What makes an entrepreneur tick? Business, Goals, and Themselves, that’s what. Brought to you via Grasshopper.

I’m pleased to be speaking on a great panel for Canada 3.0 on Wednesday.  It’ll be at 10am at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in Toronto, Canada.

As a follow up to Sheryl Sandberg’s recent Lean In movement, this panel will feature successful women in the technology industry who are all navigating through their careers and figuring out the most effective way in which to step up, lean in, balance it all and give back! Instead of reiterating the facts about the lack of women in leadership roles and in the tech industry, this session will focus on ‘what can be done’ as opposed to ‘what’s wrong’.

Themes addressed will include:

• Working Life; Facing workplace stereotypes faced, the ‘self-doubt’ syndrome, success & likability correlation, practical tips on negotiating, and balancing work / family
• Academia: Motivating young women to pursue STEM careers, and preparing young women in the classroom for their careers
• Mentorship / Sponsorship: Identifying and working with the right mentor, whether men or women
• Call to action: What is absolutely necessary for both men and women to do today to start tackling the issues at hand.

Moderated by

• Amber Mac – emcee Bestselling social media author, speaker, TV host, and entrepreneur

Confirmed participants

• Kate Brodock President, Girls in Tech; Founder, Other Side Group; Executive Director of Digital & Social Media, Syracuse University

• Karen Schulman Dupuis Manager, Digital Communications, MaRS Discovery District

• Dr. Gerri Sinclair President, The Gerri Sinclair Group

• Sarah Shortreed Digital and Mobile Technology Executive

A conversation with Jonah Peretti, Founder & CEO or Buzzfeed, and Steve Stoute, Founder & CEO of Translation. Two of the visionaries blowing up the old media sandbox and building a new one. Part of Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored 2013 event, 23-24 April in NYC.

Fast Company: I want to talk about the advertising space and disruptions in that space. Steve, how do you work to feed pop culture?

Steve: In the record business I had to learn early that it was an industry that had to learn what was coming six months out. In advertising, they’re used to making stuff that’s six months late. When I started Translation, how was I going to be able to tak true consumer insight and translate for companies into what’s to come. How can you take cultural impact and package it in a product that works well within the confines of the Fortune 500 mentality.

FC: Jonah, at Buzzfeed, you’ve thought about the convergence of media and advertising.

Jonah: We have two separate teams, but the big difference is that we use the same platform and conventions. We also try to make content that’s actually shareable and what people want. We don’t have the additional constraint of trying to sell something, so we need to make content that doesn’t suck. So when we think about advertising, we look at it from that context.

FC: Can you engineer virality? Can you predict if it’s going to be part of pop culture?

Steve: You have to take cultural insight and great storytelling. If you combine them, you’re going to be very close to landing on the mark.

FC: Is it as simple as just endorsements from celebrities?

Steve: In the beginning, no one wanted to do anything with celebrities, specifically musicians. I was the guy who did Justin Timberlake and McDonald’s. That was great before the wardrobe malfunction and I started getting all the phone calls. You don’t have control over them. They’ve created problems for me in the past when you try to align pop culture and brands. So I’ve had to shift what I do, and find other things to connect.

FC: How does this work for you Jonah?

Jonah: You have to have a creative idea, a spark. Once you have that, there’s science into how you make that a fire. Sometimes it doesn’t as well as you think.

Steve: I think that’s the biggest thing. You have to be afraid not to fail. If you’re going to follow your gut instinct.. if you have a rational thought, but if you’re zagging while everyone else is zigging, it might not seem like it makes sense at first. But you have to stick with it.

FC: What do you tell people who want to come to Buzzfeed for the reach?

Jonah: We’re a publisher. It’s all powered by people sharing. When we launched the site, and it was growing, the obvious thing seemed to be to put banner ads on it. But I felt that wasn’t going to work, that something was shifting, and we needed to figure out a better way to advertise to support the site. So we said to brands that we wanted them to create branded content that people would want to share. We’ve created a platform that allows brands to think more like publishers. Now they realize they need to speak the language of the web.

