Anywhere, anytime, any device: Version 2.0

Digital ubiquity has thoroughly disrupted the work of today’s communication professionals.

Image: Société Générale

 

Sometime last year, at a digital communication event in Berlin, I heard a communication director proudly declare: “I’m not on Facebook and I’m proud of it!” Would he have declared “I don’t read printed books and I’m proud of it!” a few centuries ago in the days of Gutenberg? There is no need to insist on the importance of the internet and social media in today’s world, not to mention smartphones and tablets. However, I still start all my presentations with a diagram showing the growth of the internet and social media. It shows one billion internet users in 2006 compared to one billion Facebook users six years later among a total of 2.5 billion internet users. Regardless of our personal opinion (even the opinion of a communication director), whether we like it or not, for better or for worse, our companies are in the middle of this explosion.

Jean-Paul Chapon

As director of digital communications and e-reputation at French multinational banking and financial services company Société Générale, Jean-Paul Chapon is in charge of e-reputation, social media and web strategy and leads the deployment of the group’s internal social network and intranets. Previously he worked for different telecommunications companies, where he was responsible for the reorganisation of internal online tools, designed to take advantage of all web 2.0 resources. Jean-Paul is also the author of Paris est sa Banlieue, a blog on the complex relationship between city and suburbs.