Tag: health

The Future of Business: SMW in the Eyes of Sara Holoubek

Posted on by Sara Adam

Sara Holoubek is the founder and CEO of Luminary Labs, a network of experts that helps create the business models that make organizations resilient to changing markets. Technology and social media are an important part of the business models that will be successful in the future of our always-on, always connected-world. Something Sara understands intimately. As a longtime friend and partner, we trust her recommendations completely — and so should you.

These are the events that Sara is most excited for:

  1. Startups to Watch in 2014 presented by Entrepreneur.com
    Because I always love big, messy, industries, and the startups about to disrupt them.
  2. The Future of Now: Health Innovation Track, Presented by Merck
    Health tech is hot.
  3. What (bio)Tech Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Tesla.
    If you haven’t been to the Harlem (bio)Space yet, it’s a must. Right here, in New York City, evolutionary biotech ideas now have a space where they can become the products that solve real health problems. Plus, they have really cool t-shirts.
  4. Fueling Social Fandom at MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central
    Everything I learned about influencer engagement came from Don Steele.
  5. Upworthy’s Real Mission: A Keynote Announcement from Eli Pariser, Founder.
    Because it is brilliant to make “what’s important popular, even if what’s popular isn’t considered important by the masses.”

To catch up with Sara at Social Media Week, check out these events (and others) and register now! We are excited for her to join us and we want you to be there!

5 Reasons You Need To Attend SMW NYC

Posted on by Nicky Yates

We hear it all the time — but isn’t every week social media week? Social Media Week is much more than just a discussion on social media. We know you’re smart enough that you don’t need that. You get it. What SMW is though is a look at how and where humanity and technology converge. And it goes much deeper than just your Twitter feed.

Here are just five of the areas that we’ll be elevating to the surface and how you can join leaders to see what’s changing:

  1. Health, Wellness and Your Spine Online
    With our focus on the Future of Now, we’d be remiss if we didn’t have a steady focus on how technology is changing our relationship to health and wellness. With classes from SoulCycle, morning yoga, Breathe Repeat’s look at how being online affects your spine, and even a special track on innovation in health from Merck, we want SMW to have a holistic approach. And you can get in on it here.

  2. Content Marketing and the Machine
    Let’s face it: content marketing is THE buzzword for 2014. But that doesn’t mean it’s not critical to your brand’s marketing strategy. Which is why we’re hosting a pretty hefty grouping on events on this topic, with leaders like Percolate, Unruly, Click 3X and more sharing their insights. We even have true[X] examining how we can prevent the online digital advertising economy from losing an estimated $6 billion a year.

  3. Music, Travel & Entertainment
    It's not ALL about ROI and the bottom line. In fact, this SMW we're looking at all aspects of how technology is shaping our experiences.From Spotify’s special track on music’s future to Chipotle’s look at unbranded film to our travel gurus, if you’ve got a passion, this is the list you want to explore.

  4. Data and Analytics and the Search for Meaning
    Most of us are familiar with famous quote by historic department store owner, John Wanamaker, “I know that half my advertising works; I just don’t know which half.” This need no longer apply, when you have skills from these events.

  5. Social Impact and Doing Good
    One area we love seeing the impact of social and technology is definitely on our society. Social impact has changed drastically over the past few years, giving NGO’s and philanthropists more tools to create change. Few get this like Deanna Zandt, and she’s curated the perfect SMW Social Impact Guide. If that’s not enough, here are some we recommend, including the launch of Mission 31 with Fabien Cousteau!

And if you need more, we’ve got a masterclass lineup you can’t resist, including Big Fuel talking the participation economy and the opportunity to build your own wearable tech.

Friday is your last day to grab your SMW NYC Pass at the standard rate. Join us, Nokia, and MKG for what we know will be our best SMW yet.

SMW Looks Into the Future: 5 Events To Watch

Posted on by Sara Adam

We may not have a crystal ball, but we have the next best thing. Leading experts across professions join together to look at what’s next for industries across the board. Look just six years into the future or at the future of workplaces in the 21st century.

  1. 20/20 Vision: Your Life Just Six Years from Now
    What will our lives look like a few years down the road? Find out from Dachis Group CEO and Razorfish Co-Founder, Jeff Dachis, and socialdeviant CEO, Marc Landsberg. At this event, they will discuss the future of wearable devices, creativity, and the real question on everyone’s mind- what the dating landscape will look like.
  2. The Future of Publishing, A Discussion with Salon’s Editor-in-Chief
    As publishing becomes increasingly digital, journalists are wondering how they need to adapt in order to make a living and stay relevant. Learn from Salon Editor-in-Chief, David Daley, how to make your story stand out above competitors and what makes people want to share your work.
  3. Physical and Virtual Workspaces that Maximize Productivity and Innovation for the 21st Century
    Are we moving away from offices altogether or is there still some benefit from being physically present in our workplaces? And what types of spaces are suitable for the proper mix of independent creativity and group collaboration? Explore how our physical environments affect our minds in this seminar hosted by TPG Architecture.
  4. The Future of Now: Health Innovation Track, Sponsored by Merck
    Startups aren’t the only ones innovating and shaping the future. Intrepreneurs from the health industry are using corporate resources to search for new business models that will improve the health care system. Join us for this seminar to look at how technology is changing healthcare’s future.
  5. PSFK Labs’ Future of Retail Showcase: Creating a Sustainable Instant Retail Model
    The dawn of e-commerce has drastically changed the ways that consumers shop and will continue to shape the retail world. Armed with digital data, PSFK will offer insight into the latest trends in retail shopping behavior and let us know where things are headed at this SMW showcase.

