Like Minds 2011

Like Minds 2011

A couple of weeks ago I spent a very enjoyable day at the LikeMinds Conference in Exeter. What is LikeMinds? Well I’m not completely clear to be honest. I attended because it was local, because some of my inspirational network locally were going and because Molly Flatt was speaking. Molly Flat – who is she? Well I came across Molly when I discovered that I had missed the event last year and while trawling the post conference stuff I came across either her talk or maybe a blog post ( I don’t remember so well that far back). But through that I discovered her blog and her wonderful writing. Molly also writes for the Guardian.

Molly is a Word of Mouth Marketer (WOM) and works part time with 1000heads. Deep down though she is a journalist and aspiring author. She talked at the opening plenary session and I expected her to champion the ‘conversations’ that happen though the raft of social media platforms, and specifically Twiter, but she talked instead about the innovation of the ‘book’ and why sometimes you just have to let the dust settle before you write your thoughts and ideas down. She introduced us to a magazine called ‘Delayed Gratification‘ and celebrated the idea of ‘slow journalism’. Thank you Molly for that reflective but insightful session. Slowness is something to be cherished is our increasingly fast paced world. This blog post is an example of that – it was drafted on the train on the way home but took weeks to make it onto the big wide web thingy.

To continue on this slow theme I am currently reading ‘The Discovery of Slowness’ by Sten Nadolny.

“The Discovery of Slowness is a novel by Sten Nadolny, written under a double conceit: first, as a novelization of the life of British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, and second as a hymn of praise to “slowness,” a quality which Nadolny’s fictional Franklin possesses in abundance.” Wikipedia

This ‘slowness’ thing is catching on in lots of disciplines (slow food, slow journalism, slow design and even slow cities) primarily as a response to the way in which most things in life are speeding up. I’m interested in slow learning but I don’t yet know what that is – apart from being diametrically opposed to fast learning which is what most of my clients seem to want these days.

What else occurred at Like Minds? Glenn Le Santo shared some anecdotes and stories on the death of the journalist’s business model. Seems like lots of business models are under threat these days. Just ask the Greeks or the Italians. We ended the plenary session with a debate around the proposition ‘Are all Companies now Media Companies?’ The general consensus is that companies are having to be much more hands on when it comes to managing the information that they create and the conversations that they have with their customers. Glenn wasn’t impressed with the idea that you can sell something and talk about it all at the same time but that’s the way the smart companies are going. If you create and develop the conversation you can shape the behaviour of your customers in ways that simply aren’t possible using traditional media levers.

Following a nice lunch hosted by James Whatley of 1000Heads I attended an ‘immersive’ on Online Video delivered by the dynamic duo of Stephen and Roger from Watershed PR. Now being an e-learning guy I have been increasingly interested in using video as an integral part of an online learning experience but making a video is much harder than it looks. Just check out the number of people (and budget) it takes to make a Hollywood movie and you get the picture (sic). The dynamic duo took us on a high speed tour of some of the things you need to think about when you want to make a video to promote your business. Visual storytelling featured strongly but also simple tips on scene setting and drawing viewers into the action. I can’t watch my local TV news reports now without visualising the storyboard. How sad is that?

I expected some innovation in the format of the conference but in practice it followed the same old conference formula with a plenary followed by some break out sessions (called ‘Immersives’) with a final plenary at the end. We did get to lunch at various locations around the lovely city of Exeter with the speakers which was a nice touch. A more inspirational format might be more appropriate for an event which is supposed to tap into the zeitgeist. Many years ago when I was in the Technical Writing business I attended a series of innovative but brilliant conferences in Europe. Called the FORUM Conferences they relied on a lot of interaction between presenters and delegates. They used ‘idea markets’, ‘immersives’ and championed the ‘rule of two feet’. It sounds quite chaotic I know but the quality of the conversations was amazing and the whole thing worked in a wonderfully human and organic way.

Idea Markets will again be a cornerstone of the conference. Developed 30 years ago by Ulf Anderssen and Lars Forslund in Sweden, INTECOM’s Ideas Markets have become recognized as the ideal way to present and exchange information. Rather than have delegates sitting in docile rows listening to a speaker deliver information in a one-way setting, in an Idea Market everyone participates in an interactive exchange of ideas. It’s exhilarating and refreshing!

Finally LikeMinds is a social media savvy organisation so it wasn’t unexpected that Tweeting would be a feature of the event. Thankfully though the ‘backchannel’ didn’t feature too heavily and we were spared a Twitter wall.

I never did get to download RokkMedia’s custom Like/Dislike app and I don’t know how well it was used during the event – with no reliable WiFi connectivity wasn’t brilliant but sometimes a little disconnectedness makes life more pleasureable.

Is this the last slow word on the Like Minds 2011 conference? Maybe, maybe not.

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