Here is a good overview of the confererence which includes interviews with some of the speakers and delegates:

Martha Lane Fox started things off.  She is currently the UK Digital Champion and Chair of Go On UK, and co-founded lastminute.com, Europe’s largest travel and leisure site.   She said we’re moving from a broadcast model to an interactivity model. If you look across all markets, change is happening differently. Consumers are now challenging boards about their decisions.  She used examples from existing institutions and the establishment of new organizations that disintermediate traditional booking and processing organisations. She cites tweetalondoncab and TaskRabbit as examples of how audiences and organisations can develop value.

A few of her many interesting points:

1.  The fear of social media among businesses.  Fox noted that there is a huge difference among businesses in terms of social media understanding and implementation.  Of those who are enthusiastic, there is the need to connect the divisions of an organization to engage with social media.  She asks CEOs to start by looking at how young people are using social media.  She notes that the boundaries between traditional and social media are meaningless.

2.  The negative consequences of technology access. Is there a problem with the always-on world?  Fox noted that while she is a technophile she is not blind to the problems.  She noted that there are some internet safety programmes.  She notes that there is a lot of alarmist headlines out there but which there is no clear evidence of changes to behaviours.  Important to ensure all questions about sleep patterns are based on fact.  It is vital that we don’t assume that changes in behavior are necessarily bad for them anyway.

3.  Online profile “cleaning services”.  There is a now a plethora of such services … such as reputation.com … as a means of cleaning up histories online. If you are not aware that people are talking about you online, you should understand that it is happening, regardless of whether you are currently online yourself.  You cannot control it, so it is better to be online and to have some contribution to your online reputation.  You also need to be aware that there are reputation scoring systems in place that could be negatively impacting on brand perception, regardless of whether the scoring systems are in fact useful.

There was a panel on harnessing power of social media to drive business innovation.  Panelists Ariel Eckstein, Ruth Foxe Blader, David Mann, James Quarles.

First speaker, David Mann, notes that twitter has changed the way we do business.  Twitter not the only platform.  There is a necessity to look at how organisations connect and how to optimise this process. The changes in infrastructure and interaction principles have an impact on how quickly business can improve and fail.   Opportunities for organisations to consider how they do their business are based on cultural changes in terms of liberalization of personal privacy.  These cultural changes should drive innovation in business.  Unless you organise to take advantage of these technologies, your chances of sustaining any advantage you get is limited.

James Quarles asked how do you provide experiences that capitalize on networks and generate authentic responses.  Quarles notes that 11% of the global population are now regular Facebook users.  Quarles notes that on Facebook, authentic selves are the rule.  Quarles used examples from Amazon and Ticketmaster on the use of the Facebook Socialgraph as a means of encouraging a personalized experience.  He also used the example of Heinz on Facebook, product testing and development.  He notes it reduces costs but increases understanding of product experiences.  Finally, he noted that the single platform can also inform about international markets and what differences exist among markets in terms of business perception.

Ariel Eckstein then talked up LinkedIn.  He used the example of BP as a company that worked with LinkedIn on how potential candidates viewed working with BP.  The company needed to communicate more effectively about the company and the crisis management.  For recruitment and product development purposes, LinkedIn can be used to track conversations, connections and ideas in a manner not previously available.

The Chair then asked the panel about risks of using social media.  Quarles note that most common concern about public conversations.  Handling that negative feedback is the largest risk for the firm.  Eckstein noted that the method of engagement needs to be clear and fast.  If you fail to respond or run all responses through legal and PR departments you will fail.   There are specific rules on when to react and when not to react, so that engagement is maintained and negative commentary is reduced.  

Quarles noted that building an army of advocates is a more authentic response approach than a corporate response.  Eckstein noted these armies need to be built before the crisis.  The Chair asked how do you establish these armies with new companies.  The response was not clear but there was some discussion of blogger recruitment and establishing contexts for communication.

There was some discussion about the accessibility of content online being the guarantee against inauthenticity.  There were also comments on the value of breaking through corporate walls and accessing expertise in specific fields.   The Chair asked if the corporate sponsorship/support of smaller companies in emerging technologies is a different way of fostering benefits.  Quarles said he expects the relationship is not so different from previously, just that its public face is perhaps unexpected.

Questions were called from the floor about the use of CV pilfering on LinkedIn, and how consumers can challenge that process.  Eckstein noted that LinkedIn has a fraud unit which will act to delete accounts that are deliberately faking content.  Quarles adds that faking does exist but there are good mechanisms of tracking inauthentic accounts.