It’s the first official SOBCon09 meetup!
Rumor has it that we’ll start talking about what’s going to be happening at SOBCon09 … Will you be there?
We’re meeting at the
Emerald Loop
216 N. Wabash – one block south of Wacker and Wabash
Chicago, IL
312-263-0200
on Monday, November 10th
Starts at 7 pm.
But I bet we’ll be there long before that.
–Liz
Good day folks! Our next update on what the SOBCon attendees are up since the conference this past May is from Sheila Scarborough. She is getting a lot done with newcomers to the world of Web 2.0:
Here’s what I’ve started doing (with Connie and some others) since I was inspired by SOBCon08:
We want to reach people who are new to social media/Web 2.0 – they understand that they need to understand it, but they “don’t have time” to understand it! With the Every Dot Connects consortium of communications experts, Sheila Scarborough is teaching a series of entry-level, practical Web 2.0 Tools workshops in the Austin and San Antonio area. We cover the basics of using LinkedIn and Twitter, we talk about Creative Commons on Flickr, we demonstrate shooting video with a Flip camera and uploading it to YouTube, and we are planning a big one-day workshop on blogging.
Lessons learned so far, for others who may wish to parlay their social media knowledge into similar workshops, is that it is easy to be so comfortable with the technology that you forget that your students are not (I confused one student by using the term “widget,” which was new to her.) In the classic teaching conundrum, it is hard to not overshoot some students while simultaneously boring others. We use a brief survey when students register on Eventbrite, to find out what they already know, and then work very hard to calibrate our presentations. Other lessons:
- Learning about LinkedIn is more popular than we thought – it’s seen as the most useful, professional Web 2.0 app.
- People CAN be convinced that Twitter is worth trying if you can explain exactly why you follow certain people and give specific examples of how it’s helped your business or personal life
- Teaching RSS is harder than we thought – there are so many readers available, people often don’t use the orange RSS button on their blogs and there isn’t nearly as much standardization of this feature as you’d think. Our students love Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which we present as an alternative to RSS.
- Many people have never heard of Creative Commons and excited to know that you CAN find good free photography for blogs and other online content, if you follow some simple CC rules on Flickr
- Students are amazed at the ease of the Flip camera, and the quality of the videos.
Fellow SOBCon-ers are welcome to contact either Sheila [sheila at sheilascarborough dot com]or Connie Reece for more details about how we set up and run these workshops.
Thanks!
Sheila
Greetings once more, and welcome to the next SOBCon 2008 Update.
@Stephen here again, to share with you some of the projects and business development that is happening in and around the SOBCon Community.
Today we are featuring Mary-Lynn Foster, the VP / Executive Producer for Bigg Success “THE HOW-TO, CAN-DO PLACE FOR PEOPLE ON THE MOVE.”
One of the sessions from SOBCON that really hit home for us was the one Lorelle hosted. She asked everyone to present a tagline about their blog in 10 words or less. To be honest, we couldn’t do it. We sat at a table of bigg thinkers like: Anita Bruzese, Kristin King, and Steve Sherlock.
We already knew we needed to niche down our concept more, but this session really fortified that for us.
We decided to “Work with Liz”…the great thinker, Liz Strauss, and we recently completed our 6 session consultation. We are so excited for what is coming to Bigg Success!
– a unique platform to stand on
– direction for setting up offline revenue
– a simple tagline that tells you what we are about and how we can help you (yes in UNDER 10 words!)
– an addition to our logo that enhances our tagline
– a fun way to personalize our blog better (think twitter). We were challenged with this b/c it is a two-person blog
– we’re now thinking vertically and horizontally with our upcoming content for better re-purposing
– we are thinking differently now…we see a bigger pictureWe have a lot of work in store for us, but our target to have our bigg changes in place in the coming months.
We’ll let you know here and we can’t thank Liz enough!
I just have to add, if you are looking to lift your online business to the next level, Liz is an amazing person to work with!
One more thing, SOBCon was so good for us. We are so close to our business, this brand we have built. It really helped us to have professional outsiders looking in and sharing their insight.
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Have you ever heard of a “Plurkshop”? Well Connie Reece has been giving a series of them. Check out Every Dot Connects to “[get]… a glimpse into the minds of some of today’s social media practitioners and thought leaders, and give you a taste of what the plurkshops are like in case you want to join us for future events“.
On Plurk, a newer microblogging/presence app, we have been having a series of “plurkshops,” an online DIY workshop where we start a topic and discuss it in real time, effectively turning Plurk into a chat room. This has been peer-to-peer knowledge sharing at its best. Some plurkshops have yielded over 600 comments in two hours, with the quality of the information shared being impressive. That’s a firehose of words, of course, so some of the participants have started writing recaps to summarize the discussion and put it into perspective.
In fact, the Plurkshop on Social Media Management is particularly insightful. Read about it all here [link].
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Greetings all!
Stephen Smith here, or @Stephen as some of you may know me. Liz and Terry have invited me to do a little guest-posting here at the SOBCon blog and I am thrilled to be here.
I trust that you are all still as excited as I am about what you learned and the people that you met at SOBCon 08. I am working diligently on applying this crash course in Biz School for Bloggers and can hardly wait to show you all what I have been up to (it would go faster if I was better at code!). I’d also love to see and share what all of you have been up to as well.
To that end I have volunteered my services to Liz, Terry, and Co. to get in touch with all of you and help you get the word out. These are some of the things that the SOBCon community is interested in:
How would you like some help in getting the word out to the thousands and thousands of subscribers that we collectively communicate with? Of course you would, and here is how you can do it.
Please send me an email [stephen at hdbizblog dot com] or
DM me at Twitter [hdbb_stephen],
I will be happy to write/collaborate with you on an article for the newsletter and/or the SOBCon blog. We all have our own communities and could definitely benefit by sharing our efforts in new circles, to new eyeballs.
Who knows? One or more of us may be able to help you over an obstacle, see a new perspective, or make a suggestion about something that you haven’t anticipated.
Two heads are better than one, even if one is a cabbage. Think about how much 200 heads can achieve!
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
All the best,
@Stephen
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Hi all – Starbucker here. Our fellow SOBConer (I think it qualifies us as a cult when we use terms like this!) Jared Goralnick was one of the presenters of the “20 slides in 5 Minutes” on Sunday, but had what I refer to as a “dreaded technical glitch” during his live presentation.
So, in the spirit of SOBCon, we’d like to present a virtual “do-over”. Jared has posted his slides at this location:
Check it out, and show Jared some SOBCon love!
Ready for SOBCon09 yet? Liz and I are already talkiing about dates next May. Stay tuned!
All my best to the SOBCon family, and thanks for all of your love and support.
Terry