Whew! October was a busy month. In six weeks (last week of September and through the first week of November) I participated in four conferences; specifically I presented at all four and helped plan two. Yeah. Crazy. And stupid. That being said, I love being busy and I love conference planning and have no problem with public speaking so as far as I’m concerned it was totally worthwhile. My recap of the conferences and presentations is overdue. I did a brief post on the Social Media Strategies Summit in September, but here are my thoughts on the other three… BarCampRDU BarCampRDU was one of the events I helped plan and I…
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Social Media Strategies Summit
Last week I attended the Social Media Strategies Summit in Boston, MA. This was a conference for businesses and non-profits to discuss the use of social media in marketing, communication strategies, fundraising, community-building and much more. It was all about making use of the right tools at the right time and it was great. I met several experts in the business and non-profit arenas and got lots of good ideas. Because I work for a university I was not really the target audience for some of the content but it was still worthwhile and I picked up several social media policy ideas and samples which will certainly come in handy. I…
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BarCamp
I look forward to several annual Triangle events: IgniteRaleigh, BeerFest, the Sanderson Band Competition (yeah, what? I’m a band geek, ok!), and I’m very pleased to be able to help out with one of those events types of events this year– BarCamp RDU. BarCamp is an unconference. In case you’re not familiar with that term, it’s when lots of people show up with a variety of ideas for talks based around a topic – in this case that topic is “technology”. Vague, yes? But an unconference is uniquely perfect for a topic like technology which is so dynamic and fast-paced that a traditional conference format often can’t keep up. Rather than…
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I heart beer
I was raised on beer. Literally. My dad began making beer before I was born and has continued, off and on, through the years; he now has a brewery in the basement. I’m a child raised with hops in my back yard, who crushed malt in the kitchen and sampled beers before it was technically legal. I love beer. So being both a beer lover and a girl I was intrigued to hear that several breweries have plans to release new beers targeted towards women. I probably should have been wary – my favorite beers tend to have lots of hops, yielding an often strong and slightly bitter flavor that…
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TED Comes to Campus
I don’t get a lot (== understatement) of opportunities for training or development in my current job but every now and then the NC State campus will host an interesting speaker or worthwhile seminar. The prize of working in an intellectual environment is that sometimes we get the opportunity to expand our horizons. Today I went to TEDxNCSU. TED Talks are “ideas worth spreading” – think “viral” in the good sense. Celebrities, comedians, professors, scientists and everyday people come to these TED events and share inspiring ideas. TEDx events are meant to be TED Talks on a smaller local scale and today’s event had students, professors and professionals from NC…
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All-Star City
I am very proud of my city. Raleigh, NC hosted the NHL All-Star game (and associated a activities) this weekend and it was fantastic. I don’t know how the experience was for an outsider visiting or watching at home but from my perspective Raleigh was a wonderful host, threw some great parties, offered up some beautiful weather and just generally impressed. A few high points:
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The Gospel of Social Media
While my current job doesn’t have a lot of social media work built into it, it is still something I find myself thinking and talking about a lot. Since I do website development for clients we’re often asked about the need for social media accounts and I frequently find myself trying to talk these folks off the proverbial ledge: you do not need 15 accounts in each of the “hawt” social networking tools. I’m also in a grad program for Technical Communication and have over my years in the program become something of an advocate for providing training on these tools in a professional environment. In fact, I’m requesting that…
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Geek Girls Unite
I recently attended BarCampRDU for the first time. I’m not going to go into detail explaining the concept behind this event but in a few words it’s a tech-heavy un-conference that takes place annually in the Raleigh area. It was a great event. Circumstances being what they were I was only there for half of the day but it was well organized, the sessions I went to were great and there were some really cool people there – kudos to the planners and participants! As the day began to wind down I noticed some dissent in the #barcampRDU twitter stream that I thought was very interesting. tesmith #BarCampRDU feels like…
