Back in a post last August, I asked you, my blog readers and twitter followers, to vote for my SxSW proposal: “Forging your Ideal Career”. And you listened! Today I’m very happy to announce that I will be speaking at the 2010 South By Southwest Interactive Festival.

As I mentioned back in the blog post, I’ve called on a former co-worker, Michael Krotscheck, as a co-presenter. Michael and I were senior developers at Resource Interactive, and sought out different ways to advance our managerial and entrepreneurial skills to allow us to advance beyond coding (not that there is anything wrong with that!)

Our proposal was such:

Forging your Ideal Career

You’ve proven you’re a great developer / designer. How do you rise above the production floor to share your ideas and insights, and drive the solution rather than simply implementing it? Presenters will share their strategies for cultivating your career and attaining personal satisfaction while still keeping a steady paycheck!

1. What if you feel your company’s career path is not for you?
2. How do you position yourself as what you want to be doing, versus what you’re currently doing?
3. How can networking help?
4. What opportunities exist outside work?
5. Forget work-life balance: how do you maintain paid work-unpaid work balance?
6. How do you get support from your organization for your outside activities?
7. What ideas do you share with your employer, versus keeping them to yourself?
8. Wherein lies the problem: Your career, your job, or your company?
9. When is it time to leave?
10. How do you move on without burning bridges?

Although we didn’t pitch it as such, our topic was selected as one of the “Core Conversations” sessions. I’m really pleased with this, as I noted last year that some of my favorite SXSW sessions were Core Conversations. In general when I have speaking or training engagements, I really enjoy the interaction moreso than the “talking to”, so the format will be comfortable. As well, although Michael and I have our own experiences to draw from, we are not by any means “experts” in career development. I look forward to networking and engaging with others, hearing their challenges and hopefully collectively finding solutions in helping others find satisfaction and self-fulfillment in their work.

If you are planning to attend SxSW, I hope our paths will cross! Even if not, I’d appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you may have on this topic. I want it to be a rewarding, helpful experience for all involved!

Related posts:

1. Forging your Ideal Career at SXSW
2. Core Conversations at SxSW
3. 5 Accessibility Panels I Hope Make it to SXSW 2010

Earlier this week I attended at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco, CA. As a technologist, I attend several conferences a year (in the past 6 months, I’ve attended the Thin Air Summit, Web Directions North, WordCamp Denver, South By Southwest, and now NTC.)

The use of social media and technology at these conferences (as well as others), is becoming as much a part of the event as the formal program itself. South By Southwest is commonly seen as the preeminent “tech-conference”, so it makes sense that it offers a mobile scheduling program and ways to ask presenters questions via twitter.

Yet for all the hype about SxSW, I have to say that the technology at NTC blew me out of the water.

This was my first exposure to Google Moderator, where session attendees could post questions related to the session online, and others could vote on the questions. Then the most popular questions were asked of the speaker. This helps to overcome several problems at conferences: the lines of people standing in line to ask questions at a microphone, and the relative value of those questions themselves. This way the audience can decide on which questions they really want to see answers, and also gain some insight into what others are thinking. It also opens it up to people who are not on twitter.

Each session also allowed attendees to text their evaluations in, thanks to a service by Mobile Commons. Each session had a particular code (ntc189) that was texted to a shortcode. The attendee then answered three questions using a numerical ranking system, and then was invited to type in comments. The evaluation was simple to complete and eliminated the logistics of gathering and entering the feedback into an electronic system.

The hashtags associated with different sessions were promoted aggressively, and the use of multiple shortags per session (“use #09ntc AND #cool) helped to make the information streams manageable.

At one point we worried that technology would replace face-to-face communication and eliminate such in-person events. Yet it is increasingly apparent that the use of technology is actually augmenting the value of such events, for those in attendance as well as those who are not.

Related posts:

1. Core Conversations at SxSW
2. PodCamp Ohio Networking
3. Conference free-throw wrap-up – sponsored by local ales

Sessions at the South By SouthWest conference are classified as keynotes, solo presentations, panels, core conversations, book reading, or trade show events. In my initial planning of sessions to attend, I shied away from the Core Conversations, as I worried that the non-structured format would not offer the insights as more planned sessions. As it turns out, these are some of the most interesting of the event.

