About 100 people gathered at Eyebeam's large studio space on 21st & 10th in NYC. The day's program was split between Keynote Speakers that the whole group watched, and a program of breakout groups around themes. As it wasn't possible to attend all the panels, and as Aquaman, Clickety Clack and myself stuck to each other like sheep in a wolf's den, I can only report on some of the activities and speakers.

Jonah Peretti

The day kicked off with an introduction by Jonah Peretti, who gave brief bios of the day's speakers, and talked about the audience for which Contagious Media works best. This he called the “Bored At Work Network” - those of us immortalized in the movie Office Space who can think of no task more fulfilling than emailing around clips of clowns getting their heads stuck up horses asses. It's a great way of looking at a target audience (i.e. - you, the YBNBY readers), and really stuck in my head throughout the day. (So much so, that it gave me a good enough idea that I registered a domain tonight on GoDaddy that hopefully you'll be seeing in the next few weeks. More to come...)

Jonah's background in Contagious Media was something I had vaguely heard about but never read the specifics. While a student at MIT, Josh decided to purchase a pair of custom Nike ID sneakers online, and requested the word “Sweatshop” be printed on the side. The resulting chain of emails from Nike customer service, while not long, hit a nerve and within a couple of months, newspapers around the world had featured the tale.

Ze Frank

The first workshop I attended was also in my opinion the best of the day. We've featured the work of Ze Frank here before, most notably his “Punctuation Substitution”. Ze discussed his theories on getting audiences involved with your web site, and showed many examples where most of the content was provided by the community, along with tactics for drawing these contributors into the fold.

Ze asks “Am I Hot Or not?”

The demonstration included his own Toilet Paper and Letter Project. Also of special note, BzzzPeek - a collection of sounds made by children of different nationalities. Ze was a great speaker and really knew his stuff - if you ever get the chance to meet him, I'd highly recommend it.

Next came another workshop, this time by Paul Berry, the co-creator of The Dog Island. I don't how, but until now, this one had completely passed me by, so it was fascinating to hear Paul talk about the creation of this hoax site, and the massive polarizing effect it had on both animal lovers and haters. Again, so many hints and tips that I'm sure his advice will start showing up in my future work. One thing that stayed with me - the best result of an internet hoax is not traffic, it is the inability of people NOT to talk about it to their friends.

Jeff Benjamin

I'd previously met Jeff Benjamin, the first keynote speaker, when we both were part of the judging panel for this year's Art Director's Club Interactive awards. Jeff is the internet guru down at the oft-talked about (at least here at YBNBY) Crispin Porter ad agency in Miami, creators of the Subservient Chicken, Come Clean, Mini Robots, Chicken Fight, Counterfeit Mini, and on and on.... (most of which we've featured here before)

Clearly Jeff and his team have their finger firmly on the pulse of the internet audience to be able to create successful viral advertising campaigns so consistently. Yet his keynote was a little disappointing. Jeff took us step by step through the elements of both Mini Robots and Subservient Chicken, but showed little that I had not seen before as an online observer. What was missing that I had hoped for was the behind the scenes story - how the ideas were conceived, how they were pitched and created, the problems with development, and then the inside scoop on results. Unfortunately, most of this was glossed over in favor of the actual pieces themselves, which anyone with an internet connection had no doubt seen before. Next time, Jeff, we'd like to see the guys behind the curtain frantically pulling all the levers.

Wendy Seltzer

Next, we attended a presentation by Wendy Seltzer of the EFF called “Know Your Rights”, which formed a basic primer on how to deal with a cease & desist letter. In some ways, not the most exciting or fun speech of the day, but I have a feeling that one day I'm going to be happy to remember every single thing she told us. Plus - FREE LEGAL ADVICE - now, there's a novelty...

The last group workshop I attended was by “comic and humorist” Chelsea Peretti. Chelsea's talk was about humor online - what works and what doesn't. Now, don't get me wrong, Chelsea seemed like a funny, funny person who I'm sure would be hilarious in a pub with friends or on a Comedy Club stage. And she is the co-creator of Black People Love Us, a cracking online gag. But unfortunately her dissection of humor online consisted of her walking her way through a collection of her favorite links. At one point she looked at me, and interpreted my lack of laughter to signify I didn't share her sense of humor. Not so - I no doubt would have found them all hilarious - if only I hadn't seen each one many MANY times before (at least half of them we've featured here over the months). I guess I shouldn't be so hard on her - judging from the date & time on her blog, she only managed to pull the list together at 4.10am on the morning of the show, so she may have been a bit unprepared.

The Yes Men

The day ended with a keynote by The Yes Men, the subject of a recent documentary film, which is fantastic, so go rent it. The Yes Men crusade against corporate injustice by spoofing the websites of large companies, and changing them slightly to reflect the true facts (exhibit A vs exhibit B). Along the way they get mistakenly invited to conferences and media interviews, which they are more than happy to attend and perform an “Identity Correction”.

As an example, The Yes Men spoofed the Cargill website live on stage and uploaded it to their own server. A fun little demonstration, but again, I wish they had talked a little more about the behind the scenes workings of their group.

Even though the second half of the day didn't quite match up to the first half, it was still incredibly entertaining and informative, and the three YBNBY bloggers brainstormed several amazing ideas that hopefully we'll be launching on the unsuspecting online world in due course.

Aquaman, Clickety - anything to add? And anyone else who attended the day - want to give a similar (or opposing) view?

View our continuing coverage of the Contagious Media Showdown here