Nick Hodge

December 14, 2007 by Des Walsh

The big stir of the week for me and many other social media tragics was when Jeremiah Owyang created a flurry, no, a storm of activity on Twitter, with his post Some Conversations have shifted to Twitter.

Twitter is becoming a major communication tool for me lately. There are more intimate conversations being held on this next-generation chat room, and it’s filled with early adopters and those who are trying to reach them.

For anyone who came in late, Tom Evslin provides a good explanation of Twitter and how it works: he points to Jeff Pulver as an example of someone who makes extensive use of Twitter.

Back in August this year I posted about how using Twitter got me invited to be on a lunchtime bloggers’ panel for a Microsoft event and that this had encouraged me to think more positively about Twitter.

And at BlogWorld Expo in October I started to experiment with Twitter as an alternative to live blogging of conference sessions. I found I could do tweets to share insights and bon mots, whereas trying to follow the session and blog it in a regular post proved to be a task I was not seriously up to. One little problem there was that I had assumed I could log in to Twitter later and retrieve the archive of my tweets about a couple of sessions, but when I tried to do that I was quite unsuccessful. I’m sure someone has a neat way to solve that problem.

Anyway, Jeremiah’s Tuesday post included an invitation for readers to join the others who follow him on Twitter (he said he’d reciprocate), and also an encouragement for readers to leave their Twitter link in the comments section so that other readers could connect with them as followers. In an update on the post, Jeremiah reported that in the intervening three hours he had acquired fifty new followers and the comment count on the blog post was up to 160 (up to 399 at this posting). And from the twitstream it was clear that a lot of people were making new connections. Myself included.

Having left a comment and my Twitter link on Jeremiah’s post, I saw quite a shower of messages from Twitter about new followers. I’ve been going through and reciprocating with most. There are a few that I’m not sure about yet because I can’t see that there is a person at the link, as distinct from a company.

Where is all this heading? I don’t believe any of us really knows.

But I am enjoying the process, the learnings and the new connections. I’m now following and being followed by a whole new bunch of people who evidently share my fascination with social media, a number of them with very impressive credentials in the field. And I’m picking up on breaking stories faster than I would from checking my RSS feed reader.

Distraction potential increased? Perhaps. But one person’s distraction is another’s “aha!” moment or link to a blog post that provides a piece of business-crucial information or insight.

Will it work in business for people who aren’t preoccupied with social media professionally? I believe it can.

And I personally feel that for home based professionals in particular it could work well as the new water-cooler, where you pick up on what’s not in the official communiques but can mean the difference between being in and out of the professional loop.

Getting some people to see how it might work for them could be the hard bit.

Have you tried lately to explain Twitter to someone who doesn’t use it? Have you tried to explain how this might have some business applications? It’s interesting – especially when you see people looking at you with that look that says “I thought you were living somewhere off the planet, but until this precise moment I hadn’t realized how much”.

No, I think right now it’s still an early adopter thing, but I’m anticipating that people will increasingly find practical business uses for Twitter.

Dedicated tweeter Frank Arrigo picks up on the Jeremiah-triggered Twitter Tuesday.

Nick Hodge talks about The Immersive Conversation.

And from Frank’s post I learned about Tweet Scan, where I have now signed up to get some Twitter updates via a daily email burst. And that could help me solve the problem I struck at BlogWorld Expo, i.e. having an accessible archive of my own tweets.

My Twitter link is http://www.twitter.com/beachblogger and emulating Jeremiah I invite readers of this blog to connect with me.

I’d love to hear of examples of where Twitter is being used effectively – or even experimentally – as a business tool, whether by solo professionals or companies.

Australian Blogging Conference a Success

September 30, 2007 by Des Walsh

I had a full-on and very rewarding experience on Friday 28th, participating with around a hundred others in the Australian Blogging Conference in Brisbane, at the Queensland University of Technology campus.

The schedule covered a range of topics, from blogging and politics, through legal issues to business blogging and the future of blogging.

