AAAA 2007

I've been at the Planners Conference in San Diego for the past 3 days and had the opportunity to listen to some interesting and smart people. The goal was to share ideas and become a better account planner.

The seminar kicked off with a speech by Sir Ken Robinson, an enthusiastic and funny, motivational speaker. His expertise is revolutionizing the way we educate and he spoke quite eloquently about unlocking creativity. He is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. He mentioned case studies like the branding of tap water to fundraise and made comments like "it's not how intelligent you are, but rather how you are intelligent." His ending quote was "our problem isn't that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim to low and succeed."

Adam Morgan of Eatbigfish spoke about realizing opportunities and being innovative. He offered inspirational advice like Kissing the Shadow - creating an opportunity from a disadvantage, and others like being Gorilla Blind, and how to beat the Duncker Cradle Task. He expressed the tremendous value he sees in looking at micro targets to determine future needs, like for example designing products for the mainstream by looking at products needed by the disabled.

Brandon Geary of Avenue Q Razorfish spoke about how we can use web 2.0 to observing better and capitalize on consumer information that is posted on sites like Flickr, Wefeelfine and others who are the 'online entrenched.' He talked about aspirational profiling and searching out pent-up demand.

Scott Lucas of Dosage talked about why people become engaged and what to do to engage them. He referenced the "7-up" documentary and focused on the characteristics that engage, like: Scandal, coopertive communities, rituals and listed about 32 different ways people become engaged.

Ed Cotton & Aki Spicer spoke passionately about Blogging, why it's so important and how to do it successfully. They expressed the importance of using blogs to"harvesting our collective intelligence" and "helping keep us curious." It was inspirational because they showed the essence of being a planner requires soaking information in, sharing information with others in an effort to engage other and figure things out.