New York

Emmy Award Winning Journalist Ann Curry (@anncurry)

Against a large screen featuring live status updates from Egypt, MSNBC journalist Ann Curry and a panel of seasoned reporters discussed “The Future of Real-Time Publishing” at The New York Times Building.

This was a timely topic as the world focuses on Twitter updates from citizens of Egypt to learn the latest developments from Tahrir Square.  The panel primarily discussed how social media has empowered citizens to become reporters who can share their experiences immediately across a span of social networks on location.

Readers have often aided journalists by providing key details.  But in the world of real-time reporting, journalists are faced with the challenge of report now and redact later.  An interesting solution to this problem was mentioned by an audience member who claimed NPR writes “unconfirmed” when reporting a story in real-time.  This helps the audience understand that a correction/further clarification may follow the news update.

After the session, I asked Associated Press’ Social Media Editor Eric Carvin for his views on the difficulty of trying to spread information across so many social networking sites.  I mentioned how NPR is leveraging Tumblr to deliver news to its followers but that it’s yet another social networking site that NPR needs to place on its radar.

Our panelists (left to right) Andy Carvin, David Clinch, Joshua Harris, Ann Curry

Eric’s answer was the complete opposite of what I expected.  Eric believes the number of social websites will eventually decrease because not all of them can reach profitability.  This belief is actually in alignment with the “Web 2.0 Bubble” that is currently being discussed by the social tech community.  While Eric does bring up an interesting point, I actually explained that in the future I see more social networks being created to focus on a variety of interests instead of broadcasting to large audiences.  But that’s another story.

The proliferation of smartphones is drastically simplifying the ability to record and publish videos, snap photos, and send status updates that can be shared with the world.  Today’s panel recognized social content is constantly being refreshed and it is important to separate the facts from gaping inaccuracies for the benefit of us all.

Mauricio Godoy is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a Social Business Strategist.  You can follow him on twitter @MauricioSWG

David Berkowitz, Senior Director of Emerging Media at 360i, is incredibly excited about the opportunities in the mobile social media space. He sees six types of mobile social media activities:

1)      Online social networks on mobile devices

2)      Sharing content via social channels

3)      Location-based check-in services

4)      Sharing and streaming content

5)      Social gaming

6)      Mobile social networks

The slides from the panel can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/360iSMW

Noah Elkin, Principal Analyst at eMarketer, has seen a tremendous growth in how mobile users are utilizing social networks to communicate.  Mobile has become core to the social networking experience, and social networking has become integral to the mobile experience.  While the number of location-based service users is still small, those who use them regularly tend to be well-connected influences and an ideal target for marketers.

The motivation for users to check-in is driven by two items: finding useful information and finding deals.  Game mechanics are fairly low on the list of motivators, but they are important to get the ball rolling.  There are concerns about check-ins becoming a commodity, but ultimately they remain a database of intentions (as search has likewise been described.)

Craig Davis, CEO of TextualAds, spoke about adding context to SMS advertising and engagement in order to better engage users.  Tom Dorf, Director of Advertisitng Sales at MocoSpace (“the biggest social network that you’ve never head of”) discussed the Mobilista badge that MocoSpace developed for Nokia.

Over the next few years, the over a billion new mobile devices and over a billion new mobile uses will enter the marketplace, according to Adam Mirabella, Head of Music Services at Nokia.  As this growth occurs, he sees a few key trends

• Communication
• Companies will have to be socially responsible and give back to the marketplace
• Marketers don’t own the conversation any more, the whole company has to get involved

The role of social and mobile marketers is to educate themselves and their consumers.  Being social is about sharing knowledge.  Only after this knowledge is gained and spread can the market accelerate.

While adoption of mobile social networks and technologies is growing, there are still challenges.  Some potential uses may not understand how a channel is used.  For example, many people who are comfortable with Facebook do not understand Twitter and may not be trying to.  Additionally, users may have existing perceptions, fairly or unfairly, that limits use or prevents adoption.  For example, people may not use Foursquare because they see it as just a game or because they fear an invasion of their privacy.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

by Kathy Blake

See more comments on the cross-posting on The Experimenal Gourmand Blog. #SMWFood, #SMWNYC

Tuesday night at 4Food, whose goal is to introduce healthier fast food to us burger-lovers, food media folks engaged their inner tech geeks and got together for Eats+Apps as part of Social Media Week NYC.  The event was sold out, which just highlights that connection between new technology ideas and those of us who love food and cooking and that many of us are looking for ways to communicate that to a broader audience.  While the internet is fantastic and has, for many people, like myself, been a way to explore recipes and menu ideas, the navigation of all of that information can sometimes be daunting and frustrating.

This event was an opportunity for food community networking as well as for those of us who write about food topics to preview some interesting new apps (iPad, iPhone, and Android) that might be valuable additions to anyone’s media library.  As someone who test-drove the iPad for about a week and who is in the market for an iPhone now that Verizon is a carrier, I am just the kind of candidate for several of these products.  It was great to have an opportunity to talk to their creators in person last night.  Some of these are definitely on my must-have list.

Gojee (http://www.gojee.com/)

I’d met co-founder Mike LaValle at the Feast.up picnic in September of last year, so it was great to see his concept in action last night.  A collaboration between technology, food information, and D’Agostino’s grocery stores, this site, with the aid of your rewards card number and a logon, will help you to track your spending and create a budget, assist you with nutritional details about your purchases, and even give you recipe suggestions and food tips based upon the items that you do buy.  This is an amazing integration of the kind of information that most of us try to cobble together every week.  The only downside for me, however, is that there’s no D’Ag in my neighborhood, so I’m hoping that this is picked up by other stores sometime in the near future so more folks can have access to this terrific resource.

Bread Baking Basics (Apple Store)

This is already available as an iPad app.  Baking bread is one of those things that I wish I could do better.  I have taken a cooking course on it and have a great book on the subject.  Still, I feel as though I can never quite get it right.  Perhaps this is just what I need to download, as the cost of it is cheaper than buying an artisanal loaf from my local bakery.  What is appealing is not only are there detailed instructions and photos of every step of the process but that there are also hints about the theory part as to how to make great-tasting bread in your home kitchen.

Ratio (Apple Store)

The cookbook by renowned food-writer Michael Ruhlman is now an app.  The concept behind this is that by understanding some of the fundamental ratios of basic cooking inputs (like butter to flour in baking cookies), those of us who want to move behind our recipe files can gain the tools to create and develop our own culinary ideas.  Having this on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch is a great way to figure out how to work with the ingredients you have or, more likely, what to do if you’ve run short on something and need to adjust a recipe on the fly.  This app is also available for the Android.

