My thoughts post-SOCADL

OK.

“That it should come to this!”, as Billy Shakespeare once said [Hamlet, Act 1, Scene II].

A lot of people met at The Tivoli on Wednesday 2nd Dec, a few of whom were there to see if my idea of an ‘umbrella’ organisation for the various social mediarists in Adelaide had any merit.

Much discussion was had, as was much libation, and no real over-arching consensus seemed to emerge. However, there were a couple of strong themes present:

1. Any ‘formal’ club or association was not wanted (because of reasons of power struggles, financing, getting people to volunteer to fulfil roles, etc.)
2. The twitter hashtag #CommsAdelaide was going to be replaced by #socadl.

It is on this second point that I want to weigh in with my views. Here we go…

Witness this conversation stream on the new SOCADL ning site:

#CommsAdelaide started quite recently, with @PPRAdelaide and @AGFinglis .. however it may shortly be consumed by the new #socadl group
@Prakky

To which I replied,

Michelle, how I personally see socadl evolving is as an umbrella meeting place for all of the distinct focii in Adelaide. Thus, there is no reason why #CommsAdelaide should cease to exist; indeed, it should continue to cater to/for the professional communicators here.

Michelle wrote back,

Okay: look forward to your blog Lee. Be interested to read your perspective, because for me I am interested in social media case studies, topics, new developments … and don’t want to focus too much on people’s backgrounds or what industry they happen to be working in at this point in time. Thus not really sure I want to be part of #commsadelaide, AND #socadl AND other evolving groups I’ve been invited to on Google Wave, LinkedIn, etc.
The fewer groups the better. ;(

To which the idea of the fewer the groups the better generates an ‘ABSOLUTELY!’ from me.

Many of us have been floundering around in Google Wave [as Stephen helpfully suggests, “Connect to the SocADL Google wave by inserting socadl@googlewave.com into your browser address bar”] and finding it ‘less than perfect’ (accepting that it is in a very early beta stage; read Michelle here and here). So having yet another place to check is a right royal pain in the proverbial. Ideas on how to bring all of the notifications into the one place are welcome – leave comments below.

So, to paraphrase myself from earlier in this post and on the night:

1. I didn’t set out to ‘own’ social media in Adelaide, nor run it, nor attempt to control it;

2. I wish the wonderful @Monnie was there on Wednesday night to offer a non-business perspective, but she was unable to attend;

3. I was super-glad that the equally wonderful @Tarale was able to come (and brought @Posty along for a meal later) to offer said non-business perspective;

4. I was absolutely not trying to usurp #CommsAdelaide with #socadl;

5. I see #socadl as a way of collating the leaders of the various groups into one central resource sharing point, allowing folks like MC Hammer to see that the Adelaide social media scene is vibrant, alive and worth visiting. The ning platform looks, imho, to be the best platform at the moment (alongside, of course, Twitter) with which to achieve that aim;

6. I was not trying to create extra work for myself; trust me, I have enough work to be getting on with. Wither that GFC that the Ruddster kept banging on about? Like many of my peers within the professional communications space, I have more work lined up than ever before.

~~~~

Regarding point 5, I tried setting up stuff in Facebook Pages because someone (I think @Monnie, or was it @CharlieRobinson?) set them up and gave me administrator privileges, and like @ezStephen, @locspoc and @Chris_Foster, I enjoy playing with the various elements to see if it makes any sense from a user’s perspective.

If I was a fan of a business called ‘SOCADL’ then Facebook would probably be the place to build, but for social media evangelists it’s just not strong enough to do what I was looking to do – make it an online meeting place and resource centre for Adelaide’s disparate groups.

Thus I burnt a few more candles and set up the ning site. Oh, and captured the ‘socadl’ and ‘commsadelaide’ .com domain addresses in case someone tried to hijack them as they did the gmail addresses. Again, absolutely not to control, but to stop hijacking and protect the brands.

There are my excuses for doing as I have done so busily since Wednesday night. I am now exhausted and want to go to sleep, and I also want to leave the ning site in the hands of whoever wants to direct it (which is why you all can pretty much do as you wish with it, including setting up new groups, etc.)

Comments, ideas, inspirations, etc., can be written on the back of a brick and sent through your nearest window. Otherwise there’s twitter [#socadl and #CommsAdelaide] and of course the comment streams on ning and this here blog.

G’night y’all. Be nice to each other and play fair.

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and thank you SOOOO much to the lovely Jessie Morris who brought me a present of some men’s personal care products made from bees. I felt a bit ‘funky’ rubbing bee stuff all over my body in the shower, but I guess the bees don’t mind as long as no one tells them where their stuff is going to end up…

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