Blog Potomac & 140Conf: If You Had 10 Min to Talk What Point Would You Make?

Just as my blog decided I could work again, I left town for a road show. I had the pleasure of speaking at Blog Potomac in DC. Then I drove north with my son to the 140 Characters Conference in NYC. The week was filled with opportunities to talk at length with dynamic and interesting folks.

Words and phrases that kept coming up — beyond the names of applications — culture, cultural, news, tools, relationships, crowdsourcing, barriers and boundaries, branding, the importance of story, unplugging and taking time off …

Blog Potomac

The first conference was Blog Potomac in Falls Church, VA.
Liveblogging BlogPotomac in Falls Church, VA, and this photo were provided by Mahdi Gharavi.

And here are The Ten Best Ideas from BlogPotomac

140 Characters Conference

A few days later I was in NYC for the 140 Characters Conference.
Becky McCray (@BeckyMccray) did a great recap called Overheard at the 140 Character Conference

As Jeff Pulver says, the panel on News Gathering Stands Out. What follows is my own ten minutes.

Short Format Conferences

Truly remarkable conversations and questions happened at two conferences that held to a short-speaking format … Blog Potomac rules were speaker had 10 minutes to present and 30 minutes for Q&A. 140 Characters offered speaking times of 5, 10, 15, and 20 minutes. Most Q&A was in the hallways. The between-session questions at both events fell seemed to fall into two categories:

• How are you using social media tools to gather information, implement ideas, and build relationships?
• What’s next after Twitter?

The most tweeted phrases from my talks included …

• If you want to use social media well, Don’t lead with the tools, lead with relationships.
• Good companies have always been doing this.
• Was there ever a conference as this about the telephone – are we getting to precious about our tools?
• Twitter is the world’s lagest networking room. Get a friend to introduce you
• Was there ever a conference as this about the telephone – are we getting to precious about our tools?
• Blogs let me go deep – Twitter lets me go wide

If you had 10 minutes to talk on social media, what point would YOU make?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!