John McCrory

At yesterday’s Gov 2.0 Camp New England Unconference, the final session of the day I participated in was, “Getting to Yes,” led by Brad Blake and Jess Weiss. The obvious premise of the session was that social media enthusiasts usually face significant barriers to employing social media in their workplace. There were several good takeaways from the session, particularly the pointers to Mass.gov’s social media toolkits (which I have found very useful and adaptable). However, the discussion surfaced more challenges than solutions and it seemed to me that many in the room were frustrated by various institutional obstacles to using social media in their work.

It’s a familiar situation to a lot of us: say you want to start a blog for your department or agency so that you can engage with constituents more easily, and in a more timely manner than you can through your official web site. Or perhaps you want to use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or some other social network. Unless you are the chief executive, you need to get permission, and in most cases, that permission is given by committee, with input from the IT department, the communications department, the legal department… IT fears security breaches; Communications fears losing control of the message (often, communications fears communicating); Legal fears everything, but particularly the exposure of private information. Supervisors fear lost productivity, that you’ll be wasting time on the company dime. Getting to yes can be quite a gauntlet.

Though much has changed in the past five years as awareness of social media has grown, fears about security and wasted time remain high, as does the fear of technology. To non-enthusiasts, social media is just a big Pandora’s box they’d rather not open.

It all boils down to the fear that if we engage through social media, something big, bad, and more than embarrassing is going to happen; the fear that an employee will do something stupid that will hurt the organization and torpedo its credibility; leading to the conclusion that using social media well will require a lot of training first, and that there just isn’t time for that right now.

To be sure, there is no shortage of social media fiascos, or employees who have been fired thanks to posts on Facebook or Twitter. But — and here is my message to the supervisors and directors at the top — the truth is, the chances of a social media disaster grow greater every day you and your organization wait to learn how to use social media. If you look at the history of social media blunders you will see that nearly all of them were self-inflicted wounds that resulted from inexperience at social media.

Let me just get one illusion out of everyone’s heads right now: There is going to be a crisis. Disaster is coming. You can’t avoid it. It’s like an earthquake — it is going to happen, you just can’t know when. So, are you going to be prepared? Are you going to start shoring up your plans now to respond and deploy social media effectively?

For those who’ve been wary of opening the social media Pandora’s box: consider that box is going to open one day no matter what you do, and the havoc unleashed will be greater the longer you keep the box closed. Here are a few things you can do to get started today:

• Assess your employees’ readiness: find out what their existing skill and experience level with social media is. You may discover some surprises, and you’ll learn what kind of social media training you really need.
• Deploy blogs, wikis or other social media tools internally, where it is comparatively safe, and train employees in using them; even if these don’t “take off” it will start moving your people along the learning curve.
• Develop a social media policy. Balance legal requirements with the opportunity you have to educate your employees how to do social media well.
• Create a social media engagement strategy. To get the most out of social media, like any initiative, takes planning. You’ll want a strategy that provides basic models for how social media engagement can be carried out in different situations.
• Set a near term deadline for deploying social media externally to make it real. Two to three months maximum.

With the right mindset and preparation, you can better handle the blunders and the fiascos which are sure to happen (they happen to everyone!) and deal with the earthquakes that are certain to upend your world one of these days.

In what may only be a sly little bit of linkbait, Joseph Jaffe calls for a ban on Twitter at conferences. It’s an issue that’s been bobbing around since the Great Keynote Meltdown at High Ed Web 2009 in October and danah boyd’s hard time at the Web 2.0 Expo last month. Jaffe complains that Twittering at conferences rips off the content that you paid for with your registration to share with your community of followers, akin to illegal file sharing. He also charges that the twittering has speakers under attack by abusive mobs of badge-wearing meeting attendees.

Jaffe’s trying to be provocative, and it’s cute, in a way. But he’s just plain wrong.

First, check out his video, then read a few reasons why he’s wrong:

Why Joseph Jaffe is wrong about Twitter at conferences

Twitter augments the live presentation with annotations. Backchannel participants often post links to sites, applications, studies, articles, or other things mentioned by the speaker. If a speaker mentions someone who’s not at the session, someone on the backchannel will let them know. All this creates a rich, connected record of the talk, through fairly easy, crowdsourced effort. It happens in realtime but is a handy reference later.

The Twitter stream can set up and improve the Q & A. Participants can submit questions via Twitter, and some basic ones can be answered by other participants on the backchannel.

The twitter backchannel is great marketing for the conference and for the associations sponsoring the conference. How many of the folks following along from home on Twitter will come to the conference next year? Jaffe’s baloney about stealing the content is a canard. Sharing the conference experience makes you a salesperson for the conference. And in the there’s no such thing as bad publicity department: I’ll bet Joseph Jaffe a bottle of Ardmore 30 year old Highland Single Malt that the High Ed Web conference in 2010 will have at least 10% more attendees than 2009 despite the down economy. And I’d chalk up its higher profile to the viral kerfuffle created by the back channel’s response to a terrible front channel.

The backchannel can be great publicity for the speaker, if s/he does well.

The twitter stream is another way the presenter can learn which parts of the talk resonated, and which fell flat. A lot of talks are given over and over again to different audiences. The best speakers refine them over time. Sometimes you can tell what works from the audience’s response in smiles, boos, laughs, or applause, but sometimes you have no idea what they are thinking. As a speaker, you can look back after a talk at the twitter stream and see which of your lines got quoted, which got questioned. It’s a more moment-to-moment record that post-talk survey cards provide (though they are useful, too.)

The Twitter backchannel is usually constructive and respectful, like most of the discussion at conferences. People are there to have fun and learn. The few examples of the backchannel “turning on” the speaker are the exception to the rule. Attendees who paid good money are not a mob, and they don’t act like one. Speakers always have to prove themselves, but they aren’t under attack.

When a speaker is truly outstanding, the backchannel quiets down. I’ve seen the twitterers close their laptops and go off the grid for a great, inspiring presentation. The audience knows when they need to just sit quietly and take in the experience of a great talk, and so do most of the twitterers on the backchannel.

All of that said, twittering at conferences needs to evolve, and backchannel participants will need to learn how to tweet appropriately.

Leave the backchannel in the back. The challenge danah boyd faced at ew2 was caused in large part by having the backchannel broadcast to the entire audience on giant TV screens behind her which she couldn’t see but everyone watching her could. I first saw this technique at the first Personal Democracy Forum in 2003 (?) and it was distracting and annoying. Participation in the backchannel should be voluntary. Don’t make me watch it when I’d rather just focus on the speakers. Plus, the speakers shouldn’t have to share the stage with the backchannel. I’d be happy to see this practice (which mainly happens at tech shows) banned at conferences. I agree with Jaffe that speakers shouldn’t have to monitor the backchannel while they talk. Instead, have an aide monitor it for the speaker and create places in the presentation for the aide to forward any important information or questions from the backchannel.

Bad behavior on the backchannel will be dealt with by the backchannel. Most people on Twitter are presenting themselves as who they really are, and not hiding behind anonymous handles. Their reputation will be affected by their tweets and they will be accountable for what they say. The backchannel will learn to police itself to stamp out really bad behavior. Over time, I expect twittering at conferences will be a self-healing system.

What do you think? Does Twitter enhance conferences? Or does Twitter destroy the experience of a professional meeting? Maybe he’s just stirring the pot a bit, but is Joseph Jaffe right or am I? Or are we both right?

Update 12/21/2009: Chris Pirillo phrases the issue as a question: Should Twitter Be Banned at Conferences?