The social media report analyzed posts from 1/10/2011 to 6/11/2011 about VentureFest Bristol 2011. It found most posts occurred on the day of the event, with some before. The majority of posts were on microblogs like Twitter, while more posts were from websites than blogs. Sentiment was mostly neutral, with very few negative posts. The report recommends more engagement on social media before and after the event to increase awareness.

1. Social Media Monitor Report for VentureFest
Bristol 2011
Period: 1/10/2011 - 6/11/2011
The posts collected were divided into the following Tech classes:
• Web
• News
• Blog
• Microblogs
• Media
Summary
Posts by time for “VentureFest Bristol” OR “vfbristol” OR “vfbris”
Commentary
As expected, the majority of the posts on social media about VentureFest Bristol occurred on
the day, with a few smaller peaks in the few days before the event.
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2. VentureFest Bristol Posts, separated to Web, Blog, and Microblogs.
Commentary
There were, surprisingly, no posts in the News category, in spite of the number of press
releases sent out by the organisers and participants. The pie chart demonstrates that the
majority of posts found were microblogs (Twitter and Friendfeed), while there were many more
posts in the web category (labelled WWW above) than the blog category; these would primarily
have been from blogs on company websites or on their own domains, rather than hosted on
posterous, wordpress.com, or blogger.com.
Venturefest Bristol sentiment over time: Positive, Neutral, and Negative.
Commentary
The chart shows that sentiment about VentureFest, as demonstrated in the social media feed,
was largely neutral. There were very few negative posts. This could have been a result of
having a public twitter feed in the Forum, making people less likely to post negative tweets with
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3. the hashtags; negative posts may have been made without identifying the event directly for
other reasons, and thus not have been returned by the search.
Many of the neutral posts were similar to the one below:
“RT @BusinessZone: RT @Dan_Martin: Paul Magelli: Entrepreneurs have got to
be good at convincing people - your bank, investors, staff, spouse! #vfbris
Others were along the lines of “at Venturefest”, though there are surprisingly few foursquare
check-ins. Positive posts tended to discuss the show in general, and to congratulate the
organisers:
“RT @Science_Bristol: Thank you to all involved at Venturefest Bristol 2011 this
week. We hope to see you again next year. #vfbris
Of the two posts that came out negative, neither appears to have been definitively negative
(neither was classified with more than 75% probability).1
Note that we measure sentiment through the creation of a training set which is used by the
classifier to learn which features of tweets and other posts make them positive or negative.
The training set is created by people reading a subset of posts, and thus takes into account
irony, sarcasm, and the context of words found.
1
The classifier we use produces probabilities that the post will take each of the possible classifications. All the possible
probabilities add up to one. In the case of the two negative posts found about Venturefest Bristol, there was a probability
greater than 25% that they were not negative.
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4. Venturefest Bristol average sentiment by tech class over time
Commentary
The three point sentiment scale used has resulted in the chart shown above. This shows again
that sentiment, as classified by our system, is generally positive for the three major tech classes
in the dataset, Blog, Microblog, and WWW.
Note that on some days the chart shows an average of greater than one; this is a result of the
smoothing algorithm used when creating the charts.
Timing
As already noted, the majority of the posts about VentureFest were posted on the day of the
event. The minor peaks prior to the event correlate to announcements of the participants in the
Innovation Showcase and the Pitch event, as well as general attendees discussing the event
prior to going.
We would suggest that this highly skewed distribution of social media posts, and low level of
overall posts, represents a missed opportunity for Science City Bristol, Bristol & Bath Science
Park, and the participants in the Innovation Showcase and the Pitch to gather followings and
promote the event, both before and after, through social media and other channels.
Consideration should be given, when planning next year’s event (assuming it will be repeated),
to actively engaging all participant companies – and potential participant companies – early on
through online competition, discussion, and debate. Creating awards, preferably voted on by
the public online, would encourage engagement by prospective participants, and increase
awareness of the event.
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