After spending most of the day at PodCamp Toronto yesterday (along with about 500 or so other people), here are some of the key things that I learned:
1. The stature that Robert Scoble enjoyed a few years ago when blogging was hitting the mainstream is akin to what Chris Brogan is now enjoying as one of the leading players in social media. Brogan’s session yesterday, “Heresy, Hipocrisy, and Sin” was a tour de force, and the number of people looking for a short chat afterwards was truly impressive.
2. As much as many of us are sitting close to the social media “camp fire” and enthusiastic about blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., we’re in the minority right now. There are many people (and companies) whose knowledge of what’s happening on the Web is surprisingly modest. Some of the questions asked during the sessions were things that many of us take for granted.
The thing that struck me is while these people and companies will eventually learn about the leading social media tools and services, they’ll still need insight and expertise on how to use and implement them, which is great news for people like myself who are focused on offering this kind of service.
3. Many people attending social media and Web conferences are particularly interested in learning about the cool tools and, as important, real-life examples of these tools are being used in interesting ways. It’s one thing to talk the talk but quite another to show social media in action.
4. There is enormous enthusiasm among people marketing, public relations, content and communication sectors about social media. The challenge, however, is getting companies to actually pay to have social media tools and strategies implemented. At PodCamp, the suppliers way outnumbered the buyers.
5. As much we’re all into social media, it’s still early days. There’s still a lot of educating, learning and hand-holding to happen before social media goes mainstream. One of the key hurdles will be showing customers the return on investment (ROI) on their social media spending. As a result, expect measurement and analytics to be one of the hottest markets.
6. There may be no such thing as a free lunch but the fact PodCamp was free showed that people like the idea of not paying and, more important, there’s a huge appetite for social media knowledge.
All in all, it was a really good day. PodCamp was well organized, the Wi-Fi was decent, and most of the programming from first-rate.
Technorati Tags: chris brogan, podcamp
Good post, Mark.
By the way, I clicked on the Flickr link in the right margin of your blog, and it took me to a Mark Evans from Melbourne who has only uploaded one photo.
Nice summary of pcto09 Mark and I fully agree with your observations. A couple of comments/questions:
1. Marketing is clearly undergoing radical change; mass marketing is on a losing streak and is bringing mass media with it. Ad agencies and their business models have yet to catch up.
2. With suppliers outnumbering buyers of social media as clearly as it did, I am wondering if the commercial aspects of social media is in ‘The Chasm’ (ref. G.Moore): The business case for social media as a commercial tool is not yet obvious to businesses so only techies are involved at the moment.
3. Yet, the power of social media keeps proving itself over and over again. This last week, Facebook had to climb down over the ToU issue, a fact possibly scaring more than encouraging those sitting on the fence to join in, but nevertheless demonstrating velocity, relevance and engagement, on a scale most mass media can only dream of.
4. Eventually, it is up to the social media community to educate the mainstream market on how to harness it’s power and in doing so the message must focus on business value more than cool tools and gadgets.
As always, I am humbled and impressed by the talent and passion that shines through at events like this in Toronto. It was great to be there.