As previously blogged, I was fortunate enough to attend the Social Networking and eBusiness Conference. Uhm, a quick comment on the event. I'd say that I had high expectations from the program, but sadly, the expectations weren't really met. (But, really, when are expectations met 100%?) From all the talks that were given, only a few were able to really share something that would stick to the mind at the end of the event. I talk about this in more detail in the paragraphs below. But still, I was happy I got to attend the event because the few learnings that I got were very valuable, or I'm hoping that they would be.
What was enjoyed from the event:
Friendster's David Jones graced the event and gave the keynote address and another talk. Uhm, I liked the talk because it showed me that Friendster is more than just photos, blogs and everything personal. To see that it could also be used as a platform for an upcoming project got me excited.
Yehey's Donald Lim and Avatrian's Rodion Herrera were my most favorite speakers. Donald Lim's speech was very insightful and I really picked up a lot of ideas from his talk. I loved his proposition that advertising on SNS does not work, because I'm now seeing that there's truth to it and simply because, it was out of the box. On the other hand, I liked Rodion's talk because it was about virtual life and worlds, which I found really interesting. I was highly impressed with the accompanying visual of his talk. He read his talk, but the visual - a peek into the virtual world - kept me engaged. I would have shaken the hands of these guys.
And that's really the most important word I picked up from the two days - engage, engage, engage.
What could have been improved:
Cases, cases, cases... I thought it would have been better to hear about several case studies - local and foreign - relevant to the various topics, but instead most of the time what I got was a plug about the company the speaker works for (or owns) and the services they offer. Uhm, I started to get annoyed when one speaker after the other started using their talk time to talk about what they can do for us. I do understand that a conference is a good venue to promote one's company and its services, but please don't spend forty-five minutes talking about your company alone. Two or maybe even three cases could have been cited in that short time so that the audience would have had more opportunities to pick up something and compare and contrast. Just because the speaker's company experiences something doesn't mean that's what the entire Internet world experiences. I know that's not their intention but that's what happened. But really, I would have expected more effort from the speakers to gather more data, to research.
I wonder now... If it would have been better to have gotten speakers from the academe or maybe someone who's exposed to the whole SNS network but not directly connected to any. Maybe that speaker would've really spent time to go online and do some real research aside from relying on what's already there. Also, when I saw that one of the speakers was this person, I was already unhappy. The first time I listened to that speaker at a recent similar event, I was really disappointed. And now, uhm, I don't mean to be rude, but I still feel disappointed.
And then my own personal pet peeves...
I'm sorry. Not... College professors taught me never to make any apologies when you're the speaker because you lose credibility to the audience. They were correct. It was weird hearing some speakers say, "I'm sorry my presentation was this. I'm sorry my presentation was that." If you're the chosen speaker and something was going wrong, keep on going. Don't apologize. You're supposed to be in command of the class. And very few would probably know you're making a mistake.
Powerless Powerpoint... I've also been taught that Powerpoint presentations are tricky. I don't understand why there were presentations that had really tiny graphs or tables and still the speaker continued to use it. I don't understand why certain text heavy slides were presented.
Incomplete info on the CD... sorry. One more annoying thing is to get a conference CD that does not contain a copy of all the speaker's presentations. It's annoying, that I have to just nod and smile when the secretariat tells me, "Sir, that CD's not incomplete. The other speakers didn't turn in their presentations in time."
It's a good thing though that the organizers upload the presentations to a website so the participants may download them.
Anyway...
As I've said, the biggest lesson learned is advertising in social networking sites does not and will not work. I agree with Donald when he said that there is now a generation of users who can recognize an ad from content, and one who does not like an interrupted experience. I am one of those users who ignore banner ads. I've learned other ways of how to market something without making it appear like an ad, and I hope those would be still be applicable when this new project of mine launches this June.
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