Whilst everyone that was present at the Paris Seesmeetup has gone home to their day to day lives the images taken are still doing the rounds. I noticed that two of my images were included in Loic Le meur’s blog. Normally all the Francofous should be able to name every shown. Can you?
Looking forward to many more seesmeetups to come.
richard - Dec 5, 2008
Je viens de passer longtemps a jouer Bix, ça me rapelle un jeu du bon vieux temps des ordis, quand c’etait encore les ecrans ega.
Merci pour le post ;-) L’iPhone, c’est fun! Surtout avec du StarWars inside ! :-)
Cool post et cool vidéo seesmic, tu me motives à essayer :)) Xavier si tu nous entend, on se réjouit des goodies du prochain blogobar ;-)
One of the most amusing things about the blogobar meetup in Neuchatel was how many iphones were there. It was particularly amusing to see the time spent look at apps, trying to see which was the most fun. Of course we didn’t travel from various parts of Switzerland for that sole purpose. It would have been silly and we would have renamed the event, Iphone party Switzerland or the likes. Those present were Xavier Bertschy of multimediacertified.ch, John Maim of Minsh, Alexander Matti of blackberry-fr, Stephan Blanchard of apus3 and Samuel Kohler of Marketing Alternatif. The venue was the Sultan in Neuchatel. The next Blogobar will take place in March in Vevey so if you’re interested in coming to the event then just sign up.
I believe I’m living the social media lifestyle, that is that wherever I go I have both my mobile phone and my ipod touch. As a result I am never more than a hotspot away from the world wide web and it’s content. In Switzerland I’m online as I hike through the mountains taking pictures which I can then upload to flickr for you to enjoy. That’s also the reason I decided to start a new blog called The Social Media Lifestyle. The purpose of the new blog will be to explore the thoughts and conversations I have with non social media nuts and why they are not interested in being as active as we are. I have based my first serious post around a conversation in the TGV from Paris to Geneva and some overheard comments at a cinema in Switzerland. What I hope to achieve through this blog is to shift the conversation away from how advertisers can promote brands and products and instead promote the adoption of new social tools such as Facebook, twitter, seesmic, flickr and plurk to name but a few. We’ve got to find the best way to explain to our audience why and how the social media will improve, rather than degrade their lifestyle.
Today I had the pleasure of meeting Ornit Barkai, a documentary producer working on a documentary about the social media. Her project is one which I am particularly interested in because she is taking an exploratory approach through interviews to see what the social media are, She told me that she has documentaries with Jeff Pulver and many other interesting social media people. This also includes some friends of mine, Phil Campbell and Chris of Ourmaninside.com. For part of the night I took her camera and was filming footage for her as I knew the people and which were the key moments. The seesmeetup itself was great in that I was able to meet at least twenty to twenty five seesmicers I already knew and help make these friendships at least a little more passionate if nothing else. In saying passion though I mean that we know each other in the physical world rather than the two dimensional ethereal existence brought on by people behind computers. You have to realise that the social media are not a nine to five thing. It’s not that you walk away and the social media fade away. The social media, are by definition about friendships, not about platforms, not about products, not about anything else. it’s not something that you should step away from when you walk away from your computer. It’s something that you should experience at all minutes of the day. You know that I overheard a conversation by some young girls speaking about instant messaging on the mobile phone and one of them was surprised this was possible. She’s younger than me and she’s unfamiliar with this. You, social media people, should think about this. If you’re working at getting people to listen to your brand and feel more connected you’ve got to take the time to converse with everyone around you. By converse I don’t simply mean answering when they message you. I mean that you have to take an active interest in who they are as individuals. You have to keep an eye on what’s going on at all times of the day. By this I don’t mean that you can’t do anything but social media but you do need to show an active interest. If I write about one topic or another as a tweet I really appreciate seeing people respond and that’s not just my feeling. A lot of people feel that way. I’ve seen it quite a few times. I really feel the social media need more people to think of them as a lifestyle, communicate all the time, because if you don’t you’ll be flooded. Communicate one or two messages every hour an your audience will not rush to write to you during the ten minutes you’re online. It’ll help you not feel flooded. I was really enthusiastic about the documentary idea although when thinking about the way the social media and it’s people are at the moment I feel slightly dissapointed. It’s not everyone that dissapoints me, just certain individuals.
