The quality of the audience is the heart of Future of Influence Summit

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Throughout all our events, including among others Future of Media Summit, Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, and now Future of Influence Summit, our intention has been to have top-level participants who are themselves creating the future, and generating useful insights from interaction with their peers.

This is not supposed to be about the audience coming to hear wisdom from those on the platform. The person sitting next to you should often have as much to offer as the invited speakers.

As such, we always include “audience roundtables” and other approaches that help participants to have conversations, building their own insights from the ideas proposed by the speakers and panellists. At Future of Influence Summit, we will step up a few notches the video interaction between the audiences at the San Francisco and Sydney events to again create something unique in terms of participation.

As importantly, we have a quite extraordinary audience line-up in both locations. Without checking with everyone we can’t generate a list of star audience members, but be assured it matches the calibre of the invited speakers. At a highly participatory event like this, the quality of the audience is what makes it exceptional. Based on who we have coming, we can expect it to be spectacular.

I hope you can be part of the Future of Influence Summit experience!

Future of Influence Summit After Party: San Francisco – August 31

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Once Future of Influence Summit finishes in San Francisco on August 31 at 6pm, we will go to the nearby 111 Minna bar for drinks and the After Party. The conversation on where influence is going will continue with a little lubrication :-)

See here for location and full info on 111 Minna

If you’re in San Francisco you really should go to the Future of Influence Summit itself – that’s where the REAL fun will be had :-) – but if for some reason you cannot make it in the day, be sure to come to the After Party!

There will be some other things on at 111 Minna – say you’re there for Future of Influence when you arrive and look for the Future of Influence Summit logo as above.

Five key trends in how influence is transforming society

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I just got off an interview on the future of influence on 2SM radio which lasted almost 15 minutes – close to a record for my interviews on live AM radio, which tends to do 3-5 minute segments. The talk show host was clearly fascinated by the issues of how influence is shifting away from people like him, and towards the unwashed masses.

In the interview, done in the lead-up to Future of Influence Summit which is on next week in Sydney and San Francisco, I discussed the social transformation wrought by the changing influence landscape, and pointed to key five trends driving this change:

1. Influence is democratized

It used to be that people were influential by virtue of their position, such as CEO, journalist, or politician. In a world of blogging, Twitter, and social media anyone can become highly influential, shaping how we think, behave, and spend. Companies can ignore no-one. As many more become heard, a truer democracy will emerge.

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What are the business models for influence and reputation – today and in the future?

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One of the most exciting topics of Future of Influence Summit next week is exploring the business models for influence and reputation.

This is an issue which is better addressed in San Francisco/ Silicon Valley than anywhere else, and we have an extraordinary panel lined up to address the topic of Business Models for Influence and Reputation at 2:20 – 3:10pm Pacific Time.

Some of the questions I see include:

* Will there be new mechanisms for individuals to monetize their influence?

* What products or services will advertisers and marketers spend money on in seeking to tap influence?

* Will advertising spending be driven primarily by influence?

* What are models for monetizing the measurement of influence and reputation?

* Who will take the bulk of the value? Will it be the influencers themselves, or intermediaries in the emerging ecosystem?

Let’s take a very quick glance at the people speaking on the panel and what they’re doing – absolutely a star-laden cast.

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Brian Solis at Future of Influence Summit: Putting the Public Back in Public Relations!

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When we started organizing Future of Influence Summit, our minds turned immediately to Brian Solis, who is himself one of the most central influencers and thought leaders in this rapidly emerging space.

So it’s awesome that Brian is speaking at the Summit, providing his insights on Influence at the Center of Marketing and Advertising.

Brian’s blog PR 2.0 is essential reading on the topic, and he also often guest blogs for TechCrunch. Just a few of his prominent posts that are particularly relevant to the future of influence include:

– Full Disclosure: Sponsored Conversations on Twitter Raise Concerns, Prompt Standards (Great post, will write more about later)

– Identifying and Connecting with Influencers

– Real-Time Conversations Gain in Influence, Hasten Social CRM

– Unveiling the New Influencers

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Hashtag for Future of Influence Summit is #foi09

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Belatedly launching the hashtag for Future of Influence Summit: #foi09

FOI is Freedom of Information as well as Future of Influence, so putting the year in will help us stand out…

I have been remiss in not using the hashtag in my Twittering yet, but now we have quite extraordinary cast of attendees as well as amazing speakers in both San Francisco and Sydney, it’s time to kick off the Twitter conversation on where influence is going.

Hope to speak soon on Twitter about the future of influence!

