My mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year (well, last year) and without having to think too much I jumped at the idea of an e-reader. I have friends who have them and love them and now that I was officially graduated and had time to read again I gazed on them with longing in shop windows. In particular the highly publicized release of the new Kindle’s were making my mouth water. In a technology kind of way. Now when my mother asked which Kindle I wanted I naturally set about the process of rigorously examining all the options, weighing the cost-benefits, and examining which device would be best for…
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BarSpeedCAUSE: A Conference(s) Recap
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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Put the “social” in social media
Anyone who is using social media without investigating the local component is missing a huge piece of what this technology has to offer. Location-based tools like Foursquare have clearly shown that social media provides value in the way we get to know our communities and companies like Groupon and Living Social are getting us deals on our local adventures. Twitter is no different - there are many local groups who have routine “tweet-ups” to facilitate connections in the community. Whether you’re new to town or just want to learn a little more about the area, staying connected with these groups is a great way to make new friends and expand…
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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…
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The Great iPhone Fix
So yes, first of all I know it’s been FOREVER since I posted. I’m a bad person, I’ll never let it happen again, please still be my friend, etc. Now to the point. Once upon a time there was a very silly girl who liked beer and football. When you put these together, what do you get? Tailgating! On the fine fall day this story takes place, the girl was tailgating with friends who liked drinking games. Evil games like Flip Cup. And to make a tragic story more palatable the girl got really drunk and, in a momentary lapse of sanity, threw her iPhone 3G. Overhanded. See picture to left (I…
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Consider me ignited, Raleigh
Way to go Raleigh! Last night’s Ignite Raleigh event was a very entertaining blend of technology, entertainment and education. I could go on and on about the awesomeness of the event but let me try to keep things brief by highlighting a couple of particularly fantastic contributions… Everyone Needs a Dumb Guy Chris Moody (@cnmoody) did a presentation about the “dumb guy” in the office who asks the often dumb and difficult questions the client will ask. It was a very quick look at the benefits of broadening your advisers; diversity of POV leads to more information and better decisions… sounds like he’s read ‘The Wisdom of Crowds‘! Chris did…
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A Year of Twitter
I have been so busy posting to my blog on a regular basis I belatedly realized that I have hit 1000 posts on Twitter! I guess my micro-blogging habit has really interfered with my regular blog updates (not that I was doing terribly well at blogging before the distraction of Twitter…). I spent some time going back through all my fascinating posts and realized that I’ve nearly hit another milestone: 1 year on Twitter. My first post was September 18th, 2008. It was at times sweet, nostalgic, painful and hilarious to read my thoughts on events of the last year. There were very few things that I couldn’t find a…
