DIGITAL MEDIA

Outside the queue is so long it extends down the stairs and out the door. Inside, the free drinks are plentiful, as are uber-cool haircuts, carefully untucked shirts, expensive handbags and chic-not-geek frames. Not that many years ago a meet-up of almost any online gang would have been a very different scene but this is the new media crowd. About 700 attendees of the Clickaholics networking event are expected to squeeze into the upmarket lounge for what might just be the industry bash of the year.

It’s RVSP only, sponsored by several advertising agencies and filled with those working in marketing, publishing, search, usability, consulting, video, directory and mobile services.

And it’s going to be a long night.

Three days prior, a similarly crowded though smaller Sydney venue hosted many of the same participants as they gathered to hear a TV executive discuss his network’s online strategy. Followed, of course, by more of the obligatory card-swapping and elbow bending.

With a range of events in almost all major Australian cities, those who work in online sectors have no shortage of real-world opportunities to meet. There are two Clickaholics events in Sydney each year, one in Melbourne and one in Brisbane. In the West, the first Australian ‘PodCamp’ comes to Perth in October. It will be followed by Perth’s nine-day ByteMe digital content festival in December.

Events run the spectrum from informal fun, such as the Brisbane Blogger Meet-up or the Geek Trivia night organised recently by News Digital Media and Web Directions, to more practical events such as PodCamp, which are essentially self-organised by attendees who contribute to a planning wiki. Then there are more stage-managed, entertaining events such as the Fourth Estate Domain (FED) sessions, where technology and media executives are interviewed chat-show style before mingling with their audience.

“We always get superstar CEOs and big-name digital pioneers as our guests,” claims host and co-founder Mike Walsh. “Not that we let them off lightly.”

The Hong Kong-based consultant is somewhat of a celebrity himself in these circles, having worked in online strategy for old media such as News Ltd and now authoring The Fourth Estate newsletter. Walsh flies to Australia regularly for the FED events in Sydney and Melbourne.

“There are no speeches or presentations. The format is more like a talk show, with the two of us chatting on the couch. It’s a great way to range quickly from personal stories about how guests got started to more detailed strategic topics – hopefully while keeping the audience entertained,” Walsh says.

NETWORKING AND SOCIALISING

Another increasingly familiar format is employed by a regular meeting called WebJam, which is run every three months at a Sydney city hotel by Web 2.0 afficionados Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod, Anson Parker and Tim Lucas (see ww.webjam.com.au).

“There’s usually 15-20 speakers and they have three minutes each to present a web 2.0 project,” says regular attendee and social networking expert Laurel Papworth. “A lot are just concepts, not built or perhaps just halfway through.”

“Then attendees will SMS vote for the one they think is the best.

“It’s like Australian Idol for geeks - the people cheer!”

The crowd at Clickaholics is proving to be just as noisy – and little wonder.

“It’s the largest networking event for those purely in the interactive space,” says founder John Lynch, nominating media, digital television and mobile industries as focus points.

Whichever the area of interest, one could be forgiven for assuming there’s a mandatory amount of socialising and glass-raising required in online media. That’s not to suggest parties and meet-ups are trivial, however. Far from it, argues Ben Barren, founder of Feedcorp and its Aussie blog search engine Gnoos.com.au.

“These mee-tups are about the only time we leave our computers,” the Melbourne-based Barren says. “We work a lot. We’re passionate about what we do. We’re up all the time blogging. We’re not 9-to-5ers.”

Indeed, back at Clickaholics, another attendee yells above the din to list his involvement in various associations and point out fellow participants in the crowd.

Working groups, standards panels and committees are where online practitioners can provide an arguably quieter, perhaps more sober contribution to their industry or particular niche. There are, for example, plenty of committees and groups for members of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

“Members have the opportunity to participate in sub-committees in several different areas, helping to shape the future of online advertising in Australia,” IAB Australia general manager Patty Keegan tells Digital Media.

“These include a standards committee which has developed rich media guidelines, an education committee which is focused on recruitment, staffing and training and the blueprint committee which is focused on online measurement.”

Member networking nights are currently in planning to start later this year, although the IAB’s night of nights remains the Interactive Advertising Awards, a major networking opportunity in its own right. The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) awards are another headline industry event.

Of course, few join industry associations for the plaques and speeches.

“For some it’s meeting others and making business contacts, for others it’s a chance to work on initiatives that help grow the industry. It’s all volunteer work with AIMIA,” CEO John Butterworth says.

The AIMIA mobile guidelines, released in early September, are a good example.

“We have a small army of all the right volunteers. It means it has been a widespread process with all the people in the industry that should have been involved. It means we get guidelines that are hard to argue with because everyone who should have been involved hasbeen involved.”

As with most organisations, some contribute more than others. There would be 140 hard-core AIMIA contributors in NSW alone, Butterworth estimates. “They’re the ones involved at a chapter level or in one of the groups. That’s a large pool of people.”

Industry associations might seem the more serious option for those seeking to meet peers and get involved, but it’s not a case of all work and no play.

