Real cakes and social media reporters

Two things really engage me about this conference, which massively build its community impact
1. A community approach to catering. There’s a gift economy around cakes and biscuits. Delegates were asked to bake and bring. Some gluten free, super brownies, great to celebrate attendees ability to be creative and have a home hinterland. I felt so caked-out I had to run for 30 minutes to feel normal appetite.
2. Big emphasis on real-time social reporting. I’m also here as a social blogger along with a posse of twitterers, podcasters, video shooters, picture snappers, social bookmarkers. Despite a slow wifi at the Abbey Centre, there’s a useful and genuinely valuable stream of content and reflection emanating out from this event into the cloud. It amplifies the response and gets the process of reflection intensified. Read the collected twitterstream. And then compare it to the BBC's report on the event. I think I know which is more useful if you want to put the conference themes into action

Now this homemade cakes and is social reporting lark is fun, and I hope it’s gonna be a trend in 2010. Watch out for the pioneer who’s making this social reporting a profession - the delightful David Wilcox, part of today’s posse, who turns out film, boos, podcasts, blogs and microblogs all day long.


But the worry about the social reporting is that it might be used to head off the increasingly common scenario of microbloggers operating as an unlicensed fourth estate during events – and often undermining a meeting’s purpose. I’ve heard of many keynote speeches where the real time twitter backchannel is an anarchic and sometimes disfunctional real time ratings system that verges on mob rule. (Example here) Organisers who are worried by this (or who are simply paranoid) should co-opt their audience as social reporters in the way that My Public Services conference showed how. But reporters have to be free to vent contrary and vexatious opinions too. The #MPS09 stream was uniformly positive, engaged and supportive – because the conference was all of these things. But I can’t help worrying that it won’t be long until we see the manipulation of this new form of media coverage by organisers who see its potential to brainwash their audiences.