In the shadow of the social media fueled Iranian election ferment, hundreds turned out for 140 Characters Conference at the New World Stages in mid-town Manhattan on June 16-17 to discuss the disruptive effects of Twitter across multiple industries and fields -- e.g., news, publishing, advertising, entertainment, etc.

The conference, a brainchild of Jeff Pulver, felt, alternately, like a religious revival tent gathering or a Twitter's Anonymous Meeting; there were very few in attendance who were not avid or addicted Twitter users.

While Twitter certainly was the connective glue, it was also the springboard for a larger conversation on the impact of Now, of real time content gathering, consumption and distribution.

Jeff kicked off the conference with these words:

The magic of Twitter is that it creates a serendipitous effect which is felt around the world.  It lets every voice be heard and every voice matter... The future is in front of us and we really need to understand the impact of Now and it's hyper-connectivity.

Conference attendees were treated to a smorgasbord of characters who shared their experiences and learnings on the disruption of Now including Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey who "never felt so close to" his government than when he watched the Twitter updates of Congressional leaders during the Presidential Inauguration.  Twitter's immediacy, approachability and transparency, he noted, enables people like us to see "the innermost thoughts of people who ... we put on a pedestal."

But, for me, the passionate pleas for compelling content from music critic Chris Weingarten and NBC news anchor Ann Curry were the highlights of this conference (don’t get me wrong — I also loved the crowd favorites -- Jim Jones, Wyclef Jean, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Xavier Jernigan, and others) perhaps its because I love being exposed to things I don’t know about; things that are new.

Now Content: Exposure to Need to Know vs. Want to Know

Chris Weingarten, self-professed snarky freelance writer/music critic, argued that too often in the Now phenomenon, people blast out self-centered and self-promotional updates and seek only what interests them.  In a hyper-caffeinated rant, Chris accused crowds (on Twitter and elsewhere) of bad taste and mediocrity:

Twitter makes it easy to find stuff that pertains to you ... that's the problem.  I can always learn about stuff that's important to me; that's easy.  I want to learn about stuff that's not important to me; that's the hard stuff.  I want to be exposed.  Crowdsourcing killed punk rock.  Crowdsourcing kills art.  Crowdsourcing killed indierock.  You want to know why? 'Cuz crowds have terrible taste... If you let the people decide, nothing adventurous happens.

Critics, he argued, even in this day and age of Now, are needed to provide the why. Why is a band worth listening to? Why should I care?  Why can be provided poeticly, potently in 140 characters.  To prove his point, he created 1000TimesYes, a Twitter page where he posts music reviews of 1000 records released in 2009 in 140 characters or less.  He left the audience with a call "to be a critic in whatever you do.  Let people know the who.  Let people know the why."

Like Weingarten, Ann Curry, news anchor for both the Today show and DatelineNBC, is angry at people's indifference to anything outside their sphere:

Here's why I'm pissed off.  The reason I have to fight every time to do these stories is because the truth is that it's hard to get the majority of Americans or even a significant number of Americans in NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS's world, to care.  I think journalism is a battle and I feel the scars and I see the blood on my sword on a daily basis for fights for foreign coverage to be more present in our broadcasting....There is a responsibility that media of all sorts ... online, all the forms it has ... we have a responsibility to not tell stories, not do stories for financial gain. We have a responsibility to inform people what the words are, what they need to know first and what they want to know second.  That is the balance.  [But] what people want to know has overcome what people need to know.  In this world we live in we need to step up and care about the things that matter.