MetzMash

Conference Report:Business Applications for Social Networking

Since Adam was busy attending the SNAP summit in San Francisco, I was lucky enough to take his place at a conference about Business Applications of Social Networking hosted by the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives this week. (Thanks, Adam!)

As an eager-to-learn Social Media novice,  the half-day event proved worthwhile. It was a wonderful introduction to Social Media, but it was also inspiring to see so many professional women of all ages come together to talk about cutting-edge web strategy. Of course, there were also some pretty inspiring men in attendance.

One such fellow, President & founder of Socialtext, Ross Mayfield, kicked things off with a stellar introduction to the world of social media, and how businesses can leverage social software to their advantage. You can check out the detailed slides on his blog.

Prolific blogger and Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, outlined the basics of Social Media implementation with astonishing clarity during his presentation. Do yourself a favor and check out these slides. This man is amazing -- and Forrester's POST methodology should be included in Communications textbooks nationwide. 

Next up, was a panel on “The Strategic and Tactical Implementation of Social Networks in Business”.  All the women were smart and savvy, but Karen Appleton from Box.net struck me as rather harsh in her assessment of Facebook profiles when she made it seem like a young professionals were committing a mortal sin by donning a cocktail dresses in their pictures.

Robin Wolaner gave a humorous presentation on Purposeful Networking, particularly as it pertain to Baby Boomers and her newly launched Boomer-oriented site, TeeBeeDee .

Finally, Ning CEO Gina Bianchini pulled it all together in her presentation on “Launching and Growing Your Online Community”. This woman is classy and cool, and her comparison of launching a Social Networks to throwing a party made me want to start one on her site.

All in all, whether you are a man or a women, this conference was a great introduction to Social Media Tactics for Business. You should be able to see the whole thing online on the FWE&E website next week.

Until then, here are my basic takeaways:

•    Understand your audience and prototype your network before launch

•    The NetGens are coming of age, and you bet they will expect/bring more internal Social Media applications to the workplace

•    Plan to be flexible. Your customers will ask for change. Heed their advice, but don’t lose your voice in the process

•    Don’t don something in your Facebook photo you wouldn’t wear to the office

•    If you have a corporate blog, make sure it’s transparent

•    Social Networking isn’t for everyone (yet). If it doesn’t make sense for your business needs, don’t push it.

South By Southwest - Day Three (Gawker, Facebook, Mochila, Natural Causes) and Four

Today was a day of non-stop action at the SWSWi interactive conference in Austin. I began my day riding from my A-frame bungalow in South Austin's Bouldin Creek neighborhood (man, could this website use a white-label social network). I met up with Charles from Ning and Nick Douglas (Gawker) and his girlfriend Melissa Gira for breakfast over at the South Congress Cafe. One of the best eggs benedict I've had in quite a while. Man, would that place do well in the Bay Area. They even had three different types of coffee on tap. We talked a lot about what's happening at Gawker (Nick's their Internet correspondent) and the work that Melissa is doing at Valleywag. That audio interview should go up in a few days, most likely cross-posted to Exclamation, LaunchSquad's storytelling blog.

[We should have an extended feature on sex and social media in late March.]

Then, I hung out at the Convention Center for a while, and went to meet the directors of Natural Causes, to interview them over yummy Mongolian BBQ. The real highlight of the afternoon was the slightly unnerving Mark Zuckerberg keynote; in this interview with Business Week's Sarah Lacy, a lot of people came in wanting insight and strategy. A lot of them walked out feeling as though they'd just watched a really uncomfortable writer at odds with a heckling audience. Zuckerberg held his own, and talked intelligently about the Facebook platform, but I left with little more vision than I came in with, regarding its growth or growth potential. I was expecting at least a minor announcement, or an in-depth exploration of some of the brand's core values. My tweets pretty much sum it up: when you take control away from users, they get ticked off. Great, thanks. I agree, but we already knew that.

Later this afternoon I sat down with Jessica and Joe from Mochila to watch them talk with John Havens from BlogTalkRadio. They're a really cool LaunchSquad client; their company is pretty much the iTunes of media content. They have a really great network of big-name publishers (AP, some huge magazines, some BBC content) and their model just works. It was really cool to listen to them talk about both the publisher and the advertiser side of the content economy.

Unlike yesterday evening, when I went out and saw a great funk show at Antone's  (The Scabs, who are like the Band meets G Love & Special Sauce), tonight is gonna be an iTunes movie rental night.

