Brady Gilchrist - presentation notes - Social Media Breakfast Ottawa

Social Media Breakfast Ottawa #7
Brady Gilchrist

Summary of Presentation

I would say his message was: instead of marketing TO your customers, market WITH your customers.
In other words, instead of just repeating "Cos-tanza" over and over again, you'll have to actually be interesting and engaged (which is much harder).  Be a real person, not a faceless "brand".

My Thoughts

Brady is a very good speaker and I thought he made a compelling case for the transformation that is sweeping over the media landscape - and he understood that this has been coming for over a decade, and that it's about engagement, not particular technologies.  Also he gets bonus points for mentioning Battlestar Galactica and showing the Star Trek: The Next Generation PADDs as precursors to our modern mobile devices (I made this same point myself - using the same image - on slides 4-5 of the Trendspotting presentation I gave two years ago).

You can see the power of customer engagement just by following the #lost and #bsg hashtags as the shows are airing on old-fashioned television (and of course before and after as well) or by seeing all of the work that has gone into the Wikipedia Battlestar Galactica pages and the entire dedicated Battlestar Galactica wiki.  This is all work that consumers do for free, because they are engaged with the product.  They're not doing this because it's some obscure thing that geeks do, they're doing it because people will share what they're interested about.  That could be your thing they're talking about and creating content around and (implicitly) promoting - if your thing is interesting enough.

There were some good (thoughtful) questions from the audience.

On the Interweb

You can follow Social Media Breakfast Ottawa discussions using hashtag #smbottawa , they also have a blog.  Brady said the best way to connect with him is through his Twitter (bradygilchrist), he also has a website.

Raw Notes

he's talking - good speaker

* talking about challenge of getting people to understand the technology
* talking ab0ut Kurzweil - rate of change - things changing so quickly we need open minds

* blogger in 1999 accidentally
* digital life - wired sailboat
* Starship Millenium - "most expensive blog ever done"
* ISDN-B Inmarsat channel
* (lots of talk about) rate of change
* more voices and more knowledge
* Tim Berners-Lee (not recognized - photo)
* business models are based on scarcity - but we live in an age of abundance
* everything is coming out of its containers
- music
- starting to happen with books

World we live in
* Near Web (desktop)
* Mobile Web
- "there isn't anything that isn't connected"
- "digital snacks" - low price
- fundamental shifts - "unboxing of newspapers"
- newspapers are made more interesting by social media
- the community joins the media
* Far Web (broadcast + Internet) - (ed comment: more like video on demand web)
- (paraphrase) has anyone noticed that the people with money aren't watching commercials
- what do people talk about: Lost, BSG...
- Eee PC-in-a-keyboard
- social media are great tools for creating a revolution (ed comment: maybe)
- could have very rapid adoption curves, e.g. Twitter
* Not so new.  1991. - Third Wave - ubiquitous computing - ubicomp - Mark Weiser - "The Computer for the 21st Century"
- (paraphase) we are now surrounded by computer chips / computer technology

*** Star Trek PADDS
- in science fiction technology doesn't really matter for technology's sake
* William Gibson
- "The future has already arrived.  It's just not evenly distributed yet."

* when creating a business: work in the space between early adopters and early majority - GET OUT EARLY before it becomes commoditized

* discussion about whether lurking has negative impact - it's ok to be a watcher -
1. You need to pay attention to what's going on
2. even if there's a small amount of interaction it's still good
* Black Swan - changes all the rules

* (paraphrase) if you're a business you'll never see it coming - you're out of your mind if you're waiting for it to hit the mainstream media
* social media as early warning medium for business

* "social media makes people smarter" - "deeper connectors on subjects"

* Rome burns and few react
- no one is paying attention to PVRs
- just "digital" doesn't solve anything - "Understand how to create abundance, knowledge, trust and connection is (the solution)."
- The One Computer Theory - the Internet as one big computer
- don't silo yourself

- "all roads must lead to dialog" - Age of Connection - lateral connections

New Rules

1. Be Present
2. Connect to others
3. Participate in ways that enhance social capital (ed comment: "don't be a marketer, be a market")

* master ubiquity and engagement

* "Many decision makers have no clue"
- the idea of the media buy (or he's maybe saying media pie) (old thinking)

* (advertising) money is being spent in places where people aren't looking

* "Motivation is the new segmentation"
- (I think he said) by participating in the conversation you can help shape the motivation

END PRESENTATION

Q: What do you tell broadcasters, newspapers to do?
A: Understand your audience / Ask your audience - create a platform for dialog

Q: Is social media just the vocal majority
A: (paraphrase) well, mass media is all lurkers - so social media is "truer"

Q: Is what's working well companies creating their own social networks?
   e.g. some companies go awry on Facebook
A: What is participation - add value to existing dialog, or spark a new one

"semantic web for marketers" - (ed comment: ???)

