I spent Saturday at BarCampRDU. It was a nice change of pace to do something here, since I usually just read about interesting-sounding events a long way away. If it's your first BarCamp, you must present, so I ad-libbed a session on social media measurement. It must have gone reasonably well, because people stayed and we filled the hour easily.
I started with the premise of sorting out social media measurement: the term is being used to refer to (at least) four different activities, and it's important to be clear about what information you're looking for and why. I mostly focused on the PR and market research angles, and we talked about the distinction between monitoring and measuring. We had a good conversation about the place of free tools for monitoring, human vs. machine analysis and Wal-Mart t-shirts (I learned today that the t-shirt story continues).
With about a dozen people in the room, it was one of the smaller sessions at the technologist-centric day, but participation was high, and I got to meet some smart people. Calvin Powers also writes about the session.
Based on some hallway conversations, I think we might put together a local conference on social media/Web 2.0 for marketers. It would focus on useful information for marketers who want/need to figure things out, with a mix of strategy and how-to sessions. Details are very much TBD. If you want to be part of starting something, let me know.
