FEI Update: Morning Sessions

Where to begin? Just so much information, it's hard to go through everything, I'm sure many of our attendees are thinking the same thing I am, there's just not enough time to see all of the great presenters. This morning we kicked off with two keynotes, Peter Guber, Founder and Chairman of Mandalay Entertainment followed by a joint presentation by Janine Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry Guild and president of the Biomimicry Institute, along with G'nter Pauli, founder of the ZERI Foundation and Professor Systems Design at the Politecnico di Torino. Before Peter began, the MC for FEI, Bumper Carroll got everyone energized, even getting us all to do the wave. Once everyone was awake and ready to start, he turned it over to Peter Guber. Peter began the keynote sessions with his presentation, Ah-ha! The MAGIC to Success, and he touched on several points. He discussed how even in the face of pain and embarrassment of failure, many of us strive for success because of how seductive it can be. The basis of the magic of success is our inherent oral ability to storytell. In any instance when we are trying to convey an idea or make a pitch in a sales call, we should keep in mind the points of MAGIC: M: Motivation ' Your desire and passion for the concept or idea or point you are trying to convey. A: Audience ' Rather than consider a person as a client or a customer, treat your listener as your audience and you are more aware of their response to your message. G: Goal ' Your focus, your intent has to be clear and understandable to your listener. I: Interactive ' Telling a story isn't about speaking one way, but engaging the listener, involving them in your story and responding to them C: Control or rather the willingness to surrender control in engaging your listener making them apart of your story, My summary doesn't do justice to the essence of his presentation. But HERE is just a small portion of his discussion you can listen to. The audience responded enthusiastically giving him a standing ovation at the end of his presentation. Then Janine and Gunter began their presentation. We've previously posted on the topic of Biomimicry, but here was a chance to listen to Janine and Gunter as they presented some remarkable case studies of how new companies are learning from nature and how it has resolved some of the same problems that businesses regularly create products to solve. The possibilities were amazing when you consider that by studying how nature has evolved these solutions, we can use them in industry, products, buildings; the list goes on and on. In fact there just wasn't enough time for them to cover all the case studies and uses they had in their presentation. But HERE you can listen to a small portion of one of the examples they shared with us today. After the keynotes it was time for us to network, visit with the great sponsors and exhibitors, and to begin attending the various tracks. Later this evening, Dean Kamen will be speaking. I'm excited to hear him speak and see some of his FIRST Robots. I'll try and post again later this evening. Stay Tuned.