1. Linkminds meeting on Friday 26th February 2010 in Exeter.
2. “LikeMinds is an organisation dedicated to Making Action Accessible. Founded in 2009 amidst the boom of Social Media, where communication was drastically changing, and knowledge was overflowing – creating both the opportunity and the necessity for us to act and turn our ideas into reality.” (http://www.wearelikeminds.com/likeminds2010/)
3. From the description, it feels like an organisation that has embraced social media. I wanted to see whether this meeting was a Social media event or an event using the words social media as a marketing angle.
The event was a mix of meeting people and presentations – this is good especially in this day and age. The programme looked really ambitious – 6 keynote speakers, 6 discussion panels consisting of 18 panelists with 6 moderators.
My point of view: I am a Social Media newbie and have come to see this in action. My understanding is Social Media is conversations between people rather than communications – corporate speak for broadcast.
Comments:
I will only comment on the afternoon session as it took me quite a time to get my head round the event.
1. The 2 speakers – Joanne Jacobs and Chris Brogan were the highlights; Joanne was a performance that set the standard. Chris – an outstanding blogger and the reason why I came. He did not have the time to finish; what a shame!
Chris Brogan in action
2. Then there were 2 speakers with corporate backgrounds – explaining why corporates are not comfortable with social media. Corporates in general broadcast and do not have conversations – it is their structure that makes it difficult. There was a constant referral to Dell getting USD 6.5 million extra sales from twitter. That is broadcast of special deals and not business resulting from a conversation.
It would be better to have people who are successful in using social media and doing good business resulting from it. I can name 4 people immediately and would therefore, recommend them as keynote speakers.
3. Panels: I did not think there was sufficient time to develop the “conversation” with the panels short of the introduction. It is also very brave to “label” a person as a social media expert. How old is this subject and the knowledge has not settled down. The time allocated for the panels was just too short.
4. No twitterfall in the background – that was a real disappointment. This is a validation of the event by social media – everybody in the audience can see what is happening.
Is it a distraction to the speaker?
Everyone in Social Media knows that there is a fight for attention so that there will be engagement. Therefore, every successful person in Social Media is outstanding or exceptional. They are well above the noise because of the quality of their content or their presentation. If your presentation is only mediocre, you will sink to the level of the noise and the twitterfall screen will be more interesting.
In this day and age, multi-tasking is the norm – listening to the presentation and twittering; watching TV and “doing” e-mails simultaneously.
I spoke to a number of people who were not in Exeter and were disappointed that their tweets where not shown – no twitterfall at the meeting.
Suggestions
Conclusion:
I had a beneficial time in Exeter and got the message of the important 4 words mentioned in Vanessa’s blog “Business : Four little words that may lead to success on the social web … #likeminds”
(http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=145723).
However, this Likeminds series will survive should it show its authenticity and leadership in the social media age where transparency is paramount.
Was it a true Social Media? It has the potential to get there if……
Dr Michael Oon
[...] Michael Oon – Was The LikeMinds Meeting A Social Media Event? [...]
Hey Michael, thanks so much for those kind words. They really do mean a lot to me – so thank you. Agree the panel sessions could have been longer, but I think the energy levels by 6:30 were about right to end so I guess maybe there could have been fewer speakers or panels? In any case I think what was achieved by Scott and Drew was amazing and probably avoided anyone feeling that their interests weren’t being met long enough in any session to warrant disappearing, so perhaps that’s the merit of a shorter period.
Good question on whether it was a social media event. Scott made it clear to me he wanted to move beyond social media, and that’s partly why I avoided the traditional tools in my presentation. But ultimately, technologies that enable better connections betwen people are ultimately all ‘social’ media, so I guess it depends on your perspective on the term.
Anyway thanks for this write up – really appreciate it!