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There’s a bit of a ‘first’ going on at the CIPR… yesterday we had the first CIPR Social Summer meeting at CIPR HQ, which is the first of a series designed openly on a wiki by members for members and non-members. The sessions run most Thursdays, 5pm-7pm, over the summer months. So I was in nirvana!.. Central London, the coolest city in the world, in a lovely building with a cold beer in hand discussing one of my favourite topics, social analytics, with some very nice and equally excited people. Ah, life’s hard. ...

Content management has come a long way since the turn of the century. Back then, web design and content management systems (CMS) typically set anyone back five to seven figures of whatever currency they had to hand. And then some bright sparks developed the idea of blogging. Blogging helped many non-technical web users start publishing for the first time by stripping CMS back to its bare bones, and I remember hosting a contingent from MIT in London in 2001 at the Work Foundation where we worked ourselves up into a frenzy about how big blogging was going to be! ...

The CIPR hosted a smashing event on Monday focusing on the impact of digital and attracting delegates from all sectors as well as a mix of in-house and agency. I was given a half hour slot to throw my perspectives into the mix, and I decided I’d focus in on the following assertion: It’s my opinion that the things people think have change haven’t, but some things have changed that aren’t yet widely understood. ...

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations announced this week one of the first actions to come out of its newly formed Social Media Panel … the Social Media Measurement Group. Some time back in the early days of media relations some bright spark came up with the idea of using a ruler to measure ‘column inches’, a considerably less than perfect approach to assessing PR campaign success only compounded in its inability to drive performance and measure success appropriately by advertising value equivalence (AVE). My disgust for column inches and AVE has nearly lost me business on more than one occasion, but being prepared to work with prospects on improved approaches can end up contributing to the reasons for going on to convert their business. Without a doubt, the simplest and shortest response to someone’s defense of such amateur approaches is to ask how they would measure a campaign’s success if a primary objective of a campaign was to keep brand X out of the press? “Oh, errr, well, I mean, that would be, ermm….”. ...

Fortunately, the last time I was asked “what’s a blog?” whilst presenting at a social media conference was 2008. Thank gawd for that. But too many social media conferences continue to labour the basics whilst the majority of practitioners have moved themselves way up the learning curve. So I thought I’d invest this Friday Roundup in identifying three initiatives in London that should tickle your advanced social fancy. The first is the CIPR’s Digital Impact conference . For an institute that didn’t lead in the social media world back when I was being asked “what’s a refback?”, the CIPR has jumped three gears and is heading straight into the thick of things in 2010. The content looks fab. The speakers are great and the venue, for those who haven’t yet been to the CIPR’s new home, is lovely. I’m going particularly for the First Direct and Vodafone sessions. (And don’t worry about the CIPR’s website, yes it is awful, and yes they do know it, and yes a new one will debut in just a couple of weeks!) The second is Social Media Marketing 2010 from the same guys that brought us the successful Monitoring Social Media 2009 and Social Media Monitoring Bootcamp 2010 conferences. And with Chris Brogan and Brian Solis making rare appearances in the UK, it’s shaping up to be another “I like” feather in the Luke Brynley-Jones’ social hat. Lastly, and another CIPR first, the CIPR Social Summer is the first event series organised by the CIPR’s newly formed Social Media panel, and a series that’s being developed openly on a wiki . Seriously, if you want to change it, you can. ...

Election 2010 was supposed to be the UK’s first social media powered election, but with the advent of our first ever Leaders Debates, it became resolutely a TV-powered election. But that doesn’t mean same-interest groups aren’t coalescing and making their point online; quite the opposite. It’s just that the majority of the British public aren’t that engaged with social media just yet. And don’t start with that “but Obama did it in 2008” malarkey… sure, he ran a great campaign, but when you break it down you find that the majority “online” effort was plain old email marketing. Good on him, but this hardly makes anyone’s definition of social media. Let’s take a brief look at two campaigns running right now, post-election. ...

The BCS, Chartered Institute for IT, hosted the Mashup Event in London last night, an event focused on the Internet of Things. As chair I knew it was important to establish boundaries for the evening’s discussion, but the problem is… there is simply no sector or discipline that is or will be left untouched by the Internet of Things. Fortunately, I could lean on an expert panel to shoulder the burden of picking out the topics, although I was first to take a stab at defining the topic: a network of objects beyond the ‘usual’ including: the device containing electronics in order to fulfil its primary function (eg, washing machine, car, aircon unit) the electrical device traditionally absent of sophisticated electronics (eg, lighting, heating, power distribution) non-electrical objects (eg, food and drink packages, animals, clothing); and environmental sensors (eg, for variables such as temperature, heat and moisture). David Orban opened the evening in ten minutes with a fast, furious, compelling and fascinating slide stack. He could have banged us over the head with ten minutes about WideTag , but preferred to situate his company’s endeavours in the bigger picture. Videos from tonight will go up on the Mashup Event website, but if you can’t wait, here’s a video of David in action at Momo Amsterdam a month ago. ...

Last week’s Friday Roundup focused on the ramifications of the Semantic Web, so-called Web 3.0, on the marketing and PR professions. So perhaps you’ll forgive me if I push my luck by talking tech two weeks running. The Internet of Things changes many aspects of our lives, including the possibilities and practice of the influence professions; marketing and PR. What is it? Well, you can think of it as a network of objects beyond the usual computers and smartphones, for example: The device containing electronics in order to fulfil its primary function (eg, washing machine, car, aircon unit) The electrical device traditionally absent of sophisticated electronics (eg, lighting, heating, power distribution) Non-electrical objects (eg, food and drink packages, animals, clothing); and Environmental sensors (eg, for variables such as temperature, heat and moisture). And just like the Semantic Web, the Internet of Things isn’t just some futurologist’s dreamscape. It is here, now. ...

Do you recall the pre-Web days of PR and marketing? The time before The Cluetrain Manifesto signalled that everything had changed and that the social media train was about to leave the station whether you were on it or not. If stretching out that train doesn’t stretch the metaphor too much, you could say that a very long train left the station from 1999 to 2009 with people jumping on board as and when they and/or their organisation felt ready. But undoubtedly, those who “got it” earlier than later have been best positioned to reap the benefits for their organisation and for their personal career. Well, marketing and PR is about to change. Again. It’s 2010. If Web 2.0 could be summed up as content and community, then Web 3.0 is about the Web itself understanding the meaning of that content and community. Web 3.0 is more accurately known as the Semantic Web, and as the name implies it gives us the opportunity to have software applications connect the dots and spot patterns and coalesce information and reach conclusions on our behalf. ...

The Semantic Web, aka Web 3.0, is here. Now. And there is, as yet, little concerted recognition of or contribution to it by the influence profession… all the converging marketing and PR disciplines. But is about to arrive in our lives, and in a big way. For example, what if I told you that when Best Buy embraced aspects of the Semantic Web its website saw a 30% increase in traffic. ...