The Latin American population online is redefining the use of the Internet and next Twitter or Google will likely be born in Latin America.

The stats speak for themselves: 30 million people have escaped from poverty in the last seven years, and 15 million more by 2014. This means consumption has been increasing, including the purchase of computers and mobile devices. There are now 90 million boradband connections. 96%of digital population now access the internet daily, and 86% more than once. The average usage is 41 hours monthly.

The four important trends in Latin America are:

• social: The penetration of social networks is 86% in Latin America, and more than 90% in Brazil.
• live: People want to know what is going on, right now
• video: 96% of digitally conntected watch videos online versus 87% offline (DVDs). 31% watch TV series online vs 27% who just watch TV.
• music: Music has always been big in Latin America

The rest of the presentation was about Terra’s services, including upcoming streaming of Olympics and World Cup.

There are four principles to Deb Roy’s concept of predicting learning:

1. Record everything and store this data
2. Develop machine learning algorithms to understand the data
3. Visualize those patterns to create understanding
4. Leverage those understandings to better certain areas of society

Language is the defining feature of the human species. The basic data to understand how a child learns is naturally in the home. Deb Roy recorded video of his baby son throughout the house as he grew up and started to talk. The video produced movement data that could be traced and datamined, particular when the son transitioned from saying “gaga” to saying “water.”

There is a natural relationship between the number of times a word is heard and learning that word. However, there is a social context to learning. The activity one does when learning also affects learning of words related to the activity. The 3-D movement landscape pattern associated with learning words can be referred to as a visual wordscape. The uniqueness of the wordscape is a predictor of how early the word will be learned. The more unique the wordscape compared to other words,  the earlier the word will be learned. This has implications for those having trouble learning language; you need to look at the non-linguistic aspects of learning.

The same principles of linguistic analysis can be applied to a whole new are: TV. His company, Bluefin Labs, connects what shows are running to what people are saying about the shows. Bluefin is indexing about 215 US networks, 200,000 shows and 2 million ads per month and linking these to conversations generated by 20 million people. With text mining and semantic analysis, you can understand what people are thinking about collectively.

Here is Deb Roy’s really interesting talk at TED:

This is Marissa Mayer’s fourth consecutive year speaking at LeWeb. MG Siegler interviews her in a less confrontational manner than Mike Arrington last year, but alas neither he nor Mike got any stunning new developments from Google. Why is it that some companies like Apple preserve the wow factor, while others like Google don’t? Perhaps this is why MG asked her “Is Google more afraid of becoming like Apple or like Microsoft?” Tellingly, Marissa skirted the question.

Currently, she is in charge of “local” at Google, including maps and deals. This includes indoor maps. Indoor spaces are equally important to outside spaces. Shopping malls, ariports, and other large spaces can be very confusing, so Google is tackling the problem with another offer. Not only are there indoor maps, but Google can place you within that map by using wi-fi.

Local feeds social and social feeds local, so Google+ has a big role to play in location based services. From the lessons learned during the launch of Buzz, they understood much more about privacy and built this into Google+

The role of a product manager is not to have all the answers, but to understand all the needs and bring together a coherent vision.

Etc and so on …

At the time, Paris had a great blogging community which met up regularly. Every week there were one or two events to attend. Through these, I met some great people, many of whom have remained friends and who I will see again while here for LeWeb 2011.

I first attended LeWeb whenit was called Les Blogs. These were a series of three small meetups in 2004, called “Les Blogs & Le Journalisme,” “Les Blogs & La Politique,” and “Les Blogs & Le Business.” These meetups later morphed into the annual Les Blogs conference, the first one of which was held at the French Senate in 2005.

After moving back to the US, I missed a number of these events until last year’s conference, when I was fortunate to be invited as a blogger. I didn’t know what to expect other than seeing my friends again and witnessing a great lineup of speakers. By the end of the conference, I was simply blown away by what I had seen: it felt like a tastefully produced mix of SxSW and TED. Without a doubt, LeWeb has risen to the rank of the very few industry-standard, must-attend Internet events.

Spread over three days with over 3,000 attendees and a star lineup of speakers and panelists, participants, and bloggers, this edition of LeWeb promises to be the best one yet. I will be live blogging most of the event. If you’re attending and reading this, let’s meet up! Just send me a note on Twitter or email

Let the fun begin!

Update– here are my live posts from the conference (see also photos on Flickr):

Fernando Madeira of Terra

Daniel Ek of Spotify

Ben Parr

Kiran Bellubbi of 955Dreams

Niklas Zennstrom of Skype and Atomico

Om Malik interviews Yves Behar

Deb Roy of Bluefin Labs

Marissa Mayer of Google

Carmine Gallo, Author, “Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs”

Phil Libin of Evernote

Bill Gross of Idealab

October 25 Social Media Club South Florida: “Social Media and the Law”

As millions publish their personal and professional experiences online, social media websites and platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs are affecting all aspects of the law. Users are creating an abundance of discoverable information that may leave them and their companies open to legal liability and ethical concerns. Join us for Social Media Club South Florida’s October Meetup featuring a panel discussion about “Social media and the Law.”

RSVP on Facebook or Eventbrite

October 26 Enterprise Development Corporation Elevator Pitch Contest

This competition is designed to launch companies to the next level! Give us your best elevator pitch — a brief overview of a company, product, service, or project delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (90 seconds or less).  Over $100,000 in prizes available to the winners in two divisions: students and community.

More details here

October 27 Twiteq Miami

Twiteq is the large Venezuelan Twitter community, now holding events in Miami as well. There will be live music, raffles, prizes for best costumes, tequeños (Venezuelan style cheese sticks) and your first drink is on them. The party takes place at Gypsy’s Pub House, 1250 S. Miami Ave, at 8pm.

