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.
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