iCitizen Live Blog

iCitizen recap: now available on-demand.

Let the sharing begin!

Videos of our iCitizen keynotes are now available on Blip.tv, with more to follow. Day 1 videos of Kelly Mooney, Joseph Jaffe and Duncan Watts are ready for viewing (and more sharing).

A treasure trove of iCitizen photos are on Flickr. (Join in and add your own. Be sure to include the  tag "icitizen" when you upload.)

Lastly, all iCitizen PowerPoint slides are on SlideShare. (In fact, iCitizen is spotlighted on the home page and Doc Searls' presentation was featured as SlideShare of the Day!)

We'll be uploading more videos throughout the week, so check back again soon.

iCitizen Day 2 -- It's a Wrap!

Wow. So many ideas, so much inspiration...what to do with it all!

A handful of next steps, in the words of the audience:

• Go back to the office and share it with everyone else
• Open up 1:1 conversations
• Establish metrics that matter
• Use mobile to activate in-store behavior
• Connect social media and mobile
• Find ways to organize around our companies around these ideas
• Iterate or die

The One Thing We Know For Sure about Measurement...

Panel: Who Keeps Moving the Goalpost?

Panelists:
Pete Blackshaw -- Nielsen Online
Dr. Robert Leone -- Texas Christian University
Steve Kahn -- DSW
Paul Horstmeier -- Hewlett-Packard

Pete started us off with a statement that gives me excitement, optimism and a certain amount of dread, that the one thing we know for sure is that our ability to measure things today is unparalleled. And as the social media space unfolds it's only going to offer up more data--so we have to be choiceful because the reality is we can only handle so much data, technologically and even mentally at times. Part of being choiceful means establishing benchmarks so that we have consistencies.

Pete: We beat up on the word engagement (as a measure), but it is important. They key thing is to keep the conversation going.

Paul: We need to make metrics relevant enough so people care. He shared the important progression of "metrics to analytics to consulting" -- a matter of taking the data and making it relevant to others before sharing it with them.

I just loved a phrase that came out regarding the importance of metrics. Pete said, "People get indicted by the metrics."

In talking about the most important metrics today and tomorrow, Pete said, "Loyalty is not enough, we have to go to advocacy." Add the insights from unaided, unsolicited conversations to the more traditional data. Love this quote, "We don't spend enough time when a Jeff Jarvis or Bob Garfield has a bad experience and bleeds venom across the web."

Pete: The degree to which we can quantify the trust factor (how much a consumer trusts us) is going to be important.

Steve: Online/offline is a marketing fabrication. The challenge in retail is how do you recognize your customers wherever they are.

Dr. Leone: "Whoever came up with the term CRM should be shot. Customers don't want to be managed...It's all about providing value to the consumer--the more you provide, the more data they'll give you."

Heed the Battle Cry for Analytics

And the iCitizen session with the most laughs (good laughs, engaged laughs) is....drum roll...A Battle Cry for Qualitative Analytics.

I think it's because if we didn't laugh, we might cry. Author, blogger and analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik from Google shared some painful truths about why we aren't better about using analytics, something he calls the Web Data Paradox.

• Online marketing is a faith-based initiative (at least that's how we treat)
• Getting reliable data is like a minor orgasm
• If you don't measure outcomes you're committing a crime against humanity
• Most web site experiences suck because they're created by HIPPOS (highest paid person's opinion)
• The only way to fight HIPPOS is to prove them wrong fast (They have egos but they are not stupid and will back down in the face of data)
• We need to focus on Scent (relevance of information)
• If we improve Scent we can crush the HIPPOS
• If we ignore analytics, we are consciously making a choice that we want to be incompetent, don't want to make money and hate our customers

Have Phone, Will Travel (the web)

Panelists:

John Harrobin -- Verizon
Will Hodgman -- M:Metrics
Ricardo Spina -- formerly from Wal-Mart

I think people were itching for this panel to happen. The audience is at attention. Why? Maybe because we all know we need to be doing (creating, living, breathing) mobile and well, a lot of us are still on the bunny hill of this industry. Plus, I think it's just a lot more personal. We've all got these devices (or "bricks," as Ricardo described his) with us (and literally on us) practically 24/7. It's hard not to get emotional.

Over-arching thoughts: Experimentation is important for mobile and we (in the US) aren't doing a lot of it. Seriously, who'd have thought ring tones would be a $5 billion business?

Personal & Portable Panel

Panelists:

Bill Washburn -- OpenID
Rooley Eliezerov -- Gigya
Kelly O'Neil -- ATG

Doc Searls, moderator

A few excerpts, then some thoughts about trust...

Bill: In talking about OpenID, which comes out of the open source movement, explained that organizations, humans and communities are what constitute "social" -- how very Love-Triangle-esque.

Kelly: ATG is trying to drive a more personal e-commerce interaction, which she described as intent-based personalization. Here's the phrase I loved. After asking the question, What can organizations do with all the data to help customers find what's best for them? she answered, "guided serendipity".

Rooley: 40% of the time people spend online is on pages created by users (blogs, social networks, etc). He also reminded us that widgets weren't born out of the social fever, that they were originally desktop apps for the most part. Now that people are using widgets to express themselves (content they like), how do advertisers play a role?

A great question from the audience turned the conversation in a different direction: What about people who don't have access?
Doc: Lots of people have cell phones. What's going to matter in the future will be portable, cheap handheld devices (versus, laptops)

Bill: Explained that there are two different reasons people don't have access, either they don't have the resources to have access, or they choose not to because "they don't trust the damn thing," referring, I inferred to the big, digital picture. He added that there are "a lot of people who could have and use it, but don't think it's more than an electronic, fancy penny arcade."

Then Bill turned it back to us, our imperative to earn their trust.

"We need to bring the trust factors into play, so it can truly be a valuable and valued tool, so everyone who doesn't now choose to use it knows they can choose safely. And the ones who don't have the resources believe it's the right thing to be working toward. That's our responsibility, those of us who see the potential, to address the issues of trust. This is an important opportunity that's going to be missed if we think it's going to be solved by accident."

Acronym of the Day

I know it's still early, but here's my new favorite acronym, from Doc Searls.

MLOT (pronounced em-lot)
Money Left on the Table

Searls On Stage

Under the umbrella of What's Next on the Open Horizon, journalist, speaker, digital advocate, flickr-er, repeated rental car customer Doc Searls is here to discuss some unfinished business from The Cluetrain Manifesto.

But before I get to the main stuff I have to report that Doc told us he's got about 20,000 pictures on his flickr account, many of which were taken through an airplane window.

He also told us that people (lots of them) can die from bad data. Fascinating. Scary. Understandable.

Doc explained that the static web is branching off the live web.

Static Web = sites with domains and locations, things that require architecture, things that are built
Live Web = syndicating, texting, twittering, RFID

Cue Video -- Day 2 Begins

All-star iCitizens and RI creatives Anthony Trimpe and Matt Talese complemented breakfast with a video recapping Day 1. My favorite line from the video: Anthony sharing what he learned yesterday, "I learned that HP stands for Hewlett-Packard and P&G stands for Procter & Google."

(I'm not saying it was a long night for these guys, but when they delivered the video they were wearing the same clothes as yesterday.)

Watch the video!

Speed Wrap

Phew! What a day! And Jim Oswald captured it all on the walls. After a fast run-through (literally, he was running) of each panel, Jim opened the floor to the audience to share over-arching thoughts about the Open Imperative in terms of what we heard today. Here's a sampling:

• Negatives can be positive
• Get the C-level on board
• Be committed
• There's opportunity in openness
• We are them, they are us
• Tipping the sacred cows
• It's about conversation
• Honesty and integrity are key
• It's not an exact science
• Experimentation needs to happen
• Start with the consumer

The Allure of Open Innovation

Tom Venable, EVP at InnoCentive, gave our last iTalk of the day, focusing on the notion of fast-tracking R&D by opening it up to the world. The premise being that with innovation, the answer is often where you least expect it.

What you have to keep in mind to achieve it:

1. Clarity of vision
2. Intellectual humility
3. Follow a network approach
4. Convert problem solvers to solution finders

Panel: What Consumers Can Do

Panelists:

Manish Chandra -- Kaboodle
Tom Smith -- Lemonade, Inc
Adam Weinroth -- Pluck
Sam Decker -- Bazaarvoice

It's apparent from each of these panelists and their social networking-based businesses that consumers can do a lot for businesses (in addition to all the ways they help each other). Each panelist had a different way of measuring the influence of social media, from hard numbers to anecdotal hot spots. Adam Weinroth from Pluck described a metric called CPC -- contributors per capita.

One thing I found interesting was what these panelists say surprise them. These folks are on the front line of innovation in social media--they see it all.

Adam: The rate at which people embrace social media.

