On June 24, we par-tayed - for me until 2:30am. But this wasn't the "hey lets get wasted on um, substances" kind of par-tay. This was another new form of party - a content driven party.
Before you yawn and say, hey Greenberg, your elderly brain is frying really really fast and you're showing that you are everyone of those 60 minus 1 years you have been on the planet, hear me out. WTF is a content driven par-tay, you might be asking?
(A digression caused by a sudden senior moment, pops into my head) "Actually, though, now that I think of it, you could make the case that my baby boomdom does fry me to some degree. My fret finger is arthritic and as a result (or as an excuse) I suck at things like Rockband or Guitar Hero.".
(Back to our station) Patience. All will be explained, grasshopper.
I had the good fortune to be one of the main players at the Radian6 "Social CRM Rockstars" event last Wednesday in Boston at the Renaissance Waterfront Hotel. This thing was amazing.
Here's the scene. A room with a large screen and a raised stage and buncha plastic translucent contemporary chairs adjustable for size and weight up and down. The screen sat in the middle of the stage in front of a curtain. In fact, it was a setup like the one that I had at a SAS Financial Services event in 2004 where I fell off the stage because there was no wall behind the curtain. So, this time I checked the curtain with my palms. No wall. Luckily, my job, as we'll see in a moment was to be part of a panel that didn't walk around, but sat on those springy chairs instead, so I didn't have worry about another little faux pas with a consequent sore butt.
The idea of the night according to Radian6's thinking (yeah, I'll get to the Radian6 story in a short while. Cool it for a few.), was to have some chosen Social CRM Rockstars do this panel on Social CRM with a what it is and what do you do about it. Radian6 uses Social CRM as their mantra and message for their company and product. While I don't think that they are there yet, nor is anyone at all for that matter, they are serious about it, made clear with their announcement of their integration with salesforce.com and, for their analytics, WebTrends, also a helluva good choice.
This was a live event at the Renaissance Waterfront Hotel and a Twebinar. The host - MC really - was social media star Chris Brogan who has a following of about 10 zillion and provides some seriously good insights into the world of social media, community and business via his ChrisBrogan.com world. He also is a helluva MC. Even sings - better than me anyway. He's got a book coming out called Trust Agents, and if its anything like his blog insights, its gonna be worth reading. I have it pre-ordered. Trust me.
BTW, for those of you who are Twilliterate (Brent - include this in our Hall of Shame please) a twebinar is a webinar done with live streaming and Twitter feeds. So questions can be asked of the panel for example via Twitter while they watch the stream via UStream or whatever streaming channel was chosen. They had about 250 at the live event (or a little less) and about 600 (I think) at the twebinar. Not bad for a weeks worth of organizing.
The cast of Radian6 zillions was amazing. Aside from the ones who did the heavy lifting so incredibly well like Amber Naslund and David Alston, both Radian6 superstar stalwarts, most senior management was in there working and schmoozing. CEO Marcel LeBrun who also moderated the panel, wandered throughout the event making sure all was fine in Radian6's piece of Boston. The two Chris's - Ramsey and Newton were all over it, meeting with the crowd all night and proselytizing for Radian6.
The Rockstars for the panel were actual rockstars when it came to CRM. That would be Brent Leary, who of course you know all about, Michael Thomas, the president of the CRM Association and not only an old friend but a hugely insightful guy; Frank Eliason, of Comcastcares, who led the way for practitioners in his use of Twitter as a channel for actually solving customer service problems for Comcast. Me too. The discussion on the panel was lively and there were a number of people who posted on their takeaways, including Katelyn D'Eramo of Topaz Partners. Her takeaways capture what was said extremely well.
Following our panel, which was very good and a distraction at the same time, there was about 1.5 hours of people up on the stage playing Rockband2 - which went really well, even with a broken drum pedal. You'll see below.
I'm not going to describe the event through my usual wordsmithing. You can see it pretty much by all the resources that I'm giving you - and its well worth it to get a sense of what's going on in the world of new business. It was kind of weird in one way. I'm usually not existential about business events. But for some reason, the nature of the crowd maybe (though I've been in many like this) and the quality of the event and the way it was carried out, made me realize that I was one of the oldest guys in the room - if not the oldest. There's all kinds of good and bad in that realization which I'm happy to talk about somewhere else if you want. Send me an email and ask me at paul-greenberg3@comcast.net if you care at all. I'll tell you. It made me contemplate though. No event EVER made me think about my generation gap before. Regardless of which generation ran it. This one did.
A Rich Summary of the Event
You want to see what really went on there, watch the following stuff for awhile. That saves me the time of trying to explain everything. Its Saturday, for chrissakes. My next post will be about Radian6's product. I'm not sure whether it will be here or on ZDNET. Or both. Got some work to do on it.
Here's a video of some of what I said, taken by my good friend and fellow CRM expert and blogger Wouter-Trumpie. This is what I mean by a party with content.
Rockstars of Social CRM @ E20CONF / Boston from Wouter Trumpie on Vimeo.
Finally, an incredibly creative Animoto presentation of the event done by VP of Marketing at Radian6 David Alston, which will eliminate your need for coffee on any morning.
Other Resources from the Event
Tweet Stream for the Event (#soccrm)
Hey there Paul,
I'm really glad I finally had a chance to meet you and the other guys in person and that you had a chance to spend time with the extended Radian6 team. I promise to try to work in some Maritime music the next time we do an event together - but you have to promise to work on some Irish stepdancing in the meantime :)
All the best
David
Posted by: David Alston | June 28, 2009 at 06:45 AM
Paul,
Thanks so much for being a key participant in this event! Really appreciate all your kind words, and glad that you had a great time. Looking forward to continuing the discussion with you about social CRM and all its implications.
Cheers,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
Posted by: Amber Naslund | June 27, 2009 at 01:57 PM