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The Digital Natives sessions are over. And they were a success.

For 6 weeks (from November 13 until December 18) we held 6 sessions about the Digital Natives, persons who grew up with digital technologies. Since they grew up with computers, mp3 players and mobile phones their brains are wired differently than most of us. That is one of the reasons Don Tapscott describes them as the smartest generation ever in his new book ‘Grown Up Digital’. We wanted to inform marketeers and advertisers involved in every day campaigns directed at this specific target group how to make sure their actions are 100% on target.

Our hands-on sessions (well, 4 of them, we had one introduction and an outroduction) were held in the House of the Future, Living Tomorrow in Vilvoorde, near Brussels. We couldn’t imagine a better place for our sessions to take place.

Session 1: The Digital Revolution. We talked about how not only people are changing due to the digital possibilities, but also about how businesses changed massively lately. We showed examples of industries that were both positively and negatively influenced by the Internet.

Session 2: Generic and Niche Social Platforms. You probably know – or at least heard about – Netlog, Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn. And you might have heard of A Small World, Shelfari or Ravelry.  Youngsters spend lots of time on those sites. And as a marketeer there are tons of possibilities of leveraging those platforms capabilities to your benefits.

Session 3: Online Advertising. Traditional online advertising is ‘passé’. And new channels, rules and possibilities are already queuing the line to take over. We have a deeper look at social network advertising and talk about viral, free and video marketing.

Session 4: Listening to Consumers. Two-way is one of the most used terms to point out the difference between web1.0 and web2.0. But conversations are only relevant if you start listening first. Understanding what your customers are talking about should be a priority.

Session 5: The Portable Web. Often confused for the mobile web, we talked about widgets, gadgets, desktop applications, embed codes and how portability are the new way of spreading your message.

Session 6: The Future of the Web. We ended our sessions with 4 predictions about the Future. We discussed the semantic web, the future of mobile and more interesting possibly next steps for the 15-year old Internet.

More info on our Digital Natives website.

All slides were posted on our Slideshare account and we made video’s about all sessions that were put online on our blip-pages.

We made some predictions about the future in our last session. Most of them are rather shocking – well, to most of you, it will be however ;-):

• We all will grow incredibly fat
• Everybody will become utterly stupid
• Laziness will become society’s steepest problem
• The Internet will totally disappear

Ok, this might sound hilarious and incredibly off record, yet every prediction is extremely linked to the future of the web. Let me explain why.

1) We all will grow incredibly fat

Since the introduction of the iPhone, people tend to surf more and more using a smartphone. Windows mobile users, nor BlackBerry, Nokia or any other device or mobile OS manufacturer created a browsing experience that was so fun to use. And never before was a phone the portal to such an enormous amount of applications. Over 10 million users worldwide downloaded up to November 2008 (in only 4 months !!!) over 300,000,000 (yup, 300 million) applications. Most of them allow you to sit down, relax and do what you want to do. Examples shown were ordering pizza, flipping a coin, turning on the heat, checking one’s bank account and even feeding the neighbour’s dog from your own lazy couch.

And as obesity is often caused by a sedentary lifestyle, we are pretty damn sure that the years to come we all will become very fat.

2) Everybody will become utterly stupid

Yet another unpleasant prediction. Or maybe not. The Google founders stated in an interview in Playboy (yes, that’s true, you can still read the article over here) what their utmost goal was: building a brain extention worthy that name. Sergey Brin even said:

“You can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example, you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”

They are halfway there with the google mobile app they released in December for the iPhone. Or think about how tools like Evernote made our life easier or cool gadgets like Livescribe offer new ways of connecting one’s memories to the Internet.

You see the need of being smart is no longer there once all gadgets and tools that surrounds us take over our memory…

3) Laziness will become society’s steepest problem

A third observation we made is the fact that your browser will become so smart, that it does most of the (dirty) work for you. The semantic web, as it is called, makes it possible for computers to understand and cooperate better with humans as Tim Berners-Lee once said (in 1999 already!). Many tools enable those experiences already, but it will get even more exciting the years to come.

Your PDA, GPS, cellphone, email program, browser, other applications, even your camera and your game console and settop-boxes all keep tons of data about you. It is only a matter of time before we can truly benefit from all data stored on those devices to inter-connect with each other with the power of the Internet as a catalysator. We gave three examples of how your life might change dramatically…

… in such a way that you never ever have to think for yourself again. Just let your devices do the talking.

4) The Internet will totally disappear

But it doesn’t matter one bit, since the Internet will disappear any time now. Or at least, the way we know the Internet will change. We entered the era of pervasive computing, meaning that everyday objects will be connected to the Internet. Better known as The Internet of Things. And forget about the Internet being limited to be browsed on your computer or mobile phone. It will be possible to collect data from it using RFID tags, graphical tags or even virtual tags (also called virtual graffiti) from anyplace anytime.

One day (well actually today if you live in the US) you will be able to take a picture of your internet connected phone and get info back about it: cheapest online prices with the immediate possibility to order it online or even prices at stores nearby with the route descriptions to it if you prefer so.

The Internet – as we know it – will have weaved in the fabric of everyday life as Mark Weiser once said (in 1991!!!).

The podcast of our entire session can be watched here and it is still possible to subscribe to it, as we will be updating it on a regular basis from January.

Or have a look at the presentation on Slideshare:

Off course you allready know all about: The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World by attending the DigitalNatives sessions and reading our recommendated readings. Just in case you missed out on that I’d like to point out an outstanding article in the business section of The Wallstreet Journal. It talks about how Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And how they’re leaving a lot of marketers behind.

When consumers are invited to participate in online communities, they expect marketers to listen and to consider their ideas. They don’t want to feel like they’re simply a captive audience for advertising, and if they do they’re likely to abandon the community.

Read more

Online, net zoals mij? Of net niet? We horen het graag… Laat hieronder van je horen en we koppelen de resultaten graag maandag terug, na onze Digital Natives sessie in Living Tomorrow.

… op naar de laatste 2 sessies. De vierde Digital Natives-sessie zit er immers op en we hebben alweer de kaap van 100 deelnemers overschreden. Hieronder tref je bovendien alles aan wat we vertelden. Zowel de slides (voor downloads, klik even door naar de slideshare pagina) als de podcast (en yes – we are still the number one!) tref je hier aan of op http://adnerds.be.

En voor wie er om maalt: vanaf morgen kan je ons ook op Twitter terugvinden. Daar zullen zowel Jan (JA) als ikzelf (BM) nu en dan twitteren over onze avonturen als AdNerds.

Ondanks het feit dat de Chinezen zo’n groot deel uitmaken van de wereldbevolking, zijn ze toch niet alomtegenwoordig op sociale netwerken à la Facebook en Linkedin. Hoe dat komt wordt iets duidelijker in onderstaande presentatie.

via Bnox