One thing emerged over all others from the media140 food & wine event. None of the roles one can have within the enograstronomy industry, from producer to importer, can ignore social media and internet any longer.
The video is in italian
Gianpaolo Paglia, wine producer and one of the Italian pioneers of communicating with his clients trough his website – poggioargentiera.it- said at the event that unfortunately many wine producers don’t know how to communicate with the public through their websites, as by leaving them static, they don’t give the client a reason to come back.
Gianopaolo thinks that as social media and blogs are the closest thing to a conversation online, they are a perfect way to keep clients informed about the wine-making process, but also to receive feedbacks on his products.
Putting one’s self at risk brings respect, he says. So he decided to send six of his wine-bottles to 100 of his clients and to post their comments, without moderating them, on his site, next the each bottle’s information. Showing his clients and those passionate about wine that he accepts critiques is like communicating on the same level, and creates a long-lasting connection.
The video is in English
From the client’s point of view, wine-blogger Ryan Opaz – founder of catavino.net – thinks the same. Ryan says that mobile internet now gives consumers a direct access to a product’s information straight from within a supermarket. If a wine hasn’t got a website on it’s label or has a badly done website the client will get a bad impression of it.
According to Ryan nowadays it’s hard to find a bad wine, so those passionate about it look at other factors like how the wine’s been reviews by other consumers, or -if producers use social media online- the the connection they establish with their clients.
The video is in italian
Samuel Sanders – of spumante.nl – works instead between producers and clients, he imports Italian wine to the Netherlands, and despite he isn’t in direct contact with consumers through his work, he thinks that internet can only help.
Samuel uses mostly Twitter to talk with his clients, he says his office is all there, inside his phone. Since he started using internet his clients know that they can contact him at any moment, and his business doubled.
According to Samuel the immediacy of Twitter shows to his clients and consumers that wherever he goes he is always immersed in the world of wine. This creates a trust that a standard work relationship could never have, and, as both Gianpaolo and Ryan think, creates such a connection with clients that it would add value to any business.
One of the critiques always done to internet is that it divides people. Attached to a computer, it’s said, we don’t communicate with those around us any longer. As all the speakers at media140 food & wine showed internet and social media help instead to create a long lasting connection between those who produce, import, and consume, giving us a chance to immerse ourselves in and appreciate their worlds.
Multimedia journalism Adam Westbrook took sometime out earlier this week to produce a special video for #media140 Perugia looking at the best way to produce audio slideshows.
A dispetto delle nubi di cenere dall’Islanda, il team Britannico di media140 ha messo insieme alcune delle migliori menti nei campi del giornalismo e social media per creare la presentazione che avrebbero dovuto dare al Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo a Perugia.
Ed eccoli, in un bunker nucleare a Rugby (la città, non lo sport!), a rispondere alla domanda: Dovremmo essere ottimisti sul futuro del giornalismo?
Gli applausi (e molti!) vanno al Dr Claire Wardle e Kate Pickering per aver organizzato il tutto, e a Christian Payne (@Documentally su twitter) per aver ospitato questo inusuale evento di Web TV.
Media140 ha provato a far vedere il materiale qui sotto dal vivo alla Sala dei Notari a Perugia, ma la tecnologia non era dalla nostra parte.
Il video è in Inglese, buona visione, e scrivi i tuoi commenti qui sotto.
Undeterred by clouds of ash from Iceland, media140′s amazing UK team have brought together some of the finest minds in journalism and social media to give the presentations they were supposed to give at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.
Here they are in a nuclear bunker in Rugby, answering the question: Should we be optimistic about the future of journalism?
Massive rounds of applause to Dr Claire Wardle and Kate Pickering for making it all happen. The credit for having this brilliant idea belongs to Christian Payne (that’s @documentally to several thousand of you on Twitter), who also chaired this memorable, ash-inspired exercise in Web TV.
media140 tried to stream this material live into the exquisitely-frescoed Sala dei Notari in Perugia, but technology was not on our side.
Enjoy a leisurely watch here, and post your comments below.
Media140 blogger Peter Bouvier is Social Media Editor for a UK Government body and has worked in project management, planning and education. Peter is also a keen consumer of current affairs, whose impressive writing skills shine whenever he is armed with a burning issue and a keyboard.
Peter was on hand to take a look at how useful social media have been in mobilising aid to Haiti this past week, as the already fragile communications infrastructure on the quake-devastated island nation broke down completely.
International relief efforts may be hampered and many lines of communication remain down, however, social media is proving its worth in Haiti.
