“Innovation doesn’t need to come out of the products created but rather how we’re going to use them,” said technology and social media blogger Corvida Raven at the Media Future Now event held on Thursday, February 17 in the AT&T Innovation Center.
Dubbed “What the Kids Are Doing,” the event featured the 23 year-old Raven, founder and editor of SheGeeks.net, 18 year-old entrepreneur Daniel Brusilovsky, and the fresh-out-of-college co-founders of event recommendation engine GetSpontaneous Jake Kring and Mack Kolarich. Each of these speakers reinforced and elaborated upon Raven’s concept of innovation, focusing more on how the Millennial generation uses technology rather than what product might be the next big thing. Event moderator Shireen Mitchell, though admitting she could no longer call herself a “kid,” led an animated panel discussion with Raven and Brusilovsky.
Mitchell began by asking about the event’s central theme – What are kids doing with today’s technology? Brusilovsky, a strategist at the Washington, DC-based data visualization firm JESS3 and the founder and CEO of Teens in Tech Labs, emphasized that mobile technology is already ubiquitous among youth today and will be even more prevalent in the future. He noted that mobile apps are both easy to develop and distribute, and that there are a growing number of resources available to help aspiring young entrepreneurs create this technology. Teens in Tech Labs, for example, recently began an incubator program that will assist young people in developing their ideas from concept to reality and provide practical advice on how to run a business.
Raven wishes more young people were aware of resources like these. Both she and Brusilovsky agreed that America should do more to educate its youth on today’s technology. Raven said she wants a culture that encourages innovation, one in which work is not the same burden as it was to her parents’ generation. She views her work mentoring young people who are new to the tech scene as a step towards that goal, and Brusilovsky shares her sense of responsibility.
“People give others 1,000 reasons not to jump off a cliff,” Brusilovsky said. “I give them 1,001 reasons to jump off a cliff and grow some wings in midair.”
The event moderator Mitchell, known on the web as “Digital Sista,” also works to encourage innovation among young people. One of her most recent projects, “The Unusual Suspects,” promotes the idea that innovation can come from anyone, anywhere, including today’s youth. Following the discussion with Raven and Brusilovsky, she introduced GetSpontaneous co-founders Kring and Kolarich as a couple of “Unusual Suspects,” who would give the audience a tangible idea of “What the Kids Are Doing.”
GetSpontaneous, Kring and Kolarich explained, is basically a Pandora for events. Like the music recommendation engine, the goal of this DC-based startup is to provide you with suggestions based on your interests. With GetSpontaneous, however, the categories are not limited to your music tastes. Instead, the platform helps you “unlock your neighborhood” by showing events near your location that you would actually enjoy attending.
If you indicate that you like soccer, for example, GetSpontaneous will show you pick-up soccer games in your city. If you love hip-hop, GetSpontaneous will let you know when your favorite artists are coming to town and where they’re playing. Kring and Kolarich hope that their platform will get people off line and in to their communities. They plan to officially launch the site this month.
The next Media Future Now event – “Journalism Through Digital Storytelling” – will be held on Tuesday, March 22 at the New America Foundation. For more information, click here.