Just got back to New York from an invigorating and slightly unsettling weekend near Boston that was proceeded by 2 days in LA at VirtualWorldsHollywood.

My mind and emotions are all scrambled up even as I head over to Bridgewaters in Fulton Mall for the PMA Digital Conference where I am due to speak, on a metrics panel, at 11 AM.

But here’s what I want talk about.

Sometimes we can only go so far with our work and deliverables because of the organization and situations one is in. This is particularly true for Social Media, but it also applies to many other things, including Web Analytics and even Search Engine work.

Here’s what I observed and what I make of it.

When I have produced reports for stakeholders I have noticed the closer my report became to what they originally specified, usually in writing, word for word, the less it was what they actually wanted and needed.

The process of producing, almost word for word, what they asked for let to new requirements which led to a report that morphed into something different.

A lot of Social Media and Web Analytics is like that; we’re not really dealing with a set of deliverables as much as a set of processes that lead to conversations and where reports are just milestones in that process.

When we fund projects, I think what we are really funding is conversations that lead to some deliverables, of not, and should be re evaluated periodically. But we need to look more at the conversation and what it leads to and less at specific reports and deliverables that was funded, initially.

It gets really interesting when we look at Social Media. Most organizations aren’t too sure what it is, what it’s value is, and where it belongs in the scheme of things. They don’t know how to measure success of Social Media either.

It’s probably too early for most organizations to benefit that much from Social Media because they are not structured to, and for one other reason.

The reason is the evolution of social networks and identity. We need to get to a point, as Forrester Research mentioned (Groundswell, Charlene Li) where Social Networks are “air”. You go to a site and your friends and the social graph are pulled in from a Cloud of data.

Not Facebook, not MySpace, but the Cloud, where your digital Social Graph resides.

We will then evaluate experience with the Social Graph in mind, for all enabled sites we visit and spend time on.

And the Social Graph measurement will also, only then, start showing up in what we now call Site Analytics.

New tools will evolve to measure the social graph activity across sites and business entities.

And then, Social Media will get funded, much as Search and Web Analytics are now being funded and have a place in most medium to large businesses.

But before all that happens it’s hard to see how Social Media will get that far no matter what anyone does now.

Because we are talking process and conversations, not results or large ROI.

It’s too early.

Same thing happened this weekend with Social Media and and an organization; deliverables and where an organization is at, need to be in sync.

And now I am standing before BridgeWaters.