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As I was falling asleep last night I thought, “it’s been a long week.” And then I started to wonder, what makes a long week or a short week?

It’s not the number of days in the week – there are three and four day weeks that are super long. And they are 5 day weeks that fly by. But you know that feeling where it’s Wednesday, and you say goodbye to someone at the office and slip in “have a nice weekend if I don’t see you tomorrow” only to realize tomorrow is Thursday and you will both be in?

What Makes a Short Week

I think it’s easier to define a short week. It’s the week that seems to fly by. I think I know the things that cause this to happen for me:

1. Day does not start too early (first meeting by 9 or 9:15, time to think and settle in before talking to other humans)
2. Day is full, but not Tetris-style booked, there is room to go a little over in meetings and time to visit the facilities or get a coffee and chat with people
3. Meetings are engaging – not lecture hall style listening meetings, but small rooms that have the ability to have conversation and action come out of them
4. Meetings are long enough to really have a conversation – with all the focus on shorter meetings and creating meeting efficiencies, I find I do enjoy a meeting where there is room to say hello, visit with people a bit, get into business and then engage in a productive dialogue
5. Wind down moment – having a moment at the end of the day, to review the day’s notes, send those follow-up emails and make sure everything is prepared for tomorrow means I leave with a clear head and ready to re-engage the next day

Avoiding the Long Week

In an effort to avoid having a long week, I’m trying to implement some tactics in my schedule planning that help me drive short week success.

1. Control the calendar (no meetings before 9 or 9:15, leave 15 – 20 minute breaks between meetings, hold time at end of day as a meeting with myself for my wrap up)
2. Build Social Time into the meeting agenda, giving everyone permission to catch up and share life moments
3. Fewer. Longer. Better. the above will mean fewer meetings in the day, they will be a bit longer and if we limit the number of folks in the room they can also be more engaging and we can make some personal connections along the way

I can’t always control when my morning starts, or how long the meetings are or who is in them. But when I can set the schedule I will try to stick to these steps, as the value of coming out of a short week means we’ve been productive, we are happy, we are engaged and we are energized for the next week.

Here’s wishing you many short weeks.

Raj Amin/Co-Founder & CEO, Healthination
Allen DeBevoise/CEO, Machinima.com
Jim Louderback/CEO, Revision3
Ran Harnevo/CEO, 5Min
Jon Goldman/CEO, Qlipso
Alex Blum/CEO, KickApps
Moderator: Andy Plesser/Beet.tv

If you have an influencer in YouTube don’t underestimate their value in comparison to an influencer on Twitter & Facebook. The vast majority of video content is being discovered through “traditional outlets” like search. but if a publisher does a good job creating the content and building the SEO value you will have a very efficient means to distribute. The power is completely in your control along with your audience.

Hulu is the only vendor able to supply video at scale for advertisers to run against.

For brands as video publishers – syndication has to be part of your strategy. You are not going to be able to monetize it on one property. If you have quality distribution at scale – then you can create individual experiences that have high value. CPMs should be in the mid 3 figures.

Long tail content – it’s important to remember that some of the UGC can be of high value if you harness it.

Cable is around for a reason, because there is someone making the choice that it is good enough to be on TV. There is little to no curation on the web. Consumers want good content that is relevant to them.

Brands need to create content that is right for the consumer.

Break time . . .

Kate Burns – SVP, Sales and Operations, AOL Europe
Carolyn Everson – CVP – Ad Sales Global Consumer & Online, Microsoft
Curt Hecht – CEO, VivaKo Nerve Center
Dev Patel: Yahoo, VP Advertiser and Publisher Solutions
Moderator: Brian Morrissey – Digital Editor, Adweek

Brian: How has the shift to audience based buys shifted the market.

Carolyn: The amount that we can target is good for advertisers and publishers alike. There will always be brands that will want big brand campaigns. Agencies are building their own platforms to buy the consumer. The industry is getting smarter and more efficient and there is a shift in the dollars that are brand vs. performance.

Kate: They have both content and ads reporting into her – which means they are holistic. It breaks the barrios of Church vs. State traditions. It helps to deliver great content and relevant ads. This also allows them to launch things faster.

Brian: Will the audience buying be remnant inventory?

Curt: Publishers are more open to being part of the networks. They are working with Yahoo! that allows it to be a reservation based system that is more branded. Ideally both organizations are lowering their cost of participation.

Brian – the chart we always see it time spent vs. dollars spent on digital media.

Carolyn: Brand advertisers still care about the environment they are in. Sight, sound, light. Digital has grown up as a DR media and we have restricted the creativity. If we were to start over how would we think about an ad mobile on the web. What is digital advertising going to look like? There is also not enough quality video content on the web. There needs to be a more robust environment for advertisers to play in.

