Chinwag Live 'Measuring Social Media', rethinking event formats and wise crowds

Last night was the Chinwag Live event 'Measuring Social Media'.

I was a panellist with Alex Burmaster from Nielsen Online, Robin Grant of 1000heads, Ankur Shah Co-founder of Techlightenment, and with Jim Sterne from the Web Analytics Association in the chair.

The guys at Chinwag did a great job - the event was sold out, so they picked a great and timely topic. The location was fine, nice and central, easy to find, spacious without being cavernous, there was free beer - it was cool, and bang on. Deirdre, Sam and the team know how to make this stuff happen.

But as a panel we failed.

The social media goodness here of people expressing their opinions online and sharing them means that we have access to the following feedback:

helenium

back from chinwag, twas good but a few more client voices would have been nice. Less 'social media rocks' stuff maybe. We all know that.

Stuart Bruce, Wolfstar:

I came away both pleased and disappointed. Disappointed because I didn’t feel that I’d learnt a great deal. Pleased because I now feel far more confident about my own and Wolfstar’s views and expertise in this area.

Tim Hoang, Rainier PR:

For those that missed it, the debate went like this: We need to measure social media! You can’t, it’s about people! We need to measure people! We are doing it! No we are not! It’s complex.
While I didn’t expect there to be a ‘42’ type meaning of life, universe and everything solution, I was disappointed with some questions being dodged and informed opinions given as fact.

Wendy McAuliffe, Liberate Media:

If I’m honest, I came away thinking that I hadn’t learnt as much as I’d hoped to, and this sentiment seemed to be shared by other people in the audience. A Tweetscan last night for ‘chinwag’ was very telling - a lot of passive observations, but nothing ground-breaking or inspiring being shared.

So it seems that the common thread is the disappointment around not having learned more on such an interesting and potentially rich topic...

At this stage I will say that it is quite possible that these opinions are not representative of the whole, and that these guys were the disappointed few, but I tempted to disagree with that - JennyBee is a sane rational person, a good reality check, and we chatted afterwards and she said that was the feedback she'd got from people - came to learn 'practical tips' were her words, and largely didn't.

So what we did do was rattle on about the big issues on the topic, and it was a bit male and a bit dickwaddish at times.

I had thought that by stirring up a debate, which was what I like to do, some good stuff would fall out. Instead we basically failed to address the core 'want': to learn more on the topic. Doh!

So what do we need to do?

This got me thinking today that the key failing here was something that needn't have happened.

And this needs to be addressed because these kind of web people are smart people. It's a breed thing, something in the DNA. Things move so quickly with the melting point of web, culture, business and other stuff that these people are all rapacious learners, on-it, smart to keep up (the slow get eaten). We teach ourselves because the books aren't out yet, nor are the courses or whatever else. Go to a vanilla marketing or PR event and it's similar but different - less edge, less hunger, less 'right now'. I really believe this.

But even so, despite this keen audience, I think that particular panel could definitely deliver content that would've helped shed light on what people wanted - what we needed was a clear steer from the audience on what they wanted to get out of the evening.

And if that's not something we can address with the power of social media, or sms voting, or something fooking simple like a bunch of biros and some paper or a flipping ticksheet when you arrive, I'd be amazed.

Perhaps now all 'webby people' events should have constant polling throughout their events? Maybe this has been tried and doesn't work, but I'm keen to know and explore.

If you wanted a techie solution you could have a live tweetscan projected onto a wall (fucking cool - 'rate my panel' in real time - bring it!) or a sensible solution then regular shows of hands ('do you want more or less discussion of topic XYZ or shall we move to option A or option B?').

Most decent speakers can and should be expected to turn on a sixpence and change and tailor their content to the need there and then. That's your responsibility if you put yourself forward.

This has to happen.
Not so much in our industry but in the world of conferences and seminars in general too many events are hit and miss - every different provider and industry has its ratios, but like with web analytics (booom!) it's about improving the ratios, working the numbers.
And too much good thinking and great preparation goes into them.
Plus the ticket investments but more, the collective time we *all* spend at these events together, all more or less gunning for the same outcomes, a successful happy crowd.

