Here are my highlights:
Third Tuesday
Shel Israel came out to the Berkeley Street Theatre to talk to a crowd of over 200 people about his new book, Twitterville. Co-author of Naked Conversations, Shel shared some of the stories that appear in the book that demonstrate how Twitter is changing the way we live, do business and build community. Unlike other ‘how-to-use-twitter-to-make-money’ books, Twitterville focuses on remarkable personal stories and is more of an anthology than a guide. Read the AdAge review of Twitterville here.
Casecamp Benefit 2009
Where to begin? This year’s casecamp featured a full afternoon of talks on social media, marketing and the power of the kittycat. I hate to pick favourites but I find that I keep returning to Ben Huh’s presentation - he’s funny, sure - but he also offered a couple of simple and valuable insights into how he built such a huge and profitable online community (i.e. The Cheezburger Network).
Monetizing community means that you have to get to a scale that matters.
Scaling is a function of business, so UNDISTRACT your company.
Human nature has a tendency to admire complexity but reward simplicity.
People choose to make their startups complicated for very human reasons (ego, pride, assumptions, sacred cows, secrets) and these are obstacles to success.
I also really enjoyed the presentation by Matt Wyndowe from Facebook. He shared some of Facebook’s insight into the question of how communication tools affect social network size. The newest ‘type’ of communication is what Facebook calls The Stream (Facebook’s Twitteresque newsfeed that allows you to ‘like’ or comment on people’s updates, photos and conversations). This kind of interaction has increased the size of our Active Network (the network of people in your life that you engage with and influence on a weekly basis - family, friends, co-workers) by allowing 2x the amount of communication you can take in.
For example, have you noticed that we are starting to get used to the stream? I find that I wish I could ‘like’ (or dislike) articles and advertising on other sites but the functionality just isn’t there yet. How would your organization’s website function differently if people could interact with it in the same way we do with Facebook? Something to consider.
I would be out of line not to mention Jason Scott, who kicked off the day to share his story about his cat Sockington (@sockington), who has more Twitter followers than Snoop Dogg, Kevin Spacey, Paris Hilton and Lady Gaga. What else can I say? People who like cats ... like them a lot. The real takeaways?
I hate bad and evil marketing and I hate bad and evil marketers.
Only robots would say, ‘A brand is like a relationship with a friend.’
Twitter is NOT a big, fat networking ATM.
TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival)
Unrelated to social media, but highly relevant to me personally, I saw the North American premiere of Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I am a die-hard fan, so I enjoyed them both but I have to say that the latter really blew my mind. I didn’t expect it to be so funny.
I was also extremely pleased that Herzog came out to introduce the Thursday afternoon screening of Bad Lieutenant and even stayed for the Q&A - it had premiered at TIFF on Tuesday and I was NOT expecting to see him again after the opening of My Son, My Son. He was incredibly gracious and entertaining and I was doubly pleased that I was sitting in the third row for his surprise appearance. WOW.