Social media: friend or foe of live meetings?
That’s what Scott Oser is asking on the Acronym blog, and it’s an interesting question. I have sort of a love/hate thing going with social media: I love the connections and the things I learn and the insights I get into people I don’t know all that well but would like to, but I hate how big a time-suck it can be. I’ve been jamming getting Association Meetings through its production cycle lately, and have been feeling this strange hole where my nightly twittering/facebooking/etc./etc. used to be. Yet it’s strangely freeing, too, to just let that whole world pass me by for a while.
Anyway, social media and meetings…I don’t see any conflict there. Scott talks about how the sessions aren’t as educational for him as they used to be, but I think that has more to do with the number of conferences he’s gone to than the social networking thing. I felt the same way about shows I’d been to repeatedly back in the days when the Internet was just a gleam in Al Gore’s eye (sorry, that was lame). I think it just adds another layer, another form of networking, around the live event. Jeffrey Caufaude in a comment does add a good cautionary note that we not get so caught up in the coolness of all this backchannel stuff that those outside that particular digital loop end up missing out on something, but generally I don’t see social media as competing with live events at all.
I’ll be talking with someone who knows a lot more about all this than I do–Web master C. David Gammel, tomorrow. If you have any burning questions, let me know so I can ask him.
And stay tuned for the podcast, which hopefully I’ll post by tomorrow afternoon. This should be a hot one!
Update: It’s up. Here’s the podcast post.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am
I left Scott my comments about this topic as well. I think he’s mixing the decline of education content at the meetings he attends and social media issues too easily. Social media is not the cause of poor content or a negative meeting experience.
Is social media hurting face2face events? Absolutely not! Contrary to popular belief, social networking sites tend to augment, rather than replace, offline interactions. One of the reasons why social media sites are so successful is their focus on supporting offline networks over online-only relationships.
Has the purpose of face to face meetings changed? Depends. What was the original goal of the meeting anyway?
Go to Scott’s post and read more of my thoughts on how I view the integration of social media and meetings.
And Sue, we miss seeing you in the social space too. When you do have time to jump back in, we’ll pick up with you just as if you never left. The 24 hour live stream of information in the social space is always there and you’re allowed to fish in it whenever you want or not at all. I think what you’re really missing is engaging in relationships with people and learning new things.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Interesting comments and thanks for the discussion. To me, anything that elevates the meetings conversation - before, during or after - is a wonderful learning and motivational tool. My sense is that people (speakers, planners) are afraid that their content and meeting design may not be as exciting to attendees and that attendees will choose to just use the tools and choose not to attend. All this means, I think, is that we each need to step up our game. It’s never been more important to be relevant and respectful.
Hope to see you both soon!
SpeakerSue
Twitter: SpeakerSue
Blog: SpeakerSueSays
www.SpeakerSue.com
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