I often say that there is nothing in social media that can compete with a face to face meeting. That may best explain the sudden abundance of real world gatherings. In Silicon Valley, you could attend a conference or meet up every day of the year, except a few major holidays, when we all gather with family and Twitter under the table.
What impresses me is both the quality and diversity of the events I've been attending or reading about. I have been on the road for the past two weeks, attending enough events to make me a presidential candidate. At some point, I decided to stop posting, stop videoing and spend my time, meeting, listening, chatting enjoying and now, reflecting.
A great deal has already been written, video blogged and clicked about TechCrunch 40, DEMOfall, BlogOrlando and the IPR Measurement Summit. I'm going to try to avoid repeating what has already been said, but I'd like to try to add a bit new to the conversations, mostly with personal overview observations.
[TC40 co-founders Mike Arrington & Jason calacanis w/Pat Phelan. Photo by Shel]
TechCrunch 40. A splitting amoeba
TechCrunch 40 was an uneven but important first attempt that I think proved something significant. The social media community is now sufficiently viable to split away like an amoeba from the older, larger "technology community, just as the PC industry once stepped away from the big iron culture of mainframes.
More than a thousand people attended TC 40. The producers boasted that more than 700 companies competed to present. Next year, I will wager that the producers are likely to show less bravado in competing with other conferences and to pay more attention to the details required to produce a professional event. I predict that TC40 will emerge as a wildly successful conference and will have a long and successful run.
[YourTrumanShow on the Demo Dais. Photo by Shel]
DemoFall: An era of refinement
As has happened almost each of the 17 times I have attended a DEMO, some pontificator had to ask, "Did you see a company that was world-changing," and as is almost always the case, the answer is "no." When I opined that you almost never do, a venerable participant mentioned TREO, which I recall was at DEMO a couple of years after the wheel.
That is not the point of DEMO. And editors, or investors for that matter, who think they can pick winners, based on six-minute on-stage bites have more arrogance than brains, or so it seems to me.
This year's pontificator is a well known editor. When I told him his question missed the point was to get a sense of the state of the industry and that the point this year was that that DEMO is the best place to spot trends on where the industry is headed. I told him, that we were seeing companies this year, whose leadership was more experienced than last year; companies whose business models came close to making sense. This, to me, indicates that we are now completing a period of prolonged and significant innovation and are now entering into an era of refinement.
The editor thought the phrase Era of refinement was worth a few guffaws at my expense
He used the line to make several sarcastic quips, seemingly intended to be at my expense. I did not bother to argue. There's no sense trying to convert atheists. They just never see the light even when it explodes in their face.
Personally, I'm a sucker for the sort of pioneer periods that seem to now be closing off. They are much mre exciting and cerebrum stretching than refinement eras. But refinement is necessary if you want mainstream endorsement; if you want an enterprise to adopt. refine invents nothing,m but it gives you that prolonged better-faster-cheaper that changes the qorld one fiscal quarter at a time.
[Josh Hallett hosts NASA blogger tour. Photo by Shel]
BlogOrlando, normalization and hope
Josh Hallett started this regional conference last year when 89 people attended. Located just about as far from Silicon Valley as you can go in the US in geography and perhaps culture, this year's BlogOrlando had more than 300 registered attendees and confirmed to me that social media is normalizing, that everyday people are working on using the tools to do things that technology pioneers never envisioned. And they are succeeding. Josh did a spectacular job of making outside visitors aware of the various Orlando attractions. A blogger tour of NASA was astounding. I was seemingly well-received as keynoter and Chris Heuer was stupendous in his closing remarks, but the useful, thoughtful, breakout sessions on topics relevent to PR, media and a variety of topics in the day-long unconference delivered the useful "how to" payloads that people attend in the hope of getting. Attendees walked away with real and specific information that, hopefully, will be useful in everyday situations. I found people, less fearful, less hostile than in previous experiences and already entrenched in solving social media challenges at work. My most enjoyable moments came during lunch, which I got to chat with two high school attendees, one of whom has already started his own business. I have great hopes for this emergent generation that reads few newspapers but share global personal networks.
[Lobster dinner for 100 at KD Paine's farmhouse. Photo by Shel]
Measurement Summit. There time will come.
The 5th annual Measurement Summit, founded by KD Paine, New Hampshire's answer to Perle Mesta. The audience of over 100 folk come from corporate communications, PR, academia and measurement. As much as TechCrunch 40, was focused on journeying where no one has previously gone, this was the venue for those who were passionate about quantification. There full participation in social media has not yet come, but it will. These are people concerned with standards and best practices, which inevitably come into play once innovation slows. These are the people that help the enterprise feel safe. The highlight for me was not the conference, but KD's amazing hospitality. We were her house guests. We arrived on the 55 Photogenic riverside acres Durham NH parcel her family has held for 101 years. She wasn't home when we arrived at the stupendous home she built a few years ago after a fire destroyed the original in 1999. People just seem to wander in and out of this house which may never be locked. KD hosted a lobster bake for over 100 Measurement Summit people one night. Two days later she would host her own birthday party for about 50, then she would be off to speak in Tulsa a couple of days later. I get to speak about the cult of generosity. It seems to me that KD is the poster child for it.
It has been an amazing few weeks. I've met hundreds of people, literally. I've been on three of the four corners of the US. Talked with people ranging in age from 16 to 74. I have learned a great deal more than I taught. There is some sense of gratification on my part as well as a realization.
For two years, I've called myself a social media evangelist. I do not think the mission has been met. Like the farmer, KD has turned out to be, all we really need to do now is step back and let things grow.
