“I am not a Web Guy”

Patrick Ruffini at TechPresident.com riffs on what Zack Exley wrote on his blog. When do we stop making the distinction between being an “Internet Strategist” and a “Strategist” or an “Internet Communications Director” or a “Communications Director”?

I’m guilty of this as well. Looking at my business card, it says “Social Media Strategist.” But what I do is end up helping people understand the new strategies, and how they can be applied in conjunction with more traditional media and communications techniques.

Zack says:

I’m not sure I’m ready to jump off this bridge, but, it is worth discussing in the context of Social Media. What do you think? Comment below, please!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content

Weinberger vs. Keen @ Supernova

Warning - this is my first attempt at liveblogging in a while…

Very happy to have been able to make it to downtown San Francisco to see this great session at Supernova featuring David Weinberger talking about his book Everything is Miscellaneous and Andrew Keen talking about his book The Cult of the Amateur. According to the session description,

Disorder: Feature or Bug?
(Andrew Keen, David Weinberger)
A debate about the value of authority in a connected world. The greatest business challenge that the New Network poses for many companies is also a fundamental social challenge. The old categories, boundaries, hierarchies, and scarcities are being swept away. To what extent is that a good thing, and to what extent is it a threat to what we truly value?

Though there were a lot of great sessions I wanted to attend, most notably Jerry Michalski and Deborah Schultz’s Markets and Relationships Track on Challenge Day, this session, IMHO, was the most important.

David started with a presentation covering the central premise of his book, that the world is messy and this is good - it creates more interesting ways to get at and discover information, creating more opportunity, more democracy and more equality. Andrew was presenting his case for authority and his concerns that the digital world we live in today is reminiscent of the middle ages. That we need authority and that the views held by the digital utopians are dangerously hurting our society. While some of his arguments are sound, I believe they are fundamentally flawed because he speaks about the ‘mass society’ but doesn’t really trust it. This is very complex and I want to go deeper into this in the near future when not live blogging.

Pt 1 - David says Andrew’s remarks were similar to arguments against the digital divide, but Andrew would be more upset than happy if it came true - Andrew challenged David to define how someone is determined to be a cultural authority. David asked Andrew some very direct questions, which he did not answer, changing the subject, but Keven Werbach redirected Andrew to show relevance.

Pt 2 - Andrew says there is an “anonymous oligarchy” with a “small group of activists who are driving this new democracy” - that his is his fundamental problem. David points out that his book acknowledges the very fact that there is a new democratization as an opposite to the existing authority. Andrew says his concern is that no one is reading it, and that the “people need experts to inform and educate and this media is not doing it.” David says the Web is “more of everything” - including more of the experts like Mortimer - “more Mortimer, expertise, crap, racism, love and Clay Shirky”. Andrews says “this is a media not providing authority, people need expertise, guides, sign posts and a way to determine authority.”

David agrees, “we do need to address it, largely because our education systems have failed it from being too stuffy.” David say “I can find the copy of Cicero, but I cant find the great work that is being worked on today - the one’s that the library’s can’t hold because the works are too big, the one’s I can’t find in a scarce world.”
“We are richer than that today.”

Andrew disagrees, acknowledging that his book over-glamorizes mass media more than it should - but that it has “done a good job discovering, packaging and selling content.” Continuing on to say that there was nothing wrong with the media business as it existed, but “now we have suddenly realized we have to revive it” - “that we have to reinvent the wheel.”

Mitch Ratcliffe asked, “what are the things you can agree upon that will help us measure how well are we doing?” Andrew said they both share the same “social and political justice and ideals, but I am less optimstic about the flattened world bringing us to more democratization.” Andrew believes in hierarchies and taxonomies - Wikipedia is more or less right, but the problem is “that no single person is in charge of determining what is right.”

Tom Mandel “Authority is not derived from any real form of expertise, the Rolling Stones get their authority from charisma and the Queen of England gets hers from Tradition.”

Liz “cultural authority does not go away because there are more voices”.

Addressing the issue of scarcity of talent, a gentleman said “talent tends to appear when it has opportunities to grow” - “have you considered how talent is really developed?”

