The SoCon09 “un-conference” was held on the campus of Kennesaw State University this past weekend. The intention of an un-conference, in the spirit of social media, is to allow audience participation to direct the presentations and panel discussions without too many constrictions from the conference organizers.
Cameron and I had observed through our twitter following that there are an enormous number of conferences taking place across the country regarding online marketing, so it was great to be able to attend right in our backyard.
One of the key takeaways from the event was the actual face to face meeting of friends and acquaintances who we have only communicated with via online social networking. Meeting Desiree Scales, Greg Bond, Tessa, Svy and others in person really elevates the relationship to a whole other level.
The first part of the Saturday event consisted of some traditional presentations with a little audience participation thrown in, that had to do with a comparison of Atlanta versus Silicon Valley, plus a discussion of the Brand Atlanta campaign. The agenda indicates that they were directed to present on What We Can Learn from Silicon Valley and Atlanta’s Niche In The Social Media Universe … Although very smart guys, the audience response to what Jeff Haynie and Andrew Wilson were presenting was less than spectacular. It just seemed to be a bunch of focusing on the small local scene and not enough of discussing the big picture of social media.
Chris Carfi in his keynote demonstrated how the development of markets over the course of history manifests itself today in the way in which conversations can contribute to actions in the online space.
His presentation slides are available here:
Cameron had the opportunity to sit in on two afternoon sessions. The first regarding B2B applications for social meeting, moderated by John Gatrell, who posted a great conference right up at his blog Spatiallyrelevant.org.
Cameron had the opportunity to sit in on two afternoon sessions. The first regarding B2B applications for social meeting, moderated by A point of difference during the session is the role of guest posting on behalf of a CEO. Should there be others who are speaking on behalf of the CEO when that person is too busy to keep up a consistent time frame for communicating?
The second session of the afternoon was a session called What’s Next for Social Media? The moderator of this session was Chad Isreal from Engauge.
Mobile usage and applications that take advantage of location based services seemed to be high on the list social media tools. On the heels of the announcement of Google Latitude the group identified the term “Augmented Reality” is what we will look for.
Augmented Reality in terms of relating your physical presence intersecting with your online profile to increase the potential for interaction. Wearing of certain eyewear might see generated images super imposed on top of the physical surroundings.
Final note of the day,
Kennesaw State announced at the start of the day the awarding of a $1.5 million dollar grant from The Harnisch Foundation to develop sustainable journalism models.
This concept came right on the heels of hearing on NPR another approach to funding investigative journalists, which is a high cost and therefore easily cut element of the media. The organization called ProPublica is about journalism in the public’s interest.
