What I Learned From Social Media Club Tonight

I’m just back from tonight’s meeting of Social Media Club London. A good night – it was great to meet Kristine in the flesh for the first time, and to catch up with people like Ian.

I was initially a little worried about how useful it would be, as I found my eyeballs rolling up at yet more blanket statements about mainstream media’s Agenda. (I’ve been in the mainstream media for a decade. I clearly missed the Agenda memo…) However, Lloyd Davis‘ skilful management of the discussion* moved it into much more fruitful territory. There were three principal streams of discussion:

• the numbers of people needed for a fruitful community
• how social media will revolutionise/subvert existing media
• how you find the right quality of material for your needs in an ever more diverse media landscape.

I mainly joined in the last discussion, and have enough notes for at least three posts – when I’m a little less tired, you’ll be glad to hear.

And the end, Lloyd struggled to draw out what people had learned from the session. I think he was fighting a losing battle, because it was the sort of discussion that exposed the questions that need to be explored, rather than one that provided answers.

If I had to identify one thing that I really took away from it is that the most important moment in social media thinking is when the “social” element of it becomes more important than the “media”; when we stop focusing on this as a technological issue and start thinking of it as a human one.

And yes, you can be sure quite a lot of my posts in the coming days will revolve around that idea.

*Clearly the fact that he pulled me into the discussion early giving me the chance to hold forth at length to a captive audience has no bearing on my appreciation of his skills…