Convergence

CONVERGENCE
August 26th, 7pm - 9pm
Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University
Foundry Building
1055 Thomas Jefferson Street, NW
Washington DC 20007

With the creative economy in full swing, examples are everywhere of how the traditional relationship between products, services and consumer is drastically changing. The challenge is in developing new ideas and approaches that result in viable business solutions. How do you manage today’s complexities, stay relevant and provide value to your audience?

Vosica is an interdisciplinary branding firm helping companies to manage these challenges. We are hosting Convergence, which looks at the merging of trends within business, technology and culture into new combinations, whose goal is to fuse creativity and the commercial world into sustainable enterprises. This allows opportunities for remarkable products, services and experiences for your fans and customers.

For this event we will explore how to leverage Convergence for new opportunities. We'll engage in a lively discussion with our panel members as they share with the audience how they each are navigating today's business climate and developing their own brand and marketing strategies.

We'll wrap up the evening with our ‘convergence improv’ segment where you’ll be able to network and crowdsource ideas and strategies for your own initiatives or business projects. We want the audience to have fun, share ideas, and learn from one another.

At the end of the night attendees will be in a better position to understand how creativity and business work hand in hand, how to develop marketing strategies for their own products, and how to grow their brand in today’s business climate.

Moderator for the night

Nyia Hawkins:
Nyia is a web media strategist and producer, focused on mixing innovation and journalism to produce thought-provoking and entertaining content for the web. Her work has inlcuded helping Fortune 500' companies uncover their most innovative practices to producing online news videos seen around the world. She's worked for Warner Bros. Television, E! Entertainment, Peer Insight and the Associated Press.

Panelists

Jeremy Epstein:
Jeremy just might be one of the hardest working men in marketing (show) business. His track record speaks for itself. He’s received prestigious international fellowships, was awarded a Japanese “Webby” award, raised half a million in private financing for an internet start up as well as authoring one of Microsoft’s most successful marketing blogs with over 110,000 views per month – and this is just scratching the surface. Currently Jeremy is ‘igniting the revolution’ by creating Community Driven Marketing engines, which is a patent-pending process for identifying, cultivating, and activating an organization's "Raving Fans" to become its most valuable marketing asset. Since starting his own company he has signed contracts with a number of clients including Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and NYT best-selling author, Dan Pink.

Peter LaMotte:
Peter is the Executive Vice President of GeniusRocket.com, a creative crowdsourcing company here in Washington DC. GeniusRocket aims to turn the advertising industry on its head by giving power to creative artists around the globe. Companies as large as Pepsi and Heinz to events such as SXSW, and small startups have all come to GeniusRocket looking for marketing and advertising videos, graphic design, copywriting, and ideation. Peter has his MBA from Vanderbilt University, and BA from Rhodes College. He has worked for companies including DC's Corporate Executive Board to Apple and IBM.

George Pierson:
George Pierson has worked as a creative executive in some of America's leading media organizations. In the 70s, he was a print designer at ABC and art director at NBC in New York. He later moved to HBO where he was Design Director during its early startup days. In 1994, Discovery Channel recruited George to lead their Creative Services department. During George's tenure, Discovery grew from a two-channel network to the world's leading nonfiction media company. He founded his current company, Creative Mindflow, to bring his insights into creativity and consciousness to organizations and individuals around the world. The design and creative departments he has led have been widely recognized for their high quality award-winning work, high-spirited creative team environment, and pioneering and advanced industry technology standards.