Category: Tech Stories

Early October, Antony was interviewed by The Pittsburgh Technology Council‘s Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting for TechVibe Radio  104.7 FM News Talk . You can catch the full interview here.

data-text=”Head of Lettuce Interview on TechVibe Radio” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/10/head-of-lettuce-interview-on-techvibe-radio/”
data-via=”" >

Recently we were invited to attend a few prestigious local events, such as, the Duran Duran concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall and the Tampa Bay Lightning season opener game. Both events recognized the importance of social media and the local community influencers in Tampa Bay.

In my experience at the Duran Duran concert I was blown away by the interactivity not only before the concert with the #DuranSocial hashtag but live at the concert with the #DuranLive hashtag, the band themselves encouraged the audience to tweet during the concert. Not to mention it’s darn cool to see your tweet scroll by while Duran Duran is playing, making the audience a temporary Rockstar.

Tampa’s local hockey team the Tampa Bay Lightning (@TbLightning) started the #BeTheThunder hashtag this season, for the season opener they invited almost a hundred local twitter users encouraging them to tweet during the game. As you can see the results say it all, in the matter of 24 hours they generated enough buzz to power one of the new Tesla coils in the recently renovated St. Pete Times Forum.

 See full report from Hashtracking

One of the biggest questions we get at HOLMedia is “Well, we did that hashtag thing you told us to do…but what does it matter to us?” Here’s where it matters, not only are you giving the event attendees a way to filter other messages from the event, but you are giving the event a measurable component through using the hashtag. “But how can we measure a hashtag?”, at HOLM we recommend using Hashtracking.com it’s an easy way to see the following.

•       Number of Tweets Generated

•           Number of Impressions

•           Reach of Audience

•           Top 10 Twitter Users by number of impressions

•           Top 10 Twitter Users by number of tweets.

As you can see our very own blue queen of buzz, Amber Osborne aka Miss Destructo (@missdestructo) takes the runner up in hundred of thousands of impressions right behind the official twitter accounts of @duranduran and @tblightning. In just a few hours of an event you can have a community of influencers getting more potential eyeballs through twitter using a hashtag than the number of people in most decent size cities. Treat your local community well, educate them how to use hashtags for your event and they will in return create an army of buzzing twitter bees spreading your praises.

Again, huge thanks to @DuranDuran and @TbLightning for embracing social media, being aware of your passionate communities and inviting us out for these memorable experiences. Also thanks to Hashtracking.com , as they have been very helpful in tracking these metrics with us.

data-text=”Using Hashtags to Track Your Event” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/10/using-hashtags-to-track-your-event/”
data-via=”" >

People who know me, know I have an affinity for Barcamp, what you might not know is why, or what is barcamp for that matter. Let me start with the 2nd question first.

What is Barcamp? Barcamp as defined in Wikipedia is, “an international network of user-generated conferences (or unconferences). They are open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.”  See also this great article which says BarCamp Tampa Bay is an unconference, which means that there are presentations throughout the day but they are done by willing attendees instead of pre-planned speakers..

My definition of Barcamp is, an event where individuals come in the spirit of sharing, teaching and learning. In addition there is a lot of networking. Most Barcamps start with everyone showing up first thing in the morning, and then anyone feeling the desire to share knowledge, signs up to do a presentation. There is a moment of magic where the organizers (all volunteers from the community) assign talks to rooms and time slots, and wallah you have a schedule of talks that are amazingly relevant.

Some rights reserved by ryantxr, click pict for info.

Now let’s talk about why I love Barcamp, simply put, Barcamp is what launched me down the path to create Head of Lettuce media In 2009 I had finished my degree in Organizational Innovations and was trying to decide what I wanted to do with it, at the same time I had an obsession with Social Media and new emerging technologies. I heard about BarcampTampa 2009 and as a past trainer was fascinated by the idea of an Unconference, so I went. I discovered a tech community that was open and sharing, and very welcoming. During that event I made the commitment to move forward in developing my idea into a company.

