SXSW Panelpicker Feedback wanted: What Social Media Managers need to know but don’t

Posted on August 7, 2011 under blog

 

SXSW12 Panel Picker Voting is open now – please help us out with a vote and a comment for “What Social Media Managers need to know but don’t“ – thanks!
Panel Picker Voting SXSW 2012

After our very successful session “Outsourcing Social Media Professionally Without Selling Your Soul” in this years SXSW, it seemed only logical to submit a similar yet enhanced proposal for next year (judging by the amount of people showing up after three nights of party, on Monday morning, 9:30 am after Daylight Saving Time and the interaction we got from the attendees – I call that very successful).

Kate Buck and I want to pick up the feedback and questions we got to make another session for SXSW 2012.  As always, the sessions have to go through the advisory board and all, but a huge part of SXSW is the so called panel picker: You as the possible attendee vote on the sessions you want to see. If you could spend a moment glancing through this and give feedback to make it more appealing, I would very much appreciate it. :)

What Social Media Managers need to know but don’t
Event Interactive 2012
Speakers
  1. Nicole Simon
  2. Kate Buck
Description How many people are thrown into Social Media positions without being given the proper tools and education on how to execute? And then are expected to deliver stellar results! When working with machines, you need to learn how to operate them.

Yet when it comes to Social Media, it seems as if concepts like skills assessment, proper training, handbooks, processes, systens abd workflows are ignored.The result is poor performance, higher costs of business and complications, not to speak of frustration of employees and contractors. Rules and regulations can pose additional problems.

 

We will discuss how to set up a framework for an effective Social Media Management program, which areas need to be covered and what you can learn from the Enterprise. Also there will be time for answering questions from the audience.
Questions Answered
  1. Job and skill requirements for Social Media Managers and Workers
  2. What areas need to be covered when setting up Social Media Management?
  3. How to manage Social Media Workers
  4. Why documentation is your friend and not the enemy
  5. Why missing rights management can jeopardize your company
Level Beginner
Supporting Material This session is an enhanced version of our 2011 session “Outsourcing Social Media without selling your soul”. We received a lot of requests afterwards to do such a session again with a more general focus on the management of Social Media.Also, our work experience over the last years shows that companies and freelancers continue to ask for these information on how to get started and get going in Social Media.

The session is suitable for Social Media Managers from every kind of company size.
Category Social Media / Social Networks
Tags marketing, social media management, training

 

 

Image by Mike Rohde

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4

Why Berlin is hip for tech – Interview Series

Posted on July 15, 2011 under Berlin is hip for tech, european view

 

8.23 you make me smile

Long, long time ago, before Berlin even knew it wanted to be hip again, I fell in love with the city. Of course Berlin always was a special city, but in the recent years (even months) it has become a hub for tech and startups.

Lots of articles (see some below) describe the new hotness of Berlin and part of that has to do with Berlin being really cheap and the amount of international visitors / expats. One of my interview partners (Igor Schwarzmann) summed it up: “getting speakers for our Cognitive Cities conference was easy – you just told them it would be in Berlin”. And while it may be hard to get funding in Germany / Europe, who cares? Get your funding some place else and then come to Berlin.

A friend once described being an artist to me as “that thing inside you which wants to come out no matter if you like it or not”.  I don’t consider myself to be an artist, but that pretty much sums up a feeling I have about Berlin. So I decided to make a series of interviews with people from Berlin; how they got there, why they live there, why they find the city attractive, what inspires them and how they see the world.

Yes, these will be audio  but fret not, I will provide you with show notes and links to their projects and social networks, so you can connect with them. And I hope you will fall in love with the city as much as I have!

Have suggestions for interview partner?

I already finished some interviews and am currently in post processing (will start posting next week): Joel Dullroy from Deskwanted, Joel Kaczmarek from Gründerszene, Igor Schwarzmann from Thirdwave, Matthäus Krzykowski from Xyologic, Oliver Beste from Founderslink. The people from Soundcloud are hard to get but already on the list. ;)

I have some ideas of who I want to talk to next, but if you know somebody interesting, let me know in the comments or forward this link. I am specifically looking in the tech / startup sector, but also maybe some design sprinkles.

To get you started in looking at Berlin

Two blogs started writing about the tech scene in Berlin and yes they are in English. A word play on Silicon Valley, the blog Silicon Allee also holds meetups (@siliconallee Facebook). Also dealing with startups is Techberlin (@techberlin Facebook).

Spiegel: Berlin on the Road to Becoming a Start-Up Mecca

Berlin may soon become the place to be for tech entrepreneurs. Berlin may soon become the place to be for tech entrepreneurs. Berlin is home to an ever increasing number of innovative new technology start-up companies — to the point that even Silicon Valley venture capitalists are taking notice. With a new focus on the country, many companies are beginning to innovate rather than simply clone successful American ideas.

Memeburn: Berlin is the hot new city for internet start-ups -

“It’s a big enough city that whatever you’re interested in you can dive into.” Germany’s reunified capital is now one of the most visited cities in Europe and its inner courtyards teem with artists exploring music or creating installations. “A lot of people are attracted by Berlin, Berlin itself is a start-up,” said Alexander Ljung. “It’s growing fast, it’s fairly chaotic. Nobody knows exactly where it’s going but it’s going in the right direction.”

CNBC: Berlin’s new techno beat

“… that are helping to make Berlin such a paradise for start-ups: a cosmopolitan array of young, multilingual skilled workers, swathes of cheap, attractive, post-industrial office space, supportive public agencies, a good infrastructure and growing interest from foreign venture capital.”

Techcrunch: London Is Gonna Be Pissed, But We Prefer Berlin for Startups

“Ecosystem-wise, Berlin has some things going for it that most Western European capitals lack. For starters, it’s cheap to work and live there. Culturally and historically, Berlin is a more natural gateway between Europe’s mature Western economies and the surging talent in Eastern Europe. And Berlin has a surging creative class, largely made up of transplants. It’s become the place where misfits in Europe– people who want to be artists and creators, people who don’t fit in rigid social structures of cities like London– flock to do what they want.”

How Berlin Became the Coolest City on the Planet

In fact, Berlin is cheap — that’s part of the appeal. Soaring real estate prices have driven the starving artists out of downtown Paris, London and New York. But Berlin, with no real industry to speak of, has only the artists to rely on. Here, coolness is an economic survival strategy. As Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit puts it, coining the city’s unofficial motto, “Berlin is poor — but sexy.”

“Berlin has made culture its primary industry,” Berlin festival boss Dieter Kosslick says. “Music, film, art, fashion — that’s been the driving force, the creative industries. It’s an extremely culture-rich, extremely international city.” Caterer K.P. Kofler is more blunt: “Berlin is everything Germany is not: spontaneous, exciting, open and cosmopolitan.”

TC guest post: The upsides and downsides to starting up in Berlin

Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital is vibrant with tourists, artists, and entrepreneurs. The city is home to over 200 startups, more than in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne combined. Berlin’s leadership in this domain is perhaps unexpected – it has hardly ever been an economic centre in Europe or even Germany. [...] “For people who are basically looking for a big career and a lot of money, Berlin is not the right place. But if you are motivated by other things, like creating and learning, Berlin is perfect”

Photo credit: 8.23 you make me smile by dabboj, on Flickr

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0

Are you satisfied just being part of the crowd?

Posted on July 15, 2011 under blog

 

crowd in concert

Going through the Google plus list of circles I find myself asking one question over and over again and I believe others ask this too:

Do I recognize your name?
Do I recognize your photo?
Who are you again?

Are you ‘recognizable’ enough to be added to circles, now that we become more and more connected?  Yes, normal people only have a handful of friends and this question is not relevant to them. But I bet in the very soon future that number will grow, even for those ‘normal’ people.  Our attention span may be able to manage Dunbar’s number of connections, but we have moved far beyond this with social networking – we stay in touch with people much longer than we did previously and connect deeper with strangers. That was not really planned by nature when it designed our memory banks.

Add to this that brands and companies are getting into the mix, people go explore their hobbies and interests and next you know they add 100 “friends” to have a better chance at social games.  They will figure out that having more choice is not a bad thing. Which is when the question comes up again:

Are you satisfied just to be part of the crowd and watch others perform or is it relevant to you to be ‘more’  - whatever that implies, being the rockstar, the artist who wants to show off his work, the collector, the curator, the what else …? 

This was sparked through a conversation with a friend who I wish would ‘publish’ more. I’d like to read what he has to say. But as much as he might have to offer, for him to move beyond the “my friends will read me” sphere, it has to be  ’better. faster. stronger.’ (sorry just in my head phones).  Interesting people are just a click away.

Being part of the audience is neither a bad thing nor that everybody aspires to be ‘more’. Seems like we need new terms and ideas about this. Who are we? What do we want to become and how much of our souls are we willing to sell?

The old model of “I rockstar. You audience” cannot work. I think we need to adapt from situation to situation and technology should help manage this. We have so many data points to enter into the system but as long as the only choice we have is putting people in circle for sending and reading …

That is not enough. The machines should be more clever by now.
Can somebody please start working on that? Thanks.

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0

No more than 10% women on Google plus?

Posted on July 7, 2011 under blog

 

Women are not as competitive as men, and mostly this is considered to be a good thing. In tech and entrepreneurship though, this very often leads to women being in the “too late adopter” crowd. I am happy to encourage people, but it is like the saying: You can carry a horse to the water but it has to drink on its own. Some thoughts on this.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, known for TheNextWeb.com, TwitterCounter.com, has started a site name SocialStatistics.com where top users on Google plus are listed.

I – and most people in the industry I know of – see such a list and add themselves right away. It is like basic promotion / marketing etc., you don’t even think about it. We don’t care about where we are on the list – we do, but only to a certain degree – and use it more for the data point. There will always be people who cry “but it is not a popularity contest” and they are right. But that is not what I am talking about.

Boris has added an interesting sidebar:

image

This lead me to ping my circles with a call to action “girls add yourself“. It does not surprise me that the number is that low. And I bet if I go through my list of contacts, I can tell you exactly who would register for this site and which would complain at a later time that they are not included.

The 10% are not a real number, I expect there to be roughly 30% females at least in my circles and there is an unusual amount of 2nd and 3rd wave people in my circles with the usual suspects still missing. I attribute that to Google’s current invite setup.

Nonetheless, the people I find on Boris top list are 100% the usual suspects. Currently the service tracks nearly 12K users and you can bet, that these are the usual suspects as well. And they reap the benefits of things like this (you can click through to the site to see the articles linked):

image

(btw: Reading the last sentence you should realize why I encourage you to click on that link instead of linking the articles right here. You should also understand why I write half of the article about that blog list below but still use Google plus in the title.)

In a totally different circumstance I came across the domain http://www.blogsbywomen.org and was not surprised to find the numbers below. On a total of 3.025 blogs submitted only 2,5% can be generously considered to be tech [Games (16), Technology (33), Science (9), Internet & Computers (19)].

It is by no means a complete list and they do take a submission fee of $5 now for the work, but that is not the point. If you look at the number of women interested right now in Google plus and the list below, you do have an impression on why women always seem to be late adopter. If tech / entrepreneurship etc. would be a person, the answer would be “They are just not that into you.”

Category # blogs %
Personal (769) 769 25,4
Family & Parenting (320) 320 10,6
Arts & Entertainment (279) 279 9,2
Shopping (271) 271 9,0
Home & Garden (167) 167 5,5
Health/Fitness/Weight loss (164) 164 5,4
Society & Culture (148) 148 4,9
Food & Drink (140) 140 4,6
Philosophy & Religion (81) 81 2,7
Politics (80) 80 2,6
Sex & Sexuality (69) 69 2,3
Feminists & Feminism (66) 66 2,2
Pop Culture (64) 64 2,1
Lesbian/Bisexual/Queer (62) 62 2,0
Pets (42) 42 1,4
News & Media (32) 32 1,1
Employment/Work (28) 28 0,9
Sports (21) 21 0,7
Reference (19) 19 0,6
Travel (16) 16 0,5
Law & Legal (11) 11 0,4
Gender + GBLT (7) 7 0,2
Military (3) 3 0,1
Business (89) 89 2,9
Games (16) 16 0,5
Technology (33) 33 1,1
Science (9) 9 0,3
Internet & Computers (19) 19 0,6
Total: 3.025

Part of why there are so few women in tech is not that there are so few women in tech. There are so few women in tech visible. Because they do not participate in the the ‘dick contests’ the guys are throwing and frown on this. They don’t like to compare themselves and stay away from it.

That is absolutely fine if you are that way. But then stop complaining to others when they understand how the game is played.  If you want to be in the picture, stop being a cheerleader on the sideline and start playing in the game.

