NMK Forum 07 - Aggregating the Motherlode

Couldn't go (had a meeting all pm to earn my crust, and Ian wouldn't let me blag a free morning boo hiss ) so this assembly of posts is more for our benefit as a record of what was said and by whom.

A good first start is always the charming Sue "Flying Fingers" Charman and Kevin "Keyboard Wizard" Anderson, who have captured stuff in real time blog-o-colour here:

- Old Guard, New Tricks
- Does Social Media Have Legs
- Citizen Media Innovation - Dan Gilmore
- Communities, Commerce and Marketing (Isn't that an oxymoron
- Future Gazing

Then TechDigest has coverage of:

- Jaiku, which has everyone a-twitter
- The VC session - build traffic and then worry about revenue

Mike Butcher blogs about Jason Calacanis' talk on 'Net Pollution, and his Mahalo Greenhouse effect, and Adam Tinworth aggregates more blogs on OneManandhisblog and Jemima Kiss from the Grauniad blogged her take here)

Some snippets from the transcripts:

Jason Calacanis called SEO players Slimeballs, but as he was pimping his new search startup well he would, wouldn't he

Old Guard, New Tricks - less Drive by Commenting from Jem Stone and (a hint at) paying da people were the new tricks from the Media Mafiosi

Social Media may have Legs, but allegedly it has no t*ts - Jemima Gibbons essentially accused it (if I read the Corante transcript correctly) of being predominantly White and Male (but not Dead, we hope). Hmm....dunno about that, some of our best e-Friends are......

In Citizen Media Innovation, Dan Gillmor

"also showed a mashup of homes sold, plotted on a map, showing homes that sold for less than local governments thought they were worth. It was posted not by a journalist but created by a real estate agent who thought it was important. Why don't media people do this?"

Hell...why don't all the web 2.0 property startups do this in the UK?

In Communities, Commerce and marketing Helen Keegan said:

"We're all brands now. Brands aren't dead, but the old tricks are dead. Your brand begins and ends with a good product or service.".

Will the last PR person out the door turn the lights out (seriously, if she is right - and we think she largely is, based on some of our client projects), then as increasingly product and service quality will be transparent - then all that operational stuff (JiT, Lean Operations, customer satisfaction etc) is going to be very critical.

In the VC section the old "hard to get funded in Europe" wail was heard. In essence the people with the money say there is no "equity gap", those who want it say there is. Funny that.....

But, the one I really wanted to go to was the Future Gazing one, as looking at the extremely smart, witty and urbane people (1) on the panel I felt that might be where some genuinely new insights came out. Reading the transcript I must admit that there was not a lot new, though it is worth picking out 3 threads that were affirmed:

- As content on-web increases, finding context and quality will become more critical
- There is power in finding patterns in stuff
- There is nothing new under the sun, the 19th century has lessons for the 21st (has anyone read The Victorian Internet at all?)

But I think the really interesting point was made by Kevin in his blog summary of the session:

I'm going to close this days blogging with a little or my thoughts. Jason Calacanis said that the fat is in the middle management of media companies. I guess I might be called middle management at this point although I tend to do operational work as well. But I think as margins in media firms are squeezed, I think that media companies will have to be a lot more ruthless in defining what it is that they do that is unique and exclusive. They will not be able to scramble for major events that are tangentially relevant to their core audiences. Will they need to go to party conferences? Will they need to send their own reporter to the next major shooting or disaster just to have their own reporter write or 'face' it?

That thing about "what do media companies do" tallied with something else I read today about the role of political parties in a 'Networld. Are they genuinely going to go after their "grassroots" who are totally predictable in their ways, or focus on seducing the floating voters.

In essence, given that so much of the day to day - the predictable patterns - are now covered by (ahem) citizen media (user generated content is sooo 2006 dahling), what is the purpose of the professional mediatrix - the media, the politicians, etc etc.

Will add mo' links as they come up......

Ah...a good one on Asynchronous v Synchronous SocNets from the mammary fluid blog (whey oh whey?)

(1) Thats a link from each of you please or Things Will Be Edited