What do we see in your future? Social Media Week of course! Register here, to stay on the cutting edge of your industry, whether you work in marketing, healthcare or technology!

What’s In Store for Health? Merck Joins SMW NYC

Posted on by Nicky Yates

Technology and social innovations are revolutionizing the healthcare industry. While start-ups and consumer facing brands have been able to more quickly adapt to these changes in business, healthcare is just beginning to scrape the surface of bottom-up innovation. As these new ideas take hold, what’s exciting is the massive potential that exists to drive social change — not just in our everyday life but also in longevity, happiness, and with medical accuracy and efficiency.

Value creation in the healthcare arena is now inextricably connected to digital, data, and more recently, hardware technology. Through quantified-self innovations allowing users to take control of their own data, technology is now the fiber of the 21st century health care organization. It is this understanding of the challenges and potential that has prompted us to focus more deeply on this issue this SMW14. And we are honored to have Merck onboard as our City Supporting Sponsor as the creative force behind this.

Featuring a half day track at our new Campus this February, we will be diving deep into how healthcare is changing, innovating, and who is leading the charge in the industry.

merck

A Reason to Unplug

Posted on by Nicky Yates

The Future of Now looks at the balance we all need in life, using tech to enhance our humanity and reconnect. And the holidays remind us of the need for this.

We’re thrilled to be hosting numerous sessions during SMW14 that are geared directly toward this. We have Erica Dhawan sharing on connectional intelligence. When almost everyone has at least the capacity to link up with people, power, ideas, information and faraway resources, how do we connect better, faster, more efficiently. It’s a deep look at the power of our relationships.

We also have Upworthy’s Eli Pariser sharing how you can encompasses using community to truly effect change with content. As the king of viral, he understands the distinct reasons we share and the revelations that has for us and our networks. We’re even getting a little granular during the week with a Masterclass that looks at how tech can help us combat the health and physical aspects of staring at a screen all day.

We know the week holds something for everyone. And we want you to be there with us, our creative partner MKG, and Nokia at Campus at Highline Stages.

Our 20% Early Bird Discount is still in effect (only until January 8th, though!). Plus, if you purchase on Tuesday, we’ll donate 20% of all our Pass sales to benefit Bpeace, an organization that helps entrepreneurs expand and scale their businesses to lead to stability and peace in post conflict countries.

This means you save $80 off your Insider Pass, give $80 to help entrepreneurs, and score a $50 gift card to BOND with your Insider Pass on Tuesday.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope to see you in February!

5 Minutes With Sara Holoubek

Posted on by Lindsey Taylor Wood

Sara Holoubek is the CEO and founder of Luminary Labs, a consultancy focused on operationalizing innovation. We are pleased to have her as a member of this year’s Advisory Board and to hear her thoughts on this year’s SMW!

1. What is your or your organization’s greatest success with social media to date?
In late 2011, we published “The Innovation Myth,” to Slideshare. While it had great traction initially, we were quite surprised when in July of 2012 views skyrocketed. The right person had discovered and share our work and for two days our presentation was one of the most viewed on Slideshare. Unexpected, organic success is always the sweetest.

2. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in the emerging technology and/or new media space right now?
We are incredibly excited by the number of gurus from Web 1.0 and 2.0 days –  Tim O’Reilly to Esther Dyson to the founders of Invite Media – who are applying their experience and expertise to solve for healthcare. Health tech is hot.

3. What speaker or event are you most looking forward to at SMW NYC?
I’m particularly interested the experiential sessions, installations, and collaborative spaces at the Global HQ at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

4. What prompted you to join Social Media Week’s Advisory Board OR What do you think is SMW’s greatest value add to the tech/media space?
I love how SMW coalesces entire cities around a common theme that transcends any given industry. This idea of inclusion runs contrary to most gatherings, and therefore, yields greater outcomes.

5. What is the most creative way you’ve seen social media used? (This could be a meme, campaign, installation, etc.)
True story: I had been spending the holidays with my family in Wisconsin when the great blizzard of 2011 arrived. Once my flight was cancelled, I spent a few hours desperately trying to find another flight, a train, a car – anything – that would get me back to New York. After tweeting a few updates on the absolute lack of transportation for at least a week, a friend tweeted back that her partner happened to be in Chicago, with a rental car, and did I want to join her for the trip back? Of course I did.

5 Minutes With LiveWorld

Posted on by Lindsey Taylor Wood


Photo: LiveWorld CEO, Peter Friedman

Our NYC Opening Party Supporting Sponsor and Event Host, we sat down with LiveWorld to talk all things social media. A user content management company, LiveWorld is a trusted partner to the world’s largest brands, including the number-one companies in retail, CPG, pharmaceutical, and financial/travel services.

1. What is LiveWorld’s greatest success with social media to date?

LiveWorld has hundreds of success stories from our stellar roster of Fortune 500 clients. To name just one story is tough, but to highlight our capabilities: we brought a Fortune 10 brand from an initial social media presence to being the #1 most engaged brand on Facebook worldwide, #1 brand for fans in the US and #1 share of Twitter voice in its category. We achieved this by deploying our proprietary user content management technology and working closely with the client on social strategy, insight analysis, engagement content and moderation.

2. What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in the emerging technology and/or new media space right now, as it relates to the health and pharmaceutical sector?

Healthcare is undergoing significant change in this country. Everyone is feeling it, and consumers have more questions regarding their healthcare and an increasing need for emotional and content support from other consumers and brands. Healthcare and Pharma have an unprecedented opportunity to become trusted sources of information and support for consumers, but are constantly caught battling legal and regulatory stipulations that hinder their ability to engage in social media. At LiveWorld, working these issues is our core strength. Our solution ensures regulatory and legal considerations are met through careful content monitoring, moderation, engagement, and crisis management protocols.

3. Tell us about your goals for SMW? What do you hope attendees will take away from your installation and reception?

All brands, including those in healthcare, must be actively engaged in social media across all of their strategically important markets. This worldwide and highly targeted approach to social media can seem complicated and intimidating to many brands that lack the internal resources or knowledge to implement such a program.

Our goal is to impress upon our attendees the importance of a comprehensive social media strategy, integrated implementation approach, and keeping the human element at the forefront.

LiveWorld’s brand clients go beyond just being on social media – they achieve something. The programs we develop with our clients are world class. They protect the brand, obtain actionable insights, and true engagement.

4. What is the most creative way you’ve seen social media used? (This could be a meme, campaign, installation, etc.)

We highly recommend the Walmart Elves Twitter Program and Sprint/Unilever Suave Shampoo In the Motherhood Program. Through creating a dialogue and relationship with consumers, both social media programs have had a transformative power to positively affect the consumer experience and brand loyalty.

5. This year, our global theme is “Open & Connected: Principles for a Collaborative World.” How does LiveWorld support this idea overall?

“Open & Connected” is what we at LiveWorld have been evangelizing for over 28 years. User content moderation and true engagement is a challenging element of social media for many large brands, and we work hard to make sure that everyone’s voice is being heard. Sometimes, however, we encounter harassment, spam and other comments that do not contribute to the conversation. In fact, they detract from it. This is where LiveWorld steps in so that our clients’ fans have a safe and respectful atmosphere in which to interact.

We like to think of social media as the brand’s big, online party. You want to create an engaging memorable party that your customers will recommend and want to come back to. We always ask our clients to consider questions like: “What kind of party are you throwing?”, “Who is invited?”, “What is the topic of conversation?”, “How will your customers experience your brand, when the primary method is through conversations with other customers?”.

Social media is all about human beings connecting, dialoguing, and building relationships. Our approach from strategy, to moderation, to engagement, to actionable insight, keeps that human element at the forefront. If social media is a brand’s party, consider LiveWorld a brand’s party planner who brings the bouncers, ushers and DJ, all to create the best customer experience.

LiveWorld partners with Fortune 500 brands to develop social media strategies user content moderation, engagement, and insight that span across 70 different country-language combinations, over 4,000 social media properties and over 1 million pieces of user content/month. We leverage our backend social content management system technology for scale, quality, and flexibility.

Every piece of user content is seen by a real, human LiveWorld moderator. We create true relationships and understanding among consumers and with the brand.

Make sure you check out Liveworld during SMW NYC when they join up with Pfizer to talk How to Improve Social Media Engagement in Regulated Industries and Consumer Sensitive Markets. It’s bound to be a day full of knowledge and information.

A Student’s Perspective: Investors in the Hot Seat Helps Entrepreneurs Help the Health Sector

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Investors in the Hot Seat. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

 

The Saatchi and Saatchi Health and Wellness Hub displayed an array health tech devices on tables this Thursday, as entrepreneurs wandered around the space, mingling with investors and other business people all looking to use their start-ups to improve the world of health. They had all come to hear a team of health investors answer their questions about how to gain seed or development money for their projects.

