Deb's SM Survey:

A couple of weeks ago I read some of Jonathan Trenn’s thoughts about “community” as it is used (or overused) in the social media world:

Social media is overhyped because we’ll often view and describe disparate members of a company’s customer base as being “communities” when they are too dispersed and too disjointed from one another to have a connection…

As much as I love social media, and think it has great potential for marketers (and everyone), I have to agree with Jonathan’s general premise.   Your typical company is not going to get an online “community” going.  And even for those companies who could, the nature of online communities is going to be frustrating to many traditional marketers.

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An incredible organizing team made Podcamp Boston 3 a huge success, and they deserve a lot of credit.  Thank you all!

Chris Penn and Chris Brogan are of course personal heroes of mine, and as the “faces” of Podcamp they have done so much to make this type of event friendly, accessible and productive.

The questions they asked at the end were:  What did you learn?  What will you do?  Now?

Their questions resonate extraordinarily well with Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss.”  And I intend to.

I learned:

•     The importance of humor and a compelling story from Stever Robbins (who is a great storyteller himself).
•     That I could strike up conversations with people sitting next to me over and over again and enjoy the experience.
•     That social media has to “earn” the viewers’ attention, a challenge for marketers and messengers of all types.
•     David Meerman Scott is a very nice guy.
•     That community can’t be just online, but must extend to physical spaces.
•     Companies think they are losing control, but they are really losing the perception the had control.  In fact, collaborating and listening to customers can create better control than they ever had.
•     That the bigger the camera you have, the more likely you’ll be thought of as “press”
•     Educating your advocates on your message is important; they will make it their own.
•     We want a “world wide rave”
•     SWOT
•     Ask for what you want.
•     Be yourself, be human, be honest, work hard, give back.  Do what you love.
•     Youth have incredible expectations put on them, but the tools they use aren’t valued.
•     List blog posts are very popular.

What I will do?

• Participate more
• Listen more
• Explore and play with more multi-media
• Keep up the connections and friendships I’ve made
• Have fun doing it!
• Hone my skills.

Now:
Check out my version of a social media resume and let me know what you think.

I promise I will write about Podcamp 3 this week: the great people I met, the great information I got, the new friends I made and the ideas I’m still pondering.  But while I’m still synthesizing my thoughts, here’s a photo from the courtyard at the beautiful building at Harvard Medical School where we gathered together.

Text and photo licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tuesday night was the 18th WebInnovators Group  and as always it was great to mingle with a huge number of smart, entrepreneurial people.  The local social media gang was also out in force, checking out the ideas and products of local start-ups.

When I’d looked at Zeer the night before, I wasn’t impressed with the user reviews of junk food on the front page.  But Michael Putnam gave a great demo and really showed off the impressive features of this online food community, including the nutritional information for 100,000 products and the usefulness of the site for those with food allergies.  The ability to port your Zeer shopping list to a cell phone is also very handy.  Zeer won the audience text-in award, so they obviously won over the crowd as well.  I do agree with a questioner who didn’t get the chance for an answer: a feature that would tell you where to find the products will be very helpful.  Hopefully it’s coming in the future.

I’m going to give Webnotes a whirl for some vacation planning.  There are other web site annotation and organizing tools out there, but I liked the fact that you could share your annotations with people who don’t have Webnotes installed.  There’s also the flexibility of a web-based interface if you don’t – or can’t – install the toolbar.

Third of the main dish presentations were my friends at Totspot, an online baby book where parents can create a profile for their baby, post content and track their child’s growth.  They’ve made a lot of progress on the site; it looks easy to use and friendly which is important for harried new parents.  I was glad to see Adam and Michael up there demonstrating their very nice site.

The “side dish” companies didn’t get a chance to present, and I didn’t get a chance to visit all their tables in the crowded room, but check out the list on the Web Innovators Group site for links to their sites.

The next WebInno will be September 15, 2008.  See you there.

I spent Saturday at the Grassroots Technology Conference put on by the Organizers’ Collaborative.  It was great fun, with an inspiring opening keynote by activist Nick Jehlen, useful workshops and a lunchtime talk by Professor Paul Niwa about his project charting connections in Chinatown, called BostonChinatown.org.

