“The ‘Atomic Unit’ of Instagram is an Image” –Kevin Systrom
I wrote the other day about a number of speaker’s at John Battelle’s Signal San Francisco Conference spontaneously sharing what they see as the “atomic unit” of their particular product or service.
I then tried to do just that in this post on The ‘Atomic Unit’ of a Conference
The distillation process represented may be even more worthwhile as one applies it to a larger variety of enterprises.
Let’s consider what else might benefit through being examined through this lens:
While not straight from the horse’s mouth, like they were at FM Signal, here are some of my answers to the above, for your consideration:
The Atomic Unit of Facebook is a __________ “Personal sharing”
The Atomic Unit of Google + is a ___________ “Piece of crawled content”
The Atomic Unit of Apple is ______________ “An unboxing”
The Atomic Unit of ________ is a ____________
Please fill in the blanks in the comments and let us know what you think.
By the way, I also tried to research a little more on the root of some of this “Atomic Unit” thinking, and came up with this great video from Marissa Mayer, on the Atomic Unit of media consumption, vis a vis Google News and the Newspaper and print media worlds:
Google VP Marissa Mayer on the atomic unit of media consumption…
“It ain’t pretty, but it’s real”
I’ve written recently about the three dimensions of events, covering learning, networking and lasting value. Or broken down to an event’s “atomic units”: shared ideas, personal interactions and concrete actions.
Today I want to explore: what does this mean for event producers? Ultimately, if you put on an event, it goes without saying that you are responsible for all aspects of it. And your job is getting harder.
You don’t just compete with other events. You compete with everything for the attention of your audience.
Increasingly, your audience is looking for more from you—they can see the latest talking heads at home on YouTube or the live stream from yours or another conference. They can network with their contacts via email and social media, and surf the web more easily than they can a trade show.
So it is incumbent on us as event producers to offer more—better content, more inspiring and unique experiences and more targeted marketing and connection opportunities. I had a chance to watch part of the live stream from last night’s Event Marketer Summit ex Awards, where the many winners definitely gave a taste for what stepping up our game may look like, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-tY5A_LDn0&feature=youtu.be
At our best, we will develop a super-heightened sense of both the interest graph and the social graph of our audiences, and leverage that understanding to compete effectively. So far, however, we are not measuring up to this challenge very well.
As you build your team of event vendors and services that allow you to serve the needs of your participants, speakers and sponsors, pay close attention to who is recognizing this new competitive reality, and is committed to upping their game accordingly.
Like the newspaper, travel and music industries before us, the Event Industry is increasingly on the receiving end of the Internet’s penchant to “eat” business as usual.
Call it disintermediation or call it what you will. One of my old event teammates was a caterer, and he, with his scruffy beard, and disheveled vibe, would often wear a shirt that sums up this current reality:
“It isn’t pretty, but it’s real!”
The “Atomic Unit” of a Conference
“The Atomic Unit of Instagram is an Image” –Kevin Systrom
One of the more interesting memes to come out of John Battelle’s recent Signal San Francisco Conference was that a number of speakers started to spontaneously share what they see at the “atomic unit” of their particular product or service.
Kevin Systrom got it started with “the atomic unit of Instagram is an image”
To be followed by other key execs with:
The Atomic Unit of Twitter is a Tweet
The Atomic Unit of Google is a Search
The Atomic Unit of PinWheel is a Note
The Atomic Unit of YouTube is a Video
Etc….
While this is obviously a trend that can be continued on and on, I think the answers get especially interesting in areas that are not as clear cut as the above.
For example, all of these came up on the main stage of a Conference, but what is the Atomic Unit of a Conference?
I would assert that there are three:
1. The Atomic Unit of a Conference Program is a shared idea.
2. The Atomic Unit of a Conference Community is a personal interaction.
3. The Atomic Unit of a Conference as a whole is a concrete action—one or more next steps taken
_—as a result of the ideas received and the interactions that take place.
How about you? Is that the way you see the “Atomic Units” of the events you attend, present or sponsor? Please let me know in the comments.
Reflections on my SXSW Session: Events are Now Platforms: Seven Tools for Success
This session achieved my goal of being a true interactive conversation, with lots of voices heard, questions asked and perspectives shared.
The audience included producers of events, tool providers, lovers of events and others drawn together by the chance to experience the magic that can only happen live and in-person.
Our room was overfilled, and almost everyone stayed throughout—the caliber of conversation was great, and my thanks to all who participated.
What were the main learnings?
- There is a hunger for more on this topic. Events are increasingly important, but also increasingly challenging.
- Technology is part of the problem, offering new ways to compete for our attention, but also can provide solutions when it comes to event discovery, better learning and more targeted networking.
- Producers are challenged when it comes to programming speakers for events, marketing events, decided what to share online, how to encourage networking, how to deal with sponsors.
- Technology has changed the game in all of these areas, and continues to change it today, almost daily—some best practices are emerging, though each case is still unique.
- There are a wide variety of cases, with SXSW and leading tech events being very advanced with tech usage, and the vast majority of mainstream events often being much slower in the adoption cycle, but still needing to learn, with an eye towards the future.
While no one asked for a definitive list of seven tools, almost all of those mentioned on here were included in the conversation at one point or another.
There is also hunger for this interactive ‘Core Conversation’ format, as opposed to the talking heads or panel model. Many in the room hope we can return to continue the conversation at SXSW2013, as well as online.
I’ll follow up with a ConferenceBites style post, to share more of the flavor of the session. (First batch is now up, here. )
I also want to thank Xavier Damman, Founder of Storify for the great Storify he created of the session (in real time on his iPad)—a great example of a disruptive event technology in practice.
The Event Graph as it played out at SXSW
Those of us who work in the event business, know how particularly intense it can get sometimes, with only so many hours until ‘Showtime!”.
For me, SXSW and our session there on “Events are Now Platforms: Seven Tools for Success” came sandwiched right in between two major events I was involved in SignalP&G in Cincinnati, and Signal San Francisco, which just ended yesterday.
Hence the delay in getting back to you all with even this placeholder post:
Our session at South by Southwest was a huge success, filing and overfilling the room with event producers, tool providers and others hungry for conversation about how events are changing.
It was a truly interactive core conversation with lots of input from many quarters.
This Storify post from founder Xavier Dammon, can help give you a feel: http://storify.com/xdamman/sxsw-new-platforms-for-success (and also showcase a very cool new technology for creating content on the fly, on the iPad, while at an event!)
Most exciting, there was a strong desire to continue the dialog online. While a formal mechanism isn’t in place for that yet, I encourage everyone to weigh in on the comments, either here or in Google+.
In the meantime, some of the key themes from the session included:
– How to integrate sponsorship that doesn’t suck
– How to market events against the backdrop of everyone’s overwhelm and challenges for where to put their attention
– The role of technology, both in exacerbating some of the above problems, but also offering new solutions as we move forward
I’ve got more posts coming soon to further flesh out some of what we discussed, and to suggest more and other interesting tools that may play a role in transforming events for the future.
But in the meantime, let us know in the comments what seems most important to you, regardless of whether you were able to join us in person or not. Thanks!
In a reader
