AMP Summit 2010 Recap

To make a long story short, AMP Summit 2010 was amazing. Both Friday's and Saturday's sessions were very interesting and engaging, and the Friday after party was a great opportunity for networking or to just to have a good time. I am sure next year's event will be even better. Here are four major things that I took away from AMP 2010:

1. Precedents Set the Stage - Events like the Supreme Court ruling overturning the Communications Decency Act of 1996, McCain's ability to raise money online in 2000, and Dean's ability to organize online continue to shape the internet today.

2. Gowalla: Quality Over Quantity - To me, Gowalla is like that great band that you hear and wonder why no one else has heard of them. While Foursquare is rapidly growing its number of users, Gowalla continues to improve its user experience. I think that as more people start using location networking, and begin to look past the premise of just "checking in," people will embrace Gowalla's more advanced style of keeping track of your travels through challenges and badges. Gowalla CEO Josh Williams was correct in saying that location networking is waiting for their "landmark event" that will fully unleash the potential of the medium. Once that happens, people will be looking for the best all-around product, and in my opinion, Gowalla will still be the best service out there.

3. AOL Is Still Alive - AOL is a service that became synonymous with the annoying noise of a dial-up modem, and it seems to have disappeared ever since broadband connection became mainstream. AOL has now re-branded itself as Aol., and focuses on online advertising and distribution of content, similar to Yahoo and MSN, instead of providing internet access. I still am not entirely sure what role they will play in the future, but being a top sponsor of the AMP Summit was definitely a good start.

4. Next Year: Who knows? - If there is anything that I have learned about social media, it's that you never know what's around the corner. I guarantee that AMP Summit 2011 will have some hot issue that is not even heard of today.

AMP Summit 2010

One of the perks of my internship at the David All Group is that this weekend, I will be able to help out with the inaugural AMP Summit (Activism + Media + Politics). My boss, David All, is the mastermind behind the AMP Summit, and I think that it has the potential to grow into a major Washington, D.C. convention in the near future. People from all over the country, representing various companies, backgrounds, and viewpoints, will come to discuss social media and what effect it plays on politics and activism. I am positive that many good ideas will be born and developed due to the AMP Summit.

The AMP Summit is all day Friday and Saturday at the Washington Marriott with various presentations scheduled throughout. I am personally looking forward to several of the presentations including one titled "Location, Location, Location," which will look into how geo-social networking is changing social media. With big name sponsorships like Google and AOL, AMP Summit brings in a good share of talent for panels and keynote addresses. Here are just a few of the people that I am looking forward to hearing.

Joe Trippi - He is considered to be the first person to truly recognize the potential of the internet and put it into use in a presidential campaign. Trippi was Howard Dean's campaign manager in 2004, and led the first ever major internet campaign, raising a record amount of money and organizing thousands of Dean supporters. Trippi is definitely considered to be a great thinker of social media.

Josh Williams - He is the CEO and co-founder of Gowalla, which is one of the top geo-social networking applications today. For those who may not know, no single geo-social application has truly risen to the top yet, and it will be very interesting to hear what he may have in store for the medium.

Saul Anuzis - He is the Chairman of the RNC Tech Committee, and is a leader in the GOP when it comes to using social media. He is speaking about the modern political campaign so I hope that he can give some good insight on how to best use social media in a campaign and what may be used for the remainder of the 2010 midterms.

Hopefully, I will have the chance to blog about the first day of the AMP Summit tomorrow so check back later. And for those of you on Twitter, follow the AMP Summit by searching for the hashtag #AMP10.

http://www.ampsummit.com/

Music Sampling

One of my favorite things to do is listen to the original versions of songs that have been sampled by other artists. Every once in a while, I'll do some looking and find a good one. This one is David McCallum's "The Edge," which was sampled by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg in "The Next Episode." I for one like sampling music because it keeps songs and beats alive that would otherwise fade away over time.