Only 10 per cent of the country’s nine million people have internet access, yet Twitter feeds gave an immediate picture of the earthquake and photos emerged on Twitpic and Flickr almost instantaneously.
First-hand videos of quake-ravaged Port-au-Prince also appeared on YouTube within hours of the quake, alongside Haitians’ personal appeals to the world for aid and support.
How desperate would you have to be if you found yourself filling out the contact details on the bottom of a blog, in the slight hope that the blogger might take the time to read about your predicament and, hopefully, even help.
When Bader and Waleed, two Iraqi interpreters who had worked for the British military in Basra, read this post about 25 of their compatriots suing the British for lack of protection, that is exactly what they did. The blogger in question, Murcia-based linguist and legal translator Matthew Bennett was so shocked that he got in touch with them to see if there was anything practical he could do to help.
Please take a few minutes to read Bader and Waleed’s story and find out how it made its way, via the blogosphere and Twitter, onto this forum. If you have any constructive suggestions or even if you have only moral support to offer, please take the time to comment – either here or on Matthew’s own blog.
Most Twitter users will clock the phrase “Please RT” several times a day. Every so often, you might even oblige – if it is a link to a particularly interesting post, or even, as so often, and particularly on #charitytuesday, if the Tweet is publicising a cause which is close to your own heart.
Many of Matthew Bennett’s followers did just that when they saw this in his stream on Sunday evening.
Please RT this – Bader and Waleed: two Iraqi interpreters who risked everything to help Britain http://bit.ly/46J6cj
I was one of them. I have been following Matthew almost since I started Tweeting in early 2008. He is a fellow linguist and translator and also shares many of my other interests – in languages, running and good Spanish wines. He is also a former Territorial Army Officer who writes considered and thought-provoking stuff about both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Intrigued by his tweet, I sent a DM asking how and why the two interpreters had found and contacted him. He told me Waleed had read his post referring to Deborah Haynes July piece in the Times and filled in the contact form on his blog:
“I’m an Iraqi who used to work as an interpreter with the British military in Basra. if would be interested in help me [sic] with some of your efforts on our behalf. I have filled in the forms. I have also attached a copy of the rejection form the British Military has already sent me. I applied for assistance but was turned down because I ‘only’ worked for 7 months. During that time I was shot at, threatened and five of my close friends & colleagues were murdered. I now live in Syria with my wife and children, and our circumstances are becoming increasingly desperate”. Read More…
The overwhelming majority of this blog’s readers will be Twitter users; most of them will also be long-term ones. We were all tweeting, re-tweeting and tweeting up many moons before MSM caught onto our secret social network, long before it became the favoured new toy of marketing and PR types and way before the inevitable squeal of the celebrity sign-up.
In this thought-provoking post, David White – an expert on Massively Multi-player on-line games – suggests that, once they reach a certain critical mass, social networks inevitably lose their lustre and wonders whether Twitter’s recent slide towards the mainstream may see many of us migrating to alternative platforms.
Twitter is now at the top of my ‘attention stack’, or so I realized not long ago. My morning starts with Twitter, moves through email and ends up in a Word doc or the browser.
One simple 140-or fewer-character-question later and I discovered that for most respondents, Twitter was also their initial point of contact with the web, some people even breaking down their routine to the granularity of DMs, then @s, then email – (clearly researching Twitter via Twitter is a crime against academia, but I can probably live with that).
My own response to this was to suggest that many of our networks, such as work email, are fixed for us, but because we can choose whom we follow on Twitter, we are therefore more strongly attracted to it. It was quickly pointed out to me that the reality is much more complex than that.
Twitter has, increasingly, become something I ‘need’ to look at for work; it has become central to my job and, in that process, it has lost some of its lustre. I find myself following individuals because they are influential in my field, not necessarily because they are the sort of people I would enjoy spending time with down the pub. Important project information comes to me via DMs because some of those whom I follow are aware that Twitter is what I go to first.
Ok, so enough of the anecdotal:
My point is that: once a social media platform gets big enough in terms of user numbers, it is in grave danger of losing its original vibrancy. This is not a technical problem but a social effect. There is a tipping point whereby, once you know that your boss or your mum have profiles in a platform, it subtly changes in character. You may feel the need to expand your network beyond its initial comfort zone, as you are followed or friended by a new layer of acquaintances or colleagues. The tone of your communications may well change accordingly.
But you can catch all the highlights from the recent event this year at the liveblog
Sydney science [rewired]
How can social media, citizen science and digital technologies enhance international collaboration on the major social and scientific issues of our time?
Barcelona
