The Awesomeness that was BarCamp Philly – Part 2

November 16th, 2008 · Comments · Community, Conferences, Events

Yesterday I wrote about how I talked at BarCamp Philly last Saturday. I also attended some fun, inspiring and informational sessions by my wildly brilliant friends: @livlab, @globalcitizen, @waltribeiro, @bethharte, and @mknell.

Check out the full schedule of all sessions at BarCamp Philly and some great photos on Flickr.

My Twitter Notes from the sessions I attended are below:

“Jedi Mind Tricks: Mediating user, brand, technology & business goals through conversation” by Livia Labate and Marion Summerville

How do you deal with coming into a project mid-stream? What do you do to help someone else come in mid-stream?
@livlab takes the person out to lunch to start off the relationship on the right foot. Don’t make the person a scapegoat
UX often facilitates the conversations between design, development and business; understanding implications, cost impact
Conversations should be focused on the value of each solution instead of saying an idea is stupid or annoying to implement
Marion — respect people for being experts in their field, but assume they don’t know the context you’re working in
@livlab coaches her team to over-communicate. “They’ll stop you if you’re talking too much…establishes a better rapport”
“It has more long-term value that the problem at hand.” Building relationships is more important than getting your way
When you’re the new person in an organization, take the initiative to introduce yourself to everyone & understand their roles
Assign adjectives to each person in the org. “So-and-so is focused. So-and-so is detailed.” Helps to understand them better
“Acknowledge that there are different languages spoken in diff contexts for diff functions. Learn the translation” – @livlab
Marion tries to figure out if each person is a “thinking” person or “feeling” person. Helps to determine how to approach them
Focus on “quick wins” to prove that you can be successful at something the org says they don’t have time and money for
@livlab — “The 5 Whys” Ask someone to explain why they want to do something. Ask up to 5 times and you’ll get to the answer
DISC model — Dominating Influential Steady Conscientious — helps you figure out how people communicate
“Everyone is motivated by enlightened self-interest”- Marion. Everyone wants to look good, be perceived well. Help ppl do that
Sometimes the organization’s process dictates the communication style, but might not be right for the project. Work around it
Marion — “You can’t make people do anything, ever. All you can do is show them how it’s in their self-interest to do it.”

“Story? What Story? Once upon a time… How to structure your story” by Mike Davis

@globalcitizen “This is 1 of the only times I’ll answer the Q of what I do for a living. I’m a contract product evangelist”
Empressr, Microsoft are some of his clients.
Rules of presenting. Just his opinion. There’s always a beginning, a middle, and an end.
That’s nothing new. But what’s important are the characters that are involved.
Characters people can identify with. A plot line that people can imagine. Ppl need to relate to you. “Don’t pitch me bro”
@globalcitizen showing photo of Sergey Brin & Larry Page. “Raise your hand if you know who these ppl are..
…and if you don’t, raise your hand anyway cuz it’ll be really awkward if you don’t.” Duh, founders of Google.
@globalcitizen gonna take 3 minutes and talk about @empressr, one of his clients. Showing how he does the non-pitch
Get people’s attention by being short and sweet. Get them hooked. Don’t worry about feature set, going into competitors, etc
“It’s about love and it’s about communication… People should be having warm fuzzies when you’re off this stage.”
“Don’t put negative feelings out there.”
Lots of Twitterers in this room: @mknell @zarzecks @srcasm @purplecar @eiobri. Probably others I don’t know
None of @globalcitizen’s slides have any words on them. They’re only pictures. He’s very confident about his content.
There are three aspects of a presentation: content, delivery, style (volume and cadence). You can differentiate with any 1 of them
@srcasm is saying engage your audience. People want to participate, give back. It’s about ego, really.
If possible, research your audience before you get there. Be a bit of a stalker. You don’t need surprises. You wanna be on message
“Whose world view needs to change in order for something to happen? They can be the influencers” — @mageier
@srcasm — “Use your environment to get your point across.” Requires being hyper aware of the resources around you

“Building Your Community, Sponsors, and Your Brand as a Full Time Job Online” by Walt Ribeiro

@waltribeiro gonna talk about how he built his brand from nothing. Been doing it for 8 months now.
@waltribeiro teaches guitar and piano. Gets tons of traffic to http://waltribeiro.net/, 23 comments on his last post
Doesn’t hurt that @waltribeiro is a cutie
@waltribeiro was teaching classes for free on YouTube. Was getting good comments, realized content was good. High energy level
If you misspell his name, you find his other twitter accounts at @waltribiero or @waltribero
“Rather than make my money off of students, I make my money off of sponsors.” — @waltribeiro
You wanna build your community, your sponsors and your brand. Your community gets you your sponsors. People get this wrong
@waltribeiro’s Pimp It! and You! pages differentiate him. Links to go viral — Twitter out his stuff automatically. Check it out
@waltribeiro doesn’t look at stats on his blog. “The only numbers I care about are emails saying, ‘Thanks man’”
“You’re not building a fan base, you’re building a friend base.” — @waltribeiro
He answers every email, every twitter DM. Every Ustream or YouTube comment. Every single one of them.
Sponsors care about numbers though, and they should.
“Yeah other people may get better numbers than me, but no one does it better than me. Period.” — @waltribeiro
“It’s all about the hustle, and it’s about caring. You’re building up this community one by one by one….
…If all you did is get 3 new fans a day for the next 3 months, you’ll have 90 ppl” — @waltribeiro
When you have community then you can monetize it. There’s no guilt trip here. You need to keep being able to do what you <3 ...
@waltribeiro sells merchandise on his website, sells his music.
@waltribeiro’s recorded lessons are in order of difficulty. “It’s literally an online school that makes money while I sleep”
@waltribeiro doesn’t like to lose traffic on affiliate links — “short-term profit, long-term loss.”
In his lessons, he will plug a book and that’s how he makes money. But it isn’t unsolicited. The book makes sense to the lesson
@waltribeiro worked for 6 mos at this without making money. Saddest time of his life. But he kept working out it & now there’s $$
@waltribeiro is so energetic that I’m finding it hard to live-tweet. Just dazed in his hemisphere
“The way you build sponsors is the same way you build community.” A bit from Twitter. A bit from Ustream. Collectively, 100s.
There isn’t one big bang. You’ve gotta use every resource, every outlet, every venue
“There’s more to life than Twitter, than Facebook. Social media is about people. I don’t want to know you as usernames…
…I want to know you as people” — @waltribeiro
“You’ve gotta invest before you get back, and you have to show that you care.” — @waltribeiro
@waltribeiro updates his website every single day. Every single day.
Writing a blog post every day shows sponsors that you’re legitimate, promotes yourself, helps your SEO and builds your community
“If you can do it every day, you’ve already beaten 98% of the competition.” — @waltribeiro
@waltribeiro recommends WordPress’s All-in-One SEO Pack plugin
“Everything about you has to be sexy. I don’t mean how you look…how you present yourself. Your subject line is your storefront”
“Stop letting it be about you.” What can you do for them? Sponsors and community. Be confident, passionate, do it every day
“If you worry too much about scaling, you’re gonna forget why you got into it in the first place.” — @waltribeiro
@waltribeiro completely ROCKED it. Damn boy. I’m fired up now

“Brand Management” by Beth Harte

Now @bethharte is talking about brand. “Companies no longer control their brand. You don’t control your brand”
Brand squatting — like the Mad Men characters on Twitter. You can’t control how people will appropriate your work
Fractured conservations — so many different platforms where messaging is taking place. You can’t dominate in all of them
Demo of http://www.radian6.com
Fractured conversation — “comments without context lose value to those who read them”
“Go where the conversation is and respond to it there.”
I’m excited for @bethharte to see the backchannel during her session
@bethharte recommending the book Personality Not Included

“Crisis to Conversation – JetBlue social media” by Matt Knell

@mknell is telling the story of the @jetblue Valentine’s Day Massacre in which customers were on planes for 10+ hours
After the whole situation, ppl started posting videos all over YouTube w/ their complaints. It was a total nightmare for @jetblue
@jetblue then made a video with their CEO David Neeleman genuinely apologizing and posted it on YouTube. 338,000 views
@jetblue Bill of Rights was a direct response to ensure that this never happened again without some sort of customer compensation
@jetblue left the comments open on their YouTube video, a definite risk. 385 comments. Only ever had to delete 5 (totally flaming)
@jetblue’s Customer Bill of Rights
They also sent an email response to every single one they got. 5 million if I heard correctly!
This was a disaster, but the question became “how to be truthful, transparent and honest?” — @mknell
For the most part, this became a story about redemption in the face of a brand-skewering
@Jetblue then created a David Neeleman blog. First foray into social media. He was writing it with help on the PR team
@mknell & @mhjohnston created @jetblue twitter account to further connect w customers. Mostly just engaging in conversations
Now @jetblue is a great example of how corporations are engaging with social media
@mhjohnston talks at some conferences about how he is further expanding the use of @jetblue
@jetblue twitter account has 5,934 followers right now
Make that 5,935
@jetblue says who’s currently on duty: Morgan. Gives it a personal touch that makes people more comfortable
@mandle just told a story about a problem with Comcast that Frank @comcastcares fixed for him in 3 days
Just asked @mknell how this scales. What if everyone who used Google used Twitter? Would @jetblue @comcastcares be able to keep up
@mknell — companies need a strategy of how to staff social media efforts. Many are putting it in their PR department
@anniemal asking what happens when the person who has shaped the voice of an org’s twitter account leaves the company
@zeldman was just brought up by @mandle. “If @zeldman left A List Apart, would the brand fall apart?”
@mandle says no because ALA cares about their “customers” and fans. They would work to maintain their voice
Rockin’ session @mknell! What a great story and you told it with such clarity and relevance. Thank you!

And there you have it, folks! Five awesome sessions with a ton of useful info. A huge thanks again to the incredible @stellargirl for everything she did to organize BarCamp Philly. Planning for BarCamp NYC4 is already in the works. I simply can’t wait!

Share this post:

Tags: Community·Conferences·Events

Denis Sinelnikov

Very Cool Review of BarCampPhilly! Twitter definatelly a great tool to capture the moments and then look back =)

WaltRibeiro

This recap derserves an award.. Or maybe a retweet.

Retweet in session!

You Rawk!

roz duffy

wow, thanks for recapping all the sessions i WISH i had gone to!!

Whitney Hess

You really did an incredible job pulling all the pieces together. It felt like you had been organizing professional conferences for years! Thanks so much for everything. We had a blast.