The two day WE MEDIA crush conference raised many issues, with some room for questions by the floor. WM Fellows were invited on May 2nd (the day before the WM Global Forum started) to brainstorm during an hour on some 15 major issues. WE MEDIA Director Andrew Nachison collected the answers for a tentative call to action, the wikied draft of which can be read here. The Forum’s last panel was pulled to address the same-titled concluding panel : Call to Action / The We Media Global Initiative, with the following members
– Jeff Belk (Qualcomm)
– Graeme Ferguson (Vodafone)
– Scott Heiferman (Meetup)
– Katherine von Jan (Infinia)
with William C. Weiss and Andrew Nachison as moderators
– Jeff Belk commented on how content and technology were wrapped together in the conference, and how technology is going to change in the next 5 or 10 years. Also, the bottum-uo and top-down issues are an US- anglo-centric issue, as he has witnessed things in developpimg countries done in ways that cannot be done in western countries. Mobile telephone was also very much used during the Forum, specially by those participants who didn’t use a laptop.
– Katherine von Jan is a cultural strategist ; her company, Infinia, looks into comsumer insights to elicit comsumer patterns in the next 10-15 years. She feels that consumers were absent from the conversation, specially that as they are now digitally linked, they can follow their inner drives and adjust their purchasing power to their likings. They do not go for marketted products imposed on them. As a consumer herself, she wants to listen and understand consumers first.
– Scott Heiferman from Meetup emphasizes on how people interested in less-publicized subjects meet thanks to Internet. When people have the power to unite and stand up for themselves, they do so, and MeetUp proves it. Meet Up went from free to fees, because their structure has to be paid for. That change first led to distrust whereby they lost half their traffic, but Scott Heiferman says Meet Up now has more people meeting up than ever before.
– Graeme Ferguson from Vodafone says that paying downloads are rising, in part because the price is low
questions answers questions from the floor :
– Katherine von Jan ; community can build on brand names, there is an opportunity for media companies to adapt and surf on a healthy brand. Companies have to be partners, co-create and not just sponsor.
– floor comment : the “WE” of WE MEDIA was not heard much
– Scott Heiferman (Meetup) : is it WE public or WE companies ?
Andrew Nachison invites the floor to pronounce itself on what can be done to build trust, based on the afore-mentionned draft.
– Suw Charman : the best thing to foster trust is to listen to people with experience : bloggers in the first place, because they know what they are talking about.
TAG: wemedia