Teens and Technology: Countdown to YPulse National Mashup ’08!

“There are people who believe that for-profit marketing and non-profit youth media or education can’t exist in the same place. I disagree. That’s part of the reason why I call these events ‘Mashups,’ said YPulse founder Anastasia Goodstein. “They pull together people who don’t normally attend the same event.”

Whoa, I’ll say. The Ypulse National Mashup is less than two weeks away, and I can’t wait to see the eclectic crew of colleagues from social change agents to techno pros and start-ups. It’s sort of the SXSW for those interested in youth media.

Anastasia has kindly offered me a press pass, since our teeny nonprofit can’t afford another big bucks event. (See my prior post about the launch of YPulse Research, and the finance factor that precludes me from attending many industry functions)

To Anastasia’s credit, this seems to validate she’s truly ‘walking the walk’ via outreach including voices from ‘all sides’ of the media microphone. So, consider this my full disclosure: Cinderella was invited to the ball as press, with no attempt to curb my candor, and I respect this immensely…

After all, much to my chagrin, last year Anastasia made it readily apparent:

“For future events, we plan to only include sponsored case studies and clearly label them as such. Any speaker on a panel, who happens to also be a sponsor, will have been invited to speak first. The two tracks will be kept separate.” (Fuse Youth Marketing is the YPulse ’08 anchor sponsor)

As one who has always felt it was illogical to correlate speakers with sponsors if you’re truly trying to open ears and minds to a balanced and insightful conversational dialog, I’m more than a bit curious as to how this will all shake out…especially since that’s what cobbed up the Virtual Worlds Expo for me…in terms of flattened expectations.

I was hoping for meaningful dialogue, hearing articulation of thought leaders on ways we can harness the potential of this powerful medium for common good…and ended up feeling subjected to sales pitches and ‘my gizmo’s better than your gizmo’ types of wonky corporate-techno-types with egos the size of the Hulk.

Still, I also understand big events are money-making ventures and costs need off-set by someone…

Just skimming the agenda and the YPulse Facebook group alone I can already tell the YPulse National Mashup looks to be quite different.

Besides, Anastasia’s smart and über-media savvy, so she’s clearly thought this one through to stir up an interesting mix of advocates and marketers ensuring we’re not all just blathering to ourselves…

Kind of like arranging the right seating at a dinner party.

Evidence?

Even though ‘mobile’ is the word being mouthed from moms to marketers, (Blyk’s ad model for 16-24 kicks off the keynote on the youth mobile market’s global impact with insights from mig33, Tiny Pictures, Socialight and of course brandcentral, mDisney)…the other end of that mouthpiece is being addressed too: (i.e. prevention of cyberbullying, texting and internet safety, etc. )

Fave folks like Nancy Gruver of New Moon Girl Media, cyberbully specialist Debbie Heimowitz of Adina’s Deck, Courtney Macavinta of RespectRx, (see her recent clip on talking to your child about teen pregnancy here) and Larry Magid on internet safety, plus plenty of social change agents I’m eager to press palms with…Lots of people ready to use the power of media for positive change! Last summer attending the ’07 Mashup, I was overwhelmed with pages of notes, biz cards, and data on new media/marketing trends to the point that it was a bit of a brain fry.

This year I’ll know to pace myself and map out my ‘must-sees’ on the agenda to organize in advance.

Though it’ll be hard as even the pre-conference topics appeal (“building a youth movement, understanding tweens and teens, and  book publishing”) so I can’t drag in late…

NOR can I slip out early, as the evening sneak peek screening of American Teen that swept Sundance and SXSW has piqued my interest completely; plus my daughter’s turning 13 two days later, so I KNOW she’d love to see it before it comes out in theatres July 26.

It’s got a Breakfast Club feel to it, (note the pithy mirrored promo of the original) but it’s filmed in documentary style, which is ALWAYS interesting to me, for tips on our own film, Body Blitz: Media, Shaping Youth. Plus, we have a whole media enrichment program riffing off of ‘cliques and tribes’ using the reality show format of ‘Survivor’ as a media model for middle school (being voted off the island, er, lunchtable) so this is grand!

Speaking of grand, at YPulse I want to finally meet Tracy Grand from JacketFlap, a great children’s book resource and kids’ publishing social network, as well as readergirl diva Justina Chen Headley, who is worldchanging every moment with her work, and of course, hear about the YPulse foray into the books and publishing world, since they’re already expanding massively with their new research division. (sheesh, maybe I should go back to the sponsorship model for our nonprofit! 😉 Sure is quicker!

