Four Conferences: Four Sets of Live Viewpoints on Innovation

by | May 5, 2013 | Cross-sector shifts, Education, Innovation Shifts

We’ve just come back from a series of unique conferences, each with a very different view of the world.  Given our overly connected digital world, the proliferation and expansion of live events is intriguing.  These were just the four we picked of the dozen or so going on during this same three week period of time.  Some are pricey — over $1,500 a seat before paying for room, board, and travel — and others are less than $100 for attendees.

Sponsors are abundant — is this the real sign that we are coming firmly out of the recession?

Or is it that in this crowded business-to-business marketing world that face-time for new brands is so essential?  I’m working with quite a few new educational technology brands right now . . . who each are having to rationalize how and where they invest their time and money to meet the right adventurous partners for trials.  A growing portion of my advisory time through Maremel is working with innovative leaders about this exact question set.

GSV/ASU Educational Innovation Summit

We had bypassed this event last year and was amazed by the 1,500 attendees at more than $1,500 a pop for three days.  This was a well-heeled crowd of investors and new educational technology ventures, as well as many leading voices from traditional firms, NGOs, and government forces.  The dance was intriguing, with 170+ short presentation pitches.  The more intriguing discussions were happening in the hallways and central seating areas.  Deals and gossip seemed evenly matched.  We overheard a lot of conversations about competitors about to run out of funds.

Viewpoints: Adaptive learning is the next new great thing.  Give our new company money and we will save the educational world (mostly US).  Selective viewpoint: We’re already an adventurous organization, doing cool things, and we are at this event quietly to see what is coming up the pike that doesn’t have revenue yet.

2013 IFTA Production Conference

Embracing the Small Screen: How Independents Are Defining Their Future in Television and Digital Media

We enjoyed this conference, run by what used to be the American Film Marketing Association, and was renamed IFTA (International Film & Television Association) many years ago.

The day was broken into the Buyers and the Sellers, and I could see why this was also a sell-out event.  The audience was filled with aspiringl producers, but the panels were filled with those really doing business in digital video production and distribution in a big way.

Viewpoints: The money isn’t there yet, but exciting things are afoot.  Big names were wondering how the money was being made.  Digital distributors were sharing some cases, but keeping some of the data close to the vest.

AERA

American Educational Research Association

How do you fit 14,000 educational researchers in a group of hotels in 5 days in San Francisco with thousands of presentations, and often more than 75 simultanous events?  With a phone-book sized guide with 7+ digit codes and a almost-connected App.

This group has seven different technology-oriented special interest groups, each with overlapping content and interests.  We spent time with both the TICL (Technology, Instruction, Cognition, and Learning) and TACTL (Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning) groups, who call themselves “Tickle” and “Tactile” respectively.  There was intriguing research in cognitive load theory in teaching (making the content format decisions make the learning easier, not harder) and evidence-based educational design.

The conversations continued that started at GSV/ASU: Why does the research being done on learning science NOT flow into learning design, both in terms of products and content?

We ask the reverse: why should it flow?  What would be the connective tissue to tie it together?

Viewpoints: Our research is wonderful — why doesn’t the world want it?  Peer reviewed journal research is of value, not necessarily research happening by non-universities (undercurrent of conversations).

Business4Better

The Community Movement Partnership — http://www.business4better.org/

What a different perspective!  In Anaheim, CA, we caught the second day of this UBM-hosted conference that brought together community partners in social support from around mostly Orange County, each with little booths waiting for people to come by.  This was the most old-fashioned of the conferences, and the thinnest attended, but the one at which we had the most sincere conversations.

Viewpoints:  We are helping our communities.  How can we bring new awareness and resources in?

End Thought

All of these were valuable conversations — all local and all connecting ideas in the light of our digital world.  How do we connect the right resources, ideas, and different frames of mind?

Live and local becomes even more important in this overly connected age.

Our eBook Future: Glut or Glory?

Our eBook Future: Glut or Glory?

by | Oct 27, 2011 | Innovation Shifts

I enjoyed a recent article in The Bookseller by Philip Jones.  Philip Downer, who used to run Border Books’ UK operation, warned of the glut of content and the control by Amazon, Google, and Apple of the pipelines to the consumer with proprietary formats.  He urged change and a pooling of resources by the publishers.  He expressed concern about the “seduction of colour, movement and noise” with digital ink, and concern that publishers are not quick to act, stating in their slowness, “Steve Jobs is dead, but sometimes I think Queen Victoria is still alive.”

In Richard Caves’ 2002 book Creative Industries, he stated that without the natural filters (like agents and publishers) within creative industries, which make money by making judgements for production, the vast volume of creative properties becomes overwhelming.

The cost of creation has plummeted, as has music.  When we all can (and we already can) self-publish to our hearts content, will we be under the deluge of new books like we are underwater with new tracks coming into the music systems from the likes of Tunecore, CD Baby, and Reverbnation?

“But is he happy?” Ian Richie’s TED Talk about Missing the World Wide Web

“But is he happy?” Ian Richie’s TED Talk about Missing the World Wide Web

by | Oct 19, 2011 | Innovation Shifts, Tech+Change

TED.com inspires, thrills, amazes, saddens, and enlightens.  I enjoy getting their regular email blasts as to new videos, learning something new each time.

This cycle I’m bemused.  Ian Richie spoke about how, at Owl, he missed “getting” the World Wide Web when Tim Berners-Lee came to him.  In his talk, he brought me back to Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” from The Atlantic in 1945.  He brought me back to thinking of how we look at and miss innovations.  He also brought me back, in a closer timeframe, to my current enjoyment of Christensen, Roth, and Anthony’s 2004 “Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change” on how we have missed and found past innovations.

I spend a lot of time with my classes and learning partners on trying to look with a critical lens at change and its impacts.  Sometimes part of the challenge is to recognize how we are refolding data, time, and space when the idea walks in our door.

Mixing Technology, Media, Education, and Social Change

Mixing Technology, Media, Education, and Social Change

by | Aug 27, 2011 | Tech+Change

We stand at a crossroads of change.  Powerful forces are transforming what is possible in media, education, and other cultural industries.

Maremel builds learning environments and organizational change opportunities with its partners for social change.

Maremel Institute

  • Builds learning programs with universities and other organizations–how to teach executives and students to embrace and understand how technology-enabled change
  • Builds training and professional development programs for adult and higher education on technology-enhanced teaching and learning.
  • Advises organizations how to bolster forward-thinking change: across whole organizations, departments, or executive teams.

Maremel Media

  • Builds interactive and live media for education.  Our videos and live events help schools, teachers, adults, kids, artists, and other individuals embrace how to work with technology for their own lives.
  • Builds multimedia content platforms for higher education use.
  • Produces socially conscious media for teaching about history, storytelling, and technology.  This media includes live events, music, and multimedia content.

How can we help you?  How can we help your organization?  Your future?

Sleigh Bells — a safety device?

Sleigh Bells — a safety device?

by | Dec 20, 2010 | Innovation Shifts

My husband, who shares my love of technology and history, pointed out a recent Los Angeles Times article on the sleigh bell industry.  The article focused on the Bevin Bros., a Connecticut-based company that has been making sleigh bells since 1832.

I was most intrigued by the paragraph on how the industry grew in the 19th century.  Sleigh runners were nearly silent and glided quietly along the snow.  Many states passed laws requiring harness bells to announce the approach of sleighs to pedestrians and others.

Maybe we need them on Priuses?

Then, the bells became associated with Christmas due to James Lord Pierpoint’s “The One Horse Open Sleigh” in 1857 (link to Library of Congress copy), which became “Jingle Bells” two years later.

Who knew?