Report from MediaOn

não falo português

Last night I gave the keynote address to open MediaOn 2008 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

The conference was sponsored by Itau Cultural.

It’s a gathering of broadcasters, newspapers and online journalists from all across Latin America.

In content, it’s very similar to our own DNA2009 conference (March 4-5, Brussels).

Brazil is an enormous country. It’s the fifth largest country in the world, with the fifth largest population.

It’s also the world’s tenth biggest economy, and it is growing fast.  Just look at Sao Paolo, which went from a small village of a few thousand people to the largest city in the world in a century. And yet for all its power an position and potential, it is a part of the world to which American pay far too little attention.

There is no question that the Spanish Speaking world is so enormous that it becomes an almost self-containted entity – talking to each other, trading with each other and in the world of television, creating programming that is traded across Spanish speaking cultures, but that we rarely see.

This is a mistake.

Because the people of Brazil are technically aggresssive and are moving rapidly into the broadband/digital age.

We have much to share.

It’s John Stewart, but in Portuguese

Following my talk, I was interviewed by Marcelo Tas, the John Stewart of Brazil.

Simultaneous translation made it much easier. Tas is very very smart and very online saavy, despite being an online personality, he lives in both worlds. Completely hip.

We ended with questions from the audience.

It’s a 10 hour flight from NY to Sao Paolo. We go much more easily to Tokyo or Shanghai or Singapore or much further.

Brazil is a place we should pay far more attention to.  I certainly intend to.

And for those who speak Portuguese:

“Adapte-se à web, ou morra”, diz o criador da NYT Television

10/09/08

A revolução que atinge em cheio a comunicação foi analisada nesta terça-feira, dia 9, no Media On, 2º Seminário Internacional de Jornalismo Online, em São Paulo.

O encontro debateu a relevância das novas mídias num novo cenário, em que a internet é a bola da vez na busca pela democratização de conteúdo.

A abertura do evento reuniu Marcelo Tas e Michael Rosenblum, dois profissionais de grande influência no jornalismo praticado no ambiente online. O primeiro deles foi um dos primeiros blogueiros da web brasileira, enquanto o outro criou a New York Times Television, braço online do jornal mais influente do mundo.