KonzeptioNerd

MedienMittwoch: Twittin’ about WebTV

Apparently, last month’s MedienMittwoch left me kind of wordless. Klaus Kofler tried valiently to address the looming economic crisis with the pure teachings of LOHAS. 40 minutes stage time left him just enough room to rehash the same points of analysis that we’d been reading in every editorial for the past four weeks and a handful of recommendations that remained rather dry. Hard work to take a topic like this, no panel partners, and engage an audience that I’m sure came partly driven by the IHK’s New Year’s reception that was announced for after the presentation.

But if the MedienMittwoch at Leo Burnett’s told us anything, it’s that the topic is only half the fun, the other half is about networking. And if you serve up drinks and small salmony nibbly things, people will happily sit through a less than inspiring podium and then rush to the buffet and spend the rest of the evening in engaged conversation. Without the drinks, the presentation can be no end exciting, people will scatter soon afterwards and seek refreshment and conversation elsewhere. Ergo, if MedienMittwoch wants to work as a networking event for the media industry, the beverage lineup is at least as important as the list of speakers.

Tonight, we seem to be getting the best of both worlds: a promise of snacks, a (cash! duh!) bar and a panel discussion that pulls out all the stops: Live-Blogging (by yours truely), a Twitter hashtag (#medienmittwoch, new&improved: #m2), feedback on questions posed via Twitter, active inclusion of audience (including outing Twitterers ;-) video trailers on a big screen and a discussion that appears to slowly drift away from its erstwhile script. If you want to know how it went, read my live-blog (see link above) - it’s in German, but it’s got an uncharacteristically high number of comments.

[Here's where I had to stop writing that night, the following paragraphs were added three days later.]

When the panel ended, I had exactly 3 minutes of battery life left (on a five-years-old PowerBook 12″!), so I didn’t manage a conclusion, neither over there nor here (where I wrote simultaneously). So, for closure and by special request, what did I think about this month’s Medienmittwoch on “Who brings quality to WebTV”? 

Best MedienMittwoch ever. Really. The ambiance, the networking opportunities (or should I say, incentives?), the onstage-action, the inclusion of social media, the involvement of the audience throughout the panel (instead of the usualy “Any questions?” at the end). But as for the take-away, ah, well. 

MedienMittwoch has been largely conceived by advertisers (or marketers) for advertisers and their clientele. The event had a general “WebTV” in its title, but “advertising” in the subline and it showed. With this filter applied, all everyone (onstage, that is) looked at was how brands and advertisers can work with WebTV and “quality” was soon reduced to “quality of infrastructure”. I think it’s quite incredible how advertisers still believe that anyone but advertisers will go to any medium just in order to view advertising (and, unsurprisingly, no-one in the audience bought this).

In fact, the audience quite vocally demanded a shift in focus and complained about the single-minded and all too limiting turn the night had taken: in the room, on Twitter, in the blog comments. I know how much work it is line up a knowledgeable and engaging podium for MedienMittwoch - let alone people who are willing to enter into a checkered diskussion with people onstage and off. But maybe after the audience had been encouraged to be and was so open about their preferences and expectations to look beyond the event horizon of advertising (*), the creators of MedienMittwoch can pick up the feedback and work with it.

(*) I remember this tendency was already quite apparent during the mobile media MedienMittwoch, which was also dominated by the advertisers’ points of view.

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