Now go over and add yourself to Boris list. :)

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6

Going to DLD Women 11 and some tweeps to follow …

Posted on June 27, 2011 under europeanevents

 

imageI am very much looking forward to DLD Women in Munich this week, especially since I will be blogging from there, together with Valeria and Romy.

As with any major event nowadays, the list of attendees and speakers twittering and sharing pictures from the event is big and it is a bit hard to add people during the event so I like to put together twitter lists with a bit of the available information.You can find the bios of their twitter accounts below. Usually I do only list english speaking accounts but I thought this time, what the heck. ;)

The lists are based on the two lists put together by  @DLDWomen:

You can follow the lists directly from your twitter account and many applications allow to filter on just a list – this comes in handy. If you rather like a normal search, then this is the right thing for you: Twitter search for dldwomen OR dldwoman (the latter just in case)

And us three will be live blogging from DLD Women:

nicolesimon[8] snoopsmaus[8] Valerie_140[8]
Nicole Simon – twitter – web
Romy Mlinzk – twitter – web
Valerie – twitter

We will greatly appreciate if you do a lot of twittering from the event as it will make our live much easier ;)  I asked my dear colleagues to tell a bit about them, and this is what they answered:

Valerie currently shares her time between Vienna and Berlin. She is writing her master thesis on digital branding at UdK Berlin and HS St.Gallen.Valerie is very enthusiastic about branding in the digital world. She works at Saffron Brand Consultants on the launch of an Austrian telecom brand. She is inspired by modern art, snowboarding and socializing (in the real and virtual world). Due to winning the Green-Card she wants to switch sides of the Atlantic very soon!

Romy is a Social Media Manager and Consultant at the German communication agency achtung! at Hamburg. She is never offline and really enjoys to discover new things through the internet. After studying Chemistry she decided to turn her passion into a job. For her work-life-balance she loves to listen to good music, going to concerts and making

 

Sounds like I am in good company ;)

Speakers

Idit Harel Caperton
Ed-Tech-Innovator. SocialEntrepreneur. Founder MaMaMedia.com::WorldWideWorkshop.org TelAviv/Harvard/MIT-MediaLab. http://www.Globaloria.org::Invent.Build.Share.
twitter – web – NYC

Katia Gaika
twitter

Lorea Canales
Escritora. Periodista. Abogada. Mamá. Apenas Marta, mi primera novela saldrá en México, editada por Random House en septiembre del 2011. Vivo en Nueva York.
twitter – web

Irene Au
Design @ Google
twitter – web – United States
Dr. Stefanie Babst
Acting Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO
twitter – web

Dorothee Bär
Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages, stv. Generalsekretärin der CSU
twitter – web
Vanessa Branson
Arts and Nature enthusiast. Co owner of Riad El Fenn and President of Arts in Marrakech
twitter – web – Morocco /London

Tina Di Carlo
Architecture writer and curator, London and Berlin
twitter – web
Abigail Disney
#womenwarandpeace is coming to PBS October 11-November 8. host a house party and tweet it!!
twitter – web

Anke Domscheit-Berg
Strategieberatung, Training, Coaching – für ManagerInnen + Vorstände – für alle, die gläserne Decken brechen wollen, für mehr ROI durch Vielfalt im Management
twitter – web – Berlin, Germany
EDELKOORT INC
Li Edelkoort’s trend forecasting agency in the US, distributing Trend Union, Bloom magazine, View on Colour and affiliated consulting services
twitter – web – New York USA

Daniel Ek
CEO and founder of Spotify
twitter – web – ÜT: 51.512248,-0.136169
Cindy Gallop
Brand and business innovator
twitter – web – New York City

Ron Gutman
HealthTap founder, angel investor, TEDx Silicon Valley curator, white-hat health hacker, builder, serial hugger, world explorer, accelerator
twitter – web
Daniela Hinrichs
Experienced and awarded communication professional, company builder (XING, Yellowdine), digital native and business angel
twitter – web – Lovely Hamburg

Jessica Insalaco
twitter
Andrian Kreye
http://andriankreye.com/Bio.html
twitter – web – Germany

Libby Leffler
I believe in: @Facebook, the power of girlfriends, delish Delfina cheese pizza & that the future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty.
twitter – web – San Francisco, California
Laura Liswood
Co-Founder of the Council of Women World Leaders, Senior Advisor at Goldman Sachs, Author of The Loudest Duck, Women World Leaders, and Serving Them Right.
twitter – web – Washington, DC

Somaly Mam
I am an anti-slavery activist and survivor fighting for victims all over the world.
twitter – web – Cambodia
Sugata Mitra
Why are we the way we are?
twitter – web – Newcastle upon Tyne

UJAM
We’re a cloud-based platform empowering everyone from the novice to the skilled musician to easily create and share great-sounding music.
twitter – web – Germany & California
Irene Natividad
The Global Summit of Women is a unique gathering of women leaders -government, corporate, organizations and entrepreneurs- wordlwide
twitter – web – Washington, DC

Patrick Ness
Writer of the Chaos Walking trilogy and other books, Runner of marathons and other races, Eater of many, many doughnuts (hence the running).
twitter – web – England
Mabel van Oranje
CEO of @TheElders. Co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations
twitter – London, UK

susie orbach
psychotherapist,psychoanalyst, writer, activist
twitter – web – London
Elisa Camahort
twitter – web – Belmont, CA

Mel Rosenberg
Share my passion for turning dreams into reality. World’s no. 1 expert in breath odors, I also write funny kids’ books, play romantic jazz and teach creativity!
twitter – Israel
Bibi Russell
twitter

Shamim Sarif
Writer, director and novelist, co-founder of Enlightenment Productions, wife of Hanan Kattan, and mum of 2 boys
twitter – web

Jennifer Schenker
global technology journalist
twitter – web – Paris

Joanna Shields
twitter – London
Taryn Simon
twitter

Alison Smale
executive editor IHT, lives in Paris with Russian pianist-composer Sergei Dreznin and daughter Lucy……
twitter – web

Dale J. Stephens
19-year-old #creator. Top 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellow. Leader of the @UnCollege movement. Evangelist @RadMatter. Loves deviant attitudes and frequent flyer miles.
twitter – web – San Francisco

Elizabeth Varley ”
CEO of TechHub – spaces for the global tech community. First launch in London – now open! @TechHub Prev: @LDNTwestival @SHINE_2010 http://tinyurl.com/evarley”
twitter – web – London
Avivah WittenbergCox
CEO of 20-first, Building Gender Balanced Businesses, Author of HOW Women Mean Business (2010) and WHY Women Mean Business (2008), Wiley
twitter – web – Paris, World

