CaseCamp: where the internet still refuses to grow up

Social media events: no longer about trying to make money for yourself anymore, sort of! This week, Toronto hosted at least three gatherings where altruism had top billing: Toronto Twestival was a Saturday night boat cruise that raised $6,000 for Meal Exchange; the monthly PR gathering Third Tuesday Toronto hosted Shel Israel — the only social media expert to be parodied in a puppet show — as part of a cross-Canada launch for his feel-good book, Twitterville ; and, yesterday, the CaseCamp conference took over the ballroom at the Carlu. An all-star cast was recruited for the $99 afternoon event, with the promise of handing over proceeds to renovate the Critical Care Unit waiting room at Sick Kids hospital. See, none of that original dot-com-era greed is going to bring this scene down. But there are no apologies for the fact that so much of the content being generated in this realm is the product of so many terminal adolescences.

CaseCamp’s daytime lineup was mercifully devoid of any of those narc-like change agents working for a legacy newspaper or television network. Here, the keeper of Sockington the cat, Waltham, Mass. tech historian Jason Scott, could revel in his non-achievements without apology — asserting himself unworthy of the stage time. “Twitter is the low-carb diet of 2009,” he quipped, noting that Sockington’s success has been all about being featured on the suggested users page that Twitter newbies are defaulted to, estimating that two-thirds of the cat’s million-plus cult is some kind of spam.

Boosting team internet were conference regulars Bryan Segal of ComScore — who emphasized that women make or break a website — and webcasting digital strategist Will Pate — whose takeaway line is “media has changed from an artifact into a trajectory.” Andrew Baron, creator of yesterday’s hottest vlog Rocketboom, and now the more ecumenical Know Your Meme, flew in just in time to talk about the interweb impact of jackass of the day Kanye West. Quick! Before everybody in the room grows up and finds something genuine to obsess over instead. What happens when that happens?

For his part, Tim Hwang has at least parlayed his web culture fixation into a role with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. And a local boy, Matt Wyndoe, is able to boast of doing good via his role at Facebook — which Baron previously likened to walled-up North Korea — although his talk focused on the fact that, beyond 150 friends, the count starts becoming kind of meaningless.

Victor Samra, the director of digital media and marketing for the Museum of Modern Art, appeared to discuss the New York gallery’s outreach to a global community. But, based on tweets, of greater appeal to this crowd was the art curated by Ben Huh, the Seattle entrepreneur responsible for I Can Haz Cheezburger, and owner of FAIL Blog. This sardonic feel-good humour is now lining his pockets daily. But don’t let all of this charitable goodwill fool you — everybody knows that a diabolical dungeon-dwelling subculture will remain the driving force of anything that’s worth anything online.

CaseCamp collected tweets [ScribbleLive]