The 2013 Summit Arrives: Bridging Data And Humanity

Over on the brand spanking new CM Summit website, we’ve announced our initial speaker lineup and progam theme for the 2013 event – Parting the Clouds: Bridging Data and Humanity.

This is the seventh annual CM Summit, the fifth as an anchor conference for New York’s Internet Week. It’s a direct result of nearly a year of work on my book, and inspired by research into the programmatic, data-driven world of advertising technology as well as some very deep roots in brand building and digital media.

The speakers are an extraordinary bunch – and this is just the first group. There are many more to come. For any of you who have been to previous events I’ve curated, you know we really sweat the details – in particular the intellectual framework of the program itself.

More on the theme:

In a scant few years, data has become a critical driver of business decisions – and increasingly, a fundamental currency of all human endeavor. But to marketers and consumers alike, “data” is often a poorly defined term that can elicit confusion, anxiety, and even fear.

Our society has embarked on a historic conversation around the role of data in business, government, and our personal lives. In the seventh annual CM Summit, we’ll seek to define just what data really is, and how we might bridge the concept of data to not only marketing, but to a deeper understanding of culture and humanity.

We will create more than 3.6 zettabytes of data in 2013 – roughly 565 gigabytes per person on earth. And that rate is doubling every two years as we adopt ever faster and more innovative devices – in particular, mobile devices untethered to one “desktop” or even one “phone.” Ten years ago, the very idea that someone might map their “social graph,” tweet their “status,” or “check in” at a location was unthinkable. Now it’s commonplace. What might be common ten years from now, as we begin to monitor our health in real time, and place sensors in our homes, automobiles, clothes and wallets?

How do we get our arms around such abundance and complexity? And how can businesses position themselves to compete in such an environment? 2013 will mark the CM Summit’s most ambitious and far reaching program. Rooted in the firmament of digital marketing, the event will reach out to explore the human implications of data, algorithms, mobility, and technological progress. In the past ten years, the marketing industry has built one of the most intricate ecosystems imaginable, with real-time bidded exchanges and powerful layers of algorithmic logic, all driven by massive storehouses of data. And while this ecosystem began with the desktop web, it’s spread to encompass mobile, video, and even search. At the Summit, you’ll meet the people behind this world, as well as the agencies, marketers and brands who power it.

We’ll continue our tradition of rigorous, in depth interviews, practical case studies, and eye-opening “high order bits” that will challenge traditional thinking and provide context for doing business in a data-driven world.

We work hard to earn your time and money, and I hope you’ll consider supporting this, the only executive conference I’m doing this year. It’d mean the world to me. Register here. I hope to see you in New York!