Amplified 08 – connecting the dots in the social media maze

Yesterday I went along, like the rest of the Twiterrati, to Amplified 08 at the HQ of NESTA. Amplified is the new brain child of NESTA and Toby Moores (founder of Sony game Buzz whom I recently interviewed for a fascinating piece ‘in the mind of the serial disruptive innovator’ for a project for Creative Sheffield). It bills itself as a ‘network of networks’ that connects people from around the country who are developing leading-edge thinking in using social media technologies.

Around 200 people were there from a surprisingly broad range of disciplines – teachers, media producers, techno geeks, citizen journalists - a mix of ages and personalities but with a strong male bias. A fairly lose structure of discussions made for a somewhat chaotic space – having been to the OneMedia open space conference recently I found the sheer volume of people here a bit unwieldy to really have useful conversations – but in general the spirit and the ideas were full of vibrancy and excitement to connect and share ideas, and it was nice to put some names to faces and meet new folks outside of my usual digital media bubble.

The sessions were as diverse as the attendees, but tended to focus on changing the world a bit by changing a bit of the world, and what web tools can do to enable that. I popped into quite a few – some were really useful like Online Video, others a bit unstructured and meandering so I think it pays for session curators to be a bit better prepared to present their ideas to help focus the discussion. There’s probably a learning curve here and some delegate education needed on how to successful do open space or semi-curated events like this so people get the best out of it. We were all told to tweet after each session so there are heaps of tweets you can trawl through here.

On the whole I found it probably a bit too ahead-of-the-curve for my own more commercially focused practice (yes, me is un-cool consultant) – and sometimes I wonder if it’s best to go to ‘what you know’ where you can contribute and learn more or to throw yourself into the least relevant and known subject to see what you can learn. I did a bit of both – maybe at the next one I’ll throw myself into the deep end and go to more of the blogging-will-change-the-world instead of is-home-taping-killing-music sessions I usually choose.

I bumped into Toby then next morning at Tuttle London – many of the Amplified Individuals were somewhat muted after a night of boozing. Whereas I went over to a church hall in Leytonstone to film a pop video dressed as a school mistress (I kid you not – coming soon!) til the wee hours instead. Toby says the next step is to hold regular networks across the country to start to connect the dots – with sessions in the Midlands, South Coast, London, the North and maybe other places too. Hopefully the Amplified network will somehow will feed into my own plans to improve the connectivity and networking of creative thinkers in my hometown of Nottingham.