After a long hiatus, we’re back
5 August 2022 (Mykonos, Greece) – My team and I are prepping this weekend for the digital tech/digital media “unconference” in Mykonos which has been in hiatus for a few years. It has been running for quite awhile and was started quite by accident by a group of digital media sensei who happen to be in or near Mykonos almost every summer. It draws attorneys, CEOs, managers, developers, executives, tech/tool providers, investors, etc. from a very wide range of companies and institutions, most of them connected to the TMT (technology, media, and telecom) industries, but also a large percentage of scientists and all-around bright thinkers. It just grows organically, pure word-of-mouth.
And, yes, everybody eschews the moniker “thought leader” . It is just a bunch of brainiacs chatting.
I have hosted some sessions over the years (venues are scattered across the island). The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference (such as high fees, sponsored presentations, and top-down organization). It is participant driven. I wrote about it at length in this post.
A lot of the conversations do revolve around digital tools and technologies, especially the advances made to engage with customers. And this year there will be a first: a bit of a tutorial on forensic extraction tools for mobile led by one of our eDiscovery vendor partners plus one of our cybersecurity vendor partners. Pretty much pulled from the headlines in the U.S. where on 6 January 2021 we saw a failed insurrection/revolution (or is it actually still in progress? ) with a massive attempted cover-up of involvement and responsibility that included the wiping of all January 6, 2021 messages from the mobile phones of top Pentagon officials plus the mobile phones of major operatives at two other major Federal government agencies. American exceptionalism indeed.
One other major area to be discussed based on some emails I have seen circulating is going to be about platform power. In the original reckoning over platform power that took place after the 2016 election, attention focused on a handful of big platforms; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and to a lesser extent, Twitter. All of those companies invested significantly in trust and safety after the election, making it harder for adversaries to make inroads. At the same time, a handful of major new platforms have popped up since then, each of which have varying levels of enforcement capabilities. As a result, influence operations have never targeted multiple platforms simultaneously until now.
More to come.