http://www.flickr.com/photos/britt_w/

A few days ago we received a tweet from @digitalmaverick inviting us to the 140 Character conference http://bit.ly/kHE7X as his guest.

We use Twitter and social media channels all the time to talk to teachers. And we do love it so.

So we said: @digitalmaverick 140 times yes! Thanks so much for inviting us. We’d be intrigued and excited to attend.

This is brand new type of conference about social media, the tools that are turning our understanding of communication on its head.

The conference was marketed as “Real-Time Internet / State of “NOW”. How could we resist?

Twitter defines itself by limiting what you can say to 140 characters, including all spaces and punctuation.

Hence the conference name and its hash tag: #140conf. Then you can search for the keyword “#140conf” to hear what’s going on, live.

So I turned up at the O2 arena (never seen it before – what an incredible and space distorting structure!) in my Moby T-shirt. Natch.

@jeffpulver, the organiser and visionary, opened with passionate and fascinating keynote about the way we consume and create media.

@jeffpulver “Listen. Connect. Share. Engage” << love it!

You can see an Open University interview of Jeff here and it’s well worth a watch: http://bit.ly/KX2vx

Then a star turn by @stephenfry who cogitated on the nature of celebrity tweeting, & the power of a million followers.

He called himself a “Twillionaire” The first of lots of Twitter related jargon we were to hear that day.

@stephenfry also exhorted us to remember that Twitter was called Twitter for a reason. It’s about people, not technology.

What followed was stream of expert panels and keynote speakers. I’ll highlight those I personally found interesting.

I particularly enjoyed @JeffreyHayzlett, the CMO for Kodak, who is blending real time comms & crowd sourcing to shape products.

The Twitter and Small Business panel struck a cord. Small businesses (like us) benefit from the opportunities social media grants us.

Because we can make customers feel *personally* looked after. That’s a struggle for large companies.

The Twitter music panel was also an eye opener, as it had a DJ, musician, digital marketing exec from Warner and a Producer.

They told interesting tales about an industry in flux. They were also, by far, the grooviest panel yet

PS: Follow @mannynorte , the Kiss FM DJ, if you want to know someone who knows Jay Z and Beyonce.

JP Rangaswami (@jobsworth) the Chief Scientist at BT told us how his Twitter following helped him find his daughters missing gerbil.

This is where twitter really works. Not when it’s used as a broadcast tool, but as a participation tool. Please RT!

Josie Fraser (@josiefraser) a Social & Educational Technologist focused on the Re-Tweet (someone “re” tweets your tweet to their network).

RT @BrainPOP_UK Josie Fraser, a Social & Educational Technologist focused on the Re-Tweet (someone “re” tweets your tweet to their network)

The “Police who Tweet” panel was eye opening as it seems that civic bodies are on board with social media and woken up to listening!

The panel I was holding out for was the Education panel. For obvious reasons…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/britt_w/

David White (@daveowhite),Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick), James Clay (@jamesclay),Shirley Williams (@shirleyearley) & Sue Black (@Dr_Black)

What was apparent was that they had formed (or enhanced) friendships via Twitter. If not, maybe it was just shared joy of teacherhood .

Immediately, as Teachers are trained to do, they involved the audience. It did feel up to this point, that the audience were rather passive observers.

They turned that on its head. @jamesclay – you were particularly disruptive and it was a pleasure to see

The main issue was “How can tools like twitter be used in learning?”.

It seemed the challenge wasn’t teaching the tool, but teaching the behaviours; how to gain from digital social comms, safely & wisely.

So was attending #140conf worth it?

Downsides: No Twitterfall (http://bit.ly/Wghue), no wifi & slightly passive nature of the event.

Upsides: The ideas and passion were clear. There was also lots of intelligent and exciting debate. An important event.

Social media is the future. Whether we like or not. The door has been opened to freedom of expression, global community and real time media.

Thanks for the authenticity, @jeffpulver and @digitalmaverick for his inclusion and generosity. Both of you are worth following.

++ UPDATE ++ The deadline for this position is now 21st August 2009. To be considered please ensure your application is received by this date.

BrainPOP UK is looking for a special someone.

A Customer Advocate. Someone who can create customer evangelists by nurturing great communications and customer experiences.

Naturally we sat down to write a job description. It ended up looking like A.N.Other job description, useful, but boring.

We realised that what we really want is someone who just wants to make our customers feel adored.

Someone who can see all the different ways that can be done and make it happen. We’re comfortable with providing a broad and open remit as long as you can prove you are up to it.

We need someone in our team who has the experience and knowledge to bring together all our current marketing work (and experiments!) to create a “user happiness” strategy for BrainPOP UK that focuses on engaging communication, community and, most importantly, customer experience.

Your challenge is to increase awareness, trial take up, sales conversions and enable our (potential and current) customers to feel engaged with BrainPOP UK.

You should:

• Instinctively “get” how to weave stories in and around BrainPOP UK, our customers and the market we operate in. You spot opportunities and make thoughtful and considered proposals for campaigns and innovations.
• Know the difference between hype and excitement.
• Be a black belt in data wrangling and insight.
• Be passionate about great copy. Writing is one of the best things EVER.
• Believe that customer support is marketing too.
• Relish the idea of working in a small company, start up culture and hot house environment, with all the pleasure and pain that brings. You will represent a big chunk of BrainPOP UK and you will be working with some extremely talented people. You will have to stand up and be counted against them.
• Be excited about working under our team motto: “Always be yourself, but on a good day“.

You shouldn’t:

• Be reliant on print advertising, direct mail, cold calling and all that jazz. Occasionally they’re appropriate, but we/you believe there are better ways too.
• Be afraid of jumping on the phone and talking to real life customers.
• Think social media is a panacea. You should understand that it takes time, authenticity and persistence. We love working in this space and we hope you will too. Developing a strong social media presence will be a key part of the role.

It would be nice if:

• You had a background in some capacity in the education arena, get the jargon and our market place idiosyncrasies. If not, do your homework.
• Be comfortable with online media and technology.
• You actually want to work for BrainPOP UK.

What do you get in return?

• You get to work inside one of the most fun and exciting elearning companies in the world, with offices in New York, Mexico, Paris, Israel and China. And in Oxford of course. Undoubtedly there will be opportunities to travel.
• You get to develop relationships with some of the most interesting, passionate (and challenging!) customers there are: Teachers, Parents and Kids.
• You get to work across a multitude of disciplines, such as social media, event promotion, PR, SEO and others that YOU will recommend to us.
• Salary? Well, you know what you are realistically worth. We’re not advertising a salary quite deliberately. Pitch us.

OK, now we have your attention how do you apply?

Clearly we’re not going to ask you to fill out an job application form. I haven’t got time to write one and you must be able to think of a better way of making yourself stand out from the crowd. If you can’t sell yourself how can we expect you to sell BrainPOP UK?

So…maybe you could email us a CV and a link to your blog, Twitter feed, Linked in page, MySpace page, Youtube channel or however and whatever you do to hang out. Or write us a hand written letter on orange notepaper about why you think BrainPOP UK is the company for you and how you will rock our world. Perhaps you want to make us a podcast job application? Or is making a short video telling us why you want to work here more your style?

Help us understand what makes you you.

If you have character, experience, ideas, charisma, great copy writing skills and think you know how to get people excited about BrainPOP UK this could be your perfect job.

We know we’re asking a lot. But go on, apply, we dare you. We double dare you. If we like you enough we’ll invite you to interview and meet the team.