Food Network – In The Kitchen (FN website)

This app is designed to give you a personal helping hand from some of your favorite television chefs.  Having access at your fingertips to shows and recipes is a huge help for someone like me, who cooks from things I’ve seen on some of the programs I’ve watched on this network.  It would save me hours of time not to have to run back and forth to the computer (or to draw upon my fading memory) to be able to bring up a show for that, “Now, how did he/she do that again?” moment that usually happens when I’m trying to recreate a recipe.  Another very useful aspect of this app is that you can also build your shopping list from it, and there is a feature to share your list in case other folks are chipping in with the shopping and prep work.  It’s like having a virtual supper club, except that you really get to eat the results.  This is available for the iPad, iPhone, and Android.

Foodspotting (www.foodspotting.com)

For those who enjoy eating out, here is an app that can help you make your food choices.  You can share dishes that you’ve eaten at various restaurants, get tips on what other folks have enjoyed at their favorite haunts, and see what might be some options for dining wherever you might be.  This is a great way to get some suggestions for cities and neighborhoods where you might not be as familiar with the dining options.  They also pull together recommendations from some of the top food guides, including Tasting Table, Anthony Bourdain, and Zagat, so you can get opinions from a variety of resources to help you decide what you will do for your next meal away from home.  This is available on iPhone and Android

Dinevore (http://nyc.dinevore.com/)

Another resource for tracking your restaurant reviews and resource lists to create mini dining guides is this site.  You can type in a wide range of criteria (I like the one about number of subway lines you want to take.) to come up with a list of choices that match and then see what other folks have had to say about dining at them.  Additional lists that have been created by magazines and other guides are also available for viewing.

Snooth (http://www.snooth.com/)

This is a great wine app for the iPhone, so I’m glad that I’m soon going to be getting one of these devices.  Have you ever been at a wine tasting or restaurant and wanted to remember what was that fabulous vintage that you sampled?  In those settings, it’s probably a bit gauche to tear off the label for your files.  After a few glasses, those photos you took with your camera phone are also a bit blurry.  If you’re like me, the other way you handle this is to write down the information on some piece of paper, never to remember where it is or what you did with it.  This will take care of all of that for you.  This will help you browse for selections, find a store where you can buy it, and help you manage your own personal wine library.

Gourmet Live (http://live.gourmet.com/)

Along with many other members of the food-lovers community, I was sad when Gourmet magazine folded its print edition in 2009.  I have so many fond memories and great recipes from this publication.  I’d heard a while back that all was not lost for this iconic brand, however, as it was going to be re-born in an on-line version.  As the representative at last night’s event put it, this is the digital re-imagining of the magazine.  I actually think that she was being modest, as to me this is the one app that would have made me keep the iPad that I ended up returning (too expensive, didn’t really do what I needed it to do).  I love this app.  It is flexible, timely, and combines great stories with useful tips and menu ideas, as well as the ability to get more information at your fingertips.  Content is updated weekly with new stories and recipes as well as old favorites pulled from the print magazine’s archive.

Overall, this was a fantastic event.  I got to see some people with whom I hadn’t caught up in a while, get to know some newer contacts, and to meet some new food media folks.  I love seeing what new technology can bring to the world of recipes and ingredient resources, so this was a perfect fit for my areas of interest.  Thanks so much to 4Food for hosting it (I need to get over there for lunch someday.) and to Danielle Gould, Emily Cavalier, and Brian Quinn and Jonny Cigar (great idea to come to us with the wine last night, as we were all chatting away downstairs!) for pulling this all together.  I look forward to the next one and to see what is going on in the Food + Tech movement.

Buon appetito!

Kathy Blake is The Experimental Gourmand, blogger, food writer and experimental home cook.

Just when I think I attended the very best event during Social Media Week, I go to another and it’s even better. Today I attended Social Around the World, Hosted by Freddie Laker, Head of Digital Strategy in Asia, SapientNitro, held at the Hearst building. I also attended the “sold out” Keynote interview with Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, Followed by 360i Panel How Mobile-Social is Changing How Brands Connect with Consumers at the JWT Hub. I also had the opportunity to meet some people IRL (in real life) that I had only tweeted with before. This has been a special part of this week as well.

Social Around the World:

This event started with a surprise introduction by Toby Daniels (Social Media Week founder in case you didn’t know) and then remarks by Freddie Laker. Then we were treated to a combination live and virtual panel from around the world.

The insights and conversations were amazing and enlightening. I’ve always had a fascination with globalization and have led an English to Japanese site globalization project. Just as direct translation doesn’t work for a website and you need to consider the cultural differences…the same can be said for social.

The speakers were:

• Moderator: Freddie Laker, Head of Digital Strategy – Asia, SapientNitro
• Katarina Graffman,Owner & CEO of Inculture, Stockholm, Sweden
• Justin Barkhuizen, Ex-Director of Social Media, MediaCom
• Mark Leong, Digital Strategist, RAPP, Tokyo, Japan
• Zarul Shekhar, SapientNitro + TV Producer/Anchor Delhi, India, Manager of Digital Media
• Mehdi Lamloum, Digital Planner, OgilvyOne, Tunisia

The speakers shared information about global trends, similarities, and differences to social media here in the USA. To see the real highlights or what attendees thought were most interesting just take a look at the hashtag #smwlake

Key points or thought provoking topics that interested me:

• Are we creating a global social “brain”– a giant collective intellect that is increasingly global?
• A small percent of penetration in Asia still equates to a massive audience due to the number of people.
• Can you imagine a future where there is an “internet of things” and all your items have chips? Imagine being able to use GPS and a chip to find those pesky missing glasses or keys.
• People in different countries use social for different reasons. In India people are using it for arranged marriages so the term relationship manager has a different meaning than you might expect.
• In Japan people are slowly moving away from anonymous avatars and personas online.
• In Tunisia social media IS the media. People trusted social media more than traditional sources.
• Predictions for the future included social media for rural markets and cheap (under $100) smart phones.

Foursquare Keynote/360i Panel:

Toby Daniels also opened this event and then Austin Carr from Fast Company interviewed Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley. Read more using hashtag #snwcrowley. This was followed by a panel that included:

• Moderator: David Berkowitz, Sr. Director of Emerging Media & Innovation, 360i
• Adam Mirabella, Head of Music Services, Nokia
• Noah Elkin, Principal Analyst, eMarketer
• Craig Davis, CEO, TextualAds
• Tom Dorf, Director of Advertising Sales, MocoSpace – @Mocospace

Dennis described his original approach as: throwing ten things against the wall the see what sticks…and they all did! He also described some of the initial ideas for Foursquare on yellow notes on his wall that said: Find a ramen place near me. Find a ramen place my friends go to. Find a ramen place that is the most popular. (It was all about ramen.) He also said that his users show them the use cases instead of the other way around.

When asked about the future, Dennis talked about how Foursquare should know you and your habits so that it would use what it knew about things you did in one location and make useful recommendations in a new location. He said that Foursquare is only 10% done. This means exciting things to anticipate for the future!

