Talking digital in Melbourne - how far we've come

I just got back from attending and speaking at the New Media Conference in Melbourne, ran by the team at Frocomm. The whole conference was hosted by Ross Monaghan of Deakin University who had a lot of interesting points to make throughout the conference – especially at the end of day two when he pulled out a number of extremely old magazines (including one that featured one of the first desktop PCs which boasted a whole 4K or RAM) just to demonstrate how far we've come (hence my choice of picture). 

A couple of the highlights for me: Laurel Papworth and her presentation on the media revolution, going from web 1.0 through to web 3.0 and the implications of that. Mark Park of Deacons talked about the legal ramifications to be considered when working with new media –  ethics, defamation and copyright. And there were a whole host of other speakers including representatives from Fairfax, ABC, Howorth, Edelman and the BrandAide group. 

Walter Jennings also gave a very insightful presentation on new media from the CEO point of view. In all, it was a great conference with some very knowledgeable people sharing their insights. I talked about how you can integrate new media into a communications plan based on the principles of listening, planning and participation - with a strong emphasis on the listening part.

MyTake – It was great to see that there's so much passion for the online space and that there are so many people that want to get involved. It still seems that the biggest hurdle is getting the C-suite to recognise the importance of the online. But, with a growing number of people becoming so passionate about the space, it can’t be long before we’re making converts of them all. I’ll leave you with the quote I closed my presentation on, from the CEO of P&G 

“The power is with the consumer. Consumers are beginning, in a very real sense, to own our brands and participate in their creation. We need to begin to learn to let it go…”

Time to (b)log on

I was at an event last night put on by The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance called ‘Freelance Journalists and Blogging’. The guest speaker of the night (and reason I went along) was Laurel Papworth. I already follow Laurel on twitter and find a lot of what she has to say very interesting, so I thought that this would be a good opportunity to see how she was going to get some of the best (paid) freelancers in Sydney to think about blogging for free.

Most of the session was fairly straight forward with Laurel explaining the basics of blogging, social networks and micro-blogging, which I think was required given the varying levels of experience in the room. However, the point that really interested me was a Q&A at the end of the session where Laurel was talking about how editors would in the future be looking to recruit bloggers with ready made contacts and followers to write stories based on their area of interest. Wow, what a thought. Definitely an innovative move for your traditional editor and one that would no doubt be a positive step forward. The world is changing quickly and everyone (not just editors) needs to change, evolve and adapt.

MyTake – I work in PR and for a long time people have been pointing the finger at my industry and telling us that we are dragging our feet, that we aren’t doing enough in the space. Now, I know that there are some PR professionals that do nothing in the digital space, but I am fortunate enough to have been involved with blogging, blogger-relations, podcasts, vodcasts, digital media releases, social network engagement….and you know what? It’s a bit scary. Sure it’s exciting, but doing something for the first time and working with new tools and networks is a bit unnerving - but the rewards are amazing. I have some very good friends that work as freelance journalists and the one thing that I will say about them is that they are not only extremely good writers, but just as good a businessman or women. They are innovative and are always looking for an opportunity to jump on. As such, I think that the freelancers of today are ready made to take advantage of the world of blogging and social media. Close your eyes, count to ten and jump in…. the water is surprisingly warm!

My colleague Dan Young has also posted about this, you can read his thoughts here