Social Fresh

This past week I volunteered at a social media event called Social Fresh. Why volunteer you ask, well first and foremost, it got me in free, but in all honesty I would have gone either way. It has been a while, but when I was with Floyd Wickman as his business manager I often was involved in events like Social Fresh, but geared for real estate agents, and while at Realtor.com I spoke at many events, so I thought I might have something to offer that would benefit the event and those attending it. Well I like to think I helped make a difference as I caught and helped fix problems before they arose. One of the benefits of being a volunteer is that you get a type of exposure to an event that you could not experience any other way; While many of the speakers were waiting for their opportunity to speak, I was often left alone with them which was a great time to have some one-on-one conversations, which I loved. I discussed the Head of Lettuce with a few of them and received a lot of encouragement. The volunteers also wore bright green shirts that made us easy for others to approach and being conversations with us, which I believe helped me make more contacts then I might have on my own.

One of the very entertaining moments for me was looking out on the room of attendees who were mostly looking at their computers or smart phones during presentations, and you knew it was not a matter of being rude, but a sign of how much they were paying attention and tweeting notes or questions to the speakers. As a Speaker, I think I would have a hard time addressing an audience that was not watching me. Unfortunately though as a volunteer I was often worrying about the even so I was not able to give as much attention to the talks as I would have liked, hopefully someone will be posting video of the talks so I can catch what I missed.

If you love social media, there is nothing better then being in a room full of people that share that same love with you, and I highly recommend you attend an event like Social Fresh. I have not attended enough social media events to say how this one rated, but I think even if you spent the day locked in a basement with these people, it would be a great event. If you are someone planning an event, feel free to tap into my experience as I do believe I have ideas on how an event like this could be better.

I will be writing on several topics that came up at Social fresh over the next few weeks, so hopefully I will be giving a little more meat in some future posts.