Tarah's Digital Voice

Session 2: Unanticipated Affinity

Gavin Starks, founder of amee.com (@ agentgav): codifying sustainability - a purpose for the Internet of things.
- more and more data available from more and more sources, making it easier and more reliable to determine and track energy consumption
- adding social features allows people to compare activity against friends'. Add some gaming features and maybe people will become more sustainable.

Shohei Shigematsu, partner at oma, architect: graphs of GDP, images and other visuals interpreted through the eyes of a funny, insightful guy, plus a few projects. Summed up with his fear of homogeny and templatization taking over in architecture.

James Smith, Hilarious comedian

Nancy duarte, presentation expert (an inconvenient truth): ideas can change the world, but how to communicate? Stories cause emotional reaction, but presentations flatline, so how to infuse story into presentation?
- 3 part structure with hero journey
- freytag dramatic story structure. 5-part structure. Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, dénouement.
- her shape of great presentations: what is and what could be, gap between, repeating over and over. Moving back and forth, like sailing. Ends with "new bliss".
- mapped steve jobs first iPhone keynote with er structure, with content type and emotional/physical responses. Jobs models emotional response he wants to evoke (e.g. excitement). Ends with new bliss - promise to always innovate.
- mapped mlk's I have a dream speech. Graphed repetition, use if metaphors and other techniques. Brilliant analysis.

Cecilia Beltran: why do we believe in myths? Comparison of human brain to religious myths...interesting.

Tim Wu: how to build an information empire. The power that comes from monopolization of information and communications. Fascinating presentation, although his speaking pace was a bit off-putting. If we want choice and openness, we need to create the options. By choosing convenience, we are creating monopolies.

Iyeoka, musician/poetess: gorgeous voice. Inspirational words.

_____________________

Session 3: Life At Large

Kurt tofteland: a reading from Shakespeare and a video of an inmate encompass the story of his work using Shakespeare with inmates to try to find redemption, cone to terms with crimes.

Morley, musician: incredible voice and what soul!
-2nd song about her work with youth on conflict resolution in war-torn countries.
3rd about women in war-torn countries - Rwanda, Tibet, Burma. If you're feeling helpless, help someone.

Dennis Crowley, founder of foursquare (@dens): making real world into game, people change behavior, use world in different ways...can you manufacture serendipity? Not sure it was too smart to end with idea if finding objects and taking them sonewhere else and dropping them...sounds like gowalla.

Sunny Bates: learning to be able to hear everything.

Panel, BBC's Katty Kay, moderating: Gavin, sunny, Raghava, Shohei, Dennis - does interconnectedness foster creativity? Kind of rambling, unfocused panel...not really worth watching.

TEDxEast - incredible again.

Raghava kk: unlearning the world. - iPad book about indian independence - shake & changes to Pakistani perspective. Shake again - bagladeshi version. - Walk in footsteps of someone that didn't think like you - learn something you didn't know you didn't know.

Jason Johnson - social books. Next Gen e-reader with social connections. Community, on page, around books. Friend comments on page, etc. Authors participate. Books more dynamic. Sharing book, excerpts.

Dana Kurtz musical performance.
- "Venezuela", a story of a dream of love and heartbreak...laced with some good humor.
- "Love gets in the way"

Debbie Berebichez, phd: What large hadron collider should learn from Facebook. 

Rick guidotti: Fashion photographer got sick of being told what and who is beautiful, so now on a mission to create beautiful photographs of people with albinism. Photographs them like models...transforms their perception of selves. Incredible international activism around protecting children, changing perceptions, educating about misconceptions. Then, took on chromosome abnormalities.

15 minute version of 1-act play - parallel of child with autism and black child. Race as stigma, like disease.

Chef Thomas Keller: cooking = ingredients + execution.
- Ingredients: The people from whom he gets his amazing ingredients, wines, even the linens for The French Laundry and their stories. True Interconnectivity. Now, I'm hungry.
- Execution: desire trumps passion. Training, education, mentorship. Have the right tools. Leadership to create environment of confidence and courage. Teamwork. Do a little better than yesterday. Changes menu every day.

Originally posted on Brand New World's blog

On April 20-21, 2010, Jeff Pulver (@JeffPulver), a long time entrepreneur and Internet communication thought leader, brought together over 170 real-time web industry leaders and over 1000 attendees to explore the "State of Now" at the 140 Characters Conference (Twitter: #140conf). This was possibly the largest gathering of influencers and passionate devotees focused on the culture, business and rapidly evolving influence of Twitter, location-based services and the myriad other developing forms of moment-to-moment communication.

