Ostensibly, a Chinwag meeting about PR Online is simply not my bag, but an interface appears to be forming (think Star Trek) between PR and Blogging exemplified by the use of conversation space on blogs (posts and comments) to communicate and respond to messages. And it was fascinating stuff!

Anyone who has seen my recent posts on my business site about the unfinished conversation economy and landing pages are opening conversations will have noted my ongoing obsession with the idea of new media as a conversational thing rather than a cleverly coded object that allows us poor mortals to ‘interact’ with it. This PR chaps have got this with a vengeance and are inventing some great terms like ‘conversational communities’ and ‘blogger relations’.

From a Tipping Point point of view, its about the PR community finding where the conversational communities are and who is the most influential within that community - named connectors by Gladwell - and conversing there.

Manipulative? For sure. Good for consumers? For sure too. Since Dell opened up to consumers after the Dell Hell and batteries debacle Market Sentinel describes that Dell users are voting for XP to be an option on new machines, alongside Vista. Dell have actioned this, this conversation has been resolved so they get an XP option. Would this have happened without this conversation? Like hell it would.

Better and less conversationally opinionated notes than mine are available at Neville Hobsons blog. Neville was part of a panel that included Jacqui White, Online Communications Director, Edelman UK; Stephanie Bonnet, Director, Burson-Marsteller London; and Mark Rogers, CEO, Market Sentinel, with Mike Butcher as chair. An excellent and well informed panel all at the top of their game.

It’s a shame there wasn’t more time to talk about Twitter, that bizarre new 140 character comms. Tim Hoang from Rainier PR asked whether it was important or not for online PR? Or is it a ‘finished conversation’? I guess we need to talk about it …

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Keen as I am becoming to save the planet, I’ve set up below. If you are local and interested, please come along!

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Interesting meeting on the 27th March through the new OpenCoffee Club in Manchester . OpenCoffee is derived from an original cappachino by Saul Klien and because it is a smart and simple idea it seems to be taking off big time.

The Manchester event was organised by Manoj Ranaweera and he has made notes on the event here. Its a good write up, and I have nothing to add except to express the interesting nature of the concept which makes it special, which is … informal and regular.

It’s a weekly event same time same place, there are no agendas (except from those attending of course…), no real start time just drop in and see who is there. In my mind this makes it remarkable, as it differs immensely from the more formal First Tuesday clones that vet your ideas before they let you in the door!

If you have an idea that you want to take forward, or even an idea about an idea then it comes recommended. Keep your eyes on the upcoming OpenCoffee group for latest info.

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I got to thinking the other day that the usability field is now subject to local theories rather than a fully fledged theory of interaction per se. As usability professionals, we will take tools, research, ideas, inspirations from where we will to make the experience good

For instance, we don’t now only use usability labs to get the best picture of what is going on. That might be the best tool, but it might not. We might prefer quantitative data, numbers, to complete our experiment so we’ll choose an online survey. Or we might use eyetracking or analytics. Or both.

Problems with being postmodern come about when the tools are selected because of sexyness or cost rather than whether they can answer the question. I still have problems with understanding why anyone would use eyetracking as a first pass analysis tool as it provides no answers, only more questions. Finding out that a particular area has been fixated upon maybe great to know … but hardly actionable. And from the psychology we know that people can’t introspect at this level.

I’ve started to think that we need to make this more explicit. We don’t ‘only do labs’ and on the Hawdale Associates site we’ve set up some video evidence to show a kind of expert review, also a local theory. I think we need more of this and using YouTube video media makes this even more possible. Even more a stamp of postmodernism, in fact…

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Sometimes it’s nice to be able to apply good usability techniques to real world items. This concerns the esteemed River Cottage Diary. Nice diary, nice concept - recipe issues are seasonal, mixed in with the regular diary pages.

But what doesn’t work is that a key orientation cue - the month - is set way out of eyeline. So when you look at a date it’s not immediately obvious what month it is. The 12th of what, exactly?

(Not my spot, credit due to Alison Hawdale, whose diary it unfortunately is…)

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