What? You haven’t heard of the 140 Character Conference Series? It’s been going on for YEARS and this September (actually in two weeks) it comes to Boston for the first time. What’s the big deal? Try to follow along with the 14 reasons I’m going to this edition of the conference. Then, maybe you’ll be excited enough to attend too. Would love to see you there.
And no, even I wasn’t creative enough or so disrespectful of your time to trot out 140 reasons. Here are 10 reasons to attend. Just sayin’.
10 – You’ll get to meet Jeff Pulver. For those of you that continually call ME Jeff Pulver, that will prove once and for all that we’re different people.
9 – It’s right here in Boston. No need to hop on a plane, train, Fung Wah bus or other mode of transport. You can just ride the MBTA – might I say the ‘reliable’ MBTA – search for MBTA on UniversalHub and you’ll get why I use quotes around reliable – to the door of the conference.
8 – The topics are short. If you really don’t want to hear a session, rejoice! They’re only about 10 minutes long each so you can gloss over the blather and concentrate on the good stuff.
7 – The topics are short. If you really get excited by a speaker, you’ll get a tasty tidbit of info that you can then build on during lunch, a break or after the conference. What better way to forge a relationship or conversation with some of the smarties who’ll be speaking.
6 – One of the people speaking is me. My topic has to do with social media and the media. But I’ll probably just talk about the Gulf oil spill, tweetups and NomX3.
5 – The people speaking include names like…
Adam Gaffin (@universalhub) – Founder and editor, Universal Hub.?Alicia C. Staley (@stales) – 3 time cancer surivor?Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer) – Artist?Amy Kiel (@Abeeliever) – Community Leader?Andy Dixon (@andydixn) – Singer Songwriter Author and Visionary?Ariel Hyatt (@cyberpr) – Founder, Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR?Bijan Sabet (@bijan) – General Partner, Spark Capital?Blake Hall (@troopswap) – co-founder, Troopswap?Bobbie Carlton (@BobbieC) – Founder, Mass Innovation Nights?C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman)?Carissa O’Brien (@CarissaO) – President, Red Box Communications?Christopher Penn (@cspenn) – VP, Blue Sky Factory, co-founder PodCamp?Doug Haslam (@DougH) – Supervisor, Voce Communications?Erik Proulx (@eproulx) – Creator of Lemonade. Founder of Please Feed The Animals.?From the perspective of a stay-at-home dad?Geo Geller (@geogeller) – Artist, Inventor, Photographer?Georgy Cohen (@radiofreegeorgy) – Managing Editor, Web Communications, Tufts University?Jeanne Dasaro (@JeanneDasaro) – Principle, New Prosperity Initiative?Jeff Cutler (@JeffCutler) – Content Creator – Social Media Journalist?Jeff Keni Pulver (@jeffpulver) – founder, #140conf?Jeff Persch (@JPersch)?Jeffrey Hayzlett (@JeffreyHayzlett) – Author, Change Agent, South Dakotan, and sometimes Cowboy.?Jeffrey Sass (@sass) – VP Biz Dev, Myxer?Jessica Murray (@JessicaRMurray)?JessicaRandazza (@JessicaRandazza) – Community Manager, Digitas?Jodi Whalen (@augustfirst) – Owner, August First Bakery & Cafe?John Baronian (@johnbaloney)?John Daley (@Boston_Police) – Deputy Superintendent, Boston Police?John Haydon (@johnhaydon)?John Moore (@JohnFMoore) – Founder & CEO, The Lab?Keith Spiro (@KendallPress) – Director of Marketing, Kendall Press?Kevin B. Gilnack (@kgilnack) – Membership Development Associate, Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers?Kirsten Olson (@bhsprincipal) – Author of Wounded By School and the principal of Old Sow Educational Consulting.?Lane Sutton (@kidcriticusa) – Social Media Strategist/Entrepreneur/Writer (and a 13 yr old kid)?Matthew Ebel (@matthewebel) – Artist?Michael Hayes (@hayesbtv) – Wizard of Wonderments and Digital Delight, Magic Hat Brewing Company?Mike Schneider (@schneidermike) – Team Boston’s “Mr. Movember”?Miles Ward (@milesward)?Nelson de Witt (@dewittn) – Chief Story Teller?Patrick Larkin (@bhsprincipal) – Burlington High School (MA) Principal?Perry Hewitt (@perryhewitt) – Director, Digital Communications and Communications Services?Rich Nadworny (@rnadworny) – Owner & Digital Strategist, Digalicious?Roger Toennis (@Roger_Tee) – CEO, Liquid Media?Scott Henderson (@scottyhendo) – Principle, Cause Shift?Shay Totten (@ShayTotten) – Political Journalist, Seven Days?Shwen Gwee (@shwen) – Lead, Digital Strategy and Social Media, Vertex Pharmaceuticals?Stephanie Miller (@kordmiller) – Director of Digital Media, CBS Boston’s WBZ-TV & TV38?Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield) – Author: Get Seen, Online Video Secrets / Founder of Boston Media Makers?Ted McEnroe (@tmcenroe) – Director of Digital Media, NECN.com?Tony Baldasaro (@baldy7) – Assistant Superintendent of Schools for SAU #16 in Exeter, NH and administrator at the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School.?Wayne Kurtzman (@WayneNH) – Volunteer Social Media Director, Destination Imagination
4 – The Back Bay Events Center is a grand place to enjoy this great learning event. Historic Boston elegance and a classic, modern venue.
