As Cordell Ratzlaff asked at MX last year, “How many people are sick of hearing about the iPod?” He posed this question to an audience of about 600 in San Francisco, the birth place of the MP3 player, where you can’t go down any street without seeing one of their now infamous billboards.

Now I would like to pose the question, “Who is sick and tired of hearing about social media experts?” I know I am.

I’ve attended Podcamps and other events in the past couple of years and have been disappointed by both the quality of the conversation and the amazingly high number of people who are providing “expertise” in this area after years in a career like accounting or chemistry.

I’m not saying people with such a background can’t learn and provide insight about these tools to others, but the reality is there is nothing difficult, nor remarkable about having a Twitter or Facebook account, Podcasting, or posting your profile on LinkedIn…doing so does not make you an expert.

Where these “experts” fall short time and again is in failing to recognize that the tools that make up social media are just that – instruments to connect you with others in the real world. (You know that space, it’s what you see when you step outside your house in the morning!)

In addition, many in this field don’t have the social skills to accomplish this goal so instead they hide behind the technology and bash others who disagree with them; not exactly the professional persona I’d want to engage with on projects.

These tools are only of value or consequence if you are able to engage people in meaningful conversation. It’s great if you can provide context in 140 characters or if you can sound perfect in a podcast after you’ve had a chance to edit it 50 times; but of course meaningful relationships aren’t formed in 140 characters and you don’t get a chance to edit what you say when meeting someone for the first time.

As noted by Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro in a recent article in Interactions Magazine entitled, “What is Conversation, And How Can We Design For It“:

Conversation is a progression of exchanges among participants. Each participant is a “learning system,” that is, a system that changes internally as a consequence of experience. This highly complex type of interaction is also quite powerful, for conversation is the means by which existing knowledge is conveyed and new knowledge is generated.

I’m not questioning the value of these tools. In fact Podcasting alone has provided me with amazing opportunities to learn and share with others. I never introduce myself as a social media expert. I typically tell others

I’m an Information Architect and User Experience professional. I use Podcasting and Twitter to share ideas with others in an effort to evolve the conversation and provide greater context to content. It’s not about me, it’s about a genuine desire to share and inspire others within and outside my discipline.

My only advice is to be very careful of those who claim to be experts in this field. It’s only those who can engage others in meaningful conversation who will be able to sell the kings of any industry on the value of their true expertise.

We need the capacity for new messages to be generated and the resultant understanding confirmed or denied. We call interaction with these capacities “conversation.” Only in conversation can we learn new concepts, share and evolve knowledge, and confirm agreement.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The [coversation] is the thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the king!”