Next month, on Thursday August 12, the Walkley Foundation is holding a conference on the importance of telling a good story and getting it covered. For two days, What’s the Story will explore the importance of organisational story-telling as a powerful way to capture attention, engage an audience, and motivate people to act. If you are in a public affairs, public relations or communications role, this conference is a must-attend event.
I will be taking part in a panel discussion as part of the Content, Context, Communications and Culture stream. Joining me will be James Tuckerman, founder and editor of Australian Anthill and Julie Posetti, well-known journalist and journalism academic.
There are also streams on government relations and public impact and social media and reputation. It promises to be a fascinating two days. Download the full PDF program or call 1300 656 513 or email events@walkleys.com to register.
On the last Friday of every month, Vibewire hosts a morning of inspirational young entrepreneurs and innovators sharing their stories. It’s five rapid-fire speakers with five minutes to fire your imagination. It starts at 7:45am and finishes up before 9:00am – so that you can get to the office in time.
What’s it like?
Take a look at the video below (featuring Mark Pollard).
The next event with the theme “What Now” is to be held on Friday June 25, at 7:45am at the Powerhouse Museum. There is a fantastic line-up, including:
For the last two hundred years, Sydney has been at the forefront of global trade. During the 1800s trade in wool transformed Sydney from a prison settlement into a thriving trade hub – which accelerated with the discovery of gold. The prolonged mining and resources boom of the Twentieth Century was supplemented with the in- and out-flow of global capital, but the first decade of the Twenty First Century has seen ever greater focus on the exchange of value, of ideas and innovation.
Later this week, XMediaLab: Global Media Ideas to be held at the Sydney Opera House is the first in what is planned to be an annual summit. Part of Vivid Sydney, it promises to be a chance for sharing and collaboration, combining creative ideas with technology, and business with culture. It’s a day of keynotes and presentation, followed up with a weekend full of mentoring and workshops. It’s idea exchange, mentoring, culture swapping and networking all rolled into one.
There are speakers such as Amin Zoufonoun from Google, Robert Tercek from the Oprah Winfrey Network and Steve Jang who has been an advisor to some of my favourite Web 2.0 groups (like Animoto and StumbleUpon). It promises to be a fascinating conference/workshop weekend. I’m looking forward to the #xmedialab tweetstream coverage!
Wherever you look across the social web, you are bound to trip over some aspect of Facebook. Whether it is a NFP using Facebook ads, pages or marketplace, or blog posts questioning the changes to the privacy arrangements, there is no doubt that Facebook as a platform, tool and yes, a social network, is a hot topic.
But it is notoriously difficult to get face time with Facebook – especially here in Australia. So if you are like me, you’ll jump at the opportunity to spend some quality time with Paul Borrud, Head of Facebook Australasia.
Siobhan Bulfin, energetic organiser of the ConnectNow conferences, is hosting a breakfast on June 3, 2010 in Sydney. Tickets are $50. You can book via Eventbrite.
I was asked to set the scene for the three days of presentations, panels and workshops focusing on the convergence of social media, emerging technologies and enterprise.
In my talk I used a ball of string, passing it through the audience to kick start our thinking around what it means to be connected. It was also a metaphor for communications, marketing and social media that helps us think through what we say and how we say it – and what it means to actually participate in the creation of value with and through an audience.
My slides are available on slideshare – and as you can see, are a crystallisation of many of the concepts that I have been writing about here for the last three or four years.
If you aren’t able to make it to the conference for the remaining days, you can follow along via Twitter using the #cnow hashtag, and join in the discussion over at the ConnectNow group posterous site.
And if you ARE at the conference, be sure to say hi during one of the breaks – or better yet, come to coffee morning on Friday. Details are here.
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of social media – or the emergence of the “social web” is the challenge that it presents to our sense of self – our identities as individuals, professionals, bloggers and amateur photographers. It provides opportunities for us to broadcast (podcasting), create movies (youtube) and publish (blogs/self published books) and so on. The power to create, distribute, filter and contextualise information has never before been in the hands of so many – this is what I call simple social media – though it is anything BUT simple in its execution.