Here are links to a few conversation starters:

The changing nature of influentials and the role of the social graph

You (or your favorite charity) can make money from your tweets! Participate in an experiment on making money from influence

Influence research: what are the real influence networks within Twitter and social media?

Influence research: Duncan Watts and the debate on whether “influentials” really matter

Launch of the Influence Landscape framework

The changing nature of influentials and the role of the social graph

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We weren’t the first to use the phrase ‘Future of Influence’. Most prominently Nate Elliott of Forrester wrote a report ‘The Future of Influence‘ (though you’re better off going to Future of Influence Summit than buying the report :-) ) and has done a number of presentations on the theme.

Nate summarizes the topic:

* As Users Become More Active in Recommending Products and Services, New Influence Challenges Volume of Classic Influence

* The Growth of New Influence Will Overwhelm Some Users, Reinforcing the Value of Personal Recommendations from Known Sources

* Marketers Should Focus on Classic Influentials to Drive Direct Action, Encourage Them to Make Off-line Recommendations

Nate’s presentation below describes the difference between what he calls ‘Classic Influentials‘ (who exert passive influence by responding to requests for information) and ‘New Influentials‘ (who exert influence by proactively giving advice).

The Future of Influence

View more presentations from Web2 Expo.

A key focus in this analysis is user reviews. As we get a critical mass of reviews of products and content, this becomes a better source of information to consumers. However simple recommendation behaviors, for example in Twitter, are also being aggregated to provide information that guides decisions and behaviors.

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You (or your favorite charity) can make money from your tweets! Participate in an experiment on making money from influence

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You (or your favorite charity) can benefit from your influence! To find out how, read on…

One of the key themes of Future of Influence Summit, on next week in San Francisco and Sydney, is ‘business models for influence and reputation’.

There are many angles to this particular topic, including:

* Will it be possible for individuals to effectively monetize their influence and reputation?

* What new mechanisms will allow people to make money from the influence?

* How will influence intersect with spending on advertising? (some of the leading players in this space will be speaking at the Summit)

* What are business models for the measurement of influence and reputation?

I recently wrote about Sponsored Tweets, which is one of a number of platforms for people to make money by tweeting sponsored messages and links. There has been extensive discussion on this concept, with a high level of polarization in the community as to whether or not this is a good idea (see for example the comments on Mashable, and thoughts from David Risley, White Hat Crew, and AdWeek).

In the spirit of experimentation and learning how paid influence may work, we are introducing a rewarded tweeting system for promoting Future of Influence Summit. Here is how it works:

1. People using an approved discount code get 25% off the full price of registration (US$199 in San Francisco, A$600 in Sydney). For any registrations with that code, an additional 5% of the registration fee (US$10 for US, A$30 for Australia) is paid to you (or your favourite charity).

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This is my current favorite album – listen to it here!

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Ellipse by Imogen Heap is my current new favorite album – absolutely delightful!

Very generously given away by Imogen a few days ago on her website, and also available as an embed, as below.

Have a listen!

I discovered Imogen Heap when listening to the Kate Havnevik channel on Last.FM – Kate’s music is lovely. Kate and Imogen’s music is indeed very much in the same vein.

Imogen is here providing very open access to her music, with prominent buy buttons on each of the tracks.

While you can listen to streamed music when at your computer, you won’t do that on your iPod or mobile. So you will quite possibly buy the song to pull into your iTunes and listen to as part of your personal music stream.

I’m certainly very happy to allow her to sell her music on my site, and I hope she makes lots of money from this! I think she’ll do just fine.

For more insights into how to create and tap online influence at Future of Influence Summit 2009.

Influence research: what are the real influence networks within Twitter and social media?

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We continue our Influence research series, paving the way for in-depth insights and breaking new ground on the topic at Future of Influence Summit 2009 in San Francisco and Sydney. See the Future of Influence Summit blog for the full series.

Earlier this year Bernardo Huberman and colleagues at HP’s Social Computing Lab did an analysis of Twitter networks, resulting in the article Social Networks that Matter: Twitter under the microscope.

They studied a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users to gain insights into how they communicated and connected. There were a variety of insights from the research, including the relationship between Twitter activity and number of followers.

hubermantwitter.gif

Source: Social Networks that Matter: Twitter under the microscope

The final conclusion of the paper was:

Many people, including scholars, advertisers and political activists, see online social networks as an opportunity to study the propagation of ideas, the formation of social bonds and viral marketing, among others. This view should be tempered by our findings that a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. As we showed in the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus the need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word of mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend.

This is of course hardly a surprising outcome. Having hundreds or even thousands of Twitter followers does not imply a strong relationship, just as anyone with over a thousand Facebook friends will not necessarily be influenced by all of them.

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