Dennis talked about applications people have made using their API. The one that the audience really liked was:  http://donteat.at   that can send you a text message if you “check in” at a restaurant on the list to be closed due to health code violations.

Well, that was a quick round-up of my day. I hope you get to participate in some of these great events and if you can’t, I suggest watching some at http://www.livestream.com/socialmediaweek.

This blog post was written by Beth Granger, a contributor to the NY Social Media Week blog. When she isn’t helping organizations interact with the digital revolution and all the power it holds, she can be found tweeting @BethGrangerSays.

The mid-afternoon session of Social Media Week New York at the Business, Media & Communications content hub at JWT opened with an interview with Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, by Austin Carr of Fast Company.  The hub was holding a capacity crowd for the interview, as they were eager to see what Crowley had to say.

While Foursquare has enjoyed a lot of success, Carr noted, it’s still a young company. It still must be concerned with growth and scale. People check into Foursquare for a variety of reasons. Users may use it as a diary of where they’ve been, use it to find friends, or use to to discover tips about venues. As Crowley explained, it’s like they threw ten things at the wall to see what would stick, and they all stuck. Rather than telling people how to use Foursquare, they want the users to tell the developers how they use it.

The Foursquare office is filled with white boards of lists of projects, including several that they’re looking to complete before SXSW. Projects may focus on new users, on super-users, and for brands; the trickiest part for the company is how to determine which ones they should work on first.

There’s a piece of paper hanging behind Crowley’s desk describing the use cases that they want to achieve (which, oddly enough, all focus around ramen.) While the cases vary, they tend to center around recommending venues for users who find themselves in a new place based on their past experiences.

Can you use game mechanics to encourage people to live richer lives? Crowley finds himself not leaving the East Village for weeks at a time, so how can he encourage him and his friends to visit a hot new venue in Brooklyn? Specials came about from venues who wanted to reward loyal customers.

Crowley believes that there is something unique about Foursquare that speaks to big brands. Users’ endorsements of venues in the form of check ins are like miniature ad impressions for a brand or venue. An advantage for media companies is creating a portable “best of” list for users. Rather than dog-earring a page in a magazine and hoping that you remember to check out a recommended restaurant, Foursquare could be used to remind users when they approach the restaurant.

As Foursquare grows, a challenge for them is to remain focused. Crowley feels that it’s his role to keep the team on track. The company displays its ideal use cases and credo in the office to remind them which direction their new features should follow. The creation of a new product isn’t the challenge for Foursquare; the tricky part is developing the organization and growing it in order to keep up with the development. Delegation is something that Crowley has had to learn on the fly, but it’s been made easier by hiring the right people. They’ve been able to bring on passionate people who have their own side projects in the same space. Their passion and expertise create a sense of trust that makes working together very easy.

While Foursquare is not looking to adopt activities like checking into television shows, they are starting to embrace event check-ins as part of their strategy. When they added a badge for checking into the 2010 elections, it was intended to get people to brag about checking into their polling places. The recent Super Bowl check-ins were less about watching a program than it was what fun things could be gleamed from Super Bowl parties (photos of dips, house party stories, etc.) Checking into events has been user-driven (e.g., Snowpocalypse) and will be expanding as Foursquare grows. Ideally, it’s about recording memories about people’s experiences in the offline world.

One of the biggest surprises to come out of Foursquare, according to Crowley, was the success of the API. The passion of developers has created a variety of mash-ups ranging from mobile device apps to dating apps to one that warns you about poor health grades at restaurants to which you check in. As the ability to craft recommendations grows, interest in using the Foursquare API has grown with it. To this end, the Foursquare team is doubling down again to make their API even friendlier for developers.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

Follow this conversation online using the hashtag #smwnypl2

If you weren’t at the Inner Workings: Staffing for Social Media, hosted by the New York Public Library, you missed a fantastic event. The conversation was interesting, knowledgeable, and even funny. It was great to be able to compare the methods, policies, and challenges between a large regulated organization like Citi, a non-profit like the NY Public Library, a start-up like ReverbNation, and a publishing house like Knopf.

My key take-aways include the below;

• Brick and mortar organizations have been shaken by the recent changes in the online world and need to adapt.
• There is no one right way to do things–it depends on the organization, your customers or constituencies, and your goals for getting involved in social media in the first place.
• Even if your organization isn’t “ready” to be on social media, your customers are already here.

Ok, I must tell you that the tone of this event was set by walking up the steps of the New York Public Library and into the room that was used during the filming of the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. What a beautiful building. I could write many posts just about what I’ve discovered in here. Did you know they have an actual Gutenberg Bible!? But enough of that…

This event was described as a panel discussion to showcase the different approaches for social media staffing juxtaposing representatives from companies in the private sector and non-profits, but it truly became a conversation between the panelists,  the audience, and all of the people participating via twitter.

The panelists included:

• Susan Halligan, Marketing Director at the NY Public Library
• Johannes Neuer, eCommunications Manager at the NY Public Library
• Paul Michaud, Senior VP of Social Media at Citi
• Jed Carlson, COO of ReverbNation
• Mary Buckley, Associate Manager of Advertising and Promotions at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Pamela Cortland, Associate Marketing Manager at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Each of the panelists had great stories about how their organization handled voice and tone, policies, approval process, tools to use, inserting personality into the communications, and other topics.

The consensus among panelists was  that there is no one right way to do things–strategy should rely on the organization, the customers or constituencies targeted, and the organization’s rationale for getting involved in social media in the first place. Each of the groups represented had different ways of staffing from the 16 cross departmental authors who were trained to use the system (as was the case with the NY Public Library using Hootsuite) to the two people at Knopf who “are the department” within their area of their company. One thing that Mary and Pamela from Knopf did that I found interesting is alternate days of tweeting, so in addition to scheduled tweets they both had specific times where they could give their full attention to the conversations taking place online.

This event was great and from all the buzz I’m seeing and hearing, all the other events are as well. I look forward to joining more conversations tomorrow. You can participate in person, online, and even watch events through Live Streaming.

This blog post was written by Beth Granger, a contributor to the NY Social Media Week blog. When she isn’t helping organizations interact with the digital revolution and all the power it holds, she can be found tweeting @BethGrangerSays.

Lauren Siegel and Ali Pulver, two Creative Content Specialists  of the YouTube Zoo team at Google, presented a fireside chat about storytelling from YouTube at the Business, Media & Communications content hub at JWT.  They present a series of videos demonstrating the history and impact of the YouTube platform (including the first video ever posted to the site.)

What are the elements of a good story?  The great stories being told in the digital space today share these elements:

• Informative
• Entertaining
• Conversational
• Useful
• Inspiring

A good story provides you with knowledge that you didn’t have before.  Siegel and Pulver shared a video from The Khan Academy, an online one-man classroom of 12 minute lectures on a variety of topics.  Even Bill Gates is a viewer of the lessons.  Pulver stressed the differentiated quality of The Khan Academy isn’t its channel; it’s that people are being educated by a passionate teacher and not a static textbook.

