Closing the Curtain on the Theatrics of Social

#sxsw #realself

All the world’s a stage, and today everyone is using their social networks to play the part and edit the perfect version of their lives. Posting selfies from only their good side, checking in to only the coolest hangouts, sharing only on-point and witty remarks. What happened to the realness? There’s been a shift in traditional social networks away from connecting with people and instead toward creating a persona. Let’s ditch the pretense and get back to what we actually care about: keeping in touch with the people in our lives in an authentic way. Hear from Path and Highlight about why and how we can go back to being our real selves online.

Presenters

Cynthia Samanian

Prod Mgr

Path

Cynthia Samanian is a Product Manager at Path where she leads product updates and launches, user experience research, and monetization initiatives. Cynthia first joined Path as Business Manager after earning her MBA from Harvard Business School. During her studies, she was a Student EIR at General Catalyst Partners and recipient of the Arthur Rock Fellowship for Entrepreneurship and Minimum Viable Product Fund. Previously, Cynthia spent four years as a Financial Analyst with General Electric. Cynthia earned her BA in Finance from the University of Washington.

Paul Davison

Founder/CEO

Highlight

Paul Davison is the founder and CEO of Highlight - a mobile app that helps you learn about the people around you. Paul began developing Highlight as an EIR at Benchmark Capital. Prior to that, Paul was a VP at Metaweb, a semantic web company acquired by Google in 2010. Earlier, Paul held various product and operational roles at Google and at Bain & Company. He received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS from Stanford University.