YouTube. Yahoo! Google. Technology companies or media & advertising companies?
Very quickly being in tech on the web, unless you're building hardware or web-based application software, it's becoming pretty much the same thing.
That's why I'm excited to be in New York.... because there are so many media and advertising folks here, it's only going to make NYC's potential to have a major impact on the web that much bigger.
But yet, despite a lot of noise, nextNY doesn't seem to be adding many digital media or interactive advertising people to its ranks... still very tech heavy. I feel like a lot of people on the other side of the table feel like they're just not in the same community as we are, which is a little strange to me.
This is completely generalizing, unscientific and anecdotal, but I feel like the tech community is actually that, a community. Tech people are just used to collaborating more. There's more freelancing going on and so they're used to working with people from many companies, often at the same time. Plus, anyone who has ever coded or designed anything has often depending on their network of knowledgable friends to help them out with a line or two or a rounded box here and there.
Could you imagine agency folks e-mailing a listserv saying, "Hey, what's funnier? A talking monkey or a talking fish? I need to get the answer to this for a 10AM presentation to a client... can someone help me out?"
They might reach out to their friends about that... but other professionals? Just doesn't seem like there's that kind of dynamic.
And on the media side, when CondeNast folks get together with their counterparts at NewsCorp, do you think their first thought is, "Hey, how can we work together?" It's just a very competitive industry that has a zero sum approach to collaboration.
I hope I'm wrong about this... and in the coming months, you'll see some nextNY events that attempt to bring agency and media people into the fold... to talk about the future of those industries as they relate to the disruption caused by technology. If you're in the agency or media biz, you should definitely check out nextNY. We're not just tech people... we're digital builders, consumers, enablers, financiers, etc... and unless we realize that we're all in this together, not a lot is going to get done.