The Coco Cam from Conan O’Brien and Team Coco was presented as a perfect example as an entertaining video (two words: “dancing taco.”)   YouTube is also capable of extending the reach of live events through livestreaming.

Brands use YouTube to create conversations with their videos in order to change an existing conversation.  Pulver shared Toyota’s Swagger Wagon campaign as an example of a conversational campaign.  In addition to the entertainment value of a suburban couple rapping about their minivan, Toyota added user-generated videos to their page to encourage participation and viral growth.  An even better known campaign that leverages a variety of social channels including YouTube to engage and converse with customers is the Old Spice campaign.

Engaging citizens and public officials about political issues is a way that YouTube can be used in useful ways.  Around the recent State of the Union address, YouTube collected and ranked questions from users through their Moderator tool.  Then, their news editor got the “best” questions answered by President Obama in a video a view days after the address.  This gave YouTube a role in democratizing the role of information in politics and on the internet.  Another example shared was the YouTube Symphony Orchestra campaign, which not only offered viewers a chance to perform with the best of the best at the Sydney Opera House, but also offered master classes to aspiring musicians.

Finally, YouTube videos can give consumers the tools to succeed and create inspiring stories.  Users can make themselves into celebrities through their videos.  One example provided was the transformation of Pancea81 from a woman teaching how to apply makeup on YouTube to a makeup guru with her own makeup line at Sephora.  YouTube’s Life in a Day campaign provided an opportunity for many users to add parts of their story to a narrative that was featured at Sundance.

Using YouTube is ultimately about providing value to your audience, through one or more of these elements.  It’s easy to oversell the effect of social media tools, but the core of success comes from good storytelling.  If you are able to create a strong narrative, then you are primed to be successful.

Even as communication technologies have evolved, the way that people share stories with one another hasn’t really changed.  This is why it’s vital to look at more than just the newest channel technologies when aiming to engage with consumers.  A flashier presentation may catch attention, but there needs to be an emotional resonance in order to hold it.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

I’m having trouble figure out on which day of the week this evening falls.  My calendar says Tuesday, but tonight’s royal rumble screams “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”  Heavyweights from the leading digital agencies have gathered for a Social Strategy Cage Match.

David Berkowitz, the “Ultimate Dragon” (and Senior Director of emerging Media & Innovation at 360i), was raring to go, picking a fight with special guest King Kong Bundy.  King Kong Bundy, for his part, took out his frustration on the wordy moderator, Brian Morrissey, the new Editor-in-Chief at DIGIDAY.

The first case study regarded a television manufacturer that had a perception of poor quality (that may or may not have been accurate)

• The offense had a two part strategy.  The first was to offer to replace the competing TV of naysayers with one of theirs.  The second was to set up a faux living room in a big box store and showcase the quality in a gaming competition
• The defense wants to let people with poor quality TVs have their TVs replaced if they record a video of them smashing their old sets

King Kong Bundy wasn’t thrilled with the offense’s plan.  He ran across the floor to attack Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, pushing him out of his seat and onto a glass.  Berkowitz was clearly concerned about further attacks, as he brandished the broken glass as a makeshift weapon in case Bundy returned.

The second case regarded a high-end fashion brand that has introduced a low-price line that has gotten social media backlash from the customers of high-end lines.

• The offense recommends widening the rift between the accessible and high-end lines.  They would move the high end web presence to a gated community
• The defense believes that the line should embrace the low-price line and hold fashion shows in rural Walmart stores
• Bundy offered another option, that the design should reach out to the naysayers and tell them “blow me!”

The third case study was the tragic case of the island of Agribar.  A new government is trying to rebuild tourism after a black eye from a violent populist uprising.

• King Kong Bundy’s plan involved whiskey and hookers.  Sadly, this plan wasn’t discussed at length
• The rest of the defense looked to focus on adventure and eco-tourism, and leverage a reality show connection.  The overall plan to to trickle out a lot of events in a short time to get buzz, and then backfill Google’s results to replace stories of populist revolutionaries mussing Anderson Cooper’s hair (hey, I didn’t make up the scenario, I’m just blogging about it!)
• The offense looks to personalize the experience by showcasing the residents as tourists’ hosts.  Additionally, they want to incentive arts and film.  Finally, they want to leverage social gaming (offering exclusive island in Beachville and badges in Foursquare)

In wrapping up the session, the audience preferred the offense’s solution for each of the cases.  The moral of the day, however (besides never bringing a wrestler to a social media debate) was that you need both offense and defense to solve problems in social media.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

Check out the hashtag #swmgamify for more comments on the event.

David Rosenberg, the Director of Emerging Media at JWT New York and moderator for the panel, opened the panel by asking the audience who had played a game or used a gamified system today.  To clarify what he meant, he asked who had a Linkedin profile that was at least 90% complete and suggested that Foursquare users check in to try and earn an Epic Swarm badge.

Rajat Paharia of Bunchball shared how easy it was to transform his company from a gaming platform company to a gamification platform company.  Gamification is used to motivate and incentivized consumers.  Gabe Zicherman, the author of the book Game-Based Marketing, noted that gamification is a process, not a destination.  Samantha Skey, Chief Rewards Officer at Recycle Bank, provides an example of using game mechanics to drive a cause.  In Recycle Bank’s case, consumers are rewarded for taking green actions such as recycling or buying green products.  Social utility has allowed consumers to cooperate and compete with others in their graph and their neighborhood, driving deeper engagement.  Demetri Detsaridis, General Manager of Zygna New York, feels that the line between so-called “advergaming” and social mechanics has shifted.  Creating a project with game mechanics is not very different from creating a pure-play Facebook game.

Often the most compelling games are the ones where users don’t see them as a game.  Game mechanics are at its core just a collection of activities that add up to define a user experience.  A game is not necessarily a program with badges and leaderboards; a game is something designed to be fun and engaging.  Defining what a game such that it includes or excludes certain activities is no an important business goal, but creating an experience that will delight and surprise your customers (whether studios call them games or not) is critical.  The key is to find and leverage the core identity of the users so that they will support and propagate the game themselves.

Community matters in gaming most of the time, according to Paharia.  Even single-player “games” like Microsoft Office’s Ribbon Hero are driven by a user’s competitive nature.  Zicherman notes that brands have lost the ability to tell consumers what their preference is; consumers are now relying on the opinions and calls to actions of their peers.  Brands can use game mechanics however, as a system through which they can inspire a call to action.  Of course, strategy must be developed using these mechanics early in the process.  After all, there’s no paintbrush with which you can “gamify” something, Detsaridis notes.