Kate: There’s a lot of discussion on how to measure around engagement, but we haven’t made it work. As an industry we need to make it easier and more efficient for advertisers and agencies to play. AOL launched The Devil Unit (I’m on the consortium there) which is easier and more engaging and quick to get live.

Brian: Is it the creative holding it back?

Curt: When digital media started to take off it was the digital media guys – and they were in before the creative agencies. Now the creative agencies are getting involved. How do agencies operate on a Paid/Owned/Earned which is more than just placing ads.

Dev: The innovation on the creative canvas in critical. On sites with high traffic and high reach – the On The Mail Login Page is a “Big Ass” unit that is attractive to the advertiser. But what we can’t forget it what happens after the ad is clicked. We have to think beyond the GRPs. (AHMEN)

Carolyn: We are talking about PC – the right conversation is what is the ad experience across ALL ad platforms. The more we can work in that way the more we will win the brand dollars. This clearly makes the argument for a unified reporting metric. It’s a very confusing landscape. We as an industry have to make this easier across platforms.

Dev: Whatever form or channel a user is engaged we must understand unique reach and what are the types and levels of interactivity and what are the effective sales.

Curt: CPMs and Rating systems play a role of currency – but what is the most important metric to the client. The marketer will start to look at the additional data, because now they understand more about how it’s driving their business. We are going to see easier things happen, but harder things on how we connect it back to the marketplace.

Brian: What is going to save the CPM?

Kate: There is a plethora of UGC and it makes it hard for brands to navigate.

Carolyn: How do you get quality content? You can get traditional media – that needs a bigger megaphone to get to users. And then there are other aggregators out there. They are working closely with the agency to get quality content from the brands themselves. Traditional Media – Aggregators – Brands – they are the 3 sources of content.

Dev: Agrees this is the source of great content.

Curt: There is a lot of supply of video – probably more than we realize. How do we use data to get to the right video.

By the way there is a “What Muppet are you?” theme happening here this week. Carolyn went with Snuffleupagus.

Personal Note: I like Carolyn a lot – it’s nice to see someone who has a lot of my same thinking on this panel.

Lunch Time: Back later . . .

Opening Presentation by Booz & Co.

TV is still the global mass medium – it is the most widely penetrating technology. Its contested, not by the Internet, but by Mobile. The technology is out there – are the consumers adopting it?

Usage numbers out of the US. Watching TV in the home: 140 hours/month; Watching Time shifted TV 7:54 hours; Watching Video in Mobile: 3:16, Watching Online 3:24, Watching on Internet or PC 27:32 – about 10% of total TV has shifted to “off the box”. What does it mean?

Panel:
Michale Comish – CEO, Blinkbox Entertainment
Daniel Heaf – Digital Director, BBC Worldwide
Patrick Walker – Director of Video Partnerships EMEA, Google/Youtube
Jan Wareby – SVP & Head of Business Unit Multimedia, Ericsson
Moderator: Satci D. Kramer – Editor EVP, ContentNext Media

Staci: Google TV is tied to the box, but how to take it and make it make money?

Patrick: The content is being distributed and as the bandwidth increases the consumption of long form content is usage. YouTube Mobile Usage is larger today than YouTube Web usage was 5 years ago. Consumers are shifting how they are using TV. By using a laptop or a mobile phone while watching regular tv.

Patrick: The rights and contracts are having a challenge keeping up with the changes in technology. Google doesn’t think they have done a good job of communicating what Google TV is or isn’t. It’s being blocked by Fox and many other stations – “you mention people are block us. they are blocking themselves from being seen on us.” Got a good laugh from the audience. But a good point – users will find an alternative way

Staci: Will Google pay re-transmission fees? Patrick: Google sees themselves as a neutral source for accessing the data that is the show. They aren’t rebroadcasting anything they are just a conduit. Interesting POV.

Patrick: Without Google being involved TV is going to the web. They are just enabling the process.

Audience Question: How do you see the consumption of media changing now that it’s on a smaller devise.

Patrick: Being able to access both the mobile content and TV content to have a more enhanced TV experience.

Staci: Will consumers pay extra to have access everywhere?

Panel says: Yes – it’s about paying for a coherent user experience. And the advertisers are willing to pay as well.

Coffee Break – NEED THIS FOR REALS!!

Hugo Barra – Director, Mobile Product Management, Google
Christian Hernandez – Head of International Business Development, Facebook
Ilja Laurs – Founder CEO, GetJar
Raoul Roverato – VP New Growth Businesses, Orange
Moderator: David Rowan – Editor in Chief, WIRED UK

Top 25 Paid Apps on the iPhone people are spending on average $1.27, on the iPad it’s $5.37 – sounds like a great opportunity.

