Lessons from a successful conference organizer

May 22, 2013 • Joseph Thornley • #SoCapOtt, Karen Wilson, Social Capital Conference

The third edition of the Social Capital Conference will be kicking off next weekend. Like last year, this year’s event will be sold out, with every available spot filled. And participants this year will attend a conference that has expanded to offer a day of practical workshops alongside a more ambitious speakers lineup.

Organizing a community-focused conference is no small feat. And I think there’s much we can learn from the organizers of successful conferences that we can apply to our own projects.

So I was delighted to have a chance to interview Karen Wilson, one of the co-founders of the Social Capital Conference, for the Inside PR podcast. You can listen to that recording as part of the Inside PR 3.33. I also recorded a video of our interview, which you can see here.

Among the things that Karen shared:

Make the conference planning a two way conversation.

Interact with your participants before and after the conference. Every year, the organizers of Social Capital survey participants and potential participants to find out what they want in a conference. “We’ve been listening to the participants since day one,” Karen asserts. We incorporate what they tell us with the lessons we’ve learned ourselves to make the conference better each year.

Get over the tools. We’ve got issues

In three years, Social Capital has evolved beyond sessions focusing on social media tools to instead offer tracks that focus on topics relating to issues people must deal with when they are active in social media: content creation, law and ethics, strategy and then a series of case studies. This meant that the organizers abandoned some of the content streams they had first planned for this year’s conference when they realized that the topics being proposed by speakers were quite different from what they expected. “We looked at the topics that were being submitted and realized that the topics we had picked weren’t the things people are interested in,” says Karen. “We redesigned the conference to fit [people’s interests.]”

Change is essential. But expectations must be respected.

Mistakes that we can learn from? “Be careful about making too many changes at once,” says Karen. “There are expectations set every year and when you make too many changes at once… We moved the date of our conference, raised prices and added a second day, and it’s been harder to sell. It’s challenging when people are used to everything being a certain way and then it starts to shift.” So, balance established expectations with innovations.

The conference experience is about the attendees as much as the speakers

Karen also shared her advice from the perspective of a conference organizer to attendees on how they can have the best possible experience at the conference. “You get what you put into it,” she offers. “If you sit at the side of the room without interacting with people … you won’t get the full learning process. Even if you’re shy, go up to people and talk to them.” It’s not just about listening to the speakers. It’s about meeting the people in the room who share your interests and forming bonds with them.

Thank you to Karen and her co-organizers for all the work you put into organizing Social Capital. I’m definitely looking forward to attending and learning from both the speakers and fellow attendees.

What do you think? If you’ve organized a conference, what advice would you offer. As a conference attendee, what advice would you offer to conference organizers?

Tonight's Third Tuesday Toronto is all about online community

May 21, 2013 • Joseph Thornley • #3TYYZ, #hcsmc, Colleen Young, Third Tuesday Toronto

Tonight’s Third Tuesday Toronto #3tYYZ is all about community – the kind that grows and thrives online.

Tonight’s speaker, Colleen Young, founded and sustains the #hcsmca Health Care Social Media Canada weekly twitter chat. And she knows how to develop a successful online community of interest. I first became aware of the #hcsmca Twitter chats a couple years ago when doing a social media audit for a health care client. As I looked around at the various discussions, I discovered that media professionals, policy makers, at least one provincial Minister of Health along with health care communicators were all gravitating to #hcsmca to exchange their views on issues relating to the provision of health care in Canada.

So, I’m very much looking forward to tonight’s session.

N.B. When I checked this morning, there were still eleven open spots for this evening’s Third Tuesday. So, if you’d like to participate, click over to the Third Tuesday meetup site and register to attend tonight’s event. I’ll be hopping on a mid day plane to Toronto so that I can be there in time. And if you see me there, I hope you’ll say hello.

Thank you to our sponsors

I can’t close this post without thanking Third Tuesday’s sponsors – Cision Canada andRogers Communications – who believe in our community and help us to bring speakers not just to Toronto but to Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver as well. Without the sponsors we couldn’t make Third Tuesday a truly Canadian affair. So, thank you to the sponsors of the Third Tuesday 2012-13 season: Cision Canada and Rogers Communications.

