ImageThink is the Brooklyn based team of Nora Hertling and Heather Williams.

Here is the gallery of their remarkable work during MLOVE ConFestival USA in Monterey in April 2012. Speakers ranged from thought-leaders of Singularity University, to experience designers, and other inspiring creative minds. The most important content of their speeches is captured here by the brilliant work of ImageThink – who are also visually record the keynotes during high-profile events like SXSW.

Salim Ismail, Singularity University

Cathy Brooks, everything.me

Brad Templeton, Singularity University – Di-Ann Eisnor, waze

Mark Rigley, QNX – Jessica Scorpio, getaround

Chester Santos – Heather Gallagher, Burningman

Josette Melchor, GAFFTA – Amish Patel, Microsoft

Toni Neidhardt, Co-Curator Teen Camp – Aape Pojahvirta, infusion.fi

start-up Panel

Beverly Jackson, Grammy’s – Vikter Duplaix, DJ

Scott Jenson, frog design

Ricardo Diaz, TBWA/Chiat/Day

Alfred Lui, fjord – Experience Design Panel

Leslie Langan, Adjitsu – Gene Keenan, isobar

Jack Hallahan, mojiva – Laura Diaz, Verizon

Visual Recording: The Art of ImageThink at MLOVE Monterey is a post from: MLOVE

Without sharing, there would be no such thing as a music industry. Sharing the songs that capture the moments of our lives and sharing our love of the artists who help create these moments. Through sharing their work and their life’s love, musicians are able to reach out to their existing fans and create new ones – sometimes in parts of the world they had never expected.

What song was playing the day happened?

When a song is integral to a particular moment of your life, how would you express it? In the way that Instagram allows us to quickly share the moments we can photograph, Jamie Sampson and Soundtracking want us to share music.

“Soundtracking is specifically focused on expression and sharing,” says Jamie. “Most other apps target music consumption.”

“Soundtracking is about sharing. Sharing is key. And these are not moments where you’re sitting at your desktop. We all have these moments, everywhere. You’re telling other users, here, this is my moment, this is what is sounds like, and I am trying to share this musical moment with you.”

Sharing. It all seems so simple. Technology has not only made it easier for us to share music with one another, it has given a constant, tangible way for artists to connect with those who adore them and even broaden their fan base. It has never been easier to share parts of our lives with others and we’re using it connect more deeply with music and the artists.

In her role as Director of Marketing for The Grammys, Beverly Jackson’s original goal was to surpass the BET Awards in terms of real-time social buzz during this year’s telecast.

13.0 million social media comments. Through transmedia storytelling, Beverly and her team helped make “Music’s Biggest Night” into the “Most Social Event in the History of Television.” And before you say –

“Whitney Houston was only the fifth most-Tweeted about celebrity during the telecast,” says Beverly. “Adele was the huge winner in Twitter. But that’s only part of it.”

Led by Beverly, The Grammys and [creative agency] Chiat\Day capitalized fully on exposure through traditional, owned, hybrid, and social media – an integrated transmedia campaign.

“This is the script, this is the narrative, do you want to get in on the story?”

For the last five years, The Grammys have developed a mobile app for the event, each one more social and more integrated than its predecessor. For the 54^th Grammy Awards, everything seemed to come together. From multiple cameras offering users multiple views of events and red carpets, and celebrity promotion, to getting music bloggers involved in creating round-the-clock coverage and hashtagged check-ins to award-week events.

“This year, we really got the app and mobile experience right,” says Beverly. “We needed you to see the app was there and that once you downloaded, we needed you to see what was going to happen and invite you to be a part of it through notification.”

“It was about creating and sharing something you could not get anywhere else,” says Beverly. The pre-Grammys red carpet livestream available only through the app peaked with 165,000 concurrent viewers in the afternoon leading up to the event.

“Viewers to our mobile device became just as important to us as our television audience.”

Transmedia storytelling. Mobile “viewers” counted in the same space as those reached through traditional media. This is the way the music industry is moving – just ask the artists. Grammy-nominated DJ & Producer – and judge on BET’s Master of the Mix — Vikter Duplaix embraced digital and took his career to places he never imagined.

“I came from the old school way of doing things,” says Vikter. “The perspective of how someone now searches the web and finds artists they like is different from the generation I came from. We would have to wait for the radio or Billboard push.”

“Kids today pay attention to what their peers are doing, not an established source. They are not beholding to the traditional forms I was used to. Once I got past wanting the big poster on I-95 and the all that comes with it, it became about paying attention to the young girl or guy talking about what is cool.”

Vikter credits his business partner with helping him change his attitude and behavior about connecting with fans online. Once he began connecting, he discovered he was reaching people – and had a global fan base. By keeping his mind open, he took advantage of new opportunities, giving back to his fans in South Africa and signing with labels in Germany in the UK.

