What I learned at AdFed - 9/22

Had the opportunity to hear Jeff Dachis speak to the AdFed on Wednesday at the Metropolitan Ballroom. Jeff is a co-founder of Razorfish and now heads up his own consulting group in Austin.

It was just 10 years ago that Jeff spoke at AdFed and made the proclamation that everything that could be digital would be digital. So after that profound statement I was very curious to what he had to say about what's next.

He talked about how IT consumerization is upon us but interestingly numerous companies still "create work in silos - still doing things the same old way."

His vision for what's next is that we are quickly shifting to a social business model that will be more agile and easier to connect with everyone. For those of us in the marketing communications business that means that we can't just buy ads that shout at people but we need to become more engaged and connected with our consumers.

His definition of social business is:

"All of the web is becoming social. All business is done on the web. All business will be social business.

Beyond influence and media, the real opportunities lie in creating a more connected, collaborative, dynamic and participatory business."

This is some pretty cool, heady stuff.

His other major theme was the four archetypes of this model:

1) Ecosystem (connection systems) - a robust, integrated network of nodes and connections

2) Hivesmind (culture) - a primary social calibration that is active participation, engagement and involvement

3) Dynamic signal (communication process) - dynamic real time signals of all nodes in the ecosystem

4) Metafilter (filter measure) - online filters that measure patterns

To sum up his talk on social business he said "integration and aggregation is the key". How true that is.

A terrific presentation and dialogue with one of the great digital entrepreneurs of the last 15 years. If you ever have a chance to hear/chat with Jeff Dachis - do it because it is time well spent.

What do you think of his forecast for social business? Would love to hear your thoughts.