15 Things I Learnt From Randi Zuckerberg, Sister Of Facebook’s Founder

I’ve recently posted about the Women Of Wealth And Abundance event at Marina Bay Sands, where Randi Zuckerberg was keynote speaker. She has a cool $100 million net worth, and we were all super excited about meeting her over the weekend. What I had not expected was how good a speaker / presenter she is. She blew us away with her sharing on her life, the biggest tech trends to think about, and why it’s important to unplug. :) If you did not attend the event yesterday, well, you’re in luck because in this post, I’ll be sharing with you about the 15 things I learnt from Randi Zuckerberg. :) #YouAreWelcome

The Importance Of Allowing Employees Freedom To Be Creative

Randi was the one who came up with the Facebook ‘live’ function, during one of Facebook’s Hackathon projects. She’d thought it would be a dismal failure… till she was notified that Katy Perry wanted to announce her world tour via Facebook ‘live’. Then other celebrities like Mandy Moore and Jessica Alba came on board. Small startups joined too and got a boost (one such startup was what we know as Twitter today). Eventually, the White House also called: President Obama wanted to do a town hall via FB live. Randi was also nominated for an Emmy award because of FB live! Not too shabby for someone who doesn’t have a degree in Engineering and has “never written code” in her life, eh!

As a non-hacker, she created FB live in a hackathon for fun. And her message? Don’t let “I’m not an engineer” stop you. :) Randi also shared that Google, for example, allows employees to work on individual creative projects 20% of the time they work there. And she encouraged us to take part in (or organize) hackathons in our various industries. It could be called a ‘Think-a-thon’, ‘Create-a-thon’, etc. And this idea applies to just about ANY industry!

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My pals with the gorgeous Randi who has a megawatt smile :D Jameson runs the events management company, Marvele, and Engel, evogue. What a formidable tag team! :)

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Everyone clamoring to get a picture of Randi:

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Randi: Biggest Technology Trends To Think About

Randi loves YouTube, Facebook (of course), LinkedIn (she joined their influencer program), Instagram (She recommends the account @HotDudesReading, and Twitter (because of FB’s algorithm, your friends may not see something you post till the next day).

1. Get creative with your resume: Upload on Amazon? Video resume on Vine?
2. Think like an entertainer; get people excited about your product. Redbull sees itself as a sports media company. 100 million people watched their video about the highest free jump.
3. Carlsberg beer billboards with kegs in them so you can pour a beer for yourself. Google Glass worn by a model walking on the runway… shows a fashion show from her perspective.
4. Possible to destroy your career in one tweet – Remember the “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS…” tweet? You get a megaphone with social media, but being thoughtless comes with a big price.
5. Start girls early on tech. Why do girls get dolls but guys get to start on video games? (TYNKER, Primo Cubetto, robotiky, wonder, Mattel Apptivity seat, Heads Up, Bankaroo, i potty).
6. 3D PRINTING! Everything from kayaks to bridges and pasta.
7. Virtual Reality and Robots. VR has been used to help cure people who have a phobia of heights!
8. Selfie drone? How about a drone that delivers champagne to you?
9. Manicures that can detect date rape drugs, or which glows when it detects wifi.
10. dot com(plicated) Good: Sensorwake – alarm that wakes you with smell of fresh croissants. Not So Cool: Tikker – the happiness watch which counts down minutes you have in life. How about having keys to the office injected into employees’ arms?!
11. Gamification for motivation – icukoo: if you hit the snooze button = donate money to charity.
12. Nike+ app… so Randi can post to FB that she is going for a run. 1 like on the post = cheers in her ears via earphones. :) Zombies Run… you have to run to escape zombies, and to save the world = real Dead-ication to fitness! ;)
13. For the courageous or the thin-skinned… GymShamer – texts your friends if you are too lazy to go to the gym. Withings – a scale that tweets your weight. How about an app that teaches couples to dance together?

Final Trend: Unplug to Refresh

I’m with Randi on this. She says that technology is there to bring you closer to things you love, so don’t let tech become a barrier. Such a coincidence that she said this just after lunch, when I had witnessed a family dining at MBS – the mother and children were enjoying the food, while the dad was busy (presumably) working on TWO phones. It’s like he was there physically for a meal with his beautiful family in a gorgeous location, but his mind was elsewhere. How sad.

Do you have a healthy relationship with technology? Randi’s friend has a child who (mistakenly) thinks laptops are where his grandpa resides – a product of Skype-ing too much.

Some questionable uses of technology include The Breakup App or the BroApp which you can use to send pre-programmed texts that your girl will get throughout the week.

And just what would women give up instead of giving up their phone for a weekend? A survey showed they would be happy to give up for a year: chocolate, coffee, wine, and even sex! And for some men, perhaps we need The Offline Glass, which is a beer glass which only stands upright if you put a phone under it.

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Randi has written a children’s book titled ‘Dot’ which might also have its own TV show in September. For the adults, she has also published the book ‘Dot Complicated’.

As Randi’s dream in life is to sing on Broadway (and she has accomplished that!), she performed a song for us as a fitting close to her presentation. :)

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A picture taken during the 1st day of the Women of Wealth & Abundance event:

Ladies, be sure to attend the next WOWA event. It’s truly worth the time and effort, and you get to learn from inspirational female figures! :)