Portfolio Beatrice Jeschek

"There is a new class of young, rich billionaires in philanthropy," said DLD Co-Chairman Hubert Burda, pointing towards his co-panelists. The digital revolution actually sheds light on "patterns to success", he said. "This new generation of digital entrepreneurs with incredible ideas are changing the way we live and think."

One of these new projects is taking place in Downtown Vegas, a non-stereotypical "secret" area of Fremont East. Taking 350 million US Dollars into his hands, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, intends to change the face of the community. Co-learning and collision are the buzz words. His strategy is to turn on short-term ROI (Return On Investment) and rather implement a long-term strategy of ROC (Return on Community). It's all about running into people, random conversations over a coffee and sharing some ideas. This way, one of his clients who got tired of the casino environment opened up a breakfast and lunch restaurant, a live-long dream coming true. 50 million dollars are put into small businesses like these, shaping the future of Downtown Vegas. For him, it's just a great business strategy, not social entrepreneurship or philanthropy as such, Tony Hsieh said. His future vision is that someday "Downtown Vegas will make you smarter."

As 50% of humans now live in cities, and within our lifetime it will hit 75%, community-based projects can become places for inspiration.

In his neon green Reebok shoes, Gebbia thought about what it really means to be a designer. He shot soft questions over to Maeda who on the other hand shared his ideas on different flavors in art. "Design is not a method, it can't be coded in an algorithm," Maeda said. It may have a rational pattern, but contains a beauty and craziness you can't find elsewhere. As a creative leader, Maeda added, you have to make sure that these little vibrations you send out don't become tornadoes within your company.

Leaving perfection behind and moving towards empathy, design can have a powerful impact. "Become the person you want to design for," Gebbia gave the advice. If it concerns medical design, "lay down in the bed and become the patient." Empathy sparks creativity, which then again is the missing link in many tech start-ups. Alongside a "yes"-attitude and inspiration coming from a note book or simply a paper bug, there is no reason to expect more and more founders from art schools in the near future.

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 22/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.

Stay foolish, Steve Jobs used to say. Translated into #DLD13 language, this means "spot an opportunity and go after it." You can turn a tremendous tragedy into an opportunity, Blodget said with a swing in his voice.

Dean Ornish, Founder and President of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, confirmed that a heart attack can be the best thing that ever happened to someone because it can spark a health-conscious lifestyle. Or the most remarkable story of Hugh Herr, a biophysicist and extreme mountaineer who has developed high-tech prostheses which precisely imitate the range of functions of human legs because he had lost his own legs.

When technology and design make a connection to the human body, like in case of a dancing robot with cool glasses, then it has an effect. Then we can relate, said Blodget. That's also the way we have to think about issues like climate change and global poverty. Connect the dots, cooperate across borders and categories to have an impact. Business, science and technology have to come together, like here at the Digital Life Design Conference 2013.

The inflatable, water resistant, bright LED solar lantern Luci is just the beginning, said Blodget. A start of a new business mission to make the world a better place, as corny this might sound.

For now, the world has remained imbalanced. Whereas companies have the highest profits in history, we at the same time have the lowest wages. We have to leave Gordon Gekko of the 1980s behind, that greedy Wall Street villain who became a hero.


Companies should not only serve their shareholders and employees but also society. It's a new message, said Henry Blodget: "Value is good!" Create it, combine your forces. That's the mission, and that's DLD13.

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 22/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.

"My six-year-old daughter prints out her own shoes," stated Pablos Holman of Intellectual Ventures Lab, where he is part of a wide variety of futuristic invention projects. "I'm sure in no time we'll be printing out smoothies, strawberries and other foods." Most beautiful to him is that we can all realize our own projects with those machines, from jewelry to robot parts.

"We've heard about parts of micro satellites that have been printed and sent to outer space," said Peter Weijmarshausen, CEO of Shapeways. His company makes it possible to create one single product for the same price as thousands of them. Any material or product is possible as the technology is evolving fast. For now, Shapeways allows users to choose from 25 different materials, including metals, ceramics and glass, in order to give shape to an individual’s product.

In the industrial sector where Ingo Ederer works as CEO of Voxeljet, 3D printing cannot be missed anymore. More money is involved here, and bigger printers. The consumers might not have realized it yet, but the method is there to stay - and evolve.

You will know when 3D printing has reached mainstream, Weijmarshausen argued: "when it's not about the technology anymore but when we just like what it provides!" The most alluring characteristic, he said, is that it's environmentally friendly as there is no shipping involved.

I'd like to see children getting taught in school how the technology works, added Erik de Bruijn, Co-Founder and Designer at Ultimaker. He was also the one standing for many hours in the conference hallways and enthusiastically explaining anyone interested of what this great new thing is all about, how "it will improve people's lives." In his view, 3D printing will enter the masses within the next five years. 

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 21/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.

Can algorithms tell what physical world we live in?

Arkady Volozh, Founder and CEO of Yandex, usually known for operating Russia's most popular search engine, today made quite an astonishing announcement. His IT company has been officially becoming part of CERN and its well-known Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest particle accelerator.

