Objectives, Audience and Making Events That Work [Pt. 2]
A couple months back I read an entertaining post, followed by some even better commentary. Some dude contributed to the story’s comments and one remark really stuck with me:
“… [social media is] predicated on this notion that marketing and saturation and content (gotta have content!) are more important than quality.”
No one—not the audiences that matter anyways—gives a damn about saturation, marketing and content if the quality is garbage. If you’re failing to solve the initial problem you started with but still throwing a great event then we all lose. Authenticity presupposes quality, however. The focus then really starts with authentic problem solving. The real challenge is identifying complimenting objectives—or problems—within the community when building authentic events.
Falling into the marketing trap is easy—and something we all do. Admittedly, I’m guilty of habitually placing marketing over quality. I obsess over what my Tumblelog [content] theme displays as ; or, if my Posterous simultaneously posts to all my social networks [saturation]; and, if my Twitter sidebar design colour is d6d366e, NOT e7e1dd5 like the sidebar border. What’s worse is that I am doing this all before I even pick up the pen or begin typing! Participants and organizers alike, are all caught up in drinking our own Kool-Aid that we’ve forgetting why we even showed up to the party.
