The Measurement Summit, Part 1: Shel Israel

(See Part 2 of this series, on Jim Macnamara, here.)

Each year, in the day or two before IPR's annual Summit on Measurement, KDPaine & Partners hosts a User Group Meeting to help its clients do better dashboard measurement. The special guest this year was Shel Israel, blogger, social media expert, and co-author (with Robert Scoble) of Naked Conversations. I met the User Group crew at Katie's house, and we sat and talked over drinks and dinner. (Also present was Jim Macnamara, with whom I had a talk over some beers, but that's a different post.) Shel Israel is an interesting guy.

Shel is, of course, all about the conversation. He spoke some about the new book he is working on, "Twitterville," and waxed enthusiastic about the special way that Twitter allows people to communicate, and how this will become a valuable business tool. His premise, as I understand it, is that the brevity and immediacy of Twitter allow a special and valuable sort of communication. Whereas email and blog posts sometimes suffer from the formal demands of writing, Twitter allows and demands that people communicate on a somewhat different and -- in many cases -- more effective fashion. For more of what Shel thinks about Twitter, see his blog, especially here.

Another thing I noticed about Shel is that he is not just enthusiastic about social media, but he's optimistic, too. For him, it's not just that social media is the center of the universe, it's the center of a benevolent universe. As you probably know, Shel spends a lot of time interviewing people, and he's run into more than his share of difficult people and situations. (I guess that's probably one thing that makes interviews interesting.) But he's not the kind of guy who makes conversational hay out of unpleasantness; he'd rather focus on what's positive.

There was an excellent example last night when the conversation turned to politics. For most of us in this part of the world, the run-up to the coming US election has got us a bit run down, and many of us are only too happy to complain about this or that aspect of the candidates or the coverage. But not Shel. In fact, he not only predicts that social media will play an even bigger and more crucial role in coming elections, but he's excited about the potential for social media to radically change US politics for the better by saving a big part of all those millions of dollars now spent on campaigns. Pleasant enthusiasm about politics is the sign of a true optimist. --Bill Paarlberg