Cisco New Media Summit

Went to the Cisco New Media Summit today. Thanks to the folks at Cisco for sponsoring this event.

It may not be a big deal to a lot of folks who came to the New Media Summit (judging from their badges most of the attendees came from large companies who probably have the budget to send their marketing folks to watch a panel discussion) but the event was free. (Ok fine it wasn’t free because Cisco’s achieving something out of this, etc, etc, must we always clarify that FREE isn’t truly FREE?)

I won’t summarize the event here only because others have already so just my two cents here and there. Check out these posts on the New Media Summit.

Jeremy Pepper was live blogging the event.
Jeremiah Owyang — Key Themes at the New Media Summit. Jeremiah was a panel speaker for Measuring the ROI of Social Media.

My Two Cents
The panel discussions were great and though they may be talking about different topics with each session the common theme seems to be that we are at the forefront of what may be the norm in marketing and corporate communications in the not too distant future.

  • There are no standard processes to measuring the ROI of social media YET because it’s so new. There was even a discussion there between Katie Paine and Jeremiah Owyang about whether we should even be measuring social media ROI in the first place. What is the value of a positive comment?
  • The fate of traditional media is uncertain. It looks like blogs and social media will replace traditional media but it’s still too soon to tell. I thought it was interesting that I happen to stumble upon Chris Salazar’s post on bloggers and journalists just as this discussion was happening.
  • The session of internal collaboration tools and strategies wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. I was looking forward to a discussion about other tools in addition to blogs like wikis, social bookmarking and crowd sourcing and other tools to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing within the enterprise, but instead it was more of a discussion on corporate blogging and conversations/collaboration that happen outside the firewall.
  • The last panel discussion was definitely the coolest because one of the panelists was an avatar on Second Life. I’ve always known of Second Life but have never been in there. I’m not sure why. Is it because it requires me to download the client? Is it because I’ve heard of some really bad things happening there? Not sure. But marketing/collaboration in the Second Life space is definitely something really new and it will be interesting what comes of it.

    • And I meant to ask (but didn’t remember the question until after the panel discussion), are these virtual worlds the next thing after social media sites? Will everyone do their 3d virtual thing on Second Life or will companies come out with their own branded virtual world a la Wells Fargo’s Stage Coach Island?

    It’s definitely an exciting time to be a witness to all the changes that are happening and having the medium to discuss those changes as well.

    And in true Social Media fashion, I’ll have to say here that even more important than the panel discussions themselves are the conversations that follow and the connections that are made after.

    I got to chat a little bit with Sun’s Terry McKenzie about the challenges that we are facing in the industry I make a living in (note to self: blog about some of that stuff on the other blog…), sat with the folks behind Cisco’s Human Networkprogram and Cisco’s Blogger in Chief (that’s what it says on the agenda) John Earnhardt, got to chat with Liz Guthridge and Jennifer McClure about the issues that social media poses in the staffing industry, and got to share a few thoughts with AMD’s David Kroll who was sitting behind me.

    This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 5:21 am and is filed under Bloggers, Cisco, Opinions and Observations, SNS, Web2.0, Web2.0-for-the-Enterprise, blogging, events, networking, professionalnetworking, second life, socialmedia, socialnetworking, tools, tracking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    5 Responses to “Cisco New Media Summit”

    1. Jeremiah Owyang Says:
      June 6, 2007 at 12:54 pm | Reply

      Great write-up. While we may have waffled abit on ‘why roi measurement’ it’s obvious that many companies are measuring in one way or another.

    2. lisaamorao Says:
      June 6, 2007 at 3:13 pm | Reply

      Thanks for the comment, Jeremiah. I personally think it is necessary to measure ROI especially in the current stage that social media is in. We’re introducing things like transparency and community participation which are, in a lot of cases, big things to ask for from corporations who have always done communications in a highly controlled environment. And then of course as with anything we do in the corporate world there are risks involved so it only makes sense that the first step would be to figure out a way to justify taking those risks beyond “what if someone else does it first?”

    3. John Earnhardt Says:
      June 6, 2007 at 10:46 pm | Reply

      So, “free” to me means no money exchanges hands…there are many conferences such as this that charge hundreds of dollars to attend or watch via webcast. Those are what I would call “not free.”

      As to what we were trying to achieve with this conference: in a nutshell, a greater awareness to communications professionals about new media. Those who can’t or don’t want to afford conferences with similar foci could have attended for free via webcast and/or can now view the archived video. If you want to give credit to Cisco and BPCC for providing such a “service,” great. If not, no biggie…please feel free, however, to watch the video of the panels and give us no credit whatsoever. Fact is, we’ll never know. : )

      Did I menation that the archived webcast is now available…for free. : ) Please go to http://blogs.cisco.com/news and search “new media summit.”

      Thanks for attending and thanks for using new media to talk about the summit.

    4. Cisco New Media Summit II « Just Another Digerati Wannabe Says:
      June 7, 2007 at 12:29 am | Reply

      [...] New Media Summit II Cisco’s John Earnhardt left me a comment on my original Cisco New Media Summit post about the word [...]

    5. Katie Paine Says:
      June 7, 2007 at 10:34 am | Reply

      Measurement requires time and money, but most of all it requires commitment of resources to collect, track and analyze the data once you get. My point at the conference was that for some organizations, where blogging or social media has already proven its value in terms of customer satisfaction or in terms of product development, I could understand why measurement might not be a high priority.
      Also, I don’t think there IS a value of a positive comment. I think positive is a relative term and needs to be clearly defined depending on the organization’s objectives. It might be posting in which you are quoted, one which recommends the product, one which contains a key message, or one you agree with.. You wouldn’t know unless you knew what goals of the program were.

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