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The man himself - Mr Jeff Pulver of jeffpulver.com.
Here we are at the 140 conference in New York.
How did you manage to get all this together?
The truth, I'm a very lucky man,
and I live a rather serendipitous life on Twitter.
I had this crazy idea based on a precept,
that everyone I know in my life is a character.
I knew that I was gonna rent out a Broadway theatre,
so instead of having a call for speakers, I had an open casting call,
for characters.
Then what I did is I reached out to people,
and I believed in total strangers and the serendipity of it,
so I asked for people to nominate a character to be part of this event,
and I listened.
Then, for people who didn't follow me,
I had a really hard time,
because I had the famous, not so famous people all adoring me.
I think all in, I think about 70% of the people who were nominated
got back to me,
and then there was the 30% that didn't,
and then at the very, very end, also said why wasn't I invited
to this 2 months ago, and I said because you ignored me!
Then of course, there was the famous and I was humbled,
because I've never before in my life been ignored by more famous people,
than leading up to this conference.
But by reaching out to others, who were total strangers to me,
and saying nominate this person or that person, and they did.
I started to see what these people had in common,
and what I wanted to do is create a foundation -
these are the people, these people define the society,
the social structure of what the event's about.
They're from all walks of life, all denominations, no biases,
it's just someone who's cool and interesting,
recommended by somebody - great, let's have them.
Then I started thinking, then all of a sudden the serendipity effect came in,
because somebody from the music industry said,
you know, it's quite Jim Drone, he's using Twitter.
He should be at your sess... your panel.
This guy from professional basketball, he should be there,
and of course, the editor-in-chief of Business Week,
well, he should be there too.
And so, I started listening.
I actually only invited a handful of people.
The biggest invite I did though was Ann Curry.
Ah, OK.
Now, I didn't know about how Rick Sanchez might be in person,
I only knew of Rick Sanchez,
because he was the first news anchor professional in America to use Twitter.
I thought this was a really... He was a pioneer.
I looked at everyone as a pioneer.
Now, when NBC said sure, we'll have to come,
I didn't realise the hesitancy about my choice of other person.
That was a great panel.
I think in the 14 years that I've been creating contents,
cos I look at this as an art.
Some people are artists, other people are architects,
and architects really kind of have a nice vision,
creates a blueprint and someone builds his building or his house.
Until last year I had my own media company,
I must've had, at its peak, 40/50 people working with me.
I could never have done this conference,
if I had 40 or 50 people working with me.
I did everything my way. Now, I'm gonna be egotistical,
instead of having to fight politics,
instead of having to explain to someone why I was right,
or why I was wrong, I just did it.
The obsessive effect was I've been online now,
for averaging between 90 and 110 hours a week,
just on this conference.
And I'm, my whole professional life,
my whole life, I sound like I'm a kid,
but my whole life, I've always done 6, 7, 8, 11 things in parallel.
I never knew this word focus.
Focus and Jeff Pulver, for anyone who knows me,
they'd be laughing their *** off right now,
cos they know I can't focus on anything.
It does not happen.
But this event had a mes... mesmerised me,
and got me to actually focus and I did.
Until we got onsite, I did basically all the work of the event,
the dynamics, the speakers and stuff.
And you've allowed it to evolve into something
that started off talking about Twitter celebrity,
we've gone into so many different...
That's the serendipity of it, you see, because...
When I said I wanted to look at the effects of Twitter,
as a platform on celebrity, the media, advertising and politics,
I did not know anyone was a celebrity on Twitter.
- I didn't know anyone in the media... - As you say, they're all rock stars.
They are. I do events. My history of doing events,
is I believe in giving everyone a stage, a platform, an audience,
and if you notice these badges we have here -
it's first name, last name and Twitter name -
that's all that matters to me. We're all equal.
We're living in a flat world, there are no politics here.
People are gonna be hanging out with the CEO of a billion dollar company,
which are here, but you don't know it.
If you don't know the guy, if you don't recognise that he's so and so,
he's just a person, just a name, just a character.
