Content blunderbuss hits everything but the target.(on the observation that video is more engaging and effective in communicating ideas than written communication)

Byline: DTEBBUT

Content blunderbuss hits everything but the target

We humans have been sending signals out into space in the hope that, one day, aliens will pick them up and respond to us. As far as I know, the results have been precisely nil.

This thought popped into my head following a visit to the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. The event was billed as "an experiment aimed at discovering the future of online productivity and collaboration".

Everything possible is put online A- go to office20.com if you're interested. The website contains details of attendees, the suppliers, the conference sessions, blog posts, comments and videos, which were posted within minutes of the end of each session.

The site contains so much stuff that you might think a visit to the event itself would be unnecessary. The organiser's gamble was that delegates would extract most of their value from the face-to-face opportunities. And the organiser would be right. That sort of thing cannot be replicated on a website. Some of us added content, but it's unlikely that much of it was read.

Which brings me back to the aliens. At the risk of jumbling my metaphors, I have to say that certain kinds of social media are little more than foghorns booming out just in case a passing ship needs them.