This week will be a conference-heavy one for me with plenty of focus on the future.

I’ll be attending the Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney and sitting on two panels.

Panel 1 is to discuss Where is advertising heading? We’ll be looking at what the emergence of new platforms and players means for advertising spends on traditional media, questioning whether brands will continue to advertise en masse and even looking at whether technology such as 3D TV is the future for advertising.

Panel 2 probably has a lot of similar themes for me as we look at Strategies for successfully transitioning to a broadband economy. We’ll discuss what media companies need to do to survive in the changing technological environment, using the online channel to develop content and advertising products that cater to the on-demand media consumer and how media companies will generate revenue online.

The rest of the conference topics focus heavily on the digital age so its going to be fascinating to see what the rest of the industry is thinking.

The Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress is on 20-22 July 2010 at the Swissotel, Sydney.

Social media steps out of the echo chamber

I only have time to attend a handful of conferences each year. Its often difficult to determine which are the best conferences to attend. You have to balance up the cost and the potential information reward for each conference.

Social media conferences are even harder to pick. Over the last 3 years I have attended quite a few social media conferences and events but the lingering impression I often have after each event is that the conference was preaching to the converted. Its been an increasing dilemma in the social media world….there are those who “get it” and those that don’t (yet). At most events I’ve attended the audience already “get it”.

Of course its great to have enthusiastic participants at your social media event, but it’d be a lot more valuable to the noise extended beyond the social media echo chamber to reach the people we’d really love to see “joining the conversation”…Ie leading corporate marketers.

That’s why I’m excited to be attending the iStrategy 2010 conference in Sydney in November. Here’s a social media conference that is very deliberately addressing marketing professionals from leading Australian organisations with the aim of “Bridging the gap in Social Media Marketing”.

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Next month I am going to be a panelist at the 5th Annual Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress in Sydney as media leaders discuss the industry and its future directions and I really need your help.

Is 3D the future of advertising?

One panel I am really looking forward to is titled The Future of Advertising. I’ll be discussing the big issues with Adam Good from Clemenger, Paddy Douneen from BMF, Marty O’Halloran from DDB Australia & New Zealand, John Sintras from Starcom Worldwide, Matt Whittingham from SingTel Optus and Paul Fisher from IAB Australia.

The initial question coming my way is based on a statement by Oscar-winning producer Jon Landau at the Cannes International Advertising Festival:

“3D is going to be the future of advertising”

Now I have been rather unexcited by the whole 3D thing and have my own opinions about it, but maybe I am way off base. So I’d really like to know what you think. Is 3D going to be the future of advertising? Is it just a fad, hyped by a desperate industry or is it groundbreaking technology that is going to make us love TV all over again and lap up the exciting advertisements that will be leaping off the screen?

I’d love to hear from people within the media and advertising industries. I’d also appreciate feedback from people who have invested in 3D televisions to understand their experiences so far.

All feedback is very welcome. I will compile the answers as part of my response to what I hope becomes a very lively debate at the Media & Broadcasting Congress.

The 4th annual Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress will be held in Sydney from 31 August to 3 September 2009 and I am honoured to have been invited to present on two panels at this years event in what promises to be some vigorous and topical discussions.

Looking at the program I realised that I am the only marketing blogger to be presenting at the event, so I’d like to think I can be a strong representative of the Australian marketing blogger community.

Therefore, I’d like your input. What would you like to see addressed or mentioned in the panels I am involved with? What issues do you feel need covering? What questions would you like to see asked?

Please leave your thoughts & suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Here are the two panels I will be involved in…

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Over at the Marketing Magazine site, I’ve posted a story called A glimpse into the future at SXSW and Web 2.0 chronicling the latest web, media and marketing initiatives I observed on my recent US conferences trip. There’s some really relevant information for Australian business considering the Rudd government’s recent National Broadband Network announcement. Please give the story a “Thumbs Up YES” if you find it useful.

The Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco is a slightly more staid affair than SXSW, but certainly still had its highlights. Here’s some of the things that caught my eye at Web 2.0 last week:

Union Square in beautiful San Francisco

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Pre-launch drinks in Austin

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Tim O’Reilly, co-founder of the Web 2.0 Expo and the person who coined the term Web 2.0, entered the stage to a rock star-like welcome for the first Keynote presentation of the event.

Tim wanted to talk about Web 2.0 five years on. He said that the term Web 2.0 was meant to explain what happened after the original dotcom crash; the second life of the Internet. It was never meant to signify new stages, like Web 3.0 and so on.

So what’s next for the web?

Tim O'Reilly

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Soren Stamer twitter.com/heartnsoul

Soren is a German entrepreneur who has applied the theory of Darwinism to business and the Internet. Darwinism is based on life without a creator and so life must continually evolve.

Soren believes that MASSIVE networking, such as what we are now seeing online, drives CHANGE. Our world is massively connected on global level leading to these consequences:
1. Increasing dynamics – life cycles are shorter. 6000 days of web life has changed world incredibly
2. Rising complexity – makes it impossible to predict, so better to stay AGILE
3. Increasing transparency – we know more and more about everything.
4. Global synchronisation – this is first globally synchronised recession. It creates opportunities too.
5. Collectively we are smarter
6. Abundance of options – declining GDP & explosion of services. Scarcity of attention.

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Presenter: Trae Chancellor from Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com has become successful and famous for moving their entire business operation online and into “the cloud”. Trae began his presentation with a big logo on screen saying “no software”.

The company drew up a vision of their business operating in the cloud:
Salesforce IT Vision: Get Salesforce on Salesforce
Organisation = Improve productivity & innovation
Operations = Improve efficiency
Infrastructure = reduce costs

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