Social Media for Business Event Overview – #SMAZ

Yesterday, was the culmination of a couple months of work coming together in what turned out to be an amazing day we called SMAZ.  OK it was actually an event called ‘Social Media for Business’ put on by SocialMediaAZ.org but we used the Twitter hashtag #SMAZ for the event and the SMAZ (SocialMediaAZ) name just stuck outside of the twitterverse as well.  The event itself was the first one I have put on and I have so many people I need to thank for making it possible!

So let me start by giving a run down of the day…

We started the event at 8:30 with a breakfast from Einstein Bros. and an opportunity to network and meet people.  The agenda was packed (tried to fit in as much information as feasible) so we kicked off the event at 9:30 with our two amazing keynote speakers, Al Maag the Chief Communications Officer fromAvnetand C. Edward Brice the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing from Lumension.  Al had a presentation called ‘Avnet’s Yellow Brick Road to Social Media‘, where he shared how a fortune 200 corporation like Avnet started using Social Media, specifically how they convinced the C Suite.  After that Edward presented ‘The Greatest Question Since the Meaning of Life: What is the ROI of Social Media?‘ and both got excellent feedback.

From there we took a little break and started two separate presentation tracks (one in theater 1 and the other in theater 2), we chose to use a succinct 30 minute presentation format (which we were praised for).  Theater one had Mike Corak and Chris Sietsema from Off Madison Avenue presenting on ‘The Anatomy of a Social Media Plan‘, while in theater two we had Pam Slim discussing how to ‘Amp up the Personal in your brand‘, just look at the Twitter Transcript (thanks to JustSignal for pulling this together) from the day of the event to see what people were saying.  Next we had Elizabeth Hannan in theater 1 covering ‘Growing Online Communites and Measuring Success‘ while in theater 2 Evo Terra discussed ‘The Disconnect: Reasons Companies fail at Social Media and how to Succeed‘.

Then we went to two separate one hour presentations from a couple industry veterans with Jason Baer and Jeff Moriarty.  Luckily we had amazing video crews (Clay from Metro Studios in theater 2 and Michelle and Tim from Paradox Productions in theater 1) capturing the presenters in case you missed them (currently going through post production), I’ll make sure to post them on SocialMediaAZ.org once they are in my hands.  Jeff was in the ‘heater’ also know as theater 1 presenting ‘Internal Enterprise Social Media‘, while Jason was in theater 2 covering ‘Developing a Social Media Strategy in 7 Steps‘.  I’m really glad we had the video crews in place because I wanted to be in both sessions many times throughout the day!

We then broke for a 30 minute lunch again provided by the wonderful Barbara at Einstein Bros. catering.  This also allowed attendees to chat, share, exchange ideas and start to process all the great information they had experienced.  After that Sheri Wakefield Saenz from the City of Tempe spoke for 15 minutes on the benefits of doing business in Tempe, with her ‘Succeed in Tempe‘ presentation, which was followed up by my taking the stage to help people understand theunconference format we used for the breakouts and giving out some great prizes.  The prizes included two bags of coffee from a local Tempe coffee plant provided by the City of Tempe (need to find the name of the coffee company), two free tickets to the amazing EduRG conference ‘Future of Education and Technology‘ coming up in February 2010 and lastly my company provided a Kodak Zi6 Video Camera with a 16GB upgrade to encourage it’s use for the rest of the day.  Congratulations to the winners, Robert Page of MedToGo, Irene Agustin of Crisis Nursery, Inc. and the others who I failed to capture their names (if you won let me know)!

At this point (around 2pm) the event broke up in to three distinct tracks with theater 1 having Ted Stanton of IBM sharing both a presentation and demonstration of ‘IBM Social Software for Business: Discover Expertise. Deliver Results.‘, in theater 2 we had breakouts that could easily have been called an intimate discussion led by an amazing panel that included Linda Vandevrede, Amanda Vega, Chris Hewitt and Sheila Kloefkorn and in theater 3 Lumension had their panel entitled ‘Cutting Through Social Media Noise: Key Steps to Launching Social Media Programs‘.  The lumension panel included, Kathy Sacks(Sacks PR) as moderator, Cindy Kim (Lumension), Jason Baer (Convince and Convert), Chris Johnson (Terralever) and Tiffany Winman (IBM).  Here’s an audio capture of the Lumension Panel. After Ted finished his presentation in theater 1 we had the awe inspiring Svetlana Toun-Sambell who is the Chief Marketing Officer at EduRG present  ’The Growing Demand for Research Within Social Media‘.

Yeah we had some problems with the Air Conditioning in theater 1 and I am VERY sorry for that, but I can say that we had a very forgiving audience that stuck through it with us.  When you complete your surveys let me know if you think we should hold the next SMAZ event at the MadCap or if we need to look elsewhere (and if so where)?  I will share that my experience from an organizer perspective has been positive in working with Casaundra and Leslie from the Downtown Tempe Community, Inc. and with Kris and team from the City of Tempe.

Based on the success we had with the SMAZ event, I’ve been asked to write a paper about the tactical aspects behind putting on the SMAZ event, so keep pushing me, I’ll publish that shortly.  I also think we should pull together another Social Media for Business event very soon, like next quarter if we can fit it in with all the other great events happening.

Let me thank all of the attendees, speakers and sponsors for come out to the event in beautiful downtown Tempe at the Madcap theater.  You made this event amazing, you the community that came together to share your knowledge.  I am so very fortunate to have been part of this!

Now the list is long but it all starts with Chris Brogan for helping get me in touch with Evo, Elizabeth, Pam and Jason.  Funny how it took a Social Media legend out of Boston to get me in touch with the people right in my backyard, but isn’t that a testament to the beautiful geography splitting power of Social Media?

Obviously huge thanks go out to all of our experts, sponsors and volunteers, if you have a moment get to know them, they are amazing people!  Volunteers like Teri Radesovich, Chad Swaney, Jessi Olson, Maria Cami, Paul Martinez, Cindy Goodman, Stephanie Connor,Linda Trujillo, Tyler Hurst, Terri Thorson, Margie Albert & Rebecca Seymann. Then there were the amazing folks like Adam Nollmeyer from AcmePhoto, Tim and Michelle from Paradox Productions, Clay and Lisa from Metro Studios.  Oh and did I mention how very grateful I am for having a supporting wife and son, thank you Caitlin and Markus for putting up with me and my SMAZ.  I know I’ve missed several people and I appologize in advance!

Event sponsors included IBM, Lumension, the Business Marketing Association of Phoenix, Ensynch, the City of Tempe, Edu Research Group, the Phoenix Innovation Foundation, Social Media Club, and Off Madison Ave.  The net proceeds from the event go to two local non-profit organizations that help kids and the homeless in our community: Scouting Pack 378 and I-Help.

So did you make it out to SMAZ?  What did you think?  If you missed it stay tuned for the videos and still let us know what you thought from your perspective!

Tagged as: SMAZ, Social Media, SocialMediaAZ