Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Draper’s Valley Girl
She’s interviewed tech luminaries from Eric Schmidt to Scott McNealy. She dresses in shocking pink. Her dad was one of the VCs behind Skype and Hotmail. Who is she? She’s, like, the Valley Girl.
Jesse Draper, formerly of the short-lived Nickelodeon series “Naked Brothers Band”, and Sharon Lee are the brains, and the feather boas, behind “Valley Girl”: a 60 minutes-meets-MTV online chat show that in just one season has hosted some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley on its pink satin sofa. Or, as Jesse herself puts it: “Where Silicon Valley’s Best meet Hollywood”. Totally.
So what does Jesse’s dad think about the show?
“It’s ‘I Love Lucy’ interviewing the president of Bank of America,” gushed Tim Draper — who’s known more for plugging high-tech start-ups than his daughter’s online guerrilla show — at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt was among the highlights of the first season. Picked up in a white golf-cart festooned with lacy pink curtains, the Internet chieftain gamely played at charades, answered questions ranging from “Who was your childhood crush” (“I didn’t really have a crush”) to “Have you ever Googled Google?” (It throws up a ton of hits).
Diller to profitable companies: Lay off the layoffs
IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller took several groups to task at the Reuters Media Summit, but he reserved special disgust for CEOs at profitable companies who add to the country’s rising unemployment rate.
Also targeted by the former Hollywood executive were “incredibly, shockingly stupid” Big 3 auto executives, the Internet’s strange and growing dictionary, and Hollywood’s lack of creativity.
from MediaFile:
Cell phones still No. 1 movie irritant for Regal CEO
People who talk and text on cell phones are still the number one source of movie theater complaints tracked by Regal Entertainment Group, Chairman and Chief Executive Mike Campbell told the Reuters Media Summit on Wednesday.
Campbell made news at a the 2006 Reuters summit by disclosing that Regal, the largest U.S. theater chain, had armed patrons in a few test theaters with gizmos that summon ushers to deal with problems ranging from rowdy audiences to a freezing auditoriums. Back then, Campbell reported that some patrons were "getting into physical battles in the theaters" over cell phones and that the chain had "had people assaulted with bats, knives and guns" over their electronic umbilical cords.
