The early session has been very much a beginner's guide to social media.
Anyone who thinks that curation is the "next big thing" in social media, as I saw one person say on Twitter, has obviously missed the last 10 years of blogging, for example.
In fact, many of the key messages are "here are the big mistakes" - just pushing the marketing message, not being authentic - and a few inspirational messages - "social media" saves lives!" - without much depth. It's baby steps stuff, the basic concepts you need to operate in this space. This is an opening session, true enough, but it feels like an opening session targeted at those who are only just dipping their toes into this stuff.
Some good insights that the more "social media forward" people sometimes missed are buried in there - that the civil service will never really make use of social media until they get proper internet access. And that (in my experience) can apply just as much to businesses which lock down anything that looks in any way "social" as being inherently non-business. As if business isn't extremely social...
UPDATED: It should be noted that others found more value in these opening sessions than I did.
Adam, I nodded with recognition when I read your observation "the civil service will never really make use of social media until they get proper internet access", as I recently encountered this.
During discussions with young social care workers, regarding Gen Y issues within councils, several raised the problem of internet and mobile restrictions. For example, they can't use internet 'what's on' listings to plan days out for clients (most worked with young people with special care needs) and they felt geo apps would assist tracking and on-the-go contact with their office.
But suggestions to their managers that apps like Google Latitude could help them keep in touch with one another were rejected without investigation.
I was really struck by how social media could potentially make the jobs of these young people and their charges more efficient (and improve security?), how open they were to it, and how frustrated they were by the strictures of their employers.
That's interesting (if a little depressing). I should point our Community Care team in the direction of that story...
Hi Alison,
I work on Community Care and am constantly surprised by reports of social workers not having access to computers, let alone the internet.
Would be interested to hear more about what your young social care workers said about how geo apps could help them.
The big challenge seems to be how you convince management to invest in social media, particularly if they don't use it themselves and when budgets are tight.