Social Media in Practice Event #socmedprak

A conference about social media, organized using social media and presented by experienced social media enthusiast, can that be done? Yes, it can. I was part of such a conference a couple of weeks ago. It was called 'The Social Media in Practice Event' (Dutch: Social media in de praktijk).

Ronald van den Hoff of Society 3.0 kicked off the event. He gave an interesting talk about the influence of the internet and social media on society, and its implications for businesses. I liked how he stressed businesses should be built around passion and learning from mistakes. They should be ever more open to what's happening around them or else they will be eclipsed. Interestingly he also said large companies will get smaller and smaller and independent contractors/free agents will be the 'companies' of the future.

I also went to Roos van Vugt's breakout about leading into social media. She works for Deloitte and explained how see introduced and is cultivating social media inside the company. She stressed to make sure higher management is on board and agrees with internal social media deployment.

I also was asked to give two breakouts about social media and knowledge management. My slides (in Dutch...) can be found here:
Kennismanagement en social media, een perfecte matchijk 27 10-11
During both breakouts the discussion was lively. Discussion topics were about the difference between business processes and networks, the security of hosted social media like Yammer, how people can be encouraged to share their knowledge and should companies introduce a central, all-encompassing social media platform or separate tools?

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