courtesy
IPA Social kicked off quite nicely two weeks ago with a big old event / ‘unconference’ at the IPA.
There were about 80 people in attendance and there’s since been a few debates about the event and about the 10 principles.
A few things struck me on the evening of the event and I’ve been mulling over them since.
1) The 90 / 9 / 1 principle is alive and well on the internet as well as in real life
We work in a industry of extremely opinionated, knowledged, curious and interested people. Recently, there’s been a lot of interest in all things social – otherwise the IPA Social launch event would not have completely sold out. The event attendees had a lot to talk about, as seen from the amount of chatter during the ‘unconference’ section of the event and the pub chat afterwards.
What was most interesting and surprising for me was the unwillingness of the attendees to ask questions during the event or to host one of the ‘unconferences’. When James was going around the audience trying to get questions and hosts, it really was like pulling teeth. I was shocked at the shyness of people who (for the most part) are more that happy to share what they think or their ideas in other circumstances. Was it stage fright? Fear of speaking out in a large group of people?
The next day, Graeme launched the IPA Social Facebook page in order to harness some of the questions, comments and thinking that came out of the IPA Social launch event. James gamely put a few questions out on the discussion board to which only a few people responded, despite there being over 100 members of the group.
This led me to think that…
2) Some people just want the answers handed to them and want to be told what to do
It’s funny how hard it is sometimes to get people to just think for themselves – behaviour that books like Nudge and Herd go into extensively. Some of the feedback from the event was that it was “too fluffy” and “there should’ve been more presentations and less talking”.
Is this one of the reasons why there’s been very little debate on the Facebook group? Have the right questions not been asked? Do people care? I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I have the sense that with this topic, some are just waiting to be given the answers.
What do you think?
