So, one week later, I was going to recap the iCitizen Symposium by highlighting all the presentations that took place, but I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t possibly do a better job documenting the event than the event blog did all by itself. Captured by Resource Interactive Creative Director Karen Scholl (@kscholl), this account is a good representation of the how things went down inside the Blackwell Center for 1.5 days in Columbus OH.
Instead, I decided to focus on some of the more niche conversations I had, like this one with Keynote speaker Kevin Kelly:
Or these other conversations I had with Metaio Head of Marketing, Noora Guldemond:
And then top it off with photos and videos of the after-party held at the Wexner Center for the Arts for all attendees:
Some folks got a little CRAY-ZAY!
I mean, I have been to a bunch of conferences but never one that treated the attendees this well! iCitizen was a real class act. Right down to the mint on my dashboard when I got back to my car.
So in the end, what was the message I took away? That the future of commerce is social? That the tablet will rise and rise some more? That marketers are the new journalists? (I’m not so sure I buy that one, by the way). Actually I think it was more like marketers need to behave like modern journalists to survive.
Anyway, there wasn’t really a singular moment where I tied it all together into a universal algorithm of clarity, but there were some compelling arguments and examples that pointed to the speed with which modern information sharing is affecting us and changing our behaviors, whether we know it or not. Whether we want it to or not. What I took away from iCitizen was a message that mobile technology—the things we worship and study here at CrunchGear—is inexplicably tied to this concept of “The Real-time Web” as a conduit for content creation and consumption. Each gadget, each mobile conduit represents another chance for content creation and interaction and it’s mobility is relative and directly proportional to the speed of interaction. Wait is that a theorem after all?
Nah, I’ m just kidding with the theorem. But I still think it all spells good news for the gadget lovers and gadget manufacturers out there.
Oh yeah, I also took away that GAMING IS GOOD FOR YOU! See mom, I told you I should have been able to keep that Atari 2600! Dang!