Social Net Two-Step
In pre-planning, I knew I wanted to take some time to attend a few of the Social Networking learning labs, but which ones? The Sunday post-lunch block offered two: "Continuing the Conversation – Implementing Social Networks" and "Incorporating New Media Into Your Communications Plans." Okay, I thought, the first was obviously going to address SN, but I wasn't sure about the second, so that helped me make up my mind.
I was wrong about both.
For me (but not necessarily for every attendee), the presentation and discussion at the "Continiung the Conversation" was too basic. It seemed, based on initial audience participation, that some attendees had yet to make the decision to make the plunge. The probably delayed presenter Robert Wolfe from getting beyond his important premise: Leverage real conversations, not pre-manufactured ones. Because the discussion kept coming back to moderating/editing, my impatience got the better of me and I bailed out and went searching for Incorporating New Media.
I'm glad I changed labs. I came in during Jason Della Rocca's presentation, so my comments are limited to that. My intuition is that Jason and the game developers' group know what they are doing. They seem eager to experiment, choose action over proposal development, opt for open source versus custom systems and – importantly – assert that Web 2.0 bells and whistles have to be matched to the membership base and many may not be appropriate or end up failures. It was fascinating to hear him acknowledge that Facebook and Twitter had not been a big emphasis, not for lack of trying, but because other things were, well, working just fine among his group.
Just to balance things out, I would have like to have heard a case history of how a group integrated a Myspace/Facebook-type app into their online efforts, but maybe I missed it during the first part of this lab.
-Peter Wray
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