Useful is always good, of course. For me, the coolest part of the day was a workshop called “Keeping it Simple:  Technology Tools that Won’t Make you want to Rip your Hair Out.”  Harold Jordan started this session off with a discussion of applications that run off of USB drives.  This is the ultimate nomad tool:  you don’t even need a computer, just access a Windows machine and your desired applications plug right in. 

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OK, I’ll admit it. The great weather has an impact on my productivity. I’ve been doing things, just not things I can contort into social media relevance. So forgive me as I indulge in a little personal photo-blogging:

This seal at the New England Aquarium knows just how I feel on those hot days…

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I’ve been reading Daily Kos for years, and though I rarely comment or post anything of my own, the site is a favorite of mine because of the quantity – and often quality – of content relevant to me both about politics and about the world. There have been some excellent user-created diaries about the floods in Iowa this week, for example, providing a compelling mix of personal stories, coverage of the extent of the problem and links to donate for help.

But any site with Daily Kos’ size and with the ability for anyone to post comes the occasional excuse for those tasteless or cruel to show themselves. The death of Meet the Press host Tim Russert on Friday became one of those occasions. I avoided, and am not going to rehash, the offenses of some and the responses of those who took offense. But it did make me think about community.

There’s the common perception that people will say things via cover of internet anonymity that they’d never say in person, and I’m sure that’s true, but it’s an overstated excuse. When any community reaches a certain size, there are going to be people who stir up trouble or say things they shouldn’t.

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I’m going out of town for a few days, but I’ll throw out links to a couple of interesting articles I’ve read to keep you busy while I’m away.

First, a student’s Facebook group to track progress on a civil unions bill in Illinois has become an effective tool for activism. The group now has 9,000 members. Like many of these online activism efforts, it wasn’t started by anyone formally affiliated with any organization. Which makes these efforts both more amazing and, possibly, more ephemeral. Without the collected wisdom of an organization behind it, will these spontaneous efforts eventually reach a limit to their effectiveness? We’ve barely begun to harness the power of the web for activism, but many people much smarter than I, like Clay Shirky, have begun exploring this question already.

Second, via Slog, comes an item about a new web 2.0 initiative for writers. Authonomy (now in private beta), run by Harper Collins, allows aspiring authors to post excerpts of their work for voting and commenting by the community. I may have to give this site a try. They can’t be more critical than some members of writing groups I’ve been in (yes, it was constructive criticism). You can read more at the Authonomy blog.

This morning I grabbed the laptop and walked a few minutes to a local café. One strawberry smoothie and a free wi-fi connection later, I was working. I’d already planned to write about the Economist’s recent special report on “the new nomadism,” but it’s even more appropriate after spending the morning living it. (OK, I’m actually writing this blog post from home, but I’m still on wireless on a laptop.

The general premise of the Economist articles wasn’t new to me (or to anyone who’s read Smart Mobs or is generally familiar with internet culture). Nevertheless, it was a fascinating speculation on how this new way of working — and living – will impact many aspects of society. The fact that office space may move away from the “cubicle farm” into a more fluid setup with shifting walls and multi-use spaces was fascinating.

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“Hulu-baloo” has been used already many times, even though the site has been officially live and open to the net-surfing public for just over a month.

I’ve been watching BattleStar Galactica (and other things) on Hulu, the new NBC and News Corp online video site, and enjoying it, even with the ads. I ditched my cable a long time ago, and get my TV from the net and DVDs. But when you want to really engage with a show and the fan community, you need to watch it as close to the time of original airing as possible. BSG comes out on Hulu a day or so after it aired on the Sci Fi channel, which is the way it should be.

Or maybe it needs to be sooner, as this Wall Street Journal blog post suggests. In my opinion, the goal is to make the online content not just available, but convenient. Streaming is faster than downloading and more convenient (provided your computer is set up correctly), so get them hooked on your online site and hopefully they won’t go seeking out the torrent anytime soon.

Things change very quickly, and who knows where online TV will be by the time Hulu celebrates its first birthday. But finding the right mix of easily accessible content, carefully targeted ads, and possibly special perks for members should make it possible for networks to keep a decent share of the online TV viewer. Make it easy, and they will come.