“If it wasn’t for my ability to be in different cultures in different places, my career would have been cut short. What I learned in Berlin, Johannesburg, and other cities allowed me to morph and change forms while figuring out what to do in the U.S. market. By the time Master of The Mix came along, I was a natural choice because I had an international reputation.”

Connecting with his fans online gave Vikter more than new career opportunities around the world. It showed him he was not only building his reputation as an artist, but also himself as a brand. And everything depended upon authenticity.

We have to find ways to connect with people in an emotional sense because most of us do not have the benefit of a big marketing budget devoted to making us part of the every day experience.

“It is a challenge for us to connect with people on this level and make them feel a part of our every day lives. We have to be consistent, because the artist as a brand lives in the mind of the people – not what you say it is but what people think it is.”

Music + Mobile: New Opportunities for Sharing and Storytelling is a post from: MLOVE

It would be impossible to have a conference on mobile without showing how these hand-held devices will change the way we educate the youth of today – and tomorrow.

At the first MLOVE USA, we heard from both a leading pioneer in education reform and a 17-year-old girl heading towards adulthood during an era where more and more of our lives are literally, in the palm of our hands.

Finland’s Aape Pohjavirta is currently developing Inclusion.fi, a global initiative designed to change both teaching and learning through mobile technology. Aape believes the fragmentation and continued emphasis on assessment testing found in United States’ education policy will guarantee zero impact on the nation’s future.

“In today’s world, data is everything, We can find data anytime and everywhere,” says Aape. “We teach something that has been decided is good for us.”

In the U.S., we give data, the relations of which make it informative, the data patterns that make it knowledge. We teach that only understanding this data, and experience, will create wisdom.

If we know everything, we must change the way we teach. We need to teach how to ask the right questions, not what to ask. We need to teach that the answers are ever-changing, and how to use these evolving “solutions” in the best-possible manner.

“Wisdom must be taught. We need to show understandable patterns of information that are formed with knowledge, regardless of the data available.”

17-year-old MLOVE Teen Camp veteran Antonia Neidhardt can access all sorts of data from her laptop, her tablet, her phone – but now what?

“We have access to everything,” says Antonia. “Where are all the ideas?”

Antonia wants to change the world, and she longs for this to be more than a lofty, youthful ambition. She’s looking towards today’s adults to help provide her with some direction on where to go and how to do it.

There are so many things I can’t do that I want to, but you can, and there are so many others in the world who cannot do it either.

There are now over 7 Billion people living on this planet. How many of them share Antonia and Aape’s passion to be the change they wish to see in the world?

“Over 99% answer NO when asked if they are doing something to make a change in the world,” says Antonia. “That’s only 70,000 people aspiring to make a difference. 70,000 is nothing.”

No matter how old we are, we can recognize the ways we can start taking now to make a difference. The world and knowledge, they are both fluid. Ever-changing. Evolving.

Education drives passion. So why would anyone ever want to stop learning?

Read more about Mobile Education

• Aape Pohjavirta, Enrique T. Muñoz, Harppi-TEC Mobile Learning

Passion for Lifelong Learning and Mobile Education is a post from: MLOVE

MLOVE is not devoted solely to mobile technology. MLOVE is based in passion, the passion triggering the inspiration that will help us chart mobile’s future, as well as our own personal journey.

Inspiration is all around us.

Inspiration is found in remembering the most powerful computers we have are our own brains. Inspiration is found everywhere, including a temporary desert-based community where mobile connectivity is both limited and discouraged. Inspiration is limitless when drawing from both art and technology.

Chester Santos is a U.S. Memory Champion. He is literally, in the business of remembering – and showing others how they can remember. Everyday, he trains his memory just as an athlete trains for speed and strength. In a world as connected as ours, Chester believes we are outsourcing too much of our memory to our mobile devices.

With current technology, there is still no computer as powerful as the human brain.

“Mobile devices are incredibly useful. But we need to be wary of allowing them to remember for us,” says Chester. “We need to use our memory as much as we can so we don’t lose it as we get older.”

The tricks the 2008 U.S. Memory Champion uses can help anyone improve their capacity to remember. “Exercise your visualization ability,” advises Chester. “Involve multiple senses and build connections in your visualizations so these memories are easier to retrieve latter on.”

Stimulation of the senses is what brings tens of thousands to the Burning Man Arts Festival every August. A temporary community set up on an ancient dried-up lakebed on the second flattest surface in the Northern Hemisphere. Gerlach (pop. 300), the nearest town, is 12 miles away. Burning Man is in, quite literally, the middle of nowhere.

As the organization’s Technology Dominatrix, Heather “CameraGirl” Gallagher handles connectivity logistics in a society where nothing is scared, and everything is temporary.

