The Importance of the Physical World

For me use of social media is always more effective when tied in to other efforts. To lengthen and enhance rather than replace.

While I was at knetwit.com (social networking site where students share class notes) 3 of us camped out at the UT Chattanooga library during finals with laptops. When students took a break we asked them what they were studying and used Knetwit to search for related study materials on the site.

Instead of the students finding the site, we took the site to them. During that week we doubled our user base on campus and, I think, helped with some grades.

Phil

To me, many conferences badly need to integrate social media to create a more connected and relevant real-world experience. Conference attendees and vendors should get a head start on meeting each other and participating in presentation content development. (Some conferences are using these tools today, I'm sure. But not the ones I attend). More thoughts here:
Fixing trade shows

In Halifax we've created a Halifax Tweetup wiki (http://sites.google.com/site/halifaxtweetup/) just to maintain that physical connection. Bringing the social back into social media? Maybe. Most of the events are purely for social interaction rather than marketing/communications but it's great to see how a tool like Twitter has engaged locals on a more intimate level.

At Forrester we are currently working on bringing the Social Media offline by hosting Tweetups before each of our big conferences. Our upcoming Tweetup will be in Orlando on April 22nd (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1844854/). We also hosted a very successful Tweetup in February with over 70 attendees and a great conversation. One lucky winner (@JoselinMane) received a copy of The Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. We developing a strategy around this in hopes that we can bring the conversation offline, in many different communities. We will be hosting more Tweetups in Boston and other areas. Hope to see you there!
To learn more about our upcoming Tweetups, latest research reports, and events you can follow us on Twitter, @forrester

The social media landscape is great for the upcoming events, but I have to say that I agree with Mat Tillotson.

It’s sometimes overwhelming the number of conferences, unconferences, meet ups, etc. that are available; however, when I attend the ones that have the physical-meets-social-media quality, the value skyrockets for me. Whether for business or social, I'm often much more interested in attending certain events because I’ve discussed them online first, am aware of the people and vendors attending, and can expect to participate in real-time.

Great to meet you in the physical world Chris – thanks for joining the Molson crew at PodcampTO! Cheers, @toniahammer.

I believe that the best way to build a community online is to figure out a way to taking it's members offline. Take Yelp for example. Yelp grants an Elite Yelper badge to its most active users. Elite Yelpers are then invited to parties, tastings, open bar events and other functions at their favorite venues. Yelp assigned community managers in each city to grow the community of "Elites". Community managers plan the events, write weekly newsletters and seek partnership with venues to give its best members exactly what they want.

That's one of the best examples of how a social network has successfully executed the offline-online experience.

Meetups are great ways to continue the relationship. Developing relationships are key, that is what social media is really about. Tradeshows are great since gives it the person the chance to feel and touch the product. Also missed is the feeling the firm handshake of a confident sales person selling a service. Social media will need to add that human element back into the equation. Keep in mind it is about selling something at some point you should meet the customer or vendor unless it is some small one time buy.

Otherwise, twitter, facebook and others will go the way of bbs's and compuserve as just another geeky thing. That's right BBS old school social media.

In terms of conferences, I have been very pleased with the Voices That Matter partnership with Crowdvine. Tony and his team enable attendees to comment on sessions and well as interact with our speakers and each other. Nowadays, I don't think either the "real world" or the online world can exist in a vacuum. Each experience adds the sort of value we have all come to expect.

I love the Tweetup idea, but it's not very immediate (like Twitter is). Maybe the way to go is to incorporate more pics and video to add a touch of the physical world. Why not incorporate sound into Twitter as well? It would be really cool to hear what you guys are saying - and probably pretty great for sight-impared folks.

Great post Chris. Online efforts must circle around to tie in with the world that physically surrounds us. In that vein, I'm hosting a Salon/Core Conversation at SXSW Interactive this year on the topic of organizing physical groups. One of the key aspects we'll cover is the use of social media tools and services to promote and communicate within the group.

We'll have a great bunch of people who have successfully organized "real world" groups and events, harnessing the power of a range of social media tools.

For anyone who may be interested, the panel is SXSW Year Round: Organize Groups, Maintain Your Buzz - Monday, 6:30 - 7:30 at the Hilton, Room D.

Molson showed you the Legacy of the beer when they presented the ingredients. To witness the origin of your beer enhanced the drinking experience. Social sites succeed by taking real life legacy events and then provide some level of enhancement. The closer we can build the online experience to its life-event, the more real it will feel to our users.
Chris, I am glad that you had a good party experience. What is more social than a party?

I've loved the opportunity to actually meet the folks I've followed/friended online and agree with Tonia Hammer. Those communities that can have both online and offline relationships provide the most value.

Plus, beer is much better shared together than at your desk. ;)

Maybe if my "theory" comes true, the physical and digital will merge anyways:

http://is.gd/gYDE

Great Post. Absolutely agree. Perhaps the obstacle to doing what you're proposing is that higher numbers can be attained more easily online. Obviously it's not as deep of an experience. But sometimes quantity does trump quality when we are looking at something on paper.

I'm not sure I'm reading the physical meets social media correctly. Over the weekend, I attended the LA Bike Summit where I met several bloggers I follow. I didn't expect that, so it was indeed a pleasant surprise.

Another aspect of my blog is bring the physical world of LA into the online world via pictures and text. In essence, sharing my extensive backyard of LA via my blog. I do consider this part of physical meets social media. Comments on my blog reflect this sharing.

In addition, a series of guest blogs featuring other people's backyards, both large, like a city, or small, like a traditional backyard, will all be included. I'm really looking forward to it.

