I got back late Saturday night from a long trip to Europe that included 6 days in London and 3 days in Rome, still a little jet lagged and under the weather from it. I took a number of videos, which I won’t embed – I’ll just provide the links (unfortunately, I can’t seem to put them in a playlist, as I have done in the past, nor am I really that interested in editing the videos, which are fairly time consuming to do – so I’d rather just put them out there, as is – watch them if your interested).
London (September 23rd – 28th) 6 public appearances
When I arrived in London early Friday morning, 9/23, I also had to give a hastily arranged last minute SEO Analytics Webinar with Bob Tripani of Instant E Training later in the day to people, mostly back in the United States – which was hectic. Fortunately, I know the subject well and had enough content to throw that presentation together, which he helped to arrange for me, based on what I already had done. My job was just to find a place to do it in London, which was easy, as I have a friend who works in the offices of the Innovation Factory, right near Farringdon Station, in London, so we did it there. I also arrange for a meetup/tweetup to occur from 6PM -9PM on Friday, September 23rd, at the Innovation Factory – a few showed up.
The weekend was my own, and was spent with friends, partly observing a Japanese Tea Ceremony in Crouch End, London, that was one of the high points of this trip. I was also hoping to find a copy of Social Media Analytics in a book store in London, but sadly, I did not succeed – even though the the inventory readout said there was a copy – I think most people in Europe would end up getting my book via Amazon.
My Talk at the COI (Center of Information) took place on September 26th, between 1:30 – 4:30 PM London time. Here’s a link to the presentation on Slideshare.com. In addition, Jon Shipley from McGraw-Hill came to the event, armed with copies of my book to give out or sell, and we had a special guest in Philip Sheldrake. The event was put on by Lisa Mame, who heads Social Media at the COI, and about 55 people showed up, including several procurement individuals from organizations such as the Royal Air Force, various museums, Royal Societies, and so on.
The audience wasn’t really there to buy books, which was OK, but more to find out how to procure platforms and information for the UK Government. My appearance had an interesting effect of provoking debate on the merit of buying any platforms given the current state of the listening systems today – but I suggested that procurement continue take place – but with a more informed buyer – which my book helps to create (the audience of informed buyers who can make a good decision, and understand their own analytics needs well enough to do so).
I also part of the Beer Diplomacy episode #83 which I posted about last week in London – the link to the video interview between Oliver Blanchard and I came out very well, I was just glad to have a room in London, right near Paddington Station, with good internet connectivity so the interview could take place, at 2AM London time. The first three days of my stay in London were in a hotel a few doors down, where the internet was horrible, so I was fortunate.
My book signing for Social Media Analytics took place Tuesday morning, September 27th (just a few hours after the Beer Diplomacy episode #83, above) at The Hospital Club, in Convent Garden, London (near Soho district) - here’s the link to the footage I took – which I just edited in YouTube to change the orientation and add stability to the view. Two representatives from McGraw-Hill came and there was footage and photos taken which will be published in a week or two, as well as a 5 minute video interview (but I don’t have the links yet). The presentation I gave at my book signing was vary similar to what I did over at the COI, the day before, so I will not repeat it here, but will post in on Slideshare.com soon.
I also was part of an Advisory Board meeting for my sponsor for the book signing in London, Integrasco.com that took place at The Union Club, in Soho. It seems that between dinner on Monday night at the Union Club (at 50 Greek Street) plus lunch and snacks after the book signing – I almost lived at the club for the better part of a day.
The following day, Wednesday, September 28th, I was back at the Innovation Factory meeting with friends – and then catching a late afternoon flight out of Gatwick airport for Rome, Italy, on EasyJet .
When I arrived at Rome it was 10PM (so I could not see much) but did find my sponsor for the event, BuzzDetector (who has a case study in CH 2 of my book) picked a nice hotel for me, Hotel Locarno – here’s a link to a video I took of the Hotel Locarno the night before I checked out on Saturday morning, October 1st. The Hotel had an old elevator (which I liked) and great internet connectivity (which I really appreciated) along with great breakfasts and a happening night club having regular events every night that were the talk of Rome. Here’s a video I took of one of those events which I attended on Friday night in Rome, right next door - it got me thinking that lately, the party seems to follow me (and I don’t have to go anywhere to find it), thanks to Gianandrea Faccini for arranging my stay and thinking about these things.
I must have frustrated Gian in my menu choices – and he had suggested the Veal dish (which I really should have had – since it turned out to be much better than what I ended up ordering) – esp in dinner on the first night – here’s a video of that.
The book signing took place on Thursday – after a interview I gave with Alessio Jacona ( you can download the audio here, if you want to listen to the entire hour of my interview). I was told by Gian my interview was the first part of the very first Social Media Listening Conference in Italy’s history – I don’t honestly know if that’s true or not, but it makes a good story – so it might as well be true.