Gabi Zedlmayer
Driving Global Social Innovation at HP – best technology & people to address pressing social issues WW
twitter – web – Switzerland
Jim Turley
twitter

Participants who twitter

medina abdelkader
Abstraction is a kind of decadence.
twitter – web – Hamilton, Ontario

Kristina Häusler
twitter – Stuttgart

Alex Kelleher
Founder, Cognitive Match | Co-Founder, Touch Clarity | Founder, Vivid Edge
twitter – web – London

Alina Schöllchen
ich bin nett. in meiner freizeit denke ich mir gerne sachen aus. und wenn ich arbeite, auch: aktuell brenne ich für die neue communications-unit des bcn/burda.
twitter – web – Hamburg, Germany
alurabrava
twitter

Amanda Lorenzani
Digital Freestyler. Co Founder, Fox & Rose. Head of Comms, Populis. Time Traveller. Mum.
twitter – web – Brighton, London, Rome

Anneke Schogt
twitter
Dr. Mariana Bozesan
An Integral investor, Venture Philanthropist, and serial entrepreneur, Dr. Bozesan, is an authority on Impact Investing and Consciousness Leadership
twitter – Munich, Germany

Bassky
BD professional in mobile–loves travelling both in ideas and real life, books&magazines, shoes, my car, Italy, the (Mobile) Internet, blogs, everything digital
twitter – Berlin

janssens vera
twitter
Benedikta
twitter

Benjamin Ruschin
Mobile, Media, Innovation
twitter – web – Austria

bhueppe
Communications for Mozilla in Europe
twitter – Berlin, Germany
Ayelet Noff
Founder & CEO of Blonde 2.0 where we socialize brands. Lover of social media & all things tech. Blogger, addicted to life, travel, caffeine and my iPhone
twitter – web – Israel

Colette Ballou
I’m a sucker for start-ups. Srsly. If I was independently rich I’d STILL be doing this. Owner of Ballou PR: Paris-London-NYC-SF/SV. 500Startups Mentor
twitter – web – Paris/London
Corinna Lemm
Corinna Lemm twittert über PR und Social Media. Inhaberin von Style & Brands. PR-Agentur für Mode, Lifestyle, E-Commerce, Food & Beverage.
twitter – web – München

Daniella Alpher
Mobile advertiser extraordinaire
twitter – web – Tel Aviv
dawn barber
twitter – nyc

Denice Kronau
Denice Kronau, veteran of the corporate world, shares a whirlwind tour of boardrooms & cultures about what makes a female CEO tick & how to be happy at work.
twitter – web – New York
Diana El-Azar
twitter

Doris Wiedemann
twitter

Efrat Barit
twitter – web

Natalie Wejgaard
Du bist einzigartig. Dein Schmuck auch.
twitter – web – Switzerland
Manuela Buslay
twitter – Berlin

Erin Mote
an AZ girl in DCs big city of politics and policy
twitter – web – wash dc

fabeau
fabeau bietet News zum Fashion-Business. Frisch, prägnant und unterhaltsam!
twitter – web – Germany
Felicia Rangel
twitter – web – SoCal-NYC

Felix Haas
Entrepreneur, CEO & Co-Founder of amiando.com, Private Pilot, World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2010
twitter – Munich, Palo Alto
Gabemac
Teaching Design for Virtual Theater and Games at the College of Arts Utrecht. Head of Innovation @Indie_Amsterdam. VJ in Amsterdam.
twitter – web – Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Gabriella’s
Imagine…
twitter – web – Italia
Gisel Kordestani
twitter

Heiko Hebig
heading up r&d at hubert burda media.
twitter – web – Munich

Robert Franken
Exilfranke(n) :: Digitalarbeiter :: Gelegenheitsmisanthrop :: Chefkochchef :: Topics: Web, Social Media, SEO, Community, Online Marketing, Basketball
twitter – web – Cologne :: Bonn
irmin beck
twitter

David Rowan
Editor of WIRED magazine; GQ magazine’s ‘Digital Life’ columnist; and speaking at all sorts of events. All in my quest to identify The Future.
twitter – web – London

Jeri Curry
twitter – Washington DC
Joanna Bakas
still loving marketing in all it’s shapes and forms – desperately seeking the NEXT BIG THING
twitter – 30,000 feet

joana breidenbach
anthropologist, co-founder of betterplace.org+betterplace lab
twitter – web – iPhone: 52.485924,13.355838
JoyMarcus
Venture Partner @DFJGothamVentures. West Village mom. NYC tech community advocate.
twitter – web

Judith Clegg
Founder of Take Out (formerly Venturing Unlimited) and The Glasshouse. Live & work in London & NYC. Love both cities, drinking Earl Grey tea and the ocean.
twitter – web – New York & London
julieta aranda
twitter – Berlin

Julia-Marie Russ
twitter – web – Hamburg

Sandra Kröger
twitter – web – Berlin
Knut Kille
twitter

kscheib
Born to speak all mirth and no matter.
twitter

Lau Mal
twitter

lilac sigan
twitter
liraz
Web & mobile expert, writer, baker, adventurer
twitter

Katharina Borchert
Back in Hamburg. Shiny new job, same old me.
twitter – web – ÜT: 51.450038,6.802151
Thorsten Lückemeier
Head of Marketing www.edelight.de – News about Online Business, SEO, Marketing, Social Media and disturbing things. Tweets in German and English
twitter – web – Stuttgart, Germany

Maria Cortina
Directora de Comunicación Siemens España. Más de 20 años en comunicación: periodista, Gobierno y empresa.Vive y deja vivir. Busca lo positivo: serás más feliz
twitter – Madrid
McMaddin
twitter – MUC

MitchellBaker
twitter – web

Natasha Lamoreux
twitter – ÜT: 40.655641,-73.980885
ninarieke
http://iblogforbrands.blogspot.com/ working as a strategic planner in Germany with www.doubleshift.de
twitter – web – Germany

Nora Abousteit
Tech Art Fashion Craft Travel People, co-founder of BurdaStyle.com
twitter – web – New York
officechief
twitter – Global

Ozlem Denizmen
Para Durumu CNBCe Cuma 17:30 + POSTA Persembe Gunluk hayatmzdaki PARA YONETIMI ilgili hersey. Birikim, Yatirm,Butce,Ev almak, Is Kurmak,Iliskilerde para…
twitter – web – Istanbul