On one hand, injecting the physical into the social (or vice versa) sphere is exciting and refreshing. But I'd argue that there's some value to having the worlds separate; not necessarily my opinion, but I've heard a lot of folks state that because a totally-online existence allows them to be "whoever they want to be," that they have little desire to add back in any sort of physical connection or relationship. The Molson experience certainly evoked that side of our human desire to connect, but both ends of the connection were already "offline."

The great part to all of this and, Chris, your upcoming efforts, is that we get to see what happens and what does/does not change. And that's always interesting. Great stuff!

"the physical meets social media "...I think this is an example...
I am very strongly immersed in the Art market, and since the death of disposable income, what I have been doing to keep up the momentum is the following. I am a private art dealer/consultant with an Advisory Company, Forbes Art Consult, to collectors, interior designers and sometimes corporations. I have always wanted to have an ART SALON, (channeling Gertrude Stein), and I have made my inventory an Artists' Showcase, started a blog, and used MeetUp.com as a conduit, to attract people to come to my home. Viola! my Sunday "SALON" described at http://www.meetup.com/ART-SALON. I have over 100 people signed up and approximately 15-20 show up at each event, and I invite Special Guests from the art world to join our discussions. It gets lively and passionate, and much information is exchanged. I have used the blog http://lepetitsalon.blogspot.com to write, post photos and videos (that I have learned how to make and edit) and also posted them on our YouTube channel "Le Petit Salon" as well. I have also relaunched the NYC Art Gallery Walks in Chelsea for the SPRING ART SEASON that I facilitate to keep myself informed of the art market in the field have some company, feedback, share my expertise and have a lot of fun! I have a blog for this endeavor as well at http://nycartgallerywalkschelsea.blogspot.com. During this dry period in my field of work, it seems to be the right thing to do. BTW, reading your blog and newsletter has inspired me to do all of this from scratch...I'm very grateful to you for sharing your expertise to facilitate my growth in social media, as I would not have attempted to connect any of this otherwise. It is working well for me and I am totally enjoying myself, even though I'm not making money right now, I expect it will pay off later on by making new physical relationships and perhaps new and beginning collectors while keeping connected virtually. Thank you again for sharing, I appreciate it so very much. I "read you" every morning, follow every link, use all of the information I can in every way, what more can I say, except that I am grateful I found your link somehow at the right time...
Sincerely,
Helene Forbes

I think the internet has brought us full circle in this regard Chris. It's so big, we must bring it back 'round to local - interacting in the physical world with those in my community - in order to have an impact.

To this end, I've recently begun Denver Likemind (of the Likemind.us family) - the intention behind it is that it provide a place/time/way for creative folks to come together and interact, share ideas, brainstorm...simply connect.

This idea is driving much of my thought process going forward, and I think the opportunities in bringing these web-interactions into the real physical world are many.

Thanks for a great topic.

Chris,

Yes, we all need to get out from behind our computers and live! How much more interested people are when they can converse face to face. With voice-mail, email, twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed serving as our daily communications paths, we need human contact, and to take a break and just have some fun!

In all of my efforts to make a living on-line, I still go walk the dog and visit with my neighbors. This is critical to staying connected for all of our lives.

Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase
www.twitter.com/nachase

Chris,
I agree with this, and have been working with my clients (most of whom are doing outreach towards the female demographic) to embrace creating offline experiences that resonate online. I've seen some great examples this past week, such as Sleepover 2.0, where several women gathered in a hotel room and actually hosted video streamed panels all night long.
In my own online life, I'm part of a community of bloggers who all live in the same geographic area- there's nothing like running into a fellow blogger at the grocery store to blur those lines a little bit.

I go to a blogger meet-up here in Vancouver and it's really cool to put a face to some of the blogs I read.
I think social media is just the beginning ... and not the end of contact.

Interesting comments on incorporating social media with conferences or tradeshows. I'm a business consultant for the meeting and convention industry. I think many groups have tried tying the two together but haven't realized enough attendee adoption on the virtual side.

I think the main challenge is that the discussions rarely have leadership, moderation or a consistent stream of interesting content. If you put a solution out there and just say sign up, there will likely be no value created. There needs to be a number of leaders that get the conversation going and keep stoking it on a regular basis. Ideally that conversation and leadership would come from the speakers or panelists of the conference.

There are also a number of matchmaking solutions used in the tradeshow industry. These are intended to match buyer profile with exhibitor products and services; recommend specific education sessions (kind of like Amazon does for books) and match up attendees with similar interests.

Another common tool for large shows is a personal expo planner. This is where you would select the exhibits you want to see in advance and a customized floor plan would be generated showing all of your stops.

Are these the kind of tools that you would help improve your conference or tradeshow experience?

IRL is doing a first step in that direction - creating a visual social network based on location based services.
www.irlconnect.com - bringing facebook & twitter to google maps as of yesterday.

I don't have a personal example, but i've seen some cool things happening!

Churches are using Twitter!
@Dana Lookadoo shared this link with me earlier today - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29588220/ - it's about a new age church promoting Twitter while preaching. the church was encouraging people to tweet the sermon (or what ever they wanted to tweet related to listening to the sermon). pretty cool. though i wonder if anyone talked to each other in person :)


http://twitter.com/franswaa

Then I guess that even if my blog is not commercial, it is a physical-meets-social-media. The net has always been for me a tool to meet people. 10 years ago I typed my birthdate in a search engine and met one of my birthdate twin. :)