Last time the YPulse event had an energetic, youthful vibe that reminded me of my ad agency days; so I’m excited to see what they’ve cooked up this round.

They wisely banned boring PowerPoint slides (yay!), used a direct “attendee to speaker” texting format when evercool Karl Carter spoke to preclude the time-sink of microphones dragged around the room (double yay!) and did a great job mixing business and pleasure with fun and festivity, which seems to be an industry mandate.

The entire YPulse experience of hearing new trends and tactics harkened me back to playing redlight/greenlight as a child.

‘Member that game?

It was fun, fast, full of energy, laughter, and just when you’d start to run full speed ahead a big “red light” would leave you tripping over yourself to screech on the brakes.

Bringing together “both sides of the aisle to network, listen, and partner in ways that are mutually beneficial” is a green light all the way for me…

Pragmatic. Smart. Visionary. Appealing.

In fact, the whole ‘mashup’ concept has the same tonality as Craig’s List Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp by embracing the common theme of CSR:

Corporate social responsibility can (MUST!) give nonprofits a foothold to even have a rat’s chance of sustainability over the long haul…

Totally agree with that teamwork premise. Nonprofits and for-profits helping each other.

Look no further than our Age of Conversation book I’m co-authoring again in ’08, this time with 237 global gurus instead of 103…Who better to beat the drums for a philanthropic cause like Variety, the Children’s Charity than a cadre of power-hitters in marketing?

Sure beats talking to yourself in an echo chamber of idealism.

But…(there’s always a but)…

All is not totally rosy on the vested interest front. Even though most of the ’07 YPulse conference was a smooth flowing green light, I had some jarring red light moments, and a few blinking yellow ‘proceed with caution’ signs that bear watching this round.

It would take forever to deconstruct all of them, so I’ll hit a few highlights on the “uh-oh” youth front and peruse them carefully in a couple of weeks to compare my observations this year.

Biggest issue?

Some of the messaging and body language coming out of the sharks and minnows swimming together in this unusual sea creeped me out a bit…

Specifically?

Observing some overly eager marketers circling their prey, frantically jotting down every twitch and tale of the ‘live teen panel’ as if they were recording prophetic wisdom from an alien life source…these ‘specimens’ on stage.

There was something very ‘E.T.’ about it…

I wanted to shield the kids in an invisible shroud, hide them from the white labcoats who kept clinically poking and prodding and mining their mindshare from damaging the soft tissue inside their brains, brandwashing them into believing they were commodity-based products.

Too late, Jake.

In the bathroom during the break, I overheard this snippet from the next stall, two teens drunk on their own empowerment, positioning THEMSELVES in payola mode as influencers, opportunists and megastars.

“Could you BELIEVE that one guy hammering me with questions nonstop? I mean, it was totally off the stage, like, I wasn’t even getting paid or anything! Omg, he got all that info out of me for FREE!”

Kids pimping themselves as marketing commodities is an altered state.

It’s kind of like asking my daughter to do a chore out of her normal scope, when she flashes me that incredulous, ‘what do I get for it’ kind of look.

Maybe I’m projecting my own ‘stuff’ here, but it was definitely disturbing and evocative of a larger ‘payola’ problem…Yes, the kids are sharp. But let’s not worship at the alter of greed.

This pattern erupted many times over the course of my ‘fly on the wall’ meandering, where some of the teens literally buffered conversation, craning their necks looking for peers, like celebrities seeking their handlers for guidance. Should they answer a question in the hallway? Sell themselves to the highest bidder as youth consultants? Eep.

Self-worth tied to being a consumption-driven data tool reminds me of all those ‘peer to peer influencers’ and teen intelligence GIA or Proctor & Gamble teen Tremor types that sell their views to make a buck in a bit of ‘moral flexibility,’ shall we say. (Target Rounders campaign, anyone?)

Conversely, I happen to believe this particular digital generation has the makings to be one of the most engaged, capable, and altruistically inclined mobile-social network of global unity any of us have ever seen!

The eco justice and cultural competency alone is astounding, breaking through barriers of language through music, hate through tolerance, and online community building and virtual world forums and chat rooms that dare to give kids a safe place to educate one another.

