Back in April I participated in an event known as DefineTO - It was an awesome experience meeting other young professionals who love Toronto as much as I do and want to harness the best of the brightest.
Through them I learned about Mesh Conference - a two-day event that looks at the evolving web and how we can harness ideas and implement them in new ways. Just don't quote me on that!
Turns out that @DefineTO was running a Twitter contest, and I won a free ticket to the conference! It was a surreal experience and I'm really glad to have gone.
The speaker who stood out the most to me during the main session has to be Clay Johnson who spoke day one. I'm still thinking through points he had made that morning. Clay compared a lot of our digital information consumption to obesity in the states, and suggested that we treat this as a health issue. Our "information diet" is increasingly getting worse, as we know more about pop culture and entertainment than we do about news that actually matters. To illustrate his point he asked the audience who knew the name of Kim Kardashian's ex-husband, people shouting his name. Asked what the youth poverty rate in Toronto is, room is silent.
Technology, if we are not careful, can easily own us. I'm being more conscious of making sure that I don't set my morning alarm to my iPhone, because I do have a tendency to then lie in bed and check my Twitter feed and Google Reader.
It's a matter of prioritization. Where are your priorities and how are you defining your day? One of the last things Johnson said as he was concluding his talk was posed as a question: do you care to know more about your spouse of whom you share everything, or Obama's spouse of whom you share nothing?
Be selective with your news source. News outlets, like entertainment, is a business. Confirmation bias: People don't want the truth they want to know they are right.
It was a great conference, and I'm already looking forward to #mesh13!
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