There are problems with loyalty programs.  One, according to Skey, is that they are anticipated rewards.  Two, according to Zicherman, is that people can easily value the “free” stuff that they are receiving.  If they are receiving a free cup of coffee after ten cups, they know how much they value that cup (as much as the price they would have had to pay.)  On the other hand, how much do you value not having to wait in line for your coffee?  How much do you value being genuinely known and recognized at the coffee shop?

Designers of programs with game mechanics don’t need to put all the pieces in place (i.e., they don’t have to recreate Second Life.)  If you provide an opportunity for the user to experience their core emotional engagement with the brand, they themselves will bring what’s needed to make a game successful.  Games are about “bringing joy out in everyday life and fun in everyday places.”

If one wants to get involved in gamifying a system, there are processes to follow.  (Zicherman is producing a video to walk a marketer through this.)  The first two things to consider are to determine what your business objectives are and to define the journey that the user is on.  The brand becomes the Sherpa for the user journey.  If you can’t answer “what does the player get out of” the game, then you need to keep working.

Perhaps the trickiest concern about gamification arises from how new it is.  The panelist, four leading evangelists for gamification, continued to trip over definitions.  Like broader social media, gaming is ubiquitous and has played a part in society and communication for years.  Yet only now are we defining the science of gaming as it relates to customer engagement.

As more parts of our daily experience (both tasks that were traditionally online and those that are now just being tied into social networks) are tied to the community around us, gaming mechanics will play a more important role in the customer experience.  Even if you are not seeking to implement a gaming system around your campaign, it behooves every marketer to have an understand of what it can do.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

Check out the event listing here.

The crowd slowly trickled into the Business, Media & Communications content hub, and quickly moved to the coffee carafes.  Ben Schein welcomed the audience to day two of Social Media Week New York and introduced Martin Green, the COO at Meebo, to open the panel with a presentation.

Social media has helped people come together and created a constant (often too constant!) connection to people that we know.  Green sees the future of the social web as social discovery.  Pandora and Netflix are two examples of current services that suggest new and relevant content to users based on algorithms and user preferences.  What if the web worked the same way?  What if we could filter new content and new information in this same fashion?

Initially, sorting web content could be sorted by people, but the sheer volume of content quickly outpaced the ability for a human to keep up.  The web then graduated to search engine algorithms.  While the search engines can keep up with the explosion of content, they fail at delivering context.  For example, Green as a road cyclist comes at a search for “cycling” from a different angle than a casual biker.  Context has been introduced through social sharing, but this is still not a perfect solution.  Our friends are a limited set who may or may not share the same interests, and even those who do are rarely the experts in the field.  The trick is to find a way to access these similar-interested experts.  If we can connect us with these disparate people, then a real discovery engine could be developed.

Green’s goal is to move from an algorithm-centric web to a people-centric web.  He sees a future where we visit sites that connect us by interests.  Logins for these kind of sites would only need a simple gesture (a Facebook Like, retweet, Pandora thumbs up, etc) and could judge our interests and perception shifts accordingly.  From a marketing standpoint, this would allow brands to build deeper relationships with their customers, and from a social standpoint, it would connect us with new individuals with the same tastes and interests.

Brian Morrissey of Adweek assembled a panel to continue to discussion.  The web has changed from Web 1.0 as it has moved from anonymity to personalization.  While much of the discussion this week is based on social media, it’s important to look at the larger “social web”.  Green, who had joined the panel, spoke about a few challeneges that the development of the social web is facing.  Data is siloed (music on Pandora, movies on Netflix, etc.), technology only develops so quickly, and people need to develop a comfort level with sharing.  Just as consumers have grown comfortable with Amazon making purchase recommendations, it’s likely that online behavior will develop to accommodate content recommendations.

Gerald Grech of Nokia sees mobile and mobile applications as an emerging growth area for the social web.  Some apps, like a “Gig finder” that recommends concerts based on the music on your phone and your current location, offer opportunities that were not possible on a desktop.  Still on the topic of changing paradigms, Morrissey asked Chris Phenner of TBG what happens when Facebook moves from a network to an environment, and what happens when a Google-centric world becomes a Facebook-centric world.  We’re moving to a world of sorting by graphs, be it Facebook’s open graph, Hunch’s taste graph, and so on, but the concept is still developing.

Morrissey believes that the principles of graphing are similar to those in search.  Search is perceived to be more effective than social sharing right now, though this may just be because search has had a head start.  One definite advantage that search has in driving conversions is intent; search requires an active role by the user, so they already likely have a purchase intent.  To facilitate conversions, Green prefers directed advertising on focused blogs to advertising on Facebook, as the visitors of the blog are likely to have stronger purchase intent while browsing.  Phenner sees an advantage to reaching out to consumers on Facebook, because the data sets are large enough to find correlations between behaviors.  This allows marketers target preferred groups for conversions.

One tool going forward that takes advantage of both the segmentation of the targeted blogs and the data of the open graph is the Facebook Connect application.  One Connect implementer that benefits strongly by using this is the new website that’s looking to build an audience.  Letting people authenticate without having to sign up for a new username and password lowers barriers to entry for that consumer.  Another implementer that benefits is one who wants to use the granular graph data to find potential customers to reach out to or upsell.

Every conference in this space has panels that cover the move from search to sharing.  I think that the key takeaway from this panel is that the future of contextually-appropriate sharing will borrow from more services that just Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.  As in many panels that we’ll see this week, speaker engagements are as much sales pitches as they are prognostications.  As long as you understand the biases, it’s an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the experience of the speakers.

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

by Karen Seiger, Managing Principal, Sirene MediaWorks

“Imagine watching a bad, stupid, or offensive ad all by yourself and how it makes you feel.  Now imagine that you are watching it with a group of people, who are all realizing at the same time just how stupid or offensive it is.  The latter has a much stronger stronger impact, right?  People are not experiencing media in isolation anymore, and that’s a huge change for the media business.”  Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism, New York University.

Insights like this one and many more came out in today’s Social Media Week panel, Participation, Aggregation and Criticism in the Digital Age, Hosted by Deep Focus:  How Social Media is Challenging (and Changing) Social and Business Rules of Engagement.  The panel discussed the three forces driving social interaction today: participation in it, aggregation of information to build profitable businesses, and criticism of and among people that are using social media.

Hottest Topic:  AOL Acquires the Huffington Post

Much of the discussion focused around the AOL acquisition of the Huffington Post for $315M.  Jonah Peretti, Founder of Buzz Feed and the Huffington Post, talked about the early days.  “We thought about things differently.  It’s about communicating and sharing, and the activities the readers are doing.  You need real-time stats to see how people interact with content.  Do they share it, pass it along?  It is less about saying, ‘Here is our media for you to read and digest,’ and more about ‘How are people interacting with our media?’

