What: SNWF New York + Discount codes to the workshop sessions (in this post)

Who: Some of the world’s leading social media thinkers, including representatives from leading brands like Tumblr, Hershey’s, Twitter, Nasa and many more.

Covering a number of key issues around the social media space, discussions will feature insight on measuring ROI on B2B and B2C social media activities, integrating relevant channels into your marketing strategy, social CRM, building and managing communities, social shopping, geo-location, measuring and managing reputation, how social media is changing customer behaviour and much, much more.

Check out these links for the agenda for the conference, to book your place at this year’s event. You get to save 15% on conference passes by entering the discount code DP15 when registering.

If you’re attending, would love to connect on Linkedin or Twitter.  Drop me a DM if you are! More updates soon after the conference!

P.S: Full registration for SMWF also grants delegates entry to another highly relevant, co-locating event, Apps World N. America, which will explore the rapidly expanding apps market, attracting developers, operators, brands and businesses from around the region.

Here’s the list of the other media partners!

Too many good sessions, too little time, coupled with an inability to divide and clone oneself meant that one had to be selective about the entire week’s events in New York. The level of discussion was amazing, and listening to people who were really into what they did is always highly inspirational.

Several themes that surfaced across various talks that were of interest:

1. Culture & Digital Identities:

• Don’t confuse Anonymity with Privacy
• Mentions of the shift from hiding behind avatars, even in traditionally privacy obsessed cultures such as Japan
• The question of the impact of culture on adoption?

I love how bits of culture still filter through online. As interactions become increasingly digital, there must be some discount to the 30-70% rule that body language contributes predominantly to non verbal communication. In my work, having a feel of the various digital conversations on the ground also helps – I’ve noticed that posts from India tend to be 2-3 times longer than other regions. Some social media landscapes are much more politically charged than others. We’ve found that there might be higher levels of sarcasm in certain markets than others. A huge bulk of Singaporean netizens might not haVe ReAchEd ThE sAMe MatUriTy LevEl of otheR PlacEs WorXX.~ (Note to self: If someone types like that to you. Run. Do not hesitate.)

Purely digital text conversation is full of nuances. How people behave and participate online is full of nuances. There is all this talk about digital plumage and how people create their identities online, and even how responses might vary to different avatars online (important for all those customer service folk). It’s been 2 years, I am still interested in how research in this field is developing.

The question posed was then, How can brands help people shape their identities, and share? Those who successfully tap into this would become part of the conversation, gain valuable mind space in this attention driven economy.

Another aspect of culture to take note of – organizational culture. Social media empowers a small number of people to change the culture of an entire organization. Like most change, time is needed, but now, all the tools are at your disposal. This is equally fascinating to me about how a dominant culture usually permeates those from a particular organization.

2. A Time Sensitive Idea Economy

One interesting thing about cloning was raised, about how the USA could learn from Chinese innovations. A mature culture will equate to more innovation, and it will not be the first time that copy and paste culture exists.

3. Platforms

• Birth of Hyper relevance- Opengraph, the semantic web. Location based advertising and marketing.
• Facebook positioning as a company to power the next generation of web.
• Question: Who’s going to be the open graph of China? Since Facebook is not in china. Ans: Localized versions of Chinese platforms? They have the money and resources.

4.  Infrastructure, Government & Politics

Big Government and politics also constantly surfaced.  How people used social media to organize themselves in times of unrest.

• Social media is now permeating up especially where government is concerned
• Freedom of Speech – With the law finally catching on to the game and laying down the rules, I’m really not too sure of the extent of this anymore.
• When mobile lines are cut, should an internet “kill switch” actually exist?
• When platforms like Twitter are blocked – How to use other tools to mobilize people?

We heard first person accounts of how some used public phones to stay anonymous, when the sharing of information became their daily goal when dealing with the situation unfolding in Egypt then.

Infrastructure always plays a huge role in communications (do not get me started about the lack of reception underground in the MTA subways.)

