Some Differences Between Business and Academia

Okay, so I've decided that writing about each particular paper presentation is kind of futile, so I will just try to hit some highlights. But first I want to start out with some of the differences between an academic social media conference and a business-oriented conference. (Not that I've been to tons of the latter, but I know enough to make sweeping generalizations.)

For starters, an academic conference like this is primarily to present papers (all available online) and share research. People talk about the studies they've done, and the methodologies they used to perform those studies, then get to conclusions. There's a lot of talk about datasets and statistical methods. The paper pretty much is the product. (There have been a couple of exceptions to this today, but not many.)

For your typical business blogging conference, it's all about networking, people making pitches and selling stuff -- their companies and themselves (no, not like that).

For example, if someone is presenting research at a business blogging event, they're basically saying, "Look how good our research is. Wouldn't you like to purchase our services?" Definitely less of that here -- the emphasis is more on how the researchers solved the problems they faced, so that people can incorporate that learning into their own work.

At least, that's my perception.

One thing that I noticed immediately is that a lot of the presentations about the papers weren't very polished. In one sense, that means there's no glitz or gloss to distract you from what's being presented, which is a relief.

However, one thing many presentations were lacking was good visual information design, which is bad if you're a layman like me. I won't get nearly as much from staring at tables of data, as compared to a well-designed graph. (Check out the work of Edward Tufte for resources on good visual information design.)

Also, it was a little jarring at first, but it's about the learning, not about trying to pitch an idea for a startup to someone (at least, not yet). Which is probably a good thing, since some of these folks need to work on their elevator pitches.

However, while they may need work on their 30-second summaries, they do know their details about the research. I've seen more Sigmas (Σ) here than on a year on Fraternity Row.

Other than that, it's a very international event -- there are folks from all over Europe, Asia and Latin America. Which makes it interesting when people with thick Dutch accents ask questions to people with thick Japanese accents.

I'll try to get up some more interesting and informational elements up later on.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: icwsm, social media