HD's Two Cents: "Social media are just a tool" - Closing Event of the Program Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape

Christian Simm opens the closing event

On Novermber 13th the closing event of program Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape took place at the University of Basel (see some photos on facebook and flickr).

It was not only interesting and inspiring to follow the presentations but to meet many of the program participants again as well.

The rector of the University of Basel, Antonio Loprieno, stressed the role of digital media in academia and compared its disruptive potential with the invention of the printing press.

Christian Simm opened the event on behalf of SwissnexSF who has organized the program and said may be the most important message of the day right at the beginning: "Social media are just a tool".

Matthias Lüfkens gave a very inspiring keynote talk on How Leaders Tweet. A dialogue opens new ways ways for diplomacy beyond the traditional channels as well he said and gave some examples - Lüfkens authored the respective study twiplomacy. He also confirmed that there is a cultural lag of using Twitter in German speaking countries.
In general, tweeting may have three different goals: broadcasting information, humanizing organizations and governments, and engaging followers.
See more about this talk by Marcel Bernet here and here.

During the following panel about the use of Social Media in Switzerland Barnaby Skinner asked the panelist about the worst mistakes one can do in social media: hiring the wrong people, having no goals, being afraid, not following the idea of "keep it simple", no content strategy.
We also learned about how to start a social media project: "Don't ask for permission, just do it bottom up".

"Social media has the potential to be transformative to universities", this was one of the findings of Ian Hsu in his final presentation. Ian was the social media manager at Stanford University for more than five years, we met him during the Fall 2011 study tour at Stanford already. He also complemented Christian's statement from the opening: "Social media is not our goal" he said.
He also presented some interesting numbers: In Q IV/2011 Stanford counted 600'000 unique users per month on Facebook, but only 100'000 were organic, thus 500'000 viral. And he reported about a crowdsourcing activity among employees during the beginning of the financial crisis where ideas were sought to make Stanford more efficient - some of the ideas save several millions of dollars today he said.

During the report about the Swiss Academia and the Social Media Landscape program FHS St. Gallen's recently launched Facebook page was mentioned - thanks for that.