Lets Write 100 Conference Sessions WE Want to Attend

March 1, 2008 · Comments

VON Keynote Conference season is almost upon me in full swing. My own company’s IT events are ready to launch. Jeff Pulver is building Video on the Net a new way for May. I just got back from PodCamp Toronto 2. And I’m so jazzed to be going to South by Southwest for the first time this year.

But what I want to do is this: I want US to write 100 sessions for conferences that we WISH we were attending. Write a title and a short paragraph for a session that you think would be cool to attend. It can be a keynote. It can be a panel. It can be interactive. Whatever you want. I’ll add a few, too.

Ready? Go!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Tagged as: , , , ,

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Thesis WordPress theme

Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.

With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.

  • Building On-the-Fly Collaboration Centers

    Learn how to take mesh, bluetooth, cell phones, video cameras, and a few simple software applications and create a platform to create, edit, synthesize, and distribute information rapidly and with little overhead. Applications of this technology include news media, entertainment, medical reporting, and more. A working demonstration will follow, starting from scratch, and ending at fully functional.
  • Building the Creative environment: How to build a workspace that helps generate ideas without killing the ones you already have.
  • Lori Laurent Smith
    The Boomerang Generation: Reverse Mentoring Your Boss on Web 2.0

    How many times have you wished that the Boomer-aged executives who run the company actually understood the basics of web 2.0? Or has one of them cornered you like an addict looking for a fix begging to know what RSS means? What is the best way to impart the news to your 50-something supervisor that wikis are not a new lapdance from Hawaii? How should you deal with that sinking feeling when you realize you actually DO know more than your boss (this is the age of transparency, after all) but are expected to help them so they can continue earning 5-times your salary?
  • It's funny that you said Boomerang Generation, because that is what people want to call my generation because we keep moving back home after college.
  • How to really blog for your business

    Forget the blogging advice you think you know. What works for affiliate spammers doesn't work for your business. Learn real strategies.
  • Information Overload:

    How to navigate through the thousand blogs that are out there in order to stay up to speed without losing your mind.

    With new blogs popping up daily and a never-ending stream of ideas, concepts and discussions, how do you get your head around all the information floating 24/7 on the web?

    ps: if anyone figures this out, let me know..
  • Rivers & Ripples, Tides & Tsunamis: The propagation of ideas.

    Hobby tribes, social media, group-forming networks, call it what you will, ideas survive and grow in a network in a way that simply did not exist in the past.
  • The impact of conversational media on creativity and innovation

    Look at the trajectory of an idea from an ill-formed thought to a fully formed product. Most of the traditional tools like Office are designed to polish and present. Now we have tools like chat, twitter, blogs and comments which support the conversational end of creativity. This has a significant impact on the quality and survivability of good ideas
  • Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling

    Experts will identify strategies for getting heard and how to effectively advocate for your technology program as well as how to break through the barriers relating to budgets, resources and lack of vision by upper management.

    (Side note: I organized this session for the Women Who Tech TeleSummit happening on March 31st - http://www.womenwhotech.com but I would love to see this session happen at other conferences since it's a huge issue that needs to be addressed).
  • Online Free Speech VS Your Job
    As more bloggers are being reprimanded and/or fired for blogging on their personal time and outside of work, how can bloggers freedom of speech be protected. As the blogshphere grows what are the legal implications?
  • Applicant 2.0:
    How students and employers are using opportunities and media on the Web to source and show off their fresh talent.
  • World of Warcraft: How playing a game together can increase a team's communication and productivity.
  • Initiating more people into Social Media

    We have to bridge the gap between the users/practitioners of the social media and the non-users. What is the best way to do this? What caution do we adopt to prevent them from running the other way.
  • Book 'Em, Dan-O
    How Indie Musicians ACTUALLY Land A Booking Agent

    Does it seem like booking agents and record labels ignore you until you don't really need them? Believe me, they do. But here's how you can fool a booking agent into THINKING you don't need them, thereby getting their business.
  • NeuroSociety - In some ways, those leveraging the current collective via social networking's tools are a subculture. What are the benefits this neurosociety realizes that mainstream doesn't. What happens to the new minority when the neuro SM collective becomes mainstream?

    Maybe more of a conversation, than a presentation.
  • Social Media and Measurement - Clicks, Hits, Adds, Reads, Subscriptions, Comments, Trackbacks and really important things that aren't easily counted

    How conversational marketing/social media/we-media is changing how we view value in the marketplace. Why ROI seems to be missing the "I" (investment) lately and why there wont be one accepted model.
  • Why Your Company Needs a Community Builder

    Using social media tools for your business takes more than setting up a blog, a Facebook profile and a twitter feed. You need someone who is passionate about your product and its community. Someone who understands the ins-and-outs of social tools and their etiquette.
  • Why Social Media is/is not Marketing and is/is not PR

    Social Media is a little bit country (PR) and a little bit Rock & Roll (Marketing). How the two need to communicate better amongst themselves and change the way they communicate with the user.

