Jason Falls speaker with attendee Matthew Baron
SocialMediaPlus 2.0 was held in Philadelphia at the Convention Center on May 25. Prior to the conference there was a tweetup sponsored by Chevrolet at McGillan’s Old Ale House. The large turnout and enthusiasm at the tweetup set the tone for a busy 24 hours which consisted of a wide array of speakers along with an expo of trade show displays. One expo even provided complimentary professional photos to be used as an avatar on social media profiles.
The conference was structured into education tracks meaning that there were concurrent presentations occurring in the following areas: General information, Executive, Marketing, Sales, Information technology, and Human resources/recruiting. The content ranged from 101 basics to more advanced information. Networking time was built in between presentations allowing attendees to connect and socialize.
Show Director, Bob Etheridge, was tireless in pulling together the conference. There was a great deal of information packed into a single work day. To that point, events kicked off at 8AM and wrapped up around 6:00PM. Unlike many conferences, there was even a get together after the conference at the Field House. The overall theme, regardless of the educational track, revolved around one word, “conversation.” Whether an educational track was associated with sales, marketing, HR, or executive leadership, sharing content and participating in meaningful conversation was the core message. One example of this theme being driven home was by Shashi Bellamkondi of Network Solutions where he expressed,
Listen, participate, contribute.
This core message continued whether given by an entrepreneur (i.e. Jason Falls) or General Motors (i.e. Mary Henige). To drill down further on what was tweeted during the conference, the hyperlinked blog contains the top 2,100 tweets that occurred during the conference (using the hashtag #smplus).
Too often conferences come to an abrupt end with little ongoing conversation; therefore, we are going to try to do something different in this column. Follow up pieces profiling companies, met at the conference, will continue in order to keep information flowing and the conversation going. In addition to subscribing to this column, one can also go to twitter and search on #smplus to be part of the social media plus conversation.
As always, feel free to get in touch with ideas, thoughts or questions...
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