Have you been missing me? Wondering where I’ve been? I know it’s a long time since I’ve posted, but there is a very good reason. In addition to my baby names work, I have been working tirelessly (although tired-fully is probably the more accurate word) to produce the first-ever Digital Family Summit, which is coming up June 29-July 1 in Philadelphia. (Just over a week from now).
The Digital Family Summit is the brainchild of Stephanie Schwab, the dynamo social media powerhouse behind CrackerJack Marketing. There are already plenty of mom blogger conferences and dad blogger conferences, influencer conferences and market research conferences, technology and innovation conferences, but perhaps the biggest shift we are experiencing in media is in youth-driven content creation, and that is what the Digital Family Summit is all about.
Kids today (do I already sound like my grandmother?) take content creation for granted, in the same way I took turning on the TV for granted when I was a girl. When I was a girl I couldn’t fathom what my grandmother’s life must have been like, growing up without television and all.
And now that’s how my kids feel about my having grown up without the Internet.
Until very recently, most content kids consumed was programmed for them by adults. Think of the Saturday morning cartoons and the ABC After School Specials you probably grew up with. For the most part, that kind of content followed a traditional narrative structure and had a more or less universal appeal to it. It’s a far cry from the meme-based humor, fan fiction mash-ups, web comics and YouTube videos that are the central components of my own kids’ media consumption and creation. To be honest, there are lots and lots of things my kids love entertainment-wise that simply go over my head. And I like to think I am pretty attuned to pop-culture or at least to pop culture references.
Do you know what a Brony is? Or a Pegasister? How about Forever Alone or Me Gusta Face?
These are part and parcel of kids’ pop culture consumption today. (In case you are wondering, Bronies and Pegasisters are teenage fanboys and fangirls of My Little Pony — yes, that My Little Pony. They write bizarre fan fiction that merges the world of My Little Pony with the world of the video game Portal, for example. Forever Alone and Me Gusta are popular Internet memes that frankly, I don’t understand why they are funny).
And creating content is as natural as consuming it is for this generation. They are opening up a brave new world of content, with its own formats, themes, points of view and narrative stylings.
So where I have I been these past few months? Steeped in the world of youth content creation, putting together an agenda of talks, workshops and interactive sessions that bring families together to explore, build skills and connect with each other.
Check it out at http://www.digitalfamilysummit.com Tickets are still available as of this posting, so if it sounds interesting, I hope you’ll join me there.