Yesterday I noticed a couple of announcements for London social media events in the fall:
- a Twitter 101 TechAlliance Breakfast Club on October 14 starring @billdeys, @ericablonde, and @titusferguson
- a social media [un]conference for the arts community promoted by @adamcaplan, @titusferguson, and @billdeys (from what I understand at this early stage — let me know if I should correct or add to that)
So I figure this would be as good a time as any to provide a few more details on what I’m doing Thurs, November 5 at the Central Library:
Come for a discussion about the ways in which digital media is changing the nature of public discourse and the structure of society. Will the transformation be as profound as the first dawn of democracy? How can we make the best use of these new platforms and tools?
It won’t be a how-to session (I’ll leave that to the people listed above — in fact I’ll likely be trying to hit them up for some pointers myself). It’ll mostly be about, well, exactly the kind of stuff I’m always blogging: “deep-thinking” (as Dan Brown puts it all the time), talking about new things that are happening and how they relate to the big picture.
“From the Agora” is a reference to this idea [not necessarily new in itself]. I’m trying to pound down the rough edges and form it into something more swallowable.
If you already know everything about social media, maybe you’ll learn something about Plato or Athenian politics or epistemology or something. The main thing I want to show is that it doesn’t have to be boring. I love that stuff just as much as social media.
I wish we had a better word than “blogosphere” but we don’t. I use it to refer to the whole newmediasphere or domain-of-digital-media — including Twitter and Facebook — but those more accurate (and less abused) terms don’t work in a title.
My main focus will be on “and Beyond.”
I have a handful of new-ish ideas that I want to bounce off of a crowd — to see what even newer ideas we might manage to create (maybe do some jamming before November too). I want to learn as much as I teach.
Most important, I want to conversation to continue to grow — which isn’t to say it needs my help.
It seems to be doing awesome without much from me, judging by the upcoming events, the buzz, and all of the Londoners coming to Twitter (both young and old but for a younger generation it looks like it’s becoming required for anyone with entrepreneurial and social-entrepreneurial intentions).
Still would be nice to build an identifiable hub…