UNCONVENTIONAL

Could Multitasking Be Making Us Smarter?

I

F THE INTERNET MAKES us stupid, scholar Cathy N. Davidson asks in her

new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Look, and Learn, why has worker productivity grown since the advent of the Internet? A co-founder of HASTAC, a network of academics and others dedicated to learning in the digital age, Davidson challenges assertions that our constant exposure to

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is affecting travel as well as importing and exporting.

INITIATIVES: ISPA is looking to attract new buyers by “really trying to take advantage of the exhibitor customer base,” Lyons said. ISPA works with a company called Exhibitor Invites, which allows exhibitors to submit their own customer lists and send EXPO invitations to po- tential attendees. The idea is to take advantage of the fact that EXPO exhibitors often have a larger network of international buyers than ISPA does. “There’s no list you can really buy, from our standpoint,” Lyons said. “We’re a very finite community.” Lastly, ISPA is for the first time advertising

in global industry publications, in order to em- phasize the fact that EXPO is not a U.S.-centric show, but rather, as Lyons put it, “a global show that is important to all mattress manufactur- ers, whether you’re inside the United States or outside of the United States.” n — Hunter R. Slaton

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.ispaexpo.com

www.pcma.org

How to Create a Perfect LinkedIn Profile

A complete LinkedIn profile helps people find you and your event — and helps both of you build your network. So be sure to:

 Use all the links they give you.

 Complete all of the sections, spend time crafting a good profile section, and change from the default headline that lists just your current job title to something more descriptive and helpful.

 Optimize your profile with keywords. Make sure the profile summary and headline uses ap- propriate key words and phrases that will attract targeted exhibi- tors and attendees to your event.

SOURCE: Bartizan Connects (www.bartizan.com/blog/?p=504) pcma convene November 2011 17

interactive technology is damaging our attention. Instead, she argues in Now You See It, our brains are evolving in ways that tradi- tional methods of measur- ing attention miss:

The new brain science

helps us to re-ask the old questions about attention in a new way. What are we learning by being open to multitasking? What new muscles are we exercising? What new neural pathways

TIPSTER

are we shaping, what old ones are we shearing, what new unexpected patterns are we creating? And how can we help one another out by collaborative multi- tasking? … The Latin word for

“inspiration” is inspirare, to inflame or breathe into. What if we thought of new digital ways of thinking not as multitasking but multi- inspiring, as potentially creative disruption of usual thought patterns? Look at

the account of just about any enormous intellectual breakthrough and you’ll find that some seemingly random connection, some associational side thought, some distraction preceded the revelation. Distraction, we may discover, is as central to innovation as, say, an apple falling on Newton’s head. n

FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.cathydavidson.com