09/04/2024 10:05:00 AM 
We’ve also created a live version in the form of a conference, where some of the interesting people we’ve met and discovered along the way get the chance to talk to other interesting people. The concept seems to work pretty well, for the last 3 years, we’ve managed to attract 200 people to each event.
This year marks our 4th year of trying to do the conference thing. While our neighbors in the technology space have broken down the walls and created “Un-Conferences”; Barcamps and their ilk, meanwhile Influx continues to adopt a fairly traditional approach. Despite notions of radical change, we’ve found that the marketing world is still fairly traditional in it’s thinking and building brands is a little different from writing code.
We’ve stuck to a fairly typical formula of speaker and a short question and answer session. People have enjoyed it and we’ve been fortunate enough to have some great speakers; Peter Sealey, Eric Ryan, Howard Rheingold, Chris Anderson, Jody Turner, Nike’s Trend Group, Nick Graham, Jennifer Leonard, Dwell Magazine, Josh Quittner, John Battelle, Jim Riswold and many other smart and talented individuals.
However, we have always struggled with getting the audience involved. There’s been some great networking, but the audience have been relatively untapped and untested.
This year on October 19th, we will host Influx Ideas, our 4th conference and although we aren’t blowing up the conference concept, we are keen to encourage more audience participation. We will be more actively seeking audience responses and questions, we will create “virtual” opportunities to network and all attendees will get the chance to be speakers in a concept called 5X5 (5 speakers get 5 minutes). These speakers will be chosen by other attendees in a “Digg” like system we are setting up on the conference website.
Despite these “2.0” changes, whenever you mention “conference”, people always want to know who’s speaking and this year we probably have our best line-up. It’s been selected to try and help people gain inspiration and understanding of the changes and opportunities that Marketing 2.0 provides.
So here’s who’s speaking and why you need to hear them:
Sarah Rich is responsible for building Worldchanging into a leading resource for all things related to the environment. She will bring her unique perspective on what the radical shift by consumers towards the environment, means for brands.
Christian Simm created swissnex, a new idea to help the country of Switzerland brand itself in the global war for talent and ideas.
Rebecca Saeger has helped to transform the financial giant, Charles Schwab, into a brand that encourages people to talk to Chuck.
Kent Nichols created a new entertainment property in his apartment. Ask A Ninja, it has taken the Internet by storm; AAN’s films regularly attract a half a million viewers and have been cleaning up at all the web awards shows. Kent will talk about how AAN came to being and what its existence means for the future of media.
Chas Edwards runs business development at Federated Media. Federated’s mission is to become the “CAA of the web” and in a couple of years have built a “stable” of talented new media brands that they represent like; Digg, Deuce and Boing Boing.
Jonah Bloom is the editor of Advertising Age, the country’s leading advertising trade publication. Jonah will share his perspective on the changing world of advertising.
Scott Wyatt is a partner at NBBJ one of the leading architecture practices in the country. NBBJ has brought “brand” experiences into the HQs of some of the country’s leading corporations including; Starbucks, Boeing and Reebok.
Reuben Steiger is the founder of Millions of Us, one of the leading builders of environments in Second Life. These new virtual worlds create fundamentally different experiences for their users and offer new and interesting opportunities for brands, well beyond their PR value.
The event takes place at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco, tickets for the event are currently $165 including breakfast and lunch and can be purchased here.
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