If Your Real Life Were a Social Network, Hosted by SapientNitro, followed by When Digital Meets Phyisical: 'Your Context is your new URL' by Gerard Grech, Global Head of Content Distribution, Media, NOKIA

Event Description:

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?

We’ll kick 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. We’ll launch into a discussion moderated by Melissa Read, who specializes in behavioral anthropology in the digital space. 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.” We’ll 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.

Speakers:

• Moderator: Melissa Read, Ph.D., Behavioral Psychologist, Director of Marketing Strategy, SapientNitro
   
• Alison Barth, Ph.D. & Associate Professor, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University
   
• Shayla Thiel-Stern. Ph.D. & Associate Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication University of Minnesota, Author – Instant Identity (Mediated Youth)
   
• Duncan Watts, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo; Director of Human Social Dynamics Group, Author – Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

• Chris Mahl, SVP & Chief Brand Alchemist, SCVNGR

followed by

Keynote: When Digital Meets Physical: "Your Context is the new URL" by Geard Grech, Global Head of Content Distribution, Media, NOKIA

This presentation will explore how the mobile is now at the epicenter of the digital and physical worlds, and how it is transforming our decision making. Not long ago, we talked about the mobile as the gateway to the internet. Now we do not need a gateway. Our physical location, social contacts and preferences shape the information we receive. Suddenly, the world becomes smaller, social and more accessible. Our everyday decision making and plans can flow more spontaneously.

Gerard Grech is global head of Content Distribution for the Media division, Nokia. Prior to this, he was Director of Content Strategy and Business Development in the Content Division of Orange/France Telecom group and Group Head of Music and Video. At Orange, he closed over 25 strategic partnerships and co-built and took to market over 10 convergent content services over web, mobile and IPTV across 12 countries.