Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies will host a social media conference to discuss the effects of emerging real-time Internet on business.

The event, called #140cuse, is the local version of the widely known #140 conferences, which are currently taking place in Syracuse and New York City. The conferences, created by Jeff Pulver, are meant to be a ‘platform for the worldwide Twitter community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other,’ according to the #140 website.

‘The purpose is to bring people together and share ideas, inspire people to go out and do things,’ said David Rosen, #140cuse Conference organizer. ‘We have amazing stories that we want to be told.’

The event will take place Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. in the Schine Student Center and will feature more than 50 different speakers, including Alexis Ohanian, entrepreneur and co-founder of Reddit; Tim Pool, journalist and web broadcaster from the Occupy Wall Street movement; and Josh Lukin, director of club initiatives at MLB Advanced Media, according to the #140cuse website.

The speakers will address a variety of topics ranging from local issues to global problems, as well as how innovative technologies are making the world smaller and providing a better quality of life for people, according to a Jan. 26 iSchool press release.

The conference is meant to be fast-paced, with guests speaking in 10-minute intervals. There will be two panel discussions that will be 15 or 20 minutes each. One of these panels will focus on year-round sports blogging, while the other will focus on local start-up businesses, Rosen said.

He said technology has dramatically changed the world people live in today, from the way they interact with one another to how businesses operate. Rosen said he hopes the speakers will focus on where technology has been in the past, where it is now and how people can utilize it as a tool in the future.

Approximately 650 people have signed up for the event, but they are expected to attend at different intervals throughout the day, Rosen said. Each of the speakers’ talks will be posted online so that students who could not make it to the event can still hear what the speakers have to say.

‘It’s definitely interesting to everyone on campus,’ Rosen said. ‘We have people from all schools coming, people from the community coming. I think it’s important to know that these new technologies aren’t just affecting students in Newhouse or students in the iSchool. Everyone is being affected.’

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Published on April 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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