• In India, even the roadside florists are implementing mobile orders for their businesses. Free Wifi is increasingly common.
• The Delhi Traffic Police Facebook Fanpage allows citizens to upload traffic offences (hopefully the posters were not committing one themselves when documenting this.)

….and many have never even gone to school.

Interesting discussions & amazing people aside, this should be the beginning of a good trip.

And now, allow me to indulge in some #iphoneography.

Hues of the Brooklyn Bridge

Iconic.

Advertisement v.s Consumer Sentiments:

Horses @ Central Park

Flag.

NYSE; Wall Street.

Two general trends that surfaced that were of interest:

1. Organizational structure

One of the key things that seemed to come up often was how various corporations and institutions had shaped themselves to adapt, in light of the “social media revolution”. This is sort of a cliche phrase, because social media is not really so much of a revolution anymore, but I believe in varying stages of adoption into the mainstream.

It’s all too common to look outside (what leads can social media bring to my business, what new customers can I engage) that it would be a paradigm shift for most to view it as a very powerful tool for internal stakeholders as well, which brings us to the next point.

2. Enterprise 2.0

Don’t just take my word for it, the good folk over at Mckinsey have also recognized this, and they have data to prove that performance is markedly improved.

A new class of company is emerging—one that uses collaborative Web 2.0 technologies intensively to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend the organization’s reach to customers, partners, and suppliers. We call this new kind of company the networked enterprise.

Web 2.0 use of these companies is significantly improving their reported performance. In fact, our data show that fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.

So, how is your organization structured to accommodate/harness social media?

• A single digital executive that is cross functional and supports many different teams?
• A full team dedicated to this purpose? How big is the team? How big should the team be?
• Who does social media “belong” to?
• How will the majority of large corporations, mostly still somewhat mirrored after the very top-down hierarchical structure of the military, accommodate or react to the largely bottom-up, non linear values of social media?

These are really thoughts that are just skimming the surface, and I’ll try to share more in some case studies. Strategy has always been an innate interest, and I’m always keen to find out more about how different corporations adapt to new landscapes. What is it that most companies want to achieve, is probably a more important question before anyone can figure out what it is that must be done, to get there.

p.s: There’s a brand new Facebook fanpage I’ve created, please Like it (in support of my first attempt to conquer FBML). Still learning, page will continually evolve!

Thanks for reading this, and I’m looking forward to 2011!

The folks at WE sure do know how to throw a party… I am most fascinated with the 3D station where 3D comes to laptops, now if only I wouldn’t get so nauseous viewing it…. Those, coupled together with mini HP products on cupcakes, games and a whole lot of other festivities!

So…Christmas is the arbitrary season where everyone is a little more  indulgent and allowed to get more than a little contemplative, so indulge me. ( but really, contemplative doesn’t need to happen only at year end).

I really need to stop sitting on posts, this has probably been lying around for weeks! Ok, so the question was, “how are you going to Amp your Christmas this year?”. I haven’t any super concrete ideas as of yet, but I’m hoping some things come through, and I’ll share that when it happens.

Well, I suppose a lot of times we think doing something means having to make some grandiose efforts for external parties. Right now, I’d love to be able to focus on the ones closest to me. The handful of people whom you actually interact with beyond hi, bye and small-talk.

Here are some things that I wish for everyone this year. The 8 Fs.

Faith – This is not just the literal religious manifestation of the
word. It is about belief. Trust me, that can go a long way.

Family - They are the only ones you’ve got. No matter what may have transpired. When was the last time your entire family sat down for dinner, or headed out together?

Friends – Then there are the friends. None of those loose ties. I’m
talking about the friends who know you’ll need decaff, no onions in
your sandwich, absolutely only KFC with the ketchup, and remember it each and every time.

Fight – Not all battles are worth fighting. About a year ago I wished
for something worth fighing for. A strange wish, perhaps, but always good to have something to aspire towards.

Fear - (the unlearning of).

Fun – Frankly, it’s hard to do anything without the element of fun.  School can be fun, work can be fun. Why drag your feet everyday to  what you’re doing? The best stuff is when you can say “Look, no chains.. I’m here because I want to be.”

Freedom – Of speech, of love, of life. Freedom to be yourself.

