This week kicks off the inaugural NExTWORK technology conference which is not a technology conference in the traditional sense. NExTWORK is an annual, interdisciplinary gathering of business leaders, technologists, futurists, economists and academics who will explore both the promise and peril of the network's future. Described as science, sustainability, entertainment, arts, healthcare and business, this unique conference draws in some extremely brilliant speakers and attendees. 

Among the speakers is Wired co-founder and Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly who spoke on Wednesday about the 'The Future of the Digital Media Landscape'. Kelly, who is a personal idol of mine - getting Wired Magazine each month is always a high point for me - shared six choice words of his own to illustrate the major trends he sees in a world speeding towards video, mobile and the cloud. Among these words, a few resonated with me, especially as it pertains to Digital Out-of-Home.

1. Screening - “We’re no longer people of the book,” Kelly said, “we’ve become people of the screen.” He goes on to explain how screens are literally everywhere now – on the backs of airplane seats, on the backs of buildings, right next to us. Soon these screens will become a filter for reality – superimposed onto our glasses, an overlay of the digital world onto the real one.

2. Interacting - These days, “if it’s not interacting, it doesn’t work,” Kelly said. He says that it's a two way street between us and the screens. We're both watching the other, like a two-way mirror. The screens get smarter as we keep interacting with them, adapting to our actions.

Screens are no longer static images. They must interact. Kelly retells how he watched a toddler try to interact with a photograph, obviously confused by how the image wasn’t getting bigger or smaller with a pinch of his fingers.

3. Sharing - Kelly says this is the “primary verb of this world.” The web was built on sharing, and it will continue to to do so. He suspects that at some point we’ll have one big cloud – the cloud of all clouds – which will allow us to share everything. We’re already sharing things we never thought possible: friends, investments, memories, expectations.

“Anything that can be shared will be shared,” Kelly said. “We’re only at the beginning.” What does this mean for DOOH? How long have you got?

4. Flowing - Our lives have essentially become one big stream of information. No past. No present. Twitter streams, Facebook steams, RSS streams. It goes on and on and “All these streams are together actually forming the new media, the new platform.” Kelly said. And these streams of information can be used to cater content for DOOH screens, based on what your streaming (and sharing) at that moment.

5. Accessing - We, as consumers, are accustomed to instant gratification now. Everything is always on and always accessible. All we need to do is click a button and we have products shipped to our door, music downloaded, movies streamed. Kelly calls it “just in time purchasing,” because you might as well wait until you’re ready to consume it. And when you're ready to own - you can and very easily. Direct response marketing and instant coupons/discounts will continue to boom as this need for instant gratification only continues to grow.

6. Generating - “The Internet is the world’s largest copy machine,” Kelly said. How do you create anything of value when it can be copied so easily? In this new ecosystem, things become valuable if they can’t be copied easily, and if they’re easy to pay for. "We are willing to pay for personalization (having music tailored to the acoustics of your living room), findability (amazon is more useful than a zipped file of every piece of music ever recorded in the world), and embodiment (concerts as opposed to albums)." These and other “generatives” are valuable, because they have become the new fundamental economic unit.

This theory is easily applied to DOOH. Why not access personalized coupons from a digital screen? Or download a great song you just heard straight from a screen? What about purchasing a Groupon right then and there? You can. The latter is already being done. Consumers will opt-in for anything they see as valuable - and DOOH screens are a perfect place for valuable consumer perks and purchases to live.

“Whatever it is, we know that we’re not late,” Kelly concludes. “We just started this.”

Ashley DiVeronica - Digital Marketing