Reflections and Critiques on JMs Conference

Now that my 7-part series on JM's conference on Social Media and Stakeholders is over, it seems appropriate for some reflection - and some critique. Apologies for the length of this blog!

Walking away from the conference, I was overwhelmed, excited and humbled. Overwhelmed because it was - at least for me - too much information. I'm not yet sure how it all fits together, or what I want my role in it to be.Excited: because it was all so good and so interesting. There are so many people doing so much good work out there without any real guidebooks to show them the 'how to'.

Listening to some of the leaders in the field, they shared some common agreement - the world is going towards greater sustainability. Social media is one of the 'how to' tools to take us there - and to re-define (or for some, re-affirm) what sustainability does. To get to this goal of a sustainable society, we can not work alone. We have to give up trying to control the outcome. This is big work, and we need to be working with partners - including variations of the public - in ways that most organisations are not used to do doing. In addition to the 'public' (the 'social'), we need to work with 'ourselves' - our employees, our colleagues, our leaders, our professional associations, our partners and our competitors in ways we haven't done before.

This resonates with my observations, but hearing it from several diverse leaders in the field deepened my appreciation of how significant, long term and game-changing this 'new' media and the dynamic path of sustainability really is. I also appreciated how often the side conversations - and many of the speakers - touched upon the 'dangers' of social media - its not always easy, its not always 'good', it can be overwhelming and frustrating and cause greater conflict in addition to collaboration. Not everyone in the room was super-comfortable with social media - which was good to recognize. As for humility: wow, do I have a lot to learn!

So: good job. Fabulous people - the 'networking sessions' were easy, honest, (not sleazy) and rich in people and ideas. That said. There's a lot to be learned about doing such events in the future. Here are my top 5 constructive critiques.

1. 'Top down' panel discussions at a social networking conference? Everyone facing the 'front', respecting the 'experts'? 'Networking sessions' separated from 'conference sessions' by a black curtain? Excuse me? How so-last-century! JM's hardly the only organization to fall into this deceptively 'easy' conference-style trap, but I hope this is its last time of doing so.

Solutions? Let's try small tables, 3 -4 people at each table, and encourage people to mix up the tables every session. Have 2 minute partner-shares after each speaker- what did your fellow table members get out of what was just said? Where do they agree or disagree? Reflect back those questions to those facilitating the dialogue.

2. The 'case study' on M&S was fascinating, I learned a lot, I will enjoy my Rainbow Salads from M&S even more in the future, but, well, what was the connection with social media? You know, the whole point of the conference. Unclear.

3. Needed at least one session that was 'open' - try using something like Open Space Technology, where anyone can self-organise a mini-discussion on whatever questions they think are important.

4. Lots of great ideas - but not easy to see how they interconnected between the sessions. And much of the time, they did. Recognise that most people aren't going to find time to sit down, go through everything again, and pull out the patterns - especially patterns that aren't obviously relevant to them. Solution: have some people who are working throughout the conference to do this - having done it myself, I know it's a high-attention, fully-engaged job, but it makes the entire experience less overwhelming and more actionable. Which is why we are here.

5. Conferences often struggle with how to engage their busy participants before and after the day of the conference, so its not just 'totally-cool-with-lots-of-cool-new-contacts/networks.' JM worked on promoting pre-conference networking - I don't know how 'successful' that was in this case(what is criteria of success in that situation?). Maybe shaping the discussions around questions - not just networking - could make a difference, and setting up the possibility for people to join ongoing 'working/sharing/learning groups' around questions that interested them.

There's a few of my critiques. Do share your own. Lets find ways to create conferences that are based on the ethos of social media - less 'top down' talking and more what I'd call community-building (instead of 'just' networking) around common concerns for our shared goals. That is, after all, what makes all of us stakeholders of sustainability.