FC: We’ve seen some of this shift. the Super Bowl is an example of this. One of the most talked-about ads that happened was Oreo, who didn’t spend any money. What are the shifts?

Steve: What you’re seeing now is brands release commercials a few days before the Super Bowl, and it’s all about garnering media attention before that. What Oreo did was brilliant, they jumped on it. You need to create work that create contagious user-behavior. That’s our responsibility now as advertisers. Now, with multiple screens and the power of social, you have to rethink this model and what the impetus for that contagious behavior is.

Jonah: What brands are doing now are creating teams that can react quickly. Companies are organizing themselves so they act differently.

Steve: You’ve got to prepare for the two-way conversations. There are some companies that aren’t really prepared to go into social, they don’t have the mentality or structure. Toyota was flying for a while, then they had a recall, and they withdrew. It set them back years, into a tailspin. They had no response for it. Having a social partner could have helped them contain the situation.

Jonah: It’s amazing that so many brands respond to a crisis that’s happening on the web without a human response.

Steve: When we assigned Timberlake to Bud Light and someone posted a photo of him with Coor Light, we got right back in and said “Timberlake might date Coors, but he married Bud Light.”

FC: With some of the old advertising work nowadays?

Steve: If the question is still whether you can make powerful statements on television, then yes you can. Digital plays a very important role in extending and amplifying the message, and that’s it’s place when you’re talking about TV content.

Jonah: Things are blurring together. Incidents can be incidents or they can be big storytelling opportunities.

Question: Are you seeing companies actually investing in this new model?

Jonah: We had advertisers who were still stuck in “that’s not how it works.” In the last year and a half, that’s completely shifted to people wanting to focus on content.

Steve: The expectations have changed, but the expectations are the same. They believe in digital, they believe in content creation. Before, they just wanted to buy banner ads. The smarter brands are paying much more for this type of content.

A 7 Minute Master Class on the Pitfalls of Predicting the Future from Ford Motor Company‘s Manager of Global Trends and Futuring, Sheryl Connelly. Part of Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored 2013 event, 23-24 April in NYC.

Key takeaways:

1. Plan for Wildcard Events. Things that aren’t likely to happen, but you need to know how to deal with them if they do – Katrina, Earthquakes, etc.
2. Leverage Global Trends. What could we leverage?
3. Explore Multiple Future Scenarios. What would consumers want in 10 years?
4. Writing Scenarios. You have to have them be provocative, but plausible. Things like “The Rise of China” or “Global Economic Collapse.” You have to enter into situations where you suspend your beliefs. If you do that enough, you’ll come across things that can play out in the future.
5. Ford used to be very manufacturing-oriented. It then shifted to become a much more consumer-centric company. They had to build cars that people wanted to drive, not hopef they would drive what was built.

[CLICK INVITE TO RSVP]

I’m really excited for our panel discussion at SXSW this year, and hope you can join us!

Monday, March 11th, 12:30-1:30 in the Rio Grande Ballroom of the Courtyard Marriott

#sxsw #SlowDown

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes an open letter stating she never felt she could manage her job and have a healthy family life. Marissa Mayer becomes CEO of Yahoo! and announces she’s pregnant and working through maternity leave. Sheryl Sandberg gains attention with a somewhat contradictory suggestion that women need to step up, not take no for an answer, and work harder.

Work-life balance has been a major topic of discussion recently, but the focus has been primarily on women.

However, there’s been little talk about the general culture in the start-up/technology/Silicon Valley-ish spaces, where people swear you only need two hours of sleep a night, that you’re supposed to feel burnt out or you aren’t working hard enough.

It’s become a competition, and an unhealthy one. But it’s unhealthy for everyone, man or woman. Is it that everyone doesn’t understand or accept the value of work-life balance?

Do we need to change this perception of how to be successful for everyone?

Moderator:

Caroline Howard
Senior Editor
Forbes

 

Panelists:

Jesse Draper
CEO & Host
Valley Girl TV

 

 

Kate Brodock
President of Girls in Tech
Executive Director of Digital & Social Media at Syracuse University
Founder of Other Side Group

 

Adam Ostrow
Chief Strategy Officer
Mashable

 

As always, I’m excited about SXSW. I’ve got a bunch of things planned, but some of the more notable ones are as follows. Please let me know if you’d like to connect!

