Poynter Institute Welcomes Popular Event Thoughtfest
october 28, 2011 | by John Siebenthaler: photos©john siebenthaler
socially driven marketing success
Viral’s out – sharing’s in Shareability emerged as the event’s rallying point. Jason Sadler’s (above) made his case with a long tail analogy hiliting the brief halflife of nearly all video (commercial) projects.
more Poynter coverage here and here
Learn more: hear what head of Edelman digital David Armano (Logic + Emotion) has to say about shareability here.
(ST. PETERSBURG) Twelve speakers, one topic, multiple viewpoints. The Poynter Institute brought TEDx (x = local) to St. Petersburg for a provocative inaugural event that, depending on whose web metrics you chose to interpolate – in this case, twitter – reached over half a million touch points.
Viral is not sustainable.
jason sadler, iwearyourshirt.com
Part theater, part lecture, part anecdote, TEDx Poynter was attended by just under 100 participants, watched via live stream by hundreds more, and followed on twitter at #tedxpoynter by the thousands.
St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans’ supported his forecast of journalism’s unvetted future with a first-person example of how mainstream media’s authority is challenged daily by anyone with a smart phone and a social channel outlet.
"The Future of Journalism Is…"
Presenters included life coach Tisse Mallon, I Wear Your Shirt’s Jason Sadler, renowned doodler Jessica Hagy, Canadian attorney turned Mediaite.com founder/social blogger Rachel Sklar, impeccable and impeccably hilarious PRI radio personality Jessie Thorn (above - Fast Company pick as a 2011 Top 100 Most Creative) and Graham Sharpe with a peek inside his richly adaptive tech startup xtranormal.
Seven hours later NPR Editorial Project Manager Matt Thompson and Twitter Media Partnerships Manager Robin Sloan wrapped everything up with a captivatingly clever snarkmarket.com Blade Runner-esque view of communications’ future.
Whether tweeting, blogging, or finalizing keynotes for upload, TEDx participants used a variety of devices to monitor, comment and prepare content.
Jason Sadler summarized the point of TEDx on this day. His message, culled from, "…maybe a thousand YouTube videos" produced as part of his original I Wear Your Shirt marketing, was that chasing a goal of viral popularity – virality? – obscures the real advantage of being shareable as an operational playbook.
Making Shareable The Goal
Shareable was also part of Ms. Mallon's message, when she first asked attendees to identify "what makes us happy." And of Graham Sharpe, as he described the intent of interactive animation synched to a submitted script. And of Rachel Sklar’s shining the spotlight on a medium that espouses equality yet regularly overlooks it in the course of playing beat the clock.
Shareability. Making your message the one that other people like to pass along. Like to bookmark. Like to download. Animated in his disapproval of anything viral, Mr. Sadler was equally passionate in his case for making shareable content.