My Schedule For Tomorrow:

9:45 Breakfast @ Magnolia Cafe with Ning, hopefully

10 The Art Of Self-Branding

11:30 Self-Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing Of No Marketing (gotta love a panel with Deb Schulz, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Heuer and Tara Hunt)

1 BBQ

2 Judo Moves for Defending Your Reputation Online (Thor from Satisfaction)

I'll likely play it by ear for the rest of the afternoon, but the evening will definitely include the TCG Party @ The Iron Cactus and the Heather Gold show. Wow. What a week. So many amazing people.

SXSW Day Two: My Morning

I had a low-key evening last night; went to the parties at Cedar St. Courtyard and The Registrant Lounge, but still made it home by 9, and watched Dial M For Murder on iTunes, which was pretty good. I think I'll stay out a bit later tonight.

My host apartment lacks a coffeemaker, so I'm going to have to hit up the Green Muse Cafe or ride straight back downtown after I write this to get moving on the day. Bre Pettis from Etsy has a really cool-sounding presentation on vlogging in an hour that I'm trying not to miss. The best thing I saw yesterday was Battledecks. Man, does Anil Dash know how to give a presentation. Especially when he has never even seen the slides before. That was funny as hell.

So, here's a brief rundown of my day:

10 a.m.: Quit Your Day Job & Vlog - Bre Pettis and a bunch of other people

10:30 a.m. : Maybe Play in the Kickball Game at Palm Park outside the convention center

11:30 a.m.: The Contextual Web

12:30 p.m.: Reading: Mobilizing Generation 2.0

I don't want to committ to anything else until I can read the sched in greater detail.

South by Southwest: How To Find Me Friday

First off, a big thanks to LaunchSquad's Brett Weiner for turning me on to the SCHED scheduling tool. Now, anyone who wants to know where I'll be at SXSW only needs to click here. I've found a copy of an mp3 CD at my apartment that contains 7 or 8 Grateful Dead CDs (Aoxmoxoa, American Beauty, etc.), so I'm winding down and planning the day tomorrow. Looks like a 2-day cold snap here in Austin.

So, here's my day:

8:00 a.m. Breakfast around the house, in Bouldin Creek, South Austin, email

mid-morning - get my badge at the convention center, go for a bike ride, check out some record stores and draft an SMR (social media release) for the new book, There Is No Secret Sauce

12 Interview around downtown with Chris from Fluid Innovation (BBQ?)

1-3 Work on a social media plan for a client

3 Book Reading: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

3:30 Panel: How To Rawk SXSW (The Basics)

4 Book Reading: Subject To Change

5 Panel: Battledecks

6 Friday Night Mix @ Six (117 W 4th St @ Colorado)

Wow, long day. You know what this means? Time to call Alie, say goodnight, and go to sleep. Goodnight Austin.

SXSW: First Impressions Of Austin

My Austin arrival went well enough; I sat next to Six Apart's Alan Kasindorf on the plane, and caught a cab down to the bike shop with Joshua Paul. Although my stay at Bicycle Sport Shop (best little bike shop in Texas!) took a while, that place is immense. The only bike shop that I've seen of that size is Mountain View, California's The Off Ramp, where I bought my first ten-speed, about 20 years ago. They hooked me up with a rad Specialized Roubaix.

It seems like everyone in town is playing a show this week. Even Stephen, the guy who set up  my bike, has two gigs. His band, The Zest of Yore, is playing a Guided by Voices tribute show Tuesday night and a gig of their own in the coming week. They're actually pretty cool, if you're into indie rock, and GBV especially, as their guitarist Doug Gillard, is producing ZOY's forthcoming release. Riding to my SXSW apartment from the bike shop wasn't tough, but the REI suitcase strapped to my back slowed me down a bit. Austin's in a bit of a cold snap right now. It's so cold you can see your breath. It felt a little bit like November, as I scaled the hills and smelled fireplace smells coming from the houses I rode by.

I'm staying in a cool little A-Frame apartment off a gravel alley in South Austin's Bouldin Creek neighborhood. I found it on Craigslist, and it's owned by a sociology professor at U of T. (I'm staying at the Hyatt or some big downtown hotel for my last night here, 3/12).  He was nice enough to take me to the H.E.B., an industrial-sized Austin-based grocery store. Hell, I'll shop anywhere that's an acronym; it makes you sound like you're part of a secret club or something when you say, "I'm goin' down to the H.E.B." My landlord said it was "sort of a lower-class store," but I was pretty impressed when I walked out with organic spinach and a bottle of Bonny Doon wine, among other things.

 

I'll be back in a few with my Friday schedule; I now have chicken wings and Bud Light Chelada to attend to.