Media Dojo

Been a busy Monday. The first clutch of media invites has arrived in time for Christmas.

First up is DLD (Digital, Life and Design). This is the big gig thrown by Burda Media in Munich about 2 days before the World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos in late Jan 2010. Burda is Germany’s largest diversified media company. DLD hosts about 700 or so invite-only attendees from around the world at the intersection of creative, technology and media. I knew some of the DLD crew from adventures at the Monaco Media Forum. They haven’t yet put out the full program but thus far the line up includes Marissa Mayer from Google, Nokia’s Tero Ojanpera, Jason Kilar from Hulu, and Own Van Natta from MySpace. Not sure if I’ll be involved yet. But it was a nice early present to get an invitation.

Then about two hours later the invite rolled in from the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. This one takes place March 9-11 at the Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi. This is a pretty tight event for about 400 people focusing on emerging media markets in Middle East, South Asia, India and China. I’ll probably have a hand in doing some editorial programming for the mobile sections. The co-chairs for this first event are truly world-class: Rupert Murdoch from News Corp., Tim Armstrong from AOL, Kai Fu-Lee (formerly Google’s top China person) from Innovation Works, Sunil Bharti Mittal from India’s Bharti conglomerate, and several others. Given the stakes involved with emerging market media, the networking is likely to be outstanding. Besides, the Yas Hotel has both a marina and a Formula 1 track. Given the likely jet-lag I’ll have, I hope the windows sound proof the vroom.

As exciting as these events are, they also remind me that in recession wracked America, some of the most important media and digital media deals are happening outside our shores. In one sense, it’s a natural evolution. But I’m racking up horrible travel miles because the only real business is overseas right now.

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