Tomorrow I will be in Lausanne once more, this time to meet the people from Bloggy Friday. It’s Switzerland’s bloggers and social media types coming together for a chat and the traditional fondue (or so it’s been for the past few weeks) and an opportunity to hear about new projects. Last month it resulted in me hearing about minsh and going to a demonstration of what the website will provide for users of twitter. i’m not going into details just yet but when it comes out some people might find it quite interesting. The second event is the TGIO (Thank goodness it’s over) party for the National Novel Writer’s month and the Swiss writers that participated. it’s a sleepover right next door to where I live and that will be interesting. The main event comin up is of course LeWeb which I will be attending this year through a great piece of luck. I’m looking forward to the presentations and meeting many new people. It should be an interesting to pick up ideas for how to develop and re-wrte some parts of the book I’m currently working on. The culmination of the week of course will be on Friday when 30 of the French Seesmic community will meet for a dinner. In all it’s going to be a very social media week and it’s refreshing for it to take place in a place like Paris. I will take some video and photographs and blog what I think is of interest. For now it’s a restful evening whilst looking forward to the fun week ahead.
This morning I spent three hours chatting to people in Australia, Sweden and France via both twitter and plurk and it felt great and the reason for this is that it was personal. We hear so much and read even more about the social media and the social web but there is one fundamental flaw and oxymoron in this vision. That is that there is an utter lack of the social aspect. Everyone is here, trying to promote their work, their brand, their friends and everything. They re retweeting what other people say and do to promote work. They are promoting things that they think can promote a person’s value. The trouble is that how many of these people do you know as friends. Do you know anything than their marriage, their recent hirings or their job. Do you know where they’ve been out with friends? I could name a hundred locations where podcamp have been, where tuttle have gone and many other things but I couldn’t tell you where more than two or three people like to go for drinks or good food. That’s because the social media are hidden. Everyone is hiding their real identity, their real friendships and their real passions. That’s why some of them have a public twitter account and a private one. That’s why there is so little conversation left on twitter. That’s also why you want to have 20,000 followers. The truth is that if you use the social media as a professional tool, as a branding tool then you might find work, and you may find those who provide you with an increased profile but is that what the web is really about? How many of you will send more than two tweets to anyone except for work? How many of you will spend an hour just chatting? You see for most of the people I follow on twitter it’s about work and nothing else. Sure there’s the charity for breast cancer and the organ donation drives that give good results but what about the mondane conversations? That’s lacking on twitter. That’s why plurk is more fun at moments. In reality if what you called the social media were truly social then I would have had nothing to write and dream about in my nanowrimo effort. That’s why I lampoon most of you. You haven’t understood the social nature of the social web because for you it’s a work tool, not a play thing. Learn to play with the social media and you will get a lot more out of it. You will build friendships and the transparency will result in some positive things. I’ve seen the Francofous community, how it grew, how it meant there were many meetings and how they talked behind closed doors. i’ve also seen the consequences of the lack of openness and what it can do to people’s involvment in the communities they’re part of. How many francofous still use seesmic for example. Of those I follow I see just one person still on seesmic. Plurk at the moment is more social, you see conversations between friends and they have fun. it’s about funny images, it’s about night shifts, it’s about waking up, or going to sleep. In general it’s just a convivial social space where no one is using the network as a professional tool. I’m not saying that you should be social all the time, what I’m saying is that you need to think about how to give time to the communities you’re part of. Ping.fm, hello text and others provide no value to those that are listening. Engage with your audience on a personal level. SHow them that you’re interested in the individuals, not the professionals.
