The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit happened this Wednesday and caused a lot of conversation both online, and among attendees at the Sandton Convention Centre (Johannesburg). Being my first one, I had really high expectations, and they raised the bar from the moment I arrived.

Without going into too much detail about all the talks, the speakers who stood out for me were Dan Ariely and Chris Anderson. It is not the things I hear or see for the first time that make sense, it’s realizing I’ve overlooked them in all of their simplicity.

Note from Chris Anderson’s talk

He spoke about concepts from his book ‘FREE – The Future Of A Radical Price’. Here are some highlights:

• Zero as a price, is not a price, yet drives economic behaviour.
•  The internet created the new form of FREE, which is really free.
• Things are too cheap to meter when you can treat them as though they were free.
• “In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost.” – Joseph Bertrand 1883.
•  This era is the end of physical media, as all media goes digital, it is moving to a marginal cost of zero.
• Younger people have more time than money, older people more money than time. As a result young people can consume free, yet problematic media that has formatting issues, with advertising. But the older audience would rather pay for a better service.
• We created the internet, with our content, our ideas and our time.

In closing: As you offer your service or product for ‘free’, what will you sell that people will need to use with your product?

Dan Ariely

His talk was about irrational behaviour, its importance in our business and personal lives. Here are some key points:

• “As decisions get bigger, we don’t know what to do and leave it to someone else to make that decision for us.” He was referring to how we make choices and decisions when using online platforms and deciding on courses of action.
• We need to evaluate things in relative terms, rather than absolute terms.
• “How is it possible that people working in a particular field are always wrong based on their intuition and legacy?” Because things have always been done a certain way, we continue to do them that way without questioning.
• Opportunities exist for us to constantly improve ourselves.  How often does intuition fail us? It is time we tried something else, doubt your intuition and try something else.

Without taking away from all the other speakers, these are some of the many highlights from the conference. For snippets of all the other talks, have a look at the conference blog here.

Image by PopTech on Flickr

“Social Media is the answer” has become a regular phrase. The popular perception lately is that you should be using Social Media. While I’m all for you exposing yourself using this medium, it doesn’t replace everything else.

Here are my 10 reasons why you should NOT use Social Media

1. Having a large following turns into business leads.

The rise of Social Media disproved a lot of the known laws of traditional marketing and advertising. The concept that you are likely to build a paying customer base if a lot of people are talking about you is not true. However, being part of the conversation works. If you think you will bombard the web with irrelevant and unwanted messaging, this won’t change a thing for you.

2. You will follow a lot of people on Twitter and hope a lot of them are listening.

The web and spammers have taught us that noise does not amount to good content.

3. You want to make small talk in a public domain.

Nothing is more annoying than 2 people using a platform to exchange information that no one else is remotely interested in, this is sufficient grounds to have your bandwidth terminated. Some popular names have started using Social Media sites and talk about parties or who they saw, which has no relevance to the people using the same platform.

4. You take ownership of the site.

The other day, while talking to a friend of mine, I found myself saying certain people should be taught the usage of Social Media. Right then, it became evident that I shouldn’t be the content they send me. We use media for different reasons and if they don’t send or write what’s relevant for me I should reject it.

5. Because of the Digital v/s Print Media debate you think Digital Media has taken over.

Print media might have lost its traction, but the majority of South Africans still read print and it is arguable that the rest of the world has more access to the internet than print. As much as we may think traditional media has lost its significance most people believe and reference newspapers than social media sites. If you think it replaces traditional media, it hasn’t yet.

6. You think it’s easy to convince the CEO of a corporate company that your Facebook group will give them the needed exposure.

Senior managers and CEOs of large conglomerates still believe in traditional business ethic with its known laws and restrictions. Very little can be proven about the people who follow you on Facebook and more so with the tech-savvy individuals. The more technologically inclined know firsthand why you cannot build a campaign using the net exlcusively.

7. You think it replaces having a thoroughly thought out marketing plan.

8. Everyone is using it, where else are people lately?

How about out there doing their own things? An estimated 7 out 10 South Africans (based on whom I’ve spoken to) don’t have a clue what Web 2.0 is.

9. You think everyone is using it, if not you strongly suggest they do.

Not everyone ‘has’ to use social media, especially if the reason is for them to find you.

10. You think it makes you an authority.

If you think because you have a blog, website, Twitter account, 1000 friends on Facebook and a website you are suddenly more interesting and are a reliable source. You are not.

Understanding that social media and the web in general act as a support system to other things you are doing to give value, it does not eliminate connecting with clients and making contact outside this space.

Mongezi Mtati is the founder of an entrepreneurial event, a vodcaster and questions everything. Follow me on Twitter.

So why don’t you attend the BarCamp in Johannesburg tomorrow? The BarCamp is an unconference  where anyone can raise a relevant topic that you think is worth sharing at the session. Besides, geek has been the new cool for a long time long time now.

Some active  and influential online professionals will be attending, sponsoring and presenting over the 2 days of this prestigious gathering. If you want to find out how the movers of social media locally are doing it, this is one of the places to be.

Some of the proposed sessions that will be covered:

• Add your session here, it can be as short as 5 minutes
• Build a quick Twitter mashup using Django & Jquery in 30 mins
• Guitar Hero multi-playa – just to unwind
• OSSA – FLOSS Lobby Group
• JavaFX

Go to the page and proposed your own session, if you have anything to offer. They also welcome sponsorships and other contributions.

Signup here to attend and you’ll be boat-loads more tech-savvy by Monday.