Social Media Gipfel #3
April 7, 2010
Today the third Social-Media-Gipfel (Social Media Summit) went down in Zurich. It is a remarkable meetup for two reasons, mostly: It starts eeeeeearly in the morning, at 7:30 a.m. (last time a presenter assumed it could only be at 7:30 p.m. and therefore missed the event), and at the same time it is booked out every time within hours.
The reason for this is of course that it is good! The organizers, Marcel Bernet and Peter Hogenkamp regularly manage to attract interesting presenters. Today it was Matthias Lüfkens, Social Media architect (!) for the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Till Quack, CTO for Kooaba, who do business in Augmented Reality.
To be honest, Matthias did not present much that would be totally new to the Social Media savvy crowd, but everybody took one important learning from his session: The WEF is using Online Social Media to engage in conversations about the Forum and the issues it deals with.
Of course the WEF is an institution often criticized for its actions by the opponents of Globalization, but it seems Matthias and his team hardly have to deal with such criticism in the online environment – they are simply not there, he says.
I had the chance to speak with him afterwards (I was playing devil’s advocate by suggesting that he doesn’t really answer to critical comments, and he approached me – so much for taking Social Media seriously, kudos for that!), and it seems to me that this head-on approach is probably the best strategy for an institution like the WEF: If you are likely to be scrutinized and in the center of public attention anyway, engage in open communication and thus take control of the conversation. It will be interesting to see how far the WEF will go with this, or how far the WEF will be driven, respectively.
In the second half of the morning, Till Quack gave a short introduction into Augmented Reality afterwards. For those who don’t know: Very basically, it is an enhancement of your environment using digital mobile devices which work with special programs (correct me, if I’m wrong!). Like Kooaba’s iPhone application Paperboy, for example.
With this handy app you can take snapshots of articles you read in a paper or magazine and it will find the digital version for you to keep and share. Currently, Kooaba is cooperating with Swiss newspaper 20Minuten, whose Hansi Voigt also spoke of the benefits of this collaboration.
There seemed to be a lot of interest in the crowd, but a lot of skepticism, also. Understandably, as Augemented Reality is still quite new and it has yet to be shown if there are convincing models for application and, as usual, monetization. But Kooaba seems to take steps into the right direction, they are definitely a Zurich startup to follow!
Once more our thanks go out to the organizers! The next Social-Media-Gipfel will take place on June, 2. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing (especially the short signup period), you should follow the event on Twitter. Also, you can find pictures of this morning’s installment on Michael’s flickr page.
6 Responses to “Social Media Gipfel #3”
Congratulations! It’s a pity that I missed it again…
I don’t want to change your format, however I was wondering if you could do it a little bit later in the morning (8.30), just to let people arriving from other cities.
Thanks, Chiara, for the input. I know that it can be a hassle if you are from out of town (I have hosted somebody from Basel before so he could attend the Gipfel), I will forward your suggestion to the organizers. Let’s see if they can be moved! ;)
ciao chiara – we were in contact and i am sorry you were blocked that morning. karsten made it from basel… we know: it is tough. 830 would definitely be too late because people like to have a full day still available after the event. but if we get more requests, peter and i will react. we are constantly looking for improvements – thx for the echo!
First train from Basel to Zurich leaves at 4:40 in the morning. That would be early enough for a 6:30 start…
Congratulations on what seems like a great event. Im sorry I missed it but I only just found out about it.
How can I stay informed of future events?
Hi Fiola, here’s the site of the event: http://socialmediagipfel.ch/ If you leave your name and your number, um, email adress, you’ll be notified once registering for the next event is open. You can also follow them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/smgzh. – But you need to be quick,when registration is open, it is usually booked out within a couple of hours.