Technology in itself has no meaning except for how we use it. These panels want to flip the preverbal script on  social media and transform it into social awareness. Basically it goes like this: use technology, save the world.

5. Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success (3/15, 05:00 p.m.) – Meghan Warby and Argyle Communications present this panel that will explore the reality that no matter what kinds of technologies are used to spread a message on the internet it is people –passionate people– who are the most important element to successfully getting a cause’s message across through social media.

4. StoryCorps 2.0: Social Networking Meets Storytelling (3/14, 9:00 a.m.) – Suneel Gupta of The Kahani Movement has organized this panel around the idea of handing over media technology to people within various communities enabling them to create and share their own stories through social media.

3. Sampling the Sea: Classroom Networks Save the Ocean (3/14, 3:30 p.m.) – This panel will teach students in classrooms around the world about the declining fish population problem and encourages them to share information with each other about the problem.  Bruce Caron and the New Media Research Institute are the panel’s organizers and are working collaboratively with google, NASAGlobe and ePals on the project.

2. How The Other 1/2 Lives – Touring The Digital Divide (3/16, 12:30 p.m.) – It seems like everyone has a Twitter account or is on Facebook. The reality is many people don’t even have access to the internet. This panel, organized by Jessamyn West and the Tunbridge Public Library, will have two librarians (one from an urban area the other rural) talk about their experiences teaching basic computer literacy to underserved communities.

1. It’s Time to Save the World with Design Thinking (3/14, 3:30 p.m.) -Dwaine King of Pinpoint Logic is organizing this panel that takes design concepts used to sell anything from $5,000 purses to items on a dollar menu and applies them to raise awareness about larger social problems and creating solutions.