jennybee.net

As anyone in the tech world who hasn’t been under a rock for the last few days will know, the SXSW tech love-in is currently taking place.

I’m not there but I’m trying to keep abreast with what’s going on. Fortunately, this is a lot easier to do than ever before. Twitter and Seesmic are updating me with observations from people who’s opinions I respect and my rss reader is busy gathering feeds. There are also a number of tools I can use to ‘manually’ find content - digg, del.icio.us, hashtags etc.

But sifting through the gossip, chatter, informed opinion, official texts, party videos etc etc to identify key themes, opinions and zeitgeist is a daunting task.

Established publishing channels such as Wired seem to be doing a good job of recording key moments and general observations. But I’m not totally certain their reporting is accurate. What if they are completely failing to notice the Twitter buzz around a new application?

What I’m faced with is my perception of trust and authority in the recording of this event. I need to employ a number of methods to build a complete picture of the conference as there isn’t one source to do that for me. I trust that I’ll be presented with well informed, intelligent, crafted commentary from the Wired blog, and I also trust my Twitter and Seesmic friends to reflect zeitgeist and offer their expert opinion.

What I need is a website where I can get a roundup of what the Twitterverse is buzzing about, what’s being discussed on Seesmic, what’s being blogged, rated, bookmarked and so on.

I’d still like to read ‘professional’ editorial and interpretation but this and the user generate content would complement each other in order to present a holistic vision of - in this case - SXSW.

I wonder if this is the approach established news publishers will need to move towards in order to survive changing perceptions of authority and the inevitable mainstream establishment of user generated content?

What do people think? Does anything like this already exist?

Popularity: 100% [?]

Could we be witnessing baby-steps towards more appropriate personal communications methods?

We can spend up to half our working day going through our inbox, leaving us tired, frustrated and unproductive.

A recent study found one-third of office workers suffer from e-mail stress.

E-mail is ruining my life! (bbc.co.uk)

The article refers to Deloitte’s short-lived ‘no-internal-email-Wednesday’ which it reckons has made staff think more carefully about the email they send and whether there is a more appropriate communication method such as picking up the phone or talking face-to-face.

I agree, we should be more considered in our communications but our places of work on the whole haven’t even begun to embrace tools like IM, RSS, collaborative working, online project management, social networks etc etc.

My personal email traffic (both in- and out-bound) has significantly decreased since engaging with some of these tools. I refuse to subscribe to email lists - choosing RSS instead, and I use IM (if I can) to have quick conversations with friends. I use Google Groups to manage extra-curricular projects, Twitter keeps me in touch with friends and acquaintances and I use Facebook to organise my social life.

If only I could (or, more appropriately, was allowed to…) work more like this in my 9-5!

Popularity: 47% [?]

Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new Australian research has found.

Full article

Awww - I concur.

(Thanks to Broadstuff for the link.)

Popularity: 14% [?]

I’ve been thinking about how you might go about taking the free-form nature of barcamp and merging it with ’static’ industry-expert panel discussions.

Very much in response to discussions after Chinwag’s measuring social media event on Monday.

So…

How about a panel event where there is a set subject and fixed set of panellists - but the areas of discussion are worked out on a wiki by the attendees in the run up to the event?

The agenda would have to be managed to the extent that there could only be, say, 4 or 5 areas of discussion in order to stick to the time frame. You could open up the wiki for general suggestions and comments and then a week or so before the event someone arranges the suggestions into logical groupings in order to form the agenda. (For the panellists’ sake you’d probably want to fix the agenda about a week before the event.)

What do people think?

Popularity: 31% [?]

I collated some brief thoughts about last night’s Chinwag Live: Measuring Social Media and was going to publish them this evening.

Thought I’d check the blogosphere first to make references n’ dat and found that most of what I was going to say had already been articulated far more effectively by considerably more intelligent people than me.

So (in true social-media-analytics styleee) here’s the Google blog search results. The rest is up to you!

My tuppence worth: reckon a social media metrics hack day might be in order.

Popularity: 49% [?]