The Awesomeness that was BarCamp Philly – Part 2

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!

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