The Morning at Widgetcon (RAW NOTES)

Opening Remarks


Chris Cunningham, Freewebs, Master of Ceremonies


A witty opening video routine by Chris Cunningham kicked off the show. A lost Cunningham traversed the city asking passers by, “what is the best way to sell a widget?” Pretty funny stuff, even to  cynics like me :)


Opening Keynote: Advertising 2.0: When will Marketing catch up to Media?


Chris Jones, Former CEO, JWT


Disclaimer: Chris sits on the board of freewebs




  • A self evident truth that you can divide the world into two type of people

    • The people who can divide people into 2 groups and people who cannot




  • Digital Natives

    • You cannot be a digital native if you are over 30



  • Digital Immigrants

  • “you will not find me seeking to display native skills”


  • Advantages to being an immigrant

    • Enthusiasm based on knowledge of the old



  • The world is not yet certain about the robustness about any business in the digital space

  • Disruption—The internet has not created chaos, it has simply revealed it

  • “It may have been a consumer society but the gods were the television networks and the temples were walmart…”

  • Agora- The greek marketplace


(this is a very interesting sermon, history lesson :) )



  • Talks about distribution via railroad etc. pioneers


(while this is all very interesting, I am loosing the sense of relevance….the historic account is great, but it has been going on for about 15 minutes at this point)



  • Distributed power and literacy


  • 3 great forces powering the interactive space

    • Bandwidth

    • Search

    • UGC (17 MM people have posted content on the web)



  • The digital worlds lives in the Agora, not in the temple (I dig that one)



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