Podcamp Montreal 2008 – Debrief

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while now, know just how much of an avid supporter I am of the unconference movement. This week I was once again blown away by the quality of yet another PodCamp, this time in Montreal (Podcamp Montreal 2008). While I’m not a big fan of the name for numerous reasons (often alienates non-geeks among other things), I am inspired by the passion of speakers and quality of content each and every time I attend.

I’m going to attempt something a tad different with this post by not summarizing this year’s speeches. Instead I will provide you with a condensed list of my top takeaways, thoughts and/or notes from each presentation I attended over the last two days. Please note that more take-aways do not necessarily signify better content (and vice-versa). I benefited in one way or another from each and every presentation.

Please don’t suck! – Sylvain Grand’Maison

• Be a storyteller when you present. Even boring stories can be made exciting!
• The aggregate online persona of a person can often be richer than a face-to-face meeting.

Mad month of April…

Well, the social media marketing workshop blitz out West (which went very well by the way) is now over. It’s time to go back home. This past month has been pretty crazy for me, not just professionally (4 client strategies due), but in my personal life as well. On April 4th, 2008 I finally took the plunge and proposed to my girlfriend whom I’ve been living with for the past 3 years. She said yes after a surprise 4-hour timed treasure hunt I had organized for her involving 6 locations, GPS tracking, snowshoeing, sweating, hill-climbing, drinking at a bar, clues, lifelines, romantic spa, horseback riding, 200 candles, PowerPoint slide show and driving long distances all the while not being allowed to contact me for help. To make things even more challenging, we are moving into our new home this week (closing date is April 15th). I have decided to take the next week off for obvious reasons. Anyway, I usually don’t use this blog to spill out too much personal issues, however I wanted to explain why I haven’t posted in a few weeks , although I have been using Twitter , which is a great tool to communicate in exactly these types of situations (especially when it is integrated into your blog).

I though I’d share with you the single most valued item that many of my workshop participants mentioned on their evaluation forms. To me, this is basic stuff, however I have to keep reminding myself to stop swimming in the small fishbowl of the social media community and take a plunge into the ocean once in a while. One of the first steps in my workbook is to “Gauge the existing level of conversation about your organization or marketing initiative”. The simple tool I provided participants with was the Technorati Advanced Blog Search, specifically the resulting conversation graph tool that is provided in the search results. It gauges the level of “conversation” , whether positive, negative or neutral on the give topic. Since I had many individuals from the BC government, I did a quick search on that term (shown below). I then asked if anyone knew what all those sudden spikes in conversation were? If anyone was there to respond or get engaged in the conversation? Then i told them to imagine doing this for their specific initiative. They were amazed. What’s even better, Technorati allows you to post this little graph tool as an HTML widget that dynamically updates on its own. Very useful.

I’ll leave you with that this week, and will be back full force once I set myself up in the new house. For all you public sector marketers and communicators out there, be sure to attend MARCOM 2008 this year. You can use the MARCOM Wiki to suggest round table topics.

Cheers,

MK

Back from PodCamp Toronto…

This was my second Podcamp, and definitely not my last. For anyone involved in social media, I highly recommend this line of unconferences (held in various cities around the world). This year’s Podcamp Toronto featured a great line of speakers providing informative case studies and “best practices” workshops on a variety of social media topics. I attended the following:

• Facebook Marketing – Colin Smillie & Roy Pereira
• Social Media in a Disaster - Dave Fleet
• Introducing the Social Media Press Release -Collin Douma
• How the Alzheimer Society of Ontario fell in love with Social Media – WayneMaPhail
• Everything you need to know about Second Life – Jenny Bullough & Eden Spodek
• Podcasting on a budget – Russel Hale

The whole conference was streamed LIVE on the Internet so you can watch the sessions yourself if you were unable to attend. Videos and presentation slides will be available here (on the wiki) by the end of the week.

From a public sector marketing perspective, I found the “Alzheimer’s Society” and “Social Media in a Disaster” presentations fantastic. Be sure to watch these sessions as they become available. I spent quite a bit of time chatting with Robin Browne from Da Biz Blog who shares a similar passion in terms of helping non-profits use social media to better deliver their messages and improve their marketing efforts. I also had a great conversation with Collin Douma about the flawed compensation model that the advertising industry is based on and the rise of Social Media Press Releases (to complement traditional PR/Communications). Be sure to check out Collin’s Blog Radical Trust for some great insights and advice on PR in a world of Web 2.0.

Overall I was very impressed with the flawless collaborative organization of the conference and the friendliness of the social media community in general. I see more and more “regulars” as I attend these events but also a whole slew of newbies as the field of social media marketing and communications expands into the mainstream.

I will definitely be using some examples from this conference in my “Develop a Social Media Marketing Plan in One Day” workshop (catered specifically for the public and non-profit sectors), which our organization (CEPSM) will be conducting in partnership with CMG across Canada beginning April, 2008 (shameless plug!). We have a PDF brochure of our complete line of workshops available as well, in case you need a hard copy document with more info .

In all seriousness though, I’m quite excited at getting these best practices out there to hesitant communications and marketing professionals in the public sector that still need proof that the benefits of getting engaged in social media outweigh the risks. Success stories are popping up left right and centre, why re-invent the wheel when we can all learn from each others experiences!