Blogs | Social Signal

Some people have a favorite pair of boots that make them feel like dancing. Other people feel like themselves with they pick up a special pen, or dive deep into a remote patch of woods.

A few months ago I wrote a blog post for Harvard Business Online about social media tools that can make business travel more effective – and thus, more infrequent. Ironically, I’ve done a lot more travel in the months since I wrote that post, since my kids are finally at an age where I can travel without (knock on wood! knock on wood!) everybody coming down with the latest virus.

I'm in Toronto today at the Getting to Uptake conference, convened by Sick Kids Hospital. The conference focuses on how social media can foster practice change in the arena of pediatric mental health by connecting practitioners with patients and with one another. In the desperate hope that I could get Sick Kids to return my tonsils and adenoids, I offered the conference an overview of social media and how it's being used in the health field.

If you're visiting from PC World - or just happened to stumble onto us - we're glad you could come by. Pull up a chair. Lemonade?

Your timing's terrific: I was just about to start the slide show. Oh, no, don't get up - the holiday pictures aren't until later. No, this is all about Noise to Signal, my cartoon about the intersection of technology, communications and life. Sit back and make yourself comfortable.

When I was a young 'un still trying to wrap my mind around personal computers, modems, desktop publishing and stuff, I had only a few trusted sources to turn to: my very few friends who shared my interest... whatever I could glean at 300 baud from Ottawa's various computer bulletin boards... and magazines.

Two magazines in particular gave me the education I was looking for: PC Magazine and PC World. For me, neither übergeek or total n00b, they were the holders of the keys to the tech kingdom of the mid-to-late 1980s and early 90s.

Over the past few years, as broadband reaches more and more communities and mobile Internet access extends its reach, the digital divide has receded into the background. Issues like net neutrality and intellectual property have taken centre stage and taken on new urgency.

But equal access to digital technologies is as important as ever. And this year, the folks behind OneWebDay want to remind us:

Alex's Harvard post about metrics and the obsessive condition she calls analytophilia has triggered a lot of conversation this morning about the role analytics ought to play in organizational communications.

Which has me thinking about the role tools like analytics play in our personal communications online, too - for better and for worse.

The past few years have seen some fascinating changes as organizations - some tentative, some confident, a few very bold - adopt the tools of the social web. We've seen windows and occasionally great big doors opening in the walls that separate businesses, non-profits and governments from the public.

But something else is happening too. Just as the tools of social media are turning marketing into personal conversation, they're also turning personal conversation into marketing.

Twitter has helped move my attention from the soapbox side of social media ("Here I am blogging about the Important Idea I want to convey") towards its conversational side ("What do you think about my Important Idea?") The short message length and rapid-fire pace of Twitter, combined with the panoramic view of my friends that I get from my Tweetdeck setup , fosters a more conversational online relationship with my friends and colleagues.

I was picking my daughter up from her first day of school, and I was so excited to hear how it went that got there a few minutes early. I could go in and spend a few extra minutes observing her class....or I could sneak one last peek at the day's e-mail. Sure enough, I pulled out my iPhone, only to experience that little ping of disappointment when the hoped-for e-mail from a prospective client had yet to arrive. I headed into my daughter's classroom, my excitement about the first day of school now dulled, ever so slightly, by the disappointment of that missing e-mail.