There was far too much content for us to recap it all, but we will provide the resources and recommendations anyone needs to identify the valuable content and individuals that really shone at this event. Top line, though: whether you're a brand, blogger, charity or anyone else trying to get your voice heard, your goal should be to develop deep connections with a community of like-minded individuals, not to amass large numbers of followers, impressions, or any other generalized metric of engagement. To prosper in the real-time web, you will be judged on your character and your own level of engagement...quickly and ruthlessly.

With an intense format - individual talks lasted 10 minutes, keynotes 15 minutes and panel discussions no more than 20 minutes - this event was at times a whirlwind of content. Some presenters were very much at ease with the format; others struggled to deliver a truly impactful message in the allotted time, making it a rather fitting live action representation of what one finds on Twitter. Overall, though, the program offered an extremely diverse range of perspectives, including branding, marketing, technology, charity, education, journalism, politics, music and a multitude of other topics. Some helpful resources:

• Conference Schedule
• Speakers List & Twitter Names
• Twitter List following the Speakers' Tweets

In addition to the 1000+ attendees at the 92 St Y, the conference was streamed live on Ustream.com. According to Pulver, during the two day broadcast, 76,332 unique viewers and 126,300 total viewers watched remotely. In addition, between April 12-22, #140conf on Twitter 5,006 people ignited 22,835 Twitter conversations, reaching 2.7 million people! (via @fredericg) Our conference highlights below.

All of the videos from the conference have already been parsed and archived for your viewing pleasure on ippio.com, but here are some recommended highlights (believe it or not, this isn't all of them!):

• Check out our tweets from the conference to see what struck us in the moment (@brandnewworld). Also check out Tarah Feinberg's, our Creative Director who runs our social media practice (@tarahfo).

Day 1 (in chronological order):

• Pulver's passionate welcome and an appearance by Miss America 2010, Caressa Cameron (@MAOTravels): http://bit.ly/dfuEkc
  • Key quotation: "If you let yourself be vulnerable, you have the opportunity to connect with people & change the world."- Jeff Pulver
• Inspiring presentation on social media and education from Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann), Principal at Science Leadership Academy, urging our society to teach wisdom: http://bit.ly/9a94mf
  • Key quotation: "We're training, not educating. We need people that can think, not pass tests."
• Dan Harple (@dharple), Executive Chairman of GyPSii, talking about the "Evolution of Location and Places": http://bit.ly/d18fvI
  • Our favorite part: how Harple likened the real-time web to life on a bike, as opposed to being in a car stuck in traffic - it's mobile, open, non-linear, and connected.
• Great panel of news leaders from NPR (@acarvin), CNN (@KuhnCNN), NYT (@NYT_JenPreston) & NBC's Today (@Rozzy) speaking about "Real Time News Gathering": http://bit.ly/di7W39
  • Watch because: it's great to hear leading news figures discuss specific events that changed their perceptions about real-time news, such as protests at the RNC and the instantaneous reaction to the Fort Hood shooting, as well as how they use Twitter lists.
• Alon Nir spoke about creating @TheKotel to allow people of any faith, anywhere in the world, to place their prayers in Jerusalem's Western Wall: http://bit.ly/dsQ6f2
  • What struck us: It has exploded into an international phenomenon, an example of Pay It Forward at work. His story is quite compelling.
• Encouraging conversation on how Twitter is helping to fix America's voting system, including Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi) and Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California (@DBowen): http://bit.ly/bzMMbp
  • Stirring story: Trippi talking about smuggling Flip cameras into Zimbabwe, in factory-sealed cereal boxes, which citizens used to document Mugabe's atrocities during the election.
• Stirring conversation about how real-time communications have revolutionized the response to emergency situations, including reps from the US Air Force (@USairforce), Ann Curry of NBC's Today (@AnnCurry), the Israeli Defense Forces (@IDFSpokesperson), Luke Renner of Fireside Int'l (@firesideint) and Nate Erickson of Wyclef Jean's Haiti efforts (@NateErickson): http://bit.ly/dlowNm
  • The takeaway: a large amount of people in the world really care about each other and will offer their voices to help those in need...and those voices are truly having a large impact on the actions of the governments and organizations that are responding to crises.
• The always entertaining and charismatic Gary Vaynerchuck (@garyvee) of Wine Library TV, charged up the crowd after lunch: http://bit.ly/aaNNiI
  • Truest quotation: "Can we once & for all get rid of the idea that these connections we're making online aren't real?"
• Hank Wasiak (@hankwasiak), a self-title former "Mad Man Turned Twitterholic", gave a humorous and insightful call for Madison Ave to embrace social media: http://bit.ly/92gQFB
  • Quotation that we live by: "Technology & technique need to be in service to an idea." If we had $1 for every time we had to tell a client that they just might not need a strategy for x platform...
• A collection of agency and brand folks gathered to discuss how the real-time web is affecting, benefiting and challenging brands, including Duncan Mitchell (@someecards) of someecards, Kaitlyn Wilkins of Ogilvy (@CatchUpLady), Leslie Berland of American Express (@AmericanExpress), Marc Monseau of J&J (@JNJComm) and Ricky Engelberg (@rje7) of Nike: http://bit.ly/cF5BPL
  • Great intros: each panel member was introduced by title, as well as what they would be doing if not that...
• The rock stars of location-based services - Dennis Crowley (@dens) of FourSquare,  Shane Lennon (@redshane) of GyPSii and Josh Williams (@jw) of Gowalla - took the stage to discuss the enormous impact of geotagged social networking: http://bit.ly/codc9U
  • Surprising stat: "Chinese are using FourSquare ten times more than the US or Europe." - Dennis Crowley
• For the executive brand perspective, a group of CMOs met to discuss how the real time web is changing their approach to business: http://bit.ly/dqWHkn
  • You should watch because: it's valuable to hear how the marketers at the top are using these platforms, including Jeffrey Merrihue (@JeffreyMerrihue) of MoFilm, Jonathan Mildenhall (@Mildenhall) of Coca-Cola, Linda Boland Abraham (@linda_abraham) of comScore and Ted Rubin (@tedrubin) of OpenSky.
• Some of the leaders of online video discussed how demands and consumption are changing and how they're solving them: http://bit.ly/9VRwRx
  • Why it's important: understanding "disruptors" that are succeeding helps to understand what audiences want.
• Of course there's no better way to end a long day of hearing people talk than with a laugh, so it was refreshing when Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack), Michael Kupperman (@MKupperman), Joe Randazzo (@randazzoj) of The Onion, Lisa Cohen (@cohills) of WitStream and Pat Kiernan (@patkiernan) of NY1 riffed for us: http://bit.ly/d0TkDA
  • If only it were a real business model: "On WitStream, there's a feature where you can put dollars in underpants of people that you find funny. It's a bit ungainly, but...that's the revenue stream." - Michael Ian Black