Among the company heads was Kevin Dawkins, who runs CFFone, a mobile social network company that provides support for teenagers with cystic fibrosis. Ordinarily, Dawkins explained that cystic fibrosis prohibited the teens from spending time with other cystic fibrosis patients because of risk of infection, but the social network allowed them to share stories of their disease and support each other digitally.

CFFone had already received a grant from NIH, but the grant was going to expire in about a year so Dawkins came to the event to learn more about how to find the right investors and pitch to them.

“The people who spoke are exactly the types of people we are going to be pitching to,” Dawkins said after the event.

Those investors he was referring to were Steve Krein of Startup Health, Dave Whitlinger of the NYeHealth Collaborative, Todd Pietri of Milestone Venture Partners, Mohit Kaushal of West Health Fund, Maria Gorsch of the New York City Investment Fund and Brad Weinberg of Blueprint Health.

The six panelists took the stage to describe their own businesses as well as the model companies they wanted to invest in–organizations that could bridge the disconnect between the government stakeholders and patients on the ground in order to create better and more affordable health care.

The conference comes at a time when the stimulus package that President Obama passed was like giving “rocket fuel to this sector”, when West Coast investors are beginning to invest in East Coast companies and when health industry is looking to the private sector for new software and technologies.

Like at many of the other SMW events, the speakers mentioned “Big Data” and discussed how it could be a valuable tool for emerging technology companies to offer, whether it be through software for hospitals or analysis and access to data for patients themselves.

“Everything we do is around lowering the cost of health care,” Kaushal said.

A Student’s Perspective: The Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge Discusses its Own Challenges (and Advantages) to Putting Together An Event of Its Magnitude

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from How We Did It: The Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

Last year, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi partnered with Data Design Diabetes for the Sanofi Open Innovation Challenge. The Challenge took young entrepreneurial innovators and health experts alike to develop a way to improve the quality of life and care for the over 25.8 million Americans living with diabetes.

To explain how the Open Innovation Challenge came to be, Michele Polz, Senior Director of Patient Solutions at Sanofi, and Aman Bhandari, Senior Advisor to the CTO of Health & Human Services came together on Feb. 15, discussing their initial project and upcoming the 2012 competition.

Polz described her desire to move “beyond the drugs” as a diabetes franchise and look at new models for treating diabetes including new technologies and designs. From this, stemmed the challenge–a five-step process that gives away over $200,000 in prize money and grants health entrepreneurs the chance to raise seed money and get their name out.

This year’s process is as follows: first, Data Design Diabetes and Sanofi use online crowd-sourcing to figure out what areas of diabetes care need the most repairing. Next, everyone can submit ideas for designing a product that addresses what matters most to people living with diabetes in the United States. Five of these entries are picked to win $20,000 and to enter an intensive project mentorship program and design boot camp. From there two are selected and given an additional $10,000 to bring their projects to real communities and one winner is chosen.

Last year’s winner, Ginger.io also appeared at the Health and Wellness Hub talk to describe their behavior analytics company that uses a mobile sensing platform to change patient behavior depending on health conditions and symptoms.

For the 2012 Challenge, the crowd-sourcing online survey has just been closed and the company is selecting a focus for this year’s competition, but the team seems almost as excited for other company challenges that have been inspired by Sanofi.

“It’s great to see someone who’s an entrepreneur and innovator, up there on stage with someone who is a major player in their field,” said Bhandari. “We are very serious about spurring innovation and entrepreneurship, whether it be in the public sector or private sector…We just want to promote the best ideas.”

A Student’s Perspective: Monday’s Health and Wellness Keynote Speakers Carol McCall and Michael Graves

Posted on by smwnyc

Stephanie Vatz is a student at Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is one of ten students providing on the ground coverage of SMWNYC- all from the student’s perspective. She is providing her report from Carol McCall on Big Data & The Eye of the Beholder and Michael Graves on People First: Redesigning the Hospital Room. You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @stephvatz.

In the realm of health and medicine, Social Media Week NYC has been bringing technology and humanity to the forefront in some surprising ways.

On Monday at the Saatchi and Saatchi Wellness Hub in SoHo, two keynote speakers, Carol McCall and Michael Graves, discussed improvements and potential solutions to patient care problems.

As the Chief Strategy Officer at GNS Healthcare, Carol McCall’s main job is looking at data. Her presentation however, was more focused on using technology to alter patient behavior both as a preventative health measure and a way for patients with similar experiences to commiserate or share stories.

McCall drew upon examples to illustrate the idea of taking an active role in one’s own health by changing attitude. Her primary interest was patient psychology and she offered techniques to either change people’s perspectives of their own life stories, positively modify self-perception, or find new ways to help people help themselves.

A key theme in Monday’s discussions was innovation. With social media it appears that experience in the field you work in might even be a detriment to thinking outside of the box and shedding new light on old problems.

