92nd St Y + 140 characters + 2 days=ROI

Bleary-brained from two days in the frenetic "State of Now" as Jeff Pulver calls his 140 Character Conferences which are unlike any others I've attended, not only because they bring together people from such disparate fields as fashion, music, publishing, real estate and medicine, but because

1. Speakers are limited to too-short-to-be boring 10 minutes, panels to 20 minutes
2. All sessions take place in same room, so by choosing one, you won't miss others
3. It's not a trade show.

The last is the most remarkable difference to me. No one on stage is out to sell you something. (Well, almost no one.) Vibe is about sharing vision and ideas and concrete examples of how adoption of social communication platforms is actually, in real time, changing the world. All sessions were streamed and available here.

Ann Curry talked about how twitter saved lives in Haiti, connecting victims with the help they needed in the US. (video)

Jennifer Preston (Social Media editor of NY Times--yes! they have one) talked with newsgatherers about how geo-based platforms (FourSquare, Gowalla) are changing the way reporters get news. (video) Later, founders of those platforms, Dennis Crowley and Josh Williams, discussed surprisingly prevalent use in heavily-censored China. (video)

Comic Book creators from Marvel and elsewhere talked about the excitement of bringing their characters off the page and onto small screens. (video)

Transmedia producer Tish Shute introduced the concept of collaborative Augmented Reality Worlds as easy to contribute to as a Wiki page. (video)

There were plenty of other worthwhile sessions, including ones from media elites David Carr and Joan Walsh and twitter brand names like MC Hammer, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jessica Gottlieb. But perhaps my favorite presentation was by unknown 13 year olds who demonstrated a breakthrough idea in education conceived by their teacher George Haines: they came to appreciate Animal Farm by tweeting the characters. Each took a turn in the classroom channelling Clover, Snowball, Napoleon, Muriel, even Orwell himself and followed barnyard conversation on a twitter list. A simple, replicable idea: combine literature with computer technology to make both more appealing to kids who "thought the book was boring until we started tweeting it." They ended their preso with remix of Lady Gaga's "Brave Romance" ("Boring Class") and got A+ from the crowd--a rare standing ovation. (Vid below)

"Twitter Will Endure" illustration by quickdraw Johnny Goldstein

taxi crashes on motrin

No doubt Daniel Ravinowicz, president of Taxi NYC is waking up with a Motrin headache today. His agency was responsible for launch of a video on Motrin's website that caused such an uproar in the twitterverse this weekend, the site had to be taken down and apologies zapped to protesters pronto. (Yea, that job must have made somebody's Sunday.)

Taxi's intentions were admirable: create a site-promo to target a niche audience, timed to coincide with inauguration of International Babywearing Week. (Babywearing? When I wore snuglis it was called…wearing snuglis.) Babywearing causes back pain + Motrin relieves backpain = Easy Sell. Or should have been. Problem was, team who created the video had obviously never had to wear a snugli or sling or whatever trendier contraption babywearers wear these days. That they weren't babybearers themselves and never consulted with people who were, seemed painfully obvious from copy intimating that wearing your baby is akin to accessorizing and one does it to "totally look like an official mom." (Um. Hello. It's 2008. Huge percentage of babywearers are dads.)



Spot went viral, but not in the way that they'd hoped.

Jessica Gottlieb, a blogger/mom who writes for National Lampoon, saw it and posted her outrage on the microblogging site Twitter. A few hours (and thousands of anti-Motrin tweets) later, #MotrinMoms was the #1 search on the site, eclipsing SNL for first time since Obama was elected.

Then it went youtube. Katja Presnal, PR and Social Media Consultant/Mom tweeted Holy Cow. I just can't believe the motrin ad. Speechless. But not for long. Her next post was, I'm making a video to boycot motrin-pls send your baby wearing pics if I can use them! A few hours later, she posted a protest video to youtube. As of this writing, it's received over 4000 hits.



Katja's video went live at 3 AM Sunday morning. By 8 PM the same day, the Motrin site hosting the offending ad had come down and apologies sent to commenters who'd posted objections to it.

Big Pharma: welcome to the world of social media, where it takes sore consumers less than 24 hours to make corporate bumblers responsible for it, feel their pain.