Conference: Recap of IC2010

Posted by admin on Apr 7, 2010 in Conferences | 1 comment

On March 18th I was invited by Maastricht University’s study organization 3MA to participate in a panel discussion about „New Media“. I took the opportunity to take part in (almost) the whole event to get an impression on who would be sitting in the panel with me. Quite interestingly the new media conference was partly what I expected and partly very surprising. I was expecting that the only conference in recent Maastricht conferences or events history dealing with media would place an emphasis on using the new technologies when promoting the event. Unfortunately, there was no Facebook fan page to become a fan of to follow updates, nor a Twitter channel of the event to build up interest among followers. If you were not studying at Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics there was no way that you would hear about this event. With ticket prices at 12 Euros you would think that pushing sales via absolutely free channels would be in the interest of the organization. As for the audience I was expecting students totally emerged in tech so there would be a room full of people using twitter to spread the news about what they saw and experiences or some live-blogging going on From the approx. 150 people in the room 3 were using twitter. This included me and the speaker mentioned below (After that I didn’t dare to ask who runs a blog). With all the tools available I found it rather disappointing how little use was made of them from organizers, as well as participants. Of course the recruiting aspect of the event comes into play here but I believe that you should walk your talk and not try to please a (media) employer if you don’t “live” media. It is going to show sooner or later.

One of the most interesting speakers of the day from my perspective was Markus Kucborski from Vodafone. He is leading the Social Media department within Vodafone that tries to leverage new technologies and incorporates them into Vodafone activities. He gave a rough overview of how Vodafone is doing it and the slides of his presentation can be found here. Following his presentation he gave a workshop about the actual incorporation of social media in larger companies. I found it funny that the format that he said he was used to (rather barcamp style) did not really correspond with the format that a Maastricht business student would be used to (totally über-formal consultant or financial service company style that just makes me smile every time I see it). Content-wise it was a little similar; business school questions and answers to (business) problems that are not meant to be solved this way. The main question that Markus brought up was how to measure the involvement in social media. This goes back on his efforts to find a social media “currency”. The basic idea behind it is how to measure in monetary terms what is going on online. You can find Markus’ presentation here.

The panel discussion was very lively as 9 panelists faced 10 questions in a little more than an hour. I had the feeling, however, that everybody made good use of their time. I realize that every single question could easily spark a month long discussion and it would have been fun to go into a little more depth. The input from the different company representatives mostly related the question to their efforts and activities. I kind of did the same by offering a start-up perspective on things. The use of social media of a start-up works a little different for team and company than lets say firm like Vodafone or Axel Springer with tens of thousands of employees… My main point was that through more transparency through social media (profiles) teams have a great chance and opportunity to present themselves to customers and investors alike. Anyone involved in a tech venture will most likely be an avid social media user. After all, these new tools allowed many businesses to thrive, make money, and create jobs.

Summarizing, I can say that the conference was well organized as almost all segments started on time and the selection of speakers was diverse, thus interesting. The team did a great job pulling off a beginners-level-conference on “new” and social media that gave everyone the honest opportunity to find an easy access to the topic. Also I feel the conference employed the right recruiting segments for the students desperately looking for a job in this area. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank 3MA for the invitation to participate in the panel and not mentioning one word of thanks. I had a fun time anyways.