I was headed to Nielsen BuzzMetrics' CGM Summit and, since blogging was not allowed, my question was "how can you host an event about consumer generated media and not let your consumers, um, generate media?" I didn't intend for that post to be particularly inflammatory and I didn't even express a clear opinion on whether the prohibition from blogging about the event was good, bad or something in between. But I sure thought it was a valid question and certainly ironic, given the nature of both the event and the company hosting it.
And then I took my family away for a vacation...
But when I got a few moments of downtime (or what my wife insists is actually "family time") I figured I would check in to see how my blog was doing. That's when I noticed that I was getting a shocking amount of referral traffic from a bunch of A-list blogs, I had a small handful of trackbacks and links in from a couple dozen marketing blogs. My Technorati ranking had jumped by several hundred thousand positions. It seemed that I had a meme on my hands.
It was clear that my question had struck a nerve among my fellow bloggers, and a number of them saw fit to continue the conversation that I had started. Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine, Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion, Stowe Boyd's /Message, even BoingBoing, and of course David Armano's Logic+Emotion (to name a few) all cried foul. Publishing 2.0's Scott Karp, who was actually at the CGM Summit, came to Nielsen's defense.
Ultimately Nielsen's management team posted responses on their own blogs. CEO Jonathan Carson, Marketing VP Max Kalehoff and some others all wrote about NBM's rationale for keeping the event off the record. Their posts were thoughtful and well reasoned, and I do understand their logic a bit better now...
I understand it, but I still question it.
Even after attending the event (not as a blogger, but as a representative of my employer and a client of NBM), I still question whether the entire event needed to be off the record. I am not niave - I understand that not every conversation needs to be (or should be) a matter of public record. And as a frequent Digitas spokeperson and someone who often speaks with reporters, I know that on the record means on the record, and off the record means off (you'll note that despite my personal view on the topic, I've not blogged about the Summit content at all). But as a CGM Summit attendee, I still believe that there was plenty of non-proprietary content that could be shared by bloggers without adversely impacting BuzzMetrics, its clients or other event participants. And it is possible to balance on-the-record and off -- it didn't have to be all or nothing.
What's more it seems that this whole episode has caused Nielsen to question their rationale a bit as well. From Jonathan Carson's blog: "Was it the right approach? We got feedback from most of the 100+ participants and our exec team has a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss it. Certainly, the feedback from the blogosphere will be heavily considered as well." (Please be sure to read his complete post, so that you don't take this portion out of context.)
This has certainly been a fascinating illustration of exactly how the blogosphere works. No blog is an island (to bastardize a popular cliche) and it is interesting to see how something as simple as posting a (valid) question about something that still doesn't seem quite right to me sparked a passionate conversation among a farflung group of people I (mostly) don't know personally but with whom I share a set of interests and (at least in some cases) a point of view. Blogging (like all forms of consumer generated media) truly is a dialogue and while we don't all need to agree, we are all better off if we discuss. And discuss we did.
Now, back to vacation (before my wife reminds me who is really boss...)