Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Elias and Bronwen about 3eep and SportsPassion and some of the fun and some of the challenges of building a new digital media (or, web2.0, or social network) business in Australia.

The discussion was recorded and podcast at TPN

We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that this evening 3eep was honoured with the Fast Thinking! National Innovation Award for Digital.  The event was held at The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and saw award winners and runners up from most states in Australia - including two guys (gratz Kevin and John) with whom I worked over 20 years ago in Perth for my first ever start-up and what was my first ever ‘real’ job.

So many people have contributed to getting us to this point, and yet we feel as tho’ the game has barely started - such a long way to go!!

We are pleased to have been included in Brad Howarth’s assessment of the top web entreprenuers in Australia, as shared in this SmartCompany article this week.  Depending on how you read the article, 3eep is one of the Top 10 Companies, or Nick and I have been listed in the Top 20 entreprenuers - either way, we’re humbled to be rated as such.  We are also proud to share this stage with a heap of fantastic Australian entreprenuers, incuding Mick and Phil from Pollenizer, who have been a great partner and friend of 3eep’s since before Pollenizer was even a twinkle in their eyes!

Just came across this interview again - a discussion in late 2007 with Andrew Urban, done for AFTRS’ Centre for Screen Business The Knowledge initiative.

Covered lots of areas - impact of new media on traditional, on the screen industries, start-ups, learnings, etc.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Simon Baker has agreed to join the Board of Directors of 3eep.  Simon is a shareholder in our business, and now, with a little more time on his hands, is eager to support our growth in other ways.

Simon was until recently the CEO and Managing Director of REA Group Ltd (formerly realestate.com.au Ltd).  He held the CEO role for over 7 years, taking the business from a revenue of $4m to over $150m, and from being a loss-maker to earning a profit of over $30m (and to a market cap of well over $05.bn).  Also, the business now operates in 10 countries.

Simon knows how to grow an Internet business in Australia and take it to the world - that experience and insight will be tremendously valuable at 3eep as we aspire to do the same.

Simon was also at News Ltd and McKinsey and is an active early stage investor, also being on the Boards of Red Bubble and ArtsHub.

We welcome Simon onto the Board, and we look forward to working with him.

Had the pleasure this morning of presenting at AIMIA’s “The future of the Consumer” seminar this morning. Guest speakers included:

- Justine Marino (Clear Blue Day - Director of Client Services)
- Malcolm Alder (KPMG - Partner, Digital Business)
- Mel Silva (Google - Head of Financial Services)
- Richard Lord (Hyro - Chief Marketing Officer)

Great session that cut across customer engagement frameworks, case studies, macro level trends and on top of all great discussions (maybe debate) on a range of topics.

Here is the presentation I gave at this event:

Had the pleasure of attending the iPRIME Sportsplay official launch today! Travelled a total of 5 hours today up and back from Newcastle to attend this event. Here is Kieren Perkins launching the event:

Younger people are not playing let alone engaging with sports properties like the Olympics. It’s fair to say that reflecting upon this on my own personal experiences, I’m here or there if I agree but…..

Do you remember what you were doing when the Seoul Olympics were on? Or even the Soviet Union Games? If you are that old to remember, we really only had the TV and it was an amazing experience to watch something at the same time as the rest of the world via “the box”. It was a family connecting experience.

Here’s what Robert Woodward from the Washingpost thought of this in a recent article:
“In the 21st century, young people have a huge variety of sport, music and entertainment media to flick through, both on television and the internet, and the Olympics has no special aura for many of them.

The average age of viewers for the 2004 Games in Athens was over 40 and shows no signs of falling.”
Article: “Digital revolution could be Olympics’ salvation” Washington Post July 23, 2008. The complete story.

These are scary trends for the IOC and I would also say team oriented sports for decades to come!

The internet and mobile technologies are dramatically reshaping what and how we engage with sports events and more importantly from a 3eep perspective - all your passionate sports team participants!

Let’s see what the Beijing Olympics “experience” will be like soon.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Ross Dawson’s Future of Media Summit 08 in Sydney (which was also held simultaneously in San Fran).  I was asked to moderate one of the Roundtable discussions held during the day - mine was ‘Media and Social Networks’, however, we probably discussed ‘Social Media’ more broadly.  Participants in this conversation were:

• * Gavan Heaton (aka Servant of Chaos)
• * Josh Mehlman, Editor at Nett
• * Chris Saad, CEO of Faraday Media (Paying Attention)
• * Stuart Buchanan, General Manager at Community Engine
• * Stephen Collins from acidlabs
• * Ulash Tiwari, Web Analytics from IBM (sorry if I got the name/title wrong, Ulash)
• * Gemma Maughan, from Lewis PR
• * Myriam (sorry Myriam, didn’t get your surname or company)
• * Jemma Enright, from DaVinci

Some of the discussion around the table follows …

Defn of Social Media, et al

• * while social networking is mostly about connections, social media is more about content creation
• * personal media - enables individuals to express themselves, thereby socialising that expression with others

Corporate Participation in Social Media

• * employees as bloggers or social media participants - blend of individual prespective and the ‘corporate’ brand
• * many companies about which conversaion occurs online are NOT tracking this  conversation, so are missing out on a unique opportunity to listen and engage with some of their passionate consumers
• * ignoring social media (by a corporate) doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist - the conversation continues even if ignored
• * invoking the Cluetrain Manifesto, Chris made the point that a company thinking that it can still strongly control its ‘public face’ is begin severley undermined by social media (and used his own example of Twittering about his poor experience with Qantas as an example)
• * companies are not resourcing internally to listen to or participate in the online conversation
• * companies’ strategies should be about listening and engaging - the tools are easy to use and relatively inexpensive
• * companies can use social media to ‘close the feedback loop’, right back/down to the product if that is identified
• * companies can use ‘crowd-source’ strategies - for example, with product support to other users
• * companies should aim to build relationships with people online in a similar way to that which they would use in a ‘face-to-face’ situation - treat them as real, use authenitc communications, enable access to real people (eg CEO, COO, etc)
• * How does a ‘corporate’  (eg Qantas) do it? - get involved, encourage employees, set boundaries; but, will require changes in the way companies hire, train and ‘guide’ staff
• * Stephen used a great example of how 10 Downing St has engaged with their online community by ‘participating in the conversation’ that occurs about British politics and the Prime Minister

NFP and Community Social Networks

• * NFPs often don’t have $ or resources to engage with their stakeholder coimmunities as nmuch as they’d like
• * They can use social media to communicate with their communities

Advertising Considerations on Social Media

• * social media ad budgets are generally miniscule for major brands
• * proposal is that companies could shift even just 10% of their ad budget into ‘new’ media for powerful and measurable results
• * ROI is not always the right metric to focus on
• * “What is the value of a conversation about your product?” - immeasurable!

Hope that gives you some insight into some of the thoughts that were discussed by a table-full of passionate and interested observers and participants in this very interesting time we find ourselves in!

Enjoy this great video by Nike and the emotive power of Nike+ and the running community. I love the way it connects people across the globe and all weather conditions……. It’s all about a sports oriented social network right?