…this was one of the worst talks on social media I have ever been to. Granted I was late so maybe I missed the best part but the 45 minutes I was there for the speaker who was to talk on “Beyond Blogs: Navigating the Effective Uses of Social Media Tools” which sounded fairly promising, promising enough anyways that I was willing to fork over $60.00, spent most of her time repeating one thing…”You have to be honest. You have to be transparent. You have to join the conversation. Hang out on facebook.” After a half hour of this it was clear that she couldn’t really fill the rest of the half hour she was contracted to speak for. And really, even people with a nominal knowledge of social media most likely already have the “transparency schtick” down.
Most of the people who attended seemed to be associated with fairly conservative organizations, who are either thinking of entering the social media space or who have an advocate who wants the tools to know how to rally thinking and resources to get their organizations into this space.
There are specific things that organizations have to think about and many reservations they have to overcome to make the leap.
One, of course, is a practical consideration…resources. Where does social media fit into your mix, what department does it come from, where is the budget for this, for what types of organizations is social media appropriate for, what can organizations gain from it, how can they overcome their fear of “opening the conversation to dialogue that may be critical of their products or services, what is a step-by-step game plan of how to practically move organizations in this direction once it is deemed appropriate, how do you manage dialogue, how do you find the time to do this????? These are all the questions that people came looking for answers for. If the speaker had taken the time to consider social media from a an organizational perspective, worked on her presentation, used concrete examples, perhaps had actually used social media visuals for her presentation…if she’d thought about her presentation at all, maybe, just maybe she might have been able to deliver a presentation of value…with information for people who are clearly trying to navigate their way through this space.
Twitter that.
6 Comments
April 11, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I’m sorry you felt my presentation was “the worst”. I repeated myself because honesty, transparency and joining the conversation are tenets any organization must adhere to in order to participate in social media.
I was informed that the people attending this morning would likely not have a nominal knowledge of social media.
This morning, we skimmed the tip of the iceberg with regards to social media. The questions you bring up about time, resources and so forth are questions that no one can answer in an hour, and still touch on the macro picture of social media.
April 11, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I think you could have touched on the point of transparency and media and moved on and talked about some of those other issues in broad strokes. None of that happened. I’m sure you’re knowledgebable I just thought your presentation was very weak.
April 15, 2008 at 9:05 pm
[...] However it seems that not everyone enjoyed it: You have to be honest. You have to be transparent. You have to join the conversation. Hang out on facebook.” After a half hour of this it was clear that she couldn’t really fill the rest of the half hour she was contracted to speak for. And really, even people with a nominal knowledge of social media most likely already have the “transparency schtick” down. Source: CPRS Talk on Social Media with Guest Speaker Colleen Coplick « Condofire [...]
April 17, 2008 at 11:30 am
Not having attended the session, I feel totally unqualified to comment; having said that and gotten that out of the way (I arrived via MapleLeaf2), I agree with Tris — its hard to plan for a talk where people have all kinds of experience already.
Take for instance SEO. In your next post the things you learned about in that particular talk are what many others would find basic and mundane.
Was it the “worst” talk you’d been to on Social Media? Maybe.
On the other hand, perhaps it was because it wasn’t geared to your level of experience nad your expectations.
Cheers
tony @ dji
April 17, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Hi Tony,
The talk I attended put on by Alex and Monique is branded as a QuickLearn series, so it’s intended for an audience like myself of people who are either novices, or have a little bit of knowledge on the topic. There was a range of skill levels at the workshop but the presenters still gave a great job of dealing with that situation. I don’t doubt that the CPRS speaker knows her stuff and that her slides reflect that. Her presentation unfortunately did not. If I was the only person there who thought she didn’t do a great job than I would not have been issued a refund. Instead an apology was issued by the president of the society to everyone who attended that seminar, full refunds and a free makeup session have been offered. This particular presentation clearly did not go over well for many of the attendees or CPRS would not have gone to these extraordinary measures to a address this situation.
I attended a talk some time ago given by Darren Barefoot on the same topic, to much the same kind of crowd. It was good even though some of the things he covered were things I knew about already but it was still very well done.
I don’t think the problem is the fact that there were multiple levels of knowledge that had to be addressed by the speaker at CPRS, though I’m sure that this is a challenge. It was the fact that the speaker didn’t do a good job handling that situation. A colleague left 15 minutes into the presentation when Colleen announced that she wasn’t a good speaker. I wasn’t there for that ( just as you weren’t) but if she’s not a good speaker than why is she taking on that kind of role?
April 17, 2008 at 4:37 pm
There’s a delicious irony that a speaker who’s main line of business is “social media” now finds herself unable to stem the negative publicity around an ill-received presentation on the very topic.
The comments about Colleen’s presentation (and her defensive responses) now live on in perpetuity in cyberpace – does anyone think she’ll get any repeat speaking gigs based on this?
I agree w/Tessa on Darren B’s HTCE presentation. It covered all the salient topics, cost way less ($15 if I recall correctly) and I was able to bring back more knowledge to apply to my communications workplace when I got back to the office.
A disappointment all around.