Paddy Cosgrave
One of about 6 billion.
twitter – web – Dublin, Paris
Peter Ambrozy
Entrepreneur. CEO edelight.de
twitter – web – Stuttgart

Raphaëlle Heaf
Polymath, Dynamo, Innovator, Founder of ArtSpotter. My thoughts are occasionally my own.
twitter – web – London, UK
Rebecca
twitter – Seattle, Washington

Chris Mikkelsen
My personal account of working with Refugees United / @Refunite on refugee family tracing…
twitter – web – Copenhagen

ruti rudner
twitter – tel aviv
Sabine Haase
Internet addict
twitter – web – Munich, Germany

Sarah Hashish
Proud Egyptian and Social Media Junkie. Interested in all Cities and Infrastructure topics. I’m always on the search for interesting Twitter accounts to follow.
twitter – Munich
Christiane Schicker
twitter

Shakil Khan
Head of Special Projects @ Spotify – Friend of charity : water – Have Passport, Will Travel – Failure is NOT an Option
twitter – web – ÜT: 51.520281,-0.142879

Shira Sue Carmi
twitter
Sina Kamala
homo ludens. spielend.mensch. PR@wooga, ballet dancer and philosopher by heart
twitter – Berlin

Stefan Janssen
NEVER Give up
twitter – Neuss, Germany

steffi kammerer
writer
twitter – web – Berlin, New York, in between
styleclicker
i have more shoes than my wife and my camera always with me.
twitter – web – München, Bayern DE

get styleproofed “
Julia war Fashion Director von Glamour und Vanity Fair und arbeitet als Stylistin. Seit Dezember 2009 macht sie zusammen mit Silke Wichert
styleproofed.com.”
twitter – web – Berlin
Sunny Bates
Super connector hub of invisible network
twitter – web – New York, New York

tamar guy
Israel-America and what’s in between..
twitter – Tel-Aviv
Deborah Berebichez
A physicist with a deep passion for communicating science to the masses. Secondary life as philosopher and actor. Made in Mexico.
twitter – web – NYC

thomas marban
runner and maker of things
twitter – web – austria or california
Tal Shoham
Internet Entrepreneur fresh from the oven. Love people, contents, events. Mommy. Chinese speaker. Lawyer (yeh, that too)
twitter – Tel Aviv

Luca Ascani Populis “
Cofounder and Chairman of Populis ( formerly Goadv). www.populis.com
Serial entrepreneur on digital companies.”
twitter – web – London
Ulla-M. Engeström
CEO of Thinglink and co-founder of Nopsa Travels. Interested in transforming things into social objects online.
twitter – web – Helsinki

ulrike_reinhard
independant traveler
twitter – web – Downtown
Uri Blackman
SVP UberMedia
twitter – web – Los Angeles, CA, US

Vanessa Gleitsmann
twitter

Verena Gladiator
Verena Gladiator for amiandoFrance
twitter – web – Munich, Paris
Victória
twitter

Pamela Wolf
twitter – does it matter where I am?

Raul Krauthausen
SOZIALHELD, Freelancer, Design Thinking, Konzeption, Projektmanagement, Multimedia, Online, Präsentation, Print, Text, NPO, Marketing, Rollstuhl, Radio
twitter – web – Berlin
RosaRiera
twitter – Munich

Rupert Schaefer
twitter – web – Munich

Oliver Clausen
Manager Editorial Picture Desk with Getty Images in Germany
twitter – Munich
NAKAMA GERMANY
Executive Search & Interim Management for Design & Digital Media!
twitter – web – MUNICH

Marianne Tochtermann
twitter
Marome62
Un poquito de aquí …otro poquito de allá …me gusta mucho aquí …pero también me gusta por allá ….
twitter – Germany

mabo
Social Media Marketing & Viral Video Seeding Professional
twitter – web – Cologne
Joerg Sigmund
twitter

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The Positive Glass Pearl Principle or how to get what you want without paying (too much) for it

Posted on March 5, 2011 under blog

 

Summary: When companies try to get started in Social Media, they use standard tactics to gain followers and response: offerings prizes, doing advertisement, etc. Instead they should use what I call the positive glass pearl principle: Offering something the customer values without having to spend too much on it yourself. And almost all clients I encountered had such a perceived gold nugget in their possession when they started digging for it.  Do you have examples of this principle in action? Please add them at the bottom!

The Positive Glass Pearl Principle (TPGPP) works because you can easily offer something to your target group which they desire / want / need. This something does not cost you retail but internal costs or you have connections the others don’t, and so on. To understand the full meaning, we need to look at the negative version of the principle.

The Negative Glass Pearl Principle

glass pearls
Photo by mollycakes

The principle is mostly known in stories around people in the new world giving away their riches like gold for something shiny without value to the giver. If the first group would understand the real value of their goods, they would not trade it for trinkets. Surprisingly enough, though people know about this from their history class, they do not understand the same thing happens online.

I first used this metaphor when writing an article about Qype, the German Yelp, where they ask the user to fill in rich information for peanuts and in return get Gold. The answer from them was like most services do in this case “but you get the recognition and we always show your information with it, so it is attributed!!” Which already back then was bogus, because it would appear on Google as “review from Qype” and not review from Nicole on Qype. I am fine with that at the core, because the benefit I want is not recognition but a usable database to help make my life easier. But please don’t treat me as stupid.

Customers / users are getting more acquainted with the idea of the worth of what they are providing, thus making it harder for companies to ripe the benefits without rewards. Good companies do reward the users adequate if they want to stay in business, bad companies are in danger to get flack for doing so.

The Positive Glass Pearl Principle

The better application of the principle is something I use with clients constantly. As they are looking to tap into the riches of their customers being online, they run into the problem of how to reward them properly for doing what my clients want them to do. By old experience, they believe “reward” to be expensive.

For example they want users to become (and stay) a fan on a Facebook page, participate in a contest to answer a question of the client, or much simpler than that: retweet or like something which clearly is using me, the customer, as a influencer to my friends without paying me for doing your advertisement. This equation does not work and even if you give away an iPhone or an ipad, it will only get you freeloaders and not what you really want and need in the long run.

When they look at what to do in social media an alike, I always ask them: What is a glass pearl to you but is gold to the other side? Very often they have something, without realizing it, to which the other side has only limited access to and thus is willing to do something for it.

Just a few examples, mainly from working with clients:

  • One customer had a niche TV channel they partnered with – to organize a kind of show where contestants could be on TV for 15 minutes would have been very easy for them (glass pearl) but for the other side difficult to achieve yet highly desirable (gold).
  • Second example would be a media organization with good ties to celebs. For them to organize a meeting with such a celeb or just a meet and greet is not totally easy, yet easy enough. Imagine your target group is teenage girls and you have backstage passes to Justin Bieber.
  • Another customer rents apartments for students which are highly sought after. In brainstorming we came up with the idea of having ‘gold’ as ‘get a jump start in the application process’ or just ‘free rent for a month’.
  • I have suggested to clients to think a bit broader.  For example, tickets to certain conferences are in high demand. At Blogger most visitors have a hard time funding the trip because they are no businesses, so offering the expenses paid / the ticket / the nice hotel is something desirable
  • Help out with your professional infrastructure: Events like Barcamps need rooms and it helps to have food prepared. If your company has a professional kitchen, it is easy to run that on a weekend but hard for organizers to get running for just one event.

If you look closely at it, it costs near to nothing for the company or organization but is highly desirable for the other side. In creating these glass pearls, they also allow their customer to feel good about helping you. They understand it is a glass pearl to you and understand the value of gold, but still want it and everybody is happy.

Do you have other examples where this principle could work? Please share them!

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Tell us more! How Facebook and partners will enrich their places data far beyond what Google can do without paying a cent

Posted on March 5, 2011 under european view

 

Summary: Facebook Places adds a “Tell us more” button to their Places profiles and this way will enrich their Places profiles to be more useful for the user. In addition, Microsoft’s Bing most likely will be able to use this as well in their search results, getting a huge advantage in the game. And Facebook won’t even have to pay a bit to use this, instead can monetize it fully, using the glass pearl principle. Question: When will Bing enhance their advertisement with the Social Graph?

A small little pop up got my attention today:

facebook-places-tell-us-more2

In the last months (well make that the last year in the US, but there is a rest of the world) we have been seeing a rise of Facebook with what I like to call “normal people”. Not only the moms and dads or the kids, but everyone. (You can call it mainstream, but as I never consider myself to be an earlier adopter, I prefer “normal people” as the ones which for most of my live have called me and my interests “weird”.)

And if you would ask them “do you use Social Media?” like surveys often do, they would deny categorically – because they don’t know what our name for this it. But they do use it. I recently was in a restaurant / café which has been open for 4 days and it already have 300 likes and 50 check-ins.

But the problem with such places is that a) users have to find them from the phone and b) there has to be some additional information like a photo etc. to make it ‘nice’. Now, this will be done by the users. Have a look at Berlin Central Station:

facebook-places-tell-us-more

If you click on edit – a principle know kinda from that Wikipedia – you get this:

facebook-places-tell-us-more3

When sombody enters the geo information, next time I visit a place my mobile phone knows where to place me on the map. You would wish that the owners of the place would fill in the needed information, but they are slow to do so. Users on the other hand will. Maybe not always, but once in a while – more than enough if you have that kind of user base. By enriching the data, combined with the access of demographic data, likes, interests and more it is possible to build a profile of users which should be a privacy nightmare to everyone if you think about it.

For the platform it is a win. No need to buy these data to make the service more useful and the chance to sell more services around this? Awesome. Now Facebook not only has the information where you are but due to the Social Graph can connect the information with your friends and so much more.

Great! But is Facebook responsible enough?

Getting users to add data points like this, using any content the users upload for their own purposes for free and being able to sell it, a user base in the hundreds of millions and people willing to add all their personal information to allow targeted advertisement? No wonder this company is valued so high. Sadly, it is also the Glass Pearl Principle in action, currently on the negative side.

With power comes responsibility and so far there is a bit of a problem. From my – as friends like to say ‘schizophrenic – European point of view on privacy Facebook is on a very slippery slope of how to use data, especially when they come to countries outside the US which actually have data protection laws.

I believe Facebook needs to be very careful in the future how to handle it well enough. The mantra of Google to do no evil has a reason: it is good business.

Could somebody get Facebook a decent targeting team?

With power does not only comes responsibility to use data well, but also a responsibility it is common sense to behave professionally – and so far the advertisement on Facebook sucks.

I have been watching advertisement for some time now, talked to other users and advertisers. Users complained to me not only about irrelevant advertisement but also that feedback is not used, as I can confirm by personal experience. It may be that somebody pays a lot to have this add here, but most people hate irrelevant advertisement and are open to interesting advertisement.

Personal example: While I may be *cough* over the magic 4, I would like a button “no baby stuff please nor ‘trying to get a kid??’” and also no wrinkles and such ads. I clicked repeatedly on “uninteresting” as well as “misleading” and saw no change. I would happily click on advertisement if it was more targeted. Login in once in Denmark served me for two weeks with danish advertisement, though I never chose anything else than German or English as my user interface. That is unprofessional for any modern advertisement system. Back to the topic: They know so much about your movements, your interests etc, that companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon would have a field day and target me with useful advertisement.

Facebook on the other hand is the talented kid in the room which does not know yet how to use their talents. It is kinda okay but by no stretch of imagination at the point where it could be. Now imagine a professional partner like say Microsoft to make use of that data. Btw did you know that Microsoft does allow targeting based on demographics like Facebook does, in certain markets? Their problem is simple: Through MSN Messenger and a like they have a lot of data but in no way comparable to the riches Facebook has at their fingertips. And Google is like most other networks far far behind in getting those data, another reason why it made sense for Microsoft to invest in Facebook, just to hold off Google a bit.

How the social graph changes search

When I say the advertisement sucks, I am more referring to the fact it could be way better. What really is unusable is Facebook search. In all cases it is better to go to a real search engine, look for what you want and just add Facebook to it – the results are so superior it is not even funny. Better put: The Facebook results are so bad – I have constantly the question from fan page owners “It is gone!!” – no it is just not findable anymore for you.

But imagine, somebody who actually understands search would work with the riches Facebook has to offer … and use the social graph and the way advertisement can be done on their engine? For example the German market is strongly in Google’s hand, search wise. But what if Microsoft suddenly can use the Social Graph to enhance these results?

In case you’ve never seen the options when creating an advertisement:

facebook-advertisement-connection-targeting

You can basically say things like “only display ads to people from 20-25, female, living 80 miles from New York and are not yet connected to this” or – and that is even the worse one – only display ads to friends of users already connected with me the advertiser. So next time you do say “I like” on a brand, imagine your name being beneath any advertisement this person thinks of saying “(your name) likes this.”

Imagine this in combination with search results.

