Posts Tagged ‘tech’

A week in Israel and Jordan

My mind is filled with ques­tions as I pon­der the his­tory, cul­ture, and cur­rent events of the region. I’ve heard so many pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives, and it is with a great sense of curios­ity and excite­ment that I travel to Israel and Jor­dan next week. In par­tic­u­lar, I am anx­ious to meet some peo­ple from the tech com­mu­nity, although the tim­ing is not great since most will be busy for year-end hol­i­days and fes­tiv­i­ties. Still, I’ve been able to con­tact some thanks to the serendip­ity of Twit­ter, and hope­fully this will rein­force bridges across the Atlantic. After all, look­ing at this pic­ture of Tel Aviv, you’d think you were in Miami!

Celebrating another refreshing year!

RefreshMiami

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 2008 … third time’s the charm

blogorlando

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.

paula berg jake mckeeOne 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 jonesLeah 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 @tiburonNik 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 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 geno church 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.

blogorlando 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.

Social Media Club forms interim board

I’m hon­ored to be counted among the peo­ple invited to give new impe­tus to the Social Media Club. Through con­ver­sa­tions with com­pa­nies, orga­ni­za­tions, local uni­ver­si­ties, and inter­ac­tive agen­cies, I’ve expe­ri­enced the grow­ing inter­est in social media and the increased demand for indus­try prac­ti­tion­ers. By bring­ing together those who have an inter­est in see­ing the indus­try improve and evolve, SMC pro­vides the much needed forum for shar­ing best prac­tices, estab­lish­ing ethics and stan­dards, and pro­mot­ing media lit­er­acy. 1

The interim board will estab­lish the guide­lines of this asso­ci­a­tion, to cre­ate the nec­es­sary frame­work before the SMC grows fur­ther on a national and global level. Once the frame­work is agreed on, local boards will be estab­lished with inter­ested cor­po­rate and non-corporate mem­bers. Please read the full press release if you’d like to know more.

As we col­lab­o­rate on on orga­niz­ing SMC for the future, Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Part­ner at The Con­ver­sa­tion Group, acknowl­edges that:

Our core mis­sion will remain the same: pro­mo­tion of media lit­er­acy; sup­port of indus­try stan­dards efforts such as Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing, Micro­for­mats, Data Porta­bil­ity and OpenID; dis­cus­sion and pro­mo­tion of eth­i­cal behav­ior; and shar­ing our knowl­edge among our mem­bers and the indus­try com­mu­nity at large.”

The newly named mem­bers of the interim board, some of whom are friends and oth­ers who I look for­ward to meet­ing, include:

  1. We are in the process of relaunch­ing Social Media Club in South Florida

RefreshMiami turns two!

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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

May 7, 2008  |  Social media  |  , , , ,  |  View Comments

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Today’s Twitter Updates

May 3, 2008  |  Twitter  |  , , ,  |  View Comments

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Today’s Twitter Updates

May 2, 2008  |  Twitter  |  , , , , ,  |  View Comments

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Today’s Twitter Updates

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Today’s Twitter Updates

April 26, 2008  |  Twitter  |  , , , , , ,  |  View Comments

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