It is the fragmenting or multiplying of identity that was explored this time last week at the inaugural Digital Citizens forum here in Sydney. Those who attended were treated to a truly open conversation, artfully curated by Bronwen Clune and panelled by visiting US lawyer Adrian Dayton (Social Media for Lawyers), Sam North (Ogilvy PR), Damian Damjanovski (BMF), and Renai LeMay (Delimiter).
The conversation jumped from panellist to panellist and out into the audience in a lively debate covering questions of law, ethics, identity, trust and copyright/intellectual property. There was some nice give and take, with some members of the audience taking the travelling microphone and debating points, raising questions and challenging not just the panel but the whole room. It was a lively topic and an appreciative crowd.
At times I expected a Citizen Kane style response, “You don’t realise you are speaking to two people” – with panellists contradicting themselves and audience members clearly enjoying the sense of theatre and opportunity for debate.
It is always difficult to know what to expect with any event like this – but there is no doubt that smaller, more intimate events like these are challenging the larger scale event/conferences. After all, at a certain point, we all have a desire to move beyond the hyperbole of the keynote and the blinding flash of never ending metrics. Social media is, after all, social. That means it will be inexact, moody and potentially mocking. These features are why many businesses find social media challenging – but in an event format – it makes social media compelling.
If you have a client who you want to “get” social media, the Digital Citizens events may well be the best introduction you could offer. It’s the cocktail party normally reserved for Twitter – just with people in the flesh. Mr Thatcher may never understand – but it’s a different world now. It’s the world of eCitizen Kane.
Here in Australia we speak of the “tyranny of distance” – the unmistakeable fact that we live thousands of kilometres from the cultures which spawned our multifaceted diasporas. And even in the age of international travel, the fact that you need to spend a day or two travelling to get to or from Australia serves to remind us that we are, as a country, a long way from everywhere.
Over the past 10 years or so, I have spent a great deal of time travelling TO other places – mostly for work. And while it can be interesting, hotels in Germany look pretty much the same as hotels in Shanghai. So when people from overseas offer to travel HERE, I welcome them with open arms.
In May, Matt Moore is hosting a workshop event on Innovation and Change. It features Johnnie Moore and Viv McWaters. They will be investigating the notion that “change is difficult and stressful, and that innovation is scarce and requires effortful management to succeed”. As Matt explains:
We’re going to explore how this is reflected in three tyrannies:
The tyranny of the explicit and the fear of not knowing.
The tyranny of excellence and the fear of not being good enough.
The tyranny of effort and the fear of failure.
We’re planning to explore these tyrannies and highlight some ways to bust them with a series of practical and impractical exercises. We’re going to reveal our own prejudices about facilitating change and innovation, which emphasize letting go of the effort to be spectacular in favour of being open to surprise and attentive to small ideas instead of chasing grandiose visions.
As a long term reader of Johnnie’s blog and an admirer of his work, I am particularly keen to participate in this workshop. And I only have to travel to Eveleigh. Will I see you there? Bookings and details are as follows:
Last year I had a great time speaking and learning at the MarketingNow Conference in Melbourne. Siobhan Bulfin had put together a great program of speakers and created a unique, insightful and very focused event that really got conversations going – so much so that the group posterous site (for speakers AND conference attendees) continues to grow.
After the event, there was a great deal of discussion around the name of the event. What would it be called if it was held again? Was it really about marketing or was the conference, the workshop format and the discussions about marketing – or about broader topics – the changing nature of our identities, the social transformations taking place and the emergence of ubiquitous computing?
I am pleased to say that the next incarnation of the conference is to be held in Sydney, from April 7-9:
ConnectNow is a marketing and communications conference focusing on the convergence of social media, emerging technologies and enterprise. The three-day event brings together visionaries and specialists in the field of new media marketing, community management and social technologies covering the latest strategies, tools and best practices in marketing innovation.
Speaking at a conference is invigorating and exhausting. There is so much talking and discussion that I wonder whether I will have any voice left whatsoever. During one of the breaks at the MarketingNow! conference I was interviewed by Yvonne Adele from IdeasCulture.com. (Check out the IdeasCulture concept – crowdsourcing ideas as a business – interesting!)
