I spotted the word in an article describing my input at one of the upcoming events I am attending, so I want to get this out of my system: I am a part-time writer, full-time teacher, observer of odd trends, trouble-maker, critique, and occasional ‘help desk’ sherpa (at least in my day job) when it comes to the infuriating things we have to do with computers. However, that does not make me a guru. Please!

FOR THE RECORD, I ignore gurus. I avoid them like the swine flu. I carry a hand sanitizer to clean up every time I am introduced to someone who calls him or herself one. Social media experts/gurus/ninjas are a dime a dozen. Advertising Age recently ran a piece about there being some 181, 000 of these types.

The entry for the word guru on Wikipedia (which usually excels in dehydrated language) says it is “used to cover anyone who acquires followers, especially by exploiting their naiveté, due to the inflationary use of the term.”

There’s a deeper discussion of the term here, by author, B.R. Sharma. He says that “the absence of a guru, though, does not preclude learning and wisdom.” The corollary to which, I suppose, is: “the presence of a guru is no guarantee of understanding.”

Ok, I lied about the hand sanitizer part. But you get the point.

The ‘knights,’ as Bates Chairman puts it, will include:

Shehara De Silva – GM, Marketing, Janashakthi Insurance

Virginia Sharma - VP of Marketing, Communications and Corporate Citizenship, IBM India/South Asia.

Dinesh Perera -Head of Digital Business / Creative Director, Bates

Nalaka Gunawardena – Citizen Journalist / LIRNEasia

Lakshaman Bandaranayake — Multi-Platform Publisher / Chairman, Vanguard Management

Shamindra Kulamanage – Magazine Editor

Ajitha Kadirgamar — Journalist, Social Media Specialist

Nimal Gunewardena – Moderator / Chairman & CEO at Bates Strategic Alliance

Here’s how the media has reported it, calling this an ‘interrogation’:

The interviewers will each straddle a different facet of the topic raging from social media’s use in marketing, adoption by ad agencies, vital value in PR, impact on mainstream editorial media, its mobilisation by citizen journalists and monitoring and analytics.

Not sure about a round table being interrogation technique. I’m there to learn as much as I could from these eminent folk. More details of the event, here.

Transmedia has been advocated by some as one solution to the attention-deficit problem that communicators and brand managers face. I’ve interviewed a few people on some ‘secrets’ of digital storytelling in my book, Chat Republic, but this explanation in a just-published article in Communication World magazine clarifies it even further.

Transmedia storytelling, says Alison Norrington, fragments a narrative, defines hotspots within the story(world) and thereby engages different demographics.The fragmented narrative engages the ‘pull’ method to draw people’s voices around a theme or story –as opposed to the old ‘push’ method that didn’t leave space for the audience to talk back.

Want to read the whole article? Its available free here on the spanking new IABC Digital site for CW.

Here’s something that’s being used to promote the Round Table discussion around Chat Republic.

Make what you will of those floating around the ‘sea of memes’  and ‘sea of opinions.’

Image, courtesy Bates Strategic Alliance

(Don’t bother Gogling it, as there are some 441 million results, some of it with the predictable talk about signage etc.)

The Voice of the Brand belongs to two groups, depending on whom you speak to:

(a) The people who define the brand, and “know” what it stands for, and articulate it in their channels. This is really what I would call Brand Talk. Sometimes I cynically call it Bland Talk.

(b) The folks to buy it or use it, and talk it up in their own communities, and sometimes on the brand-owned channels. These are, arguably, more authentic Brand Voices. They tell you why people are using the product or paying attention.

But let’s cut through all this and look at brand conversations, to figure out what are the most valuable conversations? These are what social media helps us unearth: those incomplete, poorly phrased sentences, the angst-ridden, or cult-like exchanges in a forum, or comments section. Those self-appointed ambassadors and know-it-alls…

Sadly, brand managers are not always up to snuff on handling the latter; this sort of anarchy; of data-mining conversations; of engaging with those the bosses instinctively want to block or ban those outside voices from the website.

ONE OF THE FEW AD-MEN who bucks the trend and critiques one-way Brand Talk, calls for true brand conversations.

Nimal Gunewardena, CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance, happens to be moderating a round table discussion I will be part of, when I launch my book, Chat Republic, in Sri Lanka in a few weeks.

His screed about Brand Conversations, called for an abandonment of ‘sales talk’ and the 30-second-commercial mindset. It seemed akin to 1st century monks arguing against using calligraphy.

“It’s time to start thinking beyond that 30 second commercial. It’s time to combine the power of TV with the connectivity and engagement power of digital and social media. It’s time to explore new formats. Two-way conversations, rather than one-way broadcasts. It’s time to talk to communities who have common interests.

To which one person commented:

“oh how our vocabularies have changed recently! We are all part of a social media revolution and it’s simply not possible to have our heads deep in the sand any more.”

It’s so easy to provide knee-jerk responses to the role of conversations: To engage, to discuss, to share etc. I try to pry these apart in Chat Republic, and encourage readers to think of conversations as the ‘operating system’ for their community (OK, maybe the brand) they manage.

We cannot bury our brand-saturated heads in the bland.

Chatter is not about amplification. It’s about deeper conversations that happen when we meet someone who suggests “Let’s grab a coffee and chat about…” It’s about shared ideas on an Intranet, conversation threads, if you will.

I came across this feature known as Chatter at salesForce.com that is what I might call an industrial strength Chat App. (Not to be confused with Chat Apps.). It’s a tool that could be embedded in organizations to help mine the knowledge out of conversations.

I thought it was awesome how GE Aviation uses it. More than that, it connects “a machine” (the GEnx engine on its DreamLiner) ”to a social network.”

Bits and atoms –not just opinions and marketing blather –are powerful when combined in conversation threads.

Use only as directed

More about my book, Chat Republic, here

I am ambivalent about reading long-form books exclusively on my Kindle. But I realize that many of you may want that option, especially if you travel a lot.

The book, after all, is all about balancing our digital and analog lives!

• Amazon link

• Book website
  

To this end, read this by someone who predicted citizens’ potential:

If the day comes when millions of people go about their lives while wearing sensor-equipped wearable computers, the population could become a collective surveillant: Big everybody.

That was Howard Rheingold, in Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

How will citizen participation take shape when everyone is a reporter, a photo-journalist? It’s easy to be cynical, but I have talked to many people about this, in my book, Chat Republic, and have to admit that you win some, you lose some: freedom / security.

Crowd-sourcing, whether it is investigating health issues or knowledge is always a good thing.

Here’s a quick update for all my friends, family and colleagues who have asked.

Chat Republic is now listed on Amazon. A Kindle version will follow in a week.