Interview with Tony Uphoff – on using Facebook and Twitter to network at events

Tony Uphoff runs UBM’s TechWeb (a sister company to my own) which runs Information Week and the Web 2.0 Expo co-produced with O’Reilly Media.

Tony is very active in social media with a blog Uphoff on Media and a Twitter. Here he talks about how he uses Facebook and Twitter to network before and during business-to-business events.

This is my sixth and last interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and my second interview with Tony.

Seven tips for getting the most out of an Event 2.0

I’ve just returned from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Before I left, I exploited my existing social media activity. I did not approach any potential contacts directly but used social media in what I called the etiquette of permission networking.

I got my digital kit ready for the Web 2.0 Expo: I would use Twitter for networking and microblogging; I also intended to shoot several short interviews on a Flip camera.

Web 2.0 Expo is an impressive four day event of workshops, lectures, networking and an exhibition (disclosure: the event is co-produced by a sister company of my own). What struck me most, however, was the wall of social media that surrounded the event at all time.

Whether it was projected Twitter feeds, such as #smfail for a session with Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Charlene Li, or Nancy Duarte’s use of Meebo’s Brainstorm, the conference not only preached social media. It lived it.

You might start out with 300 people in one room all linked to each other through their laptops or mobile devices. But, as the session progressed, we were joined by hundreds then thousands of others from across the world who followed and then interacted with the Twitter feed. 

So, how did I do? Was my permission-based approach to networking effective? Was my digital kit the right approach?

1. Permission networking rocks. Every single person who approached me for a meetup, showed up.
2. Online networking can never replace face-to-face contact. The most intense moments were when I met people I had only known online. 
3. Be ready for people’s assumptions about you. Listen to their view of what is the difference between your online and your real identities. If they make sense, integrate them into your social media profile. For example, I’ve changed the photo on some of my profiles since people said I did not look like my picture.
4. Video posts are not a time-saving device. Uploading the videos onto Vimeo always took longer than I thought. The checking and double-checking of headlines and links was as intense as for a written post.
5. Do not let “cabin fever” during a conference influence your media strategy. As the week went on, my subscriptions declined dramatically. I use Feedburner so I am used to dramatic ups and downs but I began to think my subscribers hated what I was doing. I stuck to my guns and my subscribers returned to normal.
6. Remember to disable existing feeds if you change kit and platform. I forgot to disable an earlier process for video interviews on my blog that I had set up six months ago.  So, one morning, I was alarmed to have sent out three Tweets with links to my Vodpod (video host) profile. It looked and felt like spam and was entirely my fault and oversight.
7. Do some traditional note taking. Most delegates spend every session with their heads over a laptop, interacting with the speakers online. It is very addictive. But you are far less likely to walk out with decent notes or even listen properly. So, just occasionally, close down the laptop, shut off the mobile device, ignore the Twitter feed and open a notebook instead.

Interview with Paul Way – the impact of Facebook and Twitter on mainstream businesses

Paul Way and I used to work together in London before he moved back to the US to work for sister company UBM TechInsights.

I met up with him for breakfast in San Francisco’s Dottie’s True Blue cafe where he reminded me just how good he was at seeing the bigger picture. Here he evaluates what impact the lack of business plans by Facebook or Twitter has on mainstream businesses. Listen to his interview.

 

This is my fifth interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Interview with David Cohn – the future of investigative journalism

David Cohn’s Spot.us is an experiment “to preserve investigative journalism” in the San Francisco bay area. 

This is how it works. Members of the public choose which topic should be investigated by a journalist, pledging anything from $5 upwards. 

Listen to how David sees his idea taking off and his plea that journalism will only survive if others are as experimental. 

David’s Twitter handle is @Digidave, here are his Shares, which I have written about before, and he writes a blog DigiDave.

This is my fourth interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

I’ve got my digital kit ready for the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (plus shades!)

I will be travelling to or arrived in San Francisco when you read this, on my way to the Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco. I’m really excited.

Several leading and up-and-coming social media experts have arranged to meet me. I wrote in an earlier post that I was going to use permission rather than assertive networking – that is only approach people if they made it clear they wanted to network. It has worked better than you could imagine.

So I’ll try and video, photo and record as many of the important ideas that they mention. So I’ve taken my digital kit with me.

When I was a traditional editor, I would have taken the lot to report with them ie broadcast from the event.

Today my goals are quite different. They are

• to use the kit for networking, 
• to test myself as I try to make all the kit work together,
• to record, rather than report, the important points in videos, pictures and words.

The picture shows my

1 Dell laptop. I am hoping there is Wifi because I want to be able to follow Tweets about the event via the #w2e hashtag identifier on Twitter Search. It is also essential kit back in the hotel room to keep up with the office in London, process all the material I will be gathering and knock out a regular blogpost.

2 Flip video camera. I’m going to ask several of the people I meet the same five questions and record them.

• How long have you been in social media?
• What social media kit have you got on you?
• Which part of your social media activity are you most proud?
• How are you using your social media footprint to network at this event?
• What one thing have you learnt this week that will help your business?
• What’s next in social media?

Then I am going to upload the recording to my Vimeo profile before posting it on my blog as a post.

3 Blackberry Storm. I’m concerned whether the battery will last each day but otherwise Twitter on my Blackberry Storm is going to be an essential cog in keeping me networked throughout the day.

4 Keyfob. All these years later, I am still so excited to be able to sit at my work desktop wherever I am in the world. What will it be like working through the company Wiki for the first time?

5 Exilim digital camera. I cannot get the quality of pictures with my Blackberry Storm that I can with my trusted digital camera so I will put up with the inconvenience of downloading. It’s not in the picture above because I had to take this picture!

6 Shades by Cartier. Heh, it’s the Web 2.0 Expo.