Today I received a notice that the SXSW 2011 panel picker was live and taking votes on those panels that have been submitted for review.  A little over a month ago I submitted a panel that I thought was relevant, and very much needed by people who are new to blogging or those who want to start a blog.

The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery.

The name of my Panel is:  The Cost, Commitment, & Satisfaction of Starting a Blog.  I thought the title was good and would appeal to a lot of people.  I guess the committee decided it was good enough to put up for a vote. So for the next couple of weeks you have a chance to vote as to which panels are interesting, relevant, and just plain old needed for the masses at the SXSW Panel Picker website.  I would encourage you to vote for more than just my panel, I have friends who have panels up for vote also, another blog post soon on which panels are my friends and why I am voting for them.

What I am needing from my faithful followers are votes, tweets, more tweets…  I believe this panel can be a great one that will provide people with the proper information on how to start blogging, what to blog about and how to keep it all going.

So now I have to ask all of you if you can do me a favor and go to my SXSW Panel page and vote for my panel here is the link The Cost, Commitment, & Satisfaction of Starting a Blog. I would also love to see feed back on the panel so that ideas can flow and interesting conversations can be seen by the review committee.  This would probably help my chances so please lets discuss it.

Izeafest logo

Izeafest was touted as an interactive event designed to educate, inform and connect social media enthusiasts. Meet the world’s foremost social media experts in a collaborative, fun and open setting.

Each word was true, while other conferences give you a ton of information that seems to speak well about what you the attendee will learn and gain. Most never deliver the goods, with so much fluff the attendees leave the conference upset, wanting more, or their money back.

Izeafest did an excellent job of sticking to the agenda and giving more than they touted. In the materials it also stated

Learn how to grow your traffic, build your brand and make more money online.

Of all the conferences I’ve attended I do believe this one gave me the most information to take home with me and apply to my blog specifically.

So why did I want to attend, knowing I’m in transition at this time

I just moved to Orlando recently and came across this conference by chance a friend of mine from twitter @ifroggy was talking about attending and it caught my eye. So we passed a couple of messages on twitter. At the time I didn’t see myself attending so I was trying to see if me, Patrick, and some other friends attending could catch up with each other sometime while they were in town. We set some time to meet up and while I was looking around the Izeafest website I found that there was true value in what they where saying was going to take place on October 1 – 4.

Looking at the speakers let me further know that this was a real conference not something that was just thrown together as a promotional conference for some new products that Izea wanted to drop on attending bloggers. I was surprised by the speakers that were attending the conference each of them have success in there own way and by attending I knew they would give me true value for my hard earned money.

I saw the following names Liz Strauss of successful-blog.com, Geroge Smith the Social Media Specialist for Crocs, Inc, Chris Heuer founder of Social Media Club, Chris Brogan of chrisbrogan.com and NML, Rae Hoffman of sugarrae.com and my friend Wayne Sutton of SocialWayne.com & Ourhashtag.com Each one of these individuals I have followed, or been following for a very long time, some of them I call friends. This was another reason attending this conference made since to me, all of the above I look to for advise weather it’s through their blog, or the many other conferences they have attended and I’ve been able to get a copy of what was said.

What value do I see in such conferences

Part of the value I see in attending these social media conferences is the networking and captivating ideas you gain from hearing someone’s perspective on the current market of blogging and social media. The money while it can place a financial burden on your pocket also, is a source of income in the long run if you choose to implement some of the ideas that are given to you. Izeafest showed me a couple of great points:

• When it comes to your image/photo hire a Pro

• Capture your personality in those photos | Get the rights for publication in all media

• The most common mistake of a blogger is to use a standard theme

• Design your blog w/clean code and a true purpose

Those are just some of the tips you gain from attending a conference like Izeafest. That was just a small amount of the nuggets I gained by attending. Some of this stuff is a little common sense but at the same time it always helps for someone from the outside looking in to drive that point home.

What I think the future holds for Izeafest

Izea while I know it’s not just about business I think they want to give back to the community and at the same time be able to tell the world about new products or services they launch. I do believe the future hold bright for the Izeafest event. Orlando is not the biggest place for social media but I do see the need for some hard nosed back to basics that are taught during all the sessions. It was stated by @tedmurphy that last year 200 or so attended Izeafest, this year 400+ attended. I would presume that next year 800+ will attend and we might even get multiple sessions going on at the same time which would be a win, win for both conference planners and attendees.

