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What the hell is Awesome?
I’ve been a part of the Awesome Foundation Sydney for a few months now… and I always get asked two questions.
1) “What happens if you’re funding terrorism?”
2) “What exactly makes something awesome?”
Social Media – Are you eating your dog food?
It’s frustrated me since I started working online the exponentially high level of ‘experts’ around social media. I believe that there’s no such thing as an expert just in social media as it is a channel, so it’s always part of a broader digital or marketing strategy for an organisation.
People have begun to realise this, but it’s led to more marketers being responsible for social media; with some of these marketers branding themselves as social media experts just because they hold a marketing degree.
A big part of being able to consult on social media in an organisation is the understanding you get by having your own social media presence; but I’ve discovered that more and more of these marketers have zero presence. This led me to question – if part of your job is to manage social media should you eat your own dog food – i.e. should you be active on the platforms?
SXSW Takeaways – Being a lurker is OK
At the core of it, community managers want their entire user base to be completely engaged with their community. However, lurkers – or those who have an account on a social network and don’t contribute to the content – make up the largest proportion of online communities. Community managers are really like cheerleaders – if everyone was engaged in these communities we really wouldn’t need them.
However, lurkers aren’t necessarily a bad thing in a community.
SXSW Takeaways – Users are in control
Although users have always been (and should always) be the focus of any system – the rise of social media and the two-way relationships between consumers and organisations has really led to users pushing back as a collective group and having their voice heard.
Clay Shirky discussed at SXSW how social media has become revolutionary, but how it can’t be considered the revolution. He compared how social media was leveraged in Egypt to the release of the printing press. There was just as much push back from the government around the potential for unauthorised or out there messages to become mainstream through leveraging printing press technologies.
SXSW Takeaways – Use your Data
South by South West Interactive (SXSWi) provided a range of key takeaways around a variety of topics – so instead of one mega-post, I’ve split up what I’ve learned into a range of bite-sized blogs. Today’s focus is the central piece of any organisation – their data.
Organisations have always known data is important, but they are now finding that the data that they’ve stored can be utilised in a variety of ways to influence decisions – to benefit both businesses and customers. Below are three examples of organisations have implemented data strategies to extract more relevant data from their users.
SXSW 2011 – The Highlights
I have just returned from the most amazing and overwhelming two weeks of my life. The South by South West (SXSW) music, interactive and film festival was the most awesome experience I’ve ever had. I have a few blogs planned which I will post over the next couple of weeks about what I did and what I learned but I thought I’d start off with some of my favourite parts of the trip. There are so many and this isn’t a complete list because every single day was just that awesome.
I’m going to #sxsw
It’s been six months in the making but tomorrow I’m leaving on a big jet plane to the BBQ loving, cowboy boot wearing Austin, Texas to experience what is probably the largest and most awesome festival in the entire universe – South by South West - a combo of what’s coming up in music, film and web.
I probably won’t be blogging while I’m over there (the WordPress iPhone app is a bit buggy) but I will be tweeting through @jessnichols and with my other #donline friends at @deloitteonline – you can follow a list of us here. Don’t worry, I’ll be giving a run down of my experiences when I get back!
See you on the other side….
Being Awesome at @awesomefoundsyd
This morning I discovered the wonderful news that I had been accepted as a micro-trustee and founding board member of the Sydney chapter of the Awesome Foundation. As clichéd as it sounds, it is so totally awesome.
What is the Awesome Foundation? It’s a group of 10 people in a city who want to fund stuff that’s just plain awesome with a no strings attached $1000 grant. The micro-trustees don’t want any sort of reimbursement, compensation or IP ownership around your idea – they just want to help you bring it to life. It originated in Boston in 2009, and has spread like wildfire across the world over the last two years.
Hey Tweeps – Let’s Meet!
As that famous tweet goes – your Facebook friends are those you went to high school with and your Twitter friends are those you wish you went to high school with.
I think the best times I’ve had in the last couple of years has been meeting people IRL after connecting with them on Twitter. I really want to be more active with meeting more people this year, and it also means I can continue my ‘research’ at bars. It also means I won’t have any more photos in my albums like the one above.
So if you’re based in Sydney (I’m sometimes down in Melbourne) and interested in meeting up sometime in the foreseeable future (March 8-24th I’ll be at SXSW) let me know on Twitter (@jessnichols) or leave a comment with a valid email and we can work out the details.
