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Oct 2012

Colin Grant

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Author and historian, Colin Grant, talks about the father that abused and rejected him to the point where he felt moved to kill him. However, he explains about how this man’s choices effected his path in life and how he eventually came to find a heart of forgiveness or compassion.

Each generation builds up an edifice which they are reluctant or sometimes unable to disassemble, but in the writing, my version of the story began to change, and it was detached from me. I lost my hatred of my father. I did no longer want him to die or to murder him, and I felt free, much freer than I’d ever felt before. And I wonder whether that freedness could be transferred to him.

Colin Grant: The son of a difficult father

21 Mar, 2012

Rules out paywall. Launches iPad apps

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At the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2012, Highfield says he will not introduce a paywall at Johnston Press. He plans for Johnston Press’s 255 titles to derive 20% to 25% of advertising revenue from digital within three years. Currently 5% of total income comes from digital.

The danger with content behind a paywall as News International did is that it is not indexed [on internet search engines such as Google], you then fall off the social graph and then no one cares what The Times says. It can be a spiral, a dangerous place to end up. Regional [newspapers] are about community, engaging with communities, and you have to be by and large free to do that. It is interesting but nothing we are about to follow soon.

Highfield is also launching a combination of paid-for iPad apps and 140 free mobile phone apps, such as the Scotsman at £7.99/month, to drive revenue and readership for its regional papers. The mobile apps have added 2 million new unique users, boosting the publisher’s total digital audience to 10 million. Highfield also says that he can see new models such as “newspaper first to digital first” and perhaps by 2020, “digital daily, print weekly”.

We need to make a digital transition, we need to do it and need to do it quickly. But this is not a panic situation. I don’t believe in a glide path to oblivion, but I’m not saying we don’t have to grasp the nettle. [Regional newspapers] are social, local and mobile but we just haven’t claimed that territory. It is going to be hard but there is survival.

11 Mar, 2012

Pycon keynote speech

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Graham gives the keynote speech to Pycon, the annual conference of Python programmers. He later reworks the speech as an essay, Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas.

One of the more surprising things I’ve noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. Any one of them could make you a billionaire. That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them.

He discusses seven ideas: A new search engine, replacing email, replacing universities, movie content on the net, the next Steve Jobs, bringing back Moore’s Law, and automated medical diagnosis.

Keynote: Paul Graham, YCombinator

7 Mar, 2012

GCU talk

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Duffy gives an opening address to GCU students about Entrepreneurial Spark.

We are delighted to have GCU as our academic ambassador as the university is grounded in what we call positive realism. We have a great relationship with Principal and Vice Chancellor Pamela Gillies, who is one of the most progressive academic leaders in Europe. GCU students will benefit from sharing out entrepreneurial thinking and from inputs within the university campus.

20 Jun, 2011

IAB Mobile Engage speech

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Highfield speaks at IAB Mobile Engage 2011. He talks about the growth in the mobile phone market, the lag of mobile advertising behind consumer uptake.

I think that mobile advertising is going to increase much more rapidly i.e. we are going to get through 5 and 10% of total budgets within two years, not the four or years it took Internet advertising. It’s self evident why: Most brands and companies have gotten used to digital advertising. I think that the benefits of mobile advertising, highly-targeted, highly social, highly engaging, is going to mean that the rate of adoption is going to happen far, far quicker.

12 Jun, 2011

Dartmouth Commencement Speech

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O’Brien delivers the commencement address at the 2011 Dartmouth College graduation ceremony. The 24-minute long speech discusses his own journey after graduation, which included challenges, disappointments, failures, and major changes in his career path as a TV talk show host.  The TV host is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate of the arts from Dartmouth.

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. Whether you fear it or not, true disappointment will come but with disappointment comes clarity, conviction and true originality.

Conan O'Brien Delivers Dartmouth's Commencement Address

16 Jan, 2011

Wins Golden Globe

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Pacino wins the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a Mini-Series or TV movie for his portrayal of Jack Kevorkian in You Don’t Know Jack (2010). Geoffrey Rush and Tilda Swinton present the award.

