So, I’ve just come back from speaking at NMK’s Social By Design event, where I was on a panel and speaking briefly about the different and emergent kinds of social media.

Some brief thoughts about the event, in no particular order:

• It was good to bump into various people I haven’t seen for years (dare I say it, since the last bubble burst the heady networking days of 2001 or so)
• Very good to finally meet Neil McIntosh who did an excellent job of chairing the event and keeping the crowd’s conversation with the panel flowing. We’ve been orbiting each other in blog world for years, so it was good to finally hook up.
• Tom was there, and it was great to see him in impassioned mode, getting riled up and animated about the questions from his place in the middle of the audience, as well as making faces at me during my talk. It’s weird to think that our friendship predates a lot of the debates that are currently being had about social software, but that it was social software that actually brought us to meet in the first place in 2000. So there you go: living proof that social web experiences can deliver rich, interesting and rewarding real-life benefits - like friendship.
• I actually enjoyed giving my talk - I like giving talks and presentations, especially when, like this, it’s about something I am genuinely passionate about. In this event, I felt like I got my point across well and in a mostly coherent way. Also, I liked making people laugh a bit. These events can be dreadfully staid.
• Chatting with people after the event, it was interesting to see a range of reactions and responses to the panel talks and subsequent discussion. Some got a lot out of it. Others were frustrated that the discussion didn’t go far enough. My take is that it’s good to stimulate discussion, and I would hope it will server as an impetus for more debate on this topic in future - perhaps in another forum?
• The panel discussion after the talks was varied and lively. I hope I managed to hold my own - felt like it, at least, though by that point of the night I was absolutely gasping for a glass of water or something.
• There were questions about the “design” aspect of SBD, which I thought was a red herring - I’d never considered the word design in this context to be about gloss. Rather, I thought it was about proposition, architecture and the way that socialness is woven into experiences.
• There were also questions about the potential power of social networks, and how they can be used to mobilise people for good. I gave an example of my mum who, living on the Isle of Mull, participated in the Digital Islands project of a few years ago, in which each islander was given a free computer and dial-up connection, to ensure that although they were geographically remote, they could still participate and interact with government on the mainland. One of the oversights in my view was that there was no attempt to enable the newly-connected islanders to engage with each other - think of how powerful that could have been, to have a physically remote community linked up via the internet and able to organise and make change collectively as well as individually.
• There was also a very inevitable dig at the big media/portals that Tom and myself work for (via us, which is always nice - thanks!), which (when you got past the bit about how we’re dooooomed, doooooomed etc) took the line of “isn’t it all about generating advertising eyeballs at the end of the day?” Well, no, actually, it’s not.
• It seemed like I was coming from quite a different place from the other speakers, who had spoken at length and in detail about their companies’ products, whereas I approached the topic from a more trend/sociological perspective
• I could definitely have done without people smoking, though - it was a basement bar, so no fresh air, roasting, and I’m coming down with a cold. Combine that with nothing to drink for the speakers and a smoky haze in the air…my throat’s raw right now.
• It also sounded from a lot of the questions that were coming out in the Q&A, and the subsequent discussions, like there’s going to be quite an interest in the next NMK B&I event, in January: Do Agencies Innovate?. Having worked for several years in the field of devising bespoke creative digital content solutions for brands and advertisers, I know what my answer to this would be….but I look forward to participating in the (probably heated) debate at the event in the new year!

Anyway, now that’s over I can get on with DOING some practising of what I’ve been preaching. I can also look forward to doing some sleeping and seeing if I can get rid of this damn cold!

If you saw me at the event, and have wandered over - say hello. You can also find me at various other socially-focused sites around the internet - there’s a list of a few of my footprints here.