It’s a great tribute to the organiser of the conference, lawyer and QUT academic Peter Black, to have sustained through several setbacks his vision of creating this event and finally achieving it.

The proceedings were launched graciously by Professor The Hon. Michael Lavarch, Professor of Law and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, and probably known better outside Queensland as Federal Attorney-General during the Keating era.

That and the rest of the morning part of the event were pretty cruisy for me as I had no official responsibilities till the afternoon. So I was able to relax and enjoy the initial, general session, with Peter Black in the chair and featuring Senator Andrew Bartlett, Professor John Quiggin and Duncan Riley, on :

* Why are blogs becoming so ubiquitous?
* What is unique about the Australian blogosphere?

After the coffee break I sat in on a very absorbing two hour session on legal issues, including copyright and defamation. The discussion was led very ably and authoritatively by Professor Brian Fitzgerald, with Dale Clapperton and Nic Suzor. Lots of food for thought and valuable information for any of us advising businessess on blogging issues. And a moral of the story for me, as a non-lawyer, was: you need to be careful about the legal implications of blogging but if you always anticipate the worst possible outcomes you will probably not blog.

Derek Barry has posted a report on another of the pre-lunch sessions, on politics and blogging.

After lunch – and by the way, hat tip to the organisers, sponsors and caterers for the provision of ample supplies of excellent refreshments – it was time for me to saddle up and join my very knowledgeable colleagues Joanne Jacobs and Nick Hodge in leading the two hour session on Business and Corporate Blogging. Our session was sponsored by Microsoft. We followed the guidelines Peter Black had sent us, especially the section “Think of it as a weblog”:

Think of the conference as if it were a weblog. At the beginning of each session, the leader talks between five and fifteen minutes. He or she will introduce the idea and some of the people in the room.

Then he or she will facilitate the discussion among all the contributors in the room, inviting others to comment and asking questions of others. It is hoped that everyone who would like to contribute to the discussion will be able to do so in the allotted time.

The response to this approach was really good and the feedback we’ve had was that people appreciated the level of participation by the people formerly known as the audience.

Check out Joanne’s notes on the session and Nick’s, with picture of the three discussion leaders. And see David Jacobson’s report on the session.

Yaro Starak responded positively to a late alert by me about the conference and my invitation to join me in leading one of the final sessions, a discussion about promoting your blog: Yaro has posted about the conference at his Entrepreneur’s Journey site. It was great to have Yaro there, sharing what works – and doesn’t. Again, we worked on seeking full participation and were not disappointed, with some excellent contributions from participants.

One of those participants, John Harking, a SEO specialist, has written a brief report on the session.

Special thanks to Duncan Riley who, seeing I was having a bit of a challenge in both helping to lead the discussion and bring up some sites online, jumped in and took over the latter role, very effectively of course.

Robyn Rebollo on her Accidental Aussie site reports on several sessions, including the other final session, led by Dan Walsh, one of the founders of conference sponsor Kwoff, on the future of blogging (Dan and I are not related, but the listing led to a little frisson of confusion – “Des, how come you are leading two sessions at the same time?”).

At the end of the day’s proceedings, a number of us adjourned to the nearby Normanby pub where over a few ales/wines/bevvies of choice we continued the conversation, got to know more of some new people and others we had previously known only virtually or only by name.

All in all, a great day. Social networking was excellent: as Julie Edwards says, “meeting new friends is great”. And it’s good that Peter Black is keen to continue the event, with Melbourne flagged as the venue city for 2008.

A word on sponsorship. From past experience with helping to organise sponsorship in this country, for even the most worthy and timely of events, I know it is a hard slog. Most Australian companies, in my experience, don’t want to be the first to sponsor something, or to sponsor an as yet untried idea. So in the annals of blogging in Australia, there should be recorded a special mention of the inaugural sponsors and hosts of the Australian Blogging Conference:

Gold Sponsor
Premiere Sponsors

Hosts

If you have posted a report or comment on the day’s events and I haven’t caught it yet, or if you know of other reports of the event than the ones I have linked to here, please share the link in the comments here.