The Glasgow media scene saw the team from Podcast Matters hosted their first New Media Breakfast yesterday and one tagged along to see what the chat was. A couple of people asked why I was going along as the team had been quite explicit that it was a 101 lesson for people looking to learn about new and social media, not for those who already know a little about it. But I wanted to go along a) to support them, b) I think you can always learn something new in this field, c) it was for charity and d) to see who else turned up.

Amongst those who were there:

• ex-Herald editor Charles McGhee (who has now set up his own operation, surprising all the gossips who thought he was a shoo-in for a senior position at the 2014 Commonwealth Games) and it was good – as well as surprising – to see him there because Charles never struck me (from what I’ve read about him and from those who worked with him) as someone who was that interested in digital.
• It was also good to see Martin Cryans, one of Scotland’s top PR operators – and head of Firefly Comms in Scotland – attend as Martin has always had a keen eye on things that can be important and is really sharp at spotting when something can be worth doing and when it isn’t (Disclaimer: Martin was my boss when at Beattie and I learned a lot from him. Some of it I even put into practice.)
• Kate Trussler from Platform PR also turned up. Now Kate’s not only a senior type on the Scottish board of the CIPR, she is someone who gets new/social/digital PR.
• The Daily Record’s Digital Editor Iain Hepburn also gave up some time off to attend (and he posted his thoughts over at Please Stand By).
• New media analytics expert Jim Williams.

The point being, the crowd had a good mix. And some thoughts have been posted by various people on Twitter with the hashtags #nmb and/or #newmediabrekkie which are worth a read. I posted some initial thoughts during the event vis Twitter (as did Iain – at more than one point we probably looked like the two grumpy old guys from the Muppet Show).

Anyway, onto the event. Overall, it was fine. Gordon White was an engaging host, going through the presentation at a fair pace and coming into his own at the Q&A afterwards. The presentation was what you would expect and had the nice touch of reminding people that there are networking sites out there that dwarf what the Western World uses (I always use the ‘Orkut bigger than Facebook in India‘ bit there, these guys went with something else), however it did have some dodgy moments:

• Dear God, the music. It was like a speed metal try-out for Scotsport or something. It was just a bit much for 8am (or perhaps I’m just getting a bit too old)
• There was a slide which mentioned a couple of celebs having more followers on Twitter than there was population of Scotland and Northern Ireland, which was easily checked and turned out to be false (Gordon provides a rebuttal on this point at Iain Hepburn’s blog)
• There was a line about how ‘companies will go to consumers’ instead of the other way about and I think that’s completely false. For a start that already happens and is called either direct marketing or spam depending on delivery. What I think Gordon meant to say was that companies will be there for consumers on more friendly platforms – blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on. The companies will be there for the consumers in that sense but they can’t go to them as directly as they implied here – and if they do, for many it will be seen as spamming.
• ‘Everyone should be involved in social media’. Oh no they shouldn’t. They should see if it is appropriate for them – regardless of being an individual, a SME or a multinational – and then decide.
• Handing out free shots of Guinness was a nice touch, even at 8.30am. The free cups (which I left behind) were also cute.
• There was also talk of a blogger who spoke about the birth of his child and how apparently this made his blog hits go up and sales went up because people felt an empathy with him. Now, that’s a tricky area and can come off as the equivalent of a politician kissing a baby. It’s manipulative. Everyone accepts that bloggers write about a myriad of topics and personal life does come into that, but it’s a minefield area and no-one ever seems to turn round and think ‘hang on, am I violating my kid’s privacy by doing this? In years to come will people pick on them or laugh at them because of this?’ Anyway, I won’t dwell on the topic as I have to try and find clients so I can afford my firstborn child’s birthday party soon…
• “If you have material, put it up on all the platforms” Yeah, carry on. Let me know how long it takes to upload video to every site there is. In all seriousness, pick the sites and platforms that work for you or your clients. Don’t go overboard. Keep your sites few to keep figures high.
• “One of our clients Fakebake was having people mention them every two minutes online yesterday.” That’s a great claim to make – and you can’t grudge the guys for sneaking in a bit of ‘look how good we are at this’ apart from the fact that it’s wildly not true. There was a handful of mentions on Twitter and a hunt across the Google suites (blogs, news, etc) didn’t show the necessary 700 or so mentions that would have been generated. Perhaps I picked it up or heard it wrong though. (The point being though that in this age of transparency, we can’t bluff up figures to look good – especially if in a crowd where people can check with their iPhones and other devices.)
• There was also a bit of boot-putting into traditional media and PR companies but that’s for another blogpost.

I know I’m coming across as picky. I’m not meaning to be, for a few reasons:

• The team had the balls and dedication to go and set this up. That’s no mean feat
• It was informative. Not just to see who turned up, but I learned that YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine. Now I don’t know if you can call YT a search engine. To me, it’s a video site with a search function just as Amazon is an online store with a search button. Google and Bing on the other hand are search engines. But it’s a fact that’s being bandied about (and I learned from Andrew Wheeler and Ciaran McNulty that YT doesn’t use Google as the search engine, despite being owned by Google)
• Gordon made some good points like “always approach this from a user’s perspective” (yes, so Flash websites, go see how well your site is doing at tapping the iPhone market)
• It is nice to get out and about and meet people doing social media or are interested in it (this obsession with doing it at the crack of dawn is a swine though).

The guys are planning more – in Glasgow and Edinburgh – and they’ll be well worth going to. For those interested in these sort of meetings, there’s also a good gathering of social media types in Edinburgh every Friday morning and the 4iP 38 Minutes group get together on a regular basis too.

I’ll definitely go back for the second one. If you are interested in social or digital media communicating, you should as well.