This is what distinguishes the older cultures of other societies and ours. Acceptance of
diversity. Freedom to be and to deviate from the norm. We aspire after all the glorious products of a vibrant society but we fear the ills that come with it. Why?

(Finding) Time

Lastly, I think one of the best gifts you can give someone this Christmas is your time.

Time flies. It’s been two years since the magic of walking through a 5th avenue
Christmas struck, and watching the first snowflakes fall. Somehow there is a really strong visual correlation between Christmas and snow for me, such is the power of commercialization.

Merry Christmas.

We are each given the chance to leave a unique imprint on the world. What will be yours?

I wish I could touch & change lives, positively.

“I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.” ~George Balanchine

p.s: head on over to the HP Facebook page here to check it out!

Branding wise, these guys have got it down…from the almost irreverent and fun decorations (think rainbows, clouds and synthetic grass) to the friendly staff that were hanging around the booth.

All this extends to Skype-blue Slushees, and the iPhone case….All great talking points as well.

Peter, one of the faces of the social media team, whom you can also find over on the Skype blogs.

_______________________________

Curious about the Skype story in online conversations in Singapore, this is what was came up in terms of the top discussed themes/buzz clusters in relation to the Skype brand name.

Unsurprisingly, Skype is strongly associated with functions like Video Conferencing and Calls.

• Video Conferencing/Video Calls

• Mobile Phones: Given that mobile usage is increasing, the fact that Skype is often mentioned in conjunction with mobile phones isn’t all that surprising.

Phone Models discussed

• iPhone 4 /Apple iPhone : Interestingly enough, there were separate conversation themes for the iPhone 4 versus generic chatter on the Apple iPhone itself, possibly double the share of voice for the iPhone compared to other phone models.
• Windows Phone 7 : There was a previous rumour floating around that Skype wouldn’t be developing for the Windows Phone 7 but that has since been cleared up over at ZDNet Asia.
• HTC Touch
• BlackBerry
• Motorola

Communication Centric:

• SMS
• MSN
• Social Networking
• Facebook – Skype was also one of the top Web 2.0 brands often mentioned together with the likes of other communication options like MSN and Yahoo!.

“We have cellphones if its important, and email, IM and Skype if its not.” - a post from The Singaporum Forum.

Skype for “not important” calls. Issue or non issue?

“Erm i normally use skype to call my friends during gameplays… Not really used for overseas purposes. ” - Hardwarezone Forum.

While Skype might be utilized heavily by the overseas crowd ( I know I would!), it’s interesting to note that gamers might also be an alternative target audience in their messaging. Not something that immediately comes to mind.

_______________________________

Also saw that the Skype business solutions offering was given a counter of its own at the booth. Skype still seems to be resonating with the average consumer online, but it will be interesting to see how their branding might translate to serious enterprise customers, and the impact or effect, if any.

Full Disclaimer: All buzz clusters phrases were taken from Brandtology’s (where I work!) Digital Conversation Workbench.

Other official pictures from the event here! : Skype Twitter Accounts

Social Networking World Forum(SWNF) – Asia …back (and better) for this year! There’s even a ticker on the new look website counting down! Honoured to be one of the media partners for this event. Attended the  SNWF Asia last year, and had a blast, thanks to the great team at Six Degrees. Guess this is one event that’s gaining traction and looking forward especially to the discussions (more Asia-centric case studies please) and sharing by others in the field.

“Brands often struggle with social media and the danger is to view it as just another marketing channel. Many realise it’s a completely different approach to interacting with consumers, building communities, integrating social CRM strategies and more. Much understanding still needs to be undertaken into consumer engagement, and the long term value social media can bring to brands.” commented Ian Johnson, MD Six Degrees Events.

Event Info

Leading Asian brands will be discussing the latest in social media marketing, social CRM, social search, community building and the role social media plays within their organisation. The Social Media World Forum (SMWF) Asia running on the 22/23rd September at Suntec, Singapore (www.socialmedia-forum.com/asia) will showcase the leading social media trends taking place in Asia through a combined conference and exhibition.

