show me how you get down, ok!

SO I just watched this TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alexis_ohanian_how_to_make_a_splash_in_social_media.html

It's a nice little story about, essentially, the power of the internet and of social media and all sorts of good things and greenpeace. Greenpeace wanted to name a whale something and they wanted it to be meaningful and profound but instead everyone voted for Mister Splashy Pants and it won by a landslide. And because this name voting became so big, the cause that Greenpeace was actually pushing by way of naming the whale went through and they were successful in saving whales n what not.

But the thing that stuck with me was the point that speaker made that due to the conversational give and take nature of the internet ("social media" if you will) once Greenpeace put out this vote to the internet they couldn't control what people's response would be. When MSP seemed to be winning they extended the voting for a week in the hopes that it wouldn't be the final outcome, but by doing that everyone got really up in arms and the MSP campaign upped the ante.

This is an essential element of performance, that try as you might to construct a specific experience for the audience so that they come away with a single monolithic meaning of what they just experienced, you just can't. You can't control if something you said as a joke is not taken as such. I think too often people forget or ignore that fact and just plow forward with their VISION regardless of the audience response. Not to say that you can't stay true to yourself and your underlying message, but just be aware that it might not come through as clearly as you'd like. And that listening to an audience will help you chart your past work and maybe hone your communication skills to better convey what you're going for next time. it's all about communication, people.

Anyway, I'm excited to see this as a development in social communication and since we're such a my-voice-must-be-heard kind of group (twitter, facebook, what have you) audience response will, hopefully, become a factor closer to the forefront of people's minds.