Andrew does not believe that “the current media system is rooted in privilege” - “the current media system is meritocratic” - does not think “people are being born into positions of privilege”. He apparently has not seen the movies that Stephen Baldwin has done…

Closing:

David pointed to “the canadian guy and the wikipedia guy” contentions that the real impact arises from talent within network effects…

Keen says “it is the job of mainstream media to find raw talent and polish it up” - that “raw talent is not real”

Tags: supernova supernova2007 andrewkeen davidweinberger kevinwerbach sanfrancisco 22june2007

Sphere: Related Content

Bloggers Wanted Here - Important Survey

Good morning! Back from Las Vegas in one piece, without a hangover and ready to get to work.

The Social Media Workshop and the FAST Track Future of Media events I helped facilitate last week were filled with excellent conversations that touched upon trust as crucial to the success of Social Media and the need for social media and traditional media to work together.  From my perspective, it is very important to understand these essential aspects of our new world better.  Which is why I was excited to learn from my friend Sally Falkow about a new survey from our organization partner (and good friends) at the Society for New Communications Research.  Its’ goal is to better understand “How Bloggers Source and Use News Content.”

If you blog, I strongly encourage you to complete this survey, to help us all gain more respect and understand where we can improve in our educational efforts.

Sphere: Related Content

How to turn 3 minutes into answers to your social media burning questions

There is a really vibrant social media environment developing in London, and around the United Kingdom in general. To try to get beyond the hype and to capture some of the real issues faced by different parts of our social media community, we prepared an ultra-quick You and Social Media Survey on Survey Monkey (worth looking at if only to see what a great free tool it is!). But rather than keep it to ourselves, it would be great to make this a Social Media Club-wide initiative. So please take 3 minutes which will help the organisers of the local chapters to create opportunities to answer your burning social media questions, and which I’ll share with the rest of the leadership council.

If you are in London on the evening of Thursday 21 June, please join us at the next monthly meet-up where we will be tackling some of the early questions to come out of the survey - all details and registration to attend are here.

By the way, the last survey I sent your way created so much traffic to Internet Business Mastery, they gave the Club a name-check on the most recent podcast.

Sphere: Related Content

Upcoming Social Media Events

As we get into summer a few of the Social Media Club local groups will be taking some time off as people travel and regroup with some more formalized structures. So pay close attention to the Social Media Club Events page and sign up for your local mailing lists to keep in touch. Of course, the current site should be going away before the end of summer, to be replaced with our new community site - stay tuned for more updates on this and ways you can contribute once we get the site to alpha test stage in the coming weeks. Yes it is a bit behind schedule in light of the recent changes here, but it is still on track to get done.
So on to the events.

Tomorrow, June 14, I will be in Los Angeles for the post Digital Hollywood discussion on The Future of Media, hosted by FAST Search at the Mondrian Hotel from 3-530 with drinks afterwards. If you can’t get to the Mondrian in West Hollywood for the start of the event, do come later in the afternoon for the great discussion with our really smart panelists, or even join us at 530 for drinks. The FAST folks are doing some really great things, and I am personally fortunate to have the opportunity to work with them on a great project such as this. If you plan on coming at all though, please do at least register so we can plan appropriately…

Next week here in San Francisco is SuperNova 2007, and because we have become great friends with many of the very insightful organizers, we are very glad to offer Social Media Club members a special discount of $300 off the registration price. The event is being held at Wharton West from June 20-22.

“Supernova 2007 is the place to challenge your insights and predictions for the connected future. Join top technology and business influencers, leading investors, visionary entrepreneurs, and provocative thinkers debating the major emerging trends in computing, communications, and media.”

Use the discount code GEN3 to receive $300 off your registration which includes the Wharton West Challenge Day, or use code GEN2 for $300 off the 2 day conference pass. I will be leading a session on The Economics of Free at the unconference prior to the event on Tuesday June 19, and will hopefully find some time to be around during the conference, learning from and connecting with, some of the brightest people in the business world of technology.