“The flipside to all of this is what happens in the evenings. Plenty of fun stuff goes on. The AIMIA Intimates is run in most states and it’s far more social. There’s a business theme, some speakers and then plenty of time for networking,” Butterworth says

THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY

For industries facilitated by the internet, practitioners naturally turn to technology for myriad tasks – connecting withpeers being one that is increasingly well-serviced.

Social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and Orkut are the darlings of online community-building, so it’s of little surprise to find associations such as AIMIA dipping a toe. It has a Facebook group with 265 members.

“Social networks for us are an extension of what we do,” Butterworth says. “Social networks give people greater reach and also the chance to maintain relationships.”

That said, the online group is hardly expected to revolutionise the overall organisation. “Our physical events get sold out time and time again. There are just certain things you can’t do online. We’re never going to get away from that. It’s human nature,” Butterworth says.

“When things are casual and relaxed and you can as easily be chatting with a CEO as a junior consultant – people tend to be more open to opportunities. Online networking is much more focused,” FED’s Walsh says. “You only have a few lines of text to make an impression. And most people’s response to unsolicited messages from people they don’t know is simply to ignore them.”

Nevertheless, there are influential groups spawning almost entirely from online participation, such as 2web (www.2web.com.au), a group of Australian online entrepreneurs and bloggers including The Podcast Network’s Cameron Reilly, Feedcorp co-founder Ben Barron and Omnidrive founder Nik Cubrilovic, among other local digerati. It’s a group that has in turn encouraged the emergence of others– one way or another.

“They made a big mistake when they remarked that there are no women in Web 2.0,” Papworth recalls.

Papworth, who consults on online strategies to companies such as Network Ten and teaches a university course on social media at the University of Sydney, was incensed at the comment.

“They knew me. We all go to the same conferences. So, I wrote a blog post and I flamed them,” she admits. And the war of words continued. “A couple of them came back to me and said that they had not meant anything by it, but Cameron joined in the flame war and said come on, make your own, ‘hike up your skirts, girls’.”

The Facebook group Wild Wicked Wanton Women of Web 2.0 was created – a group whose members are each assigned the title ‘female 2.0’, except for the solitary ‘token’ male, Melbourne-based Dave King from new media agency NetX.

So far the group has attracted women who fit that title – or at least the Web 2.0 bit. They all work with or have an interest in web 2.0 applications, says Papworth.

“There was one woman who signed up with a very dodgy cyber-sex-like name and another who was selling juice, but I’d say they are gone because Facebook is pretty good at blocking spam.”

Most online groups will eventually meet offline, although not necessarily at their own event.

Despite countless messages and postings to each other, Barren and fellow blogging identity Duncan Reilly only met in person at a media event in September, Barren says.

Barren is a founding member of the Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade or MTUB, which meets in person on a semi-regular basis. Twitter (twitter.com) is an online application that allows users to update their status frequently throughout the day by answering with the question ‘what are you doing?’ with postings of 140 characters only.

For the uninitiated, it might best be described as a cross between SMS, instant messaging, blogging and Facebook status updates. Those who update what they are doing can also ‘follow’ the day-to-day activities of others, with friends’ actions appearing on a newsfeed. There are 75 other users that Barren ‘follows’, while 250 follow his updates.

“While Facebook helps you find people you went to school with, Twitter is more for keeping up with people in the industry and what they’re doing that day. It’s great for networking without having a meeting.”

“MTUB gives those who twitter together a chance to meet-up,” Barren says. “These are classic internet meet-ups. The first question when you say hello to someone is ‘what’s your user name?’,” he laughs.

Not all online groups rely on social networking services. Digital Ministry, the organiser and more serious side of the Clickaholics’ networking events, built a standalone online forum for its now 3000 members. Founder John Lynch is sceptical about the value social networks can realistically promise the industry.

“I don’t see social networks as offering much for industry uses, although Facebook has reached a tipping point,” Lynch says.

“I was on there for months without seeing much activity and now it’s gone from one or two requests to join a group to 30 a day.”

Lynch is also wary of the ease at which some can drive group membership.

“Our approach has always been to try to limit our participants to those with a real interest in the area. It’s better to have 10 in a room who know what they are on about than 100 who maybe don’t. The key thing is having a professional interest and passion.”

“It’s almost too easy to set up groups on Facebook … It’s easy to build a big audience if the target is completely vague. Nearly 1000 people joined Australasian Digital Media group on Facebook in a month,” Lynch notes.

The Facebook Australasian Digital Media group, described by the tag line “You work in the industry, be part of this group,” is a closed group, meaning new members need to be invited by current members or approved by administrators. It currently has 990 members. B&T Digital Media magazine’s own Facebook group also numbers in the hundreds.

After a dalliance with Facebook, Digital Ministry returned to its original digs, citing member poaching, poor branding and policies that prevent large groups mass emailing their members (http://www.digitalministry.com.au/champion-blogs/an-email-to-facebook.html).

The move could be described as brave, given the snowballing popularity of social networks. “I think they are focusing too much on how they want to manage their clients, not what their members actually want,” Papworth suggests. “If your clients are there, you must be there. And if you decide to create a different community, it had better be damn good.”

The figures for Facebook are very compelling, she adds. Ninety three per cent of members check it once a month, 60% every day.

“These figures are extremely high. Building an alternative would be very interesting,” Papworth says.

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