Positioning himself somewhat as a “curmudgeon,” Scott Berkun launched a one-man attack on puffery of all kinds in his Social Media Club Seattle talk Tuesday evening, How to call BS on a social media guru.
The talk title — intentionally provocative — suggested Berkun would zero in on inflated social media egos. Instead, Berkun gave a creative, compelling and humorous call for critical thinking skills. Without using that phrase, of course, which I think is probably the kiss of death in advance copy.
My one-line summary of Berkun’s talk: learn to use “who, what, when, where, why, and how” (the 5 W’s and 1 H from news writing 101) judiciously when faced with sweeping generalizations, no matter from whose mouth or pen they originate.
I mentioned the talk in my MCDM class last night, which prompted me to shift my thoughts to virtual paper — or at least capture my thoughts at the time! With that in mind, here are my tweets from the half-hour talk:
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