The event will examine who the key social media influencers are in the Asian community, and the major trends in the likes of China, Singapore and Indonesia. It will look at how Asian marketers are realising the potential of social media and the role it will play in their future success, along with key emerging social media tracking tools.

Speaker Line up Teaser

• Pooja Arora, Brand Manager, P&G
• Nicki Kenyon, Vice President, Digital Marketing APMEA, MasterCard Worldwide
• Reynold D’Silva, Global Brand Marketing Manager, Unilever
• Blake Chandlee, VP & Commercial Director, EMEA, Facebook
• Damien Cummings, SMB Online Director – Asia Pacific & Japan, Dell
• Lito S. German, Marketing Director, BMW Group Asia
• Argha Sen, Head of Marketing & CRM, Toys R Us
• Fotini Paraskakis, Director of Production, Fremantle Media Asia
• Derek Yeo, Head of Marketing, Tiger Airways

Early Booking Discount Ends 21st Aug 09…As I’m a partner with the event you can receive a 25% discount on delegate passes to Social Media World Forum Asia 2010. All you have to do is quote ‘dorothypoon.com’ when you register. Here’s the registration link. http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/asia/register/conference And this year’s agenda!

Drop me a note / Tweet if you’re going to be there.  Catch up then!

I was at the HP #futureis event earlier this year, and there were many interesting presentations given by the various folk who shared. And yet, right now, while the whole Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare phenomenon has taken various parts of the world by storm, sometimes it easy to forget that there are many out there who still mainly stick to good old fashioned email, and surfing websites. So what constitutes this whole “social media” concept, anyway? It probably means different things to different people, and just when you think that you’re starting to understand the landscape, it moves again. We’re probably not even scratching the surface of what could possibly be done with all the information we have, and even trying to make sense of the upcoming trends in the scene.

Real time is so Yesterday; Predictive Analytics is the Now <?>

Last year around this time, the chatter was all about the real time phenomenon and how microblogging sites like Twitter could contribute to this. A year later, Twitter still surfaces in conversations, but now we’re looking into something that I’ve recently become very interested in – using past and present data to predict the future. Apparently, Twitter can even predict box office revenues of Hollywood movies, better than some established standards. All this is inherently fascinating to me, and something I’d love to explore more. The end of the research pretty much sums up the importance of this.

So effectively, this could apply to product launches, electorial campaigns (as the paper highlights) and all sorts of other CRM related issues.

What is Privacy?

On top of that, the definition of privacy continues to evolve as well. I’ll have to say that the behaviours linked to Foursquare still border on stalkerish creepy at times, and other sources like Facebook house such an incredible amount of (mostly accurate and genuine) data about demographics, user interests and the like, it’s seriously hard not to see this as a gold mine for marketers/advertisers. Imagine the conclusions that could be drawn from all this information.

What goes viral? Some good folk at UPenn/Wharton have published some research studying the list of the most emailed articles on the NYtimes that suggests that positive, rather than negative news is more viral (all those in PR can heave a sigh of relief) and that “useful” information is more likely to be shared, given that these could enhance connections with others. That goes for awe (inspiring) stories too. The generalizability of the results is a little suspect, given that it was largely confined to the readers of the NYtimes.com, and those who actually use the email function, but interesting nonetheless.

Share Prices & the Bottomline Another angle that has surfaced recently has been the effort to try and measure some real world impact of social media. We have the entire situation with Nestle and the impact of the Facebook debacle on it’s share prices. Zilch, at least according to this article. My sensing is that this is largely to do with the nature of the conversation. I do not deny it’s importance, but CSR for the most part, has been a tricky component to compute in terms of tangible profits. Perhaps it might have been different, should the issue have centered around an actual product, or service deficit. ROI is a tricky thing to nail down, one simplistic formula would probably not be able to encompass all the variables to be taken into account.

These are just some random musings that have come up… More about some other trends and thoughts on those in the next post!

The plane ride to China was within a bearable threshold, unlike the grueling 24 hour journeys to the USA.  I am entertained by the H1N1 cartoon they’ve created, the animated characters looking like a Chinese New Year food product advertisement rather than a warning about the disease that has affected people worldwide.