Jay Rosen posed the question, what is the Huffington Post?  “The Huffington Post started as a business with the revenues available online and built it from there, as opposed to asking, ‘I have a big news organization.  How do I fund it online?’   One of the strengths of the Huffington Post is their openness to the online world.  Arianna Huffington doesn’t arrive with preconceived notions about what news online should be.  You can see that with the way they’ve adapted with each new wave of technology.”

The Huffington Post is a very intelligent organization, combining very intelligent aggregation and SEO with a blogging platform that several thousands of writers are attracted to (read: working for free), plus a paid staff that resembles the more traditional media organizations.  The classic news model is the “view from nowhere,” based on the belief that the news has to be delivered impersonally.  The Huffington Post espouses a distinct philosophy.  One of the strongest assets of the Huffington Post is the view and personality of Arianna herself, which makes the brand something to which people can relate.

What is the potential outcome of this acquisition?  It could be an entirely new combination of metrics and old fashioned editorial practices to form a hybrid version of AOL and the Huffington Post that is better than isolated journalists and metrics driven news and that uses intelligence to drive content to the top.

Super Bowl Ads: Social Media Epic Fail?

The panel generally agreed that last night’s Super Bowl ads missed the mark – and the opportunity – around social media by a long shot.  The ads were seen as safe and traditional.   Worse, few of them had “calls to action” for the viewers to continue the story online.  Some of the stories will continue online in the days to come, but for the most part, they came and went.

Arguably, it is difficult to tell a compelling story in 30 seconds. However, according to journalist and panelist Danielle Sacks,  “Those ads could have run 10 years ago.  At this moment in time, the agencies or the clients just aren’t getting it.”

Jay Rosen agreed.  Before the internet, the viewers were connected upwardly to the media, watching it in isolation in their homes.  With the today’s technology, they are still connected upward, but they are also connected with each other, horizontally.   The mass communications professionals are still reverting to what they know,  or the traditional way of doing things, which explains the Super Bowl ads.  “This is an example of why Ariana Huffington is so effective at what she does – she is not afraid of new ways to do things.”

Sacks added, “Before, you strove to be skilled at one important aspect of your industry.  Today, the best skill you can have is to be curious, always be learning new things.”

Is there such a thing as a “Twitter Revolution”?

The panel discussed the role of social media in the recent events in Egypt.  Malcolm Gladwell has stated that social media had nothing to do with the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.  There was a general consensus that Gladwell does not use social media himself, and so his critique may or may not be justified.  By the same token, these revolutions have been simmering for a long time.  Social media may have played a role, but the real story and the questions we should be asking about these events are much much more complicated.

The real question is not around whether or not there have been Twitter revolutions, but rather around the real role of how people used the media to achieve their social and political goals in the face of media suppression and political aggression.  The panel agreed that discussing a Twitter Revolution would probably be more fun, but it is not a relevant discussion at the end of the day.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

Social Media Week New York at the Business, Media & Communications content hub at JWT kicked off with a welcome by founder and executive producer Toby Daniels and a keynote speech by David Eastman, the Worldwide Digital Director of JWT and the CEO of JWT North America.

Eastman called his approach a “tapas” style overview, and like the meal he alluded to, his keynote left the audience hungry for more.

What is the wider social dynamic in the world today as far as social media goes?  The news focuses on Twitter and its role in the recent demonstrations in the Middle East, but this is a narrow view.  Young people worldwide are embracing a wide range of social networks and tools to spread their generation’s messages.  Similarly, innovative brands are leveraging new social media technology to engage their audiences at a much deeper level.  While some brands only view social media as a new channel for advertising, brand programs like PepsiCo’s PepsiCo10 are showing what social media is capable of.

There are risks inherent in how we embrace social media, especially those who see it as an end to itself, rather than a means for engagement.  Some people are spending so much time collecting online friends and followers that they’ve forgotten how to interact on a personal basis.  In other words, social media has the ability to make us less social if we use it poorly.  If we keep its social core in mind, though, we can use it to create an extra layer of identity,  For example, Eastman is excited about the idea of connecting an online presence to the real-world market, be it through RFID tags, StickyBits, and any other emerging technology.  These connections create the potential for new and innovative marketing programs and customer engagement.

Media companies and content providers are becoming one and the same, and in doing so they’re shifting the focus from social media to social business.  We’ve only begun this journey, but Eastman summed up the result very succinctly: “Social is not just the way that brands do business, it’s the business that they do.”

By focusing on the importance of using new channels to engage with customers (instead of just speaking at them through non-interactive means), David Eastman gave an excellent introduction to the week’s program and made a segue way into the panel on social gaming that followed.

We’re still just getting started in the social media space.  Speakers and panelists throughout Social Media Week will be explaining how brands, advertisers, and consumers are pushing the envelope in the social media space.  Stay tuned!

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Throughout this week we’ll be posting on the ground accounts from individuals that attended New York Social Media Week events.  To participate, email a blog submission to info@socialmediaweek.org

Check out a description from the Social Media Week New York schedule event listing:

Following a lunch break at the Business, Media & Communications content hub, Microsoft hosted an event that explored advertising in the social media environment.  Ben Schiem, Global Director of Social Media Week welcomed the crowd and introduced Jenn Creegan from Microsoft Advertising to provide some examples of Microsoft Advertising’s media.

Creegan views paid media as a usage of creative resources to complement the earned media from the social networks.  One example that she demonstrated was an “interactivce filmstrip” that included five stages of the purchase funnel in a single interactive display ad.  The ad unit can be customized to display by default the funnel panel that is most appropriate to the page content while still allowing the user to explore the full filmstrip.

A second example demonstrated how social interactions can be integrated seamlessly into paid media.  Creegan described the implementation as “enabling a social ecosystem”, adding interactive elements, links to social media landing pages (on Facebook, Twitter, etc) and calls to action to the creative of the paid media.

Following her examples, Creegan introduced Loew to bring up the rest of the panel.  Kenny and Loew explained the importance of starting early and bringing all of your stakeholders into the creative decision-making process for media.  Halvorson believes that the focus must be on creative a user experience.  The decision-makers should come from a range of disciplines and must think agnostically about where the media is to appear.

Beeby sees all media as social; this should influence the design of any paid media piece.  This social viewpoint must also be applied at the campaign level as well.  Display advertisements can leverage earned media content (he gave an example of a real-time dynamic display ad that was driven by social sharing) and support a social campaign.  Personette extended this point, it’s not just media: all marketing is inherently social.  Earned media is essentially a jump ball that all media drivers should help grow.  She referenced the popular questions of “who owns social”, but chose to rephrase it as “who LEADS social”.  How do you transcend and build on the social ecosystem .Creegan’s focus remains on integration of paid and earned media in order to maximize relevance and effectiveness.

