Lunch at the Circle meeting February 24: ’Strategic investments in technology and environment by the French sovereign wealth fund – an inside view’
With Marc Julien, investment director at the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI).
Marc Julien is director of investments at the Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI). FSI is the sovereign investment fund launched by the French government a few years ago to promote development and entrepreneurship in French companies. Marc is focusing on the FSI’s investments in the areas of technology and environment. Marc will talk both about the overall strategy of the FSI and specifically about investing in “his” sectors. Marc was previously SVP at Schneider Electric and a consultant at LEK and Estin & Co. Marc has an MBA from INSEAD. More on the FSI here: http://www.fonds-fsi.fr/
This is a video interview from the Lunch at the Circle event on November 17 with Lindsay Adams.
Lindsay Adams speaks on Teams that work: “Teamwork as we knew it in organisations is dead”.
In this presentation Lindsay focuses on the elements that are now needed to work in “Teams That Work”. In the sixties and seventies academic researchers formulated models around teamwork that some companies today are still following at their peril. Lindsay will share his current research that shows teams now function in entirely different ways.
In today’s fast paced business environment business owners and leaders have to take into account a different set of factors when addressing the make-up and management of their teams. With organisations downsizing, resizing and remodelling it is imperative to have the right tools to manage the key to your organisations success, your teams!
You will learn how you to build effective teams while taking advantage of the constantly moving talent pool in your organisation.” Lindsay is founder and director of Teamocracy, a company helping corporations work more effectively by doing better teamwork: http://www.teamocracy.com/.
Lindsay is Australian and comes to Paris for a few speaking engagements, one of which is L@C. He is also president of the Federation for Professional Speakers. Lindsay comes to speak at L@C thanks to David Ednie.
L@C May 30: Selling your ideas to technology-agnostic decision makers
— The 4 vital questions you must ask to create rapport, build trust and get the outcome you want in every situation — with David Ednie, founder and President of SalesChannel Europe
David talked to us about “Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion” with a particular focus on how to sell technology to “technology agnostic” C-level managers. This is how David describes the theme: “Selling Your Ideas transcends selling products or services, your company, or even yourself. Selling Your Ideas is the most critical skill you need today to succeed in business and in life. In this interactive discussion you will learn how to:
• Leverage the Psychology of Change
• Ask questions in colour
• CREATE insights in others
Learn how to master the 3 steps to Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion and make them work for you.”
David is an expert in sales performance and motivation and President of SalesChannel Europe (http://www.saleschannel-europe.com/, http://saleschannel.blogspot.com/). He has previously worked in various senior management roles in the technology sector, e.g. as Vice-President of International Sales at Genuity Inc. and at BT. He is also one of the founding members of the French Professional Speakers’ association. And a familiar face to many of you who come to Lunch at the Circle!
Strategies for success in promoting your business on the internet in the next 18 months
with Gifford Morley-Fletcher, Strategy Director, Skive
Gifford Morley-Fletcher
Gifford will approach this subject from two angles: the fabled “SEO” and the power of broadband. SEO is one of the buzz words that basically just means “how do you get your site noticed by search engines and thus by customers”. It is critical for any web site to take into account how search engines rank web sites. It can, literally, be a matter of life and death for a business web site if you are on the first page or the tenth for search engine results. And it is not just a question of “build it and they will come”. You have to know how to attract search engines, and customers. The second aspect is that the increasing uptake of broadband has changed the way to build web sites and make people notice them – today you can offer “rich media”, video, animations, sound etc, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago.
And if you don’t believe that it’s important how you manage your web presence and think about how to appear from a search engine perspective, consider this: What do you think you will find if you do a Google search on “miserable failure”? You’ll be surprised. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm)
Gifford Morley-Fletcher has worked in New Media since 1994, making him a bit of a ‘web dinosaur’. He is currently based in London as Strategy Director at Skive, an award-winning digital strategy and design agency based in London, responsible for developing interactive web sites, games and promotions for brands such as Reebok, Playstation, McDonalds and Gillette. During his career, he has worked in all areas of web development and online marketing, most recently spending 4 years in Paris where he was a founder of LSF Interactive, specialists in SEO, Paid Search and online lead generation.
Social software… FaceBook, SecondLife, Wiki… It’s just for kids or teenagers, right? Wrong! Perhaps.
There is a new breed of “enterprise social software” emerging that potentially may change the way we work and the way we collaborate. As well as the way hierarchies work in organisations. You can also think back to the days when millions of dollars were invested in enterprise “knowledge management” solutions. And change the scenario to something that may actually work and that costs only a fraction. And that is implemented and managed by line managers – not the big IT departments.