Positive or negative? We decide

As consumers and customers, even just as people we need to learn more about what companies are doing with our data and how they are using it, and we do need more control over it. Not to be negative on all, I am rather thrilled by the options even I as a blogger can get out of this, but there needs to be check and balance. For example, why not allow me a setting “this page can only use your name as endorsement for the page itself / third party / etc.”. If you educate well and you do no evil, most customers probably will help you. And you need to provide more for me than just glass pearls.  :)

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Zynga trying to get players to spam their friends more than usual

Posted on February 19, 2011 under social gaming

 

Summary: Looks like Zynga really needs more growth in their games and has started to have more quests to ‘invite’ non playing friends. These are pushed rather aggressively but what is even more surprising – and reason for this entry – is the fact that the forums are really monitored closely on as it seems anything ‘none too pleasing’.

It probably has to do with this “Has CityVille reached its peak? Falling numbers say yes” and this one “Zynga’s Reported $7-$10 Billion Valuation Surpasses That Of EA“

Even if you don’t usually play, it is worth looking at this kind of company and behavior in combination on how Facebook works to see a glimpse of the real power of social networks and what I call “normal people” as well as the dangers which successful games bring for Facebook’s power of the friends network.

Me playing or I love to finally see brand advertisement

As some will know, I have recently taken up playing Cityville. I never got into games like this, but it seems with the combination of your real friends, online and casual gaming this is working for me. And if you tell me “but it is just a waste of time!” let me disagree with you: Since starting to play CV I finally get the advertisement experience on Facebook others probably have had for a while. Up until now I would see nearly nothing, but as a women in my age bracket who started playing a game like that?

*Boom* I now got all the advertisement I need for my slides on how to work with Facebook and Social Media in general. Which is not what they bargained for, but that is another story.

How they usually try to get you to invite friends

Cityville, like most of the games, relies on you having a plot of land where you can work and play. It only is fun if you have neighbors and if you share everything onto your feed. Which is considered by many as spamming (I agree) but the game is not just playable and even more important not as fun as if you can use your friends and the news feed.

Having looked into some of the other games, at least Zynga offers me some choice in how to deal with these invites for quests and gifts etc.: mail all friends or just game friends.

image

There used to be the option (probably for quicker getting friends in) active Zynga players (assuming they are more likely to try this out which is true) and Farmville friends. That kinda works out okay. Most people learn very quickly that you do not spam your non playing friends and Facebook has banned all the gaming stuff into a separate tab from the news feed.

How Facebook got rid of most of the postings but probably fears the “add me threads”

If you play these games, you want to use all the sharing options for advancement in the game and game fun. Which is exactly why most non players have blocked those apps: it is annoying as hell. Even I as the player don’t want to spam my profile with it but at the same time want to use the game as it is meant to be. In essence, we need a gaming tab for our Facebook profile to deal with that. I for example have to force myself not to post these because I do want my profile to be ‘nice’ to read.

It also poses threats for Facebook in a way that complete strangers accept friend request not because they know them – but just because they need them in the game. Suddenly active friends (the ones with a lot of likes because of our behavior) are not at all friends.  For example it is absolutely common to click like on one of those game entries to say “thank you” or comment on it if the rewards are out. Take into account how Facebook tries to calculate the Edge Rank and News Feed Optimization and you might see where the challenge for Facebook is.

How Zynga is trying now

Being banned out of the news feed, they try to get your more to send your friends invites. I think around Christmas they tried a “adopt a puppy” trick, where you could invite your friends for a bonus, but that was just something you could dismiss because it has no relevant in game value.

The latest in this is the so called Visitor Center which requires you to invite 4 not playing friends. Inviting neighbors has been seen before: if you do not have x neighbors to invite as staff of your community building then you cannot finish it. The hard difference now is: it has to be a ‘fresh player’ and this time it is something people would want to have.

image

Difference to the invite above at least is stated clearly that you are sending to non playing friends:

image

To be fair, you do not need to spam your friends – it is not a necessary quest or you could spend 7 dollars. Probably Zynga will be happy about that too. Just …

People are really unhappy

People are really not happy about as you can see here in the official forum. Within hours of posting the “what do you think of it” I pretty much see 70 pages of people not liking it and that is just the one single forum. If you look closer, it is not really so much about having to invite 4 friends (and make that work) but the way it is pushed onto the players.

Over 70 pages is btw the amount of allowed posting because as it seems I am not the only one who ran into their ‘house rules’

image

Amazing: Within nearly a minute my first posting got deleted by the moderators, as well as my second posting. I can agree on them having house rules on what they accept there and what not but I have to ask myself, if they delete so quickly and there are already over 70 pages in unhappy comments, how much more did they delete?

Even with only being online for probably 2-3 minutes I get friend request from somebody who said they got deleted too and several other comments indicate similar treatment.

I loved the reason for the second delete, number 5 from the list of forum rules

“You may NOT start a thread or post complaining that your post was removed.”

(the rest is also worth a look). As in “don’t let anybody know that we actually work the forums to have them the way we want”.

The beauty of the Net

As I said, I understand where these kind of TOS etc. come from and why they are in place. And of course why they want to ‘encourage’ users to get others into the game. But there are different ways to do so – and one thing companies should have learned: If you push, people will just find another way to deal with it, even the non savy ones.

And here is always more than one place to voice the opinion.

Btw anyone not playing CV and in need for a non playing gamer in their game? Friend me. Happy to barter.  ;o)

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Part 3: English twittering #Leweb attendees from all over the world

Posted on December 5, 2010 under blog

 

leweb-2010
Want to find out who else is twittering from Leweb but in a language you can read? Here is your solution for people coming to Leweb and twittering predominently in English.

This is part three of stuff for Leweb 2010. You can also have a look at “Part 1 is about preparing your Presdo Match profile for #Leweb” or “Part 2: which information to prepare going to Paris“.

I went through the list of participants for Leweb 2010 as available by the 3rd of December and sifted through them to find all the twitter accounts, which are nearly completly in English. Accounts with no tweets or protected accounts are not listed in here. For practical reasons I went for the categories of Europe, North America and Rest of the world.

In total I found 456 entries for  this list, 291 from Europe and 165 from the rest of the world. The english speaking countries of course have a huge chunk of this, but that is why I did it by country. ;) No, it is not perfect but a good start for your getting in touch with Europe. See at the bottom for information about adding / removing people.

And thanks to  Meral Akin-Hecke you can now quickly browse through the list on twitter! Just follow the link to http://twitter.com/kigo/leweb-tweets-english/members and see which Tweeps you are not yet following!