I survive the taxi journey from the airport during which the driver weaves in and out of trucks the size of Optimus Prime. Privately, I suspect he fancies himself as auditioning for 2 Fast 2 Furious, because he drives like (well, a taxi driver…) he is behind the wheel of a Forumula 1 Vehicle.

The next morning, I am having breakfast in the hotel, and something is having my foot for breakfast. I later spot the culprit – a lone Hangzhou mosquito hovering around and having eaten it’s fill, finds its business elsewhere. My foot bears the only trace of its presence. The breakfast area plays Christmas saxophone songs and I think of snow. End of the week, I realize that that same CD basically plays everyday, at any of the eating haunts, and repeatedly from morning to night.

Despite the revolving doors at the entrance which usually hint to me of freezing cold weather, it has been pretty much “like Singapore” and not “hotter than Singapore” as I had been forewarned. Maybe I have some sort of luck with the weather right now, because it has apparently been raining in Singapore since I left. Perhaps then, my perception of this place is somewhat different from the rest, because talking to the locals gets me the information that this is an uncharacteristically cool bout of Summer weather we are experiencing.

The office here is seriously swanky, with a pantry area that looks like a cafe, LCD screens mounted on the ceiling and kick ass conferencing equipment. I love the happy colours, and the chinese logo is a nice touch on the introductory wall that greets everyone who steps in.

Till then, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Youtube, Blogger are amongst the sites that I’ve been unable to access in certain places….

Facebook reassures me that they “take my privacy seriously” with their investigation that I really am who I am, since I’ve not  logged in from this location before. I wonder if this happens only in China, because I didn’t get the same screen in the USA.

More on the great firewall of China (and Iran for that matter) here and some other interesting insights on the other parts of China.

Because, I can imagine from the sheer size of this country, there are many Chinas within the whole, and what I’m seeing is barely scratching the surface of what it is like in all the other cities and provinces.

A pictorial post.

It was interesting to see how the choreographers used the sea, sky and land as their canvas. Symmetry of formation was almost impossible, and the construction works for the bridge and IR in the background marred it somewhat.
Still, an interesting show nonetheless!

Tags: ndp, singapore, birthday, marinabay, nationaldayparade, fireworks, city, skyscrapers

Digital has definitely come of age… I’m not entirely sure offline will be wiped out so thoroughly in so short a time as Steve Ballmer so radically postulated, but we are definitely seeing the start of this ‘fundamental economic reset‘.

Readers of this blog get a 15% discount, so make full use of it.  If you’re planning to head down, drop a note or give me a shoutout on Twitter and it would be great to catch up in real life!

Details, details!

______________________________________________________________________________

Social Networking World Forum – Asia - Grand Hyatt Singapore, Singapore, 22nd and 23rd Sept 2009

• Two day conference dedicated to social networking

• Featuring key speakers from social networking publishers, advertising agencies, industry analysts, software developers and equipment manufacturers, pay-TV and network service providers, mobile operators, plus many more

• Evening Networking Reception

• Joint exhibition combining social networking and mobile social networking formats

• Free to attend exhibition only pass available

Key Speakers included:

• Bennett Porter, Head of Marketing – South East Asia, Yahoo
• Deep Malhotra, Senior Director, MySpace India and South East Asia.
• Desmond Tan, Brand Manager, Loreal
• Bambos Kaisharis, Head of Marketing, Singapore & Malaysia Nokia
• Lai Kok Fung , CEO , BuzzCity
• Jeffrey Seah, CEO – South East Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group
• Olivier Legrand, General Manager – Asia, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network
• Paras Sharma, Senior Director, Marketing & Corporate Communications, ESPN Star Sports
• Plus many more

Early Booking Discount Ends 21st Aug 09 + 15% discount for blog readers

www.socialnetworking-asia.com

Strategy, Strategy

One of the things that stuck to me was how Scott detailed that they didn’t roll out onto 50 sites at once. That is also why I like parts of this post about 3 common social media mistakes and the “shiny new object” syndrome.

