Virginia Heffernan

Many companies underestimate how immersive and robust Internet culture is. They fail to recalibrate their messages for an online world that is rapidly displacing traditional media as the hub of conversation, content viewing, shopping. In this talk, Virginia Heffernan shows businesses how to capitalize on the intrinsic (and limitless) possibilities of the Internet. What are the important distinctions between the Internet and, say, television or print? How do Internet users think, behave, search, watch and consume? Plain spoken and lively, Heffernan offers corporate audiences -- product sellers, service providers, content producers -- an abundance of insight and real-world examples. The Internet is not just a reformation of stuff found in the real world. The Internet is its own world, with its own rules of engagement, its own expectations. It's a force to be reckoned with -- and profited from

In the past five years, the Internet has morphed from merely an extension of traditional media, into its own full-fledged civilization. It is among mankind's great masterpieces -- a massive work of art. The Internet has "a poetics, a scale, a palette, a rhythm, a sensibility, a system of metaphors and an emotional range." We all inhabit this fascinating place. But its deep logic, its cultural potential, and its societal impact often elude us. In this urbane and probing talk, Virginia Heffernan presents an original and far-reaching analysis of the Internet, unlike any that has come before. She shows how the Internet is much more than a new technology or new business. It's a ubiquitous yet seldom examined world that is profoundly changing the way we live.