Social media in news is a tricky situation, Kenny explained.  The key for content is that the voice is genuine and accurate.  The most important thing in news is to be right, not necessarily to be first.  This extends to how news brands work with advertising.  He mentioned the Today show (specifically the fourth hour) as a challenging environment for integrating social media, because it differs from the traditional journalistic content.

Beeby asked the audience whether they curate their own voice on Facebook or whether they allowed agencies to do it for them.  He feels that agencies can be trusted to curate the brand voice as long as it’s real.  Brands and their partners must embrace any situation in social media, whether it’s positive or negative.  Personette described the issues of team structure: how do you arrange the players to authentically communicate your brand while satisfying the concerns of departments from legal to PR to customer service.  She singled out BBDO’s M&M’s page as an example of a Facebook page that does an excellent job in communicating the brand’s message.

Concerns over consumer data and privacy create a fine line for advertisers to walk.  Creegan believes that authenticity, consistency, and trust (for the brand and for the agencies involved) go a long way to mitigate these concerns.

Halvorson believes that advertising gives a brand a voice, but social media gives it a personality.  Brands often err when they get the voice right, but don’t succeed at personifying the brand.  Even when a brand has a strong personality, the stewards of the brand may not communicate that personality to the consumers.  If a brand is successful showcasing a distinct personality on its television commercial, for example, then it must also speak in this same personality on its Facebook page.

Beeby believes that social media and brand personas give brands an opportunity to surprise and delight consumers.  Personalities can give you additional license and freedom to share new parts of your message.  Halvorson is excited to see the discipline improve and the bar getting set higher and higher in social media on a continuous basis.  There’s been a huge improvement over the last year and even the last six months.  Social media is no longer just another channel; it’s now an always-on phenomenon.  With the increasing understanding and discipline, timelines are growing, and quality is increasing with them.  Beeby still sees a lag, though, between television and social media placement.  Personette attributes a lot of success in social media to consideration of social media early in the planning.  In other words, brands are starting to treat social media as a long-term strategy in the same manner that they treat other media channels.

In maintaining targeting and focus, social media needs to pay attention to horizontal and vertical portfolio management.  A family of brands like P&G, Halvorson notes, has unique brand presences and personas for each of their products.  Personette added that different content and personalities should be provided to different geographic segments, as well as for international and country-specific brand audiences.

While this panel shared examples and tactics for integrating paid and earned media, I believe that the greatest value came from the panelist’s discussion on high-level strategy.  One key discussion was Halvorson’s introduction of the idea of creating a fully-developed personality for your brand.  If this interests you, I’d recommend searching for “David Aaker Brand as Person” on your favorite search engine.  I studied his model extensively in business school, and it helps you flesh out a persona even when there isn’t an actual human face behind the brand.  Another key discussion was the one on portfolios in social media.  Once again this ties social media marketing into its offline marketing roots and reinforces the importance of defining segmentation, targeting, and postioning.

As the panelists reinforced several times, all media and all marketing is social.  That means that you can expect to get something out of the programming at Social Media Week regardless of the channel on which you focus your attention (online or off.)

Kevin Haughwout is a contributor for the Social Media Week NY Blog and a social media strategist and blogger at the freedmarketer.  For more comments on this event, you can check out a cross-posting of this entry here.

Social Media Week is days away and over the course of the last several weeks you have been instrumental in creating a phenomenal program.  In addition to events being hosted at each of our Five Content Hubs, this year’s program will consist of more than 160 events and include participation from over 8,000 New Yorkers, culminating to bring you the biggest Social Media Week yet!

We recognize that the sheer number of events may be overwhelming which is why we’ve compiled a list of TOP PICKS; a group of dynamic and diverse events that are still open for registration.

Check out the list below and follow the links to register to attend.  You can also view the full NY Social Media Week Program here: http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/schedule

MONDAY

“News Dissemination in a Social Finance World”, coordinated by StockTwits
Hosted at the New York Stock Exchange

The Dissemination of Entertainment News in Social Media, Hosted by THA.i
Hosted at the Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Hub at Red Bull

Integrating Text Messaging into Websites, Apps, and Other Software
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Google

The Internet & Uprisings in the Arab World: Are We Already In A Post-Social Media World?, Hosted by Wired
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Google

TUESDAY

Open UN: Engagement in the Age of Real-Time Hosted by United Nations Global Pulse
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Google

How Art & Fashion Connect In The Social Media World: Are Fashion Photographers The Next Warhols?
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

How Social Media Can Be Used to Help Build the Women’s Audience for Films, Hosted by PepsiCo
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Health | Tech | Food, Sponsored by Luminary Labs
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Be Part of a Social Media TV Experiment: Current TV’s “Bar Karma,” the first community-developed television series
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

WEDNESDAY

Building Hyperlocal at Scale: An Interview with Patch Editor-in-Chief, Brian Farnham, Hosted by AOL
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Keynote with John Winsor Followed by The Power of Collaboration and Sharing Panel
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

Freddie Laker Head of Digital Strategy in Asia for Sapient Nitro/ “Social Media Across the Pond”
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

WikiLeaks and Online Civil Disobedience, Hosted by Personal Democracy Forum
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

The Rise of the Movement Entrepreneur, Hosted by Purpose
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Celebrity Spokesperson in The Digital Age, Hosted by Hearst
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

Valuing New Media Companies vs. Old(er) Media Companies
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Mobile Technology and the New Live Music Experience, Hosted by Spin Media
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Red Bull

The Social Web – Have We Arrived?, Breakfast Hosted by Meebo
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

YouTube as the New Campfire, Hosted by YouTube
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

THURSDAY

Creative Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Roundtable Debate with the Ad Industries Top Creative Professionals, Hosted by YouTube
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

Keynote Presentations by Author of The Art of Immersion Frank Rose and Author of Curation Nation Steve Rosenbaum
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

Guided by Voices…The Changing Face of Music Discovery, Hosted by Spin Media
Hosted at the Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Hub at Red Bull

FRIDAY

Open Government and The Transformation of New York City’s Digital Environment
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Almost Good Enough to Eat: Food Communities and Social Media, Presented by AOL
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

Keynote interview with author of Program or be Programmed, Douglas Rushkoff with Erick Schonfeld followed by a Keynote Presentation by Josh Harris, Producer of the Wired City
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Google

Hot in Cleveland, Hosted by TV Land
Hosted at the Art & Culture Hub at Hearst

Nonprofits Using Social Media to Close Doors…For Good, Hosted by Scott Case of Malaria No More
Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center for Media

Uses of Technology from a Crisis Response and Education Perspective, Hosted by Google
Hosted at the Science and Technology Hub at Google

Building Brand Advocacy Among Women Using Social Media, Followed by Closing Keynote Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media
Hosted at the Business, Media & Communications Hub at JWT

Social Media Week New York begins next week and posts this week will include overviews of each of the five Content Hubs, which is where much of the programming is taking place.

