On Tuesday, February, 9th, 2010, I attended a presentation by Meike Leopold (see picture) at a 7-IT event. She is a Cirquent PR manager and journalist and talked about:
“Blog, Twitter & Co. – Is it Worth the Effort?”
It was an excellent presentation about an interesting theme. I was quite impressed to hear what pains even big enterprises like the Cirquent GmbH take in order to present both themselves and their employees authentically to their external and internal stakeholders. Cirquent does it through Second World (there, too, with increasing contacts), but also with their Corporate Blog. All employees can play an active role in the blog.
Thus, I would like to express my huge appreciation to our competitor. I am sure nobody will hold this log against me. After all, I also spent a few years of my life at Cirquent. That was almost 30 years ago and at the time, the enterprise was still called Softlab GmbH.
The speaker and her presentation were excellent – which is more than can be said about some of the audience. During the discussion, the chasm between Old World and New World was quite apparent. The fear to loose through openness and the wish to control the situation were expressed again and again. Quite often, the amazement and lack of understanding for the modern devil’s works of twitterers and bloggers literally hung in the air.
I also found it a pity that there were a few IT dinosaurs who apparently did not even start to understand what the theme was all about but yet asked many trivial questions, thereby having a detrimental effect on the progress of the presentation.
Well, I guess there you have it again, the Old World. You go and listen to a presentation and you want to be handed the knowledge on a golden tray. In the New World, however, you know that wikepedia has already been invented.
onsequently, you collected the necessary basic information, especially for themes like blogs and twitter, within seconds, before listening to the presentation. And then you were in a position to actually play an active role during the discussion.
Thus, there was not enough time left for the theme itself: if it is worth the effort. I found that a pity. Maybe the presentation should be repeated in a different environment?
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The presentation and discussion motivated me to get active in the future: from now on, I will write a daily tweet in Twitter (RolandDuerre) on #Twitter and #Blog! Let me say it with the words of Erwin Pelzig: Watch Out!