I am riding high after attending LeWeb in Paris (Europe’s largest social media & internet conference). Why? LeWeb gave me insight into the convergence of fashion and technology; and Rachel Sterne (bless her heart) helped to really knock it out the park! First, let’s talk about Rachel Sterne ~ she’s the 28-year-old Chief Digital Officer in Mayor Bloomberg‘s administration. Her role makes New York the only US city with the Chief Digital Officer role following London and, perhaps laying the pathway for Rio de Janiero. At six-feet tall, she commands attention in any room, and as a young woman, she gets noticed in any tech meeting that is overwhelmingly male-dominated. She’s stylish, well-mannered, put together, poised, and gracious; everything we want from a lady and nothing we expect from a techy! Rachel has been involved and lent her support to an informal organization called Change the Ratio started by Rachel Sklar and Emma Gannett. Change the Ratio is dedicated to raising the profile of women in technology.
This brings us to LeWeb ~ a 3-day event focused on being social, local and mobile (so-lo-mo). It was a fabulous event and I made great connections, however it was dominated by men (as is the usual for tech conferences)….see the connection? The conference was packed with heavy-hitters including George Colony, chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, who talked of three social thunderstorms that will likely rock the digital world in the next few years (and one will mean lots for fashion):
- The death of the web ~ it’s all about the power of the apps
- *Social saturation ~ we spend more time using social apps than phoning, emailing, praying, etc. We’re running out of time for social apps. thus the time we have left will be spent on apps that help us save time, money and effort
- The rise of social enterprises ~ copmaies will develop social apps to more effectively interact with customers and internally
While fashion isn’t the most important thing in the world, we don’t walk around naked so I guess fashion is important ~ Karl Lagerfeld. #2 is an opportunity for fashion to get more ‘air time’ by using social apps to that make interaction with your favorite brands available at your fingertips; to allow expert resources from all over the world to weigh in on your solution real-time; and to create opportunities for continuous connection and increased sharing.
Ready, set, go! Fashionable technology here we come…..