Liz Strauss wrote about the leaves and the trees and that got me thinking of the Social Media autumn. It’s the time of the year when everyone gets back to work after summer and they no longer have as much time to be sociable, whether online or offline and as the trees remains so the leaves are gone. Of course in this context the trees are the social networks and the leaves are the users. How many of these trees are deserted? Kosso was wondering whether people will keep using phreadz in the same way. Loic Lemeur was questioning how people would keep using Seesmic. At the same time we’re going into what will probably turn out to be a recession and we get repetitive news. One of those stories is about how Yahoo is getting rid of ten percent of it’s work force. That’s hardly new. They’ve had a few purges recently. That’s what you get for being one of the top three companies in search (or has it changed since then?). One person recently wrote that the advantage of the recession is that it gives you an opportunity to get rid of those that are not as productive as they should be. It’s an opportunity to streamline the company and find new ways of being more productive. You see that’s the advantage of silence, of time apart, of a little time to think. It’s the time when those in the social media, but it applies everywhere. How long will the recession last. Which networks will remain and who will stay. Why will they stay and what collaborations will thrive. Now is the time to see which ideas have the most potential. How will the social media look covered in snow?
In 1999 I decided that I would spend 21 days without touching a computer once. That’s because I was in Tanzania for a trip during which we helped to build schools for children in the area. I had decided to do that because so many spoke about the illness of spending too much time online, of internet addiction. I came back from that trip realising one thing. It’s a way of life, not an illness or an addiction. It’s also based on how easily you can meet people and how open the community is. Look at the university environment. Some people would come to university for the lesson and leave straight after that. They would never once take advantage of the social elements that university would provide them with. As a result they would be isolated and to some degree solitary. Other people would come and participate in everything, go to the student theatre, participate in the student theatre, help post grad with their work. These people would gain a lot from university. They would learn about team work, they would see who has which skill and more to the point they coul go out at any time and meet so many people that they could spend five hours chatting to one person after another without difficulty. That’s what you get from social media, especially in a place like London or if you’re ready to travel. Join myspace and it’s all strangers with unusual nicknames so it’s daunting. Go a little further and you find facebook. That’s a nice place. That’s a place where those from an international or certain age group can find all their peers. That’s the case for people like me. As a result the community which they had known in the physical world is also online. It’s an extension of the social scene, come there as much to discuss past events as to plan new ones. it’s a place to share all the material from a night. That’s what student magazines and radios attempt to do, to bring the community to you whilst you’re “alone”. You’re social without being social. Of course there’s another dimension. That of social networks like twitter or seesmic. Both of these communites are interesting because you start off not knowing anyone, either in the physical or online word. As you spend more and more time chatting to these people, via text with twitter or video with seesmic personality comes through. Some people always joke and are fun. Others are serious, always into their work and showing their innovative ideas. Occasionally the “meetup” occurs and to some people that’s a daunting idea. If I speak to some friends they would never ever think of meeting someone from the online world because of all the negative stories that are blown out of proportion but as long as you’re wise enough those online friends you meet online may become good friends in the real world. That’s what happened for me after meeting many social media friends at tweetups and podcams, seesmeetups and more, even bloggy fridays to name a local event. Those people that I had only seen or read were now there in person “with feet” as some joked, “in 3d” as others would joke. Finally it’s possible to chat with them, to share a drink and a meal. With some people you find that a strong and enduring friendship will form in the physical world. That’s when you know it’s a community worth being a part of. In particular I’m thinking of what twitter used to be and what seesmic is. It’s a way of meeting people around the world before you travel. I really enjoy it, that’s why i spend so much time in this world. It’s not about being at a computer. it’s about having a conversation with people I hope to meet in the physical world for real friendships and real “vécu” as it’s called in French. I’m in social media for all those fun meetings in the physical world. The more time progresses and the more I enjoy this lifestyle. That is in fact why the mobile web is so important to me. I like it, I think it’s going to expand. How about you? Do you feel the same about social media. Are you using it the same way? Is it just a business tool? Think about it because what you get out of it will be affected.
richard - Oct 5, 2008
I asked a friend how to get the invite so I’m not sure how to do it but when I find out I’ll let you know.
Richard, you’ll have to tell me how to join Phreadz. It’s quite Mission:Impossible ! Do you have invites ? Am i not francofou enough? Too young to know how to fly?