A "super microscope" at CERN

"Nowadays, physics experiments don't measure anymore," he said. Instead, they record the data and need to make sense of vast sets. Here Yandex plays a significant role, with a search tool service.

Instead of burning time and energy to scan through the information, MatrixNet of Yandex is a "super microscope". Its detector registers particle collisions, or events, with the data being stored for future research. Arkady Volozh closed: "I'm very proud to be part of solving universal problems!"

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 21/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.

Premium content will still rule the future of screens, that's one pattern connecting all TV companies. "The industry is pregnant with change, although it will take more than nine months for it to happen," said Ynon Kreiz, Chairman of online video production company Maker Studios.

Components of future TV are social and interactive, Lisa Donovan as Co-Founder and General Manager of Maker Studios has figured out. Her vision has helped Maker achieve over 5 billion views online per month across its now 10,000+ channels. It's crucial to be part studio and part network.

Hubert Burda in the audience nods approvingly. His wife and actress, Maria Furtwängler, has been a huge fan of Lisa Donovan in the past, and declared the Maker Studios model as one to be watched.

A secret to success is bridging online and linear TV, through partnering or adapting to new technologies.

"We need to closely work together, linear TV and pay TV" all stitched together by Internet access, argued Lutz Schüler, CEO of Unitymedia KabelBW. Customers soon will only have to think about their interests like Formula1 for instance which will be available on all technology platforms and different content forms like games and chats.

Targeted media is what it will lead towards, Samir Arora as Chairman and CEO of Glam Media is convinced. At the moment, customers get highly annoyed by ads online: "If you just bought a car, you don't want car ads." In the future you will like advertising.

In that regard, linear TV will stay for a long time, Chief Digital and Adjacent Officer at Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Christian Wegner, is sure about. At least, as long as the model of national ad TV (Wegner) and the cable by subscription model (represented by Schüler) are working together in a strategic partnership. Together they intend to enhance the customer experience.

It's still the case that 185 hours in prime time on US mayor networks generated 67% of revenues vs. 5300 hours of digital content that generated 7% of revenues. "That's frustating!" said Lisa Donovan.

These two German companies mentioned here may not be in a competition but others, like Glam Media with 75.000 websites and Maker Studios with professional artists with 25 mio. views per video, theoretically could be shaking up their market dominance if they were offering their content in the same countries. German versions of Glam and Maker must be just around the corner.

It must be this combination of professional premium content and their implementation into the social and mobile sphere. "It will take a moment in time when people realize that digital content is considered premium, and then money will flow quickly," Samir Arora added. That's the huge different between print and TV business, he argued, "digital is not an extension of print as a medium, but for TV it is!"

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 21/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.

Once upon a time, journalists were heroes," Steffi Czerny introduced the prestigious journalism panel at the Digital Life Design Conference 2013. "That was long before social networks were challenging the authority of established media."

It seems as if traditional journalism has been undergoing an identity crisis ever since the multitude of online voices are growing louder. "We have to make better use of those new sources of information," said Arthur Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times.

It's a power shift that puts the old media into a corner. They have to react, make use of what's out there, their new audience. "I'm fascinated by the new forms of authority," Martin Nisenholtz admitted. "The audience actually becomes the editor of the authorities." Nisenholtz, who had left The New York Times in 2011 after sixteen years as the driving force behind the digital strategy, said it's most crucial to bridge new and old media.

"Actually, we have to work very hard to keep our authority," said Katharina Borchert, CEO of Spiegel Online. New forms of high quality advertisement online, native ads seaminglessly put into the news, threaten the former separation of contents: marketing vs. journalism. One has to fight for the attention of the reader and keep it.

Why follow an authority when you can curate your own content? Jeff Jarvis, blogger, j-school prof and author of 'What Would Google Do", described the new media as a platform. A scenery of anarchistic content managers pops into my mind when he speaks about how to leave the urge to be a mediator behind. His advice: become a platform builder and add value on top of that, in form of varifying facts for instance.

Is that really all there is what established - one could say admired - media like The New York Times and Spiegel can do in order to stay relevant? Digital subscriptions become more and more important, Sulzberger said, and with it the engagement with the audience. The importance moreover lies in the watchdog role, keeping an eye of what is happening in public sectors like politics. However, they need to find a sustainable economic model for quality journalism.

The key to this, the panelists agree, may well lie within the use of social platforms itself as a new form of spreading content. Instead of blaming networks like Google, Twitter and FB, traditional media should be focusing on what they are best at: producing reliable well-researched information across borders, like China and India, with nationally relevant content.

"We should be using the power we still have to support journalists in the field," Katharina Borchers closed the session. "We should get up and do our damn best and deliver," so that the promise of quality reporting by established media may hold.

This article was written for DLD Media and first published 20/01/13 on dld-conference.com. Click here for the link. The #DLD13 conference live coverage also included sending out Tweets about every session, interacting with the audience, interviewing speakers and posting highlights on Facebook.