It’s true. Just because the tools/sites are out there, doesn’t mean you have to use all of them at once or all of them, ever. He was also about figuring out what metrics made sense for each of the
channels, and using those to measure ROI, instead of sticking to the
traditional definitions of success.

“… make certain that the social media strategy is right for your
particular company, not because everyone else is doing it. One size
doesn’t fit all.“

He mentioned how the team figured out that when rolling out a Youtube video, the critical point was really in the first 24 hours. Once a video made Top video of the Day, it was more likely to ride on a wave of viewership.

“You don’t stop doing radio because you can’t tell which radio ad got you the sale.”
It was also interesting that Scott didn’t quite seem to focus on the distinction between the traditional and new media. Again, at the end of the day, the focus was on delivering a consistent, strong message across the various networks- SMS, email, websites and the lot. It wasn’t quite the struggle between “Should we channel our funds to traditional print ads or a digital campaign?“. “Good old fashioned online stores work too”, quipped Scott, on their Tshirts sold on Myspace.

Other takeaway snippets:

• The message + messenger are key

This paragraph highlights this nicely.

” and for the multi-channel, hyper-connected, user-generated,
co-created, always-on world we now live in — a world where the good
gets what it deserves and so does the bad? What if we stopped getting
all hot and heavy over the latest new media success stories du jour,
and starting realizing that the real triumph of, say, the Obama
campaign was the product and the story, not the channel used for
storytelling?”

• Customer service is now two-way communication
  
• Every organization must set online goals
• Be willing to experiment
• Engage your audience.

I hadn’t realized that Scott had come out of the music industry, having experienced and watched young artists trying to find a new tool (Myspace) to sell their records. He shared how he had been watching the trends through young artists, and trying to figure out how to tap into this.

Well, he must have done something right!

Credit goes to Bernard for the group pic, and shoutout to Anubha from Upstream Asia for the invite to this session!

More Link Love: Some other posts on the Goodstein Bloggers’ Session….

Bernard, Shalabh ,  Mohan, Saurabh , Daniel

It was a pretty lively session, from the responses on Twitter and conversations. Here’s the gang panel in discussion with Graham.

Amidst the blinding lights, waiting for the delegates to come back from coffee….

So a couple of highlights from the discussion:

Q: What do you like about digital marketing? What do you not like?

I remember saying that the one thing that I really felt didn’t quite “work” was corporate accounts following me on Twitter. I’d probably follow back if I like the brand, but if not…it just feels like going back to the old days of intrusive advertising. If I like the brand, I’d hunt them out.  This point apparently resonated with Jeremy Snyder, in his great summary of what transpired on Day 1.

The concept of Friends

… To me, it’s really not about the numbers game. The people who are in the numbers game are SEO/digital marketers on Twitter who follow 10000 random people who vaguely mention a keyword once, and have about 100 followers back (maybe other spammers“digital marketers”  who can help you “get rich quick”).

Someone asked if Gen Y measures success by how many friends you have. I sure don’t. The only people who do are the said people above…and probably the likes of Ashton Kutcher when he was in the CNN Twitter challenge.

Digital Identity

The question was whether or not digital identities were an accurate portrayal of ourselves, since marketers were probably using social profiles to try and get a sense of who you are as a person.

My answer : I (and partial mountains of psychology research that I had to trawl through for a past paper) believe that digital identities are not accurate on their own, but they could either be an extension of who we are or an aspect that may not be seen in our offline selves. True, social profiles are completely malleable online, so that people can choose to “create” their own digital identities, but the same can be said of how we pick how we speak, what we wear, how we behave, and where we choose to hang out. Impression management works the same way in real life and the digital channel.

I wish I had a photo taken with Devin and his hot pink glasses. Cool stuff.

Advertising

I think that advertising will move towards being invisible in the future, it will become content. Ideally content that people are searching for. If I’m looking online for the best hotel to stay while in a particular country, it says a lot if your brand is mentioned in the top post that search engines return. And no, I’m not talking about the text based ads (which I never really pay attention to anyway because they are not what I’m looking for).

