About Girl Geeks & Serbian PR

It has been way too long since I posted an update here...

I guess some of us bloggers spend too much time on Twitter sending short updates all day and then feel completely "empty" when it comes down to real writing...

In this blogpost I wanted to share some experiences from the last month. One is the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner we hosted at my employer's new information center called Big Blue. The other is a trip I made to Serbia for a conference on social media and public relations.

Let's start with Serbia.

View from the Beograd FortressI was invited by Andrea Brbaklić, the regional coordinator of the EACD for the area. She's Director of Communications at Erste Bank and organised a great gathering of PR professionals and social media people in Beograd.

The evening before the event I was invited for dinner with some of the most influential Serbian social media professionals.

I met with Milan Obradovic,  Marko Jevtic, Dragan Varagic, Jelena Jovanovic, Nebojsa Radovic, Dejan Bizinger and Nikola Jovanovic... (@Miss_Cybernaut @eniac @bizinger @varagic @milanobradovic @markojevtic @peckopivo on Twitter).

We spoke about social media, the web and many other topics but what was rather obvious from the start is that we're all struggling with the same issues; transparency, ROI, measurement, ethics and the decline of the mainstream press.

The day after I had 2 interviews with reporters from the Serbian media and foudn that there was a rather big focus on social networks, mainly Facebook. I had the impression that social media for the enterprise was a very new story for them.

Again I found similarities with typical Belgian reporter questions; talking and asking questions much more about the tools than about the principles that guide them.

During the conference later that day I spoke about how Van Marcke Group approaches social media and how we try to integrate both the principles and the tools in out normal, day to day business operations.

The people I met during those 3 days were all very nice and enthousiast. There is a real buzz in Beograd and social live is booming. I saw some of the best designed restaurants and bars there. Really would love to go back one day.

And then the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner.

Girl Geeks at the Big Blue Information CenterFor those of you who do not know the concept, Girl Geeks define these evening as such: "Girl Geek Dinners are events for females who class themselves as girly and geeky. The events have a technical focus and are light hearted and fun."

Clo Willaerts who organises these evenings and I got in touch. I suggested we do one in Big Blue, our new CO2 neutral building in Zaventem.

I knew the topic of ecology and CO2 reduction could interest the Girl Geeks and that they could be interested in meeting up with my boss Caroline Van Marcke, administrator of the Van Marcke Group (@carodou on Twitter) and our guest speaker Serge de Gheldere, ambassador for Al Gore on Climate Change.

The feedback from the crowd was great. It was out first offline "social media outreach" but I do think that by bringing people together and having a transparent and direct talk about our industry we showed that ecology and business can (and should) go hand in hand without going the "green washing" way.

The most important thing about these events is the feedback you get and the feeling that social media, if used in a transparent way, can really create long-term relationships. Check out some of the pictures slideshows and the video I made.

That's it for this time... Hope I can find the time to be more regular over the next weeks. Have fun in the meantime, and don't forget to comment.

European Communications Summit - July 2 & 3, 2009

This week I'll be speaking at the European Communications Summit organised by the European Association of Communications Directors (EACD) of which I am member since the start a couple of years ago.

The agenda is full with top keynote speakers like my ex-colleague Mike Wing, Vice President, Strategic and Executive Communications & the man behind the latest and very successful "Smarter Planet" communications campaign of IBM.

Mike Wing, IBMThe funny thing is that Mike and I have been colleagues at IBM for about 10 years and never really met in person. This will be the occasion to catch up in real life...

I'll be talking about how we're taking the first moves at Van Marcke Group to implement social media both for internal and external communications. I'll also touch upon the differences and/or similarities between a B2B and B2C approach/market.

Next to the interesting sessions with top communicators it is always nice to catch up with other colleagues from the profession. I am looking forward to meet again with Médard Schoenmaeckers, Head of Media Relations, Syngenta and Dirk de Muynck from Volvo Group among many others.

From a more personal angle I'll definitely be at the session by Jon Worth from the Atheist Bus Campaign, one of the most successful and daring NGO campaigns ever.

I also set up a TweetUp during the conference. You can find the invitation here and if you're on Twitter and coming at the conference, please sign up and let's meet.

The conference will be covered on Twitter, not only by myself but by several other people present. You can follow the updates by searching for the hash tag #ecs or right on the conference's Twitter page here.

If you come, looking forward to see you there !

The impact of social media on corporate information management ?

These last couple of days have been hectic....

Caroline Van Marcke (middle) at IOD2009I officialy left IBM last Friday and started to work for Van Marcke Group as their Chief Social Media Officer on Tuesday... Just on time to immediately fly to Berlin for... an IBM conference of 3 days on the topic of information management !

The interesting sessions on information management (from a business perspective for me) and hearing some very good speakers - author Frans Johansson has definitely some passion going there - were definitely worth the 3 days in Berlin.

But what struck me right from the beginning was the incredible, and largely underestimated, impact social media will have on corporate information management.

Imagine an organisation which truly uses social media to connect with employees, business partners and clients...

Not just a company that sets up a blog because it is fashionable but an organisation that really wants to engage with its constituents and gain insight from it.

Frans Johansson - AuthorThen think how all these data streams, conversations and connections could interact with existing infrastructure.

Example; the Twitter updates used by customer support of company X, integrated with its CRM system, its stock management system, the monitoring system of its PR department and so on...

All that information could then be data mined, classified, analysed etc.. in order to improve customer relations, customer support, product developments and so on.

Because to me that's the real use of social media on an enterprise level.

Real Time Twitter Feed at IOD2009Enabling employees to respond correctly and quickly to client questions by connecting with them in a transparent and direct way.

Enabling diverse teams (think development, creatives, research) to work together on a same problem through the use of wikis, blogs, and social networking in order to find a better solution than the standard one.

How will all these data streams be managed ? Can they be managed ? Are organisations even thinking about this already ?

During the Information On Demand conference the subject popped up... but not as a clearly defined topic on the agenda.

I do think this area of "social media impacting information management" is really challenging and interesting to research as it will impact more and more organisations in the near future.

What do you think ?