I am trying to work on a wrap up post about the great Social Media Workshop we had on Monday down in Palo Alto still - will hopefully get this completed tomorrow before the Future of Media panel…

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Workshop on UStream.tv

I am very happy to report that a good portion of the Social Media Workshop we are doing on Monday at SAP will be broadcast live on UStream. While we will be able to take some questions during the course of the day from the chat room, our attention will be mostly focused on paying participants in the actual room.  To tune in on Monday from wherever you are in the world, go to our Social Media Workshop Channel on UStream at 9am PST on Monday June 11, 2007.

We could really use some help running the camera and monitoring the chat room for questions, so if you have experience with managing some light Web A/V and would be willing to volunteer, please leave a comment here and I will contact you about arranging a free pass.

Sphere: Related Content

The Future of Social Media Club

While we continue to get a few new members registering, there has not been much movement on the mailing list, on blogs or on the wiki for establishing the leadership council in earnest. The call last week was promising, but once again, the amount of activity in regards to followup has been lower then hoped. I have been trying to shepherd through my last projects (particularly the new Web site) and hoping some new leadership would emerge to do something interesting with what he have developed so far, but it seems everyone is still waiting for me to do something, rather than doing it.

If this is going to be the case, I am wondering if it might be better to sell the site and the related assets to another organization or to merge with another group. Maybe we just make Social Media Club a community mark and let go of it for people to do with as they please locally ala BarCamp, PodCamp and others. I am just at wits end right now about this whole situation, feeling responsible to all the paying members and others who have put their faith and trust in this idea and me personally. As I have told many of you privately, though I said I was stepping back from day to day responsibilities, my to-do list did not change hardly at all.

Clearly conversations are still happening and in the cities where we are really strong (Boston, New York, Austin, DC, Portland, Phoenix and here in San Francisco) there is something really happening - something that really does not need a central leadership structure, but surely could benefit from it. The thing is, if I can’t do more with it and there is not enough of a group of people who have time to do something more with it, what do we do? What should we do? What do you want to do?

If you have thoughts and answers to these questions, please add your voice here so we might figure this out together…

Sphere: Related Content

Dell Gets It

Rather than reposting the original here, I want to direct your attention to the Social Media Workshop blog for a podcast interview I did with Lionel Mechaca, Digital Media Manager for Dell.  It is a great insight into what it takes to make lemons from lemonade, or should I say to move from Hell to Heaven…

PS - yes I posted it on the workshop blog to get more awareness for the event, which will now also be available in part on UStream!

Sphere: Related Content

Social Media Club New York, 5/31

Last night’s Social Media Club meeting in New York hosted Craig Newmark of Craig’s List. The 65 or so attendees saw Craig speak of the list, building online community, and his other interests in philanthropy (see Craigslist Foundation) and journalism that takes on powerful interests. He mentioned politics several times, and specifically called out Tech President as one of the things he had an interest in supporting. (disclosure: I know the folks who run that site for years.) Since I was moderating I did not take good notes so here is a roundup from others:

Donna Bogatin of ZDNet wrote up her take on the meeting.

Attendee Allen Stern of Center Networks blogged the discussion and also has an audio recording of the Social Media Club meeting (MP3, about 1 hr, 20MB) for those who missed the meeting.

Over on PRBlog News, Mark Rose has his take on the meeting including a poor photo of yours truly and some cynical takes on Craig and some of the discussion.

Jeffrey Keefer also blogged it.

Send more blog posts or links to me, or leave them in the comments.

One item that came up was organizing the NY chapter and volunteers. See the NY Wiki Page for more on that. Those interested in the NY mailing list can find a link here.
Thanks to Craig for attending. A special note of thanks to Steve Eisenberg of the Client Service Network, who went above and beyond the call of duty to get food and drink to the meeting. Thanks to Laurence Koret of Starlight Media for helping out and thanks to David Bradfield and Fleishman-Hillard for hosting. UPDATE: Also, thanks to Laura Allen from 15 Second pitch for being our ‘check in person’ and to Frank Casale from the Outsourcing Institute for answering the door over and over again!

Sphere: Related Content