The Core Conversation sessions take place in an intimate setting: there is often a table or a circle of chairs, and the moderator makes sure the conversation is inclusive and non-combative. I attended sessions on “Social Networking and Health: e-Patients, Data and Privacy” and “Privacy and Personalization.” Unlike a more formal panel or presentation, there was no great take-away message from the session: it was truly a conversation, with many diverging opinions and concerns.

Does this format work for other conferences? I’m not sure: at SxSW you have a level of passionate, intelligent, insightful individuals who are interested in engaging and working out some of these challenging subjects. This is not a conference where people attend to have knowledge imparted on them: with some hope that they will learn through being ‘taught to’. In each of the conversations we had individuals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, interested in sharing and learning from others. Were we able to solve any of these challenges? No, but I expect we were each able to leave the room with a better perspective of how others see the challenges. These were some of the topics I most enjoyed chatting with others about later, because there was no single logical flow or outcome.

In the social networking session on health care, many participants talked about a movement towards transparency, whereas my own view is that the key benefit of social media in this realm is to allow individuals a more anonymous outlet for support. In Privacy and Personalization we had quite a spirited debate about individual responsibility and contextual relevance of information. I am completely satisfied with leaving these sessions with MORE to think about, than being presented with the opinion of an “expert” on the subject.

This was my first time at SxSW so I was not entirely sure what to expect from the event. I could not have anticipated that so much of the value would have been not from the big name presenters in the packed auditorium, but in the small spaces with other delegates.

Related posts:

1. Career Advancement Core Conversation at SxSW
2. 5 Accessibility Panels I Hope Make it to SXSW 2010
3. PhotoFinder – What are your Facebook photos telling about you?

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Originally uploaded by Resource Interactive

I just came across this old photo from the iCitizen conference held by Resource Interactive last May. I’m working the social media cafe, speaking with David Griner and another conference attendee about lifestreaming.

We discussed wordpress, tumblr, flickr, twitter and digsby.

Related posts:

1. Lifestreaming at iCitizen
2. Resource Interactive Representation at Spring
   2008
3. Custom M&Ms!

As I mentioned, I’d been speaking with some of my colleagues at Resource Interactive about a pitch for SxSW. Lara Lebeiko had the idea of speaking about women in the IT field. I have my notes from one of our phone conversations, where she said she did not want it to be a feminazi panel We talked a bit about women who go into tech and eventually leave, in some cases to start a family, and then do not return. I thought it was interesting, but as I am still IN the field, I didn’t have much insight on that. What I’ve found interesting, however, is how the male-dominated IT field is starting to see a significant number of women enter in the social media or accessibility space. I’ve seen others discuss the social media aspect of it, and the prevalence of women in the accessibility space is simply something I’ve noticed personally. (Sharron Rush, Glenda Sims and Marla Erwin are a few of the ladies that I had the pleasure of meeting at Access U).

A Pew Internet research paper on “How Women and Men Use the Internet” recognized these differences back in 2005, which is arguably before all this crazy “social media” hype really took hold. It was noted:

How Women and Men Use the Internet: Summary at a Glance

There is often a perception that boys like technology, and girls like dolls. However, I recently read something (in “made to stick”, I believe) that stated that girls are bigger consumers of personal electronics than boys (in every category except video game consoles). Think about teenage girls and their phones.. Boys and girls both buy iPods, but may use them differently. Boys will tend use the music to isolate themselves, whereas girls are more often to share their player, their music and therefore their experience with a friend. (I doubted this phenomenon, but a friend who teaches high school track ensured me that girls do in fact each share one earbud of a set to listen together).

I have always maintained that I enjoy technology not for technology’s sake, but as an facilitator. I like what we can achieve with it. When I built my first webpage in the late 90s, it was to share information with my friends. I was a geocities community leader, I worked on an online community targeted at at-risk youth. It was about community: about the relationships that could be forged via technology: it was not about the technology itself.

Using technology to connect with others evolves naturally into discussions of accessibility. When you’re looking at using technology to engage with others, you obviously need for those “others” to also be able to use the tools as well. I love to share the quote by James Edwards (co-author of “The Javascript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks) –

One person’s preference is another person’s real need. It may be that a group of users finds it easier with Ajax, but if another group of users finds it completely impossible then you’re cutting people out, and you’re doing it for basically nothing.

I think of it as a hierarchy, basically, where accessibility is the most important thing, and usability comes next, and preference and design and aesthetics comes next. All of those things are important, but if one affects the other then you have to think which is the most important.

And to my mind, accessibility is always the most important, because accessibility impacts on what people really need. Everything else is just preference.

You need to have community members to foster community, which means you can’t lock the doors and bar people from entry. How does the local Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group get translated to the online world? How do the different communication means and motivations of women and men relate to their approach to IT, and why does it matter?

Related posts:

1. Chicks Digg IT — SxSW Panel
2. MySpace Needs to Rediscover its Place
3. PodCamp Ohio Networking

Resource Interactive is throwing an idea into the SxSW panel pool for 2009. I’d been weighing in on the topic, and am now actually listed as the presenter! So go vote!

Chicks Digg IT: How Women are Influencing the Future of Social Media
Men and women run on different OS. Just as Apple has surged into a new market position in 2.0, women are pioneering the direction of the web and social media in an online world that was more male-populated just 10 years ago. What has changed? Meet these women who are on the front lines of the Internet — they work on big brands, and are leading change in accessibility and architecture — and hear their thoughts on the tech brother-sisterhood that is the social web.

Related posts:

1. Career Advancement Core Conversation at SxSW
2. Core Conversations at SxSW
3. PodCamp Ohio Networking

As always, some of the best outcomes from an event are a result of the interaction with other delegates. There is something special about a group of actively engaged, newly informed individuals. Going into PodCamp Ohio, I hadn’t been sure about the people I would meet. I wasn’t a podcaster, would I have things to share with my fellow attendees?

As it turned out, I was incredibly engaged and impressed with the folks I met. There were folks from a wide background, all united by their passion for social media. The entire conference was very engaging and social, including the automated podOhioCheckIn twitter feed. As I mentioned, the first session I attended was incredibly interactive, with the attendees offering their own best practices and advice. I enjoyed putting faces to screen names, and realized that there is an entire community of like-minded individuals here in town I should get to know!

As someone who has worked on fostering online community for a long time, I have weathered all the comments about how technology throws up walls between people. Rather than interacting directly, we’re sitting in rooms on our laptops or mobile phones. However, how we do we explain the coming together of this group of technophiles? One fellow had driven from Nashville, another is based in Berlin and D.C. The Internet is the communication medium that allowed these individuals to find this information, and brought us together to share and network.

While the day passed quickly and I know I didn’t meet as many people as I could have, I have confidence that we will all leverage these online tools to continue to communicate and share our thoughts and insights from PodCamp Ohio moving forward.

Related posts:

1. Igniting Viral Campaigns (PodCamp Ohio)
2. Managing Multiple Online Identities (Podcamp Ohio)
3. Podcamp Ohio

The final session of the day that I attended was on strategies for blogging and social networking marketing. Some of the content was similar to the viral campaign session I’d attended earlier, I liked the use of the one specific case study to frame their work.

Right away speaker Bill Balderaz of Webbed Marketing laid out the three things you need for success:

1. a compelling hook
2. the right channels
3. identify client goals

In the case study he shared with us (Shizuka New York), the compelling hook was “bird poop facials”.

A good litmus test to whether or not your idea is compelling- would you talk about it at dinner? a new CEO hired from a competitor? Nah. But bird poop facials? Sure!

Bill mentioned four specific channels to consider:

1. SEO Press release
2. Blogger outreach
3. video
4. Social networks

I wasn’t really familiar with the terms “SEO Press release”, but it was quite interesting. Bill mentioned that they will search for specific phrases on search engines to ensure the uniqueness of their phrasing. That way they can be sure that when monitoring buzz or search queries, all the results are directly tied to their efforts. He did acknowledge that the most newsworthy your story, the more likely a journalist will snap up the idea and write about it in their own words. In this case, your carefully chosen phrasing is lost.

Through the presentation, Bill was very diligent at showing us the “before and after”, highlighting the importance of analytics and establishing your measures for success. We looked at google news, which had 2 links to the company in May, and roughly 50 post-campaign.

Blogger outreach is refers yet again to really figuring out the type of influentials to tap.

As for social networking, Bill said that they did not try to build for or leverage all the social networks. He said they actually received the most traffic from StumbleUpon, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t realize it was such a bg player. He also acknowledged that like it or not, you can’t ignore mySpace.

Supposedly CNN ran this story on the front page one day, but still 46% of the traffic came from social networks. While CNN gave a one-day spike in traffic, the networks were overall more significant.

