Social Networking at the Physical Security Industry's Largest Conference

The big question I was asked on numerous occasions during the conference was "Is it really worthwhile for security pros to use social networking and media?"

With the amount of industry users growing, the usefulness can't help but increase. (that's my short answer)

But I invite you to read on and see if my full assessment jives with what you are seeing as well.

It would be easy for some of us to say that social networking was a great success this year at ASIS. But, it would also be easy for some to look at meet-up attendance levels and overall "group" participation and argue against that fact. The difficult thing to define here is the "success" or "irrelevance" of the overall social networking activity - and how you measure that is fairly subjective.

That's because the users of social networking fall into three distinctly different groups. Probably more than that - but for the most part, I pigeon-hole everyone into three:

The Marketing or PR Pro / Provider: This game has been revolutionized in recent years by social networking, media and similar tools that have shifted the focus off of traditional marketing avenues. So it's no surprise that security equipment and service companies have started to get on board. The reasons for it's popularity have a lot to do with opening communication channels and new dimensions of information flow and monitoring (if properly used and planned out). How well does all this relate in the physical security industry? Not nearly as well as the rest of the world but there is definitely some positive growth. It's hard to argue with the success of marketing and customer service through this method, especially when you see what some of the larger providers do with it. It's refreshing to see @firetide, @HIDGlobal, @exacq, @DMP_ALARMS, @chelsiewoods, @ProtectionOne, @pprobinson, @ProvidentMike, @RhiannaDaniels, @Futureshield_CW, @Todd_Morris, @3VR, @stevesurf and BoschSecurityUS bringing that kind of enhanced service to their customers. It's a shame, but some of the larger manufacturers/providers are running social networking accounts with little to no value whatsoever. (not listed for obvious reasons)

The News Pro:

Call it New Media, Citizen Journalism or whatever you'd like - but things are different in the world of news. Social networking has given a press pass to just about anyone who wants one. I think this is a great leveling agent in many ways, and it can sure make things interesting.

The industry is already covered well by both print and online media, and the news industry in general is embracing social networking and media as a way to connect with users and enhance the relationship all around. I've watched with great interest as editors/reporters like @Sam_Pfeifle, @BrentDirks, @Security_Mag, @Leischen and @info4security have used social networking as a powerful tool.

The End Users, Consultants and Practitioners:

This group includes not only the end users, but just about everyone else that isn't selling a product, service or reporting on it. The motivation to use social networking is more clear with the marketing and news people, but there are more reasons and a wider set of goals with this group. Since goals very greatly among users in this group, it's difficult to measure success

In conclusion, I feel that most security professionals who are using social networking for non-sales and non-news reporting reasons are starting to see value. That's because the amount of valuable resources available varies directly with the amount of other industry people out there, using the same tools. One of the key benefits of social networking is the accessibility to others in the industry at all levels. This dynamic was slowly developing over the last few years, but the conference was a shot in the arm, boosting numbers of users and everyone's effectiveness. Thanks to everyone who participated in the conversations, and helped to further this developing medium!

More Conference News

A few things going on today in the social networking world for security professionals. 

But, to me the coolest thing was the arrival of the social networking lanyards from Laminex. 

Lanyards

As you can see, they turned out pretty well. Please note, the printed Twitter ID is the result of an iron-on transfer. If you signed up for your lanyard early enough I've got a transfer for you. Still not sure if I'll be able to iron them all on before the conference but I'll try. Also note that the lanyard to the left is modeled by my 6yo son. so unless you are under 4" tall your badge will not hang to your waist. 

TweepML List

The second cool thing was the completion of the TweepML for Physical Security Professionals. This is a dynamic list of 100 security professionals on Twitter. If you enter your user ID at the end of the list, you can choose to follow all, or select specific people to follow. It would be great if TweepML would generate a RSS feed of the members twitter streams but so far I'm not seeing any way to do that easily. 

Well, the only way to do it easily is through the FriendFeed Room. Unfortunately, there wasn't much interest when it was formed but maybe there will be now. 

Conference Tools

Which leads me to the third cool thing. If you've ever gone to a conference where you and others were using Twitter you probably noticed how easily information was shared between everyone by the use of hashtags. Hashtags are simply putting the # sign before a word. Doing so makes it easy to search for that word and compile a list of current tweets that contain it. For instance, if I'm at a vendor booth and they are about to start a demo of their latest technology - I can send a tweet with the #asis09 hashtag in it. Everyone following that hashtag will see the message and know. This kind of communication is new and strange to many. It falls between direct person-to-group communications and general postings of information. With person-to-group the ones receiving the message are expected to respond or digest the information. Just posting the information so it's available makes it difficult for everyone. With Twitter, the information gets to everyone who wants it - and people can choose to be as interactive as they desire. 

Andres Armeda has done an impressive job making this easy. We're in the process of configuring tools for social networking users to stay on top of things during the conference. The goal is to give people the resources they need to monitor what others are saying and doing without hassle. This will take the shape of a website that's streaming all conference related posts, RSS feeds that can be turned into SMS messages and even a specific twitter account you can follow to get everyone's traffic from one source. 

Meetups

Still need some help in this area. It's obvious that this year's conference will not have as many large scale events as previous years. However, I'm still trying to secure some agreements with the events that will be held to arrange for at least one meetup a day. Monday is the ASIS sponsored meetup at the President's Reception - but only conference attendees have tickets to the reception unless they are purchased specifically. Since a good number of us are exhibitors, that leaves a good number out in the cold without tickets. 

I'm hoping to arrange for meetups as part of larger events. For instance, if Company X is holding their event Tuesday evening, they agree to allow social networking users into the event to meetup with each other. If your company is interested in helping, please let me know. You may even be interested in hosting a small get together for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook users. If that's the case, you'll definitely earn a place in each of our hearts and I'm sure your investment will be returned through the solid networking value alone.