Media consumption from different perspectives

Great to have fellow panelist, Devin, from Uni of Texas on the panel, with his statement that no one really reads the newspapers in the States anymore (“You’re throwing your money down the drain advertising there”, to quote him) . He also mentioned how magazines were probably 85% of advertising ( I reiterate the importance of my point about advertising as content in future). TV – no one’s watching. Malik watches TV ..but online. Did that count? he pondered aloud, to the chuckles amongst the audience.

The very tired argument about traditional v.s new/social media

Daryl & I have recorded some live Ad:tech thoughts on our newest installment of the GennY Podcast. , where we address:

• the traditional v.s new media issue as mentioned (must there really be a distinction? I’d vote for a wholistic campaign. Just because everyone is increasingly on digital doesn’t mean you stop talking in all other channels altogether.
• Influencers – do they need to be friends/family? (not really)
• Reaching out to youth…
• and finally questioning if youth are really that different?
  

Thoughts
All in all, it was a fun session. Always too short – its hard to really gleam insights when you’re pressed for time, so I do wish there had been more responses to Graham’s call for questions, both on radio and on the official Ad:tech blog. We’ve got forever now online to really respond. Would love to hear in the comments if you have any opinions!

True, we’re mostly alpha users of the tools online and exploring the social media space, but a panel session is not much different from a focus group. Qualitative research has never been about the numbers, but more on insights and trying to find out the reasons why, how people do what they do. We all fall somewhere along the technology adoption curve anyhow, so once you have a clearer picture of that path, you can pretty much predict some possible trends for the population at large.

More Link Love:

Graham’s Pre Ad:tech interview : 28th May : on 93.8 Live on ‘How to Market to Youths’

Some good insights here! Loving the research insight on how the folks at Apple visited a sweet factory before successfully deciding to name their products in yummilicious flavours.

Part 1: Play here:
Download Part 1

Part 2:

Play here:
Download Part 2

Ritsa’s post has a pretty detailed commentary about the main gist of what transpired, so do check it out. She seems to have a great sense of humour and I am digging the BYT (bright young things) description. But I’ll have to say that Graham is anything but a dinosaur!

Speaker page

My other Ad:tech posts:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #1 Live event Tweeting…

Next up…a post on Scott Goodstein. You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

This was the first time I’ve tried to live tweet an entire 2 day conference, and I’ve found it was no easy feat…

Brain Intensive

A couple of the guys were remarking that it was pretty trying to Tweet, listen, synthesize and breathe all at once. Tiring yes, but I shall credit the factors that supposedly make females more adept at multitasking, and maybe the live blogging practice from Social Media Breakfast sessions.  Still, end of Day 1, we were Zapped with a capital Z, reflected in the more modest number of Tweets on Day 2, if you were following the live Twitter feed.

Self PWNed.

I love Tweetdeck. really I do. I’d never tried out the Twitter/FB syncing on Tweetdeck so something in me asked why not? I’ll show you why (not). See this, and multiply it a few times in length.

Basically, I spammed my FB profile with my Tweets. Horrendous. I’m sure I spammed the FB News feed of all my friends as well, giving them sure reasons to filter me out .. haha ( just kidding).

Anyway, by lunchtime of the first day, I decided this was not working (not as fun as I thought it would be, visually or mentally), so I stopped the simultaneous posting to both Twitter and FB, so my profile could breathe. Left a status msg linked to my twitter feed instead.  The really un-fun part was having to go in and delete the posts on my wall..one by one. Didn’t quite erase them all… No more experimenting on this!

Lets try not to parrot

I also didn’t want to repeat every single thing that was being Tweeted, so the plan I had really was to watch the live feed and pretty much figure out on the spot the angles that each of the other people Tweeting were taking, and avoid posting similar thoughts. Not entirely avoidable, of course, since most good points are usually the ones that get picked up and Tweeted, but worth the effort and still manageable due to the number of Tweeters. Which brings me to my next point…

It’s a digital conference

…but where is the tech? went a Tweet that I saw. Should we hope to see more people actually getting their feet wet and using the tools that would help them understand the different aspects of how it could help them in their jobs better? Only a handful of people were live Tweeting, with the rest of the comments coming from interested parties not present at the conference.