Sam: The nature of reviews. Very few 1- or 2-star reviews, lots of 5-star reviews (including reviews around niche products like, oh, say, turtle leashes). 90 percent of customer reviews are written to help other people make purchase decisions, and usually around a good product, not a bad one.

What's next? What will consumers be able to do tomorrow?

Tim: Lemonade will be turning into more of a shopping destination--a place to shop for stuff based on various attributes, versus a tool you take to your own site and use as a filter.

Manish: Letting consumers create new types of content, not looking at products in isolation, but on style boards or collages. For example, taking a pair of shoes and creating an entire outfit around it.

Thoughts from Speed Sharing part II

Tom O'Brien from MotiveQuest: You can measure advocacy online.

Steve Knox: Never mistake us for the average consumer.

What Makes it Viral? And What Makes it Successful?

Tremor's Steve Knox tossed out some wild statistics about how popular recent viral campaigns were. (C'mon, you Elfed yourself, admit it!)

But then he also pointed to less-than-stellar business results immediately following these viral success stories.

So what makes it really work? (Not just for sake of buzz, but for your bottom line.) Knox says,

"You must disrupt the consumer, in a way that is a surprise to her. This must be attached to the brand's foundational truth. If not, it won't work."

So it's got to be a bit unexpected, just not so much that it's not believable. "It must be mildly incongruent, not wildly incongruent."

P.S. Where does word of mouth die? When the message isn't easy enough to share. Messages you share with your friends are always simple, Knox says.

If you take away just one thing from Steve Knox's presentation...

Tremor CEO Steve Knox started his iTalk with a key learning from his experience using the tools of the social web to connect brands with influentials--and get them to share information.

1. There is a message the consumer want to hear, typically your advertising message, so long as it's relevant.
2. There is a message the consumer want to share with her friends.

And the big learning: 100% of the time the shared message is different from the advertising message.

Duncan Watts: The Mullet Strategy

As part of his thinking around finding accidental influentials, Duncan Watts talks about The Mullet Strategy: Business upfront. Party in the back.

Love this! And apparently I'm not alone. Twitter tells me the folks at Resource are already enjoying the notion of The Mullet Strategy.

Influential or Insignificant?

Yahoo! Research Scientist Duncan Watts challenges the notion of influentials, wondering aloud whether these people are special or accidents of circumstance.

Love this analogy he shares: Forest fires, like social epidemics, are often very small and sometimes very large. No one would claim that a forest fire is started by special sparks. Yet for social phenomena, we want to believe special outcomes are caused by special people.

Watts believes they are "accidental influentials". Since it's accidental, you won't know who these folks will be or where to find them.

Marcia Collier: My Life as an iCitizen

Favorite quote from author and eBay authority Marcia Collier:

"I'm kind of the gateway drug to the internet."
(Since not everyone is crazy about or really gets it yet.)

Second favorite quote from Marcia Collier:

"Some people Tweet too much."

Thoughts from Speed Sharing part I

Doc Searls: Any question based on fear is the wrong question.

Betsy Dee: Intuit employees get "whitespace time," unstructured thinking time to come up with ideas.

Do you have the right?

Love this comment from P&G's Stan Joosten: Marketers don't always have the right to have conversations. Hmmm. Gotta earn it.

RI Client Panel: And the Community Makes Three

Panelists:
Adam Brown -- The Coca-Cola Company
Jan Valentic -- The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
Stan Joosten -- Procter & Gamble

Now this is a power panel of catalysts for embracing the community and joining the dialogue. These folks get the OPEN imperative. Here are some highlights:

Adam: Our homepage is not TheCoca-ColaCompany.com. It's Google.com. People are going to Google and typing in things like "marketing to children" or "recycling" to find out what's going on. So we can't just speak from a PR or marketing voice anymore. We have to speak in a genuine voice.

Jan: People are going to say bad things about your brand--it's what you do about it that is going to make a difference.You have to own up to it and address it. Address how you're going to behave as an organization or the web is going to pick you apart.

Stan: The world has changed. This is really different and we have to deal with it. It's a matter of how to do this. Innovation happens anywhere in a company and you have to let it happen. The answers aren't all there yet, but you make it part of everyone's responsibility, link it back into the business.

The Big Idea

An excerpt from graphic facilitator Jim Oswald's illustration of iCitizen.
(Jim in action!)

What's the Role of Traditional Media Today?

