CONFERENCE RECAPS

After a decade of the Mashable event that happened on 92nd Street where leaders of the world talked about global warming, the United Nations Foundation organized a new kind of summit to do an emergency call out. The main message: the time of talking is gone, now is the time of action. Social Good Summit brought together speakers from different fields to talk about how important it is to take action and how each of us can do it. Climate justice has become a mainstream thing.   But beyond the trend, climate change is now an existential threat and a hard challenge for future generations. The problem is that the majority of the people, even aware and concerned about climate change, think that someone else will save them. The ones who are taking the lead in this fight are women and children. The perspective of young people is critical. Kids nowadays are more enthusiastic about the environment than adults. They are doing it because they don’t have any other choice. It’s great to have

I was lucky enough to get a couple of tickets to TrendWatching’s conference ‘Trends of 2020’ in New York City, which was hosted on October 1, 2019. TrendWatching is the #1 trend intelligence platform in the world. The conference first covered what had shaped consumer expectations since 2018, the most influential consumer trends of 2019, and then moved into trends to watch in 2020. One key takeaway from the conference is the importance of brands and companies looking outside their category and sector in order to thrive and evolve. This is also referred to as trend-driven innovation, which leads me to some of the opportunity-takeaways: cross-sector loyalty, reward sharing, reward engagement, and reward green living. Starting with cross sector loyalty, NYC-based Hooch is a perfect example. The company is currently running a beta-test with 200,000 users, testing a new “coin” which consumers connect their credit card to. The idea is that users earn 10% of purchases back in TAP, the “

Today, I had the pleasure of attending Day 3 of Advertising Week NYC 2019. Caught up in a whirlwind of advertising (shocking), tech, data, and you guessed it, people, I did not know where to look or what to do first. Luckily, I figured it out. The first talk I attended was “Getting Ahead of the Data Curve.” Since I don’t have much to do with data or data mining on a day-to-day basis, this session was incredibly informative. It also appears that to big companies, I, as a millennial, have been pigeonholed into the demographic that is on the cusp of being “afraid” of companies’ data mining, while simultaneously understanding why they do it, and what they do with it. Truth be told, both assessments of myself are correct: I am equally intrigued, yet terrified of companies having my data. The reality is that there is no escaping data collection with the amount of technology in existence today, so we might as well understand how and why it’s being done. What I learned is that compani

This fall I will begin my second year of graduate level studies as a member of the Branding + Integrated Communications program. After several years, I decided that it was time to reset my career. The only option that came to mind was entering Public Relations (my undergraduate major). Diversity and inclusion is a major factor in the current world of communications. As a minority, I want to take advantage of any opportunity possible to assist in my pursuit of completing my studies and moving into the professional world of Public Relations. A major step was applying for and being awarded the 2019 LAGRANT Foundation Scholarship. Over a three-day period, I had the honor of attending 2019 Scholarship and Donor Recognition Ceremonies at the Cincinnati, Ohio headquarters of Proctor & Gamble. Led by key leaders from the LAGRANT Foundation, Proctor & Gamble and Citizen Relations. Career building and networking were the focuses of the event.  Day #1 consisted of a Welcome Dinner

On September 26, the best projects on innovation in media and technology from the best Universities around New York City, came together at NYCCT to showcase their newest advancements in the NYC Media Lab annual summit.  When people think about media, they immediately think TV, magazine, news, etc. the classic set of media, however the media labs brings together projects that tests and breaks the limits of what media means. From AI driven experiences to emotional response analysis software, NYC’s Media Lab brings together the newest game changing possibilities in media and technology. The event was divided into the main Keynotes program, workshops and a showroom. Along the program many prototypes and start-ups were presented, including: an AI tool to process raw video footage of news stories sorting automatically elements of the story and putting them together. A prototype of an app to help make NYC subway stations accessible to people who are blind by using live subway and voice o

Receiving my scholarship to the LAGrant Foundation was a huge milestone for me considering it kicked off my career. I was able to participate in career building activities with The LGF in Cincinnati, Ohio which was a great experience. As a grad student, pursuing a career in the communications field, I felt overjoyed to be surrounded with likeminded and dedicated peers. This was a great occasion to meet industry professionals, network and gain exposure Marketing/Advertising and the Public Relations field. Most importantly, many of these people were first generation minority students in the workforce, like myself. All participants were able to visit the P&G headquarters where a series of workshops were held. These various workshops gave me great insight on the importance of diversity and inclusion in the communications field overall. As a minority, we are needed in the communications field because our wide ranged backgrounds. Our world view is essential for campaigns to be relata

NYC Media Lab is perfect platform for learning about innovation, media and technology. It is in collaboration with several corporations, companies & universities, which provides it a huge support and talent from across the city and country. Influenced by its vast network of design, technical, media and engineering researchers from the campuses in New York, the summit produces research, development and knowledge exchange through an open innovative and challenging ecosystem for upcoming media and technology trends in the industry. The summit has a goal of developing talent throughout the campuses in New York.The partnered universities and companies, involve and interact in events majorly about technology and new trends in media and discuss on issues on research and big data, connect with each other and with students and entrepreneurs and discuss upcoming projects that suits their interests. As an example, Hearst collaborated with a team MFA students at Parsons New School pursuing

