Infotrade

With the title of being the “Happiest Place on Earth” it amazing to think that it only took one year to conceptualize and create Disneyland   before it opened its gates on July 17, 1955. As a tribute to 57 years of bringing imagination to life, let’s see what Walt Disney had to say about innovation, entrepreneurship and achieving the impossible. Words of Wisdom From Walt Disney The following 20 quotes are just a small glimpse into the mind and imagination of Walt Disney. Beneath each quote I’ll be take the artistic liberty to explain what his words mean to me.  As for you, they may mean something else, but I’m sure we will both agree that they’ll be nothing less than inspiring.  1.  “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Yes, it did take money, employees and a large team of artists to create Disneyland, but it all beings with courage.  It takes courage to begin the journey towards our dreams and courage to...

Conference panels are often sedate, friendly affairs. But that wasn’t the case when   Google   chairman   Eric Schmidt   went up against   Peter Thiel , PayPal co-founder, investor and well-known libertarian gadfly. The debate at the   Fortune   Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen Monday night tackled the question of whether technology has improved our lives over the past 30 years. Schmidt argued that it had; Thiel claimed progress had stagnated because tech has largely retreated from the real world into a virtual one. “Google also has $50 billion in cash,” Thiel added. “It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively … if we’re living in an accelerating technological world, and you have zero percent interest rates, you should be able to invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over. The fact is you’re out of ideas.” Schmidt countered that the company had no deficit of business models, but instead su...

Its basic pitch is to make the ubiquitous Web videos we encounter every day a lot more navigable. The basic problem it solves is the one where users stop watching a video because in their mind it’s going on too long, or because they wanted to get to a particular highlight point in the video and don’t have the patience to wait for it. FlixMaster’s offering is a software-as-service video technology that makes Web video a lot more interactive than it generally is today. Customers are more likely to get engaged with a video you’re using to hook them, if you can increase viewing time by making the video more readily navigable. The resulting clips are HTML5 compatible, meaning they can play on the iPad and all the other tablets and smartphones that support it. When I last saw the demo at a venture capital conference in Beaver Creek, it wasn’t a fully available service. Today at Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, FlixMaster demonstrated an updated version of the ser...

Entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders in startups can learn many leadership lessons by volunteering at events for children. Here are some key leadership lessons I observed over the last nine days as a volunteer co-counselor at a children’s camp in Bowling Green, Virginia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Leadership is about creating an environment that cultivates natural talent and creates opportunities to expand possibilities. Listed below are some great leadership lessons I derived by observing both children and adults at the camp. Look beyond the noise In any human endeavor, those who successfully work on their immediate responsibilities and are open to learn from the process are able to look beyond the noise. While doing that avoid drama like the plague. Do not get entangled in negative talk and gossip. All this is made possible by embracing the fact that perfection is statistically and humanly impossible. Looking beyond the noise involves embracing imperfection in one’s ...

Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell just announced that the company will be launching a $60 million fund to invest in storage startups. Dell noted that big data is a hot category right now, and he said it’s been a “huge area” for his company too. At the same time, he said there’s an “enormous opportunity” for new companies — as he elaborated, he focused less on pure storage, and instead on helping companies (especially those with less than 10,000 people) accessing and using in real-time “the huge quantities of data” that they’re already storing. “The storage world is really getting shaken up a tremendous amount,” Dell said, pointing to technologies like flash memory. He said the goal of the fund is to “get out in front” of these new technologies. Dell has also been making acquisitions in this area, for example by   purchasing EqualLogic   and Compellent , and he said those acquisitions will continue. He was speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen...