The Kids are Allright

Today was a gratifying day for me. I was asked to give a presentation on social media and activism to a group of twelve and thirteen year olds. The conversation went way beyond that. We covered social media, word of mouth, viral marketing, the looming death of traditional advertising, convergence, market fragmentation and the million channel universe. Obviously I tried to eliminate as much of the jargon as possible and explain these things in simple english. In the end though we covered alot of territory and there were no blank looks, few questions, they seemed to just get all of these things. Some of it they even seemed bored by.

So why was this gratifying? Because I've tried in the past to explain these things to media professionals, even executives and got nowhere. No matter how hard I tried, how I explained it, jargon free or not, I got not a glimmer of understanding. It was good to finally have someone get it, all of it - like I was explaining basic math.

We even had time left over for one of them to teach me how to turn on Google's Elmer Fudd option and to briefly discuss the F.A.A.'s chicken launcher technology.