I’ve been watching the reactions of members of my journalist guild (bgtw.org) for a couple of years now…. and ’shouting warnings from the clifftop’.

Some of them are well ahead of the game. They spotted the water going out and realised what it meant. They are already building strong positions of authority in social networks, on forums, etc, etc.

Others have seen what’s on the horizon and have begun to look for escape routes.

But the majority are still on their beach loungers. They think ‘tweets’ come from birds in the palm trees.

Let me say that I obviously owe Mr. Basen an apology for my earlier comment; he is obviously familiar with Paul Gillin’s book The New Influencers, although it is really not clear to me from this speech how much of it he has actually absorbed. I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if I were not currently reading it myself, although I appear to have jumped the gun and had the presumption to begin blogging almost three years ago (on my personal blog, http://www.ruthseeley.com) without having read the book first.

Kudos to him also for finally making the speech available. To be honest I don’t really understand why he doesn’t actually engage by posting directly here: I’m not casting any aspersions on your forced assumption of the gatekeeper function, but it’s just rather odd when it’s not really necessary.