A social media expert – Laurel Papworth – will be speaking at Australia’s first social media investment conference. It will be streaming live and free from Sydney this Friday 10th December.
Laurel has been named by Forbes Magazine as being in the Top 50 Social Media Experts globally and even Barack Obama called her a social media expert and still follows her.
The conference is called MarketLit and it brings together some of the biggest names in social media for a free livestream at 10 am AEDT this Friday, following on from the inaugural MarketLit event in July which was Australia’s first millennial and Gen Z investment conference.
Education is at the forefront of this conference and the co-founders of MarketLit, Julia Maguire and Lelde Smits, emphasise it’s important to be literate on so many different levels – including social media, investment and technology. This is the reason Laurel is one of the key speakers at the event because the value of social media cannot be underestimated. As Laurel has said: “People think that social media is someone uploading a photo of their cat, but social media is actually the missing handbook of humanity.”
Managing online communities for more than 20 years, Laurel is a firm believer in educating the public on trends to come and topics shaping our society. She’s made it her life mission to provide mentoring to others, and will be sharing her latest insights: “I’m looking forward to speaking at the MarketLit conference and I’ll be speaking on investment by the big tech companies, Facebook and Google in education, and the reasons why they are investing in education,” she adds.
Talking about the rise of the ‘EduSocial’
Speaking about the rise of ‘EduSocial,’ Laurel explains: “There are artificial intelligence resources that are studying what we do on social media every single day, and learning what it means to be human. So, if we have any role in providing advice or interest to humanity then we should be looking at social media, and the future of social media, for how that’s going to play out.”
Recent reports from global firms show that social media has increasingly become an important resource for investors. The Ascent found that many young people get their investment information from social media with 91% of Gen Z investors saying they get their investing information through social media and 75% of millennials said they get investing knowledge through social media.
This is a not-for-profit conference held by MarketLit
It seems that we want more education in this area as the last event MarketLit held in early July of this year was well attended. As Julia says: “Creating another event was inevitable following the incredible reception our first event received. We were inundated with media coverage and investor interest wanting to be part of MarketLit’s commitment to investor education.”
Lelde adds: “MarketLit has been created to advance market and media literacy while exploring the future of the digital economy in the investment world with national and international thought leadership.”
Lelde will be interviewing each speaker and she says: “I am deeply honoured to personally interview each speaker and am excited to put a spotlight on their voice, views and vision for the future. These experienced industry professionals, leaders and innovators are operating at the top of their game, collectively with millions and millions of followers across their social media platforms, and we are all united in our passion to create a world in which technology can help, not hinder our collective evolution.”
Responsible Technology
Fellow speaker Jordan Guiao is an advocate for responsible technology, working as a Research Fellow at The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology.
“The online environment gives the opportunity to make the industry more dynamic,” says Jordan, “but there are also some abuses that clearly need to be regulated. With emerging financial products like crypto and NFTs, we need to get a handle on creating rules and best practices so that governance is up to scratch for these new products. That’s a conversation that needs to happen today.”
Markets and Media Regulation
The focus on markets and media regulation comes as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison advised over the weekend that the government will look at introducing legislation to make social media companies effectively ‘publishers’ and accountable for the anonymous ‘authors’ on their sites.
Scott Morrison said, “The online world provides many great opportunities, but it comes with some real risks, and we must address these or it will continue to have a very harmful and corrosive impact on our society, on our community… the rules that exist in the real world, must exist in the digital and online world.”
This sounds interesting and obviously, this will be addressed at the conference. With so much happening in the world right now, it does sound like a good time to educate yourself on how technology is evolving and shaping our lives – and especially what we can do to prepare and prosper from it.
To register for the free livestream of this conference at 10 a.m. AEDT this Friday, visit here.