The rest of the conference was in Italian, and had little to offer me, and as I had a cold, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind, so I often sat outside, in the warm sun, which seemed to help – and made a video which is here; I made a few more videos that afternoon but didn’t end up posting them – essentially, as the afternoon waned, the books arrived from shipping just a little too late for the event – I know that made my host and I a little unhappy – and I know, that while I had nothing to do with it (had more to do with trying to do too many things at the last minute – and Italian shipping customs), I wanted to help as much as I could – and offered to go over to Gian’s office, where the books arrived (instead of the conference area, nearby, where they should have been delivered to) and sign all 75 copies – which I did. That way, once people who came to the conference and what was to be my book signing, got a copy, they could read it instead of just hearing about my book. Hopefully, many of them already have their copies by now – and given how few book stores I saw in Europe, period, it was best for Gian to have his copies to give out directly, and they were now signed.
Gian did show me around Rome, to some extent, and I made some videos of our walk after dinner both nights that we met; here are the videos to that – some of it was magical to me, seeing Rome, really, for the first time.
Magical Night in Rome PT 1 – I was strolling along one of the main streets – Rome is a rich city of ancient and modern life merging all at once – layer by layer. Magical Night in Rome PT 2 and Magical Night in Rome PT 3 pick up the theme with more footage and I finished my evening walks of Rome with this last video of the series.
Friday, September 30th, I had all to myself – to tour Rome to my hearts content – and I did – as much as I could by going to the Vatican Museum first (unfortunately, missing the tour guide Gian set up for me – communications always seems to be a problem when traveling in Europe, I find); still, I have to admit that I really enjoyed just strolling along the Vatican Museum myself, with no set agenda. I was able to get into the Sistine Chapel, along with getting some footage before the guards stopped me. Honestly, in the manor the visits to this holy place are arranged, and the crowd there, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could enjoy the murals – especially the way one must arch one’s head up, to see them. Still, I’m glad I went, though I found what was outside the Vatican much more interesting to me, more or less, than what was in it, with a few exceptions, which often felt oppressive to me. I also saw St. Peter’s Square, 5 minutes away – which didn’t really do much for me (I don’t think I’m the target audience).
Overwhelmed by it all, I took a tour bus, and it made me realize that what I really wanted, wasn’t a tour guide of one museum, but a tour guide to take me around Rome, period – but missing that – figured the bus was the safest bet as I didn’t know how to get to the other places I wanted to see, the Coliseum and the Roman Ruins, fortunately, the tour bus took me there, but not before I got to see a bit of Rome including the Eurostar train station and some other sections I had missed at night.
Here’s the videos I made in the Roman Coliseum – which I had to see; I even checked in there on FourSquare (in case anyone was looking). I found that maybe I should have taken the guided tour after all, as I was trying to figure out why all the underground passages were at the ground level, which is now exposed (see the first two videos). There was a lot of talk about Nero, since most of what I saw at the Coliseum was created under his rule (and the debate on weather he was behind burning down Rome or not – my guess is, given the unusual way the fire spread, he was – and it was just a way to blow up the city so he could rebuild it again, more to his liking).
Finally I took some footage (some of which I put up on YouTube) of the Roman Ruins right next door to the Coliseum. The funny thing is that Ancient Rome, the part that is celebrated, seemed as if it could cover 1 square mile or so – so what little is left, can be walked around in a few hours.
Roman Ruins 4 and thoughts about the trip
The Roman Ruins I saw gave me a feeling of sadness – that such a great empire (whatever you want to say about it) suffered the fate of pretty much everything, it decayed and died – and all that’s left is some fragments – cryptic at that – like a theme park you can’t quite figure out. It’s hard to imagine just what this actually looked like at it’s prime – but it seems like everything important, from an imperial or judicial viewpoint, was more or less, in walking distance from each other. It also shows me just how passing all of this is.
That’s pretty much my footage about the latest trip to Europe, which included London and Rome. But I saved the best for last.
My thoughts about the analytics I saw here in Europe.
- I think the viewpoint for social media analytics is more mature in Europe (and Asia, I bet) than the United States (or Canada) and platform services are much more attractive, overall better, and far less expensive than their American counterparts.
There is a consensus, I feel, that Europeans are more realistic, and less prone to hype, than Americans, and accept, even embrace, that all verbatim meaningful for a brand in social media should be read by a human, connected to the brand, and coded according to what the need for monitoring is, for that brand.
Furthermore, the timelines are much more realistic that what I see here in the States – which upwards of 20 hours a week (not supportable here) spent coding verbatim – this is largely an off-shored operation that can’t scale in the United States or Canada – and monitoring platforms are unable, currently, to offer any kind of meaningful automated categorization capabilities to make the difference.
Very sobering. Glad I went and glad that people open to me enough, that I can get a look into the inside of how organizations work – that happened at the COI, at Integrasco, and in Italy – and it was all over my book.
My trip back to the United States happened in Stages – the first from Rome to Gatwick, London, was somewhat delayed, and then a bus from Gatwick to Heathrow brought me in to the airport just in time to comfortably check in to a AA flight to Boston, where I ended up in Providence, RI (where I’m staying today) that took 21 hours, from start to finish, and I’m still recovering from the week or so I traveled, the most grueling trip, but one of the most enjoyable, I’ve taken.
