Presenter: Betsey Merkel, The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) at the COINs-collaborative innovation networks Conference 2010, hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design in Savannah, Georgia USA on October 7-9, 2010. Title: Contextual Transmedia Communications: Content and Creativity in Complexity Presenter: Betsey Merkel, The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) at the COINs-collaborative innovation networks Conference 2010, hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design in Savannah, Georgia USA on October 7-9, 2010. From the Abstract and a Presentation Overview: The human race is faced with engaging in exponential levels of complexity resulting from expanding populations, limited natural resources, and maturating cycles of the World Wide Web. Habits of capacity building - that of inventory, meaning, and experimentation -- remain at levels suited to an industrial age of linear scarcity. The results of this mismatch can be seen in widespread U.S. unemployment, poverty, and exponential natural systems failure. Disruptions such as these will continue to diminish our collective creative abilities to advance innovative enterprise unless we think and act differently. How and what we communicate affects the economic impact of creativity.

1. Contextual Transmedia Communications
Presented by
Betsey Merkel, Co-Founder and Director
The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open)
COINs Conference 2010
Including 2012 Updates

2. We live in an age of complexity and
everyone is affected.
Everything is connecting but we are not.
This is a “flattening”.

4. In June 2010, the
Economic Development
Agency at the U.S.
Department of Commerce
commissioned the Council
on Competitiveness to
write a report prescribing
solutions to strengthen
regional innovation in
education, economic, and
workforce development.

5. The Council recommended investments in:
Connectivity - Conversations - Capacity
Regional Innovation Initiative
Collaborate.
Leading Regional Innovation Clusters

6. To succeed, regions will
need to invest in cultures
with higher levels of giving,
reciprocity, and attribution.
This will require new
habits of strategic thinking
and social behaviors.

8. We can use the example
of the COINs 2010
community, investing in
• creativity
• COINs-collaborative
innovation networks
• cool places
• swarms
• coolhunting and
coolfarming

10. We build value by sharing
knowledge about what is
important to us in our
conversations.
A social media infrastructure
- a web 2.0 toolset -
amplifies conversations to
attract and strengthen
community.

12. The COINs 2010 web 2.0 toolset was built 5
months prior to the Oct 2010 conference.
We began sharing information and curating
knowledge across:
• Facebook -- social community
• Flickr -- images
• Livestream -- streaming broadcast
• Strategy-Nets --workspaces
• Scribd -- documents
• Twitter -- micro blog
• Vimeo -- video
• YouTube -- video

13. • Audience Results

14. September 22, 2010
204 Likes

15. October 7, 2010
Stats not available

16. November 15, 2010
130,000 viewer
minutes

17. October 7, 2010
30 Members
(launched a few
weeks before
conference.)

18. October 7, 2010
12,571 Total Reads
58 Uploads
47 Followers

19. October 7, 2010
609 following
220 followers
22 listed

20. October 7, 2010
10 videos

21. November 15, 2010
260 Channel Views
1 Subscriber

23. By “contextualizing”
information, a community
creates a shared-
sentiment portrait of
culture.
Contextualization signals
meaningful attraction.
Knowledge sharing
catalyzes member
empowerment.
(Updated 2012)

24. Each social media tool has
it’s own community
network that shares
information with other tools
and their online
communities.

25. Curating social media
knowledge content in this
way attracts systems of
emerging intelligence
embedded in other
systems.
(Updated 2012)

27. Contextual transmedia
communications is a
solution for individuals and
organizations to engage in
the abundance of the
semantic web by sharing
knowledge to build value.

28. COINs 2010 Conference Instructions
The Swarm Creativity Framework is a guide to help entrepreneurs, scientists and business leaders successfully navigate a shift in mindset from
scarcity to abundance. Swarm creativity is a discipline driven by the laws of natural systems, and is designed to catalyze individual creativity,
communication and collaboration, ultimately leading to flourishing cultures of innovation.
Swarm Creativity powers the COINs 2010 community and with it the Science of Collaboration. Researchers and industry leaders share insights and
innovations in health care, design, the creative industries, engineering and technology. The community generates a collective intelligence to solve the
social, economic and environmental challenges of the world.
The five areas of investment in swarm creativity are:
Creativity -- The single most productive asset every
individual possesses. Creativity is leveraged with critical
thinking skills and an ability to ask questions. These are
the core tools required to design complex projects with
sustainable outcomes.
COINs -- collaborative innovation networks – Serves
as the infrastructure to transport creative ideas to
accelerate business development in towns and cities.
Cool Places -- Attract the conversations of entrepreneurs
focused on health care, energy, land, food and water.
Cool places are “sticky” and retain quality talent,
enterprising collaborations, and innovative firms.
Swarms -- Created from numbers of people attracted to
the next big idea that has surfaced from the crowd.
Swarms build capacity.
Coolhunting -- The practice of seeking the most creative
ideas and people; coolfarming is the practice of
collaborating to help them succeed; strategic branding
provides the storytelling discipline necessary to spread
the idea/initiatives.
Used with permission: Peter Gloor, author, “Swarm
Creativity”. Created by Betsey Merkel, I-Open, 2010

29. In summary, contextual
transmedia communications
• identifies emerging
intelligence systems
• shares web 3.0 content
across web 2.0
communities
• connects creativity to
education, economic, and
workforce development.

30. Thank you.
Betsey Merkel, Co-Founder & Director
The Institute for Open Economic Networks
(I-Open)
e-mail: betseymerkel@gmail.com