The socially redeeming value of "Twitter" and teaching social media

Whew! Note to self: Don't take a "fast trip" to the West Coast!

I returned from the Internet Strategy Forum in Portland, OR on Saturday morning and promptly slept until Sunday morning. Jet lag, lack of sleep and information processing all took their toll for sure.

Biggest wins at the conference?

1. Meeting, sitting with and "friending" Geoff Ramsey the CEO of e-Marketer
2. Meeting and chatting with Mike Moran who writes an SEO blog I follow
3. Not only watching, but participating in a full conference Twitter stream via my crackberry
4. Several new case studies from speakers from Forester and Intel
5. A free book: Groundswell by Charlene Li

The biggest disappointments?

1. Nothing really new from a content perspective
2. Lack of conference organizers focus on the use of Twitter
3. Poor choices for several of speakers -- this was a high expectation crowd so the speakers had to be "spot on" to be successful
4. No educators

Would I go again? Probably not unless they really push out the envelope on what's coming next.

So overall Twitter was the big winner for me. To actually take what I've read about and put it into practice and follow the Tweets to see the thoughts behind the scenes was great. It really emphasizes that post from Rohit Bhargava on Twitter and conferences. Nice to live the experience.

It certainly helps having had this experience now that I'm in the process of teaching social media tools and techniques to K12 educators from several Vermont school districts today and tomorrow. I'll be bringing Twitter into the classroom to play with it so hopefully this time it will work!

Finally in the same focus about connection and social media, my colleague Peter Straube who is program director for our Hospitality and our Event Planning programs sent me an email today with some great links to some things that are being used in the conference arena:

Hi Elaine,

Thought you might find this interesting: http://www.crowdvine.com/conferences and a specific example from the MPI conference I got this from in Houston last winter: http://mpi.crowdvine.com/

Oh, and while I’m at it, you might enjoy seeing some sample work that a team of our e-Gaming students produced in real time during the conference: http://www.mpiweb.org/cms/mpiweb/pec2008/peccommon.aspx?id=13996

- P

P.S. Does this get me somewhere on your blog today?

Yes, Peter...it does!

The Internet Strategy Forum

I'll be attending the Internet Strategy Forum's West Summit: The Titan's of E on Thursday the 17th in Portland, OR.

I'm pretty excited about it.

First of all, I found out about it because I read the Biznology blog by Mike Moran, and he did a post about speaking at the summit and that if we mentioned him in our registration we got 15% off. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I of course checked it out and after seeing the line-up was convinced that this was a great conference for me to attend, so I registered and got the 15% discount! Thanks Mike!

Here's that line up:

Geoffrey Ramsey, Co-founder & CEO, eMarketer
Nancy Bhagat, VP of Sales and Marketing Group, Intel
Daniel Stickel, new CEO, WebTrends (formerly with Google)
Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Chris Shimojima, VP, Global Digital Commerce, Nike
David Placier, VP, Consumer Insights, Disney Online
Shane O'Neill, Chief Technology Officer, Fandango
Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer, IBM, author (highest-rated speaker at 2007 Summit)

So why would I select this conference? Well, the timing is right. I'm not in the middle of classes right now -- but I am in the beginning process of re-creating my course in Internet-based Marketing (yes, I actually do recreate my courses, often...this ain't Shakespeare ya know!). I've always wanted to see Portland, OR, and well, I enjoy getting a chance to meet in person the bloggers/writers I follow and use in my classes!

(Note that I got that chance earlier this summer when I met Avinash Kaushik in person!)

Here's the YouTube Promo Video:

And there's a Facebook Group and a Twitter Feed. Neither of these are very active. I wonder if it will pick up during the conference?

Anyway, here's an opportunity for me to get really pumped so I can keep my class current and fresh.

As always, I'll be Twittering from the conference. I can't seem to find if they've set up a TWEME, but you can always look for updates from "Summize" (just aquired by Twitter) to see who is Twittering about the conference.