is an opportunity for us."
~ Michael Dell, Dell

"I am a big believer in using game mechanics to help people get out and do interesting stuff in life."
~ Dennis Crowley, Foursquare

"We are in this game to build things we don't think anyone else will build."
~ Dennis Crowley, Foursquare

"We want to change the way everyone in this room experiences the world."
~ Dennis Crowley, Foursquare

"We can't steer the ship by looking at the wake of the boat."
~ Dan Schulman, American Express

"For large companies, changing the way you do business is difficult. For Visa (buying companies) is a whole new set of muscles."
~ John Partridge, Visa

"Data is the holy grail of digital commerce."
~ Dan Schulman, American Express

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 3

"The question isn’t around more data—its around what really matters."
~ Brad Rencher, Adobe/Omniture

"Who would data be if it was a person, and what would it be like?"
~ Genevieve Bell, Intel

"If it consumes electricity, it will end up computing, connecting to Internet & generating data."
~ Genevieve Bell, Intel

"Data will be feral—starting domesticated, but jumping the fence and running wild."
~ Genevieve Bell, Intel

"Data is a person, has a country, is feral, has responsibilities, likes to look good, and it doesn't last forever."
~ Genevieve Bell, Intel

" Twitter is the sound of the street."
~ William Gibson as relayed by Dick Costolo, Twitter

"Google says they are going to compete on features, including simplicity.  We're going to compete on simplicity." (re competing w Google+)
~ Dick Costolo, Twitter

"Apple is a bit like a mentor company to Twitter, in terms of its focus on design, minimalism & simplicity."
~ Dick Costolo, Twitter

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit:

Web 2.0 Summit 10/17-19/11 San Francisco, Part 2

"The more points of engagement you create through Social Media objects, the greater the potential for competitive advantage.
~ John Donahoe, Ebay

"The boundary between offline and online is blurring, and consumers and retailers need help."
~ John Donahoe, Ebay

"The chinese goverment is not going to let a non-chinese company win on the Internet in China."
~ John Donahoe, Ebay

"Everything I want in a consumer operating system—I see in Facebook."
~ Marc Benioff, Salesforce

"I model on it (Facebook)—when you see how it is eating the web, it is the most interesting thing in our industry."
~ Marc Benioff, Salesforce

"Marc Benioff is essentially calling Facebook the future of the Internet. That is terrifying."
~ Dan Gillmor, ASU Professor

"I enjoy watching the cat chasing the laser pointer as much as the next guy, but it's pretty hard to monetize."
~ Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo

"Gamification is a huge fundamental next step for all of us in developing software."
~ Marc Benioff, Salesforce

"There was more data transmitted over the internet in 2012 than all the data ever transferred before."
~ Kirk Skaugen, Intel

For more info on the Web 2.0 Summit: