The Real Time Web--The Future Is NOW.

Do you remember when you were a kid and would dream what the fantastic future would hold? What was it you wished for? Flying cars? Holodecks? Time travel? Being able to be teletransported like on Star Trek?

I'm guessing that for most of us, our wildest dreams didn't include having access to all of the world's information RIGHT NOW.

But that's what we're getting. Are you ready for it?

The Real Time Web

I recently attended the fascinating ReadWriteWeb summit on the development of the Real Time Web, where the general consensus is that the future is NOW. Literally. Your future will be comprised of instant updates on breaking news, your kid's homework assignments, traffic conditions, weather, stocks,sports scores and play-by-play, what your friends ate for lunch, political developments, and much, much more, all sent auto magically to the electronic device of your choice.

You can know everything happening everywhere all at the same time.

Twitter is a good example of the real time web in action, albeit just one facet. It's an amazing source of thoughts, information, news, mundane happenings and the buzz of the hive. Now you can know when protesters are being shot as it happens in Iran, what a congressman is thinking while the President is talking, get pictures the instant an airplane lands in the Hudson River and follow real-time discussion and presentations in a conference that you couldn't attend in person.

You can also know the moment that Miley Cyrus decides that she is tired of Twitter and quits it, what Shaquile O'Neal is doing this afternoon or see video of a balloon NOT containing a child making its way across Colorado.

Do You Have The Need To Know?

It's heady stuff, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I really need to know everything going on in the world RIGHT NOW. I asked conference organizer Marshall Kirkpatrick a few questions about how this will affect the 'average' internet user, and he was gracious enough to respond in this video.

I'm curious though--can you think of when you NEED to know information RIGHT NOW? Are we overloading ourselves with too much information?

From my point of view, while having some information in real time is useful, it's rarely vital. And there's the problem of filtering--how to determine which information is important and which is trivial.

With the real time web, Neda is given the same importance as balloon boy, because it's the trending topic and what everyone is talking about. And that's just not right. I think that the constant flow of information trivializes all of it, because one bit of news is replaced by another in just a few minutes.

What about you? Is the real time web useful in your life? Is a real time web what you want your future to be--or would you really rather have that flying car?


Technorati Favorites">

What Do You Do Every Day Anyway?

I recently gave my team a challenge to develop 'elevator pitches'--short, 45 second introductions of themselves and our company. I suggested 3 scenarios where having something prepared that rolls naturally and easily off the tongue would come in handy:

1. At a conference of peers, and you get the inevitable questions-- "what do you do?" and "who do you work for?"
2. In either a business or social situation where you meet someone who might be a potential client and you want to introduce yourself in a personal yet professional way.
3. When your non-tech family and friends ask you "what exactly do you do for a living?"

As community managers, that third scenario is often the most difficult to describe, because there really isn't an off-line job that mirrors what a CM does.

Well, I'd like to give a shameless plug to @rhappe of The Community Roundtable who has written what I consider to be the best description of the many functions of a Community Manager.

She's done a brilliant job describing the role and I'm not going to recap her work here--I highly recommend you click on the link and check it out. I don't really have anything to add to her concise description.

Now, I still have to figure out how to put her wonderful CM description into 45 seconds or less so my Dad can understand what I do for a living, but that's another matter.

Rachel poses an interesting question on the topic--how do you prioritize your time as a CM? With so many different aspects to the job, how do you go about managing your day?

And that's what I'm curious to know too. I'm probably not very good at time management, because I find myself working on a Sunday afternoon, trying to catch up to work that I didn't get to during the week. I can get so wrapped up in doing daily maintenance tasks for my clients that I don't always get to the bigger, long term initiatives that will ultimately benefit both the client and my company more.

So here is my question for you, dear readers: How much of your day is taken up with 'mundane' tasks, and how do you carve time out for the bigger projects? I can find myself so occupied with responding to daily emails, looking at metrics and reports, surfing through clients communities etc, that I don't feel like I actually got anything done.

Do you have a system? How do you spend your day?

5 Things NOT To Do When Developing Community

Somebody once said something to the effect of "empty what is full, and fill what is empty."

I take that statement to mean, "do the not-so-obvious when everyone is doing the obvious, and do the obvious when everyone is doing something different." In other words, I don't always go with what everyone else is saying or doing.

If you're looking to develop a community around a brand or an idea, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of 'how to' articles on the internet that can give you solid advice on getting started. That's what's full.

What is empty...or emptier, I should say, are thoughts on what NOT to do when developing a community. So here are 5 things that I recoomend that you should NOT do when trying to develop or grow either an online or offline community:

DONT:

1. Talk with your community in marketing-speak.

Sure, you have an ulterior motive for developing a community--but people aren't "customers", "members", "users" or "clients". They're people. Talk with them the way that you'd talk with your friends, family and co-workers. Be a human, not a marketer.

2. Expect people to behave the way you want them to behave.

Yes, you have an objective for gathering people together and trying to form a community, and you have hopes for how they will act. But you can't force people to do anything, and this is REALLY important when developing a website.

MOST sites want people to register with the site--they want data like email addresses, demographic info, purchasing info for follow up marketing. So they force users to register for the site in order to use the features of the site.

Or they offer very limited functionality and try to funnel visitors to either the registration or purchasing tracks.

This is wrong. UI studies indicate that you have approximately 6 seconds to provide some usefulness to a site visitor or s/he is gone. If you're not providing *instant* value, then you're never going to get the visitor to registration.

Provide value to the visitors at first glance, and then *observe* visitor behavior and try to take advantage of what the GUEST wants to do, not what YOU want them to do.

It's a better, more fruitful experience for all and will lead to repeat visits and deeper engagement with the community/website.

Registration information given because the user had to give it (instead of wanting to give it) is useless and counter-productive. The first time you try to connect with that person, they will remove themselves from your emailing list and will form a negative opinion of you because they will remember that you forced them to give something they didn't want to give.

Give people the opportunity to give you information because they want to, and that information becomes MUCH more valuable.

3. Squash disagreements or negative comments about you.

Okay, it's your website or brand--do you REALLY have to listen to people talk trash about you?

Yes. If you want to create an environment where great ideas will grow.

Nobody likes to hear people say bad things about them, but people only say bad things because they WANT to love you/your brand, but something is disappointing them.

YOU want to please your customers and your friends, don't you?

The only way to know if you're doing that is to create an open, warm environment where people are free to speak their mind.

There should be rules of civil discourse, of course and you should definitely set the rules for the tone of the culture on how to disagree and express opinions.

Controversy and freedom of expression helps bring clarity to issues (not necessarily agreement), allows defenders to come forth and leads to new understanding.

Remember--everyone speaks their version of the truth, so there is something good to be found in every opinion. If you are looking to deliver the best possible product or service, those negative views are telling you where you could be doing better.

4. Feel compelled to ACT on every suggestion or comment from the community.

Someone has to set direction and the practical reality is that you will often get conflicting opinions from members of your community on what 'they' want.

THANK everyone in the community for contributing their thoughts and energy, let them know that they were heard and considered, and give them reasons for why you make certain decisions.

But once you decide to turn left, don't waste any more time explaining to people why you didn't turn right. It detracts from the focus of what you are doing.

5. Be afraid to make mistakes.

There are no guarantees of success in any endeavor--you take the best practices, create an environment for success and make the best decisions you can for the right reasons, and maybe success comes your way.

If you're into sporting analogies--there are 32 teams comprised of professional football players in the NFL. They all have amazing players, dedicated, workaholic coaches and organizations whose sole focus is to win games on Sundays and win a championship.

Yet, only ONE of those teams wins the championship every year, and less than half have a winning season. It's unusual when a team wins a championship two years in a row, so success is a very rare commodity.

So if you decide to turn left over opposition from the community, for example, and it turns out you should have turned right, well....

....admit it, and turn right. The community will forgive you (eventually) and your openness will signal to them that you are engaged *with* them and they will appreciate you for the honesty.

We learn more from our mistakes...remember them longer...and grow more attached people we have suffered with than those we have only succeeded with.

Failure makes you human, being human makes you endearing. And even brands can be endearing.

So if you try some initiative with your community and it doesn't work--that's okay. Try something else. Learn what you can from each experience and continue to *listen* to what your community is telling you.

After all, you are ultimately there to serve the needs of the community, not the other way around.

Those are my Top 5 Things NOT To Do when building a community.

What are some of yours?

It's said that relapse is a part of recovery, so I'll just chalk up my blogging absence to a long relapse.

Life has caught up with me and in the past few months, I've simply found myself too busy with work, the death of my mom and working on a theatrical production to keep up with my blogging activities.

I'm back, and will continue the 12 Step Social Media program in the coming days. But first...

Community Leadership Summit

I attended the Community Leadership Summit in San Jose this weekend--a fantastic event hosted by Jono Bacon of Ubuntu. (a guy so cool, he even has his own wikipedia entry)

Jono did an amazing job of organizing a free 'unconference', attended by 200 or so community managers and developers, many of whom came from the open source community.

You can find the twitter recap and notes of some of sessions on the conference wiki.

I dove in and led two sessions--one called "Social Media Snake Oil" and the other "Metrics That Matter". (note to self--remember to ask someone to take notes-I forgot to get notes of the first session, but did get them for the Metrics panel.)

My main role leading the sessions as I perceived it, was to instigate and moderate--challenge the 'conventional wisdom' (ie: you MUST be on Twitter) and prod the smart people in the room to come up with solutions to common problems.

I was really pleased when @sujamthe came up and introduced herself after my first session to tell me that she liked the way that I conducted the session and it inspired her to lead a session as well. I also discovered that she leads Twitter meetups in the South Bay and that introduction led to my meeting @pcrampton, which in turn led to an afternoon and evening of deep discussion on measuring communities that led to the topic of the second session regarding metrics.

The metrics session went well--the conversation was lively, some practical tips were shared and nearly 75% of the attendees were still deep in conversation 15 minutes after the panel ended.

That response really told us that there is a lot of interest (and NEED) among community managers for some direction when it comes to measuring communities both qualitatively and quantitatively. So now we're looking at extending THAT session possibly into an all-day conference on community metrics. (ping me if you're interested in helping organize an event!)

It's really amazing how one small thing can lead to so many bigger things at these events.

Problems CM's Everywhere Face

I discovered there are MANY common problems among community managers. Chief among them:

• Not enough time. Communities/relationships take time and it's a messy job that doesn't fit neatly into predictable blocks of time (like coding). Most CM's are tasked with many functions as part of their job.

• Which tools/platforms are the most effective & efficient to use? Where do you get the most bang for the buck? (Answer: it depends. Of course.)

• Metrics are the 800 pound gorilla. Nearly all CM's struggle with developing metrics that gives REAL information. Most metrics are devised to satisfy either marketing or upper management that the community yield is worth the company investment, but what management wants is often misguided to what the community is actually doing or good for.

What I Learned at #CLS

I came away with enough fodder for several blog posts, but here are a couple of things that stick out in my mind:

• Developer and open source communities have *incredible* passion and energy--probably more so than branded communities. Their energy level is palpable. Sometimes fierce.

• Developer and open source communities take the concept of 'purity' VERY seriously, which makes managing their communities something of a challenge. It's an almost anarchistic environment and they like it that way.

• These community members feel very, very protective of the communities that develop, and they struggle with how much guidance or control is appropriate in their communities.

• It seems to me that branded communities like and expect a certain level of control by the brand in their communities. Yes, the members own the community, but they also understand that it will be policed and managed by the brand. Branded communities don't like to feel manipulated, but they seem to accept some degree of control better than open-source/developer communities.

Women Are Geeks Too

There were more women at this conference than most, and they wanted to educate the guys on how to bring even MORE women into conferences. The ratio was roughly 75% male to 25% female, and the consensus among the women was that the 'normal' ratio is around 90/10.

There were several sessions on how to create more women-friendly conferences. This is definitely a future blog topic. I really had my eyes opened and got the message. Women want to come and play too, but the guys can make women feel uncomfortable at conferences.

All About You: In 45 Seconds Or Less

Lastly, in one session, we practiced developing a 45 second elevator pitch to describe what you do that is interesting and invites more conversation but doesn't make you sound like a robot or like you're selling something.

It's a LOT harder than it sounds. But invaluable.

I *highly* recommend people take a couple of hours and develop 3-5 different elevator pitches slanted towards different type of people you're bound to meet.

Mine still needs more refinement, but I was a lot better after the workshop and I'll keep practicing. It's really a very necessary skill to distill who you are and what you do into a 45 second message.

We all know that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If you happened to stumble upon someone really, really important in your field and only had 45 seconds to talk with them about what you do, what would YOU say?

Give it a try and see what you come up with!

Building A Social Marketing Culture: Step 2 of 12

Yesterday, I mentioned that 'old school' marketing is like an addiction--it's a habit that feels good, produces a familiar feeling, but ultimately is self-destructive and damaging to creating healthy relationships.

Step 1: Acknowledging the Addiction

I suggested a homework assignment to identify specifically what (or who) in your company exemplifies the addictive behavior that is standing in the way of developing a more social brand.

It's important to admit that something is getting in the way. It's not a pleasant task. But like an alcoholic who must first admit that s/he has a drinking problem in order to overcome it, you must identify what must change in your company culture before deciding how to change it.

Here are some common obstacles I've seen. Maybe you recognize one of these?

1. A legal department that thinks the company will be held liable for anything published on your site, and thus believes they are protecting the company. Typically, every bit of content on the site must be approved by several channels prior to posting, and every innovative idea that arises is often met with the phrase "we have to run that thru legal first."
2. A general fear of what the customer might say. What if people say bad things about your product on your web site?
3. Marketing wants to control the brand image and portray the product how they want it perceived.
4. A person in power/decision maker who just doesn't like or use the internet.
5. Business objectives that try to dictate or push the customer to desired behavior rather than offering options for the customer to do what THEY want to do.

Most of these obstacles really come down to this: fear of losing control.

Step 2: Believe in a Higher Power

Okay, so now that you've named and identified the addiction. Let's say that your company is addicted to fear. Or addicted to control. (same thing, in my book) If you've got a different addiction, mention that in the comments section below, and we'll work with that instead.

So now we know the addiction. Does acknowledging it make it go away? Is the world suddenly full of fluffy kittens, golden rays of sunshine and your company is magically ready to embrace social media?

Of course not. It's not that easy. But identifying the addiction is a step towards identifying what trumps the addiction.

If we are to overcome fear or a loss of control, we must replace that with a higher power, something that trumps fear in the cosmic game of rock, paper, scissors.

Rock Beats Scissors, Scissors Beat Paper,Paper Beats Rock...What Beats Fear?

So rock beats scissors, paper beats rock and scissors beats paper...fear beats control...but what beats fear?

Knowledge.

Now, knowledge alone won't make an addict see the light and proclaim "I'm an addict and must change my ways." I'm about to post some links to some great case studies that show the benefits of social media marketing.

Follow these links and you'll find sterling examples to demonstrate to the fearful that social media marketing DOES work, has profound benefits and that online communities are more powerful than traditional customer channels.

But those case studies won't be enough to actually change the mind of your CEO, legal department or EVP of Marketing to embrace social media.

The knowledge that others have used these tools with success will start to calm some of the fears, but won't be enough to actually change an opinion. I know we'd like to think we are ultimately rational beings, the reality is that emotion (pleasure) trumps knowledge any day of the week.

So remember this: Fear trumps control. Knowledge trumps fear. Emotion (pleasure) trumps knowledge.

If you want to convince an addict to admit their addiction and change their behavior, first appeal to their fears, then their intellect and then the emotion of pleasure. In that order.

Hey, This Higher Power Stuff WORKS.

This is your homework assignment--pick out 3 case studies of the 100's listed here that are applicable to your business sector and objectives. Don't worry if you don't know your exact objectives yet--just pick out 3 case studies that seem to fit.

This compilation of case studies is courtesy of The Interactive Insights Group, and is an exhaustive list of successful social media campaigns and sites across all commercial and non-profit industries.

(Make sure you visit their site and leave a "thanks" for compiling the list. It's a fantastic resource and no easy task to put together. Saying thank you is part of your karma. Make sure you do it.)