Wow. Thank you. Thank you. How wonderful. Thank you for that reception. Fantastic. It is – thank you – foreign press for this amazing award. It’s a great honor for me to have played such an extraordinary – portrayed – such an extraordinary person as Jack Kevorkian. You know. Just to navigate through his life was so much fun and interesting. Things I found out. And it’s great for actors who portray real characters. It’s a really kind of a special thing for the actor to play a real person. Because That relationship is so interesting and intimate and wonderful.

2010

Startup School 2010 speech

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Graham talks about the limitations of the VC model:

VCs, if they can get it, want a third of your company…there is a critical constraint in the VCs model, which is they take a board seat.

He says this constrains their ability to launch funding rounds:

[It] limits VC companies to two ‘classic’ Series A seed fund deals per partner per year

11 Nov, 2009

IAB Engage 2009 speech

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Highfield gives a presentation at IAB Engage 2009. He talks about where the television industry is going.

What took the telephone 100 years to achieve mass market penetration, took the television industry 50 years. It took the PC industry barely 20 years. In the UK this year we reached a tipping point where there are more PCs sold than television sets…When low-end netbooks become ubiquitous and disposable the idea of receiving your video content through traditional means almost becomes absurd…Whilst TV has to change dramatically, video content has an extremely rich and monetisable future.

13 Mar, 2009

Speaks at Teachers College

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Cosby speaks on responsibility, fatherhood and assists teachers in teaching in urban environments.

I want teachers who can explain to these kids, I want people who can sign that their are guardians for a 14 year old boy and he can’t stay up to four-o-clock in the morning trying to get some pussy. These are the people we want to get to, these are the people we want to stop. We want to make them aware of what they are doing to the community.

Bill Cosby Unplugged

19 Oct, 2008

Rolling Out feature talk

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Cosby speaks about the necessity for African Americans to motivate each other work to end of negative stereotypes by not playing into them.

You got to answer the same questions that you’ve always asked yourselves. Why would a boy say, he doesn’t mind going into prison because his friend is there. Why would he say that. It’s got to be about the house he`s in. It`s got to be about the apartment, something`s not right. And I said six years ago, I don`t have my time in law. Our children are trying to tell us something and we`re not listening.

Blacks are Screwed By no one else but Themselves

22 Apr, 2008

Startup School talk

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Altman tells the Y Combinator event that technical understanding is key to getting a startup funded:

Technical founders…if you can understand what the product should be and how to build it, you are a force to be reckoned with

Sam Altman at Startup School 08

19 Apr, 2008

Startup School 2008

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Graham tells the event that two pieces of advice for startups combined give an interesting result:

Make something people want, don’t worry too much about making money…you’ve got a description of a non-profit. When you get a weird result like this, either it’s a bug, or it’s a new discovery

He says Google and Craigslist are successful businesses that have been blurred the line between for-profit and charities – for instance Google ran no ads for the first year, and Craigslist doesn’t maximize its revenue but is amazingly successful and has high revenue-per-employee count:

Most startups would like to trade places with Craigslist

He says that Google behaves benevolently towards customers with money, and earns money that way, while in another example, targeting a problem like malaria could increase productivity in areas affected by the disease, also potentially earning money.

Paul Graham at Startup School 08

25 Sep, 2007

Tough Choices

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In Tough Choices, Fiorina presents her side of the HP firing as well as to give a different perspective on leadership, technology, globalization, and sexism.

This book Tough Choices is about business for sure, but it is also about life. It’s about my life, but it’s also about the lives of people I’ve come across in the course of my career.. . I wanted it to be a true reflection of who I am and what I’ve experienced.and how I’ve felt about things.

Mar 2005

How To Start A Startup talk

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Graham gives a talk at the Harvard Computer School in which he says successful startups need to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible.

If there is one message I’d like to get across about startups, that’s it. There is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.

Jun 2004

Speaks at Take Back America

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Bond speaks at Take Back America conference with the two founders of MoveOn.org. Bond imagines what SNCC organizing might have been like with the online networking, actions and fundraising. He discusses how the work of the civil rights and anti-war movement had to be expanded to fight for the rights of women, families, LGBT people, and the rights of workers around the world.

5 Sep, 1995

UN women’s rights speech

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Clinton talks about women’s rights in a speech to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women:

We focus world attention on issues that matter most in our lives — the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of our countries. What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, free from violence, and have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. When families flourish, communities and nations do as well. Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.

 

May 1851

‘Ain’t I A Woman?’ speech

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Truth speaks at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?