With wise crowds like ours, we need to rethink the interactions between audience and crowd. I'm not going to put a 2 and a 'oh' at the end of it, but I do think the wider trends of democratisation, universal access to information, self-publishing and all that other good stuff mean that the dynamic of events has fundamentally evolved. We no longer sit dumbly smiling, happy to be fed lines. Performance is demanded, 'actionable learning please Mrs Expert, or else...'.

Another idea I had, which is probably very silly and probably influenced by my toddler's parachute games at music group (!!!) is that the entire audience sits in a circle, or maybe a series of circles for larger groups like last night's, and maybe there are some flipcharts and some key roles ('chair', 'flip chart minuter' - whatever) and the whole thing becomes truly interactive, the intelligence in the groups bubbles up and is improved collectively, and some cool kinetic learning shit comes out if all. Each group could report back the key 3 points to the rest, and then the say 12 key points are then documented to a wiki.

What do you think?

• What have you seen work well at 'normal' events?
• And how can unconferences and barcamps and all that influence these kind of events?

Last random idea before I go to bed:

Organisers as panellists.
I doubt, I really really doubt, that you can find a more broadly and deeply up to date bunch of web 'experts' than Sam Michel, Deirdre Molloy, Ian Delaney, Linus Gregoriadis, Ashley Friedlin and maybe throw a bit of Mike Butcher or one of the Guardian team into the mix just for fun (maybe Mike's the chocolate sprinkles and the non-journos are the cappuccino).
I reckon they'd make an awesome panel, seriously. Someone should do it - the 'superpanel'.

Anyway, feedback as always please - I need it (see above!). See you in the comments section.

Comments

[Chris Reed]

I think you're beating yourself up too much about the format etc. It was simply a case the people who already knew a fair bit didn't learn a lot more (and also blog/twitter quicker), but I would suspect many people did get a lot out of it.

Also - it's a subject with no right (or wrong answer). It was always going to be a discussion with no end. But your Opensource idea is a good one. Not sure if/how I might help, but if it does move forward, let me know.

[Robin Grant]

Hey Will

There are some good ideas in there (especially the live tweetscan projected onto a wall bit). As Jenny suggests, perhaps some sort of hackday / BarCamp / unconference is in order? Ankur?

p.s. apologies to everyone for by my contribution to the male dickwaddishness...

;p

[kelvin newman]

It's the curse of a social savvy audience, especially when many of the audience will have already read the blogs of the presenters and been used to contributing to the discusion via comments and blogs. And a linear presentation doesn't work in the same way.

I think there's definately a place for roundtable events with presenters roles being to move along the debate rather than 'present' in the conventional sense.

But I def like the idea of a social media unconference...

[Sam Michel]

"We teach ourselves because the books aren't out yet, nor are the courses or whatever else."

Yup, and we often have to invent, because we're tinkering with things that are in their formative years.

The circles idea - it had a better name, I think - is something I've seen at Jim's Emetrics conference. It can work really well, especially with the right blend of people.

Super-panel? Sounds like fun, I'd be up for getting involved. Not sure if Mike is the sprinkles or the cappuccino though. He might like to be the cinnamon topping ;-)

Back channels/ratings at events like those can be good, but they can also descend into ranting about the speakers/debate, which detracts from the Q&A and potentially takes attention away from the discussion. Better to have the audience/panel focus it then and there.

One thing I'd add from the panels we've run is to consider the breadth of audience knowledge and experience. Chinwag Live audiences' are clued up, certainly, but there's always a wide range of view points, experiences and approaches. It's not always easy to flush these out, even in what I hope is a pretty informal and approachable envionment.

I've mentioned this in other blog post comments, but we're hoping to re-run this event in a few months and it'd be great to re-visit the subject with this feedback in mind.

Thanks for the write-up and being on the panel. Oh, and for those that couldn't make it and want to hear first-hand what happened, the podcast will be up on the site in a couple of days:

http://live.chinwag.com/#podcasts

[BadgerGravling]

Hi,
I'm still annoyed that I couldn't make it in the end, as it's a subject I'm deeply, deeply involved in. It sounds like I definitely missed out (particularly on the free beer!)