But first you have to understand what it is and start imagining what you can do with it. This is what Carlos Diaz will tell you.
Carlos Diaz is founder and CEO of blueKiwi, a French enterprise social software company. Gartner recently listed blueKiwi on its pick list for the top “Team Collaboration and Social Software” solutions. In fact, blueKiwi was the only European company on the list… (“blueKiwi has successful deployments of Web-based open collaboration solutions where the emphasis is on information sharing, strengthening of employee relationships and expert identification.” -Gartner 2007.)
Before founding blueKiwi Carlos was CEO of GroupeReflekt, a consulting company and web agency that he founded with his brother in Limoges ten years ago and recently sold to the Belgian company Emakina.
Interview with Stefan Engeseth, November 9, 2007 at Restaurant Maceo, Paris.
“Detective Marketing”…? Stefan Engeseth describes it like this: “to find what’s hidden in the blind spot and to see what your competitors don’t see”. Creative and unusual marketing. Understanding customer requirements differently. Detective Marketing is a concept Stefan created that focuses on “detecting” hidden possibilities and unrealised potentials in companies. It’s built around a structured methodology but Stefan will bring it to life with several examples, both surprising, amusing and unusual. Stefan comes to Paris specifically to speak at the L@C.
Stefan Engeseth is author, consultant and speaker. He is founder and CEO of Detective Marketing Consulting. Stefan’s ideas range from innovative and future-oriented to bordering on the far-fetched. Yet, they all build on the universal truth that without innovation and visions, companies will not grow in today’s highly competitive business world. “The question is, how far are you prepared to go?” Over the years, Stefan Engeseth has worked as a consultant with many international companies and Fortune 500 corporations. He has been described as on of the world’s leading experts and speakers in his field.
Stefan has written two books: “Detective Marketing: Creative Common Sense in Business” and “ONE: A Consumer Revolution for Business”. He is currently working on his third book.
Once in a while computing becomes interesting again. A new technology comes to maturity and turns everything up side down. This is what is happening right now with “virtualization”. A big battle is going on between Microsoft, IBM, HP, Citrix, VMWare and others. Come, to understand what is virtualization, why it is radically changing the way IS operates and how it is impacting new services and users … and wait until September 18th to buy a new PC!
Carlos Escapa is VMWare’s Regional Director in Southern Europe since November 2006. Prior to his current assignment, Carlos was with Sterling Software and Computer Associates as Business Development Director in Japan, Sales Director in France and Vice-President of channels in Europe.
A native of Valladolid, Spain, Carlos has a Bachelor’s Degree from Illinois State University and a Master’s Degree from Virginia Tech, both in Computer Science. He is based in Barcelona.
“How can enterprises catch up with consumers on Web 2.0” with Louis Naugès
Consumers have taken to “Web 2.0” rapidly. Over the last year or so there’s been a massive uptake and general acceptance of much that can be labelled Web 2.0: blogs & wikis, of course, but also for example “software-less” applications like “Office 2.0” and Google Apps (why buy a license if you can get the service for free online?), MySpace and other “communities”, video sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion, internet telephony with Skype, Wikipedia, wireless everywhere, peer-to-peer file sharing and distribution…
So where are the enterprises in all this? Most are nowhere. Louis Naugès will chart a path for how enterprises can catch up with consumers and up-to-date employees who are of the digital age…
Louis Naugès is president and founder of Microcost, a company that, according to its web site “guides enterprises through the revolutionary transition from existing legacy systems into the future era of web based autonomic computing and assists them as a trusted partner with ongoing evolution. http://microcost.com and http://nauges.typepad.com/.
Here’s a video interview with Serge Soudoplatoff on his views on innovation and other things. Click on the image (L@C logo) below to view.
We will be back soon with the podcast recording with Serge’s whole presentation.
Serge Soudoplatoff is founder and president of Almatropie, a foundation that promotes intelligent use of the internet and innovation. His previous career includes: co-founder of Highdeal, a company providing software solutions to telcos and internet operators; director of Cap Gemini’s R&D activity , director at France Telecom Innovation centre, as well as positions in higher education and research. He has written a book, “Avec Internet, où allons-nous” (“With the internet, where will we end up?”). You can download the book on Serge’s web site.
Serge will talk about how you can facilitate and promote innovation and how the internet can make your organisation more innovative.