We want students to be able to attend

One more thing: Third Tuesday is a great opportunity to hear about the latest developments in social media and to network with business and thought leaders. And we don’t want students to miss out on this opportunity. So, if you are a student and would like to attend, don’t let the admission fee stop you. Simply present your student ID card at the time you sign into Third Tuesday and we’ll refund your admission fee, courtesy of Thornley Fallis.

If we had a billion dollars…

May 20, 2013 • Joseph Thornley • Tumblr, Yahoo

OK. I get that it’s an arch statement. Yahoo leads off its release about its $1 billion acquisition of Tumblr with the subhead, “Promises not to screw it up.” And given that Yahoo now is led by someone who for years subscribed to the corporate slogan, “Don’t be evil,” it makes sense.

However, I can’t get over the feeling that, if you and I had a billion dollars to spend, we’d probably aim a little higher. 🙂

Things I learned from the people I work with

May 20, 2013 • Joseph Thornley • @Cmdr_Hadfield, Chris Hadfield, motion graphics, public engagement, Sherrilynne Starkie, Thornley Fallis, Twee-Q

One of the benefits of having a company blog is that I get a chance to figuratively peek over the shoulders of my colleagues to see what they are interested in and what they choose to write about. And that made for interesting reading over the past week.

Chris Hadfield returned the magic to social media. This week, @Cmdr_Hadfield returned to earth from the International Space Station. “At a time when the the world’s second favourite social network is courting the corporate world in its bid to establish a viable monetization strategy, Hadfield has reawakened some of the excitement created in the the early days of Twitter and he did it by tweeting in the moment,” Sherrilynne Starkie wrote. “Canadians, and people around the globe, are more than engaged…they are enthralled. They feel as though they have been part of the mission and they adore Hadfield for taking them along.”

Social media as a channel to reach the “Mass Affluent.” Katie Charbonneau reported on a survey from LinkedIn and CogentResearch of social media use by the “Mass Affluent,” the approximately 40 million American investors with assets of between $100,000 and $1 million. This is a target group for many upscale products and services. And there’s some good insight here into their expectations and use of social media. Among the insights: “There is a 25-40% opportunity gap between the information the “Mass Affluent” want and the information actually provided by banks, brokerages and credit cards.” A gap between expectations and delivery is a great opportunity waiting to be exploited.

The case for motion graphics videos. “Today, consumers are bombarded with content. Brands are pushing to be more creative. While live action video footage is arguably the best way to humanize a brand, viewers also want something that is visually appealing, entertaining and informative,” wrote Ashlea LeCompte. And that need is often filled by motion graphics.

Thornley Fallis: Graphics & Animation Reel 2013 from ThornleyFallis on Vimeo.

Are you gender biased in your listening and retweeting habits? You may not know it, but you probably are. “Twee-Q is an experiment from a Swedish organization called Crossing Borders that … calculates a Twitter Equality Quotient that they describe as a simple score derived from how often you retweet men or women,” wrote Diane Begin. “The tool takes your last 100 tweets to come up with a score. The closer you are to 50-50, the higher your Twee-Q.” I tested it on my @thornley Twitter feed and discovered that I retweet women 60% of the time, giving me a Twee-Q of 6.6. Hmmm.

Five steps to success in online public engagement. A great post by Pierre Killeen, who has built a highly successful practice helping organizations develop purposeful discussion with their communities of interest. Unlike the car commercials, you can do this at home.

Thank you to my colleagues at Thornley Fallis for these entertaining and informative reads. The time I spent with your posts was well worth it.

Inside PR: Where do you place your trust?

May 19, 2013 • Joseph Thornley • Gini Dietrich, Inside PR, Martin Waxman

In this week’s episode of the Inside PR podcast, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I talk about the challenge of determining what news coverage we can trust when traditional media outlets vie with social media to be first with the news.

For me, this is like moving around in a darkened room. We know we’ve had contact with something, but we can’t really see what it is. Judgment and speculation become overly close neighbors at times like these.

How do you decide where to place your trust when news is breaking online?