3 – Topics like Social Media Rehab: A Time to Disconnect; Lemonade – The Story Behind the Story; There’s Something About Video; Music Panel; Media Panel; and more.
2 – Sponsors and organizers. Names like Virgin Atlantic, Verizon, SummerHill Venture Partners. And folks like Joselin Mane, Ellen Rossano, Laura Fitton and others have worked their tails off to put on this event.
1 – Content, content, content. The value here goes beyond what occurs on stage. Spend some time in between sessions to talk to the presenters, the organizers and the other attendees. You’ll learn more than you’d ever imagine. Ask people who have attended other 140 events.
Let me know what you hope to learn and why you’re attending. See you there.
I’ve interviewed a number of social media luminaries and asked them to give me their answers to three questions. To make this game fun, in a Jeff Cutler sort of way, I told them that they could pick the questions. I further told them that they didn’t have to reveal the questions, just provide me with the answers.
If you’d like to provide your answers for this project, send them to me at jeff (at) jeffcutler [dot] com. I’ll put them in the queue and they’ll appear in the order received. *Also include your Twitter handle and one link you’d like included in the post.
I’ve interviewed a number of social media luminaries and asked them to give me their answers to three questions. To make this game fun, in a Jeff Cutler sort of way, I told them that they could pick the questions. I further told them that they didn’t have to reveal the questions, just provide me with the answers.
1. When the ball went through Bill Bucker’s legs in the 1986 World Series
2. I’d only consider it if you threw in Jennifer Anniston
3. Bouncing off the tires of a massive tractor trailer, in a blizzard, while I drive my Chevy Chevette
If you’d like to provide your answers for this project, send them to me at jeff (at) jeffcutler [dot] com. I’ll put them in the queue and they’ll appear in the order received. *Also include your Twitter handle and one link you’d like included in the post.
Do you worry about your Twitter content? Do you agonize over what you’ve said on Facebook and LinkedIn? Are you bereft if everyone doesn’t agree with your blog posts?
Image from http://www.bconnected.lk/hrd/social_businesss_registration.htm – a 2008 course advertised on the Web.
Well, as much as I want everyone to like me, I subscribe to the idea that I should share my thoughts with conviction and my feelings without reservation. Because these thoughts and feeling are stuff I’d share easily and freely at a cocktail party. It’s stuff I’d tell my friends. And it’s content I wouldn’t hesitate to send in an email, text message or other missive vehicle.
But people continue to get bent out of shape over some of my thoughts. So what should I do? What’s the etiquette? Is there a precedent?
Recently I ranted about Greenpeace and now have people up in my grill about my attitude over the environment. Back in July I griped about bad communication among a group of people – and those folks still aren’t over that misunderstanding (ironic situation based on my points about our communication issues).
Therefore, I’m looking to readers to share their experiences when something they’ve written gets people all riled up. I’d like to hear from Stuart Foster, Justin Levy, Meg Fowler and Christopher Penn. I want to hear from you.
Is there a strategy to keeping people unoffended and still entertained? Should people just create their content and throw caution to the wind? And is there a stage at which the caution throwing becomes more restrained?
