Digital Darwinism is the evolution of consumer behavior when society & technology evolves faster than you.

In my early days of writing around social media, I focused on the importance of social science in any social media approach. It's still true today...Social Media is about Anthropology, Sociology, Ethnography + Psychology first and technology second.

via Brian Solis

A week or so ago I happily participated at one incredible event called Innovation Lab, organized by Biz magazine. The event, which was unique in what I've seen so far on the local market, was organized as a training about how to generate innovation in business and projects, about innovation and trends in the next 20 years in business, media and technology.  It was held by TrendONE, the Europe's leading micro-trend research company, and the fantastic crew followed by Nick Sohnemann - Global Innovation Advisor, Sebastian Metzner - Senior Trend Analyst, Isabella Furlinger-Strodl - Director TrendONE Viena and Delia Dumitrescu - Trend Analyst. 

Since I'm all about discovering new things/experiences that challenge me and most of all meeting great people, it was a great chance for me to take part at this event, besides the fact that I'm pretty sure I was the youngest person participating. And more, how cool is to have a job researching innovation, identifying micro-trends, macro-trends, mega-trends and most of all teaching people about it. I can only dream about it, for now :).

The training was organized in two parts that lasted almost 8 hours (of course with coffee breaks) which I literally didn't felt, the first one - as a conference (the next trends identified by TrendONE in technology, business and media) and the second part - the radical game (one original method that transforms the trends presented in the first section in practical innovations that could be applied in business). 

The conference was an incursion in how the world would look like after 20 years based on the changes in business, media and technology. Well, mind-blowing. Imagine this: in 2021 information will surround us like a digital fog and some active contact lenses will enable us an augmented vision. Face recognition technologies will provide us with a personal ID in real time. Using media in 20 years will be about future screens connecting intuitively. What's this all about? The next evolutionary step of the internet is the OUTERNET, a new form of intelligence where everything will be connected. It all may sound out of this world, but on a second thought it's actually plausible. These are projects that are already in the testing phase and in 10 years, most likely they will be part of our daily lives. 

Some of the innovative ideas and technologies presented at the event:

1. The wikitude world browser - a mobile app based on augmented reality that with the help of a camera projects information in real time. 

2. In-car apps by Tesla

3.  Smileometer - technology that automatically recognizes emotions, a software developed by the Fraunhofer Institute from Germany, it can be downloaded for free here and it was smartly used for a Magnum campaign. 

4. Augmented Print - the Esquire example. In case you missed this by now, here it is. Other great example of brands using augmented reality are Ray Ban (an online fitting room using a virtual mirror), Tissot and many more. 

5. Phone interacting with TV - W+K London launches the Honda Jazz with a big TV production number and an iPhone app that allows viewers to interact with the spot and catch different characters from TV, first use of "screen-hopping," which uses audio recognition technology to sync the app with the spot's soundtrack. 

6. Electronic Ink - Fulton Innovation developed a Cheerios box that lights up using a new branded-technology called eCoupling that provides electricity via induction, which means the shelves have a coil with AC power running through it. 

7. Drive legally and earn money/The fun theory - Can we get more people to obey the speed limit by making it fun to do? An idea developed by Volkswagen, together with The Swedish National Society for Road Safety. Because fun can obviously change the behavior. For more fun theory madness visit http://www.thefuntheory.com/

8. The first interactive horror movie at the cinema - The movie "Last Call" allowed the interaction between the audience and the movie. The interaction is made possible by language recognition software which transforms the participant's answers via mobile phone into specific instructions. In this case the dialogue between the movie's main actress and an audience member leads to a different film - and outcome - every time. 

This were the main example selected from the conference to give you just a little taste of how technology will change the world in an environment that is shaping more like a Youmocracy (do-it-yourself). It's not a matter of when, but how! 

The second part of the event was the training that was too complex and wonderful to describe it (it has to be experimented if you have the chance) - participants in groups had to form new ideas based on the ones already presented and then you were given money (not actual money) to invest in the best idea.

All in all was one of the best exercise for me, gave me the opportunity to change perspectives and challenge new creative ideas.   

This will officially be my first year with a New Year's resolution written and making it public.Ok, more like a to do list like a very good friend said.  And since another goal for this year is to grow my blog and write more often, I'll take this opportunity to promise to try to read 26 books this year. 

It all started with 2 posts from Julien Smith and Dave Fleet that embarked in the same journey and that got to me. The reason to start this challenge for me is that it's not only a matter of reading more books, getting those creative juices flowing, being more inspired and creative in your ideas, but choosing to follow a plan and stick to it, having the relief of finally finishing someting. No more delays. If you're not going to do that thing today you keep on saying you're going to do, trust me you never will (this is me actually). There's actually a theory that says that the more you postpone doing a thing, the more the time will increase until you're going to actually do it. 

The time - 2 weeks to finish a book seems more than plausible, and roughly 20 pages/day is more than reasonable to squeeze into my daily program since I'm not such a busy person, yet. 

The books

This is not the full list of course but just some important books that I really wanted to read for some time. I will complete this list by asking for recommendations from friends and from those who read me now. Additionally I want to try and read most of them in print, just to get myself away more from the daily hours that I've been spending in front of a laptop, and of course to have my library stack with good books. 

