Overnight Mark Zuckerberg streamed live on Facebook, a discussion with President of the United States, Barack Obama. The pair were speaking at the 7th Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford which this year was held in Silicon Valley and attracted people from 170 countries and 20 governments sent representatives.
The summit provides the opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet successful entrepreneurs, venture capitals, non-profits to gain an understanding of best practice and essentially lower their learning curve as they go about building startups and changing the world.
It is rare to see Zuckerberg look up to someone both figuratively and literally, but what we see is that Zuckerberg is clearly inspired by Obama.
In the final stretches of an Australian election campaign, its also interesting to reflect on how Obama speaks so passionately, positively and without a script about a topic that he clearly believes in. Facebook Live is providing a platform for long-form content, where the traditional time lines of commercial television or radio don’t apply and that lets Obama speak at his own pace and detail responses to a level he wants to, rather than a time-restricted grab from the 6pm news.
While this was technically a question and answer format, it never really felt like an interview and that’s thanks to a lack of media shooting for their ‘gotcha’ moment to make their own career or to get the front page of a newspaper the following day. Australian’s are generally over our traditional politians sprouting their traditional lines and dodging questions on important issues like climate change where I was impressed by Obama’s explanation of the global problem and how they’re taking practical solutions to find answers, not produce plans that look like the right answer and make for a great headline or 3 word slogan.
Obama said,
There’s not a problem out there where young entrepreneurs are already finding innovative solutions, the key is for us to have built the infrastructure for it, to build the structures of the rule of law and the regulatory structures so that they’re not getting bottled up and frustrated by old creaky systems.
If there was a politician that spoke to the Australian people the way President Obama did in this Facebook Live, there wouldn’t be a competition for Prime Minister of Australia.
I know its Saturday and I know its cold in a lot of Australia right now, but grab yourself a coffee and please, watch this video.
