ad age conference / theme of the week

On Tuesday morning Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist, is giving a keynote speech at the Ad Age Digital Conference to open the two-day event.

      

If you don’t know about Fred you should. He is the founder/partner of Union Square Ventures in NYC. Over his 20 year career he has dedicated himself to discovering the next tech breakthrough, determining a company's viability and deciding whether to invest. He has a long history of success and the quintessential resume for this arena, MIT undergrad in engineering and Wharton Business School. The perfect blend of technology and commerce. You may ask yourself what the hell does this have to do with advertising? Nothing and everything.

Whether you are in the creative department or post production or account services or manage a production company and anything in between, we need to realize what happen in the world, in particular in technology communications, impacts our business. Living in a bubble is no longer an option. Everything is converging TV, films, PR, talent management, social networking, etc. They overlap one another and are racing toward a similar finish line.To remain relevant, we need to view our careers, our business and ourselves in the broadest possible terms. Defining (or re-defining) what we do and who we are is my THEME OF THE WEEK. How does this specifically relate to Fred?

As mentioned above Fred is a VC investing in a variety of tech firms. Two of his companies are Twitter and Boxee. These two companies may significantly alter (if they have not already) the way we send and receive messaging and content. As communicators, it is imperative we understand the technology, the business models and the impact it has on our culture.

                 

Fred’s topic is officially titled, “Bridging the Gap: How Venture Capitalists and Marketers can Create Meaningful Relationships and Innovation”. Truthfully, I have no idea what that means. What I do know are two things:

1) Fred will focus will be on the rise of earned media and the ebb of paid media. This is a significant trend that will effect all of us in communications.

2) If you have tickets to the conference don’t oversleep figuring no need to catch the first speaker. If you don’t have tickets, I'm sure someone on twitter can find you a transcript or you can download it on boxee.