Blog

Get blog posts by emailGet an RSS feed of blog posts

Work

About

Blog posts about Conference

My interview at Civil Service Live

I caught up with the Amplified team at Civil Service Live recently and got interviewed by the lovely (and uber-talented) Steve Lawson about the work I’ve been doing on Monitoring Dashboards at Ministry of Justice (amongst other things).

Listen!

23/08/2009No Comments
Filed under: Blog, Communication, Conference, Government, Social media, Twitter

All is full of love

Abstract heart by tanakawhoI’m full of love for the web at the moment.

Well, I’m always full of love for the web, but every now and then my tolerance for navel gazing disappears completely and this time it’s been replaced by a desire to just sit back and enjoy for a while.

Bathcamp is a matter of weeks away and I’ve been mulling over what I might contribute. Whatever it ends up being, it’ll be a celebration. Pure and simple. And preferably without any explanation or discussion.

I might host a film club – bring a clip from your favourite video sharing site. Or perhaps the same thing but bring a film, a flickr photo, a (demonstrable) meme or a website.

In case you were wondering: today my 3 favourite things on the internet are:

Urinal Bitchie – Hello (because of the entire spectrum of wrongness)

The 21 Steps google maps story (because of the potential it represents)

The sneezing lamppost (bless you)

Tell you what, while we’re on the subject, what’s your best thing on the web, reader? Post me a comment…

I also like the idea of actually making stuff during the weekend. Something creative, not just your standard documentation of conferences guff (handy though that is :) ). So that’s something else to ponder.

If you’re coming to Bathcamp, keep an eye on the wiki to find out what I come up with (in case you need to bring anything!).

If you weren’t planning on coming to Bathcamp, I’d strongly recommend reconsidering. And – hurrah – there are still a few tickets available!

12/08/20081 Comment
Filed under: Blog, Conference, Favourite things

Embedded buzzdaq

Frustratingly, I can’t see a way to embed it into this post…

jenny-bee.net/2008/04/22/buzzdaq/

Hi Jenny

Thanks for looking at our Buzzdaq, it was a great idea to add an embed code. If you take a look now, you’ll notice we’ve added one one on there now!

jenny-bee.net/2008/04/22/buzzdaq/#comment-131

Nice one Refreshed Media.

26/04/2008No Comments
Filed under: Blog, Conference, PR & marketing, Tagging, User-generated content

Buzzdaq

This is quite PR-y but a nice idea none-the-less.

Refreshed Media unveil their latest digital breakthrough called Buzzdaq, which … allows visitors to see, at a glance the most mentioned words from hundreds of specially selected blog and news articles.

All feeds are taken from the blogs or news items of sites relevant to the internet community… These are drawn from an RSS feed and displayed through the Buzzdaq application which can then be bookmarked to share with others.

From socialmediaportal.com

Frustratingly, I can’t see a way to embed it into this post, but you can sample the delights of Buzzdaq on the Internet World website.

I’m wondering whether something like this could be used to measure the buzz around specific conferences (related post: I want it ALL (in one place)!).

22/04/20081 Comment
Filed under: Blog, Conference, PR & marketing, Tagging, User-generated content

I want it ALL (in one place)!

As anyone in the tech world who hasn’t been under a rock for the last few days will know, the SXSW tech love-in is currently taking place.

I’m not there but I’m trying to keep abreast with what’s going on. Fortunately, this is a lot easier to do than ever before. Twitter and Seesmic are updating me with observations from people who’s opinions I respect and my rss reader is busy gathering feeds. There are also a number of tools I can use to ‘manually’ find content – digg, del.icio.us, hashtags etc.

But sifting through the gossip, chatter, informed opinion, official texts, party videos etc etc to identify key themes, opinions and zeitgeist is a daunting task.

Established publishing channels such as Wired seem to be doing a good job of recording key moments and general observations. But I’m not totally certain their reporting is accurate. What if they are completely failing to notice the Twitter buzz around a new application?

What I’m faced with is my perception of trust and authority in the recording of this event. I need to employ a number of methods to build a complete picture of the conference as there isn’t one source to do that for me. I trust that I’ll be presented with well informed, intelligent, crafted commentary from the Wired blog, and I also trust my Twitter and Seesmic friends to reflect zeitgeist and offer their expert opinion.

What I need is a website where I can get a roundup of what the Twitterverse is buzzing about, what’s being discussed on Seesmic, what’s being blogged, rated, bookmarked and so on.

I’d still like to read ‘professional’ editorial and interpretation but this and the user generate content would complement each other in order to present a holistic vision of – in this case – SXSW.

I wonder if this is the approach established news publishers will need to move towards in order to survive changing perceptions of authority and the inevitable mainstream establishment of user generated content?

What do people think? Does anything like this already exist?

10/03/20085 Comments
Filed under: Authority & expertise, Blog, Communication, Conference, Dreaming of the future, SXSW, Seesmic, Social media, Twitter, User-generated content

Unconferencing chinwag

I’ve been thinking about how you might go about taking the free-form nature of barcamp and merging it with ’static’ industry-expert panel discussions.

Very much in response to discussions after Chinwag’s measuring social media event on Monday.

So…

How about a panel event where there is a set subject and fixed set of panellists – but the areas of discussion are worked out on a wiki by the attendees in the run up to the event?

