Venue: Kohlmanns

Join the event on Facebook.

This is an informal networking event meant to get together Social Media professionals and students to swap opinions, to share innovative ideas, to informally present new projects and last but not least to hand on the social media culture.

There are two big tables reserved for us at Kohlmanns.
Unfortunately there’s no wireless connection, but many of you are provided with Iphone and so on.

We’ll hopefully attain a great and generous sponsor for our drinks and it will be announced soon.

Save the date!
Chiara Bolognini, founder of the Social Media Basel Group.

In few days the website of my Web & Social Media Agency Swissite International will go live.

Social Media Marketing and Campaigns are the main services, however take a look at the following list of services:

Shortlist of services

The famous Italian Newspaper Repubblica posed 10 questions to Silvio Berlusconi about his relationship with a teenager. He decided not to answer.
It could be  weird behavior on the part of the Italian First Minister, though acceptable. What has been unacceptable is Berlusconi’s decision to sue Repubblica because of those 10 unanswered questions.

Reuters Memorial Lecture 2009
Monday 23 November, 17.30–19.00
“Newspapers and Democracy in the Internet Era: the Italian Case” by Carlo De Benedetti
Chairman, Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso / La Repubblica

Introduced by the Chancellor of the University, The Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes, CH
followed by a panel discussion with
John Lloyd (Director of Journalism at the Reuters Institute & Contributing Editor, Financial Times)
Timothy Garton Ash (Professor of European Studies & Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow, St Antony’s College)
Paolo Mancini (Monte dei Paschi Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College & Professor, Dipartimento Istituzioni e Società, Università di Perugia)
Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s College

Monitoring Social Media 09 will bring together leading brands, Social Media Monitoring experts and suppliers with PR & marketing professionals for a one-day conference in London on 17th November 2009. The first event of its kind in Europe, MSM 09 offers attendees a series of high-value talks, panel sessions and debates, with contributions from leading digital agencies and brands.

http://www.monitoring-social-media.com/

At MSM09 we will explore:

* The ROI of social media monitoring
* Innovations in reputation management
* Who controls social media data
* Free vs paid monitoring services
* Automated vs human sentiment detection
* How to identify and contact influencers
* The future of social media monitoring
* Examples & case studies

Birmingham is well known as the second biggest city in UK and it is recently getting the fame of Social Media center of interests.

Developing Birmingham’s Digital District is exactly that kind of project, heading towards evolving digital networks by providing fast internet connectivity known as Next Generation Access.

Digital Britain together with Digital West Midlands and The Regional ICT Strategy is the project above Digital Birmingham, which is the context of policy and regulation to develop. It has been said that there is great support from corporations.

Key speakers at the event came from various European cities such as Birmingham, Barcelona and Berlin to swap their opinions and report their own experience about developing digital districts:
Steve Harding, Dave Harte — Birmingham City University, Lisa De Propris – Birmingham Business School – University of Birmingham, Paul Tinsley MBE – Deputy Leader Birmingham City Council, Chris Price – Digital Birmingham, Hardy Rudolf Shmitz – Wista Management GMBH Berlin, and finally the enthusiastic Chris Pinchen – Citilab-Cornellá Barcelona.

Hardy Rudolf Shmitz – Wista Man­age­ment GMBH Berlin

There are a great deal of potential evolutions coming about by realising these projects that actually are impossible to determine in their entirety right now.
However, let me briefly outline some of the input given during the  Digital Birmingham event on the 14^th of October 2009 at Fazeley Studios.

Fazeley Studios

Developing a digital area in the city would allow digital people to aggregate easily and quickly. This innovation brings along new business opportunities or simply the development of existing businesses.

In addition to that a digital district would make many more people come onto the internet to share and to build knowledge.

Beyond sharing knowledge there is a fast and always on hand networking possibility, organised out of the standard hierarchy and through the many social media and websites which are the foundation of a newly organised crowd of voices.

Anyway crowding the city center is not in the on the scope of the project. On the contrary the aim is to connect fast and virtually from that area to anywhere.

Let’s think offline to have a better understanding: imagine offering a group of people the possibility to have a place to meet with whom they want and to find what they want. Put this centre of interests an inch away from each person. Would you not see the whole group go there in a crowd, meet, chat and create new valuable things?

This happens today on the internet, which is infinitely expanding the capability of people to network. The key factor is to allow people to use tools to interact in always easier&quicker-to-use ways.

Imagine a virtual place, the internet itself, with an infinite possibility of connections with the world and put it in the center of an active group. What would happen?

Some of the most brilliant students at BCU, Hai Nguyen, Nkem Nwchkw, Shilpa Alakkal attended Developing Birmingham‘s District Event

These are exactly the business drivers of Developing Birmingham´s Digital District: to explore what happens when it is provided with much more speed and access to connectivity. Actually, current levels of connectivity are inhibiting innovative products and services.

On the other hand there is a strong need to demonstrate the value of building a Creative Metropolis in order to solve the main issues which are briefly: engaging stakeholders and existing developments, getting secure funding and delivery timescales, resolving state aid concerns, building market engagement and business care.

