Some highlights of the day:
Marie C. Damour (Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embasy) in an off handed comment mentioned that she only uses her PC for emails and to play World of Warcraft!
Waldo Kuipers (Corporate Affairs Manager, Microsoft NZ) gave some insights into the product development cycle at Microsoft. I loved his recommendation to keep an element of secrecy and surprise as you design technology. Develop the product in a bunker if necessary!
Dan Neely (Manager for Community Resilience, Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office) was able to show the audience how his team have the daunting task of engaging Wellingtonians with preparing for a disaster.
He offered the example of how his team used the Marmite shortage to engage Facebook users by "reporting" on the "crisis" and at the same time ask some basic questions around emergency kits in the home and office.
Michael Jones (Chief Technology Advocate, Google) reminded attendees of how Sesame Street made learning fun by producing content that was engaging and memorable. We have the same opportunity in education with this digital revolution! 
I learned in the Pacific Shift forum that the Pacific community is 12million people strong spread across the Pacific Islands (including NZ), Australia, and America. Increased access to digital communications (we all sighed re ultra fast broadband) will play a key role in uniting this diasporic community and preserving their heritage. 
Have you ever wondered what would happen when you put a PR man, a journalist and a media commentator on a panel together? Paul Brislen, Greer McDonald and Russell Brown provided some vigorous discussion on the impacts of the digitization of our news culture. Mostly they disagreed with each other! Just goes to show that online media platforms are an evolving medium and the experts still utilize them differently. 
Rick Shera (Lowndes Jordan) aka LawGeekNZ explained some of the confusing things about fair use and copyright law. He shared how social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are giving brands the opportunity to deal with complaints and feedback instantly before they become a story on FairGo.
The Quick Fire presentations by Mike Wilson, Anthony Deos, Cate Owen (Media Works), Alexis Lam (Burgerfuel), David Barton Ginger (New Zealand Rugby Union) all provided some sharp commentary on their respective industries - make sure you follow all of them on Twitter!
Image: Alec Ross et moi
Alec Ross (Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton) was the keynote speaker today and boy is he a sharp cookie! I felt all giddy and happy when he discussed how citizen centered movements take power away from hierarchies and invest it in networks of citizens. He explained technologies role in shifting geo-political movements - revolutions that were being built in basements over years can now take place over open platforms of communication that allow a spark to become a wildfire.
I'm going to be mulling over all of these conversations and I hope to chat about them a bit more in-depth over the coming month. To follow the chatter in real time tomorrow tune into Twitter and monitor #ProjectRevolution.
Readers, you are awesome!
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