‘You feel like you know everything about social media, and then you find out you only know social media in specific areas, and realize there is so much more to it.” These are the thoughts of Eric Cleckner of the group known as ‘The Toppest Notch’ at Social Media Futures. The Toppest Notch has been working together and finding that the intensity of this weekend has allowed them to come up with more and better ideas than if the sessions were broken up over a longer period of time. Members of the group are of the opinion that the workplace would be more productive with longer, more intensely focused workdays, shorter work weeks and an interesting work environment.
Although the students have been working in the incredible COLAB environment all weekend, they haven’t felt distracted by the openness of the space or the many diversions available. According to Dan McSwain, “even when you’re playing Foosball, you’re still thinking about the project.” Shay Colson added that the lack of expectations or constraints, such as would be evident if you were working on a specific product, has also enhanced the process. The opportunity to ‘dig deep’ and have the ability to spend this amount of time on the subject of social media has helped Jay Adams refine some of the business ideas he has been working on this year.
The big picture idea for The Toppest Notch has been to come up with a set of overarching principles and core values for social media that will persist while the social media platforms on which those principles and core values are enacted will come and go. The ideas generated will help individuals and businesses to be successful in the social media space.