The second keynote speaker of the morning, world-renowned architect and designer Michael Graves, knew very little about health care until he had to. Graves rolled to the stage in a wheelchair after a CBS Sunday Profiles clip of him finished playing on stage.

In 2003, a mysterious infection paralyzed Graves from the waist down, suddenly making him dependent on others, even inside his own hospital room.

Once he was on stage, Graves pressed a button on his wheelchair that made the front wheels roll under the back wheels until he was tall enough for everyone to see. It was the first example in a string of innovative design to come.

He started his discussion of reinventing in hospital room design by talking about his own frustrating experience of being unable to reach the sink faucet at the hospital, or being able to see himself in the mirror. Constantly, he was reminded that he couldn’t walk anymore.

“Oh, that’s not for me,” he said he once thought about the out of reach faucet, “that’s for people who can walk.”

Now, Graves is dedicating his career to designing new products, furniture and buildings with the disabled in mind. He displayed images of reinvented hospital bedside tables that would be easier for cleaning crews to disinfect, more functional shower stools, chairs that were easier to get out of and patient chairs to make the transition from operating room to hospital room more comfortable. He even made his employees sit in wheelchairs while designing some of the new products for him.

Although Graves couldn’t stand-up himself, his audience stood for him; he received a standing ovation before and after his presentation.

Bring Your Coats for Regina Holliday’s Walking Gallery Exhibit

Posted on by Nicky Yates

Interactivity. Engagement. Participation. Empowerment. These are all things we value in a SMWNYC event. And this is embodied in a special interactive exhibit taking place on Monday, February 13th from 2-8 pm at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness. But you should bring a coat with you to participate.

The Walking Gallery: An Exhibit
Regina Holliday is a patient rights art advocate, who paints series of murals depicting the need for clarity and transparency in medical records. Regina will be screening her film, “73 Cents” at 1 p.m. and will remain on site from 2-8pm for the Walking Gallery Exhibit, where she will to listen to and paint people’s patient stories on coats, which they can then wear to tell their story to the world.

What should I bring? A business jacket or Doctors Lab Coat. Best fabrics are poly blends, linen, cotton or wool (NOTE: No denim, leather or pleather garments please). Also you might want to bring a jacket a size larger than you usually wear, as the painting will may stiffen the material and make it harder to close the buttons.

When can I tell my story? Email your patient story to Regina along with pictures of yourself and the people involved in your story. If you do not want to send photos, Regina can use her imagination to create an image. You can also visit her at the Walking Gallery at Social Media Week’s Health & Wellness Hub from 2-8pm on Monday, February 13th to tell her your story.

How will I receive my painted garment back? She will finish a handful of garments at the event and can ship the remainder of work to participants following the conference. Donations of $10-$15 to offset the cost of shipping and paint are appreciated (but not expected) and can be left in the pocket of the jacket for along with an address or business card. You are joining a movement, and this is a sacred oath to walk the walk and spread the word.

Who is Regina Holliday? Regina Holliday is a DC-based patient rights arts advocate, who was inspired by her husband Frederick Allen Holliday II and his struggle to get appropriate care during 11 weeks of continuous hospitalization at 5 facilities. After his death in 2009, she began painting a mural entitled “73 Cents”, which has been adapted to a film that will be screened at Social Media Week. “73 Cents” is an 11- minute documentary that tells the story of one woman’s grief with her husband’s death; her ability to turn tragedy into change; and her transformation into an influential advocate for patient rights. Learn more about Regina.

You can keep up with the conversation with these Twitter hashtags:
#SMWWalkingGallery
#TheWalkingGallery
#SMWHealth

Defeating the Enemy of Wellness — You

Posted on by Michelle Welsch

Guest post by Jacob Braude, VP of Planning at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness

Wellness has an enemy, and despite what you may have been told, it’s not Voldemort – it’s you. And me. It’s all of us. When it comes to wellness, we are often our own greatest adversaries. But don’t get down on yourself, because it isn’t really your fault. The fault lies in your unconscious – or rather in the way your brain has evolved to divvy up responsibilities between your conscious awareness and your unconscious. First, let’s recap some of the more staggering evidence that you are the enemy of your wellness. Then we’ll talk about how your brain gets you into this mess, and we’ll introduce some of the new research and technologies that are making it easier for you to get out.

We already know that poor choices in what you eat and how often you get some exercise has led to a staggering rise in obesity – and all of the health risks and costs that come along with being overweight. But beyond that oversaturated story, we are learning that even something as widely consumed as sugar may have dramatic negative effects on our wellness – regardless of our weight. According to this lengthy and terrifying piece in the NY Times, some research indicates that sugar (which is in pretty much all processed foods these days) may be the poison that has been behind the rapid rise of heart disease, hypertension, and even cancer. In the article, they claim that sugar and high fructose corn syrup, could account for up to 80% of all cancers. There’s way too much science for me to explain that claim here, so go read it for yourself – it’s worth it (and yes, I still eat a ton of sugar).