If you’re looking for a side of entertainment with your social media; then the Entertainment, Gaming & Sports Hub hosted at Red Bull is the place for you next week! In addition to daily happy hours, a gaming center, and an appearance from the world renowned Funk Master Flex; The Red Bull Hub will also house some fantastic events hosted by Spin Media, Buzz Media, CMJ, and more!  Here’s an overview of what you can expect.

On Monday, you can start your day at Red Bull by attending a panel examining how entertainment news is shifting industry operations, and how companies are responding to the growth of user-generated feedback and collaboration.

Then head over to the Red Bull Gaming Lounge for Happy Hour to experience the latest releases, including a top secret mobile app sure to keep you entertained for hours on end.

Afterwords, you can reach across continental divides to the shores of Africa, with a panel on the influence of social media and music, and the cultural change they’re engendering throughout the region.

Tuesday morning starts with a discussion facilitated by BUZZMEDIA on social media as a skeleton key to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry.  You can hear about the innovative focus this sector has taken on with the efforts of artists’ grassroots marketing campaigns from the experts themselves.

Take a break at the Red Bull Happy Hour after, and indulge with a variety of console and mobile apps sure to keep you riveted.

Ever wanted to know what happens after the success of a Web 2.0 campaign for artists, companies and celebrities? Close the day with a panel hosted by Red Bull on the the future of app development featuring panelists from Circ.us, Gowalla, Buzzd and Edelman Digital.

Start your Wednesday off learning how to grow Brand You by attending  Tweet Like the Stars also hosted by BUZZMEDIA  Hear an in-depth discussion on savvy celebrity marketing, and how Twitter keeps your love of Kim Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher buzzing in 140 characters or less.  You can then join Spin Media for a lunchtime delivery of mobile technology and the evolution of the live music experience from a diverse group of company reps .

Still not head your gaming fix from Monday and Tuesday?  After the mobile forum, gear up again for the Red Bull Gaming Lounge for Happy Hour.

Once you’re gamed out, finish the day with a forum on leveraging social media to effectively build a brand for your band hosted by CMJ.

Kick off Thursday by exploring a career change with Ian Wyatt (aka Enable), a 17-year old professional Halo player.  Then head over to another Spin Media panel on the process of discovering and establishing music talent, cultivated through innovative social media marketing strategies and search engine preferences.

Meet Enable: the 17-year-old pro Halo player...jealous?

Start your weekend early with Happy Hour on Friday; head over to Red Bull with one last, extended gaming session with a cornucopia of apps, your choice of mobile or console.

Isabella de Medici is a contributor to the Social Media Week NY Blog.

This guest post has been brought to you by Mike Matthews–Fighting “decisionparalysis” at retail with mobile technology. You can follow his tweets here.

A legacy client from the pharmaceutical industry once humbly shared a major business challenge they were faced with:

“Mike, I’ve got 1.5 minutes to sway a consumer to purchase one of my cold/flu products while in-store and I’m competing against a new competitor every quarter (it seemed) and “loyal” consumer base that’s faltering. What’s the answer? They all have smart phones, so should we create some mobile apps?

We discovered that the consumer was overwhelmed with being able to match symptoms to the product benefits of over six product lines which treated “cough & cold” to “long-acting fever” to “cough & chest” (you get the picture).

Before throwing out the entire product line and then launching a singular product which served all symptoms we knew two things:

1. The product worked. It was hyper-focused on symptoms and when taken properly it beat out the “all-in-one” solution.
2. Consumers had phones. More than that they used them to call/text for health counsel, to scan for competitive pricing or coupons and to find out where the nearest Blockbuster video was located.

If there was a way we could initiate dialogue with our consumer on their mobile devices, we could drive sales. An app? No. We have 1.5 minutes and that time would be spend downloading and we got ourselves a customer who can barely stand up straight.

We had to create value for the consumer. Value first, product second. What if the consumer told us their symptoms and we gave them the recommendation? What if we listened to them and served as a “mobile concierge” of sorts to alleviate their mental exhaustion? Now that dialogue is struck and choice is made clear, what else can we do to maintain this conversation?

I use this pharma example to share what brands, from pharma to auto, feel everyday. They know they have potential and current customers armed with “always-on” mobile devices but lack understand as to what they should do about it. How do I drive a consumer in-store, communicate with them while in-store and continue dialogue when they leave? Every brand is different, but one thing is for sure, the opportunities exist. At the upcoming “Convergence: How Social Media & Mobile Change the Way We Make Decisions and Shop” you’ll hopefully leave with an idea that speaks to your consumers.

Hosted by Saatchi Wellness,  Convergence: How Social Media & Mobile Change the Way We Make Decisions and Shop aims to highlight why and how convergence is impacting marketing, advertising and sales and will provide a deeper dive into mobile and social commerce and what this means for brands. This event will be held at Saatchi & Saatchi on February 8th from 12 to 3 PM. You can register here.

What if people spoke in Twitter updates? What if we reprinted embarrassing pictures of each other and handed them out to thousands of strangers? Or to co-workers?

Social networks have fundamentally changed the way we socialize, so connected  users are increasingly looking for ways to marry their virtual experiences with their real ones. Platforms like foursquare bring the online space into our everyday lives. As they gain in popularity, we’re witnessing an increasingly fine line between our online social networking worlds and our real worlds. Will this line blur even further in 2011?

Start your Monday morning off right and kick it off with a series of pre-filmed xtranormal vignettes that depict the absurd and potentially hilarious scenarios that could occur when social media networks and the real world collide. Discussion to follow. Get all the details below!

What is this event called? If Your Real Life Were a Social Network

Where will this event be held? Science and Technology Hub at Google

When will this event be held? Monday, February 7th from 9 AM to 11 Am

Who is hosting this event? SapientNitro

Who is putting their two cents in? (Moderator) Melissa Read, Ph.D.: Behavioral Psychologist and Director of Marketing Strategy at SapientNitro, Alison Barth, Ph.D.: Dept of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, Shayla Thiel-Stern. Ph.D.: Associate Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and author of Instant Identity (Mediated Youth), Duncan Watts, Ph.D.: Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo; Director of Human Social Dynamics Group and author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age and Chris Mahl: SVP & Chief Brand Alchemist at SCVNGR.

What’s this event all about? Following the presentation of the vignettes, a discussion moderated by Melissa Read, who specializes in behavioral anthropology in the digital space will begin. She’ll raise questions about how social behaviors manifest themselves differently online than they do offline and the effect this is having in the “real world.” The panelists will also explore these behaviors from the perspectives of a scientist who uses social networking to describe neural behavior, a professor who studies the effects of social media on teen girls, a celebrated researcher who experiments, measures, and explores our modern day social behaviors, and an entrepreneur who has developed a social media application to form real world connections.

Don’t forget to register here.

Joanna Firneno is a contributing writer to the Social Media Week blog and is an Associate Communications Manager at Deep Focus.