§ Subscribe

Alternatives

Enter your email address to receive blog updates by email:

Delivered by FeedBurner

§ Podcast

• For Immediate Release
  A weekly podcast for professional communicators from Shel Holtz, ABC and Neville Hobson, ABC.
  Podcast Feed
  Vote for FIR

---

§ PR Search

---

§ Places

• Shel's link blog
• Blogs I read
• Holtz Communication + Technology
• IABC
• Ragan Communications
• Society for New Communications Research

---

§ Dead Trees

• Tactical Transparency
  
  by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens
  
  
  
  
• How to Do Everything with Podcasting
  
  by Shel Holtz with Neville Hobson
  
  
  
  
• Blogging for Business
  
  by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos
  
  
  
  
• Corporate Conversations
  
  by Shel Holtz
  
  
  
  
• Public Relations on the Net
  
  by Shel Holtz
  
  
  
  

---

§ License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Speaking

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

NewComm Forum is coming. Will you be there?

Five years ago, I spoke at a little conference in Napa, California. Two social media enthusiasts put it together with a very specific goal: let people who are on top of social media get together. People with specific expertise would present to small groups, there’d be a couple of keynotes, but mostly it would be about gathering and sharing.

Out of that first NewComm Forum, the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) was born, and the Society and the Forum have been linked ever since. NewComm kept getting better and better. There are plenty of Social Media 101 conferences out there—it seems like one is taking place every day—and plenty of gatherings that are more social than educational. NewComm—along with SNCR’s annual one-day Research Symposium—stand out as the best social media learning opportunity of the year. At each one of these, I hear the same refrain from first-time attenders: “How come I’d never heard of this conference before? This is awesome”

Now, NewComm is affiliated with a company that has the resources to kick it up to another level. With Redwood Collaborative Media‘s backing, NewComm’s original co-founder Jen McClure (Elizabeth Albrycht was the other) and her team have put together a program that’s tough to top in terms of business-focused substance.

My FIR podcast co-host Neville Hobson is one of the keynoters, along with other well-known social media professionals Jackie Huba (co-author of “Citizen Marketers”), Scott Monty (who leads Ford Motor Company’s social media effort) and Tim Westergren (founder of the killer music service, Pandora. Also keynoting is Charles Holt, senior strategist for emerging media for the U.S. Department of Defense.

The list of breakout session presenters over the four days reads like a Who’s Who of business-focused social media. Here’s just a partial list:

Eric Schartzman, Katie Paine, Todd Van Hoosear, Paul Chaney, Brian Solis, Shel Israel, Paul Gillin, Susan Getgood, Maggie Fox, JD Lasica, Chuck Hester, Kami Huyse, Beth Kanter and Geoff Livingston.

More compelling, though, are session topics. In addition to the standard complement of introductory sessions for social media beginners, there are sessions like:

• Social Media and the New Purchase Process: New Frameworks for Marketing and Sales Planning
• B2B Video: Why a Corporate Video Channel Makes Sense
• Social Media Governance
• Social Media for Regulated Industries

Consider Brian Solis’ session, “The New Media Style Guide,” which “will focus on exercises and methodologies for establishing a brand personality cycle that effectively weds brand and representative.” It’s part of the “New Communications & Communities” track, one of five that also include “NewComm Essentials,” “Social CRM,” “Markets Are Conversations: Putting Theory into Practice,” and “Understanding the New Media Landscape.”

In other words, it’s not the same old “How to Get Twitter Followers” sessions so seem to characterize so many other conferences. This is meaty business content that you can use right away to help your organization use social media strategically to move the business needle.

And don’t forget, the sessions are just part of the attraction. The opportunity to get together and talk with others who are well-versed and serious about the business dimensions of social media and where’s going is unparalled at NewComm. It’s more than three montns away and I’m already getting stoked about it.

As for my involvement, I’m presenting a pre-conference session from 1:30 to 5 p.m. on April 20 on the characteristics of a networked organization and the steps required to get there. Then, I’m presenting a breakout session on April 21 titled “Stop Blocking” (sounds familar, doesn’t it?), which will cover the business advantages of unfettered employee access to social sites and the steps organizations can take to minimize risk.

The conference is in San Mateo this year, on the San Francisco peninsula. Don’t miss it.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Revisiting paper handouts

After today, I may have to rethink my position on handouts.

For years, I have resisted providing handouts of my presentations. The reasons:

• Delivering handouts weeks before the speaking engagement precludes making changes to the presentation, even if events or better examples make such a change a good idea.
• We’re supposed to be going green, right? I have a file cabinet full of presentation handouts from conferences. I’ve never looked at any of them. How many trees would have been spared if those handouts simply had never been printed?
• Somebody (I think it was Wilma Matthews) told me about research that proves people retain less from presentations when they have a handout of the presentation in front of them.
• I hate it when I have a point that’s going to be a big “ah ha” moment, but it’s spoiled by people who can’t resist reading ahead.

My concession has been uploading a PDF of my presentation and making it available for download after the talk is over. Then today came along.

I’m in Vegas (at this moment sitting at McCarran waiting for my flight home). I delivered this morning’s keynote at the annual Healthcare Internet Conference, then did a lunch talk at IABC’s Las Vegas chapter. My cell phone rang while I was speaking and the caller left a message. This is the gist of the message:

Hi. I’m attending a conference at the Venetian Hotel. I found the handout of your presentation and it blew me away. I’m at a different conference but I got permission from your conference to keep this copy I found. I’m with a non-profit and, as I read your presentation, I realized our marketing company is doing things the old way. We’re very highly rated but having trouble getting our story out there. Can you help?

I called him back and we’re going to have a longer call when we’re both in our offices next week.

I never considered handouts as marketing tools for people attending conferences other than the one where I’m presenting. That may be worth a few trees after all.