We have been very lucky this year to have the presence of some of the most influential twitter users in Australia assemble at Future Summit early next week. We also are very excited to announce that the largest twitter-er in Australia, Darren Rowse from www.problogger.net will be Guest Tweeting for our very own www.twitter.com/futuresummit account!

If you follow us at www.twitter.com/futuresummit you will be able to follow along as Darren shares his thoughts about the Monday sessions with you. You will also be able to ask questions of the speakers through Darren and the other twitter users replying to the @futuresummit account.

So who are the these influential twitter users who are coming along?

Darren Rowse
Company/Website: Problogger
WHO?: Probably the most notable and famous of Australian’s bloggers.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/problogger

John Johnston
Company/Website Jjprojects
WHO?: Social Media Manager, Global Team at Earth Hour
HERE: http://twitter.com/jjprojects

Bronwen Clune
Company/Website: Norg
WHO?: Bronwen is the founder and CEO of www.norg.com.au and is a media guru.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/bronwen

Michael Specht
Company/Website www.inspecht.com.au
WHO?: HR Technology, Recruiting & Enterprise 2.0 Consultant
HERE: http://twitter.com/mspecht

Markus Hafner (Eskimo_Sparky)
Company/Website: Happener.com
WHO?: Online Recruiter & business grower
HERE: http://twitter.com/eskimo_sparky

Ross Hill
Company/Website: Yabble / Deloitte Digital / The Hive Co-Founder
WHO?: internet entrepreneur and general social media expert.
HERE: http://twitter.com/rosshill

Duncan Riley
Company/Website: Inquisitr
WHO?: Editor, The Inquisitr, CEO Nichenet.
HERE: http://twitter.com/duncanriley

Kate Carruthers
Company/Website: Digital Business Group Pty Ltd
WHO?: Kate is a respected online collaboration, social computing, digital media consultant who knows her stuff.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/kcarruthers

Mick Liubinskas
Company/Website: www.pollenizer.com
WHO?: Mick is a web business engineer who makes web products happen.
WHERE: http://twitter.com/liubinskas

It will be great fun to spend some time with these folks in Melbourne this weekend, something I’m personally really looking forward to. They will all be tweeting from Future Summit through-out the two day, which you can follow along on search.twitter.com. If you’re on twitter, let us know below what your user name is and we’ll follow you.

P.S Thanks to my friend www.twitter.com/lucio_ribeiro for some of the the text above. His descriptions of some of the folk above we’re so good I decided to borrow them again!

I was walking down Bourke Street on Friday afternoon, going to meet up with Steve Sammartino for lunch and a discussion about starting businesses which are rigged for social good as well as profit when I bumped into the kids below.

As you can see, they we’re giving their all for charity, the Red Cross in this instance, and we’re not backwards in coming forward in letting the heaving throng of passer-byes know that giving them their spare cash was the most important thing they could achieve all day. There we’re several thoughts that came to me as I was digesting what I had just filmed.

Today’s children bring all of themselves to the task at hand

The guys we’re on the street because their school, Melbourne High, run an initiative each year which sees the entire year 10 student body hit the streets to raise money for a given charity. They could have very easily stood back, held their cans on the corner and basically just let people pass them by without intruding too much. The thing is, these kids we’re proactive in pushing people from their normal stupor and encouraging them to give them cash. Not forcing them, just offering some extra value for people to enjoy when they made a donation.

They didn’t just become part of the scene, but brought all of themselves to the task in full. Each student had their own creative take on how they could best achieve the task – there we’re more students all the way along Bourke St and each had their own unique way of getting my attention and alerting me to the need to help the Red Cross. How fantastic that each student could take a given task, such as “raising money,’ and independently come to their own decision about the best way to achieve an outcome. 

Children today are comfortable to be filmed being themselves

Before I captured the guys on camera, I asked them if a donation would allow me to film them dancing and they wouldn’t mind me uploading it to YouTube and this blog. Immediately, the answer was a resounding yes. They immediately understood what that meant, understood the risks and also (crucially) the opportunity. There has been a heap of negative press about how today’s youth can use video in unconstructive ways. Whilst this is true in some cases, it’s a symptom of the need kids feel to be (just a little bit) famous. They have grown up in a celebrity focused (obsessed?) society and these are the results. Importantly, however, they understand how to manage that and their own personal brand when online. Much more so than their parents have or will.

The impact this has on our future

So what does this mean? Steve Johnson suggests in his book, Emergence that we are moving to a place where we create our own unique content which self organises itself online based on the organic linking that takes place between friends and other related content. Kevin Kelly’s talk at TED about the next 5000 days of the internet has some fantastic ideas which engage this very idea.

In reference to the media industry “Turning on your television will be like logging on to the Web today: an infinite collection of links will beckon you – if not through the front door, then at least a few doors down the chain. Today’s breakaway Nielsen hits have half the audience and reach of The Cosby Show or M*A*S*H – and only two-thirds of Americans are even wired for cable”

Steve Johnson, Emergence.

Imagine what this will mean for the way we not only organise our lives, but the way we interact as organisations, communities and a society. People will be feeding content from the ground up which we will be simply linked and connected to via a huge number of other, relevant links. There will be limited top-down hierarchy and more relevance placed on the number of connections and links people are involved in. How will we interact as a society when this happens? What are your thoughts about the future of our social structures and norms? If today I can film a kid dancing on the street, what can I look forward to tomorrow?

There will be a session at Future Summit called Technology – Essential Growth Multiplier, which will engage with some of these topics. Is anyone interested in asking some questions for us to raise during the Q&A of this session?