my #140confNW experience

On May 19th, 2011, I volunteered at, attended, and spoke at the 140 Character Conference in Vancouver, WA (check out #140confNW, the event’s official hashtag).

First of all, I want to send a big thanks to the creator of the 140 Character Conference, Jeff Keni Pulver, and the organizational mastermind of the #140confNW, Cheryl Bledsoe. It was so awesome to be a part of this great event, and it has already had a profound effect on my life. And we’re not even a week past it yet!

The conference was held at the Vancouver Hilton and Convention Center. It was a gorgeous setup. Here’s a few pics I was able to snap the night before:

enjoying the view

the lights may abduct you

the stage is set

did I mention there was a bar ;-)

I would like to say that I learned a lot from the conference as an attendee, but I did not. I was too busy working for Dale Chumbley and Tim Bledsoe as a volunteer speaker “wrangler” to listen to much of the conference in real time! So I have been spending a couple days watching the individual videos on CRESA’s YouTube channel. They aren’t all uploaded yet, but that may be a good thing. With this many speakers, that would be a lot of information to properly digest! More videos will be coming out in the days to come, and I am excited to see every single one of them.

First of all, Jeff Pulver gave an amazing keynote. A lot of people have already written about that, so rather than trying to improve upon their work, I’ll let Jeff speak for himself:

Just listening to his thoughts on the “why” and “how” of the genesis of the 140 conference format is awesome. And his story about Anne Curry and Doctors Without Borders in Haiti is an amazing testament to the power of social media. Not to mention how bad-ass it is to make friends in the Pentagon!

But Jeff isn’t all bad-ass, he gave me a very warm hug at the end of the day :-)

Another presentation that immediately caught my attention was Lise Harwin‘s presentation about a survey conducted by the American Red Cross regarding peoples’ thoughts on using social media during a disaster situation. What I absolutely love is how many people said they would use or would probably use social media networks to let their friends know they were OK during a disaster. The answer to that question was a whopping 49 per cent!!! I think that is fascinating.

Because of my friendship with Cheryl Bledsoe, I am more aware of the issues facing people in the Emergency Management and Disaster Response community, and their use of social media, than I otherwise would be. There were many presentations given on that very subject during the #140confNW, so keep an eye on those videos as they continue to populate CRESA’s YouTube channel.

Another topic that was very interesting to me, and was covered in a couple different talks/panels, is how social media is affecting traditional media.

It has seemed to me for awhile now that the old media needs to wholeheartedly embrace the new media, or be confined to their a narrow audience. Because of that, I really enjoyed listening to representatives from our local traditional media discuss how they are incorporating new outlets into what they do. Presenters spanned our local sphere of print and televised media.

I want to give props to a lot of our local media people and how they are using social media. I follow many of them on Twitter. The local print media has been fantastic about reaching out when they are mentioned, and our local televised newscasts are fun to watch because the anchors frequently tweet DURING the broadcast. That to me is how the “old guard” proves it’s continued relevance; true engagement with their audience. Kudos to Libby Tucker of the Columbian, Aaron Weiss of KGW News, Alexandra Manzano of the Oregonian, and all others who participated in that ongoing discussion.

And speaking of engagement, I gave a “talk” as well. Here’s that:

I did learn something from my own presentation. I am aware that statement sounds a bit self-serving, but follow me for a second. When I finished my little dog and pony show, I checked my phone. I had north of 40 mentions on Twitter. And they kept coming.  Now all of those mentions were positive (thankfully), but I decided I needed to check the #140confNW stream to see if there was any chatter there that didn’t specifically mention me. As a result, I had the ability to reach out to anyone who didn’t get what I was saying, which is totally understandable given the amount of nervous energy I had. What struck me about this was that for all the talk of two-way communication in social media, you are still being talked about EVEN IF all you do is broadcast. And giving my talk did feel a little bit like broadcasting. That’s why I took 10 minutes afterward to respond to every mention on Twitter.

I did, after all, speak about engagement.

Practice what you preach.

The #140confNW was nothing short of a breathtaking experience for me. I am still catching up with all of the information that was presented. I probably will be for the next year. Just in time for the next one, which I hope to see YOU at.

You’ll notice that most of the links in this post are to various Twitter profiles. Engage with these folks. They’ve been Twitter-tested, and ninja-approved.

What about you? Did you attend the #140confNW? What did you take away? Scroll down to the comments and share your experience!