Luke Simonds

Luke Simonds of Booz Allen Hamilton talks at lunchtime about what he's seen so far

JP Rangaswami

JP reflects on his experience of the day.

Notes from the Blogs & Social Media Forum

I have posted notes from the keynote panel and a couple of presentations at my personal blog. More photos to come...

Open Space Session

Overall I've had positive feedback on the Open Space that we held earlier.  People spotted some of the ways that it could have been improved, if we'd had more time.  Johnnie shared an insight with me which is that it's often good to resist the impulse to help people out based on our own perception of their problem.   We very quickly had a wide range of  conversations hosted and ready to go including: learning and education with wikis; moderation; using a combination of tools to support communities of practice; guerrilla marketing; engaging with large groups of consumers;  making money with blogs and many others that sprang up in the gaps between.  Most gratifying for me was seeing people in suits sitting cross legged on a conference room floor...

Quote to remember

JP Rangaswami: "I don't know why you'd hire a human being and then expect them to do what you tell them to."

Flickr photos

I'm putting images from the conferences up on flickr with the tag bsmf0506 - I encourage you to do the same - and to use this tag on any blogposts that you might create.

Pre-conference podcast #3

Here's Euan Semple, today's chair, being interviewed in the least noisy cafe we could find in Blackfriars.  This is one of the joys I find in blogging and social media, show up and do what you need to do, and never mind the "quality" feel the width!

Download the podcast from here

This is stretching 'pre-conference' a bit - it's posted from "speakers corner" at in the registration room at the London Hilton Metropole....

Picture by Peter Kaminski

Pre-conference podcast #2

I spoke with Adriana Cronin-Lukas this morning to hear how she first got involved in helping to create the conference and what sorts of issues she's dealing with when working with social media in a corporate context. 

Download the podcast here

Adriana offers some fascinating insights into the differences between how social media affects organisations both at a macro, strategic level as well as at an operational level.

Pre-Conference Podcast #1

I met up with Lee Bryant at Headshift HQ to chat about what he's bringing to the forum on Wednesday and also to find out what he's expecting to take away.

Download the podcast from here

Lee mentions a couple of the public sites that Headshift has been involved in:

1001 Inventions
Patient Opinion
Culture Online (DCMS)

Look out for Lee on the day (the picture here is of Lee at Our Social World last year)

Social media phobia in organisations

Journalist David Tebbutt links from his blog to an article he wrote for Information World Review entitled Genie in a Bottle. In it, he explores the deep fear that some companies have about introducing social computing into their operations. As Al Tepper, head of online development at Caspian Publishing points out in the piece, some companies have quite valid reasons to be scared - and they should be. In his words, "if you’ve got something to hide, you’ve got something to fear." As Tebbutt concludes:

This is bad news indeed for those who maintain their position through manipulation, hoarding information or playing politics.

In which case, you have bigger, more fundamental issues to worry about than social media.