Last night’s talk from Fact Curator Heather Corcoran proved inspiring stuff for many bloggers, photographers and other assorted online media types – but didn’t win universal approval.
Speaking at second of the Social Media Cafe event, Heather gave the audience at The Northern some insight into networked artists’ communities and also the sort of work whe was interested in.
The short video below should give you some idea of the talk but there’s also plenty of links below to more coverage of the night and Heather’s own delicious network where many of the links discussed can be found.
But not everyone found the evening to be thought-provoking. At the One Greener Day blog, Tim Difford thought the crowd had been silenced by politeness during Heather’s talk: “Lovely lady though I’m sure she is, turned up with an online connection to some pleasant enough non-controversial arty bobbins obviously thinking, ‘that’ll do’.
“It wasn’t enough really as she mumbled through link after link of fractionally-diverting, grant-attracting shenanigans. However, to her credit and with Paul Dirac-like aplomb, Heather inadvertantly created Anti-Twitter, as the assembled crowd, reserved and British to the last, refused to comment or acknowledge this faux-pas ridden ‘elephant in the room’ on the back-channel.”
I’d love to hear what you think of that analysis or anything else from the night – feel free to get stuck into the comments below.
Pictures by Julia at Los Cuadernos notebooks
Blog post from Jon Clements; A geek-sters Paradise.
A couple of Qik live streams from me here and from MartinSFP here.
Dim Sum Digital 
Sarah and everyone,
Thanks again for organising the event. I think with this one we might have seen an existing but not easily noticeable difference in how we all understand Social Media. I think for some people Social Media may be more interesting in connection with Online Marketing, whilst others are interested in Social Media for the artists. When I first attended Futuresonic in 2006, I was gobsmacked by what then sounded like a hardcore geeky talk (I apologise if this sounds slightly ambiguous, given the recently added connotations of the work “geek”). I’m sure I’d manage much better today, but the truth stands: it is hard to marry Art and Technology, but when you saw the example of successful unions, you want to see more of those.
But as they say, good or bad comments are always good, it’s when there are no comments that we should worry. I think one thing that can be done is to actually survey the interests associated with Social Media, and then it might be easier to see where we can be going with speakers and topics.
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I like Julia’s idea of surveying the varying interests in social media. I’m sure the group’s wiki could handle this.
Tim
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Hi Julia
Thanks for your comments – thoughtful as ever.
I think you are right, social media interest is such a broad church that it will be hard to please everyone all the time. One person’s geekiness is another’s dumbed down.
Personally I thought Heather’s talk was interesting being in an area I don’t have a lot of experience with and that she came across as well-informed and warm.
It’s going to be interesting to see what sort of debates are put forward for future events.
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