It's been a quiet week here on EMERGE and we want to apologize. Between Tuesdays stellar PSFK Conference and a torturous stint at Brooklyn Supreme Court for Jury Duty on Wednesday, there's been a lot to keep us away from our interweb connection. In our absence, the bazillion other folks with blogs at tuesday's conference have undoubtedly already blogged about their favorite moments and key lessons learned from Piers' spectaculary run event. We've been too damn busy to check our RSS feeds so please try to understand if some of this stuff is literally yesterdays news.

The PSFK conference was an all day affair broken into a morning session on trends and ideas and an afternoon session about marketing. While every segment was not earth-shatteringly awesome, there was indeed a real wealth of wisdom and insight in evidence. Here's a quick rundown of our favorite speakers as well as some relevant links for the curious to try and find out why EMERGE was so impressed:

1) Allan Chochinov of design resource Core77 gave a humorous presentation on how the internet's ability to share ideas has created an alternate market wherein people are consuming ideas of products rather than products themselves. Citing several popular design memes from the past few months, Chochinov posed some very interesting questions on how this phenomenon is influencing the design process and product development. Interesting food for thought.

2) Wendy Dembo's discussion of the handmade in an era of technologically assisted art and design was probably EMERGE's favorite segment of the conference. Not only did she touch on a trend that we've been following closely for the past year or so, but she did so via interviews with two very different and very engaging artists: Laurie Ronsenwald and Scott Campbell. Rosenwald is best known for her deceptively naive illustrations for AreaCode gave a really interesting presentation on massive urban gaming and his work creating means for brands to more deeply engaged with consumers through collaborative and competitive play. Taking the conference through the ConQwest game AreaCode developed, Slavin illustrated both the motivations and challenges that are defining this very new area of brand/consumer interaction.

4) George Murphy followed Slavin's talk with a superbly well thought-out and insightful look into a far more mundane aspect of brand experience by devoting his talk to the process of brand's developing a sense of identity and a means of communicating that identity through the design and implementation of retail design. Discussing one of the pivotal moments in the development of Starbucks, Murphy nimbly deconstructed the processes that allow brands like Apple and Starbucks to successfully expand market after market, retaining existing customers while attracting new supporters all the time. This is an area EMERGE has never worked in and it was interesting to hear a really lucid and concise lecture from a formidably experienced pro, especially amongst a panel of fellow presenters who engaged emerging technology and virtual worlds far more often than the tried-and-true brick and morter retail experience.

5) George Parker takes the cake as perhaps the biggest curmudgeon at the PSFK conference and for that alone EMERGE loves him. Supremely intelligent, hilarious and oh-so-opinionated, he led a really fascinating panel including Engadget's Peter Rojas, Flavorpill's Sascha Lewis, John Lee from Theme and Scott Witt of Droga5/Denuo, all of whom were exploring the varying ways media companies are working in capacities previously reserved for advertising agencies. A hot button issue for sure given the difficulties of traditional publishing as a business these days- and a major concern for agencies who have seen vastly increased competition from consumers and media alike for their business- Parker capably directed the conversation, hitting many of the major points squarely on the head while still leaving room for a few good laughs and for the panelists to move the conversation beyond a canned bit of boilerplate.

Can't wait for the next conference Piers!

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