Well the weather sure can put in a wrench in things (so can transit strikes but that’s a whole other story.) Bryan Person, planned guest speaker for today’s Social Media Breakfast (SMB) Ottawa event got stranded in Boston. After three flight cancellations he had to admit defeat. He wasn’t going to make it.

Disappointing as that is, today’s event was still great. Organizers rallied and brought together Joe Thornely of Thornley Fallis and ProPR.ca and moderator James Lewis (Executive Director of the Canadian Interactive Alliance) to lead a discussion on social media happenings in 2008.

What I and many other attendees enjoyed is how they actively sourced the crowd for input during the conversation. We talked about all kinds of social media faux pas and successes – from the Sarah Lacey incident at SXSW earlier this year to the successful use of social media on Obama’s political campaign.

The conversation took a turn at this point when we as a group started talking about social media etiquette. Is it polite to microblog while speaking or moderating at a conference? (Joe’s own experience is cited here.) Is it polite for the audience to microblog when the panelist or speaker doesn’t get a chance to respond in real-time?

Bob LeDrew said you have two options in that latter situation: ignore the Twitter conversation or adjust and accept this new form of communication. Most conferences project the Twitter stream on a screen. Speakers have every option to respond to the conversations taking place on Twitter and involve the conversation as part of their speaking stint.

It was also pointed out that people who attend conferences but aren’t on Twitter feel isolated and antagonized from what is essentially a water cooler conversation happening around them of which they can’t participate. I understand to an extent but if the Twitter stream is projected on a screen for all attendees to see, what’s to stop you from turning to the person beside you and voicing your opinion in face-to-face dialogue?

That person beside you may just be on Twitter and can tweet what you just said for you. There. You’ve joined the conversation. But that’s beside the point. Nothing replaces face-to-face communication. What Twitter does is make the water cooler conversations happen in real time. There is no need to wait until the speaker finishes. It’s not disruptive to what the speaker is saying, or at least, it doesn’t have to be.

So when you do get a chance to ask the speaker a question, or chat about the conference track over lunch, you’ve had the opportunity to process a myriad of opinions and that can extend your face-to-face conversations into deeper and more provoking (and dare I say interesting) discussions.

We then turned to how some organizations ban social media sites like Facebook and Twitter from the workplace, which is a real shame. The powers-that-be think these sites are a time-waster so they ban access. Um…if someone is going to waste time at work, they’ll do it anyway whether they have access to their Facebook profile or not. It’s a shame too because sites like Twitter (and even Facebook) can be great tools for expanding your knowledge and building business relationships.

And what about those Gen-Yers entering the workforce. They and their younger counterparts grew up with these technologies. It is so ingrained in their lives that they will expect to be able to use these tools in the workplace. And if they can’t, they’ll go work somewhere else. As Jeff Parks contributed, there is already a reverse mentoring taking place where the young are teaching the old about using these technologies (and the value therein.)

Rob from Bloggeries voiced his opinion that 2008 is the year of the social media hangover. We are now in the real time web and we have accounts on all different kinds of sites: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, SocialMedia, FriendFeeed, etc. It can be a bit daunting.

Another point mentioned this morning was that interpersonal skills in the workplace are becoming more important than technical skills. This ability to play well with others is also important in the online world. In a timely way, this point relates to something that Sue Murphy blogged about today: “Why Being a Good Friend Makes You Good at Social Media.”

Whether you use one social media tool or multiple, no matter how far you stretch yourself across the social web, it’s important to be authentic. To be kind and honest, to help others and to be a good listener.

It will be interesting to see where 2009 brings us. What are your thoughts?

The fourth Social Media Breakfast (SMB) Ottawa, held today at Gowlings, had a huge turnout. I’m thinking the topic of online communities is definitely a hot topic for the city.

The SMB Ottawa founders (Rob Lane, Ryan Anderson and Simon Chen) organized a panel of online community experts in the city.

• Luc Levesque, Founder & General Manager, TravelPod (A TripAdvisor / Expedia Company)
• Gérard Métrailler, Senior Director, Product Management, Graphics, Corel Corporation
• Ian Skerrett, Director of Marketing, Eclipse Foundation
• With Jens Evans, Founder and Chief Strategist, Sequentia Evironics (Toronto) as the panel moderator

Their expertise comes from actually implementing online communities for B2B and B2C engagement.

