I live in New York and consider it a big city, but after visiting Mumbai I’ll never see it the same way again. The same energy and optimism I saw everywhere else in India was more than pervasive here, except backed with major financial resources and a huge urban population.

The members of YPO Mumbai echoed this; all of the business leaders I met were eager to learn more and grow their businesses outside the narrow confines of what the established silos dictated. I hope to get back soon!!

Bangalore is often called the Silicon Valley of India, and now I know why. An old friend of mine (who started Hummaa.com, a music sharing site) happened to be living in the same building as a load of other tech entrepreneurs (FlipKart.com, the Amazon.com of India, is one example).

Pair the experience of getting down-and-dirty into some exciting new tech models over curry and beer with speaking to the powerhouses of industry at the best hotel in town the next day and I couldn’t help but come away impressed. India is ready to blow up on the world stage, and I’ve no doubt that small-scale startups are going to lead the way.

I’d never been to South America before, and this was a great way to get introduced. The entrepreneurial marketplace in Venezuela is ready to pop, and if legislative hurdles get out of the way I think we’ll see some amazing new technology platforms emerging – they certainly have the resources and the will!!

Talk about kindred spirits!! The guys at Smart People Podcasts were a blast to talk to – motivated, savvy, and full of interesting insights. This is the kind of conversation I look to have over dinner whenever possible; being able to have it recorded was even more fun.

My wife and I developed a system to analyze our relationship with our possessions by sorting through everything we owned based on both emotional and rational utility. It has made an *enormous* difference in how we buy, use, and replace physical goods, and (we think) hugely improved our quality of life by getting rid of anything that doesn’t improve it.

We explain it all in the video below of a talk we gave at a NY Quantified Self Show a& Tell. Hulda also talks about another system she made for buying clothes based on seasonal usefulness, care-requirements, and compatibility with her other clothes.

Hulda and Josh Klein from seth ludman on Vimeo.

I was lucky enough to get to speak on WBLQ radio, heard up and down the eastern US seaboard. What made it a real treat was talking with CJ, the host, who is as excited about changing the world as I am. Our 15 minute pre-call before the show lasted more than an hour, and the bit that we eventually got on the radio was only a snippet, but it was fun to revisit the topic of crows again – especially with someone who was as curious about them as I am.

Listen to it here.

Here’s a speech I did at TEDxDublin; “An overview of Hacking Work and why the world of employment is about to undergo a sea change.”

Here’s a speech I did at PINC; “How to do the impossible for fun and profit.” The PINC guys were super kind, and embodied everything I’ve ever liked about working with conferences – warm, fun, and a great time had by everyone.

Here’s a speech I did at BIF; “How to break the publishing industry in a few easy steps.”

They also said some nice things about me.

Here’s a speech I did at TED; “A presentation on training crows to bring me spare change – and how it can serve to better the world.”

Here’s a speech I did at Davos; “What we’re overlooking about four big trends in IT, and how their confluence spells big change for our world.”

Whoever said that a conference put on by insurers would be boring was absolutely dead wrong. It’s no accident that these guys are a critical part of every business, and I especially enjoyed their willingness to mutually plumb each other’s expertise. More than a couple business ideas sprang out of this conference, and I’m looking forward to going back to speak again this summer!

Every crowd has at least one tough nut to crack, and it’s often a lost cause trying to convince the ones that don’t want to be converted. After I spoke about Hacking Work here a gentleman who’d been scowling at me from the audience the entire talk waited in line to tell me I was full of crap, and that my ideas were going to get people fired. I thanked him, and he left.

A couple months later, I got an email from that same gentleman telling me he’d worked for the same company for 25 years and was laid off the day after the conference – two weeks before his pension and retirement were due. The company didn’t want to pay it, so they dumped him.

After he’d finished grieving he decided to try some of the things I spoke about in my talk and began networking intensively. When he wrote he was a week away from starting a new job doing work he’d always wanted – but never been allowed at his old job – to do. I can say honestly that it’s this sort of success story that makes it all worthwhile.

One of my first jobs out of school was at Microsoft, so it was fun to get to go back and speak about Hacking Work. The audience was a a little too tongue-in-cheek about bureaucratic problems at MS for my taste, but once we got into brainstorming how to harness hacking the creativity there just blossomed.

So I got invited to go to India to sit on a panel and argue about the future of the internet with… Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who basically invented it.

After I changed my underwear I started packing, and had an absolutely amazing time. They wrote a nice piece on it and published a delicious soundbite.

Over a bottle of wine after the panel I had the real revelation, which was that Tim was a warm, funny guy who I genuinely liked. More than anything that’s the take-away for me; that revolutions are built on the backs of normal people who just want to make things better.

Oh, and Sarah Palin was there. Check it out: