The MidWest Media Conference was a success. What was it you ask?
IF YOU TWITTER, POWNCE, BLOG, SEESMIC OR UTTERZ - THIS IS THE CONFERENCE FOR MEDIA RELATED ISSUES.
HOSTED BY WORKING PROFESSIONALS, IT’S DIRECTED TO EVERYONE INTERESTED IN IMPROVING ONLINE MEDIA PRODUCTION.
The conference was the brainchild of Duane Myers, aka PreppyDude. Seeing the strong interest in St. Louis and having connections, he went forward with his plan. He brought together a diverse set of panelists to help out.
Byron Sletten of Mindactive, headed up the technical side of the conference. His company provided the site, as well as the equipment to live broadcast the conference. Byron himself bookended the row of panelists. He provided valuable insight about site design and purpose for businesses and artists.
Steph Stockman, geologist and science educator, brought her expertise as a developer/implementer of education and outreach programs for NASA to the panel. Not content with mere drawings and a few pictures, Steph has strived to use online media in her education efforts. She’s now quite familiar with online networking and media, for both professional and personal use.
Dana Loesch, professional blogger and talk radio host, has been online and sharing writing and media for decades. An experienced hand at online media from blogs to broadcasting, she shared her experience in getting it right online.
Bill Streeter, a video blogger, blogger and more, is the man behind LO-FI Saint Louis. He brought a strong background in online media publishing as well as production to the table. A good portion of his work has been with local St. Louis musicians and artists.
Frank Ireton, Ph. D., a retired educator and public outreach professional, turned those years of experience to becoming a social media and virtual world expert. He’s created numerous things for clients and private projects in Second Life, including a representation of Belfast Ireland, including a pub that streams live music from Belfast.
Michelle Havens, professional photographer and stylist, worked on both the panel and as technical support for the evening. Her expertise in creating and publishing digital works was a welcome addition to the group.
David Myers, radio host and voice over talent, came with 14 years of radio industry experience. He’s now acting as Operations Coordinator for CBS Radio’s Kidstream Internet station. David played cohost and spurred on the panel.
These people came together to share their expertise and experiences in putting media online and making it work. They handled questions from privacy to investment to get something online.
One of those most interesting things to surface was the panels agreement that up and coming artists, especially musicians, should get their art online and put up an interactive site at the earliest opportunity. Also, the panel made clear that interactive doesn’t mean just a few news updates now and then, but a two way communication, between artists and fans.
Cost to get involved was a big topic. The answer? It’s cheap, just do it. They key is to focus on the quality of the content in general, and not on the gear. There’s no need to invest in $1000 plus camera or recording gear to get started. The panel talked about even using a cell phone to get initial things online.
Though the panel had limited time for questions but also managed to talk about privacy concerns, some pet projects, and what other first steps an artist should take.
The turn out was small for this initial conference but the attendees and panel enjoyed themselves. After the conference proper broke up, the entire group of folks retired to another section of the Roadhouse for dinner and drinks.
Lessons learned:
1. You can put a conference on with no in person meetings.
2. You can put a conference on without tens of people.
3. You can put a conference on in just about any place, even a noisy restaurant.
4. You can put a conference on and have a good time.
5. Noisy restaurants aren’t the best venue.
6. Get their early to set up.
7. Have questions prepared for the panel.
8. Advertise the hell out of it; you’ll get more attendees online and in person.
The biggest success about this conference was that it happened. It’s hopefully a gateway event for St. Louis and a sign of more to come. It’s also a great lead in for the upcoming St. Louis Interactive Festival.
I’m already excited about the next event. What’s great is that you don’t have to be an expert to get involved, just have the urge and energy. Do you have an idea for a one evening conference? One afternoon? Target audience 20 folks or less? Let’s make it happen!
They’ll hook up 2 of you with an Amazon or Mobile gift certificate when they announce the second Utterz Game next week.
**BONUS** up your odds by sending in a picture of the total on your gas pump to go@utterz.com. Send it within 10 minutes of calling so it matches up to your recording.
What are you waiting for?! Go, pump, pay, and share the pain! Share your Utterz posts here in the comments was well for extra fun.
St. Louis is going to be host to the Midwest Media Conference. A variety of speakers will be on hand for an evening of stories, questions and answers about online media. One of my favorite guys involved in social media, Duane Myers, aka PreppyDude, will be hosting the show.
Three of the presenters are well known folks in St. Louis media, David Myers, Bill Streeter, Dana Loesch, and Michelle Havens. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting these folks in person on more than one occasion. But not only are locals turning up, like the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, one of our Ohio favorites is joining us as well, Ann Miller, aka AnnOhio.
Duane and the out of town speakers will be here a bit early. I’m hearing rumors of dinner and drink plans. Be sure to get a hold of these folks and let them know your interested.
An Utterz Ambassador? No, it doesn’t mean you’ll be talking to more cows, but it does mean you could be representing good old Bessie for Utterz. Utterz is kicking off a Memorial Day weekend contest to find a small group of folks to become Utterz Ambassadors. Here’s the scoop straight from Sim and crew.
Here’s the skinny: The Utterz team will be hand selecting a small group of Utterz users to help shape the future of Utterz for the entire community. If you’re selected to be an Ambassador, you’ll get to peek behind the Utterz curtain to learn what we’re working on now, as well helping us design and refine our upcoming feature releases. And of course, you’ll get “more cowbell”.
So how do you become an Utterz Ambassador? Easy.
Send us an email (ambassador@utterz.com) or create an utter tagged “utterz ambassador” (bonus points) describing why you’re the perfect Utterz Ambassador.
Be creative, have fun, show off your riffs, and prove your chops as an Utterz user.
We will begin the selection process Tuesday, May 27th, so be sure to get your submissions in before then. We’ll announce the newly minted Utterz Ambassadors by Thursday, May 29th.
You read it here; you could be the next Utterz Ambassador! There’s an Utterz blog post with the same information in a video for your more visually fixated Utterz fans.
So what are you going to do? Join the fun! Be the next Utterz Ambassador!
I’ll not spoil the articles for you, but did want to talk to one or two from each article. First from the Why it won’t article, #8, “It pisses bloggers off because all their comments are moving onto FriendFeed rather than staying on their blogs.”
Scoble mentions that your blog post is likely to get more comments on Friendfeed than on your blog. Why? Because your friends and readers are no longer just following your blog. They are following your videos, all three of your blogs, and your Pownce and Flickr streams. They’ve found it easier to catch you in one place, Friendfeed, than checking all of those separately. The concern is that your visitors will go down. Truth here. All that Friendfeed shows is the link. Folks still have to click over to read the article. So maybe they aren’t commenting directly on the blog, but being on Friendfeed makes you a lot more visible.
Then there’s #6 on the why not list, about finding new friends. The argument being that it’s tough to find new friends there, unless you want to find Scoble, Dave Winer and some other uber geeks. I’d contend though, that with this service, as others, that folks aren’t coming without their friends. Oh, they might be the first in their peer group, but rarely are they the only. This is true for me. Early adopter but now a swarm of my contacts is using it. And believe it or not, finding my blog posts and stuff there instead of directly from my RSS.
Now about the will go mainstream side. #5 is one of two favorites from the list, “It is freaking fast and much more reliable than Twitter.” This is so true. I’m often seeing Friendfeed show tweets before I get them on the client I use. Reliable, even more so. Twitter seems to be offline or bugged a noticeable part of the time. Friendfeed is managing incoming data from a slew of sources and yet it seems to handle and keep up with them without error. However, I wonder how dense the user base is yet. Does it have the many thousands of users that Twitter has? How will it fair in six months?
Then my other favorite, #9, I’ll call it the all the cool folks are there item. It’s the fact that many interesting geek and non-geeks alike are on FriendFeed. Scoble mentions a few interesting ones, Barack Obama, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Hey, you’re there too right? This is a deal maker for me. I follow friends of course, but thought and discussion leaders are definitely folks I enjoy following as well. Are some of them just Internet rockstars? Sure. But some are well known in other arenas and just happen to be blogging, and making other social media.
Where do I stand? I’m in the will go mainstream camp. My reasons? It’s only going to get easier to use, and people will become aware of it from mainstream sites, such as Obama’s campaign page. Right now it doesn’t have the eyes of millions, but as it grows and changes, it’s user base will grow and mature as well. The feedback is just beginning to role in for them.
Where do you stand? User? Never heard of it? Following a slew of folks? Or just your real life friends? Bloggers? Politicians? Your neighbor?
David Wallaceshares his thoughts on raising his children up to speak his language about blogging and more. David, a search and social media marketer, and blogger, is thrilled to educate his children about what he does and get them personally involved.
I’ve tried to bring my younger son along as I’ve gotten more involved with being a digital citizen. It’s been an on and off again situation. He’s tried blogging, MySpace, and Twitter, but his real online home seems to be forums. He’s a significant contributer to many forums on his favorite topics, even being invited to write guides for various online games. Different than my deep dive into social media and networking but to each his own.
So are you bringing your family along for the ride? Teaching them the lingo and the meaning of what you do online? Did you get them into blogging? Perhaps they were there first, on their MySpace and Facebook pages? What’s your family’s story?
People who don’t know you love to ask what you do. Here in the Midwest that often is asking what you do to earn a living. With the growing breadth of online tools and toys, more people don’t just ‘do’ their job.
Ordinary folks like you and I not only do programming, or teach grade schoolers, but we blog, make videos, create social media and network. We don’t just network either; we inspire, conspire, and admire; we encourage, uplift and share; we are not passive.
So when I ask my contacts and friends what it is they do, I don’t want to just hear how they bring home the bacon, I want to know all they are in what they do. I want to know that you write and inspire through your blog, to know that you raise funds for cancer by making videos, or that you raise kids in a digital world.
In this spirit, I polled my Twitter pals, and here are the answers they gave. Enjoy.
Do you know these folks? Any of this sound familiar? Perhaps one of these is you, or very close. Note that on one up there does just one thing. Many have a full life living and doing a variety of things. It’s not a crime to specialize but don’t sell yourself short. Very few of us wear only one hat.
Ask yourself today, and be ready to answer when we ask, what do you do? What do you do?
The MidWest Media Conference was a success. What was it you ask?
