Fantastic panels today. I’ll have notes on teen marketing, alternate reality games and Henry Jenkins soon. I had to get a quick post up about the social media metrics panel.
First, some quick background: I participated in a Traditional/New Media panel in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, live-blogging for Metroblogging Minneapolis. In addition, while the speakers spoke “at” the audience, a few were liveblogging the event and many others were using Twitter to form a social media backchannel.
Following the forum, there was all sorts of dust-up following the panel — mostly caused by unrealized expectations set by the panel’s topic, the format in how the speakers interacted with the audience, and the availability and use of digital backchannels for those of us in the audience to communicate, collaborate and share our opinion — and the reaction of those not in the world of digital backchannels.
At today’s SXSW 5 p.m. panel, Social Marketing Strategies Metrics, Where Are They?, most of us in the crowd felt like the moderator’s questions were geared toward an elementary audience and answers from panelists were vague and philosophical not exactly quantitative answers for a discussion about metrics.
Attendees flocked to the official Meebo Livechat page and Twitter to vent their frustration. What they found there was lots of likeminded people coming to the same conclusion. Finally, after 30 minutes and still no sign of talking about measurable results, someone did speak up. His comment basically said many of those in the room were dissatisfied with the panelists and discussion so far, but he was quickly dismissed by the moderator, “I have a couple questions left, then we’ll get to your questions. We have 30 minutes left.”
Because of the formal backchannel on Meebo, participants were able to vet their feelings (often angst) at being disrespected. You don’t disrepect geeks, people. A panel on metrics not addressing metrics was indeed depressing. For the record, I wasn’t part of this — just watching from afar.
On Meebo, christine wrote, “don’t tell me that there are metrics, tell me what they ARE, how to measure them, what the benchmarks are.”
Charlie Byrne wrote, “If I was ever a speaker, I would want an assistant monitoring Meebo and talking to me via earpiece so I would know what the audience was thinking. (well maybe anyway). “Keep going, they like this topic” or “You are losing them…”
At one point, avenger (I think Henry Copeland) wrote, “ok, i’m taking off my sweater,” and he threw it, hitting me.
Then he wrote, “ok, all together now… let’s raise our hands on the count of …. three,” and people really did raise their hands all across the room. The reporter from the local Austin newspaper looked shocked.
Then it got out of hand, something the folks over at the Social Network Coups panel probably could have seen coming. Suddenly literally l/10th of the room started coughing intermittently…for the rest of the panel.
It was an amazing collaboration by a group given the tools, like-mindedness and opportunity.
I see so many similar veins in this example to my social media panel a few weeks ago. I think Ed Kohler put it best regarding that situation in his post on Twitter’s Influence on Real-World Forums:
“I see this as a simple clash of cultures. The Twitter users were simply doing what they do all day long every day through their blogs, Facebook status, IM messages and IM status, and – from time to time – in the real world. Suddenly, the topic of conversation turned to, obviously, the topic at hand….
Clearly, 50 people cannot all ask even one question each in a public forum lasting 90 minutes, much less receive thoughtful responses from others. But 50 people could each share their thoughts as they happen with whomever finds them important (subscribes to their Tweets or Tweets on a topic) and receive real-time responses from people they find interesting…
I’m sure many of the non-Twitter using mainstream media members in attendance leaned over to whomever they happened to be sitting next to and shared a spontaneous thought or two during the event. That’s great, but it’s constricted to the handful of people you happened to sit down next to who may or may not be interested in hearing your take at that exact moment. Scaling your thoughts beyond whisper range makes things much more interesting.”
Totally applies to this case.
For the record, coincidentally, I got a lot out of the information the panelists presented. But my expectations (based on the topic title) were also not met. (cough)
