da speakin' circuit

I’ve been on the speaking circuit of late, doing a workshop in sacramento on cyber satefy, another in Buenos aires on the threat landscape and how to protect yourself, and finally today in DC on “communicating in the next tech-ade” for the FTC. Everytime I hit the road and do a preso, I invest time in the content to make certain I know what I’m talking about. Seems pretty logical but you’d be staggered to find out how many ppl don’t do this. They’re either freakin’ brilliant, or careless. The latter is the case more so than the former. Having said all this, I figured I’d share a little bit of what I’ve learned over the last 3-4 weeks.

CA cybersummit

It’s time to own up to facts that kids are the new content creators and the de facto owners of the internet. Nothing spells this out like the interactive poll below taken at the cybersummit, stating that adults have much more to learn from kids than vice versa about online safety. Ouch. What’s clear though is that kids lack the life skills that adult’s have which allow them to sniff out bad actors. The question is how many kids will listen to adults who don’t have any clue about what’s happening online? Dunno.

Did you know that "cut and paste" aka Internet plagiarism is now an online business extending into the 8-figures? Crazy, eh? Just type in “free essay” and see what you get. Millions of entries touting online “copy and paste” plagiarism. There’s even one that sells an essay on ethics, including plagiarism, which costs just shy of 100 bucks. There’s some irony there somewhere…. Clearly that time you leaned over Suzy’s shoulder to scam her math test was all amateur work, we’ve got a whole new ballgame on our hands here.

IDC in Buenos aires
Ok, so I’ll admit that I didn’t learn as much prep’ing for this one. It was pretty much straight forward “what’s happening and how do I protect myself?” nonetheless, I can tell you that I learned that it’s perfectly ok to hire women in skimpy wardrobes to pitch your products. At least in South America. Have I mentioned this before? :-)

Unrelated non-work thought: You eat a cow in India and you get thrown out of the country, you don’t eat a cow in argentina and you risk the same punishment. Hmmmm….

FTC “next tech-ade” workshop
This one was interesting! Plenty of prep and some downright fascinating stats. I’ve already pretty much posted my preso but consider the following data…

-about 2.5 billion ppl carry a hand-held phone (mobile), this knocks the socks off of PCs
-there are 800 million registered IM users in China alone, 200 million of which are active
-the population of second life is growing at a little under 1000% per annum, 30%+ month over month!!!!
-The average age of the SL player is 32
-The economy of SL is growing at 270% annually or 15% month/month
-You can buy a Toyota car inside of SL for $2—even with zero % financing and a great trade-in, you’re not getting that from the dealer.

Extra cool thing is I got to meet Esther Dyson here, who I happen to think is pretty cool. She’s written some insightful stuff and has been a leading force behind the EFF. I always thought that if I met Esther I would let her know that I really liked her adware analogy which I’ve used from time to time. So when I met her, I told her such and then predictably someone asked her what it was. She proceeded to rattle off the wrong analogy. Argh. Ah well….

All told, a nice dialogue ensured following our little speeches at the event and the FTCers were brought up to speed on our crystal ball gazing.