Remember when the Drudge Report, and its hat-wearing, odd, eponymous proprietor, Matt, emerged on the scene? Old media types, myself included, groaned over having to pay attention to this unwashed and unvetted interloper, who, with no provenance or credentials whatsoever, was posting scoop after scoop.
Well at Social Media Week last week I prayed for an established old hand like Drudge on one of the panels, in hopes he could translate some of the techno-babble being spouted by the twentysomething mush-mouths who served as “experts” at “Social Media Marketing & Millenials,” held Friday at the Princeton Club.
Don’t ask me what the hell “millenials” has to do with the seminar, which was really more of a sounding board for people to pose as cool cats by name-dropping little sites and apps and mash-ups.
The room moaned in unison when MySpace was brought up, though apparently the former leading social Web network is “still cool if you’re a musician.” WordPress is also OUT, doncha know? (Nikki Finke can’t sue me, yet, for using her Deadline Hollywood catchphrase, because her trademark application is still pending. Phew.) Tumblr is the cool place to start a blog. (No one even mentioned BlogSpot, where I was thinking of beginning mine. Oh well.)
The seminar started 20 minutes late due to the delayed arrival of event moderator Doug Akin, chief engagement officer at Mr. Youth, whatever the hell that is—he didn’t bother to give even the briefest explanation. Luckily, something on Foursquare steered him away from the other Ivy League Club he mistakenly went to. Thank god, remember when we had to rely on writing down the address of where it was we were leading a paid seminar? Oh, the primitiveness of it all.
The badly organized panel discussion—no, strike that, the panel was not organized in any discernable way, with panelists and questioners taking the discussion in any random direction that jumped into their heads.
This, however, was a huge improvement over the seminar I attended Wednesday, “Social Media & Blogging for Newbies,” held at the Roger Smith Hotel. Hosted by Bloggers School, the two trainers/speakers took 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the projector. Then half an hour into the session, the projector went dark, providing a welcome break from the shockingly unfocused presentation.
In that session, the pupils revolted, hijacking the class to show a Spirit Airlines ad that cleverly hides the phrase “muff diving” and was, according to one student, about to go viral globally. I’m still waiting.
To be fair, the two inexperienced instructors were genial and well meaning, and I did learn how to assign a tinyurl and how to embed a video from YouTube in an email rather than just sending a link. But in between these nuggets of practical information I learned all sorts of whiz-bang marketing tips like “reaching females on Facebook is better because they are buying for their whole family,” and “the more friends you have, the more people you can reach.”
I wanted so much for Social Media Week to send me hurtling into the future, tweeting links to my stories and musings with embedded artwork and video footage. In its second year, the event seemed impressive from afar. Given the simultaneous weeks of seminars in SĂŁo Paulo, Toronto, London, San Francisco, and even Berlin, I was positively bristling with excitement at the global chicness of it all. And with impressive old school sponsors such as PepsiCo, The New York Times, and Time Inc. mixed with relative upstarts like Mediabistro, Wired.com, and Razorfish, I expected to be meeting the best and the brightest of this rapidly emerging milieu.
Undeterred by two unanswered press queries sent over a week in advance through the organization’s official press email address, I broke down and registered and paid for my seminars like a civilian, humbled, but not broken. I got two responses, one from Toby and one from Lauren, both apologizing for the lack of response and promising lots of help bringing my story in for a landing.
Long story short, I got no help, either with providing me access to a spokesperson or in booking any of the other events I attended. Oh well.
I made it to and through the TheLuxurySpot event without the assist of a spokesman. Bryce Gruber, the C.E.O. whose name was on the invitation, did not attend. No reason was given.
I did meet the people from SheSpeaks. They nicely sent along a copy of their recent study on social media, which basically tells you that social media is growing, growing, growing and that Facebook is zooming ahead of MySpace. They also sent me a link to their blog about this event, which I’m thrilled to insert here so I don’t have to write any more about this event, which was really just a cocktail party with no discernable content or meaning. A colleague who attended an event later in the week told me it was pretty much the same.
On Sunday, February 7—better late than never, je suppose— Lauren coughed up the name and phone number of Toby Daniels, the founder and executive director of Social Media Week.
Toby gave me the basics: Between 3,500 and 4,000 attendees participated in 85 different events in New York, by far the biggest of the markets, both about twice as much programming as last year. Social Media Week is a for-profit organization; the money comes primarily from sponsorships. He declined to say whether the event broke even in New York last week.
A company named Mutopo acts as the financial overseer of the event. Toby is a paid producer for the event, but not part of Mutopo.
When I told Toby, a British-sounding chap who seemed very articulate (but then all British-sounding chaps seem articulate to me), that I was pretty horrified by the lack of professionalism that I found at all the seminars I went to, he let me in on a secret. The events I attended weren’t actually put on by Social Media Week. Only about half of the 85 events are actually organized by Social Media Week.
I was looking at the event’s Web site as I interviewed him, and asked how a consumer was supposed to know which events were actually produced by Social Media Week and he said, “Maybe we could do a little better job of communicating that.”
He explained that the philosophy behind the event is to provide forums for everyone to communicate their message, and that some seminar producers did a better job than others. But after all, the events were free.
Wait a minute. I paid for two different seminars, how could that be? Apparently, some seminar producers need to recoup their costs for putting on the event, thus the fees. But Social Media Week does not send a representative to every event to ensure the quality of the seminars, even when they have paid attendance. “I’m quite comfortable with the fact that some content and some conversations aren’t very good.”
You see, Social Media Week is just like the cloud of people doing it—by everyone, for everyone, regardless of their skills, background, or qualifications. Some are just better than others. Weeding out the time wasters, that’s your job.
Toby told me about a seminar at The New York Times building with Ann Curry and Times-man Rob Mackey talking about how social media had assisted the reporting in Haiti. There it was, listed on the schedule right alongside the others. I had just missed it. Better luck next time.