Once you've picked out your 3 case studies, you will write a total of 3 paragraphs for each case study:

• a paragrah summarizing the objective and result of the campaign
• a paragraph describing how this campaign is relevant to your company
• a paragraph on what you would hope to acheive by running a similar campaign for your company

These 9 paragraphs will become the basis of your appeal to a higher power--the power of knowledge. We'll be working with this appeal to knowledge for awhile, so spend some time getting these paragraphs right.

How am I doing so far? Are you finding this 12 Step Plan useful?

Building Community: A 12 Step Social Media Program

One of the things that's been bugging me about the SXSW Interactive conference was the generalization of advice given in most of the sessions I attended. Actually, that bugs me about MOST conferences I attend.

What Is Moderation? Not Enough Excess?

I think when people pay money for a conference, they attend because they are looking for specific help to a specific problem they face at work. At conferences, however, presenters often give a broad overview that you could get from reading a book, and usually only take 3-4 questions from the audience on specific problems.

I realize that there isn't time to help everyone one-on-one at a conference, but I can read a book and figure stuff out on my own time. I don't need to spend $450 or so to have someone tell me, for example, that a community should be moderated for a more pleasant user experience.

I want to know, what exactly is moderation? What does moderation entail? How many hours per day does it require? What *specific* guidelines should I have in place? What are the pros and cons of having topical moderation? What do I do when a flame war breaks out? Should my CEO be posting on the boards?

Yes, I understand that the answer to each of those questions CAN be "it depends". Which is of no help to the person shelling out scarce dollars to attend a conference. The person presenting is supposed to be a Master Practitioner. At the very least, I would want a very specific list of questions that I need to answer in order to proceed.

The typical response of "your community should be moderated" is just not helpful enough.

12 Steps and Tips You Can Use

Well, I'm going to try and fix that and provide solid, practical and detailed tips on how to use social media to develop online communities using the principles of a 12 Step program. I've been in the business of developing online communities for 10 years, and I have a few experiences that just might be useful for others.

Now, a 12 Step program is typically associated with recovery from addiction and getting on a more productive life path. So in my use of the 12 Steps, I'm going to assume that companies are addicted to 'old school' marketing, production or communication techniques and need to be broken of this addiction.

The principles of a 12 Step Program are founded on:

• admitting that one cannot control one's addiction or compulsion
• recognizing a greater power that can give strength
  
• examining past errors with the help of a sponsor
• making amends for these errors
  
• learning to live a new life with a new code of behavior
  
• helping others that suffer from the same addictions or compulsions
  

Can you recognize how these principles might be applicable in your company?

Step One: Admitting Addiction

Does your company have an addiction or a compulsion to a particularly destructive behavior?

Maybe it's that your company is too much under the influence of the legal department and free exchange of information is prohibited for fear of liability. Or completed projects never get an internal review for lessons learned because that's 'not billable time.' Or maybe business objectives overrule design principles, because the business folks want to force the users into a particular experience rather than let the user *choose* their experience. (and thus the business people ensure the failure of their own objectives)

When it comes to using social media or developing strong relationships with their clients, MOST companies have an addiction that prevents them from getting closer to their customers. These might be addictions to personal power, control, fear or an aversion to change, but whatever the addiction, there exists an "us vs. them" mentality.

The company is us. The customers are them. But there is rarely a "we" that embraces the customer as an integral part of the company. (notable exceptions: Nike, Southwest Airlines, Apple)

Your Homework Assignment

1) What is the most significant obstacle in the way of your company using social media?

2) Can you list 1-3 things that your company is addicted to that is preventing your company from establishing real relationships with your customers? Is it a person? A culture? A department?

Identify it. Give it a name. You won't know what to change unless you can name the addictive behavior. Please use the comments section to 'fess up to your addiction, but if your obstacle is a specific person, please use a psuedonym.

Tomorrow: Recognizing A Greater Power That Can Give Strength (or: Case Studies in How The Collective Rules)

SXSW-Wrap Up

Finally home and mostly decompressed from SXSW. Long travel day yesterday--I missed a flight for the first time in my life!! Totally got caught in Austin traffic and it took an hour and a half to make what should have been a 20 minute trip.

Yeah, I know, I should have left earlier. I had a SXSW recap breakfast with Bryan Person and then caught the Birth of Cool exhibit that I missed on Monday, took some photos, lost track of time and left for the airport later than I should.

How nerdy am I--missing a flight because I was at the museum. I am definitely not 'cool'.

Anyway, lots of really positive things at SXSW.

Special Recognition Goes To...

1) The SXSW organizing committee.

The event is very well produced and staffed. The volunteers away from the registration and information areas weren't all that knowledgeable and the signage/maps of events could have been better, but really, that's nit-picking. The web site was excellent, you could organize events online and sync them to your mobile calendar, the printed materials were outstanding. There was a wide variety of conference topics, social activities were great, special areas like the trade show, screen burn gaming area, blogger lounge and podcast areas were nice on-site getaways.

Special kudos for the designers of the pocket guide, which was truly a useful guide. Best I've ever used at an event.

2) Twitter.

Love it/hate it/indifferent. I feel all those things about Twitter, and at SXSW, it finally proved itself to be a very useful tool for me. Whether you were connecting with a friend because the cell phone coverage was sketchy, looking to find out what the hot panels were, searching for content in a session you missed or just participating in a backchannel conversation during a talk, Twitter really proved it's utility.

I know some people who weren't at SXSW complained about being inundated with tweets, but on the other hand, I also know a lot of people who didn't make the conference who felt like they got a lot of value by following the twitter-stream.

I still get annoyed by people using Twitter to give a blow-by-blow description about the party that they are at or who they are downing shots with, but who am I to judge?

Well, I'm me, and I rule. So stop it. No one cares who you are drinking with or that you are about to go sing karaoke.

My Favorite Panel Discussions

1) Most Entertaining: Mad Men on Twitter. Now I have a mad crush on Peggy Olson and I don't even get Showtime.

2) Most Use(r)ful: Designing for the Wisdom of the Crowds by Derek Powazek . He's funny in a nerdy way, and chock full of useful information on how to let user behavior influence design. After all, it's called User Interface, right? Plus there were some really good notes and slides.

3) Most Validating: Managing Expert Clients by Kali Cover and Marili Cantu. These two laid out very practical how-to advice on managing client relations. Lots of nodding of heads in the audience when discussing the special challenges we face helping clients. The notes are by @MeganGarza.

Most Disappointing Panels

I don't want to call anyone out in public because any disappointment I had was *mine*, and I'm sure that for every panel I was in that I thought wasn't fulfilling, there were people in the room who thought it rocked.

Still, here are some things that disappointed me that ANYONE who speaks at a conference should heed:

1) Title are important. If you have a totally kick-ass title for your panel, your presentation should rock too. A provocative title means you will have bold opinions and a definitive stance. A title with a question in it should ANSWER THE QUESTION by end of the session. (you'd be surprised how infrequently this happens) A vague title that requires a subtitle to explain what the topic is really about isn't going to get many people to your session.

2) It's not necessary that EVERY panelist responds to EVERY question. I saw a lot of time wasted and thus, not a lot of information being shared in panels where the moderator would pose a question and then the other 4 panelists would give their answers and they were all saying essentially the same thing.

If there is strong disagreement on the panels, that's good and makes for a lively discussion. Everyone agreeing with the first response and then saying why they agree pretty much wastes everyone's time.

I would rather see more points covered than making sure everyone on the panel got equal response time.

3) Have enough topics to cover the time allotted. I saw several one hour sessions where there were maybe three bullet points covered in the entire hour. I wasn't sure if that was because that's all the moderator could think to cover, everyone just kept rambling in their responses or what.

But each case felt like a waste of an hour. I don't mind getting only one good takeway out of an hour presentation, but if you only cover three things, you're cutting down your odds of getting something awesome in there.

More isn't necessarily more, but less isn't always more either.

4) A presentation isn't a lecture, it's a performance. Please don't just talk about what's on your Powerpoint slides. If that's all you're going to do, just post your slides somewhere and let us get on to someone more interesting.

