Disruptive by Design

Thought leaders. Innovators. Entrepreneurs. Welcome to the annual WIRED business conference in NYC.

Nate and I had the good fortune to attend thanks to our friends at WIRED Magazine.  I attended last year and was blown away by the quality and variety of speakers.  I didn’t think I would attend a better conference, ever, but the lineup for 2012 was even hotter. The brilliance of the conference is taking a wide variety of topics and organizing them within a common theme. This year it was ‘disruption.’ The topics ranged from the Google car, fitness and technology, entrepreneurial approach to government, artificial intelligence, the car as a mobile app and, of course, social media.

The morning kicked off with a discussion with Marc Andreessen (founder Andreessen Horowitz and creator of Netscape) on The Future of Everything. Marc is clearly the smartest guy in the room and when he speaks about a trend or a possibility you have a good sense it will happen. Other highlights included Dick Costolo CEO Twitter, Alan Mulally CEO Ford, and James Dyson inventor. But equally compelling were lesser-known speakers that are doing equally important work. Yancey Strickler founder of Kickstarter, and Jennifer Pahlka from Code for America – incredible individuals that possess not only the skills but also the drive to make their ideas reality. In turn, they are also making their ideas, your ideas. Truly amazing.

The take-aways are simply too many to list – but also too important not to suggest that you watch the entire conference. Stream it through this link below. Stream it today:

http://fora.tv/conference/wired_business_conference_2012

A must-watch is Curtis Houghland speaking to The Myths of Social Media. His presentation is insightful and very relevant to today’s marketers. I especially like the quote, “P&G’s marketing goal is to have a one-to-one relationship with all customers.”

Too often – in my opinion – people dismiss the value of conferences. In this instance, the venue, production quality, speaker lineup and depth of discussion were of the highest possible caliber. If you can buy, beg or steal your way into the conference for 2013, I would highly recommend.