TheWayoftheWeb

Wednesday saw the latest meeting of MeasurementCamp (Big thanks to @willmcinnes for setting it all up and @helenium for sorting out the venue at Dare Digital). It was a bit strange, as I made it to the inaugral event, and then missed the next three for various reasons. There were quite a few new faces in the room, which was good.

Unfortunately both my son and the train service conspired to make me rather late, but I was still able to get a fair bit from the format, which saw groups tackling one of four real world scenarios - it’s great to be applying our skills to something real rather than debating semantics (buzzwords rather than Web 3.0!) as often happens with social media geek gatherings.

And it was quite funny to see how many times Twitter was mentioned compared to just five months earlier - particular as I missed the chance to meet a lot of people, but I was already following everyone in the room except for one (now added!). I still managed to catch up with a couple of people, which was good - and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Keeping on the subject of Twitter, I had the pleasure of chatting to @amandita about microblogging in my first ever academic interview… She’s interviewing a veritable army of people, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the insights she draws out of it…

The only annoying thing was a though that occurred to me after I’d headed back to the train station, about the position Twitter occupies in my online persona - and why it’s probably the most realistic image of me. On other services it’s easier to slip into a certain subset of my identity - either consciously, or just through habit. But the constant and almost instantaneous nature of Twitter means it’s almost impossible to keep up an act unless it’s a real conscious decision - e.g. @amandachapel. And the fact it is a calculated work of artifice is comparatively obvious. The nature of the fake ExxonMobilCorp showed how suspicions could be raised.

Whereas I tend to be fairly serious using LinkedIn. And depending on the recipient, usually fairly serious in email. And Facebook for me is mainly around photos and events with friends, so I tend to be far more sarcastic then normal.

Like so:

I’m intrigued to see whether other people think they’re more ‘real’ on Twitter, or whether they find themselves slipping into a persona, either consciously, or without even thinking about it.

I try not to blog during work time, but as work is a 24/7 obsession at the moment (a side effect of loving my job and having lots to do!), I’ve fallen a bit behind with updating - something I really need to be more organised about. There are lots of bloggers concerned that their output has fallen due to so much time on Twitter, so I’ll claim my share of that excuse as well…

The other reason I haven’t been about as much is that I’ve had a couple of real life events which are pretty interesting.

The first was the inaugral MeasurementCamp meeting, driven by an idea of Will McInnes. It’s a great idea to share requirements, needs, concerns etc in the emerging social market, focused around how we actually report on our efforts, and bringing together software vendors, agencies, and clients (Which is where I fit in - although my work internally mirrors a lot of agency work).

What’s great is that it’s open, informal, and within five minutes of sitting down it was becoming clear that everyone shared pretty similar needs/requirements, despite everyone working independently. Which is reassuring if you’re trying to break new ground within your organisation. And it’s also going to provide a great frame of reference for everyone within the industry. It’s definitely one of the more valuable events I’ve attended…

And speaking of events I’m involved with…

I’ll be at Mediacamp Bucks 08 on May 17, 2008, and not only will I be attending, but I’ve found myself volunteering to lead a session. Mediacamp is interesting, because it’s “An un-conference digging on advertising, blogging, web-dev, branding, new and social media”.

So luckily for everyone I’m not going to be standing up and talking at people for an hour - it’s about everyone being involved and exchanging information, opinion, knowledge etc. The biggest downside of volunteering for a sessions really is the fact there’s already one session at the same time that I’d love to attend!

It’s another event that’s open to all and free to attend - which means I get the chance to learn from anyone - and it seems pretty well organised by the Social Media Mafia…

If you’re interested, I’m running a session on “From Personal Blogging to Corporate Responsibility - from social media for fun to managerial demands.”, basically looking at the implications as more and more companies seek to engage in community and blogging, and the implications that’s had for me and other people on a personal level, as something done as a hobby for fun, or as a side project with little managerial involvement suddenly becomes something which is integrated and backed by entire companies.

Oh, and in the spirit of community, open-source, free access, and the fact he made me feel guilty, I should probably mentioned and link to the designer of the above logo (and several other cool Mediacamp ones), Eaon Pritchard.

So it’s a hectic time, but a really, really good one. Throw in impending fatherhood in the next week or two, and you’ll hopefully be sympathetic if there aren’t daily updates here - you can always find me on Twitter to ensure I haven’t dropped off the ‘net entirely…