For more than three years now I’ve been involved with social media through my job, but I’ve never had the chance to attend a social media conference. I’ve “attended” Webinars and gone to a few discussions about social media, but most things were just a couple of hours or so. 
So today I find myself several hundred miles from home in Birmingham, Ala. at Social South, a two-day conference about social media. I’m probably in competition for being the farthest away from home, but that doesn’t really matter. In fact I’m surprised more out-of-towners aren’t here. This is some good stuff. I could probably have a different blog entry and analysis from each discussion I’ve attended, but I don’t quite have time for that, at least not right now.
The day kicked off with an address from author Andrew Keen, who really challenged the group of about 150 or so on what social media is. Someone next to me said Andrew was like the Simon Cowell of social media — it was a good comparison, especially since I appreciate Simon Cowell’s honesty. Andrew posed some excellent questions we all need to think about — is social media getting rid of the concept of time and geography? Does social media make the world flat? In short, social media is replacing conversations people used to have at the corner store. Well, being 31 and part of Generation X, I don’t really remember having conversations at the corner store and my parents and grandparents don’t really talk about how much they used to hang out at the corner store.
Andrew says social media is creating personalized universes. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Through social media I can chat quickly with others about running or the Dave Matthews Band or … social media. Andrew says social media is creating radical individualism and is leading to inequality, such as people having a million or more followers. He’s right to a point, but don’t more than a million people watch Oprah every day? A million people is a relatively small number in a country with more than 300 million people and a world with billions of people.
I’ll have more to discuss later … for now I should pay attention to the current discussion going on! If you’re interested in what others are saying, follow the #soso discussion on Twitter over the next couple of days.
