Category: Conferences (page 1 of 1)

“I always thought it was a shame the way we have to play these games.” – The xx, Sunset

By the end of Social Media Week Los Angeles, I had seen some interesting talks from big players in the space. MWW Group hosted a panel of brand advocates from Uber and Subaru and Vitamin A that dug in a bit on the most pressing question I think all brands have as they navigate social networks: how do you maintain an authentic voice  when a PR flap takes place, when customers have legitimate complaints, when you make a misstep in one of your postings?

Anthony Zuiker’s conversation about digital video storytelling followed immediately by a roundtable with the largest of the digital video studios in LA inspired me to take a much deeper look at that world and excited about the possibilities of “New Hollywood.”

But, ultimately, I was left most impressed with the folks still really trying to figure it all out — the local hospitality and travel folks, the food writers and business people, and the more civic-minded people I mentioned last week.

Their audiences featured people furiously scribbling down notes and asking really nuts and bolts tactical questions. It was a reminder that no matter how fast it feels like we’re moving, these technologies and services and ways of communicating are still in their infancy. Things I might take for granted as being well-known or understood, really aren’t.

They still require the conversation. Like the one I had at lunch of really smart industry folks on my last day at the conference as we discussed the future of television or the one we had last night at my parents’ house as my mother revealed her strategy for posting on facebook and how she’s on twitter but doesn’t use it because she doesn’t “get it.”

We’ll have to talk about that more, I thought. And not online.

If anything, the biggest takeaway I got from Social Media Week is that “social” is the most important word in “social media.”

We can discuss strategies and tactics and messaging and blah blah blah but this is what is true: humans interact. They relate to each other, or not. We try to use all the tools available to us to better be heard or to better listen.

And, for all my love of twitter and tumblr, it hasn’t replaced the power of people breaking bread together, talking, growing closer, and, occasionally really figuring some things out.

“Why see the world when you’ve got the beach?” – Frank Ocean, Sweet Life

I arrived at Mark Horvarth’s Keynote ten minutes or so into it, running late from my lunch at the Roosevelt. This was an after thought on my schedule. I knew the name Invisible People somewhat but not enough to resonate with me that this was an important topic.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I arrived, Mark was just pressing play on a video interview he had done with a woman living under a bridge. “I’m not a doctor,” he said, “but I could see that she was dying under there.”

He showed an animated video explaining how someone might get to that situation.

He explained how close he had been to that situation himself. How precariously close he was even today after all the amazing accomplishments his efforts had brought about for the homeless. But he felt accomplished. Changed. 

“Never miss the opportunity a crisis provides,” he said.

Despite tailoring my first day at Social Media Week Los Angeles to be hyper-focused on the southland, I hadn’t expected the vast majority of the talks and conversations I would attend and have to be so centered on the people of the city.

I shouldn’t have been. There’s a myopia that comes from spending most of your work day tackling marketing and promotional tasks.We talk a lot about tactics and metrics and tools and messages. Those things have their place but the reality, as it always has been, is that the internet is made up of and about people.

This should not be mind blowing but sometimes, like today, it is.

It was great to hear about KCRW’s social strategy first thing this morning but the real celebrity sighting was Lan-Chi Lam, LA Metro’s communication strategy manager–one of the brilliant people behind the Carmageddon moniker and who is preparing us all for the sequel this weekend.

She delivered my favorite term of the day: Trolley Jolly.

She was also a member of the “A City of Angels” panel which was about how we use social media to make our neighborhoods and communities a better place. That was a running theme. My final panel of the day was called “Nobody Walks in LA” featuring a gaggle of people who do nothing but. And this theme of community–real community where we know our neighbors and our streets, where we are less strange to each other, where we sit behind screens not to retreat but to connect in real and meaningful ways–is now my entire focus of this week. 

I had come planning to be inspired about the future of digital media and work. Now, I’m already re-engaged with what I fell in love with online in the first place, how these tools give us voice and bring us closer together.

Let’s go.