Planning-ness - a conference where you actually do something

 

Have you ever been to a conference where you heard interesting ideas, but walked away having no idea how to implement them? Or worse still, having heard speakers who only talked about themselves?

Conferences like that are why we started Planning-ness.

Planning-ness is an un-conference for creative thinkers designed around doing, not just listening. Unlike most conferences, our sessions involve a speaker teaching for the first 45-60 minutes then setting the group an assignment to put that learning into practice.

At this year's event - in Portland, OR on September 11th and 12th - our speakers will include a Warner Bros. screenwriter, an expert on observation and crowdsourced product expert.

You can find out more about it at http://planningness.com and also learn about the Planning-ness Grant which is awarded to people conducting research that can benefit the creative thinking community.

http://planningness.com/

2014 Speakers

Richard Cordiner
Screenwriter

 

Richard is passionate about storytelling in all its forms, be it a great ad campaign like Apple’s “Think Different” or the latest Batman movie. He believes human beings are hardwired to digest stories because they help us make sense of the world around us, and teach us something profound about what it means to be alive.

Richard spent 15 years in advertising as a group strategy director. He won a coveted IPA Effectiveness Award in 2010 for his work on Virgin Atlantic, gained a distinction for his thesis on the future of brands for the IPA Excellence Diploma, and acted as the lead strategist on a range of accounts including McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, Google and Intel.

In 2011, Richard moved to a San Francisco ad agency to be closer to his real passion: Hollywood. Throughout his time in advertising, Richard spent his evenings and weekends writing screenplays with the dream of one day being able to leave advertising behind and write movies for a living. At the beginning of 2013, this dream became a reality when one of his scripts landed him representation with a top management company and talent agency and led to a two-picture blind deal with Warner Brothers. At the end of 2013, Richard’s script “The Shark Is Not Working” made the coveted Black List, the annual list of Hollywood’s most-liked screenplays.

 

Jamie Davidson
Redpoint Ventures

 

Jamie Davidson is a Senior Associate with Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on early stage investments in consumer Internet, mobile, digital media and online marketplaces. Previously, he was the VP of Product at Hotel Tonight. He joined HT as a result of their acquisition of PrimaTable where he was the Founder / CEO. Before PrimaTable, Jamie spent time at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers focused on digital technology investment, at YouTube as the Product Manager for algorithmic video

 

 

Jess Seilheimer
Cretegic

 

Jess has 14+ years consumer and healthcare marketing experience at large agencies such as Grey and Havas. Her focus has been on Digital Business Transformation, Innovation, Strategic Planning, Research & Insights, Digital Marketing, Customer Engagement, User Experience & Analytics.

Most recently, Jess started her own consultancy Cretegic, which offers fullstack marketing in a digital world.

Prior, Jess was an Executive Board member and SVP, Digital Innovation and Strategic Planning at Havas Health . She established new revenue generating strategic capabilities/deliverables and led a digital marketing practice and P&L across strategy, creative, user experience, account, media and analytics. She is a contributor to Alleywatch, Medical Marketing and Media, an influencer on digital/social trends and strategies, an ambassador for SocialMediaWeekNYC, and  guest lecturer on digital marketing at Columbia Business School and NYU.

 

Robert Gallup
XOBXOB

 

See. Think. Make. Bob has spent his career doing these at the intersection of people, design, and technology. In the halcyon days of Microsoft, he led a team through the drama of shipping Fury3, Microsoft’s first PC game for Windows 95. Since then, he’s been a leader and designer on an eclectic mix of early stage projects from computer games, to automobile computers and online education platforms. Bob is currently the founder/CEO at XOBXOB, which is focused on seeing, thinking, and making in the rapidly emerging world where everything is connected.

 

Andrew Smith Lewis
Cerego

 

Andrew is one of the inventors of Cerego’s learning method, and started Cerego to create an open platform to improve memory and quantify knowledge. These days he spends equal time improving the product and working with our partners and advisors around the world. His passion for research stretches back to his high school days at Bronx Science, and inspired him to start three education and technology companies (including the Princeton Review of Japan) in Tokyo, where he lived for nearly 25 years.

 

Alexandra Horowitz PhD. – Author and Cognitive Psychologist

 

Alexandra Horowitz is a professor of psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University; she earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego. The Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard conducts research on a wide range of topics, including, lately: dog olfaction; inter-species play behavior; and attributions of secondary emotions to dogs. In addition to many scholarly articles relating to dog behavior and cognition, she is author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (Scribner, 2009), On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes (Scribner, 2013) and editor of Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior (Springer-Verlag, 2014).