The Walls Are Alive With the Sound of Conference
So what have we learned from the SIPA UK Conference Twitter Wall (#SIPAUK2011) in the last 24 hours? Plenty. Carolyn Morgan from The Specialist Media Show wrote that editors should keep evolving and personalising content as they gain insight on user behaviour. (Side note: there’s a very interesting article on that site about How Niche Publishers Can Reach a Mobile Audience: “You can use the mobile channel to engage with your audience in a different and deeper way.”)
We learned—from another tweet by Morgan—that we’re asking editors to be personalities, conference producers, social media experts, video directors…as well as wordsmiths. That’s the trend throughout media now. On Tuesday night, I ran into a former acquaintance who I knew when she worked as a camera operator for Channel 7 here in Washington, D.C. She’s still at Channel 7 only now she does her own editing, sound, etc. “I feel sorry for the young people coming in today,” she told me. “They have to know how to do so many things.” Back in the day, there were rules preventing people from doing “so many things.”
And we learned who many of the winners were in last night’s SIPA UK Awards; Informa Business Information (3 awards) and Lloyd’s List Intelligence (2) seemed the most “vocal” tweeters. (The August Hotline will run a full list of the winners.) And we learned that Jonathan Feroze must be one entertaining awards host because Kate Mayfield tweeted that she was glad Colin Firth was free again to host—or does he just look like him (or both)? And finally we learned that Louise White of Incisive Media was wearing high heels for the first time in six months. There’s a reason this is called “social” media.
The Media Briefing tweeted about another interview from the Conference, this one with Susanna Kempe, CEO of fashion forecaster WGSN. Asked about the difference between a traditional publisher and WGSN, Kempe says, “The fundamental difference is that an old-fashioned publisher is about publishing the past, what has happened, and what we do is all about saying what will happen. And because of that we enable our customers to be successful in the future. It’s a dramatic shift.”
Twitter walls provide an interesting dynamic. Some observations:
1) At 140 characters, comments are not going to be in-depth, but they can link to in-depth places.
2) You get a sense from the tweets as to which speakers and what subjects are having the greatest impact.
3) Not every comment will be positive.
4) It’s a good way to see who is at the Conference and who is most devoted to social media.
5) Finally, it’s interesting to see the photos that people use of themselves. You see a lot more smiling faces than you do on, say, LinkedIn.
It’s funny, LinkedIn is thought of more as a job center where Twitter—as an old Seinfeld episode phrased so well—kind of shows off your “social George.” (Remember, George wanted his new girlfriend to see how well he interacted in social settings. Twitter reminds me a little of that. How does he play with others?) You wonder how the whole social media package fits together sometimes. Employers certainly have a lot more information to go by these days when hiring. Will it be possible in the future to separate our professional and personal selves? Will we even try?
I digress. It’s Bastille Day so it’s a day of celebration! And while we’re focused on Europe, there’s one other thing that I found interesting this morning. I got up early to watch the British Open golf tournament just as torrential rain was pouring down. Clicked over to the Tour de France and bright sun was shining. Just as David Gilbertson spoke about the value of good content yesterday, we can take a little comfort knowing that some things do tend to stay the same.
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*** Monitor what’s happening at the SIPA UK Conference
by going to Twitter and searching #SIPAUK2011. ***
Upcoming SIPA Events
July 19, 2011, 5:30 PM EST
Washington, D.C. Chapter Happy Hour
October 4, 2011
2011 Fall Publishers Conference
October 5, 2011
E-Learning Workshop
December 7-9, 2011
SIPA’s 28th Annual Marketing Conference
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