Share your thoughts in the comments. Or point me to documents that have explored this very issue. Thanks!
I’ve interviewed a number of social media luminaries and asked them to give me their answers to three questions. To make this game fun, in a Jeff Cutler sort of way, I told them that they could pick the questions. I further told them that they didn’t have to reveal the questions, just provide me with the answers.
3. A golf handicap of 15, NY Rangers win Stanley Cup again
If you’d like to provide your answers for this project, send them to me at jeff (at) jeffcutler [dot] com. I’ll put them in the queue and they’ll appear in the order received. *Also include your Twitter handle and one link you’d like included in the post.
I just wrapped up a project for EDRnet as their reporter in the Gulf of Mexico. I was interviewing scientists, business owners, residents and tourists about the impact the BP oil spill has had on their lives. This encompasses work, lifestyle, recreation and future livelihood. And what I found out might astound some folks. Here are a few things…
1 – The beaches in the Gulf of Mexico – on the US coastline – are gorgeous. I have never seen sand as white or well-cared for. The communities in the Gulf derive a huge portion of their income from tourism, so keeping the beaches in good shape is of paramount importance. #ioilspill tidbit – The beaches were mostly deserted and the local economies were mostly decimated because of the perception of oil rolling up on the shores like a big black blob. Not true. I spent 14 days in the Gulf and didn’t see one tarball. I saw and learned a lot about the BP oil spill.
2 – New Orleans has a Holocaust memorial, plenty of cigars and booze, little things called begniets, a few donkeys and of course great jazz clubs. I was stationed in New Orleans for about half of my reporting mission (unlike iRoadTrip when we drove a Ford across the nation) and I saw a lot more than the photos above. I also saw poor people in the street. Houses still standing – barely – from the Katrina hurricane. Crime-prevention methods everywhere (locks on the anti-perspirant at CVS!!). And some fabulous food. If you’re planning to visit NOLA, come down in September or October. The weather will be better, the hurricanes will be gone, and you’ll still get to enjoy all the great stuff the city has to offer without sweating to death.
3 – Big disasters trump personal ones. While I was in the Gulf, six kids drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, LA. It didn’t make the news in as big a way as it might have because of the oil spill.
4 – Movies go on regardless of the real world. The world of make-believe continued forward as the filming of Green Lantern took place in downtown New Orleans for about a dozen days in late July and early August. I didn’t get a chance to see the filming as I was reporting on the oil spill and doing interviews. But the filming caused traffic tie-ups around the city and consternation to taxi drivers and others whose income comes from shuttling people around in the heat.
5 – The city is a little gritty. If you’ve never been down to New Orleans, here are a few photos of the real-world. In fact, during my stay, the city had an argument with a trash company and refused to pay them. So the trash company refused to pick up any trash. The streets didn’t stink TOO badly as the city made municipal employees clean up the really bad areas.
6 – The industries down here are oil and fish. That’s it. And that’s really why the oil spill has had such a psychological and financial impact on the region. What happens if the fish die? The region dies. What happens if they can’t drill for oil? The region dies. What happens if both occur? You tell me.
14 days reporting. A ton of new information and insight. Anew perspective on a historic city. And another iRoadTrip wrapped up.
Got any questions about the trip? Does your organization need a content specialist to attend an event or report on a region? Give me a shout or leave a comment here on the blog. As you can see from the success of this project, good content has its place in the mainstream.
If you read the title of this blog post one way, it might seem as if I’m tooting my own horn.
If you read it the way I intend you to, you’ll enjoy the sarcasm and irony in that statement/headline. You see, the written word – whether it shows up on parchment or laptop or phone – is subject to forces beyond the writer’s control.
These include, but aren’t limited to, perception, preconcieved ideas, personal bias and current state of mind. That’s why so many business professionals try to use the phone or face-to-face meetings when clarity is critical.
Unfortunately, writing is far more expedient in some cases for sharing thoughts with a global audience or for just clearing your metaphorical throat. It’s in these cases that writers should use the novelist’s trick of setting aside a tome for at least one night before submitting it.
In this, I failed recently. I spent some time typing out my thoughts – in diary or journal style – and then published them instead of editing or sitting on them.
I won’t give details, but the stuff I wrote could have been clearer and my tone could have been softer. For a communications pro who prides himself on knowing how an audience will respond to a message, this was a #fail.
