NACE Annual Conference & Exposition June 9 - 12, 2009 Las Vegas Nevada

2009 Keynotes

Opening Keynote Speaker, Frans Johansson

Frans Johansonn, Keynote Speaker at NACE's 2009 Annual ConferenceAuthor, The Medici Effect
Wednesday June 10 | 8:15 a.m.

The Medici Effect: Groundbreaking Innovation at the Intersection of Disciplines and Cultures

What do goat’s milk, spiders, and fishing lines have in common? Music records and airlines? Ant behavior and telecommunications routing? Most of us would assume nothing. But out of each of these seemingly random combinations have come radical innovations that have created whole new fields.

Frans Johansson takes us on a fascinating journey to the intersection of unlike things—a place where ideas from different fields and cultures meet and collide, ultimately igniting an explosion of extraordinary new innovations. See how companies become global leaders, how products and services yield huge margins, how researchers, managers, and artists outdo their peers.

Prepare for a talk unlike any other where Johansson will show:

  • How to find groundbreaking ideas by combining different fields and cultures.
  • How to make these intersectional ideas happen.
  • How to think differently about the risks involved. (Hint: The risks are not as great as you may think.)

 

Featured Keynote Speaker, Julie Gilbert

Julie Gilbert, featured keynote speaker, 2009 Annual ConferenceSenior VP, Retail Training and Leadership Development, Best Buy
Thursday June 11 | 8:30 a.m.

The Fuel to Power Performance: Leadership, Diversity, and Innovation

Julie Gilbert shares the strategies she and her team use to mine new growth markets, identify unmet customer needs, and create value by leveraging diversity of thought inside and outside of Best Buy.

Gilbert's capacity to tap employees' passions to drive innovation and value has earned her a reputation as one of the fastest-rising leaders in corporate America. At Best Buy, Inc., she leads retail training, leadership development, and the company's innovation engine for the more than 140,000 Best Buy employees internationally. She also created and leads the Winning With Women strategy for the company, which is powered by WOLF (Women's Leadership Forum). Under her leadership, Best Buy has achieved significant business outcomes in employee recruiting, retention, and customer market share.

 

Closing Keynote Speaker, Michael Wesch

Digital Ethnographer, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University
Friday June 12 | 9:30 a.m.

Harnessing the Social Media Revolution

Michael Wesch, closing keynote speaker, 2009 NACE Annual ConferenceIt took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after humans spoke their first words.  It took thousands more before the printing press and a few hundred again before the telegraph.  Today, a new medium of communication emerges every time somebody creates a new web application.  A Flickr here, a Twitter there, and a new way of relating to others emerges.  New types of conversation, argumentation, and collaboration are realized.  How can these tools and new modes of relating to others be used most effectively?  In this presentation, Wesch will showcase and discuss both successful and failed attempts by himself and others to leverage and integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, 2D barcodes, and other emerging technologies for purposes far beyond what they were originally created to do.

Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on human interaction (and the impact of human interaction on new media). After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology.  He is also a multiple award-winning teacher whose teaching projects are frequently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other major media outlets worldwide.

For more information, see his presentations or read his blog.