I like to thank Hamburg New Media @ Work and EMMA for asking me to make the keynote speech this evening. Thank you for attending this evening. I was asked to talk about the US and the business of the new economy. I felt it was a little too close to home. I work and live in the heart of Silicon Alley and am 50 blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. And now we are truly facing the unknown, which is the new war, and how it will impact our struggling new industry. So, I make this speech in honor of our lost colleagues from both NY and DC. Let's have a moment of silence.

We are all citizens of a much smaller world.

To quote from Charles Dickens's book, The Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, --in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil. - Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities is an appropriate zeitgeist. We have "the dirt world' the world in which we breath in, and we have "cyberspace" the world which we created.

I don't know about you, but I've been reflecting over the past decade and taking a good hard look at what's was what. Introspection is important when you want to change and more forward. Who am I? I'm an old timer and an early true believer.

12 years ago was my first time, I was a member of ECHO, was the east coast version of the WELL. Stacy Horn's creation and business. It was where the excitement of the Internet started for me. It was also where many of us first generation internet entrepreneurs came together, where the web was dreamt about, where WWWAC founders Kyle Shannon and Howard Greenstein met and brought people, like myself, who were enthusiastic "about changing the world" and especially changing the way business was being done. Free! The Internet should be Free for everyone. We understood little about capitalism. We glorified the early days of excitement of discovery, challenges, and hard work.

Like any developing society, we created more then just a business delivery system for the Internet we created a culture with it's own nomenclature. We invented strange names for our companies: Razorfish, Flooz, Yahoo, Napster, and Kozmo. We had our own way of socializing - which include many parties and networking events. We were young, embraced such things as rollerblading, skate boarding, tattooing and piercing various parts of our bodies. We shunned suits and ties for sneakers and jeans. It was our way. The world would not trust our strategy if we looked any differently.

Remember creating your first web page? I bet some of you even have stored somewhere. Staying up all night, and total delight of seeing what was created. Discovering news ways of doing business, new ways to create, new ways to bring people to the net and new ways of closing the communication gap around the world. As well as helping to develop and push the commercialization of the industry.

Look what we accomplished in such a short time!

• The excitement in connecting the world to the world, business to business, people to people.
  We succeeded in doing this!
• We truly changed the way business is being done! It's not going away!
• We created a Renaissance! And gave life to many a new businesses.

We should be very proud of what we did and are doing.

Hype and buzzwords are only symptoms of bigger problems we encountered while building our new industry. Over the past few months, few weeks the news of the world economy has been bleak. The US saw the technology sector fall apart in April of last year. Business sense tells us there are only so many servers you can sell before you've sold enough.

Understandably, out of every new movement comes hard learning experiences and with out these learning experiences we can not grow. We can not grow as an industry, we can not grow as a community, and we can not grow on an individual basis. I know I have had my share of very painful learning experiences in the past years but these experiences have made me wiser and brought me more intelligence and knowledge. Without failure there is no learning.

It's going to be us, the leaders of the new economy and of the next economy, that are rising up again to take hold of what we created, and turn the tide to defeat what many are predicting to be our demise. Yes, we have some incredible challenges to face. We have war that is disrupting an already fragile economy. But it will be up to us to discover the new ways in which we can aid in making business more efficient and making a difference in the world.

In order for us to understand what the future will hold let's revisit the history of development of the US industry.

It was a birth of a new culture, a new way of doing business, a new form of creativity and new form of capitalism. What where the past 8 years made up of?

1993 - Browser Wars (Netscape and IE)
1994-95 Philosophical debates Making Pages
1996-97 Delivery Communities Portals
1998 we discovered that the business of the Internet was made up of the 5 C's commerce, community, customer service, content, customization
1999 the net needs purpose and Application will provides it
2000 Customer
2001 we look for stability and pray for profitability.
I can speak very clearly on the state of affairs in Silicon Alley. I'm certain our industry businesses across the US are feeling the same stresses.

The New York New Media Association said in 1999 New York area grew from almost nothing to 250,000 employees among 8500 new companies. In April 2000 just before the market started to fall, new media executives predicted that the industry would continue to grow at an annual rate of 40%.

It didn't happen.

The lifecycle of the new economy was accelerated. The Pioneer, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Investor, Builder, Advertiser, Old World business, and Customer perpetuated its growth.

In the past old-world economy businesses took an average of 3-5 years to become profitable. The demand outweigh our ability to supply.

In the new economy, because we pioneers made the rule, that fast was better. Our businesses grew at the speed of light: We went from the garage to plush offices over night.

Startups grew before they had time to mature. Speed was everything!

Ichak Adizes a well-known management consultant calls this state "go-go". And we went!

In April of 2000 our new economy bottomed out for US causing a recession in the Technology sector. We learned quickly it was back to business basics. Recession is a factor in US economics, roughly occurring every 7-10 years.

We had the perfect mix for the perfect storm:

• recession which came up rather quickly
• accelerated growth of immature companies
• inexperienced entrepreneurs
• business models that had nothing to do with profitability
• investors that wanted an over night return
• marketing that yield no ROI
• customers that didn't come

As business builders, we must build from the basics. Remember what is not built on a firm foundation will topple. Keep in your mind when you are creating a new business:
Your business must sell something and not Vaporware. The following is important:
Sell products or services
Create new products or services
Increase shareholder value
Cut costs/save time

Now our struggling industry measures success through:

• Building a firm business foundation using the basics to business
• Incorporating business applications
• Using information through a business to build an effective organization
• Understanding market demand and the customer first
• Know how the business ties into the world economics as well as the local economics

How did you arrive in Hamburg? Did you use new media to book your flights, get your rail pass or car rental? Putting tools to work. Giving the customer what it really needs. That is the key to successful business.

When was the last time you stepped into a bank? When was the last time you had to go to the post office?

What we have today is the conversion of Old World economy with the new economy.

What does the future hold?

It was in 1993 ATT created the You Will commercial. Showing a man on a beach talking to his watch. The thrust of the commercial was to have the ability to access communications and information anywhere, any way, anyhow? Well, it's not here yet, even though we have PDA's and mobile phones, but I believe there's still hope. The future still holds the promise of objects and applications and human communication.

Remember

In a changing landscape we can make a difference, and we have the knowledge to do so.

What did the New Economy bring?

• Renaissance
• Brought a World together
• Revolutionized business
• Invigorated old business
• Inventive new business