THURSDAY EVENING: International Women’s Day with the Austin Women’s Club.  I’ll be emceeing the event for the evening:

“The Gender Agenda, Gaining Momentum”
Featured speakers:

• Rebecca Powers, Founder of Impact Austin
• Kate Brodock, Girls in Tech, Syracuse University
• Felora Derakhshani, Founder & Exec Dir of ACT Women, Peace Through Commerce, UNA Austin

SATURDAY MORNING: Student Startup Madness (SSM) in the Startup Village.

Schedule for Student Startup Madness 2013

SSM is a nationwide tournament-style competition for college student digital media startups, culminating with the “Entrepreneurial Eight” national finals at SXSWi.

The Finals are being held on Saturday, 9:30-1:30 in the Hilton (Room 400). We’ve got some excellent judges (@InternQueen, @PatrickAmbron, @2000F, @sandyTBS, @petersmagnusson, @nglaros) and our Finalist roundup is looking really top-notch!

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and the event hashtag is #sxmadness.

SUNDAY MORNING: Generation Flux panel discussion.

“In an inspiring, thought-provoking presentation, Safian will sketch out who and what defines GenFlux, how models like Apple and Facebook–and leaders like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg–both define this era and are useless to those looking to navigate it.”

I’ll be joining fellow GenFluxers in the audience for some improv conversation around the panel.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON: Creative Conversation with danah boyd, also at the Fast Company Grill around 1:30.

SUNDAY HAPPY HOUR: Girls in Tech is co-hosting a Happy Hour with Fast Company at the Fast Company Grill! You can RSVP for the event (and their other happy hours) here.

MONDAY MID-DAY: I’ll be SPEAKING on a stellar panel at the Courtyard Marriot.

“Ok, Women Can’t Have It All, But Maybe No One Can“

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes an open letter stating she never felt she could manage her job and have a healthy family life. Marissa Mayer becomes CEO of Yahoo! and announces she’s pregnant and working through maternity leave. Sheryl Sandberg gains attention with a somewhat contradictory suggestion that women need to step up, not take no for an answer, and work harder.

Work-life balance has been a major topic of discussion recently, but the focus has been primarily on women.

However, there’s been little talk about the general culture in the start-up/technology/Silicon Valley-ish spaces, where people swear you only need two hours of sleep a night, that you’re supposed to feel burnt out or you aren’t working hard enough.

It’s become a competition, and an unhealthy one. But it’s unhealthy for everyone, man or woman. Is it that everyone doesn’t understand or accept the value of work-life balance?

Do we need to change this perception of how to be successful for everyone?

Moderator: Caroline Howard, Senior Editor at Forbes

Panelists:
Kate Brodock, Executive Director of Digital & Social Media at Syracuse University and President of Girls in Tech
Jesse Draper, CEO and Host of Valley Girl Inc
Adam Ostrow, Chief Strategy Officer of Mashable

Our hashtag for the discussion is #SXSlowDown

In November, I had the opportunity to speak at the Hewitt School in NY as part of TEDxYouth.  The topic? How to be successful and balanced in life.

The recipe is to work hard, play hard, and love hard, in no particular order.

Editor of Fast Company, Robert Safian, discusses Generation Flux and how it will effect innovation, the way companies grow and are run, and the how skill sets need to be rethought.

I’m so amazingly excited to be speaking for TEDxYouth@Hewitt on Saturday at the Hewitt School in New York, as part of the global TEDxYouth Day.

For those of you unfamiliar with TEDxYouth, it’s a series of events around the world where speakers and performers share their great ideas with audiences of youth, primarily high school-aged.

The theme for this year is:

Dream Big…Then Do Something” or “Dream Big… THEN DO IT!”

I’m focusing my talk on the concept of working hard, “playing” hard, and loving hard….. that’s a teaser for now, I’ll post the full video once it’s up next week, but in the meantime, you can access the live stream here (I’ll be on around 12:15 or 12:30…. but the rest of the speakers are also worth a listen!).