Keith Shirley

I went to the IIA Congress and Netvisionary Awards last Thursday and Friday. I enjoyed it a lot – it was a good opportunity to network and get some information. I don’t know if I’m spoiled by events like Bizcamp but I didn’t feel quite as inspired as I was at other events. The talks were good – containing some good insights but I couldn’t help feeling on occassion that they were slipping into sales pitchs. The organisation of the event was excellent – especially considering how small the IIA team actually is. Overall the event was very good and I hope to be able to go again next year.

On the afternoon of the first day the Social Media Working Group held three breakout sessions. Quite a bit of effort was spent in preparing for the breakout sessions and I have to admit that I missed the two practice runs. The idea on the day was to take a sample company as a case study and to form mini groups to discuss how blogging, forums and twitter could be used. The order of discussion was guided by a very good five point plan devised by Conor Lynch.  One of the things I especially liked about it was the simple fact that the first point of focus was to figure out who your target customers are. Regular readers of this blog will know that no matter how much I love tech – I’m always wary getting the tools and then going looking for where to use them.

There was two of us in each group facilitating the discussion and then after a few minutes we were moved on to the next set of people. I was doing Blogs with Conor. The feedback was great and most people seemed happy. The sessions were packed and we had people waiting in the room for 20 minutes during the break to make sure they had a spot.

While an overall success – I do feel that it didn’t really work as we had hoped. The biggest issue was that we didn’t have enough time to get an actual discussion going – and we ended up doing most of the talking ourselves. I got some very helpful feedback from FinalContext via Twitter. Next time I think we should try keeping it as one large group and having a general open discussion.

As a reminder – The working group is publishing the whitepapers on the IIA website – http://www.iia.ie/smwg

I spent all Friday morning doing the mentoring sessions on Social Media. Matt Matheson from ThinkhousePR and I spent 30 minutes with individuals from companies talking to them about their social media strategy and answering their questions. The format of these sessions is fantastic. For all my readers – book them as early as possible next year and fill up your whole morning. Do your homework to have questions ready in advance – you will never have a better opportunity to get so many experts together in such a short space of time. Your brain will be steaming afterwards but it’s worth it.

Originally Matt and I were going to split up the sessions but the day before we decided that we would do all the sessions together. This worked much better as while I’m strong on blogging – I have not been so involved with facebook (especially with fan pages).  It was a tiring but productive morning – we even managed to help three extra people during the break and in between sessions.

The Fish

And finally I have to talk about the fish. The hotel has a projector in the hall that shows images of fish on the floor. Companies can put there own graphic as the background. There is a sensor for when you walk that causes the “water” to ripple and the fish to swim away. No surprise that I want one – I’ll find a home for it later. Some gadgets are just too much fun to try and be sensible and find the requirement first. The picture below does not do it justice.

Related Links:

IIA Protecting Your Brand Slides

IIA Congress 2009

Irish Internet Association Congress 2009

Review of IIA Congress 2009

Photos are available from the IIA

Slides of the presentations are also available

The Irish Internet Association and Net Imperative are running a free roadshow event that I think will be very interesting. It takes place on 28 Jan 2009 (so hurry) and has a great range of speakers on Digital Marketing for your business.

From their web page

”
From designing a website for the user experience, through building brands online, leveraging search engines, social media, and blogs, to campaigns, online PR and digital marketing. Hear from high-profile, industry leaders during this information packed day.

All delegates that attend the event will also be able to sign up for a free membership of NetImperative.com at the registration desk usually charged out at £99.00+VAT.
“

Have a look at the IIA site for more details:

https://secure.iia.ie/events/event/188/net-imperative-dublin-roadshow/

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

The word Podcamp for me brings up strange visions of Mork and Mindy and his spaceship. It has nothing to do with that of course but I can’t shake it.

I went to the Podcamp Ireland event yesterday (Sat 27 Sept 2008) to have a look at what people are doing in the area of social media and podcasts. The event is a very informal but very well organised conference type day that has numerous presentations and conversations running at the same time. As Krishna De said in her opening talk – you vote with your legs. If you are not as interested in something as you had hoped then you can get up and go to another session. The problem for me was that there were so many interesting things going on that I ended up in the hall moving between sessions trying to get a bit of all of them.

There are a couple of things that really caught my attention – most of them heavily influenced by my desire to apply what I’ve learned to an educational environment. I’m also playing with the idea of how social media can be put to good use helping rural businesses – so these kinds of events are fantastic inspiration for me.

Simon McGarr was the second session I attended and it really did strike a chord with me. I was worried that I might misquote what he said but I’m glad to see that he’s put his notes on his blog. What I got from it was the need to help people learn to question what it is that they are reading in the newspapers etc. Where did the information come from? Who’s doing the writing? What is influencing the way things are written? I liked that the emphasis was on making your own informed decisions and not just being cynical and thinking that the papers are full of lies etc. There was a facinating reference to research done by Conor McHugh of St. Thomas’ Senior National school in Jobstown in Tallaght where getting the students really involved in these issues had a positive influence on other classes. I’ve written before on how sceptical I am about statistics and this discussion was really an extension of that for me. I’ve even discussed how “facts” can be twisted with my own classes and use the example of how dangerous bread can be.

Darragh Doyle had a session giving advice to new bloggers and it was really great. Instead of him standing at the front preaching, he sat in a chair and facilitated a session where members of the audience talked about their own concrete experiences and passed on titbits of wisdom. It was facinating to hear the stories of people whose blogs I have been reading. I was able to add to the discussion myself – hopefully someone found it useful.

