Ed Cotton Talks To PSFK About Next Week’s Influx Curated Event In SF

From the Influx consultancy in San Francisco, Ed Cotton produces one of the more inspirational marketing and insights blogs on the web. Over the last few years, he has brought to life some of the prominent themes that his team has written about at Influx Curated conferences. Next week sees the 2009 version with a different format for different (and difficult) times. We caught up with Ed to see how the June 11 event was shaping up:

Can you describe the event? What’s different in terms of content from the Influx events from previous years?

I ran a conference for 4 years in a row and last year I took a break. It was a chance to reflect on what I’d done and think about a new approach. Just looking around at events like Pecha Kucha, Basecamp and Russell Davies’ Interesting conferences, it seemed the landscape had changed. People were looking for something new, so I decided to change things up. Instead of the traditional conference format of 20 minute blocks, with CMOs presenting case studies, I looked to change the format and the speakers. This year, given the economy, people are looking for value, so I’ve decided to give it to them. For $99 they get to hear an eclectic mix of 30+ speakers including artists, musicians, designers, authors, entrepreneurs, filmmakers and of course, brand experts.

Your key speakers are inviting their peers to come speak with them. It’s a novel approach as most conferences rely on the organizers to curate the event. What do you hope will come from out of this?

The “Curated” part of the conference is what makes the event unique. It seems fairly obvious that interesting people know other interesting people, so why not ask them to curate their network? I started off with ten core speakers and asked each of them to invite two other folks they thought could be inspiring. I like this because it means speakers get a say in the programming. Given that each speaker is only given 5 minutes and the stipulation is “no sales pitches”, just inspiration, they are free to do what they want. Some speakers are going to co-ordinate their three presentations and others are going to present individual topics We’ve given a bunch of really interesting people the canvas to make their own conference. In most conferences, the audience knows well ahead of time what the speakers are going to talk about, at Influx Curated the whole thing is going to be a surprise.

Who Should Attend?

This event is really for anyone who is seeking inspiration at a time dominated by the doom and gloom of economic news. If you look under the surface, these a really interesting times that we live in and all our speakers have a positive outlook on the future. To be more specific; creatives, strategists and media folks working in communication agencies and anyone who working in brand marketing inside organizations.

Thanks, Ed! (And good luck)

Tickets: Influx Curated 2009