Virtual world Habbo’s new Matthew Shepard Foundation alliance for example, is giving kids a global space to deal with bullying, disrespect and discrimination in a virtual room to grow their own compassion.

Habbo’s InfoBus resource is set up as the inside of a high end touring bus (much like we want to do with the virtual SusBus for sustainability via Earthseeds only the prototype is virtual and the SusBus tours schools!)

Online they lead discussions twice a week staffed by MSF to help teens navigate turmoil, ‘erase hate’ and champion acceptance through understanding.

THESE are the kinds of media/marketing opportunities that light me up with positive potential…Right up there with Habbo’s 50,000 teen eco-signatures via Greenpeace for the climate change survey, to present to the U.N., online to offline eco-actions, and cycle-breaking in its rawest form of youthful hope and ‘yes we can’ spirit.

Cynics might say, “online” hate is where most of the bullying comes from in the first place…but to me, online anonymity cuts both ways.

It can be used to HELP as much as harm, becoming a viable platform to reveal the microcosm of schoolyards so we can learn ways to help understand each other using media as the conduit for positive distribution.

So kudos to Habbo’s InfoBus for opening up this form of ‘in-world’ teen dialog on a variety of topics.

By the way, their 2008 Global Youth Survey of 58,000+ teens is being offered via the YPulse Research division as of yesterday, but here’s a classic example of what I could NEVER afford.

$779? Riiiiiiiiiight. (As Bill Cosby used to say in his Noah monolog)

So, fellow nonprofits and cheapskates who need a global sampling to create programs that work, here’s a hat tip…You can preview some of the data in synopsis form to see what kids across the globe are doing via the YPulse Facebook group here.

Needless to say, I’m hoping the YPulse National Mashup has as much ‘teach’ as well as ‘reach’ to tap into synergies in the youth sphere, so send me any of your core questions or concerns to start my keyboard clicking…

There are plenty of channels for change if we turn the right knobs, so to speak…

Like this crew is doing at Quantum Shift TV, who just announced their school video contest winners and have already launched another contest, this time using machinima called, “Quest 2 Change Real Life” (feature forthcoming, soon after the feature on Courtney’s RespectRx Rallies)!

This seems like a fun summer night challenge to team teens in creating machinima stories to solve various eco-crises. (fall deadline after school starts!) And if you’re still in ‘what the heck is machinima’ mode, don’t forget our article…

Okay, I’m rambling, readers…so will hush and leave you with a query:

What areas do you want to hear about the most when I cover YPulse?

Where should I spend the majority of my time? How can I serve you as the readership?

Mobile/social? Citizen journalism? Youth activism? Games and virtual worlds? Emerging technology?

By all means, if you’re attending, ping me in advance so we can say hello! I love my ‘virtual friends’ but there’s nothing quite like a real life face to face introduction. Join me there?

Visual Credits: NEA site/Silence Cyberbullying, istockphotos

YPulse “user generated” lunch sessions, suggested and moderated by attendees.

Intimate, in-depth discussions that happen over lunch; here are a few roundtables in the works for week after next. There’s still time to register and get in on the discussions (Shaping Youth readers, remember to ping me with your questions of what’s on your mind!)

2008 Ypulse National Mashup

Attendee Tables (more TBA)

Defining Social Media Celebrity – Joe Marchese, SocialVibe
Girls, Self Esteem & Media – Claire Mysko, author of Girls Inc. Presents: You’re Amazing
Reaching International Youth Digitally – Adam Aberman, Ashoka Youth Venture
Managing User Generated Conversations – Benjamin Wagner, MTV News
Teens & Finances – Stefanka Von Brzeski, Santa Clara University
How to Create Engaging Social Apps For Youth – Lance Tokuda, Rock You
Understanding Today’s College Students – Clifton Wright, Survey U
Engaging Youth On Health Issues With Technology – Liz Song, HopeLab
Creating Successful Partnerships In The Youth Space – Paul Brindaki, Miss O & Friends
Leveraging Technology For Youth Civic Engagement – Jamie Contreras, GenerationEngage
Is Tech Hurting Youth Communication Skills? – Allison Mooney, NextGreatThing
All Things Mobile: Mobile Web, Mobile Games & More – Stephen Siaz, mDisney
State of Affairs On Legislation Affecting Youth Online – Denise Tayloe, Privo
Building Online Buzz With Teens – Roger Slaven, USAA
Advertising In Mobile Environments – Antii Ohrling, Blyk