I think it’s pretty safe to say that in 2 days time, much of the Social Media world will have it’s eyes on Exeter. I’ve been watching the community on the #likeminds hashtag with sheer amazement and still wonder how a relatively small event in a small city can get such attention.
The answer of course is people. It’s people who make this happen – who make ideas spread – and I maintain my stance from last time that really myself and the team ‘are nobody’. We’re no one special. It’s about all of us together – which is why it’s We Are Like Minds.
We’ve worked hard to create an event that emphasises “we”, an event that epitomises the people-to-people theme that we’ve set, and an event that can truly be called a ’social’ conference – a way that adds far more value than the tradition room filling methods.
I wrote recently on how we went about creating a people-to-people conference, and I want to repeat some of those thoughts here before we go headlong into the excitement that we’re all looking forward to.
The first level is person-to-people. The people participating in Like Minds come from a range of backgrounds and have varying degrees of expertise and experience. We needed to provide keynote addresses that ensured everyone – from the novice to the expert – got a concentrated and focussed set of ideas, inspirations and information that they could take away.
We sought the best in people-to-people, and we’re pretty sure our six keynote speakers are among the best in the world.
The second level is persons-to-people. A single keynote speaker brings only one view, and we needed to make sure each session’s topic was looked at from various angles from people who are working day-to-day in people-to-people. We crafted six panels – each with a moderator and three panelists – who could each bring a fresh perspective and ensure that everyone listening could identify with at least one person’s situation.
The final part is people-to-people. The ideals of Social Media are ones of ‘flatness’ and ‘equality’, but the reality is we haven’t seen much of that at the conferences that our team has gone too. Nor do we find that ‘networking’ aids in our relationship building because in a room of 200 people, you tend to group to the people you know.
We needed a way to have intimacy between our speakers, the attendees, and then between each other. Our solution was the Like Minds Lunch Time Talks – something that to the best of our knowledge is the first of its kind.
Hopefully, when people walk away on Friday, they’ll have gotten value from each of these three levels, and built some new connections with new people to go and do new things with.
Our only frustration is that we couldn’t do more for those attending virtually. A live stream and a hashtag just doesn’t create participation, and our vision for the future is one where people can choose camera angles (as if they are sitting at a certain table) and chime in on a particular back channel hashtag for their preferred discussion. Skype and conference calls should be built into breaks, so that whilst physical networking goes on, there can be face-to-face networking online too. And this is something that we also believe should be paid for. Live streams have become common place and mostly valueless – we need to create new ways that have serious value attached to them.
So – I hope this gives you a little more knowledge into the why of Like Minds. For most of you, this isn’t new news – in actual fact, you were the ones that helped us build this.
We’ll see you on Friday.
Scott
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