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Replay now available: Guest Lecture from Dr. Brendan Barrett, United Nations University, on the “Use of Social Media”

Mon, 08/11/2010 - 15:54 — andreasmeiszner

Today Dr. Brendan Barrett, head of the Media Studio at the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo-Japan, gave a guest lecture for the openEd 2.0 course Module 1: Tools for Collaboration in a Web 2.0 world.

For those of you taking the openEd 2.0 Module 1, this guest lecture might provide some useful information for the Module 1 Activity 3 (Group discussion on advantages and disadvantages of Web 2.0 Tools) and Activity 4 (Reflection on Web 2.0 Tools).

Towards the end of his presentation Brendan highlighted five lessons on use of social media that they have learnt, namely:
1: Go where people are (don’t wait for them to come to you)
2: Less is more - make your messages clear and focused
3: Be patient. It takes time to build a community
4: Focus on thoughtful contact, rather than continual contact
5: Understand who you are trying to reach
 
Brendan also provided some insights on the United Nations’ University day-to-day experiences with Web 2.0 tools and how those tools have impacted their way of working; as well within the UNU, for example amongst colleagues, as well as outside the UNU, such as interaction with the general public etc. As for most of the cases, advantages come along with disadvantages, and following Brendan this is not different with Web 2.0 tools. In addition to this, and as detailed by Brendan, anything that is ‘new’ often requires some change management and to overcome resistance to such change. However, the overall experience at UNU on the use of Web 2.0 tools has been positive until today and Brendan provided several examples on such positive experiences and how things suddenly can ‘go viral’ and have an unexpectedly high outreach. To maximise such an outreach Brendan also highlighted the importance to know your target audience and detailed how the ‘Sinus-Milieus approach’ might help you in this.
 
To watch the replay or presentation, please follow the links below: