Social Networking - Now It’s Getting Personal

Two stories (really, three) about the power of Web 2.0, mobile networks, and rotten tomatoes:
The first story features a well respected subject matter expert in compliance law speaking to a group of employees in a large company. As was his style, he was telling a story about a “real world” experience to make his point. Several people in the audience were searching on the topic while he was speaking and they found that the instructor’s facts were not always correct. Then the participants began instant messaging with one another - sharing links to prove that the instructor was “wrong”.
The instructor was summarily fired having lost all credibility with his audience.
In the second story, the issue is “kicked up a notch” as Twitter enabled audiences are learning to exert more power - and to break out of the passive sit and listen mode.
Read the story for yourself at Mark Zucke’s blog post from SXSW.
Here we have a well intended interviewer (Sarah Lacy) and a CEO (Billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg) who needs to be extremely cautious about how his words will be construed by a sophisticated audience keen to decipher the next moves being made by Facebook—arguably the world’s most influential social networking site. Five years ago, the audience would have left grumbling at the scripted, controlled, pre-digested dog and pony show that passes for most keynote addresses. But this year, at the South by Southwest Interactive Media Conference the barrier between the stage and the audience crashed. This event was described by attendees as a “train wreck” - caused (ironically) by the very forces of social media the participants were there to discuss. Audience members heckled, and eventually controlled the entire conversation.
The third story is thankfully free of the term “train wreck.” I deliver about 25 keynote speeches a year - mostly to financial service audiences. And these people are not as rabid or technologically sophisticated as the attendees at South by Southwest (and I mean rabid in a good way). But as a speaker I am extremely conscious of how every book title, date, name, and reference will be reviewed by my audience. In a speech in Dallas, Texas this year I was answering a question and could not remember the name of the author of a book called The Transparent Self. As I was literally scratching my head, an audience member shouted “Sidney Jourard”! I asked, “Did you know that?” He replied, “No - I just searched for it on my smart phone.”
My bottom line is that this (audience on steroids communicating in real time phenomenon) is a good thing - but it will forever change the literacy and chemistry of the audience/speaker relationship. I see how “information” is not the name of the game in the speech anymore. Already I want to include more edgy, artistic, and interpretive elements in my presentations - things that can’t be typed into a search bar. It is also a clear signal to anyone standing on any pulpit; the days of making stuff up off the top of your head are long gone. We are all going to be held to a much higher and more exacting standard of performance and integrity in our presentations. And, like I said, that is a good thing.