Why I’m gonna attend Izeafest10 next year

I will attend another Izeafest because it’s worth my time to gain new insight and to network with other people who are blogging, or vlogging on the internet. Communications is key when you talk about what do you expect next year or would you attend again next year. My answer is “Hell Yes” I will attend again next year. By that time I know my skills will be further along but just like technology,  Social Media is changing everyday. We bloggers, social media strategist, vloggers, and others are paving the way. By paving the way we all get to shape what social media is about and where it is going. I plan on being part of the process and getting my feet wet in the social sphere.

What others should learn from conferences like this

One thing you gotta do when attending a conference you must know what sessions your going to attend. Some of these sessions will talk about things you have no knowledge about and others will speak about things you already know. It’s worth your time to map out what your going to do before you get there. Make sure you look at the following nuggets to help you get the most out of the conference:

• Try to stay at the attending hotel (Great networking at the in house bar or restaurant)

• Bring sneakers, you never know how much walking your going to do

• Make sure you have business cards a head of time, no last minute cards created with avery like I seem to do right before every event I attend.

• Carry some cash with you for the small purchases

• Ensure your website is working

• If you win a gift please trying to pick it up immediately since giveaways are limited you ensure your item is still there

Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, everyone is attending for the same reasons to learn and meet like minded people
Those are just some of the nuggets I like to tell people when they are attending a conference, if you have more to add, please leave them in the comments.

Today I got an email from Darren Rowse, if you don’t know him he is the mind behind ProBlogger.net.  He has been known for giving away tips on blogging and making people feel they can blog as a full time job.  It looks like today he is launching a new Paid Community called ProBlogger Community.

With the cost being $1.95 per month at an introductionary rate this may be the time to fall in line and sign up.  I’m always about doing things that cost little or no money and Darren’s cost of $1.95 is right up my alley.

If your a new blogger and want to know how to blog, how to create content, and how to treat your community then it might be time for you to sign up and give this a try, the price says it all.

As it seems just when you think all hope is gone, you come across a blog post that seems to get your juices flowing.  Today I found a post by John Chow “I have six passes to BlogWorld Expo! Who wants one?

This post alone got me to thinking , I remember earlier in the year when I attended SXSW for the first time.  It was amazing, I was working as a Network Administrator but wanted to learn more about Social Media.  To see if I could put some of the things I learned to work, and to understand some things that I couldn’t fully grasp.

The over all experience was amazing to say the least.  I met some of the most interesting people, some I knew online as friends on twitter, flickr, and facebook but I had never meet them face to face.  The year before I remember looking online at the multiple twitter streams discussing the learning sessions, and conversations.  I remember thinking this is not going to be me next year.  It just so happens that a good online friend at the time @waynesutton sent out a tweet for another roommate to share cost of the hotel room.  It was a blessing, as we know hotel cost alone can be higher than the entire event.

I was able to secure my position, and attend this amazing event.  Now I find in front of me another opportunity to attend another world class event, and again I am stoked at the possibilities.

So why should I win a pass to BlogWorld Expo?  I should win because it’s another layer to my goal of becoming a blogger.  I believe this conference will teach me more about blogging, that I can then pass along to those who follow or view my blogs.  I know that winning a pass would not be taken lightly, knowing anyone out there could use it just as well as me.

I hope that attending this event will push me further along into the professional title of Blogger.  Knowing this event is for bloggers opens up the doors, just as SXSW did to meet and foster new, mutually facilitating relationships.

John you would not be disappointed in choosing me for such an event. I know Rome was not build in a day, but I do believe that if people like you were there it would have been done so much faster. (Just a bit of cheesy kiss ass)

Tr.im is a URL shortener, your next question will be “what’s a URL shortener?” Well on the internet you have a normal domain name such as thiswillbealongdomain.com or some other name ending with .com or the hundreds of other extentions at the end of a domain name.  What shortners do is allow you to send a small link such as tr.im/ab1 which would redirect you to the site, the major reason shornters came into existence because of micro-blogging sites such as twitter where you need to send your message in 140 characters and the smaller the size of your links the better for usage of that 140 characters.

