Scott Kveton presentation at TEDx Portland

Notes from Scott Kveton's presentation at TEDx Portland


Scott Kveton 

Co-Founder Urban Airship

• Open. Mobile. Social. - the three areas he’s an expert at.
• The crossroads we’re at now is that they are in collision.
• Open
• Demo: Took a picture. Uploaded it. Tagged it with location. It went out to thousands of followers on Twitter, on Facebook.
• Three years ago you couldn’t do this.
• Richard Stallman: the guy is who responsible for open. One of the most principled people in the industry.
• In 1982, got really frustrated. At the MIT hacker culture, really open. Got pissed at businesses who were not shipping the source code to their software. In 1985, created a set of licenses for open, free software.
• In 1991, Linus Towards, a college student, created Linux as a hobby. (Linus now leaves here in Portland)
• He adopted the licenses that Richard Stallman created.
• Linux is everywhere. Cars, phones.
• Other kinds of open... 
• Julian Assange, founder of wikileaks.
• wanted to promote and force transparency at the government level.
• release 250,000 diplomatic memos.
• Mobile
• 4 B mobile devices. 1 for every 2 people.
• there’s 900 million people on the planet.
• a third of all Facebook users don’t have a computer. they only use it on their phone.
• Android, an operating system for phones. Based on Linux. It was purchased by Google. Now 600,000 Android phones activated every day. 
• iPhone: a platform for creation. It knows who you are, where you are, who your friends are.
• Social
• friendster: v 1.0
• myspace: v 2.0
• what was different this time?
• dinner with friend, december 2006
• they get seated. everyone looks down and fiddles with their phone.
• pre-iphone. “what are you guys doing?”
• “Twitter”.
• So I sign up...
• twitter started in the bay area, it had a geographic area, and a certain density, and only later did they spread.
• with facebook, they started at harvard, and slowly spread out.
• with 4square, they targeted “bars and restaurants below 14th avenue”. very geographically focused.
• Mohammed [lastname]
• Lived in Tanzania
• Unlicensed vegetable seller.
• Policewoman confiscated his cart.
• He offered to pay fine.
• The policewoman slapped him in the face and insulted his dead father.
• He went to city hall to protest, and was turned away.
• He went back, doused himself in gasoline, and lit himself on fire.
• The protests that resulted were peaceful, but utterly crushed by the police.
• This wasn’t reported by mainstream western media.
• But this lit off everything.
• This wouldn’t have been possible without social media. 
• social, mobile, open is completely transforming society.