Author and Wired senior editor Bill Wasik will speak at the Event Innovation Forum, a new conference at the BizBash IdeaFest at the Javits Center October 24. Wasik created the first flash mobs in 2003, and he has written widely on viral phenomena and Internet culture. His presentation will focus on how physical crowds follow different patterns than online crowds when electronic communication brings people together in real life.
"Bill has already influenced countless corporate events with his creation of flash mobs," said Chad Kaydo, editor in chief of BizBash, who is curating the Event Innovation Forum with Howard Givner, executive director of the Event Leadership Institute. "I'm excited to see what kinds of ideas and innovative thinking this session will provoke for our attendees."
Wasik is the author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (Viking, 2009) and, with Monica Murphy, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus (Viking, 2012). "And Then There's This is one of the smartest, most interesting things I've read about how our online and offline lives affect each other," Kaydo said. "This is guaranteed to be a thought-provoking session for event professionals looking for insights into where live events are going."
Here's the blurb for the session:
The Connected Crowd: Physical Gatherings in a Digital Age
Today we often use the word crowd to describe groups of people in cyberspace (e.g., crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and so on). But when electronic communication brings people together in real life, the physical crowd follows different patterns than online crowds do. Drawing on examples that include the London riots, Occupy Wall Street, the TED conferences, and his own experience with flash mobs, Bill Wasik will sketch out how digital media have changed the way we get together IRL today.
Attendees can register for the BizBash IdeaFest and the Event Innovation Forum now at bizbash.com/ideafestny.