Jaffe answers this question from the audience better than I've heard anyone else do it:

He uses the analogy of a box of crayons, pointing out that red, yellow, blue--representing TV, print and radio--are still important primary colors, but at the end of the day we still have a whole box of other colors.

Instead of starting with those three, we can end up with the mainstream media, using it to fill in the blanks. Their role is now supportive of non-traditional, emerging media. Mainstream media "doesn't go away, but it's not the end-all, be-all."

Ahh, break time. Conference-goers hit the Social Media Cafe.

Jaffe: 2012

Joseph Jaffe tells us that by 2012:

• Organizations will have Conversation Departments
• Chief Conversation Officers
• All campaigns will have a "Commitment to Conversation"

Paraphrasing Jaffe: Marketing can be a conversation. We don't have to be bystanders anymore, we can participate, we can partner with our consumers.

P.S. I love this comment: When you hear a consumer say, "You suck," what you need to hear is the consumer saying, "Give me a reason not to hate you." This is the moment to engage with consumers, not ignore them.

Joseph Jaffe: Five Things to Do, Five Things Not to Do

Jaffe paints the landscape for us. Right now there's so much data, too much, we're drowning in it, he explains. There's so much conversation out there, and so much of it is good, trustworthy, credible conversations. And yet, "the noise can drive us mad if we don't know how to listen."

How do we survive in this environment?

Five things to do:

1. Listen (you have two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion)
2. Respond (in-kind, video to video, text to text...)
3. Be Invited to Join (marketers can't just Join because we're not as cool as we think we are)
4. Catalyze (make conversations better)
5. Start (once you've done 1-4, start talking)

Five things not to do:

1. Faking
2. Manipulating
3. Controlling
4. Dominating
5. Avoiding

Did you get that?

iCitizen, keynote and author Joseph Jaffe just shared a bit about himself in his introduction...his book, his blog, his Twitter feed, his social security number and credit card info.

The OPEN Macrotrend

Resource Interactive President and Chief Experience Officer Kelly Mooney took the stage for this morning's first iTalk, sharing with us the OPEN macrotrend.

First, Kelly introduced us to Ashley Qualls, who started whateverlife.com where she quickly moved from "teenager" to iCitizen and self-made millionaire. Brands can't ignore people like Ashley, because she's part of a massive power shift, a new way to think about marketing.

Kelly explained this power shift with the acronym: S.T.E.E.P.

Social -- Our lives have become open books, with an unbelievable sharing of information. Take Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, one of many who uses Twitter to build his brand.

Technological -- Open source-powered. Marketers learning from technologists where every message can be shared in a new way, the mobile web, the full-video web, the 3-D web, the semantic web, the ubiquitous web--the OPEN web.

Economical -- Open innovation. Mass collaboration, co-collaboration, using the resources of the world to solve problems.

Environmental -- Open access. Saving polar bears, whales, everything. And thanks to Wal-Mart for getting out there and acknowledging the company's impact on the planet and committing to lessen it.

Political -- Open playing field. Exemplified by Ron Paul (who raised $4 million online IN ONE DAY) and Barack Obama, whose team mastered the tools of the internet to turn him into the ultimate OPEN brand.

Happy Joel

Meet Joel Levinson, songwriter, world traveler, Nature Valley Granola Bar contest winner, iCitizen. He sang a song he wrote about what it means to be an iCitizen.

What'd we learn? Chat rooms freak him out.
He enters (and wins) lots of contests online, thanks to his humor and smarts. And iCitizens are not all utterly manipulatable idiots. In fact, they're quite savvy, and decent songwriters too.

Welcome to iCitizen -- The Day Begins

I can smell the coffee. Seriously. And all sorts of other good breakfast foods. 

Hmmm. Comfy couch? Soft chair? A seat at the table? I think for now I'll settle in on a Resource green Shaw carpet circle.

This is going to be a conference like no other!

The Anticipation Builds

Welcome to the official iCitizen blog!

We're checking off last-minute details, getting ready to welcome more than 150 guests for a day and a half of inspiring speakers, panels and discussions.

If you can't catch it live, check back here for the highlights.

A few guidelines to aid in your enjoyment of the conference:

• Dress comfortably. We'll be doing some heavy thinking and sharing.
• Be ready to eat. We've got meals and snacks planned all day.
• Look for a free ride. We have a complimentary shuttle going back and forth between the hotel and the event, and dinner too.
• Share or follow. We're on Twitter--and so are our keynotes.
• Explore the area. We're on the map.