Social Media Measurement: behind the scenes view

Claire Thompson, Freelance PR consultant, Waves PR

Organising the Social Media Measurement event was fun, if somewhat hair-tearingly time-consuming, and, of course, I didn’t get to see everything that I had hoped to.

Behind the scenes, I was, of course, worrying myself stupid.

When people started signing up in their hundreds, suddenly a small event became a big deal.

Yet the big takeways from an organisational perspective? Chill.  Chill. And chill. I had worried about all of the wrong things.

There was so much that we didn’t have formally that happened informally, that I’m not sure I would worry myself so much next time.

Video/live streaming is a case in point. Not needed. The audience did it, gadgets at the ready, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there – or not, since the introductions were down to me so I’ll be on the ‘film’. The hours that I put in trying to find someone who would do it for the kudos or to get sponsorship for it  were wasted and no-one seemed to miss it. (There was no budget for this event – I’m a ‘one man band’ with a family to feed and the event was free).

And ipermedia stepped forward with recordings, so these will be valuable insights into the conversations.

I spent a lot of time creating a presentation as an aide memoire and with all of the presenters’ pictures and logos. The memory stick corrupted (that’s never happened before) and I timed out on being able to put my backup on. The presenting was strictly analogue. Ironically it was the one area where I’d not been as belt ’n’ braces as I normally am – I usually email presentations ahead (there’s one there in case I’m not), have one on my laptop and one on a memory stick.

Did we miss the presentation slides that I spent hours producing? No. People speaking came across as people rather than ‘company representatives’.

I’ll upload it anyway – at least anyone who couldn’t get along will have a rough idea of who was there.

The name tags were out of my control and just didn’t happen. I expected to have to print them myself. I should have. Did we miss the name badges? Only people who were there could tell you that, but it was more of a meet up than a conference, and not having people jump on you because you might be buying was possibly a good thing? OK, I’m deluding myself. It wasn’t good.

We also didn’t nave a Twitter back channel. The point of the event was conversations not broadcast, but it would have been good to get feedback from attendees and from the final, moderated session. As it was,  there was no-one around to make it happen technologically. Given that even the presentations turned strictly analogue, it was perhaps a good thing. But for future events, I’ll try and get the technology in place.

On the food and drink front, I had arranged for funky chips folk Chipstix to come in. They have a new twist (quite literally) on chips, but needed to bring in a deep fat fryer. This was nixed by the landlords. I’m glad I checked rather than having problems on the day.

Finding a new food source loomed so large in my mind that at the Social Media week opening party I not only bored anyone who would listen, but threw myself (quite literally) at the poor man from Skype, barring his exit,  with no introductions,  begging him for food sponsorship. He quite naturally said no, and almost certainly thinks there was a gatecrashing bag lady at the party. If you see him, please don’t tell him it was me.

So big thanks to Sun for stepping in with cakes. And beer.

Creating the space to talk was by far the most valuable element of this event and of the last one.  That’s something to build on for future events.

I’m looking forward to attendees feedback on this event. And to seeing some pictures as I had no time to take any, A seed has been planted in this event. It will be interesting to see what takes root.

There won’t be a thupr event in March because Twestival is on and my ‘extra activity’ energies will be going into that one. So the next one will be in April. I shall have to decide quickly on subject matter to make it happen, so anyone prepared to step up to the plate with a suggestion, give me a yell.

1 Comment

Other Links to this Post

1. uberVU - social comments — February 8, 2010 @ 5:27 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment