How Can You Get Your Online Social Skills Working Offline Too?

One Room, One Community of the Most Incredible Ones

Every year when I plan the content for SOBCon, I realize it’s an amazing proposition for every person — speaker, attendee, sponsor who walks into that room. It’s one room, one most welcoming community but intimidating too because it’s made of up of the most incredible ones.

It’s like walking into a living Internet. Shiny minds everywhere …

How can anyone be visible in a room like that? Yet we were. I’ve thinking about what made the conversation work for even the newest members of that highly charged group. What I was that the skills we learn on the interwebs can serve us in the most power-charged rooms of real people.

We just have to translate back to real people what we already know. Here’s a few I saw in action that helped folks connect last week.

• Focus is attractive. We like people who know what they’re about. Rick Wion’s unabashed passion for his client, Klondike bars, drew a conversation around him. Gail Goodwin’s vision for the Global Hug Tour got a whole room ready to wrap their arms around the world. Go buy a hug now.
• Change the plan when it’s not working. Greg Ross, from Colgate said best when he said, “The suspense we’ve built is far more the video will deliver. Let’s move on.” How cool was that?!!
• Disruption can be fun, when it’s respectful. Elevator pitches in a real elevator got us to forget our self-consciousness and laugh. Thanks @DaveMurr and @RamseyM
• One question can start a conversation. Amy LeForge said so much in her story of changing what she feared. What she heard was that so many others felt as she had when she stood back last year.
• Community is about learning, not teaching. Walmart, Colgate, Allstate, WeSeed, Metzger, BuzzCorps, AirCell, TheImageStudios, One2OneNetwork, BlogCatalog — all sponsors — came to learn from the community and left with a roomful of friends and a passel of ideas.

That handful of skills made ones — individuals — stand out in an outstanding room of people.

How can you get your online social skills working offline too?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!