Julien Smith gave a mindblowing presentation yesterday on trust agents and social capital. I cannot believe I have never heard of him before because his stuff is nothing short of awesome.
It got me thinking back to my “Blogs worth reading” feature that ran for a few months but has fizzled out recently. There are a few reasons for this. One was that I was getting very busy in summer with freelance work and just had no time to explore blogs the way I used to, the second is that my Google Reader was already getting overloaded, and thirdly, was that these blogposts just weren’t generating much interest for my blog, traffic-wise.
But Julien’s talk reminded me that sharing these links is creating value and social capital. It’s not about me and my traffic. It’s about sharing these resources to people who might not discover them otherwise, and the value that they bring. Even if that’s just to one person.
Stuff surrounding Social Media Breakfast | Singapore and certain events have affected my love for the local social media space over the last few months, but this really made me think back to why I started the blog, why we were helping each other on Twitter, why we went out on a whim and started Social Media Breakfast | Singapore with nothing but faith that it would work out.
And it was captured in one comment yesterday: Because that’s the kind of world I want to live in.
I hope you’ll think back and remember why you got into this space to begin with, and if where you are now is a far cry from that beginning. If it is, why did that happen, and is that something you want to continue to happen? If it isn’t, what changed?
While a lot of thoughts here at Podcamp Montreal have been personal, a fair amount of them relate back to the social media scene as a whole back in Singapore as well. I do have a couple of observations comparing the different parts of the world:
1)Singapore may not be as far behind as we think
I’ll be the first to say I’m constantly bewildered about why companies don’t use or experiment with social media enough back home, but from what I’m seeing, the business questions are only just starting to be raised here and even then, not the tough questions yet. Maybe it’s the lack of people back home talking about the space or social media is more common in the tech or social aspects of the web that makes it seem like it’s more quiet than overseas, but it’s not necessarily the case.
I will say this though. I feel like people here have been dealing with social media as a passion for the last year or two, and are now moving into the business aspect of things, whereas back home, people are jumping the first stage, and immediately looking at results and implementation. I’m not necessarily saying it’s wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s going to yield very different results and have very different implications.
2)Social Media usage may not be as different as we think.
Again, maybe because there are just so many more social or Meepok blogs back home, we tend to think that it’s just us who are really into using the web as a social tool, but I do see a lot of Seesmic users who are here purely for social reasons with minimal business or personal applications. And that’s alright. Everyone gets something different out of the podcamp.
3)No one’s really an expert
Maybe what people at home need to learn more than anyone. No one is really an expert in all aspects in the field. Different questions go to different people, some are better suited to answer some questions than others, and depending on what field you’re in, the answer actually changes. It’s more important to get someone who understands your niche and how it works, than someone who is a self-declared “expert” in all things social media
4)These events don’t have to be a big affair.
Compared to the events in Singapore, Podcamp Montreal is almost simplistic in its setup. Three rooms for talks and a hallway is all we have. The value is created in the interactions, not the venue.
5)Sponsors are largely invisible
This was an observation made by someone else. There are pretty big sponsors here (not huge corporate identities), but they aren’t putting up booths or waving pamphlets in people’s faces. They’re just here to interact with people and see where that leads. This, combined with point #3 really gets me thinking about Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, and all our sponsorship/venue issues all over again.
6)It’s strange being new
I’m not naturally an outgoing person, but it’s easier to deal with that back home at events because people know who I am and what I do. Here it’s a bit different. I know who they are in most cases, but it’s not always two ways. And that’s a little bit intimidating. I didn’t push myself totally out of my comfort zone, but I did go around meeting a couple of people, and had very, very awesome conversations.
7)Gen Y is startlingly missing.
I asked the question “Where are the youth” in my video yesterday. And I’ll ask it again. I don’t understand how I’m the youngest person here at all. Exchanging stories here I hear how the misconception is “Let the person in her 20s handle it because they understand Web2.0”, but the managers who are supervising these people will tell you that’s not true. In some cases, they know more than the younger person does.
Call them Gen Y, millennials, digital natives, what have you. I think there is a very large distinction between living in the digital world, and understanding it. I cannot imagine how anyone in school right now can think they don’t need to know how the digital world works to get by later in life.