I learned so much in the Advertising Week. I spent two days there, and I listened different speeches. “How does Google market Google” was one of my favorite speeches, which was held by Google’s VP of Marketing, Marvin Chow. Chow mentioned Google founder held the first conference in June 7th 1999. It was there, Google’s mission as Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” “At the time, it seems like a very ambition mission, as a marketing group the team less focused on the tradition market back then, but they more focused on the idea of information and how they can help the more and more people in the market.  There are so many changes since then, more information is available online. The power of information gives people its potential. As a company far beyond research, there are so many products all through our growth and our evolution. The Google’s mission still feels very true today. Everyone knows and uses Google’s products. If we just use

CUNY School of Technology hosted the Annual Media Lab Summit on Technology and Innovation which consisted of several keynote speakers, Innovative research project pitches from students around New York, a product demo/expo fair and small workshops to facilitate discussion and ideas around exciting new tech innovations. The day kicked off strongly with an innovation panel discussion between four great forces within the media/tech and social justice community led by Justin Hendrix, Executive Director of NYC’s Media Lab. Hendrix asked the group to address big topics such as, what is the most important tech trend that will affect us in the next ten years? Yael Eisenstat, Policy Advisor at the Center for Humane Technology, responded that it’s our over-reliance on social media where we get our news feeds which will diminish the overall quality of journalism and prevent people from critical thinking, “First, fast and free is not sustainable,” she says. Though journalism is a business, th

NYC Media Lab 2019 started with introductions from the people working behind-the-scenes for this year’s NYC Media Lab. Justin Hendrix, the Executive Director of NYC Media Lab and RLab spoke about how this new wave of interfaces is on the way and how Virtual Augmented Reality, Brain Computer interfaces and Neuro Interfaces are going to be the future of technology. He further spoke about how technology and media are a really important part of our economy and play a crucial role in functioning of the city. In order to be ready for the future we need to try to think about the implications of this and come up with creative solutions for the the age old media problems. He also briefly spoke about creating a healthier media environment for our society to function smoothly and how NYC Media Lab will see demos that are pushing limits of these new interfaces and how that’s changing the economics of media business. Steven Rosenbaum - the new managing director of NYC Media Lab spoke about diver

I had the fantastic opportunity to attend the Design + Diversity Conference in Chicago, IL, as a fellow.  The Design + Diversity Fellowship program identifies and supports​ emerging under-represented designers with a passion for making positive change within their communities as well as the creative industry​.​ It is a year-long program to provide mentorship, professional development, and access into organizations across the country​. The ​culmination of the fellowship is a self-directed​ local Design + Diversity​ micro-events, which I will be planning in the near future. 
 The three-day conference itself was hosted at Columbia College Chicago, and its speakers were from companies like Adobe, Google, Microsoft among others. The main focus of the conference was exploring proactive ways to make the design industry more diverse. However, not in the typical way you maybe think of such as diversity of race, gender, and place of origin. However, diversity in our industry in terms of maki

I had the opportunity to attend the Linkedin Education Connect and it was an awesome experience to say the least. With a focus on reaching prospective students and alumni, I was able to not only gain insights on how the world of academia is able to do so, but also insights into what employers are looking for from these student who would one day graduate. My favorite speaker from the day was Suzy Welch. She is a noted journalist, tv commentator, author and speaker. I admired her independence and her outstanding resume. However, what was most valuable to me was the knowledge she shared. She went over five lessons to unlearn once you graduate college.  Assignments in school are direct. There is a specific ask and students deliver on that ask. Whereas in work, the ask is vague and ambiguous. It involves deep thinking and interpretation to even understand what has to be done and how to do it.   School has reset buttons because there are new semesters and new professors. There is

I had the opportunity to tune into this webinar recently and it was helpful to say the least. In my role at the time, it was imperative to understand social media and the impact it has on acquiring prospective students to colleges and universities so this webinar was beyond useful. Some of the key takeaways I was able to gain were as follows: Content first strategy  Universities are shifting to a content first strategy which essentially means that the focus is predominantly on the type of content and not on how much is created. There had long been this idea that there needed to be a consistent flow of posts on all social media platforms which put a strain on quality. Now, it is imperative to produce high caliber content. Followers engage more when the content is of quality. Response Time It is so important to respond in a timely manner to those asking questions or simply engage with a college platform. If a prospective student reaches out via a social platform and are left wi

On October 23, I had the opportunity to listen to five top CEO's what they think about the future of influencer marketing.  A lot of topics were covered, from how ROI changes from market to market. When thinking about reaching to younger audience it's important to think about the platform that they are using, we know that at NBA TV still works, highlights are most important. One of them mentioned that 64 percent of millennials are on Instagram, Its about thinking about the ecosystem, where and how your target is using its platforms. One of the main topic discussed was that influencer factor, almost all agreed that influencers play a vital role for brands. "You have to be careful when choosing the influencer cause it's your brand against another person that’s not on your payroll. So you got to be really, really careful about that". Global brands absolutely need these influences. Brands  should consider themselves as publishers. So you need content and

In catching up on my blog posts on the last day to submit, and also before my Graduation, I'm reflecting on the past two years and everything I have learned and become curious about. The two words NRT always mentions: "Stay Curious." What does that mean to me? Stay curious in any industry that you're a part of. I'm a rare breed in this program who works in the interior design field -- a field that is considered too decorative. But the field embodies many other things that I've come to learn by staying curious. Branding exists in every product, including the materials our homes are built with, the chairs we sit on, and the lighting that changes our moods. In thinking about branding in interior design and architecture, I attended the first Innovation Conference for design, hosted by Interior Design Magazine at the Neue House in NYC. It aimed to explore cutting-edge technology, breakthrough ideas, and insights that will drive the interior design into the n