As the foundation to Black Rock City is laid in the 1-3 months before Burning Man, limited wireless access is provided by the organization. During the event, there are shared machines for staff use, on-playa webcasts, BMIR (Burning Man Independent Radio), and other mission-critical operations.

“When we build systems in the desert, everything has to work in a standalone world,” says CameraGirl. “If it cannot be backed up with a paperclip system or a clipboard, you have to have plans A, B, and C.”

“My job is to tell people why they DO NOT need the Internet.”

The ambitious Burners who fund and build their online capabilities on playa are known as the Wild West. Every spring, Burning Man holds a wifi summit so the Wild West knows just what they need to bring to the desert.

Until recently, OpenBTS has provided a small amount of cellular coverage to the event, similar to what is found in under-served rural areas and during deployment to disaster zones. When a third-party cellular tower went up near the area in 2010, most residents of Black Rock City were not pleased.

“Radical self-reliance and participation is about what people are doing and giving, not just observing. At Burning Man, there is a focus on the immediacy – having immediate relationships with immediate human beings.”

As a founder and Executive Director of The Gray Area Foundation For The Arts (GAFFTA), Josette Melchor sought to use lessons learned at Burning Man into the default world. When seeking to figure out ways to provide aboveground connectivity to areas posing a challenge, Josette decided to try it on the playa where harsher-than-normal conditions prevailed.

Using data visualization and emerging digital technologies, Josette and GAFFTA seek to foster exploration and further sustainable creative solutions to make the most of our space.

“Our society is experiencing a data overload. The tech world can learn from the art world.”

“GAFFTA seeks to unite the art and tech worlds for educational purposes,” says Josette. The organization’s Urban Innovation Weekends strive to improve life in cities, for example, using data visualization to show food deserts and locate where to find fresh food.

Whether furthering the new canvas with Emerging Medium of iPad Art or working with the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory to Explore Urban Futures, GAFFTA is building social consciousness through digital culture and advancing the role of creative technology in promoting both social good and artistic achievement – by looking beyond the obvious “solutions” to the issues facing both communities and artists.

When we disconnect from our devices, we discover the connective technology we so crave. And then we find it. Inspiration. We had it all along.

If you could not join us in Monterey, there is still time to join us at the legendary MLOVE ConFestival Europe 2012 on June 27-29.

Read more about MLOVE USA:

• VentureBeat – MLOVE conference marries mobile tech, drum circles, and Maslow
• TechCrunch – A Run Down Of The Mobile Startups At MLove, Monterey
• AllThingsD – Driving Home a Better Future in the Connected Car
• MLOVE – First MLOVE USA captures West Coast spirit

Inspiration: Find it everywhere is a post from: MLOVE

Best Practice

PayPal and the petrol station chain Cumberland Farms recently teamed up to develop an app that enables users to both pay for their petrol and get discounts on it.

Without having to leave the driver’s seat, customers can pay and earn themselves a 5-cent price reduction on each gallon. After setting up a PayPal account, users can drive to a participating Cumberland Farms station and the app will detect their petrol pump via GPS.

The payment is then made automatically via PayPal and the customers get their receipts by e-mail.

Source: http://www.cumberlandfarms.com
Initiator: PayPal, Inc., USA

Paypal Develops App with Petrol Station Chain is a post from: MLOVE

Best Practice

The Californian start-up JoynIn offers a mobile app that enables users to get special deals in bars and restaurants based on the number of people they go out with.

Participating business will offer them deals that get cheaper the more friends they invite in their group. After arriving at the location in question, users can check in via JoynIn and earn themselves a special discount.
For their part, the bar and restaurant owners can look forward to increased business and the chance to win regular customers.

To begin with, this service is only available in San Francisco.

Source: http://heyjoynin.com
Initiator: JoynIn Inc., USA

Saving Money When Going Out With Friends is a post from: MLOVE

Best Practice

Californian start-up Alohar Mobile has developed a smartphone app called “Placeme” that automatically tracks users via GPS and Wi-Fi without them needing to check in to locations such as stores.

Creating a movement history, the app allows users to see where they were and at what time. Users can also add notes to locations if they wish. All data is encrypted and not shared with third parties. However, should users want to recommend a location, they can convert it with a tap into a URL for sharing.

Source: https://www.placemeapp.com
Initiator: Alohar Mobile Inc., USA

Smartphone Tracking without Check-Ins is a post from: MLOVE

Best Practice

The British agency LOVE Labs has set up a digital poster in front of the window of one of its studios, allowing passers-by draw on it by scanning the displayed QR code. A web browser then opens up that can be directly used as a control element, while there is no need to download an app. A specially developed server application transfers the drawings made by the smartphone users to a projector. Several users can simultaneously draw sketches based on the word inserted into the screen, and all the results are uploaded to Flickr.

