Don Tapscott Rocked Me At The CMA – Canadian Marketing Association – National Convention And Trade Show 2007

Don Tapscott is most recently known as the author of Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. He’s also the Founder and CEO of New Paradigm and is well-regarded as one of the leading visionaries when it comes to technology, business and marketing.
I’ve also been told that he’s an amazing speaker, so I was eager to catch him for the first time yesterday at the CMA – Canadian Marketing Association – National Convention And Trade Show 2007 (full disclosure: I was more than a little concerned that we would be delivering similar content – which was, happily, not the case). His presentation was called: Wikinomics And The Transformation Of Marketing.
I learned a ton watching Tapscott’s presentation. A lot of the material was culled from personal stories but based on multi-million dollar research projects that Tapscott leads to understand insights into technology, media and marketing.
Here are a couple of audio gems I culled from Tapscott’s presentation:
– “I’ve banned the word ‘websites’ in our organization. We call them ‘communities’.”
– “They’re not Teenagers… they’re Screenagers.”
And, perhaps, one of the best lines I’ve heard in a long while:
“How sad, the industry that brought us The Beatles is now suing their consumers because they couldn’t figure out a new business model.”
As you can imagine by the title of his book (and presentation), Tapscott makes the case for corporations to engage their consumers in co-creation via mass collaboration.
I bought Wikinomics when it first came out, but I have not read it yet. Every attendee at the conference yesterday was given a free copy of the book. With two in tow, I really don’t have any more excuses.
Tapscott also directed the audience to a video from his New Paradigm website featuring a panel discussion with some very unique Teenage digital natives. Here’s how Tapscott’s website describes the video:
“How will the digital Net Generation consumer transform traditional marketing and products through new ways of making brand and purchase decisions? How will this generation impact the 21st Century workplace?”
Watch the video here (it’s about an hour long): N-Gen Panel At The 2006 WCIT Conference.