Someone asked about the time this campaign took, and he said the video shoot was the biggest task, coming in at about 10 hours. The rest of the campaign and marketing was about 40 hours. In the end, the company saw traffic increases from all sources, not just referring sites. People weren’t just clicking on links they had presented to them; bird poop facials at Shizuka had reached a point where people were talking or thinking about them, and motivated to seek them out.

He talked some more about some compelling ideas and hooks, including the work they did for Hatteras networks (the cash cow), or the scantily clad etymologist at HotForWords.com

While I don’t know that this session really offered me many “strategies” for blogging and social media marketing, I did find the session interesting. I appreciated the focus on the results achieved, and how they were managed. I still feel in many ways that analytics is still in its infancy, and I appreciated the approach that was taken to demonstrate the campaign’s success.

Related posts:

1. Igniting Viral Campaigns (PodCamp Ohio)
2. Podcamp Ohio
3. Managing Multiple Online Identities (Podcamp Ohio)

I’ve noticed that @podcampohio has been following me on twitter for awhile, but hadn’t thought too much of it. Today, however, a colleague at work asked if I was attending this weekend. While I hadn’t really thought about it (and already have plans mid-day), I checked out the line-up, and made a quick decision to attend at least part of the event!

So Saturday will be a busy day for me, but there are a few sessions that certainly peaked my interest. Namely:

Managing Multiple Online Identities:
As if managing a single web presence (blog, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) wasn’t hard enough, some of us have more than one. In this session the group will explore reasons why some of us have multiple web presences as well as some strategies for managing them. I don’t have all the answers, but I know that the group will definitely have some great insights to share.

Strategies for blogging, podcasting and social network marketing
Wait a minute.

There is a form of marketing that involves consumers creating videos, podcasts and blog posts about your brand and distributing that content freely? And they don’t have to go through rounds of lawyers, executives and brand police when they are creating this content? And they do it without getting paid, on their own time and show genuine passion and interest in doing so?

And these programs enhance my search engine optimization, pay-per-click, online public relations and traditional marketing campaigns?

To top it all off, this form marketing is viewed as credible by consumers and has a measurable impact on my business?

Sign me up.

Social Media Marketing…working with consumers to create and distribute content about your brand is a powerful tool that smart marketers can’t ignore. In this session attendees will learn:

- How to build and execute a great social media campaign

- How blogging, and working with bloggers, can help a marketing program “go viral”

- The role podcasts and video play in online marketing campaigns

Orchestrating a Viral Explosion
Everyone wants the benefits of a viral campaign, but few people really understand how to put the pieces together to create the best chance for success. Find out the most common mistakes companies make when aiming to go viral and how a little bit of brainstorming can set you up for success. Jennifer Laycock will walk you through the actual brainstorming process she uses with clients to help you gather information needed to put things together. She’ll also help you learn to identify “key influencers” within your industry and will offer concrete tips on the best way to approach them with your campaign.

Can you make $ with facebook pages?
My Frank Sinatra and Stevie Ray Vaughan fan pages are growing at over 25% a week.

How are fan pages different from groups?
How do facebook page fans differ from group members?
How do you deal with an International fan base?
What does facebook give you in terms trends and stats?
Can you innovate a business model from inside facebook?
Find out the detailed results of a month long contest?

Related posts:

1. Strategies for Blogging and Social Network Marketing: A Case Study (PodCamp Ohio)
2. Managing Multiple Online Identities (Podcamp Ohio)
3. Igniting Viral Campaigns (PodCamp Ohio)

Here are the slides from my second presentation from Spring <br />. Coming into this presentation, I was less nervous than about the first, which in some ways I believe contributed to a weaker presentation.
I had asked the conference organizers if I would have the same audience in the two sessions, and it was generally believed I would. As a result, I had expectations about a certain level of background information. When I started the presentation, I realized quickly that other than a few familiar faces from the morning, I was speaking to an entirely different group.

I did try to engage the audience a little, and learned a bit from them. Almost everyone in the room had done some flash, but only one or two had ever heard of the accessibility properties available. And whereas a few people in the morning session had indepth knowledge of specific screen readers, that was not the experience in this session. I asked if anyone had ever seen anyone use a screen reader, to little to no response. I got to joke “great, that means you’ll believe anything I say!” In retrospect, I think a session on how users use assistive technologies would probably be very eye-opening and interesting.

So here is the slide deck – as I said, it’s rather weaker than the one from the morning. I had weathered numerous questions in the morning, and had expected the afternoon to run similiarly. However, I think I only had a single question, so we breezed through it.

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