Give Me a Microphone and an Audience …

A couple of times a year I have the great opportunity to guest lecture at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management’s MBA program. Run by adjunct professor, Dennis Price (who I met through my blog), it is a fairly jam-packed hour to an hour and a half on the “Business of Web 2.0”. Each time I try to update the talk with relevant facts and figures … but the core remains fairly static, focusing on:

• An alternative view of marketing – the new B2C – brand to community
• Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 as a baseline
• The Age of Conversation 1+2 as a case study
• What to consider when measuring

Most recently, however, I realised that I had been starting the presentations with too much presumed knowledge. After all, some of those in lecture would have been teenagers when the Cluetrain Manifesto changed the way I looked at strategic marketing. So I added my three minute Interesting South presentation – Cluetrain Through the Eyes of Children to the beginning slides as a way of quickly establishing context. From my point of view, it worked a treat.   

Another change to the presentation was to allow work to speak for itself. Rather than showing captures and explaining the storyline, I brought up a couple of sites and YouTube clips and let them weave their magic. One of the most compelling examples, for me, is the story of Matt Harding and Stride Gum … and by showing this example it demonstrates the transformative emotional impact that digital stories can have.

Since the talk I have had a number of emails from people in the audience. Some have even registered for Twitter. And if this means one more business person starts to understand the impact and potential of social media, then it feels like that is a mission accomplished!