Well Tr.im sent out a post tonight saying “tr.im R.I.P.” they are closing the doors of tr.im because as they stated:

Twitter has all but sapped us of any last energy to double-down and develop tr.im further. What is the point? With bit.ly the Twitter default, and with us having no inside connection to Twitter, tr.im will lose over the the long-run no matter how good it may or may not be at this moment, or in the future.

When I saw that statement I was pissed, not that I used tr.im but the fact that they geared the whole kit and kaboodle on twitter alone, and now that they can’t get twitter to buy the work that they have put in, they scream “well it’s because of twitter” come on get off your high horse tr.im.  If you guys or gals had put together a better plan, and worked on making tr.im better and not be so dependent on twitter you may have been able to create a better business model, but instead you put all your eggs in one basket.  I always thought rule number #1 was “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

Don’t get angry at twitter, get angry at yourselves for not understanding the dynamics of the web and how to create revenue.  Not only do we have to hear you bitch and moan about how twitter is doing you so bad, now we have to look forward to all the tr.im links that will no longer direct people to content.

It’s not a sad day in my opinion it’s just another day, of another company, that looked for the money and really didn’t give two cents about the community.  Do us a favor release tr.im as an open source project so it can live on, and go about creating another business model that sucks some where else.

TBTR

Facebook is the internet darling with over 200 Million users, it’s said that 45K people join Facebook hourly and over 1 Million are now joining per day.  With that kind of growth people are jumping on the bandwagon.  It seems the highest number of current new users of Facebook are women over 45, WOW that’s traction.

So as a new user you know you can find old friends and classmates, some of those people have been on Facebook far longer then you.  With that being said they update Facebook on a more frequent basises than you do.  At first glance since you have limited friends and they may have hundreds your stream could be filled with just one person ranting about something you don’t care about.  Today looking across a couple of websites I found this article How 2…Filter updates on your Facebook page take some time to read this quick little tip that will help you filter out the JUNK and stay in touch with the relevant.

TBTR

I’m always amazed at some of the content that people make just for the sake of helping out the community.  Here is a video from Commoncraft.com about Twitter Search.

Enjoy

TBTR

It’s official Facebook is going to allow you to change the URL to include your name.  Since the beginning Facebook has only allowed an id# to identify accounts in the URL that used to look like the first example, the second is the new method:

This is huge for a number of reasons best of all search engines will now index direct facebook pages with your real name or selected name.  Facebook is the #1 social site at this time and with such traction this is a very important.

Facebook is also showing me that this is really important to them.  If you joined Facebook Since May 31st you will not be able to participate.  The reason why is because of cyber squatters.  Those are the companies and individuals who will go in the system and grab a name just to hold it in hopes that someone will pay them for that name.  This is one of the first times I have seen a company take a great stance on stopping this well known practice.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/.

Read more at the Facebook Blog Here

What is it?

#followfriday is a way of recommending friends to follow on twitter.  If your new to twitter your probably looking for people to follow, here is a great way to find those new friends.  Although it could be a universal movement across any website the main use is for twitter.

So how does it work?

Lets say you have a friend on twitter that you follow. He or she could be in any profession, but you follow this person because they tweet about  for example: starting a small business. You know that what they are saying is relevant and would benefit some of your other online friends. So you want a way to tell the world or your circle about them.

So on Friday you create a tweet with the hash tag #followfriday, the # sign is used to create a way to follow the conversation on twitter.

Is this how it’s always done?

In the beginning of @followfriday most people just added the names of those they recommended you follow example:

but as time has progressed people dont just want to know the names, they want to know why they should follow them. So people started to form the #followfriday tweets a little different, by adding the reason why you should follow someone example:

This has answered questions for those looking to add someone interesting to their network

My recommendations about #followfriday

I recommend you #followfriday selectively and cautiously. Get to know some of your online friends, only recommend relevant, and deserving people. Others throw anybody into #followfriday without really knowing them or what they are talking about. You will see a backlash if you do this blindly so think before you recommend someone who might just be a link spammer.

While some people do this for the shear volume of people they follow to pretty much gain more followers.  Litterly recommending everyone on their list.  Recommending someone for #followfriday is really important and with great knowledge comes great responsibility in my opinion.

Have fun