Yet another social media event?

Last year, I was lucky enough to spend time in Australia doing some training and consultancy work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. As I sat down with Ping Lo, the ABC's social media co-ordinator, over a couple of days, I soon realised that, while there were similarities between the way the BBC and ABC were dealing with the challenges of social media, there were also some significant differences.

We both came away saying how much we'd learned from each other, and I returned to London with the big, maybe slightly crazy, idea of trying to get as many mainstream social media producers as possible together in the same room so they could compare and contrast. I also wanted people to be able to talk openly about their challenges and frustrations in a way that blog posts can't do.

The result is a one-day, closed event on 19 May where roughly 30 social media producers will do exactly that. (The hashtag is #bbcsms.) The day is going to consist almost entirely of group discussion, with conversations structured around key questions to do with changing audience behaviour, managing cultural change within the newsroom, the editorial challenges raised in terms of impartiality and verification, and the demands of fast-paced technological change.

By the end of the day, we will have started to create a number of public documents. At the very least, we hope they will be a proposed research agenda; at the most, they could include tentative guidelines for verification, informal networks for collaborative working during emergency/disaster relief and shared training material.

The second day, 20 May, is when we hope things will get interesting. This will be a larger event for up to 200 people: we have invited academics, bloggers, hyperlocal journalists, digital ethnographers and news-related start-ups.

We will share the material from day one, interrogate some key speakers in Q&A sessions, and then the structured conversations will continue. Our hope is that some of the thinking from the first day will be challenged and critiqued by different, interested parties. New ideas will be produced and connections and networks created.

At the end of the event, the BBC College of Journalism will write up everything produced, publish a research agenda and connect academics who want access to research subjects and to start facilitating a loose network that will continue to discuss these issues.

Just talking about social media is great - but our hope is to actually do something.

Claire Wardle is a freelance trainer and researcher working with the BBC College of Journalism and specialising in social media. She was previously at Cardiff University School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, where she holds an honorary lecturer position.