Now that you’re sufficiently freaked out, let’s talk about your brain. The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. There are more connections in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. And all of that magnificent processing power runs on approximately 20 watts of electricity. Compare that to the 85,000 watts required to run IBM’s Watson (the super computer they built that recently dominated past Jeopardy champions), and you get a sense of just how remarkable your brain is. One of the most important ways your brain conserves power is to automate as much of your behavior as possible by shifting it into your unconscious. It takes a lot of energy to make a conscious decision – to sort through all of the options and make a choice. It takes very little energy to follow a pre-programmed script.

Here’s a good example: have you ever gotten in your car with the intention of going someplace, then you zoned out and realized that you had driven yourself somewhere else? Driving is a decision-intensive activity. You have to take in a lot of sensory data and make a lot of choices. How much gas, when to break, where to turn – but almost all of us can make these decisions while thinking about something completely unrelated, because these behaviors have become automated and are handled by our unconscious.

Wellness behaviors are handled the same way. What you eat. When you exercise. How you handle stress. All of these behaviors are largely automated, and once they are programmed into your unconscious, it’s ridiculously hard to re-program them. It requires persistence, effort and repeated failure. It requires willpower.

Luckily for us we live in an era where we are not just becoming aware of how our own automated behaviors are sabotaging our personal wellness, we have new technologies (like the passive monitoring FitBit or UP) and insights to help us be more successful at reprogramming ourselves. I’m going to talk about three of the big ones at Social Media Week and run a live experiment to help you understand this, on Friday 2/17 at 11am. If you can’t make it, I’ll follow up this post with more info on what I spoke about. The three I will tackle are:

Willpower. We now know from a number of experiments, that willpower is a real thing, and that it functions under similar rules as your muscles. It is fueled by glucose, it gets stronger with training and it has a finite amount of strength – meaning every conscious decision you make will make the next choice harder.

Social influence. Lots of research has begun to unearth how the people around you influence your programmed behaviors – often without you even knowing it is happening. This has big consequences for the role of social media in health and wellness.

Feedback loops. The proliferation of devices that measure our behavior, and the use of data visualization to reflect that behavior back at us in totally new ways, has rapidly accelerated our ability to deliberately reprogram our behaviors.

I’m going to wrap all this info inside an experiment to test one of the key hypotheses: that socially-enabled feedback loops can strengthen your willpower. Remember to register to attend and look out for an announcement for the beginning of the experiment. We won’t have any idea before the talk whether it will work or not, so it should be fun to see the results live.

In the mean time, please visit our Quora board on willpower and feedback loops to learn more and contribute to the conversation.

Hope to see you there.

Keynote Spotlight: Carol McCall, Chief Strategy Officer of GNS Healthcare

Posted on by Sara Haile-Mariam

Carol McCall, Chief Strategy Officer of GNS Healthcare

 This post is a part of a continuing series of Keynote Spotlights– check back here throughout the week for more information on the phenomenal individuals who will be gracing #SMW12 events next week!

You can see Carol speak on Monday February 13 from 10am-12pm at the Health & Wellness Content Hub! 

Carol McCall is a health actuary with a background in innovation, predictive analytics and health services design. Her specialties are creating novel computational approaches that leverage ‘big data’ in healthcare, and designing services and business models that expand the traditional notions of health, care, community and sustainability.

Carol is the Chief Strategy Officer for GNS Healthcare, a Big Data Analytics company whose industrialized knowledge discovery platform extracts cause-effect relationships directly and at scale from observational data. Her goal is to leverage these capabilities to redesign the entire notion of ‘evidence’ and ignite a true learning system in healthcare.

Prior to joining GNS Healthcare, Carol served as Chief Innovation Officer of Tenzing Health, a subsidiary of Vanguard Health Systems, where she merged creative analytic approaches with human-centered design to build team-based care models that improved people’s health, dramatically reduced costs, extended into communities and created new opportunities for economic sustainability.

Carol also led the R&D efforts in Humana’s Innovation Center where she pioneered using sophisticated analytics to build a portfolio of prediction, knowledge discovery and simulation models. She also launched Humana’s innovations in personalized medicine and led Humana’s Health Services Research Center. Carol also helped launch Green Ribbon Health, LLC a Florida-based company creating innovations in health support services for seniors, and later served on the Board of Directors.

In other roles at Humana, Carol served as their Chief Information Officer and as VP, Pharmacy Management. Outside of Humana, she served as EVP of Managed Care Business Development for Allscripts Healthcare Solutions and as an actuarial consultant for Milliman.

Carol served a four-year term as member of the nation’s National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, as an advisor to the HRP Scientific Program Board and was a member of the HSRC’s governing board. She currently sits on the advisory board of Keas, a consumer health company. Carol is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Click here to register for her keynote! 