It was also a fail in terms of personal relationships. So, my words of warning to anyone who might want to share their personal feelings in public…think about the public you’re sharing with and how they might respond to your words.
As another genius once said, “Not everything that can be counted, counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.”
Have you ever sent an email or wrote a blog post you wanted back?
I’m now in a session at Enterprise 2.0 learning how to measure social media activity within communities and entire populations. Here are a few of the resources these guys have shared with us so far…
Next up in the session – 40 minutes about what you should think about when working with communities and social media. Analytics that apply to the social media and Website landscape.
The session is called Enterprise Communilytics. Here is the description…
Last year, at Enterprise 2.0, we took a look at the tools used to monitor social media platforms. The market has matured greatly since – and many new tools and techniques exist to help you understand more about your brand presence online.
This year, we’re going to cover how measurement practices and tools are applied to every day social media campaigns. You will leave with a practical understanding of measurement concepts as they’re applied to digital strategies. We’ll spend time looking at real campaigns that we’ve launched, and how we measured them to determine their successes and failures. We will cover some material from our book, Complete Web Monitoring, but most of the content in this session comes from recent campaigns that we’ve launched and new concepts that we didn’t have a chance to write in the first edition.
Instructors: Alistair Croll, Founder, Bitcurrent Sean Power, Consultant and Analyst, Co-Founder, Watching Websites
It’s good stuff with a lot of practical information. Glad I made the trip to Boston today. Conference goes for another three days. More info here.
What do you do when you find yourself face-to-face with someone you have only met on Facebook or Twitter? Tipping Point Labs made me answer that question on tape.
Back in the 1980s a friend of mine was really excited about a concept called distance learning. The process was effectively teaching folks using technology. It allowed for entire classes to be in disparate locations while still interacting. The company that was introducing this concept has since been swallowed up, but the concept is more sound than you might realize. Especially if you or your organization has divisions or professionals all over the world.
Let’s take a look at a few ways people can learn anything from social media to food preparation using new tools.
First, there are Webinars. These are discussions led by masters in their field (you hope) on topics as varied as healthcare compliance to bike maintenance. I’m guest hosting a webinar on what to do with your Website after you launch it so it doesn’t languish. You can find me on Monday, May 17 at this location – sign up now if you want to attend.
Other companies are using them to pimp products, share knowledge and build a follower base. Firms like Awareness and Hubspot use them a lot to create buzz around their organization and their company’s products and services. What they offer that you can’t get from attending a conference in person, is the ability to streamline your learning.
It’s great to spend face time with people in the lobby of a hotel, but if you’re looking for targeted knowledge, these online routes are more effective ofttimes.
But how can you sift through the mess, short of spending entire mornings clicking around the Web Googling the word Webinar. Well, that’s where another friend of mine comes in. Rachel Levy started a company called Webinar Listings. This site aggregates a huge collection of these online learning programs so you can tell in a glance what’s happening when and how to sign up.
In fact, if you’re in the Boston area, Rachel is planning to present this company and concept to the attendees at a real-world event on Wednesday, May 12 in Waltham. The event is MassInno and it begins around 6PM…oh, it’s also free to attend.
Going beyond webinars, you can learn in a more formal way by taking classes at online colleges and universities. The one that jumps to mind is University of Phoenix. While these institutions might have been seen as fly-by-night in the past, they now carry accreditation and respect. You can take nearly any class you want and pursue many degree programs from your own living room. Which brings me to the biggest resource of all – the Internet.
While you might be digging around looking for the perfect webinar or session or conference, most of the content from these events and programs is archived somewhere on the Internet. Using Google or Bing or AddictoMatic, you can dig up information on myriad topics that can inform and entertain you for hours, days, weeks or months.
I’m NOT saying that this is a great resource because it’s all true. I’m saying the Internet is a great resource because it has such a breadth of knowledge at your fingertips. When I teach companies, universities and news outlets about social media, I’m very careful to explain how it’s a ‘buyer-beware’ environment on the Internet.
But once you’ve adopted some caution, you can find slide decks of presentations, past podcasts of shows featuring smart people, and even publications from every corner of the world. Your next step is to sit down and digest all this stuff. And become smarter.
What are your favorite resources on- and offline? Share them with others here in the comments.
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