BlogWorks: Blogging On

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October 18, 2005

Blogging On

I’m here at the Copacabana Nightclub in New York for the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit, where music and passion are always in fashion. It’s definitely an interesting venue. The stage has a black backdrop and strong stage lighting for the live webcasts, while we in the audience get softer lights comes from the red Japanese lanterns. Lunch was in the Carmen Miranda room. As befits a social media conference, several cool tools are available for participants – the webcasts, podcasts, an event blog, and a social networking site.

Some of the highlights from Monday afternoon’s sessions:
· Lisa Poulson of Burson-Marsteller interviewed Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications at CBS Television, on “Communicating with your customers in times of crisis.” While the basic lessons of crisis communications still remain (acknowledge the problem, fix the problem, aggressively get the message out), the speed of bad news has increased since the days of the Tylenol crisis. The news cycle, between online editions of mainstream media and blogs, is dramatically shorter now, Schwartz noted, “so now the anxiety is just 24/7.”
“The difference is the time frame and the potential for any story -- no matter how bogus or transitory -- to flip out of control,” Schwartz said. He bemoaned the lack of fact-checking on some blogs, as well as in some mainstream media. On a day when the top news stories on BlogPulse were all of The New York Times reporting on its own problematic reporter, Judith Miller, Schwartz said, “I guess my plea would be to hold yourselves to the same high standards as The New York Times,” to much laughter.

· Steve Rubel moderated a discussion with bloggers Shel Israel, Deborah Schultz of Six Apart and Vicki Warker, who is Sprint’s business blogger, based on the Cluetrain theme “Markets are conversations.” They explored questions arising from corporate blogging, such as how much time to spend on customer service complaints and whether tightly controlled messages are best in some circumstances, such as a new product launch.

BlogOn2005