We just had another highly successful trip to the annual Amsterdam Dance Event. Among the usual feverishly paced meetings by day and cutting edge club events by night, The Alchemy Group ran the press area at DJ Magazine’s 3500 capacity Top 100 DJs Awards Party.

This included working to manage the huge online reaction to David Guetta’s win, the popular success of many local Dutch DJs and handling the video and interview requirements of over 40 media teams.

ADE 2011 was bigger than ever but didn’t seem to be any less important or useful as a result. Much fun was made of my irresistable status update that I was ‘updating client social media profiles sandwiched between Frankie Knuckles and Derrick May‘, but if ADE can expand and still remain that personal (which it obviously can) then it’s future looks as exciting as it’s past 16 years.

Read our review of Amsterdam Dance Event 2011 on the Point Blank blog. We’ve been consulting on social media strategy for the award-winning DJ and music school, including maximising the online dialogue between clients via their own sponsorship of DJmag’s Top 100.

While we’re at it, might we suggest you SUBSCRIBE to Point Blank’s YouTube Channel, where video tutorials on the latest EDM production techniques are posted FREE every week.

Today I was on the train to work when I discovered via Facebook that Josh Edmonds, a colleague of mine when we both worked at Ministry of Sound, was killed in a motorbike accident yesterday while travelling in Thailand.

It wasn’t long before my feed was full of shocked comments from friends we shared from that era. Grief aired publicly, immediately, emotively. Before it has even had a chance to sink in. Heartfelt words communicated via a platform so new our society hasn’t worked out what is and isn’t acceptable to post in such a tragic situation.

Having now witnessed this before, in those shocked first few minutes of grief people may leave what can appear to others as inappropriate posts. Using lots of exclamation marks or coming over as overly chatty, almost continuing the lighthearted text-speak banter they usually fire off. It doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation and some may feel it’s the ultimate indignity of our cult of the individual.

It’s fine testament to Josh that the posts today’s sad news generated were universally touching and deeply, thoughfully expressed.

I’m not sure that writing a blog post about the development of social media etiquette is even appropriate at this moment. But as my own tribute to such a talented young colleague, I’ll add this to the stream of online dedications that so many have been compelled to express today.

Many in society will take some convincing about this new way of dealing with death and grief, but this is how we communicate the minutiae of our lives today, so Facebook clearly IS the most appropriate place when it comes to expressing something really important to those that matter.

The number of people who changed their profile pictures to ones of themselves and Josh today was a silent but incredibly powerful statement. For all the scare stories about social networks eroding cultural values, they equally offer a very traditional form of support during difficult times. And if they make speaking about – and therefore coping with – death a little easier for us collectively then that is surely only a benefit to society, however we end up redrawing the lines of etiquette and media behaviour.

The saddest thing is that such an enthusiastic proponent of all today’s communications technologies will not now see them develop. RIP Josh.

All this week we’re out in Mayrhofen, Austria, producing a real-time stream of news content for the official Snowbombing festival iPhone app by Eristoff – Vodka from the Land of the Wolf.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, download it for free while the event is taking place and let us know what you think. You’ll find news, gossip and interviews direct from the week-long festival, which sees artists like The Enemy, Editors, 2ManyDJs, De La Soul, Fatboy Slim, Vitalic, Doves and Friendly Fires playing to 6000 fancy dressed loons high up the Tyrolean alps.

Live Feeds

The app makes use of Alchemy Content’s specialist experience of developing and running mobile applications that go beyond the gimmicks; providing a useful, always up-to-date information service that’s constantly available in a user’s pocket.

Live feeds of high-quality custom content give people a reason to refer to the branded application repeatedly throughout their time at the event. For Snowbombing, we’ve devised an additional Eristoff Secrets feed, offering exclusive calls to action on things like VIP party access, ticket competitions and insider tips for getting the most from the resort.

Intense Usage

Mobile apps based around intense periods of usage, like major events or holiday locations work particularly well, so the Eristoff Snowbombing app is an ideal use of the technology and Alchemy Content’s editorial and project management services. See our Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza app for more.

GPS maps pinpointing and recommending local businesses, a fully searchable events schedule including artist profiles, plus user generated community feeds from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all add to the application being an essential download for anyone – whether out at Snowbombing or not – with an interest in the artists or wanting an interactive guide to the best of Mayrhofen’s après ski.

Download the Eristoff Snowbombing app for iPhone or iPod Touch.

Twitter is far more established and important that it was even during Barak Obama’s famous social media election campaign. And the UK already loves to tweet during political TV shows like the BBC’s Question Time. It’s a real shame that the many Twitter-phobes are missing out on this important new dimension. One day soon, all big live events will have a feed of comments as a standard part of the broadcast. Then, status updates will be see for what they really are – far from egotistical personal broadcasts, they can be a simple but effective ways for any audience to participate in a communal event.

It’s fantastic that just as digital progress seems to signal the ‘end’ of event television by making almost everything available on-demand, we have a brand new medium for live events, that also has the added importance of immediate political weight.

The Chancellors Debate showed the shape of things to come once the party leaders have their TV showdowns. Of course the negative side of all this real-time digital commentary is that those in the spotlight become incredibly guarded and bland, plus attempt to exert way too much control. However, like it or not, this technology will play a vital role in the Election 2010. And this is really just the beginning of a new political era, so resistance to things like Twitter will have to simply fall away.

The Daily Mail and others may still find value in running daily scare stories about social networks and the anonymity of the internet for some time yet, but the next month will be an important move forward in the acceptance of all the ‘new’ media technologies – and how to use them effectively. Even if politics continues to annoy and baffle, hopefully the relevance and power of digital media will become clearer.

Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.

It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.

It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.

Train Your Brain

The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.

Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.

As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.

Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.

Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…