Social Media University
Social Media University took place at the ICC hosted by Trivera Interactive and a slew of local and national sponsors. The day was filled with breakout sessions, a panel discussion on small business and a keynote by blinds.com CEO, Jay Steinfeld. All levels of social media users attended. From the mom & pop shops up to individuals who manage multiple facebook, twitter and you name the network accounts.
The day started off with an entertaining introduction from Tom Snyder (@triveraguy), founder of Trivera Interactive and social media guru. Tom covered how he uses social media to the trends. He added some suggestions on how to use social media. He explained everything he tweets from 8-5 M-F is business related. After 5 and on the weekends the tweets are all about real life. Good advice for those trying to find balance with their own SM efforts. If you follow him (which you should), you’d see he tweets articles about how social media is changing how marketers operate to what him & his wife are cooking up for dinner. Tom’s talk energized the crowd for the event and I was looking forward to the breakout sessions.
Every breakout session I attended was packed. The presenters knew their topics well. Unfortunately, all of the sessions were more for the beginners of the group. Not bad to review the fundamentals, but a little disappointing when you compared them to the descriptions of the sessions. The panel discussion was fun and attendees seem to be interested in the beer & pizza specials.
The final event of the day was the keynote by CEO of blinds.com, Jay Steinfeld. He validated many things about social media mentioned by others in the earlier sessions. He opened up his keynote with stating something many forget when developing a SM plan: social media is about relationships. His advice on “experimentation without fear” I think resonates no matter what industry you are in. He was charismatic and the only speaker that actually used Keynote for his presentation. (It was a very pc kind of crowd.)
This event was great for those entering into the realm of social media for the first time. SMUM fell a little short for those of us with a little more technical savvy and social media experience. I’m hoping to see another Social Media University with a few “advance” sessions. A couple of ideas: a session on some emerging social media technologies or how the rest of the world is using social media.
Overall, I think Tom and his magical group of social media masters did a great job of organizing, presenting and running the event. All of the speakers clearly showed their knowledge and understanding of social media. They did a great job of presenting their information it was just not intended for the geekier of us. Judging by the number of tweets though, most attendees where able to bring something home and are energized about their own social media endeavors. Making this a successful event for everyone involved.
You can check out the recap of the event here.
