Reports from TieCon 2008

[rahulk...@gmail.com]

Hello All,

I was at the TieCon 2008 on the second day of the conference. Wanted
to share the highlights and my takeaways from the panels I attended.
Feel free to post your comments,

1. Elon Musk's Grand Entry - The day started with entrepreneur par
excellence, Elon Musk, making a grand entry in his Tesla. As you
might know, Tesla is going to be an all electric car. My notes from
his chat,
a. Tesla sports coupe is going to ship in Sep with a price tag of
$100K. It will run around 200 miles on one battery charge consuming
electricity worth $5
b. Elon is also heading Space-X, the private company which will
head US space efforts for the next few years starting 2009.
c. As if two grand ideas were not enough, Elon's third company,
Solar-City is bursting at seams meeting solar installation orders.


2. The next keynote, "Sustaining Entrepreneurship in Biotech and Its
Global Impact" by John C. Martin, PhD, President and CEO, Gilead
Sciences was about sustaining entrepreneurship in a big company. My
takeaways,
a. John credited his engineering background for his ability to be
practical about assessing and deploying advanced technologies.
b. Gilead is investing heavily to subsidize AIDS drug in Africa and
India working with generic drug manufacturers in those regions.

3 The afternoon panel on "Display Advertising 3.0" had panelists from
Doubleclick (now part of Google), Spotrunner, Glam Media and Specific
Media. My takeaways,
a. Ad money flowing mostly to "safely lit" websites where the
advertisers feel their brand message won't be diluted
b. Doubleclick is focusing on deep engagement metrics that target
long term ROI and convergence
c. Spotrunner is making it easy for all size businesses to create,
target and measure messages over Internet
d. Glam Media has taken the route of helping the existing content
and tailoring it for Internet. Think of it as transporting glitzy
fashion mags to Internet.

4. The other afternoon panel I attended was on "Social Networking".
Panelists were from NBC, CBS, Hi-5. My takeaways,
a. Social networking sites best for brand related ROI as opposed to
financial ROIs
b. Still not a good way to quantify the brand ROI past "Time spent
on the ad/site"
c. Huge numbers of visitors but business case still evolving