Over the past week, I’ve spent more time at conferences than at Headshift Towers.
Last Tuesday was Social Media Influence where Headshift sponsored, and I moderated, a panel on “Having Difficult Conversations”. On the panel were our friends Paolo Valdemarin from eVectors, Andy Hobsbawm of Agency.com and Do the Green Thing, and Headshift director and founder Lee Bryant. Paolo posting the following after the panel:
“I guess that one of the main challenges companies face today isthat they still consider communication with their clients an activityseparated from the rest of their workflow, managed by those weirdos atthe marketing division; expensive efforts structured in campaigns whichlast only few months, that must be creative and innovative, and bringsales in the very short term.
At the same timewhile the “rest of us”, on this side of that communication activity,might be more or less entertained and amused by these activities, whatwe really want is be able to communicate with simple and effectivetools, allowing us to get in touch with real people insideorganizations who can help us when we need them.”
Then, on Thursday, I was in Brussels for DNA2009 where I joined a panel on how Twitter is being used by news and media organisations. The panel, moderated by Ben Hammersley of Wired, included Jeff Jarvis (via video), Katharina Borchert from WAZ Media Derwesten.de, journalism.co.uk‘s Laura Oliver, Darren Waters from BBC News and Bart Brouwers from the Dutch freesheet Spits. I later joined an expert panel, again moderated by Hammersley, alongside mobile expert Stefan Biela from dailyme.tv and video expert Michael Rosenblum.
At both conferences, Twitter was the service nearly everyone was talking about and I’m not the only one whose figured out some interesting ways to use it to make better news content or engage with consumers. Drop me an email if you want to know more about how Headshift can help you create and implement your own Twitter strategy.
Today and tomorrow I’m at Olympia for the Social Networking World Forum. The organisers claim there are 1600 people registered to attend over the two days of the event – a clear sign that, even in a recession, people and businesses are realising that social media is a key part of the future.
If you happen to be at #snwf, as twitter users are tagging their tweets about the event, tweet me @Cybersoc so we can meet up.
