Kadisco: Cycling, Marketing, Sponsorship, Social Media

Influx Curated recap

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by Josh in Marketing, Trends

If someone gave you 5 minutes to inspire a room of 200+ people, what would you say? That was the directive at the Influx Curated conference that I went to yesterday. Ed Cotton – the guy who organized the event, writes the Influx Insights blog, and interviewed me about bikes – picked 10 speakers. Each of them picked two additional speakers. There was a 5-minute time limit and a simple instruction: to inspire.

Due to a lack of pictures online from the event, I’ve used the fifth most interesting photo with a Creative Commons license and the tag “inspiration” on Flickr. Briefly, some pros and cons of the speed-dating format.

The time limit meant that a lot of people had a chance to talk about a lot of different topics and it was never boring. But many of the presentations felt rushed and glossed-over.

Even for the most articulate, engaging, and enthusiastic of speakers, being truly inspirational is a stretch. On the other hand, it led to some unexpected and interesting moments, like three guys from Apple not talking about Apple.

Openness was a frequent topic throughout the day. I enjoyed Jelly Helm’s presentation about being open to “No Casey Caplowe gave a cool talk about GOOD’s open-ended “[blank] like you give a damn” mission. Apple’s Chris Riley is open to being depressed – and I really liked his take on the craft of writing, which was a nice counterpoint to the usual stuff about social media marketing. Such as…

Jeben Berg from YouTube said that brands need to cultivate trust with their audience. But he also held up as an example of great social marketing this successful video that goes to great lengths to conceal that it’s an ad for Levi’s. Maybe transparency isn’t the key to everything, after all. Talking about social media marketing to moms, Neil Grimmer said, “she’s a part of our company and we’re a part of her life.” That seemed a little Big Brother-ish to me but whatever.

Who else was good… Emily Pilloton made an interesting point about how online media streaming is sustainable because it replaces manufacturing and shipping physical items. William Hall did interesting things with masked volunteers. Madison Mount talked about the nature of “good” itself. Adrienne Ciuffo had a cool story about making a documentary the way she wanted, not the way her client wanted. Angel Ciangi didn’t really go for inspiration but she did give an eye-opening intro on marketing to young multi-culturals (like the kids on Sneakerplay).

Most conferences are about answering questions. Take WordCamp SF, which I attended two weeks ago, for example. The speakers – who were mostly excellent – told you how to do things like make your website faster, how to improve search ranking, and how to blog more effectively.

Influx Curated was about asking questions, something it’s all too easy to forget the importance of. Here’s Ed’s recap.