The reaction was mixed. My point was that it seemed odd to charge upwards of $2,500 for a conference full of speakers who would largely give away their secrets for free at a meetup, unconference or even over coffee. Some agreed, some disagreed, and most came down somewhere in the middle.
At the time of writing, I was really unsure about the whole shebang. In the interim I’ve had the chance to talk to a lot of people who commented (and several who didn’t) about the subject in more detail. And while I’d love to say that I came to some sort of definitive conclusion… I didn’t.

But, as is so often the case, the real world didn’t wait for me to make up my mind before throwing a wrench into things.

My current employer is a big believer in conferences. From what I’ve seen, the speakers we send out are pretty good, too. Good mix of theoretical and practical; case studies in context, as it were. So when a speaker had to drop out of an upcoming social media conference, the organizers asked if we could provide a replacement. Since I’m the social media guy at NLC, I was handed the gig. Within days, our president had to pull out of a post-conference workshop he was supposed to facilitate in Ottawa. Again, I got the call.

I sort of knew this was inevitable but now, with two speaking engagements staring me in the face in the next couple of weeks, I find myself doing a bit of soul searching. I’ve still got reservations about the amount of money the conference attendees have to shell out just to hear me and others talk but I’ve also come to the realization that, rightly or wrongly, there’s still a pervasive belief that the value of information is often defined, at least by some, by the amount it costs to access it.

The fact is these conferences are going to happen regardless. People are going to put their money down and attend these events and the best thing I can do, given my position and the reputation that NLC has cultivated in these circles, is to show up and bust my ass to deliver some value for that money. Draw on my experience and hopefully bring a slightly different viewpoint to things.

So, if you’re attending the social computing post-conference workshop at the ALI’s Social Media for Government in Ottawa this week, or if you’re going to be at the Executing Social Media conference put on by Acuity in Toronto next week and plan to hang in until 4:00 on day 2, I’ll be the guy prattling on at the front.

And while I can’t promise I’ll be entertaining, or funny, or insightful, I can promise this: I’m going to do my damndest to make sure you get your money’s worth. And if, by the end, you don’t think I have, let me know. We can meet for coffee and I’ll try to answer any questions I didn’t answer during my talk.

I’ll buy.

photo credit: spanaut

A few quiet curses so as not to wake anyone and I’m out the door to wait for the next bus. Trying desperately to untangle my earbuds so I can listen to some suitably angry music, my seething anger is interrupted by a friendly hello.

It’s one my neighbours. One of the ones I see on a semi-regular basis while I’m out walking the dog, exchange a wave or a friendly hello with, but not one of the ones I’ve ever really had a conversation with. A soldier, judging by the fatiques he wears, though this morning, speaking to him up close, I learn that he’s a military surgeon.

I’d like to pretend that I warmly welcomed this unexpected reprieve from my shitty morning but, in reality, my decision to engage in deeper conversation was based more on the severely tangled earbuds in my hand and my desire not to be a total prick to a man in uniform.

Still, engage in conversation we did. It started with fairly standard fare: how long we’d been in the neighbourhood, what his kids are doing these days, how great it is for me to have a new baby. As we boarded the bus our conversation moved along to places we’ve lived and the transient life of most servicemen and women. Mostly wondering if he’d been stuck in some remote corner of the country (Hey Sue! What’s up, Dan?), I asked if he’d been in any far-flung locales as part of his service.

“Well, I’m just back from my second tour in Afghanistan.”

At this point, I should say that, generally speaking, I’m a broad-strokes pacifist. I’d really rather not live in a world in which armies and soldiers and people shooting at each other were a necessary fact of life. That being said, though, I’m generally of the opinion that – if armies and soldiers and people shooting at each other ARE a necessary fact of life – I’m pretty glad that the Canadian Forces are out there doing it. Call it blissful ignorance, call it patriotic naivete, but I tend to think that Canadian servicemen and women do the job well, with an underlying sense of respect for human life and human rights.