Jen presented various statements about online community and social media engagement, of which the panelists had the opportunity to agree or disagree. The audience chimed in with their own view points which was fantastic.

Without further ado, here is a quick run-down of the panel discussion…

60% to 70% of any community are lurkers and won’t actively engage (post comments or contribute content)

• Had a 50/50 split on audience agreement with this number
• Ian – don’t fret about it since you will have a core group who will contribute and carry community engagement. The number will build over time

A blog is a community

• Gerard – in isolation, no. But as part of a collection of blogs that share common interests, yes.
• Ian – blog is a tool to build community but not a community in itself

According to Gartner Research, 50% of soical media and community programs in Fortune 1000 companies will fail by 2010

• Luc – by not incorporating community measurement into programs, your initiative will fail. You need to understand the value social media / online community can bring to your business (and your customers)
• Gerard – thinks 50% is low and the number is probably higher

Most important characteristic of a community is vibrancy (activity, engagement), etc

• Ian – important to give your audience something to talk about and do this regularly to bring fresh content to the community
• Luc – spur conversations to turn lurkers into participants
• 70% agreement from the audience with this statement

Makes no business sense to give competitors access to your community conversations. Closed communities are the way to go.

• Gerard – Corel builds open communities except for the beta community. Once product is releases, the community opens because Corel wants to capture product conversations on their own communities versus trying to find them elsewhere on the web
• Luc – depends on the situation – sometimes it makes sense to have a closed community
• Ian – to grow your community, it needs to be open otherwise it can be hard to build buy-in. It also depends on your audience and objective

Search and ongoing member acquisition is critical to health of any community

• Luc – absolutely essential. Measure through the number of people coming in and how engaged they are. Use search marketing to feed community content into search engines as way to grow awareness
• Ian – new and acquired member engagement is equally important. Need to look at diversity of your membership base (geography, age, expertise, etc)
• Gerard – Corel uses a combination of organic and paid search marketing to build community growth. Work with evangelists to welcome new members and encourage them to interact.

Building successful communities is a full-time strategic endeavour and requires a team, thought and planning

• Ian – adhere to certain best practices: have relevent content, have a visible community leader (ambassador) who champions the community, make it easy to join, involve the whole organization
• Luc – need to know your community objective and you need someone to administer the community. Your company needs to be involved (engaging members and contributing content) to demonstrate commitment.
• Gerard – Corel is a customer-driven company and sees community as one way to focus on customer needs

Online community and social media programs will be a casualty as businesses seek to pare down costs during current economic crunch

• Gerard – once your community hits a critical mass, it can be self-sustaining and require little economic investment.
• Luc – if your community or social media engagement can’t be measures, expect it to be affected. Don’t look at revenue ROIs as the necessary pull-plug factor. Look at other key performance indicators such as decrease in support calls (and therefore decrease in support costs)
• Ian – often can be less expensive than traditional marketing initiatives. Ensure your community offers value to members to ensure its longevity
• Audience felt communities are mission critical to corporate objectives and thus won’t be a casualty

Blogs start every 1.4 seconds. The only way to stand out in the clamour for attention is to focus and go niche

• Ian – it’s marketing 101 – have an objective and purpose and a target audience
• Luc – have to have good product and/or good makreting
• Gerard – focus on a niche – know your audience and the value you deliver

During Q&A there were lots of questions around social media metrics…

• Gerard – track where people are coming from using traditional analytics tools but to track what people are doing in the community, you’ll need to either find a platform that offers this analysis natively, find a community analytics tool or build one in-house
• Ian – a good place to start is to look at trends in downloads from the community. Track the people who contributing value (number of people and what they are contributing). Find out how they found and then joined the community to get your conversion metric

And that’s my recap in a nutshell! For another perspective on SMB Ottawa 4, check out Joe Boughner’s post at www.joeboughner.ca. If you’ve come across other reviews/recaps of the event, please share them via the comments section below

On a related note – my first video blog interviews…

After the event, Simon Chen and I sat down with Jen Evans to discuss Sequentia-Environics’ role in helping companies implement their community engagement.

I also had an opportunity to chat with Kelly Rusk of Web2dotwhat.com and SmartHippo about how she entered into the social media scene and was able to eventually built herself a career out of it.

Look for my first ever video blog postings on these two interviews in the near future.