It was a shattering blow to the very heart of Canada. On Friday, April 6, at an intersection in Northern Saskatchewan, a semi truck slammed into the side of a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos, a junior hockey team. Sixteen people on that bus, including most of the team, are gone. This column is not about the accident, but about how we've dealt with our grief.

For the past four years, the Tribeca Film Festival has made a remarkable effort to embrace the current state of immersive storytelling. This year, the Tribeca Virtual Arcade was full of interesting projects - far more than anyone could experience in one gulp.

With the departure of Sir Martin Sorrell, many are now predicting the end of WPP and of agency holding companies in general, along with the business model of the tailor-made, client-specific, integrated agency offering. I doubt that will be true. Will things change? Absolutely! But the agency holding company model is not going to disappear -- and that's all because of simple economics.

Are big media companies ready for another big wave of disruption? They'd better be. The direct-brand revolution is starting, and it might not be pretty for large incumbent players in the media industry.

The data landscape is experiencing a new level of scrutiny, which has potential implications that will resonate for years to come.

Last week, when I talked about the current furor around the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I said that part of the blame -- or at least, the responsibility -- for the protection of our own data belonged to us. Whether it's wise or not, when it comes to our own data, there are only three places we can reasonably look to protect it:

At this year's TED Conference, the risks that face the Internet were on dramatic display.

Behind Zuckerberg's overly solicitous proclamations of user control sits a hard truth: You can give people as much control you want over who sees their information. It won't make a dang bit of difference--because Facebook is asking the wrong questions.

I spent an amazing morning today at Media Kitchen's annual Venture Capital Conference in New York City listening to leaders in media, investing and banking talk about "new TV": the merging of broadcast TV, social video and everything in between. In my remarks, I focused on what I thought would the key drivers of the advertising industry over the next five years. Here they are - and AI is not one of them:

We are moving toward a world where voice is becoming more important, and the way we speak is quickly becoming the primary means of interaction -- not only with other people, but with machines. Poor grammar, useless fillers, broken language and mumbling make it harder to get your point across or to get an action to be undertaken.