Live event broadcasting

I can see why there is the debate over whether or not a portion of the presentation screen should be devoted to the live Tweets while presentations are going on. Possible issues I can think of are:

• It’s distracting : some people can’t listen and focus on the Tweets at the same time
• hijacking: some people mistaking the Tweet screen as a stage to send SMS-type msgs like on TV/ or saying something inappropriate.

The Tools are more powerful than you know…if used right

Some thoughts on the conference as a whole – It really would have helped if the folks organizing the conference could have confirmed the #hashtag, rather than the Tweeters finalizing it themselves. I saw Claudia taking the inititaive to try and standardiz the tag, but there was still some confusion and all conversation got divided mostly between @adtechasia (the official one) and @adtechsg, with a huge majority not even using them… so just adtech ought to return those results in Twitter search. The problem with the last option is that it returns all global adtech sessions – Twitter is now “mainstream”…hopefully digital marketers will make more effort to really utilize the power of the tools offered to them.

I found another Tweet about how Ad:tech singapore might end up as the conference with the most number of abandoned conference Twitter accounts ever amusing.

Having said that, it was very encouraging to see progress, however small, in terms of the ad:tech blog, using Twitter to get live audience questions during sessions ( although there was the query about why Wifii appeared to be cut off during sessions without a Twitter Q&A feature. Feedback off the Adtech Twitter stream should show lots of griping comments about a technology centric conference with no internet from both visiting and local delegates… ). Baby steps, but it can only get better!

Are you on Twitter? Drop a note to say hi if you were at Ad:tech too! If not, it would be cool to connect on Twitter anyway, or you can leave a comment here.

More up next on the Keynote Youth Panel session… and meeting Scott Goodstein (man behind Obama’s digital campaign)! I shall try not to fangirl too much.

My other posts on Ad:tech this year:

Pre Ad:tech thoughts: Web 2.0 & Gen Y: The Other Side of the Story
Ad:Tech Singapore Thoughts: #2 Engage the Youth Keynote session

You can stay tuned through this blog’s RSS here!

Very amusing was the line up of fake fangs that greeted us at the entrance. Each of us got one. I have decided that they look very much like dentures, when placed on the appropriate prop (like white serviettes).

Bloggers mixing up a storm, trying to recreate the True Blood concoction after being “taught” on the spot. (True Blood is the name of a drink that we were served, and obviously, the title of the show!)

More photos from the True Blood Event from HBO can be found here. I thought the night was a riot, cos we were made to pose like the show’s poster as you can see in the background above. So apparently, mine was totally not sultry and came out looking oh-so-happy. haha! Poster imitation FAIL.

And because I was tagged by Yinqi, here goes!

1) Assuming that vampires did exist (and I’d want them only in Bill Compton/Edward Cullen types :p), would I date a vampire?

NO. For some reason, this question makes me imagine a T shirt with the phrase “I bite”. Anyway, still a definite no. =)

2) If you were a vampire (in True Blood times), would you choose real or fake blood?

So this is probably not going to make sense unless you watch the show, in which both species can (somewhat peacefully) co-exist because of synthetic blood. Um. I would probably go for fake? The thought of it being real disturbs me. Plus, the True Blood drink we tried at Ink Bar was pretty good! I only tried the non alcoholic version though, had a meeting to return to!

3) Which of these 3 abilities would you choose? Super speed, telepathy and shape-shifting.

As it is, I already get an excess of information from just being naturally attuned to the various things people are saying/not saying. Watching the preview snippets of True Blood and the telepathic waitress also made me realize it must be pretty tough to be able to keep hearing other people’s thoughts.

I’m going with Yinqi’s combination choice here. Super speed…sounds pretty good to me! Shape-shifting would be cool too, I’m imagining morphing into various animals, to fly, swim, run, and then turning the corner and becoming human again.

….You can read the HBO blog here!