YOU are as important as your material. I hate to put any pressure on anyone, but if your name is in print, I'm expecting you to entertain me in some way. Be provocative. Witty. More knowledgeable than anyone else out there...be extraordinary.

5) Announce a sensible Twitter hashtag at the beginning of your presentation. If you don't know much about Twitter, then ask someone in the audience to set a hashtag.

Hashtags are how we are going to find notes and information from your presentation afterwards. Twitter just may become the new search. People are tweeting about your presentation and we want to find those notes later.

Clever hashtags like #cake and #fuckcount draw a laugh from the crowd attending, but when you try to find a bit of information from that presentation 3 months from now or you weren't at the conference and the topic was really Building a Brand or Developing Strong Communities, are you really going to look for #cake or #fuckcount? (yes, those are actual hashtags recommended by the panel moderators)

Great Connections

1) I loved meeting the Southwest Airlines new media team. Southwest is doing some really cool stuff in the social networking/online community space, and they clearly 'get' this media. It's refreshing to see a corporation that knows how to have fun and be social with their customers.

2) Also enjoyed meeting @LPT--another person at a major corporation that is utilizing social media well, albeit different in tone than Southwest. Her blog is a good, thoughtful read.

3) I was amazed by @carbody, and she really opened my eyes as to what being a 'digital native' means. I watched her effortlessly tweet, listen, take notes, engage in conversation, email, add followers, fact check and absorb everything around her as easily as breathing. I don't even think she is aware of how extraordinary she is-but she is so fluent in this realm that it was truly inspiring.

I chatted with her during the breaks and found her to be quite thoughtful, eloquent, knowledgeable, passionate about social media and her clients and just down-to-earth and friendly.

4) I was also lucky enough to chat with Andy Carvin of NPR and chat about the future of journalism and some directions NPR will be heading. He's a very thoughtful, forward-thinking person, and NPR is also doing some exciting things with social media.

If you're not an NPR fan now, you should check 'em out! NPR should be a daily stop for news and entertainment.

What I Take Away From SXSW

1) Inspiration. It was a pleasure to see so many passionate social media practitioners in one place and learn by watching my peers as well as participating in discussions with 'experts'. I have many new ideas and information to share with my team, my company and my clients.

2) Have a plan. I went totally free-form. I wasn't sure of what to expect, so I didn't plan much beyond where I was staying. I got a lot out of it by just wandering around and going with the moment but probably could have gotten a few more connections, developed a few more relationships and learned a few more things by being more organized.

3) SXSW parties are not a good way to connect. They are good for having fun (you can never go wrong with free booze and food!), but it's tough to have meaningful conversations with music blaring.

4) Go with someone. I traveled solo for this, and it can be an extra struggle/effort to constantly meet people. I'm kind of strange, maybe. There are times when I can be very outgoing and love to meet people AND when I'm in a big crowd, I can also just sort of sit on the sidelines and watch.

I didn't find many people at SXSW who made much of an effort reaching out to me (other than Bryan who I work with, and thankfully, he seems to know a lot of people), which meant that I was the one constantly going out of my way to meet other people.

That's not a horrible thing, just something that takes some effort that eventually feels draining. I'd recommend going with a friend--it's a better shared experience than solo.

5) Pace yourself. The smartest thing I did was get away from the conference for an afternoon and just enjoy Austin. The energy at SXSW Interactive is very palpable and eventually becomes overwhelming. Don't be afraid to get away--Austin has many other nice attractions. Get 8 hours of sleep and drink plenty of water. It's a grind, not a sprint.

6) Blue Bell ice cream. This was recommended to me by Texas native @LindaKayHolden and I first thought it was just another "everything is better in Texas" kind of suggestion.

Nope. Blue Bell is REAL ice cream. Made from real cream. Waaaaaaaaaaaay better than Ben and Jerry's, Haagen Daaz or any other ice cream I've had.

Really. It's that good.

The Conclusion

Yep. It's worth the money. I got enough ideas, inspiration and new friendships that totally made the trip worthwhile. I highly recommend attendance if you're currently using social media or are thinking about it. I'll be back next year.

So...what was YOUR SXSW experience like? What was the best and/or the worst of it?