Great success for the 4^th edition of ICS Rome

ICS Rome 2013 has maintained the expectations of the numerous participants. It was an edition rich of contents of quality and reflections about the new models of dialogue between civil society and citizens always more “engaged” and consumers aware of values and services. In a single event there was a confrontation among Harper Reed, web strategist of the Obama’s election campaign, Mons. Paul Tighe, who takes care of the media social activities of the Vatican, including the Twitter profile of the Pope, and Jung Chang, the most read and translated Chinese writer in the world.

Three ways of communicating and three different visions that have dialogued about transparency in communication, with a particular attention to the contents. As evidenced by Franco Pomilio, ICS Chairman and President of Pomilio Blumm, main partner of the summit: “We have gone around the world, to the Vatican, United States of America and China, with different interpreters, different cultures and different personal histories, to give birth to one of the most beautiful triangulations ever among our gurus”.

The debate had a great audience also online and on the social networks. The hashtag #ICSRome remained for a long time among the "trending topics" of Twitter, meaning among the most popular arguments of the famous micro blogging site.

The new face of communication

Mons. Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Social Communications, explained that moving in the social media world may present risks, but that as happens with foreign languages,

if you are too scared to make a mistake you will never learn, 

and that specially the church must open to this world being careful of the contents because

”for the people of my generation it may be  great news that the Pope is on Twitter, but for the young it is a normal thing, so they look at the contents as being more important. We are sure about our contents because we feel that if we make people know Jesus, we are doing them well”.

Transparency means telling the truth. This is the simple and strong message of the bestseller writer Jung Chang, who told us how much is there of truth, life and feelings in her books and explained why she has been capable of reaching so many people in the entire world (sixteen million copies sold with her last two books). She said:

“Transparency is at the centre of my writing. It is the soul”.

When her autobiography “Wild Swans” had success, she remained surprised that so many readers in the whole world could relate to a family from such a different culture.

“While writing, I followed the Chinese saying that compares the message in a story to “salt in water and flowers in honey, where they shall disappear but leave their flavour everywhere”.

Harper Reed, web strategist of the re election campaign of President Obama, explained how the President found him and why,

“He wanted something different because those elections were different from the previous”.

Reed, being one of the inventors, also talked about crowdsourcing. Through social networks and the web, it lets people be the ones to do the hardest part of the job, the creative part and the contents.

“We don’t have to do it; this is the beautiful part of crowdsourcing”.

Harper Reed also evidenced that,

“Facilitating a web community gives power to the brand, no matter which.  If you create a good neighbourhood, people will come to live with you”.

The summit, free and with a limited number of participants, was fully booked also for this edition. The main partner and promoter is Pomilio Blumm, together with the other ICS partners: Confindustria Assafrica & Mediterraneo, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the Osservatorio di Pavia and the Italian Association for the Public Communication. The Rome edition follows the European edition that took place on September at Brussels and introduces the Local edition that will be held al Milan on November the 28^th.