So when my neighbour casually mentioned that he’d been in the single deadliest war zone for Canadians since the Korean War, I thought it only fair to mention the deep respect and gratitude I felt to the likes of him. He seemed almost embarrassed, graciously thanked me, then proceeded to speak at length about how lucky he felt to be Canadian and how much pride he had in our country.

Later, when discussing the life of a field surgeon (again, in the single deadliest war zone for Canadians in more than 50 years), he largely downplayed his role, saying the real praise goes to the guys outside the wire who do the first aid and careful extraction needed to get the wounded back to base in the first place.

I know I tend to be verbose so I’m going to ahead and recap that quickly, in case you’re skimming:

A man who has saved lives in a war zone deflected all praise and gratitude, choosing instead to praise his country and the people he serves with.

I work largely in social media. The people I share an industry with go by ego-massaging titles like “rock star,” “guru,” and “expert.” My compatriots speak at length about personal brand. They think so highly of their work and their thousands of followers that they seek every opportunity to broadcast in any new medium that comes up. People in my field have iPhone apps built for the sole purpose of distributing their work. They speak at $2,000 per head conferences. They write books.

All my neighbour does is stitch up wounded soldiers while suicide bombs explode outside the gates of the base.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the leading minds in the social media sphere. A man’s gotta eat. They’re using the skills they have to earn a living and isn’t that really what we’re all trying to do?

But my god, if my neighbour – a genuine fucking hero in my eyes – can deflect the praise that’s sprinkled on him by a surly, coffee-deprived white collar consultant during a dreary morning commute, I think we can all try to find just a little more time for humility in our day.

Don’t you?

photo credit: slimmer_jimmer

Photo credit at bottom of post

The arrival of a new year and a new decade has prompted many “where was I ten years ago?” posts from people far smarter and more talented than this humble scribe. For me, though, this retrospective meandering was nothing new. I find myself gazing back to the turn of the millennium every time I hear about another newspaper axing staff or closing up shop altogether.

Back in 2000 I was a cocky kid slogging my way through journalism school. I had all the arrogance that comes with someone meeting with success at one of the best j-skools in the country (or so it sells itself – that’s a debate for another post, however). Yet despite being pretty good at journalism – at the student level at least – I was also coming quickly to the realization that I wasn’t meant to be a journalist.

It was hard to articulate at the time but I just felt like mainstream journalism wasn’t going to suit me. Even then, before the emergence of easy-to-use self-publishing tools and ‘citizen journalism,’ I sensed a disconnect between the noble craft we were studying and the reality on the ground. Sure, there was (and continues to be) phenomenal journalism being done out there. But more often than not, the finished product is anything but. News is produced to meet artificial deadlines; it’s published to feed a seemingly insatiable desire for news first instead of news best.

So as I grew closer and closer to graduation, while many of my classmates were fighting it out for internships and summer reporting jobs, I grew my hair out, dyed it blue and continued gigging with my band. I took a job as a morning media analyst largely because:

a) it paid the bills that being a musician didn’t

b) they offered me the job

But a funny thing happened

Working as a media analyst rekindled my love of journalism but in a way that I never really expected. I rediscovered my passion for the craft largely because, rather than simply ignoring it, I was being forced to see how far it had fallen every day.

Morning after morning I’d drag myself out of bed well before the crack of dawn and I’d pour through pages and pages of hastily-assembled pieces of reportage. I found myself increasingly angry. Not at the reporters, many of whom I knew and most of whom I had incredible respect for, but at the industry that had grown up around them.

It was like watching Monet paint houses.

Artists. Professionals. Genuinely talented story tellers reduced to filing incomplete articles based on sanitized quotes from scripted and prepped spokespeople. The sources of the stories knew full well that the reporters had deadlines to meet. They needed a quote – any quote – to fill their column inches. There wasn’t time to dig deep.