#SMW12 One Week from Today: Monday Feb 6th

Posted on by Sara Haile-Mariam

Welcome to the first of post in our “One Week from Today” pre-Social Media week blog feature!  Throughout this week, we’ll be giving you a heads up on everything that’s going on at our content hubs this time next week.  Events are filling up fast so check out what’s going on this time next week and click on the corresponding event link to register!

Art & Culture: 9-11am:  The Mobile-Social Living Room: How Emerging Media is Reviving the Live Television Experience

Advertising & Marketing: 9-11am: Keynote: David Eastman, CEO of JWT North America, followed by Top Trends that will Shape Social in 2012

Business & Innovation: 9-11am: Keynote: John Bell, Global Managing Director at Ogilvy, on The Insidious Plot to Socalize Enterprise

Global Society: 10-11am: Managing Social Media on a Global Scale

Health & Wellness: 10-12pm: Keynote: Carol McCall, Chief Strategy Officer of GNS Healthcare

Health & Wellness: 10-12pm: Keynote: Michael Graves on People First: Redesigning the Hospital Room

Advertising & Marketing: 12-2pm: Beyond Borders: Impact of Social Media in Global Economy

Business & Innovation: 12-2pm: Keynote: Jeff Dachis, CEO, Chairman & Founder of Dachis Group Followed by Panel: Big Data and Bigger Conversations: Measuring Your Brand’s Social Performance

Global Society: 12-1230pm: Jon’s Fireside Chat: Social Listening with Patricia Gottesman, CEO of Crimson Hexagon

Social & Environmental Change: 12:30-2:30pm: Global Keynote: Don Tapscott, Speaker, Consultant & Author of Macrowikinomics on Re-Civilization: Empowering Change Through Collaboration

Global Society: 1-2pm: Global Social Media Listening

Health & Wellness: 1-2pm: Fast Forward Health presents 73 Cents followed by Q&A with Regina Holliday

Health & Wellness: 2-8pm: The Walking Gallery: An Exhibit

Art & Culture: 3-5pm: Keynote: Jermaine Dupri on Building Community

Advertising & Marketing: 3-5pm: State Your Case: Research vs Social Analytics

Business & Innovation: 3-5pm: Keynote Howard Lindzon followed by Panel: The Evolution of Reg-FD: How Social Media Has Changed Investor Relations, Hosted by StockTwits

Social & Environmental Change: 3:30-5:30pm: Is it Getting Hot in Here? Considering Social Media’s Impact on Climate Change

Global Society: 4-5pm: 10×10 Educate Girls, Change the World. Accelerating social change and leveraging media, technology and innovative strategic partnerships to get there.

Art & Culture: 4:30-5:30pm: Social Sharing and The Art of Doodling

Health & Wellness: 4-6pm: Designing for Desire

Health & Wellness: 6:30-8:00pm: Networking Cocktail Reception, Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson

Global Society: 6:30-9:00: Meet the Afropolitans: Digital Media + Culture In Africa

Interested in a particular Hub? Click on the following links to browse events according to content area;  Art & Culture,  Advertising & Marketing, Business & Innovation , Global Society , Health & Wellness , Social & Environmental Change. 

You can also view the full #SMW12 Schedule by Clicking HERE. 

 

 

 

 

Five Reasons to Visit the Health & Wellness Hub

Posted on by Nicky Yates

In 2012, Social Media Week New York introduces the first Health & Wellness Hub to serve as a platform to empower change in health through collaboration. Hosted by Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness and curated by Luminary Labs, the Health & Wellness Hub will take place at Saatchi & Saatchi’s ground floor auditorium, and offers seating for 400 guests as well as a livestream. The event runs from February 13-17, 2012.

We spoke to Luminary Labs CEO Sara Holoubek on what’s hot at the Health & Wellness Hub.

 
1. It’s about people.
Given the rate at which social technologies are changing the face of healthcare, it is quite easy to get caught up in the tech. And yet solving for health is about humanity. Or as keynote Michael Graves says “People first.” We’ll kick of the week with a human-centered approach to health, from a big data to hospital design to Regina Holliday’s personal story of how she became a patient advocate. Later in the day, participants will roll up their sleeves with Jessica Hammer to learn how to design for desire in health. Also in the spirit of humanity, Johnson & Johnson will close the day with a networking cocktail reception.
 

2. It’s about tech.
We’re going to explore, demystify, and even challenge the role of the technology that is changing the face of healthcare. Frank Moss kicks off the day with a lively discussion of the 2012 MIT Health and Wellness Innovation Hackathon. J.C. Herz will help us unpack the quantified self, followed by a panel on the role of sensors in health. We’ll also explore gaming in the panel, “This Game Will Make You Healthier.”
 

