Hill Holliday’s 2012 TVnext brought some incredibly bright minds and progressive thinkers to the ICA on Monday to discuss the future of television. In only its 2nd year, the event has become a must-attend for those whose livelihoods depend on our interactions with the small screen. I walked 4 miles through freezing winds (full disclosure: the ICA is next door to MITX) and I’d like to share a few key takeaways.

When your customers have provided over 60 million reviews on your site, understanding who they are and successfully engaging them is critically important to your business’s success.

Here are some of the articles we shared this week:


*How to Handle That Email or Phone Call You Totally Forgot About
*Can Boston be the hub of the start-up universe?
*22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue

Did you read something great this week? Share it in the comments!

This post is part of our February blog series. We asked several thought leaders to respond to this question: "What technology do you love most?" Stay tuned for more posts in this series, and for the upcoming March series on UX/design. This post is by Tom Anderson, President and CEO of Weymouth Design. Tom is interested in how advances in mobile and digital technology, like FFTs, can transform healthcare and interactive design. Find him on Twitter.

A few weeks ago, Nick, one of our video editors, was waiting for the server to compress and crunch his brilliant work into a viewable, transferable, and integrated file. Time was wasting. I had to remind him of the good old days in the late 70s and early 80s, when I was his age, and the long nights were spent lining up tapes and editing in a painful, laborious, and repetitive all-nighter fashion.

This post is part of our February blog series. We asked several thought leaders to respond to this question: "What technology do you love most?" Stay tuned for more posts in this series, and for the upcoming March series on UX/design. This post is by Ali Robbins Hyatt. Ali is a manager on the growth and innovation team at Avery Dennison and a past member of the MITX Future Leaders Group. Find her on Twitter!.

I will admit it – I can be overly analytical when making a simple decision. If I am in a new city and want to maximize my dining experience for the night, I will consult not one, but countless apps and websites to make my final decision. Eater and Grub Street are professional sites that relay the newest restaurants from the trusted opinions of food writers. Chowhound’s community of foodies gives me a perspective on which of the city’s top restaurants cannot be missed. The Yelp app gives me the latest reviews so I can check if a restaurant has recently gone downhill. The Menupages app shows me the menu so I can... well, you get the point!

These are the best articles that we shared (on Twitter) this week!



What is Geo-Fencing and Geo-Targeting?
With Shortcut App, Kooaba Says QR Codes Are a Thing of the Past
3 Ways to Use Pinterest For Marketing Research

What industry blogs do you follow? What was the coolest thing you read this week? Tell us in the comments!

Here are the best blog posts & tweets from the first ever E-Commerce Summit! Scroll through and see what people were saying.

A Tale of Two (E-Commerce) Retailers - by Chris Fletcher, Research Director, Gartner
Perspectives on the E-Commerce Summit - an Event Recap - by Mina Hsiang, Associate, General Catalyst Partners

Guest post by Mina Hsiang. Mina is an associate with General Catalyst Partners in Cambridge and a current member of the MITX Future Leaders Group.

As I sat in the sold-out MITX e-commerce event, I couldn't help thinking to myself "This is about everything but the commerce!" No one was discussing transactions. No one was talking about how to manage payment systems.  People talked about social media, e-mail, reviews, comparisons, a volunteer marketing army!  So I looked up the word commerce, and this is the definition I found:

com•merce/ˈkämərs/
Noun:    1.  The activity of buying and selling, esp. on a large scale.
2.  Social dealings between people.
    
I immediately saw where my expectations had been wrong. In fact, I now think e-commerce is finally coming of age; it is truly becoming commerce instead of just shopping.