I'm uncomfortable with some of this panel's message. There seems to be a distinct undertow of "how do we control the message through Twitter. The examples we're being given seem to be using Twitter as just another channel, maybe to give a veneer of engagement, without a reality to it.ASOS seems to be the notable exception right now, but let's see how the panel develops.
Amelia Torode from VCCP suggests that it's about the right people doing the right things...
And this panel has almost been completely hijacked by the Twitterfeed... Running jokes about the guy from Innocent, Ted Hunt.
Some suggestion that Twitter is a passing fad, and it will be replaced by something else next year, but that feels like someone who isn't really engaged.
Look, the real lesson of this panel was that, if a panel is insufficiently interesting, using a Twitterwall will sabotage it. Fascinated people don't undermine sessions with jokey tweets, they tweet reaction to people's statements - or just tweet the statements. Despite the best efforts of chair Jess Greenwood of Contagious magazine, this is actually a classic counter to the sentiment that I saw emerging at the start of the panel - about controlling the message. With so many people able to publish now, you can't control the message - you can just join in.
I didn't get too much of the impression of a 'control the message' emphasis and I did find the panel discussions pretty interesting on the whole.
I also thought the Twitterwall interaction was great. It's not that the panel was insufficiently interesting but that that's how the [human] conversation happens. In a way, the whole structure of a panel discussion is rigid and one-way (the theatrical notion of the fourth wall) and I thought the interjections from the Twitterwall were enlivening, almost bringing things back to reality - which always happens in these situations with a laugh.
There seemed to be a lot of speakers from agencies (ie. people in the business of selling social media to their clients) and, as such, there were a lot of ideas rather than actual case studies. The highlights, for me, were the people from brands with some real insights: Ted Hunt from Innocent; James Hart from ASOS and; Richard Baker from Virgin Trains.