Watching the Media Wave Break
Spent Monday afternoon at the New Media Summit, hosted by Metzger and Associates.
The audience was largely PR and communications professionals — people whose bosses, clients and clients’ clients are frequently turning towards to answer the ever-maddening questions about how to deploy new technologies, what social networking, mobile applications and new media in general is all about.
It’s a big change from the GoogleIO I attended six weeks ago, which was the uber-geek center of the universe, where the discussion was more technical, on the far side of the cutting edge.
Highlights of today’s discussion were Twitter, mobile applications and general new media trends. Here’s a good wrap up from the Metzger blog.
What’s the nuance?
This is, hereby, the middle of the breaking wave. Boulder is clearly a key hub in the Web 2.0 development sphere. But the attendees were not the uber geek crowd who centers on the TechMeetup, TechStars and related ‘echo chamber’ groups.
Attendees at Metzger’s gig were the implementers, the folks who have to answer the hard business questions from their clients, and the PR pros who have new challenges, given the world where everyone’s a media outlet.
This is a clear sign that the coolness of building web 2.0 apps may begin waning, but the coolness of regular people adopting these tools for business is on the rise. We’ll save the debate on web 3.0 — whatever the hell that is ; > — for another day.