Buzz Networker - Social Networking

Getting down to business, geekstylie

by Colleen on July 28th, 2008

I’ve been blessed by some recent guest posters agreeing to come back and share their insight again. This one comes from Lisa Thomas-Tench, another partner in crime and the content strategist for Redwerks.

A few days ago, I wrote a post on my own company’s blog as I am wont to do. I asked whether conferences were a wise investment for start-ups wanting to connect to the larger tech community, and which ones were worth our time, given that we were up against the resources of other companies with massive VC funding.

Within moments of tweeting about my post, I received a lovely note form the ever-affable Tod Maffin stating that he loved the post and wanted to spend some time formulating an answer. That he did. Several hours later, he posted on his own site an interesting response stating that (and I am paraphrasing generously) one might want to rethink the whole conference-going ethos because most of the panels, well, suck.

I’m inclined to believe that Mr Maffin was overstating the point to make a point. The value in a conference, IMHO, has rarely been about the panels – it’s about making connections. With the advent of social media, making connections in person has been devalued to the point that we’re often tweeting to the person sitting next to us in the auditorium AND everyone around the world AT THE SAME TIME. We’re not reaching out the way we want to, in a way that feels significant, unless we’re full-on wasted at the Digg party and there’s a huge queue for Guitar Hero so we have to strike up an actual conversation.

The other day, Tris Hussey posted a really interesting article about the value of social media in general the gist of which was that, as he puts it,

"Yes, social media and social networking is BS. It isn’t new or Earth shattering. It isn’t anything already done in the past, it’s just being done better now."

If you sift through all of Tod’s cynical posturing and Tris’ intellectual pessimism, what it comes down to is this: relationships are relationships. Sometimes social media assists us in building bridges (business or otherwise), and sometimes it doesn’t.

On the positive side, the doors are all open. Anyone can walk through. Information is readily available, and so are people’s email addresses. Transparency is the name of the game.

At the same time, as in any strata of society, we’re playing the same old tune when it comes to cliques, clubs and cluelessness. As Tris writes, "it isn’t social media but society, technology, and communication that are the lasting parts."

So, Mr Maffin, I say to you, as did many of your commenters, it’s about taking the time to make that deeper connection, even if it is only with one other person. When our CEO was at SXSW last year, he maybe went to five presentations, but he also met two really nice VCs one-on-one, who gave him some great feedback. And that was worth all the expense. So we’ll be going back there next year. But we will be taking your advice and bringing our developers, even if we have to drag them from their dual monitors kicking and screaming.

And we’ll meet some folks, have some drinks, and maybe – if we’re lucky – make some valuable connections.

We’ll just skip the keynote.

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