The Natural Order of Things

We are now only 1 day and 12 hours away from the beginning of the European Communication Summit and are both very excited and extremely tired. You cannot attend? Follow the sessions held in the main room on our live stream or follow us on Twitter.

(why all is different and how all remains the same)

While I  talk openly of my lack of nerdy credentials, I believe I have one decisive advantage over some fellow online communicators (and in general over anyone defining him- or herself as an online marketeer): I was a heavy social media user long before ever considering doing it professionally, before doing it professionally was even something one could reasonably consider.

As such, I am a firm believer in the big picture. Should I be on Twitter or is it only a hype? Can blogs already be considered vintage? Will we totally loose control in what they are saying about us? Possibly, but that is irrelevant (with an extra reality check award for all of those who pose this last question in the full assumption that they ever controlled what was being said about them before).

The advent of social media has certainly brought about a revolution in communication, but it is a revolution that goes far beyond new channels of communication and technological innovations. Social media has changed the way in which we communicate, it has enriched if not totally altered the entire paradigm of communication, online but also offline.

It goes beyond the classic Media is the Message, it is more Media is the Culture: it has redefined the way we see ourselves as communicating subjects and posed important questions regarding authority, value and control of our messages. And it has changed our perception of ourselves and our expectations of others dramatically,which I believe is what is both the most relevant change for companies, both the ones investing in the social media arena and the ones who think they can just wait until it goes away.

As an internet user a communication subject, I expect my messages to be replied and my comments considered, I expect a reaction to my criticisms. I expect open communication channels to exist, a direct line between me and a company, between me and my CEO, between me and my favorite rock star, me and the journalist whose piece I comment on. And in all of these relationships, I feel more than empowered, I feel growingly equal. I have the power, the means, the currency.

A great website, a million Euro spent on professionally managed social media presences, painfully google-optimised texts still won’t do it. It is not about making me give you my money, the word of my mouth or contribute to your reputation, it is about the potential relationship I have with you and how this relationship, even if remaining only hypothetical, affects my perception of your openness, honesty and reliability.

And said relationship, said openness, honesty and reliability are still what is going to get me to give you my money, the word of my mouth or contribute to your reputation. Which is how, in the end, nothing changed.

Reflecting on trends and tendencies has always been as attractive to me as acting on them, with the advantage that while I excel at having opinions and over-analyzing everything from the name change of a subway station to current trends in wine making, I suck at oh-so-many of the things I like to have opinions on, such as soccer, all of the visual arts and budget planing.

While my recent career change ( from a conference organiser, a job that satisfied my reflective and conceptual side side and from which I have learned immensely, to a newly created position as the responsible for social media of a German publishing house) was long due, it is also quite daunting for someone who has been sitting in the background having opinions for almost two years (more on my personal take on online communication to follow).

Cautions aside, there are still three last events coming up: a conference on digital communication at which I will also teach a (beginner’s!) workshop, an event on internal communication which had to be rescheduled due to the Icelandic volcanic ash and, last but not the least, the largest ever European Communication Summit, from which I will also be twittering live on July 1/2.

It could be because all of these three are such special events to me, or it could be the fact that reading the job description written for my successor actually lit up a sparkle (awesome job!, I actually thought for a moment), there already is a hint of Portuguese saudade of my former position, as excited as I am with the new one.

I’ve decided to treasure the feeling, as it reminds me that I have enjoyed my job and what I learned from it. And with this in mind, I prepare to enjoy every second of what I hope will be a great summit this week and, perhaps, get some inspiration from all of the social media case studies featured in the programme.

“I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it, until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.”

Douglas Adams, How to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

For me as for many others, blogging has always been a foremost private issue. I have been blogging about my life, politics, the economy, recipes and the weather for about five years (in Portuguese, under Boas Intençoes), but I had never considered writing about work and the communications industry until very recently, even if social media is a growing part of my professional life.

A big part of it of course was a question of language: Portugal has a very strong blogging scene, with blogs being written by all kinds of people and mostly on personal or political issues but I don’t work in Portugal nor for Portuguese audiences mainly, so it would hardly make sense; Germany has a more self-centered blogosphere, with bloggers writing about blogging and social media with mostly each other as a target audience  and although I work from Germany most of what I do has a European focus. Which, given the lack of improvement of my French,  left only English, both my main working language and the common solution for all of those searching a linguistic common denominator.

So much said, you will have many occasions for noticing it is not my mother tongue and I welcome corrections, anytime.

The second issue keeping me from blogging on professional topics for a long time was the fundamental question: do I have anything to say? I organise several international PR and Communication events per year, but that is hardly enough and I am positive that the considerations that run into conference organisation would only be of interest to very few, if any.

However, before organising events, there is a long work of preparation, that involves getting acquainted with each topic I work on. This work is intensified while preparing the event. There  is, of course, direct access to a large number of case studies and presentations, both before and during the events. And there are the many opportunities to discuss with both speakers and attendees, both before and during the events, sometimes in the aftermath. And being a curious person with plenty of time for reflection, all of these impressions translate into a very personal view of the communications industry which I think could be of interest to at least some readers, along with some conference impressions, interesting contents I run into.

Having already told you that the language might be lousy and the content could be equally uninteresting, I look forward to becoming a part of the dialogue.