I think there's been democratisation in terms of how we connect with people,
and in some ways, I'm making up for all the events I always wanted to do,
where I only wanted to put first name, last name and email address,
cos that's how I connected to people.
Here, it's all about the ad,
but, if anything, the success of this conference,
comes from the disintermediation of Twitter.
I call it I'm a character, 140 character conference, I don't say Twitter.
I believe we're living in the state of the now,
the early, early stages of the real time internet.
If I would have gone on Twitter and said I'm doing the now conference,
come join me, they would not come.
So, I used Twitter as a way to connect people to people,
cos I believe that in any emerging civilisation,
one of the first things we have to do is create a language and communicate.
So, it is that the language of the 140 character conference is Twitter.
It's a platform we're using to connect people with people,
but I think that the success of things like Friendfeet,
and Facebook status updates and Twitter,
has actually introduced the real time internet to the world,
and that we've gone away from
just going to search engines and asking questions.
We go into a place to share what it is we're doing right now,
and when so many people share that right now experience,
all of a sudden, the unintended consequences,
is the democratisation of information.
And now the common person,
I'm not talking about the head of nation,
or head of a large corporation.
If you have internet connectivity in Zimbabwe or Bangladesh,
or in Thailand or New York City,
then you have the same access to information as anyone else.
What you do with it, of course, is up to you.
So, this conference,
I kind of liked having... the people I know that are famous,
but are really like not famous,
the guys who pitched me on why they should be a character,
and I listened and I provided - it's almost like a...
In New York, maybe they have it in London,
it's like improv, it's like an open mic night for comedy,
I'm providing open mic night to the world,
for a bunch of characters.
This isn't the only place, is it - this isn't the last one?
No, I'm gonna do one in London, I'm gonna do an event in LA,
but like I had someone flew here from Perth, Australia.
Just flew here, to speak.
And of course this guy who came and spoke from Iceland,
he said I'm a character.
And it's like who am I to say you're not?
So, it's the dynamic.
Like, this afternoon, one of my favourite sessions,
which I just think is totally amazing,
is that we have someone from the US State Department
and someone from the British Foreign Office,
who's coming here to talk about Twitter
as a platform for public diplomacy.
This, particularly in today's geographic climate,
particularly what's going on in Iran,
I think it's very foretelling that we're living in a different world.
This is a change agent, right?
There are other conferences that will always deal with Twitter,
and you know what, I can't avoid
if some people want to talk about how to be a better twitterer.
I mean, it's part of our language.
As much as I have English teachers telling me my grammar sucks,
or fix this or that, we need to be proper,
but I think that the picture in front of us is this other world,
and every one of the characters that are here, right,
they're all pioneering something.
But when you're so close to something, you don't realise,
oh, my god, something's changed around me.
That's what I'm trying to really explore, the now effect,
the fact that we're living in a different world.
Since 1993 we've been in the past on the internet,
and we're now coming to the commercial realisation
of the real time side,
and this will have tremendous impact going forward.
Businesses that didn't think they had to worry about this will be disrupted,
billions and billions of dollars will be created,
and there's that wonderful edge of opportunity,
that's what this conference is all about,
and while I would believe that we'll embrace other platforms,
that are also in the now, we'll continue to talk Twitter,
and we'll continue to be a character,
I mean we are characters, because I think that's so...
I just believe in human nature, I believe in the positive side of people.
I believe that the next person you meet could change your life.
140 people changed my life with this conference.
I mean, 140 people who I didn't know came together under one roof,
for whatever reason, and had a tremendous effect.
Did I know Rick Sanchez or Ann Curry? No.
I knew none of these people,
but when you look back on some of the best days of your life,
I'd have to say these are... What a crock!
It's been, it's like... things happen, right.
If you're so structured,
if you're so focused on something, you lose out,
so, I'm reminded all the time.
It looks like now could well be the future.
This is true, at least for me.
Jeff, thank you so much.
Thank you.