Digital Family Summit Sunday — Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead
Saturday night at Digital Family Summit ended with a beautiful fireworks show courtesy of the city of Philadelphia’s 4th of July celebration, as well as a super fun Pink Carpet Party sponsored by Gillette/Venus, that had kids and parents dancing into the night.
Attendees were still up bright and early Sunday, though, for breakfast (sponsored by Whole Foods — thanks!) and a half day of great programming before it was time to say farewell. Make that some attendees were up really early, for a private viewing of the Liberty Bell that got rave reviews. After that, the entertaining, funny, and super smart Professor Sree Sreenivasan of the Columbia University School of Journalism gave digital parents and kids straight talk about what it takes to be smart and safe online in 2012, particularly in preparation for college a nd careers.
You can find his collected wisdom at Sree’s Tips, and see why he thinks it’s so important for everyone to use their heads on the internet, in their business and personal lives. Follow him too on Twitter, as @Sree, of course.
The morning panels included Blogging and Pinterest and Google+, Oh My! Keeping Up with New Platforms, with Cecily Kellogg and Lynette Young, Master of the Blog: Everything You Need to Know About WordPress, with Tracy Levesque, of Yikes web design in Philadelphia, and Write On! Writing Skills Workshop for Bloggers with Entertainment Weekly Senior Editor Abby West.
This blogger spent enough time in Ms. West’s workshop to know that there were some focused, talented, young writers in there. Several of the kids present had at least one blog, most supervised by their parents, and responded enthusiastically to questions about their hopes for blogs and businesses, as well as a writing prompt everyone worked on. Similar rave reviews came out of the WordPress workshop, where if you didn’t go in with a blog, you could certainly leave with one in progress.
The afternoon panel closed with a focus on Blogging For Good, as St. Bonaventure University sophomore Simone Bernstein of Volunteen Nation spoke on behalf of RAMP, an organization that reaches out to alleviate hunger and poverty in Appalachia.
Joined by several corporate sponsors (including Rockin’ Water and Whole Foods, who supported Digital Family Summit) RAMP envisions a poverty-free Appalachia. Attendees viewed the video that tells the story of several families in need in Martin County, Kentucky, and brainstormed service projects (that could be blogged or otherwise supported by social media) to help.
Tech innovation, family solidarity, support for young kids and teenagers in developing crucial creative and online skills for strong futures in school and career, along with opportunities to network and learn from some of the best online — Digital Family Summit had it all. Check out the photos here, the Facebook page here, and wait for the news about the second annual event. As speaker Dresden Shumaker said, “My favorite thing about the conference is all of the folks talking about how they can’t wait for NEXT year.”
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