But I think it sounds like it echoed a problem that is endemic throughout the wider internet discussion on social media. There's a growing recognition of social media and word of mouth as a valuable way to reach people, and numerous 'big picture' discussions of how things are changing. You can find 100 academic and scientific debates about social media, influencers, networks, widgets etc.

What's harder to find is numerical evidence, practical advice, guides, and success stories. As with the evolution of internet analytics, there is are very few guides to what a company should measure when engaging with social media for the first time, and many guides are produced by analytic companies themselves.

The subject is a new one, and experimentation rules, which is a good thing. But experimentation is a hard sell, and it can only be helped with experts providing evidence. Anyone webby enough to be attending an event will already have some instinctive knowledge that they should be using social media - what's missing is the next step of implementation and measurement etc from a practical viewpoint.

[Helen Lawrence]

Hi Will

I agree with Chris, you are beating yourself up about it too much - it was a great event. My twitter you've posted above about wanting more clients to attend these things is somewhat of a pipe dream, but it would be interesting to get the perspective of that typical client with £xxxxxxxk to spend and worrying about the ROI on a social media campaign.

It'd be lovely to see what kind of measurements they think should be brought in across the industry as a standard for us to aim towards.
x

[Ian Delaney]

Super-panel? Would it be like 80's supergroup The Traveling Tilbury's with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison? Sam gets to be Dylan, of course ;-)

Balancing events is the trickiest thing ever, because you've ultimately *no idea* of the experience level of the audience. They're bound to be very mixed ultimately, so too dumb for some and too high-falutin' for others. The blogger contingent are likely to be at the high end of the scale, so probably there were loads of non-bloggers who really learned a lot.

Sorry to miss you again!

[Will McInnes]

In response to Helen and Chris, I'm really not beating myself up, but thank you anyway! I hate public mea culpa celebrations of self-punishment - it's so weak! :)

This isn't the first time I've thought these thoughts about the more-direct steering of an event by the attendees - this has been a useful springboard for those thoughts and I wanted to share them and see what you guys thought.

And thanks for the feedback all.

[Mike Butcher]

I'm a chocolate sprinkle?!?

[jennybee]

I had a thought last night about the possibilities of merging barcamp-style unconferences with more 'static' evening events...

http://www.jenny-bee.net/2008/02/21/unconferencing-chinwag/

What do you reckon? Could it work?

[Chris Hambly]

I disagree Sam is beating himself up, he is self-reflecting on something very important.

It was a great idea, wrong format.

As Sam says, the dynamic and answers are in the crowds, the shift is away from "sage on the stage" types, to "guide by the side".

It's a power-shift is all..

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

I guess the proof is in the pudding.

I'd love to attend an event like this where my views as a member of the audience are expected in real-time.

Where biros and ticksheets with flexible agendas are handed out before the event begins...

Hopefully they aren't a long way off; look forward to hearing more about unconference, barCamp-style Chinwag Live spinoffs, JennyBee, sounds good.

[Andy Williamson]

Hi Will - saw your spiel at the Nedstat thing yesterday. Good stuff.

About "Live Feedback from the audience" - I went to one of the 'media salon' things at the ICA 7 or 8 years ago, where they did this using txts. The screen was above the panel, so they couldn't see it without craning their necks. The discussion was, shall we say, less than stimulating. I think the descent began when "She's not as bright as her shirt" appeared halfway through a speech by a very nattily dressed (but a little vague) woman - cue stifled sniggers and splutters all over the audience, and panelists all looking a bit shifty. I think the rest of the session was accompanied by the post-session watering hole being arranged, and stuff like 'mine's a guinness'. So it depends how honest and public people like their feedback :)

[Will McInnes]

Wow, wonderful comments and suggestions - thank you all for taking the time.

@Andy - LOL! Great story, and I can quite imagine the unhinged passive/aggressive snarkiness that would kick off with anonymous real time commenting. There has to be a better way though, I'm convinced of it.