Down the rabbit hole with the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship

I had an opportunity to present at the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship's "Social media in your organisation" course. The course is currently underway at the Quartermain Hotel in Sandton and is being presented by the Branson Centre and Bjarke Gotfredsen. I was given an hour and a half to talk (including questions) and I used that time! I found that as I prepared for this talk, my scope seemed to expand as more and more social media related legalities came to mind. It was an eye opening voyage into the myriad legal considerations and concerns that accompany social media implementations and platforms. My slides probably only paint an incomplete picture but you'll probably get the idea:
Social media marketing and the legal stuff presentation slides
You can also view my slides on Slideshare.

The more I think about it, the more I realise just how much legal complexity the social Web introduces to the mix. To a large extent this is unavoidable unless your company intends disengaging from the Web altogether. The social Web isn't just about fun and harmless sharing. The applications and platforms we use are becoming a lot smarter and are learning a lot about us. I had a slightly deeper understanding of this when I took a look at my Foursquare stats and realised just how granular that information is becoming. Consider some of the information Foursquare has about my location based activities, albeit based on my voluntary checkins and my relationships:

We had a fascinating discussion about changing privacy expectations and how location based services, alone, could take us much further along the privacy continuum towards greater transparency than we probably imagined just a few years ago. We may find that we will be using tools and services that know our many preferences: when we tend to do our shopping and where, what our friends like and which of those likes may be shared, which retailers may appeal to us, who our clients are, and so on. We may also be ok with that level of transparency because it will make it so much easier for us to find what we need, when we need it. It may also be the end of privacy as secrecy for those of us who embrace these technologies.

It was a stimulating session and I enjoyed it thoroughly! It was, after all, an opportunity to debate law and the social Web, one of my passions.

Presenting at the Social Media Marketing in Africa conference

I am going to present at the Social Media Marketing in Africa conference tomorrow morning about the legal risks that arise out of social media marketing initiatives. It sounds a little negative but I see this general topic as being both about risks and opportunities - it really depends on how you approach and manage the risks.

Social Media Marketing in Africa Presentation Slides

The line-up includes a couple interesting speakers like Cerebra's John Beale and Puruma's Ingrid Lotze I usually don't have a chance to spend much time at these conferences but I am hoping to catch a couple of the other presentations after mine. Either way, I am sure you will be able to follow some of the proceedings on Twitter if it interests you.

WTF Media Conference presentation slides

I presented at the 2010 WTF Media Conference earlier today on the topic of how social media is impacting on traditional legal approaches to challenges arising out of social media use. I spoke for about half an hour and touched on a couple trends and issues I have been thinking about lately. Here are my slides:

WTF Conference 2010 Presentation Slides

One of the benefits of speaking at the conference was an opportunity to meet and chat to Shel Israel. It was a real treat to listen to Shel's thoughts about social media and his work. Definitely a highlight of my trip!

You can pick up highlights from the WTF Conference by taking a look at tweets from the event. The #wtf10 hashtag was a popular hashtag and a good one to start with.