Day 2 (in chronological order):

• Four under-23-year-olds took the stage to discuss what it's like to grow up with the real time Internet: http://bit.ly/b5WtCp
  • Great insight for young people: You have to look at your digital footprint as a portfolio...it matters to potential employers and they will search for you in social networks.
• Leading thinker, Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis), focused on the issue of comments in social media and how to deal with them: http://bit.ly/aOTIFR
  • The issue at hand: "The problem with comments is that we allow them after we're done creating our content. When there's no response, the society of comments gets taken over by assholes."
• Peter Corbett (@corbett3000), CEO of iStrategyLabs, presented some of the exciting technology and community action that they are driving in the political arena. For some reason, it looks like the video isn't up yet, but we'll keep checking and will put it here when it is.
  • In the meantime, don't miss: http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/
• Actress and activist, Angela Shelton (@angelashelton), spoke about the life changing film she made after searching for other Angela Sheltons on social networks and finding a disturbing story: http://bit.ly/ctZDH4
  • Watch her film, Searching for Angela Shelton, for free on SnagFilms or Hulu.
• Entertaining discussion about using social media to create and support reality TV: http://bit.ly/9xJNO6
  • Interesting tactic that we use: The utility of social networking profiles for casting real people.
• A few futurists led us through their augmented reality ventures. Joshua Fouts (@josholalia) didn't make it, unfortunately, because of the volcanic ash, but it was still a great conversation: http://bit.ly/cf3mf3
  • To whet your appetite: check out AR Wave, an open source project devoted to streamlining the gathering and usability of geolocation data from multiple sources.
• No 140conf video up, but we got the chance to hang with Kosha Dillz (@koshadillz) and Flex Matthews (@flexmatthews), two great rapper/Tweeters that performed at the conference. Here's a YouTube video of them in action with Matisyahu: http://bit.ly/9AeXYD
  • You can also vote for them in a Southby.tv contest: http://southby.tv/
• We had to hear from one of the hottest blogger categories on the net these days, Mom and Dad bloggers: http://bit.ly/aPJIcx
  • Our favorite Twitter username on the panel: @dada_rocks
• Jeffrey Sass (@sass) from Myxer shared his strong views on how mobile both benefits and detracts from our quality of life: http://bit.ly/aCo271
  • Our question: He claimed that mobile has become an addiction...but when does it stop being addiction and just become a part of human life...like eating?
• And a bit of fun:
  • Lynn Rose (@LynnRose), actress and singer, created a fun music video called Everybody Tweet, which was shown at the conference: http://everybodytweet.com/
  • Visual artist Jonny Goldstien created live iPad and paper pad sketches of sessions as they were happening: http://bit.ly/9b3Uk4

There are many other great talks from the conference, which you can browse through yourselves, but these were the ones that we thought really stood out on a cultural, industry or performance level. Feel free to leave your thoughts or own recommendations in the comments.