I enjoy SXSW because I get a chance to meet most of the people I read, follow, and interact with throughout the year. They are all here this week.

I’ve been to this conference twice before, and this third time’s the charm: I’m honored to share the stage with co-panelists Peter Imbres, Scott Monty, and Andy Carvin for a talk about “Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds“:

The news about the earthquakes in China broke on Twitter. A fake email from Apple posted on a blog sent the stock tumbling 5% in twenty minutes. How is the modern media landscape affecting crisis, both humanitarian and for major brands? Discuss with those enabling it and victimized by it.

While here, I plan to live blog to the extent possible, although there aren’t enough power outlets …

If you’re at SXSW, I hope well meet up!

Last night we celebrated another great year of RefreshMiami meetups (slideshow here).

During the year, our membership doubled as we accomodated about 35 presentations by South Florida new media startups, entrepreneurs, and freelance professionals. Our meetups were attended on average by 50 people, with some events drawing about 100. We’re particularly grateful to Yahoo! Hispanic Americas and to Brikolodge for hosting most of our meetups, as well as to our sponsors for providing the catering.

What’s in store for next year?

As the new media community continues to grow, we plan on providing more services throughout the year. This means we’ll look into incorporating as a non-profit early in the year, building a team, and setting objectives. It has been a rewarding adventure so far, and we look forward to our next stage of growth.

Thanks for taking part!

BlogOrlando gets better each year, I’m very glad I went. I of course enjoyed reconnecting with friends who flew in from across the country, seeing the Orlando tech community again, and meeting new people.

One of the highlights was getting firsthand case studies from the teams that manage(d) social media at major corporations: Jeff Rubenstein and Josh Hallett presented the Sony Playstation strategy; Paula Berg spoke about successes and learnings at SouthWest Airlines; and Jake McKee recapped his experiences at Lego.

The schedule was full of good topics, making it hard to choose which track to follow:

Leah Jones of Edelman Digital presented advanced search techniques, including the search engines and Boolean searches she makes. Here’s her presentation on Slideshare: “Going beyond Google“.
Nik Wilets, aka @tiburon, explained the difference between a photographer and a photojournalist, and had great examples of his own and other’s work. He was later followed by Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel, who spoke about the use of Twitter in Journalism.

Phil Gomes, also of Edelman, shared his experiences, tips, and techniques on giving internal education on social media within the large PR firm.
Spike Jones and Geno Church gave excellent presentations on “WOM and social media” and “Movements, activism, and social media“, respectively. Most interestingly, Geno spoke about creating and building the Fiskateers community, for one of the oldest companies in the world, Finnish scissor maker Fiskars. Community is not about the scissors, it’s about the higher purpose.

I’ve been going up to Orlando tech events, and each time it’s reassuring to see the tech community grow and organize itself. They’ve made great progress in the last few months since BarCampOrlando, which was the catalyst for many of the groups and initiatives. Pictured are Alex Rudloff, Ryan Price, and Gregg Pollack, who summarized the history and the many things going on. Here’s a video of their 30-minute preso.

I also saw David Alston from Radian6 speak about brand monitoring (disclaimer: I co-founded StartPR), but unfortunately missed David Parmet’s session on education and Jake’s session on identity.

Overall, it was great to meet up with such brilliant and engaged people, and best of all, it happened in Florida

Update: Some of the sessions are archived here on ustream.

Continuing what has been a stellar year in Miami in terms of online conferences, the The Word of Mouth Marketing University came to town. To welcome some our friends from out of town who came to speak at the event, including Rohit Bhargava, Joseph Jaffe, JC Hutchins and Jason Anello, we organized a blogger dinner last night:

Brian Breslin of infinimedia

Joseph Jaffe of Crayon

Jay Berkowitz of Ten Goden Rules

By the way, Josh Hallett snapped some great photos at WOMMU, some of which appear on WOMMU’s good live blog. Have a look!

On Wednesday, May 2nd, we celebrated the two-year anniversary of RefreshMiami! When a few of us first met at a Starbuck’s in South Beach on May 5th, 2006 (Brian Breslin, Chris and Rebecca Saylor, Robert Murray and I), little did we know how significantly the RefreshMiami community would impact our lives. As Brian writes on the RefreshMiami blog:

"So its been 2 years. Wow. In the last 2 years I have either met or interacted with hundreds of great people in the south florida tech community. Lots of people have gotten jobs, made friends, and had a great time. So with that in mind, I think its time we celebrate."

Celebrate we did! Here are some photos. Michael Tangeman compares RefreshMiami to the First Tuesdays and such of the early dot.com days (see also comments on his post):

"It is so refreshingly unlike the dot.com days here in Miami. No suits, no VCs just flown in from the Valley, no investment bankers looking to take somebody public, no lawyers handing out cards and wanting to get in on the deals. The talk is about technology and apps and projects and what people are up to, not about shares and options and exit strategies."

If you’re new to Miami and looking to meet and connect with other web entrepreneurs, developers and designers in South Florida, here’s how to participate:

1) join the 220 member strong RefreshMiami Google Group for discussion on local tech issues, job postings and more;

2) join our group on Facebook;

3) if you’re on LinkedIn, we just started a group there. Here’s the link to join;

4) Subscribe to the RefreshMiami blog;

5) Come to our next meetup! Our next event is on May 28th in Coconut Grove … see you there!

BarCampMiami came and left us some great memories. David Parmet and Michael Tangeman wrote up summaries; here are my Flickr photos tagged BarCampMiami08 and unbeknownst to me, Michael recorded a video of the introduction to BarCamp:

Thanks in no small part to the Future of Web Apps conference and to the RefreshMiami group, close to 300 people participated in BarCampMiami. Over 35 presentations were given, including a sneak preview of Kevin Marks’ Open Social presentation the next day at FOWA.

We have Nick Dominguez, Michael Montgomery, Chris Saylor, Brian Breslin and dearYvette to thank for helping organize our event. The folks at the Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts were most helpful by allowing us to stay past closing hours and by lending us extra rooms. A special shout out goes to Mel Kirk and Ryan Carson at Carsonified, who graciously invited BarCampMiami in their venue for FOWA.

Most of all, we have all the participants to thank, who made this such a rich experience. The participants run BarCamp and they made this one great.

After a succesful road trip in Europe, The Future of Web Apps is holding its next conference in Miami, in February ‘08. In preparation, Mel Kirk from Carsonified will be in town this weekend to scope out venues and organize the event. Dan Rubin and I have set up a dinner this Sunday October 28th at 7:00pm on Lincoln Road to meet Mel and discuss the event. Please RSVP on the Facebook event page or leave a comment here so we can get an idea of the numbers to reserve the location.

Also see this blog post, where Brian Oberkirch’s looking for suggestion’s for speakers, and don’t forget to join the FOWA Crowdvine socnet (my profile is here).

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