Europe

Austria (4)

Belgium (10)

Switzerland (18)

Czechoslovakia (1)

Czech Republic (6)

Germany (26)

Denmark (6)

Spain (5)

Finland (8)

France (55)

Greece (4)

Ireland (17)

Israel (4)

Italy (5)

Netherlands (8)

Norway (6)

Poland (2)

Romania (3)

Russian Federation (1)

Sweden (10)

Slovenia (3)

Slovakia (1)

  • Szabolcs Gáborjáni-Szabó – @szgaborjani – Slovak Telekom

United Kingdom (88)

North America

Canada (14)

United States (139)

Rest of the World

Australia (2)

Brazil (1)

China P.Rep. (2)

Jordan (2)

Japan (1)

Fr. Polynesia (1)

Singapore (3)

If I missed somebody who is also attending Leweb 2010, please add yourself to the comments but note that you should only add yourself if you do tweet nearly completly in English. Also the other way around – if somebody is in here who does not belong, please note as well, so I can take them out. Please note that while in Paris I will not be able to edit this list.

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Part 2: Getting ready for #Leweb: Get on twitter, download the information and plan your time

Posted on December 5, 2010 under europeanevents

 

leweb-2010[Part 1 is about preparing your Presdo Match profile for #Leweb]

It is only a few more days until Leweb and the weekend is a good time to start thinking about networking and how to use the time in Paris. The program looks impressive but as usual, Leweb and other conferences of this size are best used for networking and connecting with like minded or interesting people.

First things first: Networking is a real skill and there are people out there, who are not only are really good at it, they are also charming and exciting to talk to and with. Meet Colette Ballou (@coletteballou), who’s article “Hold on – who are you again? Networking tips in time for Le Web” is not just good for Leweb but for every other conference.  Go over there, print it out and put it in the folder with stuff to read on the plane.  She describes mostly on site stuff, mine is a little bit more about what you should do before.

Let’s get started with the conference tool number one: Twitter.

Get on with twitter and look at the searches

  • Don’t have a twitter account yet? Get one or you will hate yourself because you missed out on all the real fun and more importantly on all relevant information. It is okay just to have one for this event and then stop it again. It is also the quickest way to post photos from the event.
  • Learn how to use the search: Visit search.twitter.com and enter the term “Leweb OR leweb10“. This is where all the information will be in real-time or to be more precise already is. Not Facebook, not the web: conference communication is on twitter.
  • I have not tested this, but if you use the Twitter app with your Facebook profile, it should automatically connect you with all the people in your FB who are also on twitter. Easier version: Use the participants list and click on their twitter profiles and follow them just for this.
  • Private messages can only be sent to people you are connected on both sides, but most people I know do have a so called Vanity search setup (take a look at mine). If you know the name of a person, use their name with an @ in front and they will see it. If in doubt, use their full name, people usually have that included in their search.
  • If you are really lost, now is the time to find somebody you know and bribe them to show you the few things you really need to know about twitter. This should take about 5-10  minutes.

Prepare your mobile devices

  • If your social network of choice allows downloading your contact information, now would be the time to sync it. Don’t forget to add your mobile phone number with country code!
  • Make bookmarks for relevant sites.
    When at Leweb, you do not have the time or Wi-Fi access to surf as you usually do. Quick solution: Visit all sites you find relevant and then mail yourself this link list. Access this from the mobile phone one by one and make a bookmark.
  • Install all relevant software on your mobile devices and test in your home network, if Twitter, Facebook and co work. During the event, this software will help you save data transfer. Yes, you could use the mobile websites but these apps are much better and usually they can reuse lists and searches you have setup before on the desktop tools or website. This could be a good time to test out the mobile versions of Seesmic, the company of Loic Le Meur. It is also a good test if you have all passwords with you.
  • Test to upload a photo to your sharing site of choice. Tip: Use twitter and the build in feature to send to sites like Twitpic.
  • Setup your mobiles for offline use. Let’s not kid ourselves: This is a conference, where each attendee is at least going to have one gadget with them with Wi-Fi, probably more. It is always a struggle to connect on these events and usually it does not work when you need it.

Examples of information you should be downloading

  • email addresses + phone numbers of people you want to meet
  • screenshots of maps with all relevant locations
  • the program and the participants list
  • addresses of venues of the parties, including the trip information going there
  • reservations for hotels / flights
  • given the current weather information you might also want to add information from the airline you are using
  • [what did I forget? please add in the comments]

This is best done into a simple text file which you also can print out in smaller print to take with you. I prefer the file based Dropbox for this:  It syncs with your hard drive and has mobile apps for most platforms. I like to save my information to a special travel folder then sync it from there to the different devices I use. F.e. Goodreader for the iPad does connect to Dropbox.

For screenshots I have been using Snagit for years, its profile feature is worth the price alone. My travel profile saves all screenshots automatically to my travel folder. This way I can go crazy on the screenshots and know they all will be saved where I need them. I not only use it for images but also screenshots of text I want to remember. If you don’t want to pay right now, think about testing out Jing, the little free brother of Snagit. My friend Betsy Weber (@betsyweber) is the evangelist for Techsmith and also at Leweb; she has lots of experiences and connections in Europe not just for screen casting.

Decide how to spend your time

Look through the program and decide, which slots you really cannot live without. Everything else is optional and the time can be used in a more productive manner. This includes the parties: In theory it sounds like a great ideas. But as Leweb is such a huge event, chances are that most of them will be overcrowded and loud. Spend your time with others and don’t be shy to ask others if they want to go dinner some place. If in doubt: Go to bed early and rather use that additional two hours in the morning at breakfast to meet people (and this is coming from somebody who loathes events starting this early). Back to the event.

Leweb offers a unique choice of attendees from all over Europe (yes, and the world) and should be used as such. Decide what you are interested in for yourself and let others help you find counterparts in other European countries. You don’t want exchange with other Europeans? Think again: Even if you do not want to connect, you could learn a lot from them and apply what they do locally in your country. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Start with the official blogger list and move on to the participants list. Don’t forget the workshops, startup presentation plus demo booth and the sponsors. Put some time aside to go through the exhibition hall because even if you are not interested in the products; do not forget that the people there might be able to connect you with others you are highly interested in. As the vendors who is there and if they can connect with somebody. A good start is to look again at the participants list or choose the live version on Amiando where you also can search.

Which leads us to the most important tool of the event: Presdo Match. I have collected some tips on how to “Part 1: Prepare your Presdo Match profile for #Leweb” in the next article.

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