Despite the glitches, the best Social Media Club Sydney yet
If the tweetstream from last night’s Social Media Club Sydney is anything to go by, its size is becoming an issue for some people.
Yesterday’s event at The Arthouse Hotel was the biggest yet. My very (uninformed) guess would be north of 400 people in the room. Which is pretty good going for a cold Monday night.
You can form your own impression on numbers based on my wobbly cameraphone footage from a few minutes before the formal bit got underway.
And that pan around the room shows what is to me the real value of the group – it’s a place where people who are interested in this stuff can get together. As you can see, there are lots of conversations going on.
Chatting to one person this morning who was there, but not yet on Twitter, he said: “I think I get social media now”. Meeting the people you’ve been talking to online certainly changes your perspective.
But as the tweetstream suggests, the AV for the formal part was not ideal, which made it tough for the speakers to keep the audience’s attention. The sound quality was a bit poor and some of the Powerpoint hard to read from further back. The stage was at one end of what is a longish, thinnish room and some of those further back did break into their own conversations. I don’t think that was down to the speakers – who knew their stuff – or the moderation (I’ve helped out at previous events and know I’d have been murdered last night). It wasn’t even down to rudeness from those at the back talking. It was just the dynamics of the room.
But the gathering does not deserve to be judged as one would a conference, for instance. It’s a free event, and those who organise it are volunteers. And it was also the first time in the newer, larger venue. Sydney is after all the biggest chapter of Social Media Club globally.
Next time, I gather that the organisers may be able to put the stage more centrally, which will probably help solve many of those issues. There will also be, I understand, a return of a visible live tweetstream, stressful as it can be for those on stage (I speak from experience…).
(Update: Jo Gitsham shares her views on the lack of a visible stream on the Dennis Rutzou PR blog.)
As a result of the acoustics, I didn’t follow the formal part – which was around social media metrics – as fully as I’d have liked. But one of the presentations – which were all strong – is now online if you want to see it. Jye Smith of Switched On Media gave his presentation on a Lord Of The Rings theme. You can see his thoughts on destroying the fucking ring here (it’s worth a look). Jye has also put up some pictures from the night too.
(Update: And Matt Granfield of DP Dialogue’s presentation is up now too.)
There’s also a good perspective from Rich Evans on the night. He asks:
“My question however is this, who benefits from the sorts of conversations and presentations they were giving? If the presentations are intended as conversation starters then they did that, but for the most part for the entirely wrong reasons.”
It’s a good point. Tangentially, I do wonder whether the nature of the subject matter and audience should be more conversational and less presentational. That does seem to be what social media is about.
Meanwhile, the event even brought together rival brands. This image shows Telstra, Optus and Vodafone representatives together (hat-tip Mike Hickinbotham). There are further Twitpics from the night aggregated at Roooby.
And according to Twitrratr (hat-tip @BenTortora), tweets for #smcsyd are running 81% neutral, 14% positive and 5% negative.
But even that doesn’t really convey the sentiment in the room. For those that stayed for the afterdrinks, it was a very good night with a really interesting mix of people to talk to. The new room lent itself better to that than the previous venue.
For me, despite the glitches, it was the best one yet.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Tim, thanks for your balanced perspective, this time as a participant. There were a lot of teething problems based on moving to a new venue and the big jump in attendees too. We were not helped by random “art viewers” who kept coming in through the back door and chatting loudly. The venue appears to have double booked us and an art event, and despite reassurances that doors would be closed once and for all when the speakers started, they were letting in the art viewers the entire night.
The format, with presentations this time, wasn’t helped by the acoustics nor the small screen size. We do try and mix it up in terms of format, but it seems that the feedback is the more interactive we can make it the better.
We are continuously working to improve, and we are trying our best on a (so far) no budget event. We really appreciate your support, and look forward to having you back as moderator, and hopefully also as participant at future events.
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I agree, it was a good night even some of the content was a little hard to hear
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Glad you enjoyed yourself Tim, I think there were officially 450 people there. The acoustics were downright terrible, but such is life! I had a ball.
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Glad you enjoyed LOTR as much as me. Had fun too. Cheers to destroying the fucking ring.
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Oh, and I’ve put my presentation up at http://www.dpdialogue.com.au/z.....ial-media/ if anyone is interested.
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Far too noisy, left right after Jye’s presentation. Pretty disappointed in general, looking back I can barely remember what any of the presentations about. Actually that’s not fair – Matt’s was great, exactly what was needed on a Monday night, and had me mark down Dialogix as a future reporting solution. Jye’s was OK but I couldn’t say what it was about other than making rather oblique references to Lord of the Ring that I thought got tired pretty quickly, although maybe that was me tired of trying to make out what he was saying over the noise, combined with trying to read his slides on the small projection (and I was near the front). I have no recollection of the guy in the middle, neither his name nor what his presentation was about. I remember he had way too many words on his slides – I think even if I could read them and it was quiet it still would have been unsuitable for a Monday night.
I definitely enjoyed meeting people and hanging out, as always, but I don’t think this was the best SMC. Mind you I’ve only been to this and the one before, and while the latter was definitely more crowded, it was certainly more communicative and I took more away from it than business cards.
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Oh, and they desperately needed someone there to do some level of bedroom sound engineering and get the levels on the microphones somewhat even.
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Ok ’cause I think I come off sounding whiny and ungrateful (and also ’cause I bothered to read the twitter stream, other people’s blogs and the above comments from Tiphereth) I just wanted to add that I think the SMC Sydney is awesome and I’d go to the next one. Just wanted to give some constructive criticism, but really I love you guys.
Plus I love Tim so I felt like bumping up his Comment to View ratio.
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I want to extend a hearty thanks to Doug, Tip and everyone else who helped to put this event together. It is no small feat, especially with the number of participants SMC Sydney has now (SMC Sydney is officially the largest chapter in the SMC community of 150+ cities, I think the next closest chapter gets 150+ on average).
San Francisco has trouble finding venues for groups of 100, I can’t even imagine trying to lock a venue in for 400+. Huge accomplishment. Audio is never easy, but I am sure that will be sorted out over time. It always is. There will be kinks. Not everyone will love it every time, but you keep trying. You keep experimenting.
It also may, one day, come down to holding several gatherings per month – some meetups that are purely social, others educationally focused – so the community can continue to grow and continue to get what they need (whether social, educational or both).
I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the SMC Sydney team. All volunteer. All amazing. All deserving of praise. Keep on, keeping on.
Congrats to you all!
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Yes, Monday’s SMC night was a vibrant social occasion with a buzzy atmosphere and a few logistical challenges but what about the content?
My take away was that yes every campaign needs its own metrics and goals and that these should be tied to business outcomes. Beyond that we sawa heavy reliance on quant measurement techniques – with little qual.
And most significantly no one seems to have big ideas for measuring engagement – which is the edge that social media provides over ‘traditional’ marketing, no?
This, for me, remains the industry’s biggest challenge.
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I think you need to determine engagement for each campaign – I’ve noticed how much this can vary from industry to industry. Music blogs for instance run on a very different scale to say, developer blogs. So the ‘engagement’ differs for them both, and hence a engagement metric is uniquely defined.
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I think there is a responsibly for the SM fanclub to work a little harder on metrics and measuring things that actually influence ROI.
Not measuring cute things like interactions and RT’s and individuals engaged and other stuff that really doesn’t matter nor fall in line with other business measures.
You can’t slam other media (traditional, digital display) for not working and being based on irrelevant metrics like reach and opportunity to see, frequency etc and being tired and unaccountable if you don’t put your own results under the same scrutiny.