L’Orange is promoting apps as part of the mobile bundle.

The panel agrees it’s impossible to build creative for every platform. The consumer is spending money on the private platform (Apple) although Apple has made some massive changes to the terms of service and allowing apps that are more social including VOIP.

What you want to do with the application is critical – if you want something standard a web app is fine. But if you want to do video and other things then you are going to need to custom create the app to each device. France has 3 million users of mobile television. Ultimately there will be consolidation of mobile platforms – there needs to be competition so that only the best survive and they are forced to be open. It’s a shift of power 4 – 5 years ago the operator was the gate keeper – and now the OS provider is the gatekeeper to the consumer.

Facebook’s future? They didn’t set out to build the world largest gaming platform, but it happened. They are now the second largest driver to media sites. They are trying to make it easier to allow developers to bring consumers from web to wireless seamlessly.

Audience Question: Is Google working on a social network called GoogleMe to compete with Facebook?

OOHs and AHHs from the audience – answer is NO. They think of social as an ingredient of the experience on a vertical. Google has made it more difficult for Facebook to access GMail info – and TechCrunch has covered the whole story. Obviously and uncomfortable moment on the stage here in Monte Carlo. http://tcrn.ch/aN8MTp

The New Wave

Buddy Media
Only 1/4 of all Facebook users are in the US. Featuring Starwood Hotels. There are 1,000 hotels and they are all using Buddy Media to create custom pages, managed by the individual hotel managers. “You’re not going to build blog software to start a blog. Why would you build Facebook tabs from scratch.”

Newspaper Direct – we are all getting a gift of 1 year of newspapers from Igor.
They have 2,000 newspapers from 94 countries. They are all available for distribution on the digital network before they are even printed in their local country. Press Reader is the app. It takes you to a store where you can choose the country and order the paper. It’s not the website – it is the printed version of the physical paper. It is optimized for the platform on which you are accessing it. You can navigate the pages in a carousel and zoom into a story. and if you click on a story title it will give you a plain text view of the article. You can also listen to the paper being read to you and you can share via email, Twitter and Facebook. The next generation that is white labeled for the publisher is a combination of the Web based content and the physical paper in one app. The Arkansas Gazette is an example of this “super app”. The new Galaxy Tablet – the Samsung Android tablet was rolled out in Europe this week and the app is built to work there as well. Spencer comments, “this could be the thing that saves old media.” Check out PressDisplay.com to see how they are experimenting with the possibilities.

Clicker: Based in LA and San Francisco, Paul Whirley COO & Co Founder.
Clicker is a programming guide for internet streaming television and movies. The goal was to design what TV Guide would look like in a full streaming world. It’s a database that can be pivoted and queried for all available content and brings in social conversation from your friends about shows. Clicker.tv is wrapped to allow you to view from your couch. It’s an affiliate based revenue model. They raised 8 mil. in October 08 and in February they raised another 11 mil.

L’Orange: Patrice is going to show off 24/24
Do you know when the first newspaper was published? It was 1631 just after Gutenberg inventing the printing press. In 1980 you got the first dedicated news channel on TV which was CNN. 24/24 Actu by Orange TV, Press, Radio service 100% dedicated to news. It’s about getting the news when and where you want. It works on your computer and all mobile devises. Every screen has been custom designed for that screen. 2424actu.com The search brings everything from all channels.

XBox Kinect Hub
Let me simply say – Oh Hell Yeah I Need One Of These!!! Alex it’s a good thing you don’t read my blog this may be your birthday present 🙂 I’m going to play with this live this afternoon – expect that I will write a full post about that experience later.

Mini Tycon Casino Mobile Social Game by SGN
Passed Farmville to be the #2 game. It’s a casino game. There are few former EA folks that are working on the social game. The vision is to bring social playing into mobile. They are planning on building other apps that will be part of the world. Restaurants, hotels, etc. You can hire your friends to work in your casino. Millions of dollars a week are getting made by companies with these social apps. There are tens of thousands of simultaneous games at once. At most they have had other games that had a million simultaneous players.

I was honored to be among a great group of speakers at this event by Luxury Lab (L2). It was called the Social Graph Clinic. The audience was a fantastic group of leaders in luxury all eager to improve their standing in the social media space. It was great to see some old friends and make new ones. Also, I quote Erik Qualman a great deal, so fun to be able to do it infront of him. Here are some highlights from that day.

I’m so honored to be featured with such great Entreprenaurs in this series. Come see us all at the event on 11/17