The audience

On top of that, do not forget how many places in the world are becoming sort of open offices for creative people. Coffee bars such as the Coffee-lounge in Birmingham or co-working places such as the Moseley Exchange in Birmingham the set up of which Steve Harding was involved in, Citilab-Cornellá of Chris Pinchen in Barcelona, the Betahaus in Kreuzberg Germany. The list of places like these is getting longer and longer, that is a strong signal of a new digital way to work.
Well, these places provide their own wireless network to the creative people. Actually the connectivity is not always the one you can expect to work efficiently.

So let’s see what Developing Digital Birmingham is going to bring to the citizens media in terms of quality and coverage. According to a Wikipedia definition citizens media  refers to forms of content produced by private citizens who are otherwise not professional journalists.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, with the support of the BBC College of Journalism launched the working paper by Nic Newman ‘The Rise of Social Media and its Impact on Mainstream Journalism’ at Council Chamber, BBC Broadcasting House in London on 30^th of September 2009.

BBC Broadcasting House in London

Speakers and attendees

David Levy, Director of the Reuters Institute led the discussion together with Nick Newman himself, Controller Future Media and Technology in BBC Journalism, Meg Pickard, Head of Social Media Development at Guardian News and Media and Kate Day Community Editor at the Telegraph.

Speakers

The exact list of attendees was not made available, however most journalists involved in the discussion were respectable and valued mainstream journalists. A smaller group of younger people instead represented the current and upcoming online journalism industry.

The discussion

Most mainstream journalists´questions sounded in some way obvious and were slightly suspicious about the effective values of engaging in social media.
Actually, to find the non-sense of a highly populated world, which is increasingly threatening the mainstream media and journalism, makes strong sense and it is completely  understandable given the threat of potential unemployment or retirement and considering  broadcast journalism revenue.

Attendee

The obviousness of most questions is due to the inverted roles which have been developing in the media and technological environment: the progress is developing very fast, therefore people are not learning their profession from their parents. On the contrary, they are learning “on the field” and it is highly likely that they will learn eventually from their children.
In any case what people do not have to explain their children, they  struggle to explain to their parents.

So at some point it would be time to give up the weapons and to consider the generation gap among journalists as something acceptable and something from which it would be wise to start learning in order to stay as active workers in the industry and to make valuable room for new journalists.

Attendee

Learning and listening from everyone is exactly the success key factor of social media and blogs swarmed by online journalists. Definitely, the concept of first hand information has been developing against the concept of journalism as a lobby.

The value of engaging in social media

In view of this, most speakers´ answers were aimed at clarifying the value of engaging mainstream media in social media as an opportunity to listen to the readers´ voice and to learn what the readers, their final target group, really want.

To the questions “How is it possible to gain money from social media, what is the added value in the engagement in social media?” Kate Day gave a sharp though polite answer explaining extensively that the way is to be complementary and not to replace online and offline newspapers with social media.

Questions and answers

As a matter of fact the synergy of media channels is definitely converging on the internet. Starting from that point, that synergy is sharing its potential with the entirety of the same media channels and is redeploying in different media tools enriched through web functionality that are the most demanded products in the market. For instance  web mobile phones, web tv, online newspaper, e-books etc.

Actually the market and expenditure themselves are determining factors in such kinds of lobby issues and sweep away any possibility of ignoring the reality of social media as the main part of the global conversation, newsmaking and newsgathering.

People wondering if social media brings money to newspapers are easily answered that where are people, there is money.

Imagine an empty shop or better a shop where the clerks tell you everything about the shop but do not let you touch, explore, compare, get your own idea and under the best conditions enjoy a customer experience. It is highly likely that most people won´t buy and will left the shop to go to another shop where they would be free to do what they want. This is the current situation of newspapers which are being left to populate social media.

In addition to that, a pragmatic answer to the money matter was given by Meg Pickard, who said that social media users number in the millions, influencing other people and driving traffic to newspapers.

Multiple voices

Eventually the discussion itself demonstrates that becoming experienced journalists does not imply stopping making comparisons and swapping opinions with new journalists, considering them trustworthy and worth listening to.

As a matter of fact, not listening to them implies not listening to the crowd of voices which are enriching either newspapers or people´s lives through social media and blogs.

None can stop these voices from being raised and from pandemic spreading.

Multiple voices

In fact, newspapers are supposed to stop being one voice and start being part of the multiple voices, profiting from them and using them as a megaphone as Meg Pickard brilliantly said.

Pending answers

However, there are questions that mainstream journalists did not pose and that are still pending:

-          To what extent do online journalism, social media and blogs gain from being considered important by mainstream media?

-          Does this engagement imply a free pass to newsgathering through blogs and social media?

Well, you are invited to answer these questions.

New subject, new rules, new hopes

In conclusion, it would be essential to take into consideration that whereas it is true that online journalism is going to find its definition, as a completely innovative subject, it is also meant to stay open in order to meet people´s changing needs and progress as any successful and user-friendly web project does.

That implicates a rather impossible categorisation within the predefined mainstream media rules and schemes.

To sum up, this quote of Mahatma Gandhi describes the condition of things and conveys an expectant message: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Hopefully, many more online journalists, who are now playing the role of agents of change and innovators, will find a rewarding and fitting placement in this new industry in the near future.

Something stays, something changes

Other articles, videos and podcast about this topic:
- The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism by Caroline Beavon
- Social media and its impact on mainstream journalism by Dan Davis