Big Mouth Strikes - A Day In The Life Of A Social Media Conference

The Social Media World Forum, big name, big ambitions, big trouble. That's where I went the other day. A gathering of the clans of social media at Olympia in London. On checking out the agenda I decided to go on Day 2, primarly for the conference sessions. There were 4 or 5 sessions all with beautifully copywritten titles to whet the appetite. I got to the event a tad late as I had decided to walk from my 'conveniently located for Olympia' hotel - about 2 miles away as it turned out. Not to worry. The first peculiar thing on arrival at the venue was the only access to the halls was via a rather large lift that was 'manned' all day by a member of staff whose sole job was to 'push the 3rd floor button', not seen the like of that in a while I have to say.

First up was the conference Chairperson and then a keynote speech from someone I can't remember mainly because I missed both of these as I was trudging across West London at the time. I finally sneaked into the theatre style conference hall and settled down into my rather comfy cinema seat. I was awash with technology and vigrously set-up my netbook, iPod Touch and Blackberry in a race to see which would connect to the Wifi first. All set, here we go.

Good grief! I was stopped in my tracks as the sassy tones of Chairperson Penny Power wafted over the auditorium. I looked up from my abundant technology and saw a vision to match the voice and was a immediately jogged out of my morning malaise.

Session One: SOCIAL NETWORK ADVERTISING & MONITIZATION

Good presentation by a guy from COI on the RAF gunner recruitment campaign, where he nicely demonstrated the integration of various SM channels and how they had properly engaged with RAF crew in Afghanistan and the public back home. It was actually a very radical and I have to say brave approach, which was surprising in such a sensitive 'war' situation, for example they used video blogs from gunners in the front-line. Only thing missing was the results, they were trying to recruit 700 or so gunners, I'm not sure if they hit that target and if so how much could be attributed to the SM campaign.

Next up a nice fella whose company did some sort of integrated affiliate style stuff to allow bloggers and others to earn cash by linking from their blogs/twitter acccounts to e-commerce web sites. I presume they would get a small slice of the action for every sale from their link. My only thought was - Bloggers don't give up your day job.

Then a panel of 'experts' who took more time introducing themselves and their wares than most panels take discussing the subject. Penny got stuck into them basically saying 'get a move on' in not so many words. Then my first audible guffaw as one of them used the word 'Glocal' and I more or less sprayed a mouthful of coffee onto the person in front. They talked about something or perhaps it was nothing it was hard to see beyond the blandness. Unfortunately industry experts aren't necessarily good performers on a stage, not their fault.

Panel over, my mind turned back to the fragrant Penny and a rogue tweet slipped out.

Penny Power is a bit foxy I have say and doing a great job hosting the conference too. #smwf

I then think to myself 'it'd be a good idea to say Hi to Penny during the break' but she was much in demand so I didn't bother and got another coffee.

Session Two: SOCIAL MEDIA AND PR

A PR guy gets up and does his stuff which passed me by a bit, something about corporate crises and the Eurostar 'stuck in a tunnel' tweets thing. I think the main point was say your sorry quickly and keep people informed, cant argue with that.

Then comes a guy called Dirk who'd flown across 5 continents just to be there. Unfortunately his brain and mouth were still going at 300mph over Greenland as he machine-gunned stat after stat on the demise of the newspaper printing press. fucking hell Dirky boy SLOW DOWN my pen's melting!!.

There was then a panel discussion before which we were asked by some of Penny's helpers to write down on a piece of paper a question we'd like to ask the panel. I wrote 'How would you have dealt (real time) with the Jan Moir Twitterstorm?'. Now that is a perfect question for a panel but the buggers didn't ask it! I felt cheated.

Lunch break: This consisted of an egg banjo and bottle of water at a little mobile cafe consumed sat on one of those bendy plastic garden chairs £2.20 all-in, bargain.

Session Three: B2B SOCIAL NETWORKS: SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS & POLITICS

Now this was what I was really interested in a session on b2b marketing, my passion. But unfortunately it was just a panel discussion and sort of revolved around what Linkedin is and one or two other 'professional' networks and a few stats with lots of noughts on the end. I was beginning to get amped-up on coffee and my mind was drifting, so I got stuck into some pithy tweets requesting that someone should show us an end-to-end b2b case study with nice tables, charts, plenty of results metrics and insights.

Another rogue tweet slipped out.

I'd like to flirt with Penny Power, just flirt mind #smwf

Session 4: THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Big subject, big ambitions, big success in my book. I guy called Adam did a great job detailing a cracking case study and clearly describing 10 trends to look out for getting me quite excited.

Then some strange goings on started to appear in my Twitterstream. I got this from someone in the conference hall.

RT @Adventurebaby: I'd like to flirt with Penny Power, just flirt mind #smwf I'm telling Thomas

Thomas, whose Thomas? I thought in mild panic as a caffeine overdose sped through my mind I put 2 and 2 together and tweeted back accordingly.

@RebeccaIntuit I'm going to hide now :-)

Then I got this tweet from Penny Power herself!

@Adventurebaby - can you say hi at the end of the day? would be interested to meet.

@pennypower of course

Then this from RebeccaIntuit.

@Adventurebaby he's here, I will show you ;)

Gulp.

AND THEN THIS FROM A CERTAIN @Thomaspower!!!!

@Adventurebaby my wife @pennypower is foxy?

And then my world collapsed, as a rather burly Thomas Power mounted the stage to take part in the final panel discussion chaired by the one and only Mrs Power.

Double gulp. My mind raced as I weighed up the options, all seemingly doomed from my point of view. There I was in second row, hemmed in far left of the stage, Penny Power at the podium and her husband on the panel and then suddenly I realised, I had a train to catch and had to leave the conference during the panel discussion.

I started to very quietly shut down the array of technology and devices I had. Just before I had sent a final couple of tweets in a desparate attempt to recover the situation.

@PennyPower BTW you've done a great job today, very entertaining. Thanks

@pennypower gotta get a train, you're on stage and Mr Power is after me ...eeek he looks handy :-) once again thanks

@thomaspower I'm sure you agree :-)

Now the problem was, how do I leave the conference theatre without drawing attention to myself, an embarassing enough situation in normal circumstances, I was obviously near to heart failure. Mr Power was speaking, Penny was speaking, I cant leave now! So just like I used to do when surfing waiting for a wave surge to jump into the water over some rocks I watched the discussion carefully, bag packed, the conversation ebbed, it moved onto another panel member, this was my moment. So very casually I got out of my seat and walked the full length of the stage, I almost whistled a nervous whistle. I got out of the exit and waited very anxiously for the lift to arrive to make good my escape.

Just to reassure you all, I got a DM from Penny later that evening and had a little e-mail exchange where I'm pretty sure I smoothed over the waters, to be fair I think Penny and Mr Power saw the funny side and took it all as a compliment. I certainly hope so.

Back to the conference. I think the take-away from these things is the seeing art of the possible, not the nuts and bolts mechanics of implementation. No-one will write your strategy and implement your SM campiagn for you. Just get on it with it, be courageous and go for it. Fortune favours the brave, and these are the people prepared to take the stage and present to an audience.