Speaker: Gunther Sonnenfeld

Gunther Sonnenfeld A digital media innovator for 18 years, Gunther plays multiple roles as a content developer, experience designer, data specialist, software architect and social technology expert working with a number of Fortune 500 companies. He is an award-winning writer/producer, an internationally renown speaker, a columnist and a published author. He is completing his second book entitled, “A Literacy of the Imagination”, an exploration of the new storytelling paradigm and its influence in shaping the collaborative economy.

What Gunther will be doing at DIY DAYS

talk

Leveraging & Procuring Good Data Through Storytelling

The inevitability of too much content and too many messages coupled with not enough time and not enough attention has left us, as creators of media and products, in a very precarious position. But fear not, we have a macro solution: good data.

What exactly is “good data”? That’s a loaded question in and of itself, but we do know that good data means that audiences are interested, consumers are satisfied, and that there are a plethora of opportunities to make data a catalyst for better storytelling and creating more intelligent media.

We’ll explore what this means by looking at some critical elements:

- Why context matters more than content
- Why business context and creative context are the same thing
- How data can drive the creative development process
- How data can help us build stronger revenue models around the ideas we create
- Where new markets are emerging as a result

DIY DAYS asks Gunther

What are you currently working on that you’re excited about?

Two things. First is Algren, a multi-platform narrative on the life and times of Nelson Algren, a beat writer who influenced prolific artists such as Lou Reed, Johnny Depp, Salman Rushdie, Russell Banks, David Mamet, Art Shay and Michael Mann; these perspectives will be told through the artists’ own select media, and coordinated within a unique, holistic experience. The second is an educational ARG called Gates of the West that puts players in different periods within modern times to unravel conspiracies (such as the deaths of JFK and Leonard Peltier), so that they may “rewrite history”.

What are some of your favorite sites and / or mobile apps and brief why?

As sites go, oh, probably Lost in E Minor for the cultural value and “counterhipness”, and Dermalogica’s FITE because it’s a rare example in which a domestic brand can actually provide a scalable economic alternative for business growth in 3rd world regions by enabling its own supply chain. As far as apps go, probably The Elections App because, well, the primaries are around the corner, but more importantly, because it arms you with information from your social and interest graph that can enable better decisions around what candidates to choose and why. In general, any Gov 2.0 app is good by me because we need better transparency and authenticity layers tied to the systems we support with our lives and our taxes.

What are you currently watching, reading or playing?

I am obsessed with the notion of social capitalism and human betterment through more collective economic means; I recently revisited Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay, which prompted me to dig into Columbia University Profs. Banerje and Duflo’s Poor Economics and Umair Haque’s The New Capitalist Manifesto. Good reads, and very telling of where we’re at as a society and a federation of corporate and government systems bound to the same fiscal challenges.