Dave’s grabbed the microphone and is shooting around the room, all fired up to share his thoughts on the Attention Economy.

What’s that? Basically it’s about attaching value to eyeballs. It’s about idea snacking and chipping away at a huge piece of marble to find the David!

Generally, Dave is proposing that people don’t care anymore. They want value in the moment right now. Gone are the days of leaving work early to watch Dallas. Ideas need to stick - and for them to stick, they need to be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.

Value in products has moved from the 20th century concept of ‘unique selling proposition (USP)’ to ‘by interacting with’. Essentially, Dave’s talking about social currency. His example of how social currency works is a great one: if someone shares a joke with you, IF it adds value to you by making you laugh, you pass it on. The more it gets passed on, the more the value grows incrementally at each pass-along, eventually resulting in that joke (or product) having substantially more social currency.

The future acccording to Dave? Creating an environment where people choose to care. Selling more, for less. The long tail and all that. Nice one, Dave.

Also part of Mr D’s talk: Creative Commons. Read more on their site, but in a nutshell: a license that you apply to work that defines what rights you’re reserving and how you’d like people to use your content. Madonna has just scared the record label industry by completely buying into the concept of free sharing. She’s happy for fans anywhere to download and distrute any of her material as often as they like, and chosen instead to focus her profitability on the resulting increased interest in her work, and thereby greater attendance at her performances (where she begins to make money on ticket sales) and merchandise. Smart lady.