Middle East entrepreneurs and royalty representing at LeWeb

I hadn't had time to go through the LeWeb videos until today and I was happy to see a panel on the Middle East moderated by Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons with Rabea Ataya, Chairman & CEO of Bayt.com and
Habib Haddad, Founder of Yamli.com. I hope that people who watch it get a better idea of the Middle East and the opportunities in this region for entrepreneurs.



Also attending was Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I blogged about her before and I think she is a great. She is very active online on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and she does a great job breaking the stereotypes, not only of Arabs but women in the Arab world.  

Going to Korea

A bit nervous about heading to Korea tomorrow to meet Rory's family. Read more about it on our wedding blog. I'll be updating it regularly with pics from ceremonies, dinners, cool places we explore and hopefully some relaxing downtime as well.

Of superheros and economic pundits

The Wired article actually depict Park in a sort of comic book-esque way

I found this article on Wired Magazine's site really interesting. The Troubles of Korea’s Influential Economic Pundit by Mattathias Schwartz is about a sort of nobody Korean guy, Park Dae-Sung, who took to writing anonymously about South Korea's economy and the recession and all that. His alias, Minerva, became super popular to the point where he was actually having an impact on the economy because people would invest or pull out based on his predictions. In the end he was found out and was tried in court. Now he's a nobody again.

It's a great article and I suggest reading it but what intrigued me wasn't so much the conspiracy or government involvement (Disclaimer: the Korea Government just started following Rory and I on Twitter @koreangov ;). What interested me was the concept of alter-egos.

Maybe it is my fascination with superheroes but when I read the story, I couldn't help but think of Clark Kent. A geeky farm boy disguise for an alien super dude who took to saving humanity. People loved Superman but no one really cared or knew about Clark Kent.  I guess Park was the opposite. He was a nobody who's alter ego was a celebrity. But really, how can people put so much trust in the anonymous predictions of someone who wasn't willing to show their face? Would something like that be possible in Canada I wonder...?

Spiderman on the other hand has always had what I believe is a more truthful depiction of an identity crisis in that the public is split between his heroic deeds and his need for secrecy. There is a lack of understanding and a lack of public trust about whether he truly has good intentions or that he is even qualified to save people. Police see him as a vigilante. JJJ thinks he's a menace. So then why were Koreans so easily trusting of someone who was hiding behind their monitor?

Peter couldn't always handle his superhero side

I think it is an interesting insight into Koreans and maybe even humans. What's your take?
Debate!

*For more information on Korea, feel free to check out a blog I put together with my fiancee for our wedding in Korea. There is some interesting information on Korea there.

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Korean Fan Death

On hot summer days, Korean fans are known to commit murder!

There's a superstition in Korea that fans kill! Now, we're not talking about this kind of fan, though if looks could kill... but click through to our wedding blog to find out what we're talking about. Knowing just might save your life.

Spare change and the future of journalism

When I was 13 I needed 10 dollars to buy a Batman action figure. My dad wanted me to do 2 weeks’ worth of chores for the money so instead I went to the mall and stood near a pay phone booth outside the Walmart. “Excuse me but I really need to call my mom and I don’t have a quarter,” I whimpered to the old ladies shuffling by. I looked sad and cute and in ten minutes made enough to even buy a Robin action figure for my brother. A valuable lesson was learned that day: it can be more profitable to ask a lot of people for a little than to ask one person for a lot.

The more the merrier

With the advent of the internet and social media, this theory holds truer today than ever. Crowdfunding, as it has been termed, is my concept of begging for nickels multiplied by millions and it is how sites like Wikipedia and the Pirate Bay are able to operate without a formal funding model. There are countless crowdfunding projects on the web in nearly every industry and they are all benefitting from the power of a democratized web. For example ActBlue is designed to fundraise for political candidates, giving voice to underserved populations. ArtistShare is a service for musicians to fund their projects outside the normal recording industry. In 2004, Maria Schneider, became the first artist to win a Grammy with an album distributed only through the Internet.

It's like a potluck where everyone adds a little and they all come away with a lot.

Now it seems that crowdfunding may well be the solution for the ailing newspaper industry. According to Mashable, a recent New York Times story was the first piece of completely crowdfunded reporting from Spot.Us, a community-funded journalism site, to be printed in what can be considered the most important news publications in the world. The concept is quite novel, actually. As newspapers become more picky about what goes into their thinning pages, they are unwilling to pay the upfront costs for their staffers to travel and research news stories that, in the end, might not make it. With this new model, journalists receive funding by the public for writing stories that the public want to know about. Newspapers and other media then get to purchase those stories, knowing that they are on topics that people want to read. The journalist wins, the newspaper wins and most importantly, the global community wins.

Mob rule doesn't always have to result in hysteria. It's more likely to produce critical thought

Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in general are proof that social media is more than a fad but a viable business model based not on capitalist principles but on the odd marriage of social ideals and mob rule. In the case of newspapers and journalists, it’s a win/win/win situation for the industry. As a public relations professional, however, the question I need to ask is, where does PR fit in?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4YCHVXXzjQE/SwOdmOTSDOI/AAAAAAAABVg/8BIzIM5OpXQ/s1600/crowdfunder.jpg

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Racism in Korea

This picture is taken from a textbook in Korea. It explains a lot about why young people in that country are struggling to understand themselves and their place in the world. I explain it all in my post over on Rory and my blog http://www.roryandjamie.wordpress.com.

I'm Getting Married

I am marrying a beautiful and wonderful young woman by the name of Minseok from South Korea and we have officially set the date as May 2, 2010. It will be a traditional Korean wedding and we will be blogging about the traditions, cultural significance and our own experiences related to the wedding and all that is happening around it.

If you're interested to know what is involved in a traditional Korean wedding, visit us at www.roryandjamie.wordpress.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/roryandjamie.

By the way, the pic above isn't that random. Geese are an important symbol of fidelity in Korea. :)