The Sweeney Agency

About David Weinberger - Expert on Technology and Trends:

David Weinberger, Ph.D. is one of the most respected thought-leaders at the intersection of technology, business and society. He's the co-author of the The Cluetrain Manifesto, the bestseller that cut through the hype and told business what the Web was really about. His next book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined has been published to rave reviews hailing it as the first book to put the Internet in its deepest context. His previous book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, which has been called an instant classic, explains how the new rules for organizing ideas and information are transforming business and culture.

His latest book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room, gets to the heart of what we need to know, and too often don't, about how the network world's flood of information is transforming business and society.

David has been a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He's written for the Fortune 500 of business and tech journals, including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, USA Today, The Guardian, and Wired. Journalists from The New York Times, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, InformationWeek, The Economist, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal and many more turn to him for insight. He is a columnist for Knowledge Management World and has been a columnist for il sole 24 ore.

David has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a Senior Researcher at the prestigious Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and is Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and was a Franklin Fellow at the United States State Department (2010-12). He has been an active participant in working for, founding and consulting with companies from Fortune 500 companies to early-stage start-ups in the new market space.

David turns this remarkable range of experience and knowledge to the most important question facing every business today: How is technology changing the way my employees, partners and customers are putting themselves together, and how is that changing the basics of my business? He is also one of the most entertaining and acclaimed presenters around, and works enthusiastically with clients to customize his presentations.

What David Weinberger Talks About:

The New Shape of Knowledge: How businesses can and should learn to love the miscellaneous
Ever since ancient Athens, we've organized our ideas the same way we've organized our laundry, separating them into neat piles. In the digital age, this unnecessary limitation keeps companies from getting maximum value from their knowledge, and frustrates customers. In this presentation David looks at the four new principles of organization and how businesses are learning that they do best if they include every piece of information they can find and allow their customers to organize the information the way that works for them.

Conversational Marketing: Ending the 100-Year War against Customers
For a hundred years, marketing has been waging war against customers. It’s time for a cease-fire. The fundamental fact of marketing is that you’re trying to get unwilling customers to do something they don’t want to do. That’s why customers want to flee when they sense they’re being marketed to. But suppose waging war against our customers — targeting them via strategies and tactics — isn’t such a good idea? And suppose customers simply won’t stand for it any more? In this powerful presentation, the audience learns how the old techniques actually alienate customers; the six principles for engaging in the new customer conversations the market expects and demands...and how companies are already applying them.

How the new dimensions of information are transforming business...and life
Remember how in the '80s and then the '90s we were all going to drown in information? The information tidal wave crashed all around us...but we barely got wet. But don't relax too soon. The real change is already upon us. We managed to survive the information tsunami by coming up with surprisingly good information management tools - who would have predicted Google would be so great? - and, frankly, by ignoring much of the information that we've gathered.

It turns out that the quantity of the information hasn't changed our businesses or our lives so much. But changes are on the way that will bring about deeper and more profound changes in the most fundamental dimensions of life and work. Your audience will learn about upcoming technology trends and how they affect business, and how to take advantage of the new capabilities that are coming to customers and businesses.

Patients 2.0: Medical Care in the Internet Age
We are together rapidly inventing new ways to find what we need, develop knowledge, make connections, and find trustworthy information. These new ways are, of course, flawed, but they are setting expectations for today's patients. In this talk, David Weinberger challenges the medical community to understand this new dynamic of the Internet Age, to help patients learn what to trust, and, to see the real value in how patients are learning together.

Other sample topic include:

• The Knowledge Management Oxymoron
• Messiness as a Virtue: Information Management in the Age of the Web