I’m producing, or helping with, four GameChangers events next week as part of Social Media Week in Los Angeles:

1) A two hour GameChangers workshop, ‘The Revolution Will Be Improvised:  Brand Narratives in the Networked World,’ at KCET television studios.  This will be a quick introduction into the fundamentals of improvisation for business communication, and an exploration of how, to be effective, brands must be prepared to improvise their narratives in the social media space.

2) A workshop billed as ‘Communication Trifecta:  Levels of Meaning in Presentations’ at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy.  This will be for students at USC who are learning to use new media tools and platforms to help them ‘get their show on the road,’ as my dad used to say.  We’re going to focus on how to give good presentations.  (Hint:  It’s not the presentation, it’s the presenter.)

3) A science communication workshop based on biomimicry–using processes found in nature to produce sustainable designs and business strategies–at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC.  The workshop continues a program begun by the actor Alan Alda and science journalist K.C. Cole to help scientists improve their communication skills.  Cole, who was mentored by (and has written a book about) Frank Oppenheimer, creator of the Exploratorium in San Francisco, will be co-facilitating with me.  Alda will be viewing segments of the workshop via teleconference from Stony Brook U. in New York.

4)  A program on fan culture hosted by the Cimarron Group that will be moderated by the legendary Henry Jenkins of M.I.T. and USC, who’s like a Professor of Fanthropology.  The program will look at the ways that fan culture affects the marketing of motion pictures.

Only the GameChangers workshop at KCET is open to the public. If you’re in Los Angeles  next week, please plan to attend.  The biomimicry workshop will be streamed live online (follow @socialmediaweek on Twitter for the video link.)   You’ll also want to check out the full schedule of events for Social Media Week. There’s something in it for everyone.  And a lot of it will be streamed live.  You can track it via @socialmediaweek on Twitter, and on the Facebook page and lots of other channels, too.  The new networks have thousands of channels, dontcha know.

Ultimately, all human discourse is social media.  The fact that we have new platforms for doing it doesn’t guarantee we’re going to be any good at it.  For organizations and individuals alike, getting good at social media means getting good at human skills like listening, finding agreement, and synthesizing different points of view into a brand new whole.  That takes improvisation.  And that is why GameChangers is so committed to Social Media Week.  Social media platforms are the stages, and every stage needs its play.

Social Media Week in Los Angeles is being produced by Erick Brownstein and The New Agency.   The event began last year as the brainchild of Toby Daniels and his company, Crowdcentric, in New York City.