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I can’t believe it’s all over.

After months of planning, stressing, arranging and re-arranging, it’s all over. After thousands of emails, several blog posts, countless tweets, Facebook & LinkedIn updates, a dozen radio ads, two TV appearances with FTW mentions, a series of newspaper ads and God-knows-how-many phone calls, it’s all over.

I’m talking about the Social Media FTW Fall Conference. This was a half-day conference on social media marketing for businesses, non-profits, entrepreneurs and anyone else who’s trying to make sense of this communication revolution.

I think there was still snow on the ground when Jaica, Chrystie and I first started talking about the need for a conference teaching people how to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, online video, podcasting and more to grow their business, increase their membership, reach their constituents, or engage their readership.

I’d like to think the event was a success. Despite the A/C breaking down and USM running out of parking, the vibe throughout the day was upbeat. (No doubt in part because of endless caffeine provided by Bard Coffee and Red Bull.)

(My biggest disappointment was even though I had asked for a full bar for the networking event on several occasions, when I got done with my presentation–the last workshop of the day–I discovered it was wine and beer only. No bourbon = #fail.)

Based on some conversations and early feedback from an attendee survey we posted, here’s a brief recap of what we learned about putting on a conference:

• People want multiple tracks based on experience. This was the number one request for the next event. Experienced users felt held back by questions on what to do when someone posts an unflattering photo of you on Facebook, beginners felt some things went over their head. (My takeaway is that this is great: many people are really starting to use these tools and are looking for more specifics on how to take their skills to the next level.)

• 

  People don’t like to miss stuff they don’t want to miss. Many people wish they had been able to attend two or more workshops that were going on at the same time. I’m torn on this one, as I’m a believer in “leave ‘em wanting more.” That being said, we had every session videotaped and we will be sharing those tapes with the attendees. The best suggestion in this vein was having the same session put on multiple times throughout the day, in case your favorite two workshops are in competition.

• People get hungry. And thirsty. Man cannot live by Red Bull and coffee alone. (Women, neither.) We didn’t have water bottles (I’m kinda morally opposed), but we should have had something better than “there are water fountains by the restrooms.” Live and learn.

• We may be too hip. At least two people complained that we were “too hip”. I can live with that.
• You can’t please all the people all the time. On a question about workshop length, the answers were nearly evenly split between “perfect length” and “too short.” There was a lot of that.

My own .02? We wanted people to understand these tools and get comfortable using them. Most everyone I spoke with ended the day feeling like social media wasn’t the enigma it appeared when they woke up. However, there were other people who would have been better served by some advanced topics and more specifics. We’ll give them more attention at the next FTW conference.

Here’s what some other people had to say about the Social Media FTW Fall Conference:

• Social Media Gets Simplified at FTW – Justin Ellis, Portland Press Herald
• This Week in Business: The Road Trip Edition – Nicole Ouellette, Breaking Even Blog
• Why Conferences Are Successful – Carl Natale, The Takeaway, MaineBusiness.com
• #ftw09 – HUGE Success for Social Media in Maine – Jason Blais, JasonBlais.com
• Social Media and Traditional Media FTW – Jeff Parsons, The Jeff Parsons Project
• Social Media FTW Feeds the Hungry – Stacie Chalmers, The Inbound Marketing Blog for Small Business
• Social Media FTW – A Win, Win for Everyone – Sarah Wallace
• Social Media FTW: Bringing Maine Social Media-ites Together FTW – Nicki Hicks, Maine SEO Blog
• Social Media FTW Conference Was a Huge Success! – Howard Levitan, Quantum Hospitality Group

You can also see the running commentary about the FTW conference on Twitter.

Photos by Angela Coulombe. You can see more of her photos from the FTW Conference here.

Rich Brooks
Funky Toothpaste Whitener

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.