Upcoming Speaking- A Busy Few Weeks
I was just going over my calendar and realized that I’ve got a fairly busy speaking schedule coming up shortly. In case you’re going to any of these events, and/or would like to meet and talk, I’ll post where I’ll be:
MarketingProfs Business to Business Forum 08 June 9th-10th in Boston. I’m speaking on the 9th at 1:45PM on lead generation.
Enterprise 2.0 Conference June 9th-12th in Boston. I’m speaking on the 11th at 8AM on social media in the enterprise, and on the 12th at 10:45AM on microblogging, both times with great people.
ITEC Indianapolis June 17th-18th in Indiana. I’m keynoting on the 17th, and I think I have a panel to moderate. There might also be a social media breakfast.
Podcasters Across Borders June 20-22nd (the weekend). I’m speaking at some point but don’t remember the details because mostly, I’m going to be a general member of the community. This will be my first time at PAB.
And then, I’ve got no conferences until PodCamp Boston3 in July, and I like it that way. : )
Will we meet up? I hope so.
Coming to Detroit for ITEC May 20-22
I’ll be in Detroit for ITEC Detroit from May 20th - May 22nd. ITEC is our IT trade event, sharing the latest in Second Circle technologies (those that will potentially impact your company in the next 6-18 months). If you’re into tech, especially emerging stuff, come to the show (it’s free to attend).
ALSO, I’m hosting a breakfast briefing at the show about Social Media, so it’s your chance to hang out and talk social media (that’s on the morning of the 22nd at the Rock Financial Showplace).
Finally, I’d love to take part in a Tweetup on either Tuesday night (the 20th) or Wednesday night (the 21st). If you’re local, pick the place (somewhere not so fancy, where we can get a beverage or 2, where we can hear each other a little), and let us know. And tweet the hell out of it.
So who’s in? If you’re coming to the event, just click the links above, register, and you can pick your badge up at the show. If you’re doing the tweetup, cool. Just make sure you keep watching Twitter.
See you in Rock City.
Screen caps made with Skitch
SOBCon08 was Great
Flying back from SOBCon08 in Chicago. It was a great experience, and I’m grateful to Liz Strauss and team for putting it on. I’ll have more to say soon. I’m working on my business right now, and trying to get things done, and kind of overloaded. I’ll put up something meaningful for Monday, but I wanted you to know that SOBCon was a good time, loaded with great people, and is worth your radar for 2009.
New Comm Forum 08 Rocked
I don’t really have a lot of time to talk about this, but I want to point you to the New Comm Forum site to get yourself on their mailing list for their upcoming events. If you’re interested in the future of communications, or if you’re part of the PR and marketing world, this organization and their events are a must for your radar. Jen McClure and team deserve some praise.
Todd Defren has a really good post summing up the event, and Phil Gomes has some great points to consider for next year. Give it some thought.
What I Did This Morning Instead of Blog
There’s a lot more to social media than just blogging. To be active, we must be out there listening, commenting, contributing, communicating in other ways, and reaching the people who matter to us. One one side, that’s where I’ve spent a lot of my time this morning. And I’ve been doing other things, too.
Inspired a bit by Andy Quayle’s What Did You Do Today post, here’s a bit of what’s on my plate (not counting family life):
CrossTech Media
I’ve been doing lots of stuff for CrossTech Media in anticipation of our upcoming ITEC Houston technology event, I’ve been working with Radian6 on a webinar/video series that we’re producing for a CrossTech webinar. I’m also trying to build interest and awareness of our new The Next Data Center executive briefing event, which I’m really happy about. I’m also building out events for later in the year (something about the future of work, and one about communications, and another about social software). I’m building speaking engagements now for New Marketing Summit, my event in Boston this fall. So, that’s a lot.
PodCamp
PodCamp Boston3 is coming up this summer. I’m in charge of helping raise sponsorship money to cover the venue, the wifi, the other stuff that makes a PodCamp happen. Christopher Penn and Whitney Hoffman and others do all the heavy lifting, but fundraising takes some efforts, too.
Book
I’m co-authoring a book soon with Julien Smith. We’re in the proposal stage, so I won’t say more. Book is the new “rock band” thing we say. “Oh yeah, I’m writing a book, too.” But it’s something that matters to me, so I’m putting what I can into it.
Social Media Stuff
Here’s a pretty busy bucket that I’ve run out of time to cover. But there’s where I spend a lot of time, too. What comes of this part is always interesting, quirky, sometimes business-actionable, and filled to the brim with humans. THIS is where the above stuff starts. Social media are the fields I tend, where I plant seeds, weed out things that don’t work, grow new varieties of relationships, and develop ideas that might or might not lead to business or a further sense of being helpful.
Later, I’ll cover what goes into all this, but start here. Think here. Start here. Think about how this is what social media does for individuals. Do you know that’s why my bosses hired me in and gave me a big role in changing their company? Do you know that my bosses (and I say that half joking, because I think of us as business partners with different percentages) talk to me about Twitter and Facebook and things like that every day?
If you’re passionate about social media, real business happens here, real connections and value happen here. Education happens here. It’s what you want to make of it, and it’s a powerful force for STARTING and MAINTAINING good things. It’s up to use to close what you do with it. But if you use the tools, at least you can start.
What are you doing today? How are you using social media to move the ball forward in your life? What are your challenges?
Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks
Registration is open for PodCamp Boston 3, organized by Christopher S. Penn, Whitney Hoffman, and tons of great folks. I’m excited to be part of the experience, mostly in the Mayor role, and I want you to come. But first, I want to talk about why we decided to ask for $50 to attend an event that has been free up until now.
First, some history. Until last October’s PodCamp Boston 2, our attendance-to-no-show rate was unprecedented for free events. We had approximately 70%-80% attendance. Not so last year. We had almost 700 people not come. This caused some problems. One, we had sponsors paying money for a lot of things, estimating a higher number of attendees, so some people bought things like tee shirts for nothing. Second, and more important to me, participants who expected tons of people got something different.
But what we felt after the experience was somewhat sideways to both of those things: we found that we were craving a closer connection to the people who wanted to be part of our community. We wanted a more intimate experience, where everyone who came felt like they were part of something special, and that they were making a commitment to something we feel is valuable.
Is $50 a lot of money? Yes, to some folks. Does this make us less of an unconference? Frankly, I’m a little frustrated by arguing what type of event we are or aren’t. We allow for group participation, no keynotes, as much access to everyone’s ideas as possible, and with as much consideration for our community as possible. We’re an event that has proven itself to be useful to those who choose to participate. We recognize that $50 might be a barrier to some, but feel that the commitment it represents means a lot to us.
Remember, our ledger is open. You can read the blog to see that our costs this year are $35,000, which I will be helping to raise via sponsors. Chris and I don’t make a dime off participants, and we both put in our money at several steps. Repeat: we make no money off the event for ourselves.
So, I’m asking you to register and show your commitment to PodCamp, and the Boston 3 event. Potential sponsors, I’ll be reaching out to you, but if you want to be associated with a 40-plus event and growing experience, drop me a line.
Co-founder and friend, Christopher S. Penn states his take on it here.
Photo credit, DC John
Why SOBCon Should Be on Your Calendar
Liz Strauss is passionate about the 2008 version of SOBCon, taglined, “Biz School for Bloggers.” What makes this concept really important is simply this: we’re at a time in our universe where we don’t NEED a lot of the old infrastructure to do something meaningful and making a reasonable living, but we DO need business knowledge, business sense, and a reasonably worked out plan of what needs doing and which steps to take to get there.
All kinds of crazy hooligans are going to pile on their business perspective and give you a sense of how you can advance your efforts into something that might become a sustainable business. Hooligans include:
Anita Bruzzese from Gannett USA Today, on online reputation management, Brian Clark, Copyblogger, on online business models that work, Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress, one focusing your business to get noticed, Chris Garrett, on managing the editorial, Muhammad Saleem, on what makes an appropriate social networking portfolio, Chris Brogan, on social media choices that produce, Dave Bullock, a sales model that converts, Liz Strauss, how to build an irresistible offer and Wendy Piersall on success management.
By the way, if you register before April 1, it costs less, but honestly, either price is within the realm of reasonable if you consider this a business consulting opportunity with tons of minds that understand the old school and the new school.
So, if you’re interested, register and get your future put in order.
Photo credit, Brian Solis
Special SXSW Thank You to WashingtonVC
Rana Sobhany and Eric Litman from WashingtonVC threw a really great party on my last night at South By Southwest Interactive. It was a Rock Band party, where you got to play the cool new game by Harmonix (met their super community guy, too, and if he emails me back, I’ll do a tour of his place). By ‘cool,’ I mean that Mark Cuban and Moby and other real live rockstars came by. MTV was in on it. I mean, yeah. Cool.
So, I wanted to thank Rana for putting it all together, and for everyone who came and had fun, and for Scoble for being part of a hilarious video (too lazy to find a link, but Robert surely has one on his blog). It really rocked.
AND I want to encourage companies thinking of creative ways to get involved with conferences to think about throwing a Rock Band party. For the dollars spent, I promise you that it was one of the most memorable nights ever. I think that bringing an experience to an event far trumps a simple branding effort these days. Agree?
I enjoyed the heck out of the experience, and as a result, it gave me positive feelings about WashingtonVC, Harmonix and several other companies. Cheap trick? Great idea? You decide.
10 Ways To Make Your Next Conference Better
Before your next conference, consider these 10 simple things:
- Scour the web (technorati and Google Blogsearch) to see who’s coming, and reach out to people you want to see.
- Schedule meetings with people on day 1, as soon as you can, because time runs out.
- Drink more water than you normally do, and wear VERY comfortable shoes.
- Pack business cards. Tons of them. But get theirs, because then YOU can ensure a reply.
- Have a really simple, brief sentence to answer: “What do you do?” “What are you working on these days?” “What brings you to the conference?”
- Blog a VERY RECENT photo of yourself so that people know who they’re going to meet.
- Check Upcoming for related events and parties. Attend a few.
- Take some pictures of you and some folks you meet. Post them with links to the people, if you can find such.
- Never assume people are better than you, or that you’re somehow not good enough or important. You are. And if people don’t know you yet, go in like they know you reasonably well anyway.
- Don’t hide behind your laptop, BlackBerry, camera. Step out and be brave a few times. It WILL pay off.
Would you be willing to add YOUR advice to the comments? I know you’ve already thought of something I’m forgetting on this list. Help us out, okay?
Lets Write 100 Conference Sessions WE Want to Attend
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!
