summ( )n

The key message of my presentation was that the ‘social media’ change us, and we need to understand these changes, these transformation to employ all these new tools properly. But our own transformation in turn becomes a tool; or rather it should be understood as a dialectic mixture of both a result of the changes and a prerequisite of those.

In any case, and verbal equilibristics aside, I also suggested for IDN to run a ‘serious game’, an interactive workshop where the participants of the conference could probe different aspects of online communities. The format of the gathering only allowed for a short demo version of such a game, but it was nevertheless worth trying. Fortunately, they agreed, the game was developed and we played it during the opening day of the conference.

In the game (nicknamed ‘Purge’) the community (‘a renown on-line forum of the future thinkers’) had to clean itself from the infiltrated ‘business promoters’, using a combination of open and close votings. The key task of the latter was to pretend as long as possible that they are NOT the corrupters, but the real and devoted members. Although visible powerless, the promoters won! They managed to surviver a number of rounds, malevolently watching the true members being banned, by both the moderators and the general members alike. What a lesson! Almost all the participants knew each other before the game, so the group dynamics remained friendly (which is often not the case), but the emotions were quite hot nevertheless.

Of course, the true value of such exercises appears after at least a few games played, when people have a chance to try different roles and – most importantly – reflect on how and why they played those roles. But well, it was a good start anyway, I believe quite insightful for many players.

This is cover slide of my presentation (in case of interest, the full pdf can be found on SlideShare – So called ‘Social Media’ – What do we do with it? What does it do with us? ) I made in Tallinn last week, at the spring gathering of the InterDirect Network. I was invited by the group to talk about the possible futures of the ‘Social Media’, and what it may mean for the DM (=’direct marketing’) industry (although as I learned, the industry is currently repositioning itself into a ‘dialogue management’ one).

But before talking ‘the futures’ I made a tour into the relatively distant past, bringing transformational approach of McLuhan into the conversation: the tools change us, and different us create another culture.

It was not, therefore, a usual story about millions of users, billions of clicks and quadrillions of connections (at least it was not only about that – you can’t entirely escape the quadrillions). Instead, I tried to talk about the impact these new media have already made on us, and what are possible societal and cultural shifts that are brewing as a result. The picture below is a short summary of the four major qualities I presented (they also group into two large themes, Omnipotent Me and Stigmergic System. I was worrying that this might be too high-brow and abstract for these very pragmatic folks, but no, the talk was apparently very well received (albeit called ‘overwhelming’).