This document summarizes a conference on youth trends, social media, creativity and innovation in Asia. It discusses several presentations: 1. The conference used a Pecha Kucha style with 21 short speakers to keep things fast-paced and focused. 2. A session on local culture in Singapore discussed how the city-state is starting to develop its own creative identity after absorbing influences from other cultures. 3. A NASA representative discussed how the agency partnered with external communities and used social media to engage youth and develop space-related projects and games. 4. A presentation on middle-class anxiety in China explained how youth face pressures from wealth accumulation and turn to online sharing or hedonism

1. PSFK Asia 10 Oct 08
What it is: Conf targeted at creatives on youth trends, social media, creativity and
innovation, collaboration, digital democracy and the impact of change in China, with speakers from companies
including MTV, NASA, Panasonic and agencies including Flamingo International, Mindshare, Profero and Wieden +
Kennedy
What works: Short and sweet! 21 speakers, less than 20 min each. Pecha
Kucha. I had been to too many bad conferences. Some had CEOs talking about what it’s like to be a CEO to an
audience of non-CEOs. I wanted to create an event with quickfire presentations and talks where the audience could
use their learnings the next day back at work.
What doesn’t work: Crowd is not international enough. Very SF, British,
Australian, SGPean. It’s PSFK Asia, where are the Asians? But this is their first, maybe it’ll get better. Local partner Brian
Tiong got a lot of SGP creatives to talk, v good, but a tad parochial. SF food, cold sandwiches…
What we can use for our next conf: ACM’s Auditorium is cozy. Sit
down Q&A style before or after every segment jazzes up the room. Casual
dress code. Brochure cum notebook is cool. Presenters work in Pecha Kucha
style, short and sweet. Very tight time control. Bloggers encouraged.
Multimedia intensive, lots of videos. Lots of breakout times for networking.
And most important, smallish group 70+ but mostly interesting people.

2. SGP and the creative spark
Graham Perkins (Elasticity), Chris Lee (Asylum), Jackson Tan (Phunk
Studio), Tad Leckman (Lucas Arts Singapore)
PSFK tradition: Start off conference with session on local culture.
Singapore is blank! So
(a) Absorb and learn from other cultures
(b) That’s why we are free to create.
SGP is just starting to output
SGPean stuff. We get more
hungry the older we are.
HK-er: Previously seen SGP as
formulaic robots, but in past 5
years it’s changed
tremendously. Where did you all
come from?
Problem with SGP back then,
it’s not happening, now it is.
Kids now want local identity,
you will see this strongly in 10
years time.

3. Make it with us
Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture/Pecha Kucha) Andew
Hoppin (NASA) and Colin Nagy (Attention)
ペチャクチャ Avoid death by powerpoint. 20 slides x 20 sec = 6
min 40 s. Timebox presentations, force a focus, Q&A at the end.
Squeeze 14 presenters in, keep energy high, diversity high.
Pecha Kucha took off virally as it met an unspoken need for people
to gather around and show each other their work for no particular
need, no particular reason. Now in 80 cities! Likeminded ☺
NASA as a slower, ‘older’ govt organization didn’t tap into the
energy of the youth, not creating a future of space in the
imagination of youth. Andrew pushed for partnerships between
NASA and external communities, tech entrepreneurs through
Facebook groups, Second Life, Twitter … and learning how to
market NASA through blogs, online videos, 3D games.
I found this most inspiring and a good direction that we can learn
from to tap on the energy of youth around the world.
In addition to reaching out, Andrew used blogs, internal version of
Jabber, Twitter, IMs to see which cross dept groups formed around
interests and could push for projects.
CosmosCode for space software for third parties to contribute open
source code to NASA projects and share know how with scientists.
The sweetener is NASA’s enormous sets of data.

4. Anxiety in middle class China
China youth grow up Nick Barham, Wieden+Kennedy
online, this is their only
real space away from
pressures of school,
society, parents.
奴 When they enter middle class, they get a shock from the
pressures of wealth and status accumulation, they cannot escape,
and take perverse pride in being a ‘slave’ to mortgage, cars etc.
晒晒我的生活
Punned after the English word
‘share’, literally it means to
share, show off, what I possess
to an online audience.
啃老 refers to youth still living at home not working
after graduation.
腐败族 They turn to hedonistic lifestyles to
destress from the pressure.

5. China and Identity
Jerry Clode and Floydd Wood, Flamingo International
Focus is on retro. Retro in the West is post-war 70s counter-culture.
Retro in Asia, esp China, is not about culture but about identity.
Retro for Chinese youth is escapist, borrow from someone else’s
yesterday to make sense of today. Brands can create a bond with
Chinese youth through retro.

6. The Creator Class
Pier Fawkes, PSFK founder, Jason Annelo (Yahoo!), Paul
Tan (POOL) and Brian Tiong (B-side)
Super Group called the Creator class.
those creative individuals who have multiple skills and
who have trouble finding their niche. A suggestion was
that creators try not to develop too many styles, but
rather find one they like and enjoy it. In the process, while
finding out all the things you cannot do right, you will find
out the things that you can do right.
Creators
Companies
Community
But I found this a rather closed loop.
Brian Tiong sidestep the question “So
how will they make real money?”

7. Jeff Staples and the Accident
Jeff Ng, aka Jeff Staples, wrap up cool dude.
A series of fortunate accidents led him from making T-
shirts to retail to snowboard clothing design and so on.

8. ACM is a nice and cosy place