In addition to a wealth of networking opportunities for guests, a career expo and targeted breakout sessions, the event hosted two standout keynote speakers: Shama Kabani (@Shama) and Kevin Sullivan (@ksullie).
Shama Kabani, of The Marketing Zen Group, kicked off the event with a breakfast keynote on the “Top 10 Digital Trends of 2012.” After opening with a frank admission that she was no psychic, she quickly proved how valuable her assertions would be by reviewing her background as an author, international speaker and CEO of a global digital marketing firm. Based on her extensive experience, she expects these digital trends for the next year:
- Drag and drop apps: The ability to create applications for iPhones and iPads, Android devices and others will become less complex, opening the market to even more developers.
- People will become Googlized: The battle of the four giants: Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, will lead people to evangelize only certain brands.
- Identity-based ecosystems: People use the web and social media to express themselves. Online personalities will become digital mirrors for a person’s real life.
- Multi-channel publishing: PR pros and brands must present information in a variety of ways so that people can decide what medium they prefer.
- Targeting and contextual targeting: Advertising will become more intuitive by using web behavior. Expect to see web ads that display based on what sites you visit, what you’re saying online and what you share on social media.
- Video = Web + TV + Mobile: Video experiences will expand past traditional mediums to be used an increasing amount for web and mobile. Facebook is even making its own web television series.
- Content curation and aggregation: More tools will be needed to assist people in sorting through the information they find online. Sites like Pintrest are digital swipe files that replace older methods of clipping photos and articles.
- Artificial intelligence: The next wave of technology will be dependent on intuitive design. Apple’s Siri is a system to watch.
- Online/offline becomes no-line: The references to being online vs. offline will drop off from relevance. Everything will become digitized; even tombstones will include quick response (QR) codes.
- Rise of community managers: People will begin professionally educating themselves as community managers in order to expertly guide online conversations.
Post contributed by Vicky Smithee, @VSmithee.
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