Social Week
Pivot Conference 2013

October in New York means it is time for the Pivot Conference. In its fourth year, the Pivot Conference 2013 had a new venue, one of its most impressive lineups of speakers and sponsors along with its largest attendance. The two day event started off Tuesday at the Altman Building with host Brian Solis leading the way as the conference explored this year’s theme – The Total Digital Experience.

The day started Brian Solis and Anil Dash having a direct and enlightening discussion on the impact of technology on media and society. The day’s sessions also explored rapid innovation and integrated experiences and the mobile shopper before exciting research by the Tomorrow Project and Dynamic Signal was presenting studying the impact of Social on the sales process .

One of the day’s most entertaining, direct and to-the-point sessions (not to mention bow ties) was when Ted Rubin, Jeremy Waite and Richard Margetic took the stage to discuss the relationship economy. The stark conversation captured the attention of the audience and sparking conversation.

Another entertaining discussion was the audience participation-driven “Provocation” led by Jeff Jarvis exploring measurement. The goal of today’s provocation was to lead the audience to a new way of approaching measurement to guide a path to a more pragmatic and useful means of measuring success, ROI, influence and more.

The day wound up driving through the integrated experience in the automotive, sports and retail sectors and wrapped up exploring entertainment in the new age. The culmination of the first day’s events was a discussion and a live performance by Brooklyn-based music group The Skins.

Like all new venues, there were a few kinks to iron out but a broken internet communications cable nearby played one of the biggest spoilers of the day knocking out internet access for most of the neighborhood that included the Pivot Conference. Our streaming partner Watchitoo handled it in stride, recording all the sessions and modifying the stream to at least broadcast some of the sessions as our impromptu network could handle. As the day wore on, service improved that allowed us to broadcast the live stream.

Day two looks to be just as exciting and we are looking forward to taking the next part of the journey exploring the Total Digital Experience.