Follow @Twiteq on Twitter.

November 5 TEDxOrlando

Ok, it’s not in South Florida but it’s inspirational anyway and may be worth the drive.

November 7 Mobile Monday Miami: Mobile Coupons

In this not-so-hot economy, people are looking for ways to save money, and retailers large and small are giving consumers a reason to turn to their mobile phone to find a solution. The dizzying array of mobile money-saving options has increased exponentially: text messages, apps, daily deals. With more than 42% of smart phone owners using mobile coupons, this is an opportunity that can’t be ignored. On November 7, the Mobile Monday event will feature leaders in the mobile deals space to talk about what’s hot and what’s not, and where they think the industry is going.

RSVP on Eventbrite

November 10–11 Women’s Success Summit 

Miami’s largest 2-day business conference for women is heading up to Gulfstream! Over 700 women – Miami’s smartest, coolest, most impressive professional women – gathered at the last sold-out, standing-room-only Summit. On November 10th & 11th, THIS is where you should be.

I’ll be presenting at WSS, at the all-male keynote panel wrapping up the event.

Details and RSVP at WSS

November 12–13 Hackday Miami

If you think you are ready for an all-night hacking marathon to take home $2,000, and want to demo your product to the leading VCs and investors of South Florida and Latin America at the Americas Venture Capital Conference (http://avcc.fiu.edu), come right in. We are looking for the local rockstars, so we will only be inviting 40 participants to compete.

Don’t have a great idea in mind? Then try these hackathon ideas posted by Dave Winer.

Details and RSVP at Hackday Foundation

November 16–17 America’s Venture Capital Conference

This conference will provide a forum for innovative enterprises in South Florida and Latin America to showcase their ventures, and to meet established firms and potential investors to develop strategic alliances.  More info here

January 31-February 1 2012 Florida Venture Capital Conference

And coming up in February, it’s Tech Week Miami

February 4 HeartCamp Miami

February 12 BarCamp Miami — Website and Twitter account to be updated soon

February 17–18 SuperConf

February 18–19 WordCamp Miami

February 25 BarCamp Palm Beach 

Shai Agassi of Better Place delivers a TED moment at LeWeb 2010

I’m just back from an inspiring LeWeb conference last week. Loic and Geraldine Le Meur outdid themselves. They and their team of organizers clearly benefit from five years of experience running this event and from their collective experience in attending TED, Davos, LIFT, SXSW, and others.

What was so great about LeWeb? The event assembled a lineup of inspiring speakers, including Dennis Crowley of foursquare, Phil Libin of Evernote,  Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, Mitchell Baker of Mozilla Foundation, Salim Ismail of Singularity University and particularly Shai Agassi of the $700 million “startup” Better Place and Mel Young of Homeless World Cup. In one way or another, these speakers and their companies are elevating the conversation and inspiring us to do good. For them and their companies, it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about changing the world. There were a number of TED moments, indeed.

LeWeb was also impressive for the flawless audio-visual and production setup on stage. Media Partner USTREAM doubled the audience with 1,500 to 2,000 people streaming continuously throughout the event. Internet access worked despite the number of users and if you were sitting in the first few front rows and cabled in, you enjoyed exceptionally high upload speeds. The blogger’s lounge is small compared to other events like SXSW, but with such great speakers, you aren’t likely to spend much time in the lounge anyway. The weather added some unexpected challenges, though, and when it snows in Paris, the city breaks down.

I visited Costa Rica earlier this year and heard from everyone their national greeting: “Pura Vida” (“Full of Life”) . LeWeb was just that. Rock on.

jowyang, jeremiah owyang, leweb, leweb10, social media

Loic Le Meur interviews Shai Agassi, Founder & CEO, Better Place

Better Place has about 700 engineers working on their solution. They raised $700 million, with no government money — just private investors.

You cannot replace oil without a full solution for the way we drive cars. For cars to be successful today, you need providers called gas stations, that sell you kilometers on a weekly basis and separate from the car. So if you do the same with batteries … you have switchable batteries. The bonus is that the cost of batteries goes down the more is produce, which is the inverse of oil.

In April 2010, they initiated a test in Tokyo with four taxis and a single battery switch station. Some passengers ask to be taken to the switch station, and batteries can be switched with them sitting in the car. Each car has logged about 20,000 kilometers so far, and the project is ongoing.

The market tips when an electric car costs the same as a three year old gasoline car. The choice then becomes: would you take an old gasoline car or a new electric car for the same price? At that point, the whole market will tip.

“If you don’t like my business model, just wait six months, because it keeps getting better,” says Shai Agassi. “We don’t recommend for Bertrand Piccard to switch his batteries in mid-air, though.”

shai agassi, better place, loic le meur, leweb, leweb10

Zynga acquired NewToy, a company that have developed “one of the best social game experiences on the web, creators of “Words With Friends” and “Chess With Friends.” Users use these games for about an hour each day. Zynga will keep the team intact and will continue to invest in them to leverage what they’ve built and to take it mobile.

Zynga’s philosophy is not to detract from the user experience, so including advertising is difficult. On the other hand, NewToys monetizes mostly through advertising, with a paid application that gets rid of ads.

Over 200 million people play one of Zynga’s games monthly, and 40 million are Daily Active Users (DAU).

Cityville is their fastest growing game, and are already up to 3 million DAUs after just one week. When you dive into the userbase, about 2/3 of them are non-English. This means that games need to be localized, and there is huge growth and expansion potential outside the US. Asia is Zynga’s top priority for international growth. Of their 13 studios where they work on new games, five of these are outside of the US, including in China, Japan, India, Germany.

cavid ko, zynga, mg siegler, leweb, leweb10