1. Nassim Taleb - Black Swan

2. Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational

3. Brian Solis -  Engage

4. David Meerman Scott - The new rules of marketing and PR

5. Clay Shirky - Cognitive Surplus. Creativity and generosity in a connected age

6. Richard Branson - Screw it, let's do it

7. Sergio Zyman - The end of marketing as we know it

8. Malcolm Gladwell - Blink; What the dog saw

9. Chip Heat & Dan Heath - Made to stick

10. Jeff Jarvis - What would Google do?

11. Steven Pressfield - The war of art

12. Erik Qualman - Socialnomics

13. Chris Brogan, Julien Smith - Trust Agents 

So wish me luck and perseverence and let me here those great recommendations! 

Oh and Happy New Year since it's the 1st of January! :)

via PSFK

This is a post inspired by a post by Julien Smith

Since I'm currently confronting with my monthly information overload, I thought it's a good idea/exercise to try to write a blog post not inspired by the tons of information I read daily. Why? Because this is the primarily information that I used up till now, so it's time for a change and challenge. 

I want to talk to you about the importance of getting the time to meet, listen and think about people and friends. It can mean more than a self discovery that you think and it can enrich you more than you believe. It could be a wake-up call or just another frustration on the list. But most of all, it can amaze you how many new perspectives can you gain by just stepping out of your bubble and safety net.  

via imjustcreative

Check out these cool slides. It will definitely keep your eyes glued.

Disclaimer: No, I didn't vanish away from Earth since I haven't wrote a single thing for over a month and no, I haven't forgotten about those few readers I've got. Bare with me, I'm just figuring out the directions for this blog, hunting for inspiration, since is still a newbie :). Also, suggestions and advices are more than welcome.

It's been a couple of days since the new twitter has been revealed to me too...never too late. It has been more than enough to figure out his full potential and give you some fair personal points. Getting over the first shock that a change brings upon everyone, I can admit that it takes some time getting used to it. Main improvements:

- the wide interface is what strikes you from the start, and after a while you'll notice how well organized it is

- visualizing the content (video, photo, profile etc) takes place separately in a column next to the twitter stream so you can be sure you're not leaving the page to miss out on things; comparing it with the similar feature from Tweetdeck (the twitter client that I've been using for quite some time), there the content is overlapping the twitter stream. But, that means that the personalized background image is no longer grabbing the attention. 

- as I've found out recently there are some great keyboard shortcuts that makes everything a lot more easier as you can see in the picture below, they work only if you've clicked on a tweet and to appear in the right column. 

- exploring content on twitter has become much easier, you don't have to click more and more to load old tweets, just scroll down and they will load and load indefinite...The same goes for the folllowers/following list. As I wanted to do some cleaning in the people that I follow, it made it quite useful not to  endlessly flip the followers page, but just scroll down. 

- another good thing is the feature that was also available on Tweetdeck, texting in the message bar @ followed by a letter of the one you want to reply, will reveal the users starting with that letter, just as on Facebook. 

- and finally, I cannot ignore the fact that there's an increase in the speed everything is loading on twitter

Minor flaws: you don't get to see  the client anymore that every person is using and the number of messages are not shown as it used to be

It's not perfect, there are a couple of cracks in the system but it's a big step ahead that I gladly took. It definitely got me using it more, in the time I'm not having Tweetdeck open. So don't say no just because it looks difficult to handle at first sight, give it a second chance, it may surprise you. There are so many good additions that still need exploring to do.  

P.S. As for what I've been up to lately: next week I'm gonna start my courses at the master - Brand Management and Corporate Communications it is, I will be apart of IAA Young Professional to build beautiful projects and meanwhile of course, like the rest of this young generation, looking for THE job to keep my enthusiasm running. 

Details here

You get up in the morning, drink your coffee and start catching up with your news feed, pilling up with every minute, besides your countless e-mails and it always seems like you don't have that time to fully emerse yourself with information. Briefly: you feel overwhelmed with information. 

My main sources of information daily are google reader and social networking sites. I spend quite some time reading and trying to be up to date with all the important news out there and for that, Twitter has become one important source. I have more that 1000 people worth following so it's hard trying to catch up with the great stuff out there...maybe that's why firefox sometimes crashes on me and chrome freezes ;).

But then awhile ago, fortunately I stumbled upon paper.li and today decided to research more about it. I'm sure it's not the first time you find out about this but maybe you haven't had the chance to explore it long enough to see it's potential. Paper.li lets you organize on subjects your twitter and also your facebook stream into an wasy to read newspaper-style format. Great way to stay up to date even tough you missed twitter for a couple of days, filter your news, give all the attention to the ones that really matter and be more time-efficient. Or maybe you are accustomed of reading newspapers the old fashion way, this gives you a great style of reading your news and maybe getting rid of that feeling that you missed something.

You have the options to create a newspaper of a Twitter user and those being followed, of a Twitter tag or of a Twitter list. 

Some big potential uses could be: 

- the possibility of promoting twitter list by subject to non twitter-users

- organizing hash-tag conversations into an easy-to-read form that can be used summarizing events for the ones that attended and didn't attended

To get you started and exploring, here's my paper.li and some great recommendations out there from the team at Edelman Digital, Guardian Tech, Neil Perkin, Lee Odden's list of public relations.