The agenda would have to be managed to the extent that there could only be, say, 4 or 5 areas of discussion in order to stick to the time frame. You could open up the wiki for general suggestions and comments and then a week or so before the event someone arranges the suggestions into logical groupings in order to form the agenda. (For the panellists’ sake you’d probably want to fix the agenda about a week before the event.)

What do people think?

21/02/20088 Comments
Filed under: Blog, Conference, Social media, User-generated content

PR, Social Networking & Blogging in Practice

I was at the PRWeek PR, Social Networking & Blogging in Practice conference yesterday.

To be honest, I was sceptical beforehand and my scepticism was at first confirmed by being one of only about 5 people with a laptop, and there being no free wi-fi. Am I too ‘un-conferenced’ these days?

Anyway, in actual fact the day turned out to be extremely useful with a consistently high calibre of speaker and a few genuinely interesting case studies.

Abbreviated notes and comments:

  • The established media clearly don’t ‘get it’ if they think (according to Shane Richmond) that bloggers are official spokespeople for the brand. But hey, it’s something we need to be aware of
  • Applying a persona to your programme may help focus and inform the nature of engagement
  • Apparently the mobile internet isn’t worth talking about
  • Some established media giants might actually think people will always read print newspapers
  • I like what Kodak are doing with 1000 words & 1000 nerds. After all, experience IS the product
  • Oh how I love stats
  • Penguin are doing some really exciting things with social media – engaging interest groups and facilitating user-generated content, merging on- and off-line
    (Wondering how they’ll respond when faced with the same challenges the music industry are currently facing. Hoping book publishers will learn from music publishers mistakes)
  • Will McInnes twitters, and said some interesting things like:
    • Negative reviews generate conversions AND reduce product returns (because expectations are lower)
    • You demonstrate confidence by linking to competitors
    • Fake people are so much better than real people ;)

    And he also wrote up his thoughts from the day here.

  • 12-14 year olds trust unknown peers more than experts and they are source agnostic. And deys de future, man
  • Authority is now with the ‘louder voice’ rather than seniority
30/01/20082 Comments
Filed under: Authority & expertise, Blog, Conference, PR & marketing, Social media, User-generated content

Why I love Twitter (barcamp presentation)

Presentation for the UKGovWeb barcamp – 26/01/08 – London.

The basics

Twitter is a website that enables you to set up a profile and then add text updates (known as ‘tweets’) using 140 characters or less. Other people with twitter profiles can choose to ‘follow’ your updates, and vice versa.

Twitter screengrab

You can update your twitter feed through your profile page on the twitter website, via SMS on your mobile phone, through an IM client, and via a number of dedicated desktop and on-the-move applications. You can also receive updates from people you are following via these methods.

Read more on the Twitter fan wiki

Things that have been said about it

  • It’s a glorified facebook status
  • Micro-blogging tool
  • Ambient text
  • A free service that enables you to update the world (or just your friends) in 140 characters or less via the web or mobile device (foamee)
  • Always on, always available communication to the masses (Techcrunch, 30/12/07)
  • It’s put … a human face on the web (Comment on Small Dots, 21/12/07)
  • It’s just a fad (Techcrunch comment, 30/12/07)
  • An RSS feed to every boring aspect of your friend’s lives (Helen A.S. Popkin, MSNBC, 8/5/07)

How is it being used?

Dan York describes 10 ways he uses Twitter as being:

  1. Twitter as a News Source
  2. Twitter as a Knowledge Network
  3. Twitter as a Virtual Water Cooler
  4. Twitter as a way to stay up-to-date with friends
  5. Twitter as a Travelogue
  6. Twitter to Track Conferences
  7. Twitter as a PR/marketing Tool
  8. Twitter as a Learning Tool
  9. Twitter as fun
  10. Twitter as a Daily Lesson in Humility (and Brevity)

    11. Yes to all of the above, with an eleventh from me:

  11. Twitter as creative expression

Some examples of the 11 uses listed above:

What does this mean for gov?

Need to start with thinking about why and how people are using Twitter and meet people where they are at.

Good PR communications isn’t about a one-way conversation, or even a two-way one, it is about ‘making yourself useful to the network’.

Thinking about Dan York’s 10 uses: Twitter as: News Source / Knowledge Network / Virtual Water Cooler / PR/marketing / Learning… These are all important things for government comms to be tapping into.

I hear about a campaign because I am following a news twitter, I tweet a comment about it (including a hashtag) and that gets passed on to my followers, one of my followers wants to find out more and follows the hashtag to see who else has tweeted about it. Suddenly the network is a-buzz with ambient text about the campaign.

Clearly audience demographic and general saturation has to come into the discussion. Twitter is a relatively recent phenomenon and is predominantly used by the tech community. But it is changing rapidly. The Guardian reckons it’s a hit website of 2008.

Citizens using twitter to communicate a political message:

Unofficial political leaders twitters from shorttermmemoryloss.com:

And discuss…

Back to Twitter as: News Source / Knowledge Network / Virtual Water Cooler / PR/marketing / Learning / Opinion gatherer…

Assuming our target audience is active on Twitter, what can we do to interact with them?

26/01/20088 Comments
Filed under: Blog, Conference, Social media, Twitter