hashtag smbyyc74

Once again I was bereft of the hot tub at Talisman. The other pools were busy, but I found a lane with like-speeded people, though one of the guys was slumming. I recognize his stroke; he can swim way faster than I can. But by the time I was done 750 m everybody was gone, and I got in 5x 100 all less than 1:45 on 2 where it belongs. Several laps of water running and chatting after were all good.

I'm wondering if they've changed the pool chemical concentration. After the swim I was smelling much more pooly than I usually do, and as soon as I got my towel and stuff out of the tote bag Linda dragged it downstairs to be washed.

Being the social butterfly that I am, it's taken 73 monthly meetings for me to become aware of the Social Media Breakfast, and finally attend. Today was the first one for me, and won't be the last. I ran into several people I knew, including this guy.

Martin gave a really good talk mostly focused around his 250 marathons in one year back in 2010. For many of these people running a marathon, just one, is an inconceivable thing. To do 250 of them just melted their brains. The twitter traffic was really interesting at that point.

In fact, what's interesting about these is that doing a talk would be a tough gig. Most speakers want the audience to be looking at them. It gives them a chance to interact and see how the talk is going over. But here most people are looking at their phone, watching the social media feed. It's fun. The WWC convention has much the same thing happening, real life and a roughly aligned twitter stream.

This is Kelly Hofer with his attention grabbing suit worn during his talk on wearable tech.

There was a rep from Vivametrica talking about not just collecting biometric data from wearable tech like fitbits, but actually analyzing it. Very interesting, if a little scary. There were several other talks as well, but the sound was terrible and I had a hard time hearing a couple of the people. The big open area in Eau Claire was very echoy. The sound system died entirely at the end so I have no idea what was said.

Like it or not, social media has become part of our landscape. Mostly I like it, but I can see why some people are nervous about it. I think we're just getting started on all this, and the people that can really figure it out are going to make a ton of money.

What I'd really like to see is social media better used to help form government policy. Right now many people in government have some sort of presence, but it needs to come a long way. It needs to be easier to find information, easier to solicit and get considered feedback. Nobody needs more of what passes for comment in all too many places. It should be possible to have ongoing discussions about an issue, moderated of course to weed out the trolls, that are actually an exchange of information. From there the government policy wonks can draft legislation that has a basis in reality. One can but hope!

We need more powerful messaging tools, though. Reply threading, topical indexes, hashtags or labels just aren't going to cut it. Maybe someone at one of these groups will figure it out and we'll all be better off.

What would you like to see happen in or with social media?