Martha Rotter did a presentation titled “Podcasting Inside the Evil Empire” about her experiences inside Microsoft. With a title like that I could not resist going and I’m very glad I did. The teaser video on her blog gives an idea of how entertaining it was. It was also very informative and I’d love to be able to rent the functionality for some companies here. It’s been about a decade since I first read about how well Siemens used their Intranet and other tools to disseminate information internally. Since then I’ve been facinated by the whole area of internal communications – especially as I really wonder how much waste there is when the same mistakes are made again and again because there is a lack of information inside a business.

There were a huge range of other sessions on the day and I wish they had all been videoed as I’d love to catch up on some of the ones I missed. My notebook is filled with ideas and websites that I need to followup on. It was also great for me to be able to help others and pass on some of my experiences or point them in the direction of people who should be able to help them.

Apologies to anyone I didn’t mention – there would be too many. Rest assured – there was not a single session that I did not gain something from.

Rollon next year and the next PodCamp.

Here’s another photo of me – proof that I was there. All the photos are on pix.ie:

We had the first meeting of the IIA Social Media Working Group on Wednesday night. Even though I left at 16:00 I still managed to arrive late. Thankfully I received no dirty looks when I arrived. I’d much prefer to be able to take the train but with the increasing number of unannounced strikes I don’t fancy the risk. On a positive side however – it makes me very glad I don’t work in Dublin and have to drive there every day. Anyway – back to the meeting.

It was interesting to compare this meeting to working groups in the Telecoms sector. I know the remit of the group is not to formulate a new standard but the atmosphere was very positive. Why do I mention new standard? In the telecoms world it was often quite difficult to filter out which suggestions were being made to push a standard in the direction of one parties plans and which were genuinely meant as useful comments. For the IIA working group I got no impression if this, which is very refreshing.

The exact details of what the group will focus on is going to take a little time to solidify. The whole area of Social Media is so big that it could quickly become a quagmire. There is a good mix of people in the group from various backgrounds which should help keep it balanced. Possibly I would have liked there to be more “non-traditional” tech users there but there has to be a limit on the size. There is a very healthy attitide within the group to sharing information and trying to release drafts to the public for comment at an early stage.

One topic that keeps coming back to me were the comments about the fear factor sometimes associated with this area. It was only a tiny part of the meeting but it really stuck with me. The worrying part is that it’s a fear of “attack” (my words – not the group members) by members of the blogging community rather than a general PR issue with customers. The point being that if a business makes a mistake with the way they try to get invloved in Social Media it can turn into a mini disaster because some fanatic has taken exception to it.

This is something that really pisses me off. I’ve seen it so often in the tech area where some arrogant guru decides that everyone must follow a specific set of rules and God forbid that they step out of line. Yes – I get annoyed when someone sends me a spam mail BUT as long as it’s not with intentional bad manners I don’t get too worked up about it. If I end up receiving new product announcements and I didn’t ask for them – big deal. Oh – and I get 1000’s of spam messages a day to my domains so I could have a “right” to be annoyed. I also don’t get so upset if someone forgets to use BCC when sending out a mail to a group of people. I try to calmly take the time to educate them and help them improve. Damien Mulley has recently made an offer on his Blog to open source his training materials on how to do Business Blogging. I think this is a great idea – and unfortunately I was too late replying to be able to take part. I know at least one member of the Working Group will be there however so I have no doubt he will have a very positive influence of the output of the group.

At this stage I’d like to confirm that the group is really pushing to get everyone with an interest in Social Media involved at an early stage. The drafts will be made available for review an comment as soon as they are in a half decent state (again – my words) – we won’t be publishing a definitive guide and saying take it or leave it. It really is a great opportunity for bloggers etc to make some comments without the time commitment that actively taking part in the working group involves.

A blog report of the first meeting of the Social Media WG is available on the IIA website.

Krishna De comments on her blog about the reticence of connecting with bloggers.

Bernie Goldbach calls us Social Media Plumbers, which I though was a very interesting term. Personally I’m certainly trying to figure out the best (or just good if there is no best) way of putting techniques and technologies together to get Social Media “flowing” within a business.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ll be going to the first meeting of the IIA Social Media Working Group next week. To quote their website -The Social Media Working Group seeks to support businesses in the development of strategies for engaging with social media, including blogging, social networking, community sites, RSS, tagging, and podcasts.

I’ve always been facinated with how technology can best be applied to business – especially a small business. It’s often tricky to know which technologies are going to prove useful and which ones are a fad. I’m lucky in the sense that it’s “ok” for me to experiment with different tools and technologies as I get paid to pass on what I learn.

The small business owner generally can’t afford to spend much time experimenting. During the startup phase it can seem impossible for a new business owner to manage to get everything done. Social media can be really helpful at this stage – not only does it provide a mechanism for people to get their name publicised but it can provide a great support community during what is often a very lonely time.

Of course the other side of the coin are the costs to a business when people spend hours on social media sites.

The output from the working group will be available to the public and now is your chance to influence proceedings:

- Do you have any comments on how and why you use or don’t use social media?

- Do you have any success stories or failure stories? A wise man (or woman) can learn from the mistakes of others. I’m personally especially interested in comments from “non-techie” businesses.

- What kind of results would you like to see the group produce?

Feel free to leave comments on the blog directly or email me at K.Shirley@Shercom.com

Keith