If you were at Podcamp Montreal, do let me know if you agree or disagree my thoughts, or if anything particularly stood out for you, or if any of these differencesI mentioned make sense to you at all. If you’re reading this from Singapore, do you think the similarities exist? Or are there truly cultural differences that we need to think about?
I’m attending Podcamp Montreal this weekend and so far it’s been awesome. I’ve met Mitch Joel and CC Chapman so far and hopefully many more soon to come.
Halfway through Mitch’s presentation I started wondering at the lack of college people at these events. Social Media Breakfast | Singapore may be an anomaly because it’s primarily youth-initiated, but generally, where’s Gen Y?
I noticed quite a few “business” questions today. Like how can my organisation use this, or how would this make sense for my message. People in organisations (read: our bosses) are trying to figure this stuff out, so why aren’t we? Are we safe in the delusion that learning about the 4Ps is going to get us by in the workplace? I was back in a marketing class after not taking one for a year, and it struck me how the stuff being taught is simply not relevant to my (read: Gen Y’s) world anymore.
Getting to the point, we have all these conferences back home that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to attend. Why don’t we have one by us students for students? And I’m not talking about people like me talking just about social media. Maybe it’s someone in a local band talking about how his blog is attracting new fans, maybe it’s someone with a fashion site talking about expanding her presence via Facebook. Sort of like the way we talked about wellness, food, photography, haikus and social media in our audio discussion.
So for the people in school going out to get a job soon. Or thinking of switching a different job because your finance job doesn’t look as glittery as it did a week ago, what do you think? Do you need social media in your job? Would you attend small gatherings to improve on them and share? Or do you think you can learn it all at work? Feedback please!
When I read about Podcamp Montreal fromMitch Joel’s blog, I signed up instantly! One of the things I wanted to do while on exchange here in Kingston was to really explore the social media scene and see how different it is from Singapore. What a perfect opportunity!
I’m a little nervous because the official language in Montreal is French (according to Wikipedia) and some of the sessions are held in French, but I’m sure there will be enough English sessions to get by.
It’s happening over the 20th and 21st of September (just three weeks away!) so be prepared to see lots of blogging and Flip videos over that weekend. I just know this is going to be inspiring.
I first found out about the Flip Cam from a Hack College video podcast and was immediately impressed. The best things about the Flip Cam are its size and ease of use. It’s about the size of a handphone and I’ve had it for almost a week and have not looked at the user manual once. You switch it on, press record and press stop. End of story. It’s so nice to have a no frills piece of equipment these days.
The one thing that I was a little bit hesitant about at first was the size of the lcd screen. You can see it’s pretty tiny, especially compared to what I’m used to on my 2.5inch Nikon D40x, 3inch Canon Ixus 860 IS and 3.5inch iPod Touch. However, with more use I’ve realised that the screen is meant for little more than making sure you have all the objects you want to capture in your view, because the Flip Cam’s video quality is so high that it takes care of the rest. In other words, as long as the object of interest can be seen on the lcd screen, even if it looks like an ant, you don’t have to worry.
Memory-wise, the Flip can hold an hour of video. At first I thought it didn’t sound like much, so I decided to keep all my videos on it and see how long before I run out of space. Fastforward a week later and I’ve barely used 10 minutes of video. Pretty amazing! That said, I don’t think you could go on a long trip without laptop to transfer stuff to because sooner or later you will probably run out of space.
The other thing that bugged me was the lack of batteries. The original Flip Video used AA batteries whereas the Mino uses an internal battery charged by your USB port. However, seeing as it’s unlikely I (or for that matter most bloggers) will go more than a week without connecting our gadgets to our laptops or computers, it’s safe to assume that the battery can be easily charged. And it only takes a couple of hours.
Brian also alerted me to the fact that the Mino has a omnidirectional mic attached compared to the older versions of the Flips. That means that it picks up sound from all direction, not just in front of the camera. That makes it great for interviews or running commentary as well (as you can see from my videos)
All in all, I think the Flip Cam is a fantastic piece of equipment. Sure my Canon Ixus 860 IS can take videos, but I’d much rather save the space for pictures, and use the Flip for dedicated video taking. It’s also much smaller which makes it easier to store in my pocket for quick retrieval. I think this is going to be a great accessory for the next Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, PodCamp Montreal and other fun stuff while I’m up here in Canada.
