Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

How can something as cutting edge as social media be considered old school? Because it goes to the heart of communicating. That’s the upshot of a couple of talks Darren Barefoot gave at a Web Content Conference [WC08] put on by Duo Consulting in Chicago. This totally engaging Canadian started his presentation quoting from Shakespeare’s Henry V and a drawing of the theater used in Elizabethan England – not exactly what you’d expect for a presentation on the many facets of social media. Barefoot pointed out that someone drew the theater after hearing about it, then copied it and published it. It underscored for me that social media isn’t suddenly working because of the power of Web 2.0 tools. These tools simply give people who are hungry to communicate an easier way to do it.

At his second talk, Barefoot used a decidedly low-tech approach – he hung 29 cards naming social media tools on a clothesline of sorts. Borrowing from Theatre Skam's 29 Plays in 59 Minutes concept, he asked the audience to call out a social media technology. He’d rip it off the line and riff for several minutes [of course, some kept falling off the line early, providing even more comic relief]. He covered everything from the ubiquitous Wikipedia to emerging surprises like Kyte.tv and Ustream. For the last two, he even admitted to the dreaded feeling of “Kids seem to like these but I don’t know why….” Made me feel a little better for not even knowing about them yet. 29 tools in an hour and a half. Not bad.