It became a mutually destructive symbiotic relationship. Reporters didn’t have the time to ask real questions and spokespeople lost the ability (perhaps willingly) to speak off the cuff and give genuine answers. They each got what they needed from one another and the audience was poorer for it.

I allowed myself one last journalistic indulgence, spending a year at the helm of my beloved campus rag, then I bid adieu forever to journalism and embarked on a career on the dark side.

You can take the boy out of storytelling…

Oddly, this is where my current passions and my older one collided. While working largely as a communications generalist I quickly gravitated towards web strategy and, eventually, social media strategy. Here, finally, was an arena where the pressures that destroyed journalism didn’t apply. There were no deadlines, no bottom lines to feed with hastily-crafted stories.

Citizen journalism. Average folks doing what they’re doing because they’re passionate, not because they’re paid.

But just as these new storytellers were free from the constraints of corporate journalism, so too were they free (for lack of better word) from the standards and expectations of a professional press. Rather than improve upon the ragged journalism that fills the daily papers, blogs and amateur media often ended up sloppier. Without the training, resources and editing process that (theoretically) serve as the backbone of quality reportage, these publications did little or nothing to advance the craft.

The new era of journalism (?)

Many advocates for new media technologies trumpet social media as the foundation of a new era of journalism. There’s a tendency in these circles to view the demise of traditional news gathering organizations with a sense of pride that verges on hubris. Journalism itself has been democratized; we no longer rely on arbitrary gatekeeping by so-called professionals.

But time after time – breaking story after breaking story – the free-for-all that is citizen journalism leaves me wanting. Rather than be free from artificial deadlines, “reporters” see the easy access to publication as a deadline in and of itself. News ‘breaks’ on Twitter and there’s a rush to see who actually broke it. Nuance, context and (far too often) basic fact checking go out the window in the name of immediacy.

Sadly, in an effort to stop the bleeding, most modern professional news organizations have opted to fight their battles on their opponents’ turf. Rather than rely on the very skills and traditions that should define the craft, they’re pressured to go toe-to-toe in the race to break news.

So long as the goal is speed, professional news organizations will be fighting a losing battle. It’s a numbers battle. There are more amateurs out there than professionals. That’s why they’re losing. They’re fighting the wrong fight.

I left journalism because I didn’t like what I saw when I started stepping outside the theoretical and into the actual world of modern, for-profit reporting. I’ve been critical whenever anyone has given me a platform. But my criticisms and frustrations are based on a passion for what journalism could be.

I feel like journalism was dying long before blogs and tweets were the reporting medium of choice. Back then the enemies of journalism were deadlines and news cycles defined by business interests and conventions that had little to do with the art of story telling. Rather than free the craft from the constraints, social media have exacerbated the problem.

This is why I don’t celebrate the death of the industry I turned my back on 10 years ago. I don’t feel like I picked the winner. Truth be told, I think we’re all losing.

photo credit: seng1011

If you haven’t heard of it before, Case Study Jam takes a slightly different approach than some of the other, better-known events. The Jam is a place for low-level folks to come together and share their war stories(though high-level folks are welcome to come too!). We don’t feature one speaker, we feature a few, and their (very short) presentations only serve as the catalyst for the greater discussions (the titular ‘jams’) that follow.

It’s informal and, if all goes according to plan, everyone gets a chance to say their piece, share their ideas and shoot the shit about how to get social media projects off the ground.

We don’t have the benefit of a recognized brand. We’re not using super big names to try to attract your attention. We’re just hoping the idea of jamming with a community of do-ers is incentive enough.

If you haven’t already, check us out. And if you think you like what you see, why not register and join the fun?
photo credit: Darwin Bell

People who neglect their blogs for weeks at a time for no good reason because they just had their first child then, in a lame generous attempt to make it up to their readers, offer a link to something they wrote somewhere else.

Erm. Yea. Anyway, here’s a post I wrote for the NLC Blog about social media strategy and ethics.

photo credit: LindaH