Source: http://www.lovecreative.com
Initiator: LOVE Labs, UK

Drawing On Poster Via The Smartphone is a post from: MLOVE

Best Practice

As part of an initiative called “Project Glass”, Google recently offered its employees the prototype of multifunctional augmented reality glasses and is asking them to send them feedback via Google Plus.

The wrap-around glasses feature a see-through lens that can stream everything from the weather to maps to text messages, in real-time.
In addition, they can record video, take pictures and the device sends and receives messages through voice commands. Users have reported that the glasses let technology get out of the way, as they no longer need to use a variety of devices.

Source: https://plus.google.com
Initiator: Google Inc., USA

Google presents Augmented Reality Glasses is a post from: MLOVE

From April 24-April 26, MLOVE ConFestival USA made its American debut to over 150 individuals from over 20 different nations, attendees all united by their passion for something even more powerful than the future of mobile – the power of participation.

Tall Redwoods looming above and the sound of the Pacific crashing against the shore, MLOVE arrived in Monterey with an inspiring, future-forward presentation from Singularity University’s Salim Ismail – followed by a drum circle led by poet, recording artist, and TED Global Fellow Iyeoka. Attendees then hit the Asilomar Conference Center’s Surf & Sand for drinks and dancing with DJ Izzy Lawrence and VJ Odbol.

Skimming The Surface: 2 Days in Monterey

Over the next two days, attendees and speakers both talked and listened, participating with one another in open space discussions, MLOVE’s startup competition, Future Cube sessions, and artistic performances. The Grammys’ Beverly Jackson and Grammy-nominated DJ/Producer Vikter Duplaix discussed how in the music industry, social media goes far beyond an artist’s Twitter and Facebook. What we listen to is one of most accessible ways to express ourselves. With the Soundtracking app, Jamie Sampson offers a way for us to share our moments through the songs that define them.

For the first time, MLOVE explored the technology behind connected vehicles, bringing in Singularity University’s Brad Templeton and his “art car”, as well as QNX’s Mark Rigley to discuss how mobile technology impacts automotive software. The way we drive in the future will be a community effort, according Di-Ann Eisnor, who, as part of WAZE, is working to save time and energy through crowd-sourced GPS and timestamps in an effort to reroute traffic; and Getaround’s Jessica Scorpio expanding peer-to-peer car sharing to combat the increasing problem of car overpopulation.

Everything (and everyone) has a story

Experience design plays a crucial role in our online interactions, and these are uniquely shaped by our human journeys. Designing an experience must tell a story. Amish Patel recanted his tale from programmer to Experience Director of Microsoft Kinect and XBOX platforms. In his eight years as the touring chef for the Grateful Dead, Isobar’s Gene Keenan learned from the close-knit Deadheads that a scattered community has the power to create meaningful viral content without a software platform.

Fjord’s Alfred Lui believes when designing any user experience, it must begin with love, as love is something we all desire. Frog Design’s Scott Jenson urged us to gain perspective by stop resisting the urge to look back to our old way of doing things when new technology emerges. In the business of creating 3D ads for tablets, Adjitsu’s Leslie Langan shares the sentiment – why run TV ads in an online space?

Inspiration is everywhere. Find it.

So change the world, whichever space you’re in, no matter your age or where you are in life. 17-year-old Antonia Neidhardt wishes to know how you plan on changing her future as she prepares to enter adulthood. What’s in store for her and the children behind her? Aape Pohjarvirta imparts change may only begin with education. A nation with a fragmented system will not have the power to impact future generations. It is up to us to solve this problem. But like most solutions, they are not digital.

In a world as connected as ours, inspiration often finds us off the grid. U.S. Memory Champion Chester Santos, Burning Man Technology Dominatrix Heather Gallagher, and GAFFTA’s Josette Melchor challenged attendees to disconnect to find connection with their minds, each other, and digital technology.

Passion. Inspiration. Future of Mobile. Attend MLOVE Berlin 2012

Please check back for full reports from the entire weekend. Over the next several days, we will be featuring each topic and speaker in a series of written wrap-ups and on-camera interviews. You will find out what you missed and discover more about MLOVE and how it is a “tech conference” unlike any other.

If you could not join us in Monterey, there is still time to join us at the legendary MLOVE ConFestival Europe 2012 on June 27-29.

Read more about MLOVE USA:

• VentureBeat – MLOVE conference marries mobile tech, drum circles, and Maslow
• TechCrunch – A Run Down Of The Mobile Startups At MLove, Monterey
• AllThingsD – Driving Home a Better Future in the Connected Car
• MLOVE – Inspiration: Find it everywhere

First MLOVE USA captures West Coast spirit is a post from: MLOVE