The Raw University By Devin Ferguson

The Perils of Social Relevance

About two weeks ago I was leaving class when out of the corner of my eye I saw an interesting pamphlet hanging out of a kiosk. It was titled “Are you Socially Relevant?” It was a brochure for an informational meeting with USF students interested in IBM’s Lotusphere 2011. Ordinarily I frown on this kind of undefined “Social” spam, but since I liked IBM and would love to get an insider’s view of any new technology, I decided to attend.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to wear a shirt and tie. Working for a bank I had a closet full of shirts. Strangely, I couldn’t find any pants. The one pare I did find was about three inches too long. Time for a quick trip to dry cleaners for an emergency hem.  A day later and $12.00 poorer, my shirts are pressed, my pants are reconditioned, and I’m off to class three hours early to register for Lotusphere and get some ‘intel.’

I don’t live anywhere near USF. Most  students at USF including myself are commuters. To get from my front door to USF takes about 1 hour 22 minutes.  Total round trip mileage is approximately 106 miles. You can imagine what a royal pain in the rear it is to get things done when you have to spend three hours and a hundred miles of your day just to sign a form or talk to someone in person for five minutes. I don’t like frivolous treks onto campus if they’re not absolutely necessary, but I’m aware we must do what we have to to get things done.

Arriving at the meeting, I can see the smiling faces of student advisers greeting students, as well as a friendly IBM representative. The venue is posh with framed canvases of  USF deans hanging on the walls and contemporary chandeliers dangling over huge conference tables. The room is nice, real nice. It can reasonably hold about 40 persons. Satellite “kiddie” tables can expand this to about 50-55. About 60-70 students showed up so about 20 students had to stand in the back of the room.  No biggie, we’re here for the information and to register for Lotusphere.

The coordinator guy was about ten minutes late. Apparently he was here an hour and a half early, but got lost after sipping espresso at Starbucks. He welcomed us and began his pitch about Lotus.

“How many of you have ever heard of Lotus software?” he asked.

Almost everyone raised their hand.

“How many of you have ever USED Lotus software?”

This was the awkward part. Out of about 70 students, maybe two raised their hands. Not to be discouraged, the coordinator salvage the situation by explaining this this response was expected. “This is why we think Lotusphere is so important.”

At this point it’s clear that IBM has a problem. It seems that though its software line has high awareness among college students, it has virtually zero penetration. This is not the best situation for a business whose senior software engineers are retiring in droves. It’s okay though, because we’re here to register for a conference that will exposed us to IBM’s latest and greatest software, hardware, We’re here to register for Lotusphere.

From this point it’s slide shows showcasing IBM products, an introduction to the IBM rep, and a nice little video about Tanzania and how IBM has developed a system for text messaging to help villagers get medical care.  Oh, and there was pizza and soda.

“The registration for Lotusphere has closed. We have filled all the 500 available slots. I’m sorry.”

The mood in the room got noticeably sour.  It was like someone just slapped a baby. The coordinators tried to smooth things a bit, but by that time a dozen or so students simply got up and left. The only thing keeping me there was the free pizza. There would be no Lotusphere 2011 for us. No exposure to IBM technology or software, no “Social Relevance”.

I’d like to point out that I really like IBM. It’s not the coordinators fault that there were only 500 tickets allotted for all the students in the US. They did what they could do given the short notice they had about the event. However, I’m going to be critical here because it involved my time and expectations, and offer some relevant solutions for next year.

“Most of you are already doing this stuff every day…” was the line the IBM rep kept using to describe the future of Social Business. “To you it’s like yesterdays news, but for all the millions of existing workers out there, this stuff is new and unfamiliar.”

The whole focus of Lotusphere this year was Social _(Fill in the blank)_ this and that. Everything was about connecting, sharing, clouds, and relationships. IBM wants to be in a position where their software is cloud based and omnipresent. They want ideas on how to make money with this social media thing, and they have the resources, the capital, and the people to make it happen.

There was just one little nagging problem. There was no concrete specifics on how this was to be achieved. And with students totally in the dark about IBM products, none of this made any sense.

If you ask someone to define a word, and that person uses that same word twenty times during its explanation. One could argue they're a bit fuzzy on what the word means. That’s the impression I got while listening to the info session IBM rep talking about Business within the Social environment. The video IBM released for this year’s LS2011 event illustrates this:

Social. It's about Social being Social in a Social world. Social.

Scary.

The point I would like to make is if you are going to try and conduct a Social event about Social media, with students who are Socially Relevant, then at least try and involve the social technology you’re trying incorporate. A simple Twitter feed could have been set up on a per institutional basis so that:

1. You would embody the 'Social' technological focus of event.
2. There would be a running head count of how many interested students there are per institution.
3. In the event that there are unforeseen problems (running out of tickets),you can communicate with those students instantly.

What was most disappointing about this ‘informational meeting’, was that there was little real information. A few slide about products that none of us has ever used or knows anything about, a video about text messaging, and a few slices of pizza. Three hours of my time on the road and a hundred miles worth of gas at $3.10 a gallon. I’m sure most people would have skipped the event if they were aware that the reason for it, which was Lotusphere, was unavailable.

One comment that sicks out was right from the mouth of the IBM rep; “Social Business can back fire catastrophically if done incorrectly…”

Yes it can. It certainly can.