Eyes & Ears On Social Media

Podcamp Montreal Recap & Where Are All The Youth?

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

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.


Montreal: Podcamp Montreal Recap & Where Are The Youth? from Daryl Tay on Vimeo.

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!

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