    Outreach and Communities - Why Retail Politics works and why its lessons are so important to Social Media initiatives.

    Trying to yell at/sell at users is going the way of the dodo. The goal is to connect with users on their terms and the spaces and places of their choosing. This requires a lot of hard work to understand these folks outside of demographics and requires investment (time, money, product, listening) in the community over a long period of time. ROI needs to remember what the I stands for (and it isn't "Immediate" or "Intense"). Discuss in the context of Retail politics seen in the recent presidential primaries.
  • Randy
    Panel Discussion:"We Were Wrong(www)"

    What happened to your brilliant idea for a web site/community/application from the time it was imagined to the deployment that was not embraced by the target audience.
  • Books You Need to Read About Social Media

    This could be a group discussion. This area seems to be changing quickly. Every few months there are new influential books with great ideas. It can be challenging to keep track of things.
  • I'd love to see something on education. Maybe something like Education 2.0: the future of the formal education system.

    I think a lot of us realize the formal education system needs to change and evolve to meet the changing world, and I'd love to see a discussion/session about where it should be going.
  • Agree with @Lori. Similarly, a panel on "setting your employees free" and how they can be your best advocates online through transparency and evangelism.
  • What Social Media Medium Is Right For My Business?

    So many businesses jump into social media and end up failing not because their strategy is poor but because they chose the wrong one to launch from.
  • "Why you should be up here instead of me"

    Kicking the lurkers into action: addressing their concerns (embarrassment, preparation, skill, whatever), providing tips, trick and encouragement.
  • JP
    What a sideways organisation really means

    We all know that we've moved from hierarchical to networked, from proprietary to open, from vertical to horizontal. But have we really?

    The power remains in the PowerPoint. And until we dismantle something, it's going to stay that way. It's not about social media or the underlying technology, it's about community. Community within the enterprise, community beyond the enterprise.

    So what is it that we have to dismantle? And will we ever? Does anyone care?
  • How to fully understand Google Analytics and Feedburner stats :) I admit, I am lost! Sure I'm told I have 30 subscribers, but do I really?
  • Comic-com meets Sundance.

    The opportunity to view, educate, and create content for comics. Somewhat done, but there needs to be longer sessions between the professionals and the pro-sumer.
  • One day I'm going to make it TED! One day. You just wait and see.
  • Social Media is for Everyone

    Social media is not the domain of just PR, marketing, communications, technology and library sectors. It is about the average person making their own content. So often these industries see it as solely their own domain, and as a result tend to only talk amongst themselves, looking to each other for new ideas. It is time to look beyond the blinders and see what other people are doing with the new technologies.
  • So why are we still blogging and what should we be using?

    There are so many options out there nowadays -- whether it be Twitter, Utterz, "old" standbys like Blogger and Wordpress or your status line on social networks. There's even a resurgence of using IM services.

    What do you want to accomplish and what do you need to do. That's the heart of the presentation. It sounds a lot simpler to figure out than it really is...
  • Inspiration to start (or restart) a podcast.

    Some sort of session that will inspire people to start (or restart) a podcast (possibly that they podfaded, or just that they want to start).
  • 1. Is there a spiritual space online?
    2. How to find social media talent to work on projects at any time day or night?
    3. How to find projects to volunteer for that make the greatest impact on your beliefs/ideals
    4. How to build a website, blog, podcast, movement in 24 hours
    5. How to reduce the amount of clutter in your RSS/Email/txt/life
    6. 100 amazing examples of local business using social media to generate sales
  • I'd love to hear someone discuss ethics in podcasting/blogging. Where pitfalls can occur and who seems to be doing it right.
  • Social Media, Social Change

    How social media can be used for more than just updating on what we're watching on TV or what our friends are doing. Discuss companies like kiva.org and One LapTop Per Child to see social change in action, examine how social media has helped their efforts. Explore ideas on how social media and its users can help affect positive global changes in health care and education. Special guest speaker Bill Gates :)
  • When to Adopt and When to Wait and See
    ======================================

    How to judge whether a new application or tool will benefit you & your business, or if it will just take time & focus away from the ones that already do.
  • I think a good basic primer on copyright - when it's okay and not okay to use something, getting permission from an author/composer/performer/etc and what the upsides/downsides to something like Creative Commons are.
  • Based on @geekmommy's suggestion: basic SEO tactics for writing. Not writing for SEO, but how to keep SEO front of mind when writing online content.
  • beckymccray
    Jumping Outside the Fishbowl

    How you can take your skills and tools to a whole new audience.

    The Failures Have Done More for Me

    Redefining how you think of failure, and using it as a lever to move forward.

    And if you can just permit me to dream for a moment,
    Small Town Doesn't Mean Small Time

    Stories of small business success from small towns. Live where you want, and do business anywhere.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: