Tzipi Livni is very impressive.  She is running for Prime Minister of Israel right now, as are Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu.  As you may know, Barak and Netanyahu have both been Prime Minister before.  Livni is running for the first time.  All three candidates came to the Israel Business Conference to speak at the closing plenary session.

Here they are, from my iPhone (speaking at the same lectern at which, ahem, well, I had the chance to speak only an hour before….!):

Netanyahu

Barak

Livni

All three candidates spoke at some length.  Netanyahu burnished his credentials as a reformist Finance Minister, arguing that he was the right man for the job of Prime Minister in an economic downturn.  Barak responded by saying that he had presided over the year of greatest economic boom while he was Prime Minister but believed that politicians can’t take credit for economic cycles.  Both men possess remarkable qualities.  Barak perhaps didn’t come across as immediately “at home” on economic issues, possibly in part because he spent so much of his career as a military man, but he has also had a successful career in recent years in the private sector.

At the end of the day, however, Livni came across as the standard-bearer of the future.  She reads as smart, energetic, positive without being supercilious, and honest.  She spoke straight at the audience, without fanfare, right to the heart of the topics of the upcoming election and the economic challenges facing the country.  She waded directly into the task of differentiating herself from the other candidates.  Livni is the head of the Kadima party, the centrist party Ariel Sharon formed while he was prime minister.  For some reason, some of my Israeli friends get the impression that she is weak.  But I can say without reservation that, as I watched her in the plenary session, I got the impression that she is tough and strong.

According to recent polling, Netanyahu is out in front of the pack in the race for prime minister.  But it also seems that the gap may be closing.  There are still two months left before the election.  And if I had to bet, I’d say that Livni has the chance to pull ahead.  If her performance at the Israel Business Conference is any indicator, she will.  At any rate, no matter what happens, I think we have not heard the last of her.  And I got the distinct impression that she is, like Barack Obama, part of a new generation of global leadership that now has the chance to emerge.

The panel on “Managing multi-directional communications” took place yesterday toward the end of the conference.  I thought it was very interesting!  The panel was moderated by Prof. Oren Kaplan of Tel Aviv University and consisted of Haim Romano, CEO of El Al Airlines; Holly Weeks, CEO of Holly Weeks Communication; Adam Bly, CEO Seed Media Group, and Dr. Eva Berger, the Dean of Media Studies at the College of Management in Israel.

Smart discussion, I thought.  Holly Weeks connected her theme of intelligent navigation of difficult, emotionally-laden conversations to the recent sit-in at the Chicago factory filing for bankruptcy. She recently published a book with Harvard Business School press called Failure to Communicate.

I failed to get a (signed!) copy of the book, so I will have to find a way to get one!  She’s very smart.

Adam Bly gave a visually rich and sophisticated talk about the way information is organized and presented.  He offered novel insights on the future of informational presentation, given the accelerating rate of both data generation and the availability of processing power, the combination of which will necessitate new ways of presenting information sets so that they are useful.

Haim Romano is an obvious badass.  He is the CEO of El Al, Israel’s national airline.  Previously, he was Deputy CEO of a mobile communications company.  He gave a practical view of a corporation’s communication strategy in the age of the Internet.  His formula: because everything that can leak will leak, anticipate that inevitability and communicate honestly, quickly, and as completely as reasonably possible.  Sounds pretty good to me.  And this guy is clearly smart and on his game.  But I think he can do even better.  For example, if you look Romano up on Google, it’s hard to find a simple bio of the man!  Come on, Haim, you should use Reputation.com’s MyEdge service!  We’ll fix it for you.  Also, if you want to get better control over Google’s searches for you (a quick scan yields what may be an unwelcome article from Haaretz about a “riot” caused aboard one of your planes by ultra-orthodox passengers), we’re here for you.

Eva Berger offered analysis of “talkbacks,” which are comments left, often anonymously, by readers of articles published online, typically in newspapers and other current media.  She has been studying talkbacks formally for some years now.  She noted that the comments left by readers are often oddly negative, ad hominem attacks that very quickly become abstracted from the topic originally covered in the article.

My presentation was about what I called “massively multi-directional conversation”.  I argued that the Internet has, for the first time, offered up a truly democratic (or at least potentially truly democratic) discussion.  Our modalities of communicating before the Internet were either unidirectional (advertising on radio, for example), bidirectional (a conversation between one customer and one company, or between two companies), and small-group multi-directional (i.e. among political parties).  The Internet finally allows (it doesn’t always have this effect, but it does allow) one-person, one-vote, one-comment, one-participation-in-the-discussion multi-directional conversation.  I hope to write up my notes at greater length for later distribution here or elsewhere.

Samuel Dergel of CFO2Grow, a Montreal-based company that offers both outsourced CFO needs as well as recruiting and headhunting services for accounting and finance staffing, attended the panel and kindly sent me a couple of photographs.  Thank you, Sam!

The Telegraph is reporting that the black market for stolen Facebook profiles is heating up in Britain. The stolen profiles are then used to spread viruses and malware through the popular social networking site.

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The cyber thieves steal the account entry details from users before selling them on to gangs behind online fraud who in turn send viruses to other computer users.

These gangs send “spam” messages on to millions of other computer users, urging people to click on false video or photo links.

By clicking on the links, people’s computers become infected with spyware viruses that can track keystrokes and copy details such as passwords to online bank accounts.

Other profiles being sought by the gangs include login details for MySpace and internet phone company Skype.

The article also notes that identity theft and cyber crime spikes around the holidays when people shop online for presents. Online crime is up 500% since September, cyber security experts report.

“Whether you’re going online to use Facebook, or for banking or Christmas shopping, you should be aware that hacking and identity theft tends to increase at certain times of the year.”

It is clear that Facebook privacy is a growing concern for internet users today. MyPrivacy from Reputation.com helps users keep their private data off the internet and away from identity thieves.

The New York Times has a fascinating piece that touches on cloud computing, Facebook, and a new application that allows employers to recruit top talent by sifting through their social network profiles.

Mr. Benioff showed me a new application meant to help companies recruit new employees. A company’s workers would give permission to the company to run software that combs the profiles of all of their Facebook friends to find those who might fit open jobs.

[SNIP]

“We are able to take the information on Facebook, and empower you, the Facebook user, to do something you have not been able to do before,” he explained. “We are taking one database, your company’s job listings, and another database, all your Facebook friends and their profiles, and creating a third, the matches for these jobs.”

The article ends with a meme that Reputation.com has been advancing for years: The information posted online can impact one’s real world reality, especially one’s job search.

“You have to be cautious what you put on your Facebook page because it will build someone’s database,” [Benioff] said.

Reputation.com is the market leader in Online Reputation Management Solutions and looks forward to working with the future of online, cloud based identity.

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Hello, Reputation.com Hepcats,

I write to you from the David Intercontinental Hotel where I am listening to the plenary session of the second day of the Israel Business Conference. There is a sense here at the conference that the economic crisis now stretching around the world is getting worse and will last between 6 and 18 more months.  We heard yesterday from Yu Yongding, a senior Chinese economist, who noted that China’s economy slowed considerably and stunningly in October and November.  Indeed, certain key indicators such as exports entered negative territory for the first time in many years.

We also heard from Jonathan Story, an emeritus professor of international political economy at INSEAD.  Very smart guy.  He gave a thoughtful, substantive talk in which he pointed the way to an increasingly globalized future, anchored in its stability by the transatlantic alliance.  He will be publishing a book about China shortly; I hope to read it.

The main theme of this conference, in fact, has been globalization.  This is naturally a well-discussed topic.  But a theme of much of the discussion of the conference has been the virtual inevitability of increasing globalization during the ongoing economic crisis.  The view is that the crisis will necessitate and catalyze further interconnectedness of finance and economy.  Professor Story did note that, as financial and economic regulation has become more coordinate over the recent decades, there has been an acceleration in the number of (generally smaller) crises in these sectors.  But he also suggested that revival and rescue have been swifter and more feasible through this coordination.

Also yesterday I saw an impassioned presentation by Adeo Rossi of TheFunded.com.  Here is a link to a video of him discussing some of the same substance. Adeo really thinks there should be a total change in the way private venture investment is made around the world.

Also, check out this photo, taken from my iPhone, of the speech given by Israeli President Shimon Peres yesterday at the conference.  The guy is 85!  Lemme tell you: he is very sharp and very spry.  I hope I am that together if I ever get to that age.  He gave a rather non-political speech, noting not only what the governments must do to help countries get out of the slump (i.e. investment, counter-cyclical R&D initiatives, lending, etc.) but also what the private sector should do (work extra hard!) to get their countries back on track.  I was inspired.

Michael Fertik