Q: some industries are starting to adapt
how do we compete as a country if a lot of new technologies are not available here
(Kindle etc.)
A: (paraphase) CanCon is killing CanCon

... consumers find a way... (geoproxy)
"the more you deny it, the more bittorrents..."

Canada as a digital ghetto?

Q: how does the Globe continue to create... they have extraordinary content that makes their platform worthwhile... now what do they do in terms of costs and sustainability?

A: no one knows - engage with audience/... "I don't have the answer"

Comment on music industry - they tried to fight with DRM and are now giving up...
A: "information wants to be free" - but everyone spends money on things they find interesting

"DRM sucks!"

END QUESTIONS

People Promote Their Events

* (didn't catch name of event) Mark Evans April 2
"brandividual" ????

* cupcakecamp.ca
March 29

podcastersacrossborders - Kingston, Ontario - June 19-21

The usual sidebar about wifi

I was (as usual) the only person I saw with a laptop (my little Asus 7" Eee PC 4G) - this did make it easy to camp the power outlet.  Also the only person to ask about wifi (AFAIK) - result:
* tried to get online but no luck - user/pass doesn't work
"The User Name and Password combination you have entered is invalid. Please try again."

Sometimes I feel like I'm back at Internet Librarian 2004 all over again (where I was in a giant room full of people, and almost the only one have a laptop, open it up and start typing).

I think I probably annoyed people with my aggressive typing, I'm sorry (but welcome to the 21st Century).  In a way I feel on the outside as usual - I'm not in the "writing on paper about how technology is transforming our lives" crowd (which I could never understand - writing URLs and notes on paper?  so then to share it, you have to transcribe it to digital?  what?) - and I'm not in the 3G-erati, the iPhone crew who never have to worry about Wifi access.  (I refuse to pay for the iPhone which doesn't meet my needs, just so I can get 3G, and I'm not getting a 3G stick for the small amount of usage it would get - what I'd like is pay-as-you-go 3G - there's a market opportunity for you.)

I think they're going to work on getting wifi access for future events.

Comments

[Simon Chen]

Hey Richard,

Thanks for coming out to the Breakfast and for posting your event notes and commentary. @MarkBlevis and I grabbed some video - we'll edit it down and add to the discussion asap.

A few items to add to your notes about local people promoting their events, etc.

- re Mark Evans: Dave(@davehicks613)had talked about some upcoming speaker events that CNW is sponsoring (I think in other cities) that will be also be streamed

- Scott Lake (@scottica) talked about http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Social-Media-Book-Club on April 1st. I'm going to try to make this as it will give me a reason to finish Clay Shirky's book that I already own but have not cracked open!

I empathize with your wi-fi frustration. On a personal note, I often do attend events where I've suffered poor (the lack of) wi-fi and power outlets (power bars). Of late, I don't even want to lug around my Mac because of the weight. (As an aside, this is why I was checking out your netbook - have you seen http://tinyurl.com/c8j597) I do have an iPhone (that I forgot to charge last night) but I do find live tweeting to be a hassle on the touch screen. Hence I've returned to using a notebook and pen. I do find that this is less distracting for me. That said, I also enjoy reading the tweets, blog posts, etc. that others produce while the event is going on.

To date, we have not been able to provide wi-fi access at any of the 7 Breakfasts that we've run. Part of the problem is due to the fact that we have hosted the events at private office locations (Ramius, Overlay and now Gowlings) which aren't well set up for many non-employee connections. And we've tried to program the events so that the focus is on the people networking activity - encouraging our speakers to incorporate interaction with the audience as much as possible.

But, we can try to change this. I'm going to send out our (mostly) usual post event survey and will add a specific question on the topic. Our surveys have yielded great suggestions and I've been the one that has been slow at letting everyone know how we will try to incorporate the feedback in future events.

Thanks for coming out!