FAQ

What the heck is Case Study Jam?

Case Study Jam is a place for communications practitioners to come together and share their stories – successes and failures. How are on-the-ground, front-line folks using social media and, more importantly, how are they integrating these tools into overall communications strategies and practices? Oh, it’s also an online repository of these stories. But more on that later.

Another meetup? Man, don’t we have enough of these things?

Oh good lord probably. Where we’d like to think we’re different, though, is that the idea behind Case Study Jam is to break down the theoretical and focus on the practical.

Rather than bring in one thought leader to dispense twit-sized pearls of wisdom for the masses, Case Study Jam is all about the low-level folks sharing their experiences. How does a communications officer convince the skeptical DirComms that social tools can complement their traditional efforts? Why is your organization squatting on its Twitter ID instead of actually using it? What happens when you fail and fail hard?

Case Study Jam dispenses with the speaker-audience arrangement and gives everyone a voice. And please don’t get us wrong, we love the Social Media Breakfasts and Third Tuesdays of the world. They are great events with plenty of value. We’re just trying to bring something a little different, something geared to the folks on the ground.

So are you saying agency types and consultants need not apply?

Well, there’s no need to be exclusionary. Case Study Jam is for people with some dirt on their hands. Flacks who have a good story to tell are certainly welcome to come and riff on their experiences. But if you’re more interested in being a thought leader than a practitioner, perhaps you can invite your clients to come with you and tell their stories from their perspective instead.

Wait, aren’t there two consultants on your organizing team?

Funny you should mention that. Yes, two of us are working on the agency/consultant side. We talked a bit about that in a post just prior to the first jam. In short, neither of us were on the dark side when this idea was born. And we both promise to keep our business out of your business. If you’re on the agency side, we’d ask that you do the same. Networking is awesome. Preying on presenters with a stack of business cards? Less so.

I am interested jamming but I’m not sure if my story will add value. Will it?

Probably, yes. We’re looking for all kinds of stories: mad successes, complete failures and everything in between. And we’re not limited to any sector. Government types, NGOs and organizations, corporate comms pros – everyone is welcome.

So what’s the format?

In four words: Rapid fire oral presentations. Bring notes if you must but don’t read a script and don’t dazzle us with your mad powerpoint skillz. There’s plenty of time to explore various sites and campaigns outside of the event, Case Study Jam is for talking about the processes. Presentations should include:

  • Basic background. What does your organization do? How big is it? What’s the approval chain you’re faced with?
  • Your pitch. What was your need and how did you decide on the tools you recommended? What was the reception like? How did you sell the skeptics?
  • The execution. How did your plan roll out? Did you do it in-house or bring in some help?
  • The aftermath. Was it a success? Was it a failure? What comes next? What’s your takeaway?

Once you’ve pounded through that, we’ll open the floor to questions for a few minutes. Maybe split into small groups. Honestly, we’ll probably experiment with formats until we hit on something that works.

[Insert generic question that will allow us to talk about legacy]

I’m so glad you asked! If the presenter is cool with it, the presentation will be captured on video and uploaded to the Case Study Jam YouTube channel. At the very least, we’ d like to toss up a brief overview of the presentations on the wiki. We can also link to campaigns and websites there and add a bit of value to each presentation. The idea here is to share stories so why limit the fun to the people in the room? Let’s create a repository of best (and worst!) practices that we can all draw upon and learn from.