Month: September 2010

American gigs

As part of my mini-tour of the USA, in a couple of hours I’ll be delivering a couple of internal sessions for leading school design firm DLR Group, here in Santa Monica, California.

The first will be a presentation which will have virtual attendees from eleven other of their offices around the country, then the second session will focus on their specific use of social platforms as an organisation.

DLR Group recently participated in what we hope is the first of a series of conversations with DK of MediaSnackers. He explored with DLR Group the opportunities that exist in social media and social networking, evaluated our current strategy and provided us with valuable insight to maximize our outcome.

Penny Ramsey, Brand Communications Manager, DLR Group

This will be followed by a couple of pre-conference workshops at Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) in San Jose, introducing plus implementing social media in the context of learning environments.

DK’s energy and vast knowledge of social network systems, the power of connecting imagination to realistic life and learning application was unreal. He mesmerized the audience by continually engaging them in the process of learning while swiftly covering new materials that even us “old dogs” were willing to learn! Fascinating young man – he is changing the world of learning and connecting the world of learners to unbelievable possibilities. DK’s time, energy, and expertise were a real treat to the conference attendees. I, myself, learned so much that my kids now think of me as cool because I can speak their connected language!

Julie Barrett, Business Development Leader at tBP/Architecture

Then my final sessions are another pre-conference workshop for executives and business owners at Lavacon in San Diego.

I want to thank you for speaking on “Social Media for Executives” at our conference last month. Attendees absolutely raved about your session.

A sampling of the comments included:

Very engaging!
Excellent presentation. Too bad it wasn’t longer!!
Great job!!
Loved all of it!
Bring DK back next year!

Attendees specifically enjoyed the practical portion, where they could practice what they learned in the first half of the presentation.

It is interesting to note that the Program Chair for an international conference on technical communication was following the comments coming out of LavaCon on Twitter. Based on the positive comments about your session, he immediately contacted me saying, “I want him to speak at our conference, too!”

Again, thank you for making our conference a success, and I look forward to speaking with you about our 2011 program.

Jack Molisani, Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference

I love my job and the above gigs illustrates the transferrable nature of social media to be delivering to a diverse mix of people/industries.

MediaSnackers Consulting and Speaking/Masterclass

Winning stuff and getting published

Remember our little pro-bono project from last year exploring the emotional responses of how the web makes young people feel…?

Well, the resulting academic paper (written by Dr Kelly Page) not only won “Best Conference Paper Award in Interactive Marketing” at the 2010 Academy of Marketing (AM) Conference (sponsored by the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM)) but it will also be featured in the next issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

One little by-product of this is that Mark and I are now officially academic authors in our own right (without having to do all those years of studying most people do).

This year the project has some international partners, which, due to the recent earthquakes in Christchurch where Core-Ed are based, will be slightly delayed.

Russian cameras

(WORLD) Back in 2001 I purchased a little russian camera called a Lomo LCA and joined the accompanying online Lomography site.

It was platform where you could create your own page, add in your personal details, upload your images taken by the camera (after scanning them in one by one and saving them to the correct specified size), sort them into albums, leave comments on other peoples pics, add them as friends, enter competitions, send each private messages and updates—sounds familiar?

All this in 2001.

Not before long, I had made ‘friends’ with lomographers from all over the globe, met Mark, connected with my first business mentor, met in person people I’ve only known virtually on lomowalks, swapped ideas, swapped stories, swapped films etc

Then in 2003 the Lomohomes got updated which meant you could update more than just your images. The site got a diary function and here’s my first entry:

Tue 26.08.2003 13:24:55 CET

….it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day….

well well well – weblogs now, what will the funky munkys from lomoheaven think of next…..?

not too happy with the ‘snot green’ everywhere although everything else i like.

well happy with my lomohome at the moment – feeling a little smug with my new pics from the eastpak event! thanx to everyone who attended and all those who threw down some massive tricks….you guys are nutters!

well i will try and keep this up-to-date with pics and my scribblings! i guess the biggest piece of news is that in 3 weeks and one days’ time i’ll be in vegas with the two darrens from back home in wales….look out!

till next time……

I was an active member of the community till early 2005 when I turned my attention for other things going on in my life.

Apart from a couple of things like the advancement of technology convergence into our mobile devices and other stuff like geolocation not much else has changed in the world of online networks. Sure, we’ve seen different iterations but at it’s core it’s all about creating spaces for people to connect and communicate with each other. Simple as that.

So what was your first foray into social networking?

Was it the old-boys, safe and stuffy LinkedIn? The terse and funky Twitter? Maybe it was all-conquering Facebook? Or perhaps you’re an arty type and it was DeviantArt? Are they much different?