3. We’ll collaborate.
There is no silver bullet in health, and change requires partnership and collaboration. Michele Polz of Sanofi and Aman Bhandari of Health & Human Services will detail how their two organizations partnered to identify new innovations in diabetes. In the afternoon, well take a look at the role of collaboration in wellness, with a keynote from Dr. Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic and a panel on how our perception of beauty affects our behavior and purchase patterns. Last, but not least, participants will get a chance to crowdsource the ideal FDA social media guidelines, as well as comment for the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
 

4. We’ll Accelerate.
Jay Walker, founder of Priceline and TEDMED chairman & curator will set the stage on Thursday as startups, investors, and strategic partners converge to make it happen. We’re putting the investors in the hot seat, asking them to “pitch” the startups. Later in the day we’ll connect strategic investors and startups via an interactive matchmaking session.
 

5. We’re going to change the game.
We’ll wrap up the week with the ideas and case studies. Participants will get the opportunity to take part in an socially-enabled feedback experiment, learning how little acts of willpower help train your willpower muscle. The week will wrap up with Feast on Health, hosted the fabulous Jerri Chou.

Is Social Media The New Mothers’ Group?

Posted on by Michelle Welsch

Is Social Media The New Mothers’ Group?

Guest post by Meg Akabas

I recently ventured into the world of Twitter with the encouragement of friends, colleagues, and my kids who convinced me it was an important medium to help link me to people who might benefit from my new iphone app ParentSmart. I was told Twitter is the way to find people who want my parenting expertise.

A few weeks into my Twitter journey, I’ve seen a whole new community of parents and discovered that while one might assume parents, especially those of young children, might be too darn busy for social media, moms and dads alike are thriving online.

As a parenting educator, I wanted to understand why so many parents are gravitating towards social media. I examined the content and found four main areas of attraction for parents on both Facebook and Twitter:

1. Community

Taking care of a newborn or young child can be an isolating endeavor. No longer! Parents need not rely solely on meeting other new parents at the playground or through mothers groups to stay connected. They can immediately tap into a community of parents on Facebook by joining groups, on Twitter by following other parents or parenting experts, and on any one of the thousands of mommy blogs by joining and participating in discussions. Social media provides an accessible forum for discussion with other moms and dads about public policy concerning families. This is the stuff we used to talk about at our weekly mothers group while our babies crawled around on the floor and spit-up on our shoulders.

2. Product Recommendations

When I was popping out babies (four of them), in order to get a full picture of what was available in stores or to compare products, I had to load the stroller/baby carrier/bags/etc. and visit the baby supply or toy store. Now, parents can quickly compare and review all possible infant seat models AND get recommendations from other parents through social media channels. Twitter parties and give-aways abound as a way for marketers to reach an audience eager for products and services that make life easier. On www.CoolMomPicks.com, recommendations are linked to thoughtful reviews and product details fly fast and furious from their twitter feed.

In addition, product recall information hits social media sites quickly, giving new parents piece of mind that they are aware of any safety hazards that arise.

3. Health Information

Linking with other families or professionals who can share tips on almost any health issue saves worry and time.  It’s one thing to look up symptoms in one’s dog-eared copy of Dr. Spock, but quite another to get the benefit of hundreds of other parents first-hand experience with curing a nasty diaper rash. When my son recently ran into trouble trying to take his first un-chewable pill without gagging, a swift online connection with parents who had faced this problem resulted in a perfect solution…feed him the pill in a spoonful of applesauce or pudding; it worked like a charm.

4. Parenting Advice and Inspiration 

Because babies don’t come with a “how to” guide, one is constantly trying to figure things out. When I was a new parent, I read lots of books and relied on guidance from my own parents. Social media provides much easier access to a wealth of parenting advice, and it has completely crumbled the barrier of shame or embarrassment that formerly plagued parents who thought they were the only ones struggling. Sorting through so much advice, much of it conflicting, can be difficult, but mothers and fathers are finding experts or other parents whose strategies ring true for them, and they are developing a trust in those sources.

In addition, life as a parent of a baby can be extremely tiring and often feels tedious. Now, parents are just a smartphone away from ideas for activities, recipes, positive thoughts and humor. Social media enables moms and dads to tap into the larger community, helping them to ”know better,” “do better” and “feel better” in their parenting role, which represents an opportunity for those with products or messages aimed at helping them achieve those goals. This is good news for parents, good news for me — the parenting educator — and excellent news for anyone who wants to reach this eternal market.

I just hope that all this connecting through social media isn’t distracting parents from interacting and being present with their children! (For my thoughts on that issue, click here).

 

Meg Akabas is a mother of four, a parenting educator, and the founder of Parenting Solutions. Meg specializes in working with parents of children up to age 10 both individually and in workshops. She helps parents tackle non-medical issues such as communication, discipline, learning, sibling rivalry, separation, and sleep problems. Download her ParentSmart app on itunes and follow her on twitter.