If you’re on the fence, come, you won’t regret it, it will be an experience like you’ve never had. If you have a tech company, consider becoming a sponsor, as it is a great way to give back to the tech community of Tampa, this is my second year being involved as a volunteer and sponsor. To sign up go to http://barcamptampabay.org/ .

data-text=”BarCampTampa” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/08/barcamptampa/”
data-via=”" >

As many of you know, Amber and I were part of the original Foursquare day team here in Tampa with several others from the Tampa Tech and Social Media communities.  Here is a great interview we had Foursquare Day after spending some time with the Mayor of Tampa. Here are some of the Picts we took this year.

data-text=”Foursquare Day with the Mayor of Tampa” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/05/foursquare-day-with-the-mayor-of-tampa/”
data-via=”" >

I decided to write this article to give everyone, who is interested, the history and story behind the #KloutDrinkingGame.  The game started as my way of poking some innocent fun at a friend (@mitchneff) and some others at #UsGuys who were taking Klout way to serious. Now, don’t think I am disrespecting Klout, as I am a huge supporter of them and PeerIndex and any other way of measuring social media accounts, especially because it makes it easy for those considering hiring a social media company to know whether or not they are talking to someone who really understands the business. They validate us at Head of Lettuce Media as authentic social media people, unlike the speaker I was contaced by the other day who talks about social media, but only has a Klout of 20, By the way the average Klout score is in the 20′s acording to Klout CEO Joe Fernandez.

"Klout!" and Drink

The game is simple, when a conversation breaks out, or when you instigate one, drink every time someone mentions Klout. The winner is everyone who plays, and it really does not matter what you drink although we do know Joe plays with Whiskey, that’s it. Have fun and don’t get stupid with the game as it is just a game for fun.  Lastly when playing, use the hasthtag #KloutDrinkingGame or #KloutDG so others can join in and play, after all it is a social game. If you don’t drink, consider M & M’s or Skittles

data-text=”#KloutDrinkingGame” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/05/kloutdrinkinggame/”
data-via=”" >

Dan Auito from leadingedgebusiness.tv interviewed Antony on Social media, turned out to be a great interview, other then Antony’s name being spelled wrong, but with video like this, I think he will live with it. By the way if you are looking for quality video, consider talking to Dan, you can see from the quality after the jump… that they rock.

Continue reading ““The Head of Lettuce” – interviewed” »

data-text=”“The Head of Lettuce” – interviewed” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/02/the-head-of-lettuce-interviewed/”
data-via=”" >

This past December I was invited to submit some writing by Justin McCullough who was working on a collaborative work from an impressive list of Twitter veterans, not sure how I made the list, but honored that I did as the finished product, Embracing Twitter, came out beautiful.  What’s even better is that the Head of Lettuce was not represented once, but twice in this e-book.

Of course, nothing about Twitter would be complete without some input from “The Blue Cheese”, Amber Osborne, AKA MissDestructo

Justin, thanks for including us in such a great project.

data-text=”Embracing Twitter” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2011/01/embracing-twitter/”
data-via=”" >

Ok kiddo’s, recently I have been getting out more and more talking to people about how Head of Lettuce media can help them in their social media needs, and one question seems to keep coming up, so I thought I would share for everyone who wanted to know, but never got a chance to ask, and that is where did I get the name Head of Lettuce.

As I have mentioned before, I use to be the National Speaker for Realtor.com, and I did talks all over the country in every state but 5, well, when speaking I would tell the story of when I use to sell real estate in the early 90′s. I was doing color brochures (for those of you that don’t remember the 90′s, there were no color printers like there are today, and color photocopies were new and expensive) on all my houses and I was paying about $4 per copy for color photocopied brochures, which did look awesome by the way:) . Well, all the other agents were using black and white photocopies, some on stroke inducing neon paper. I would walk in to discuss selling a house and I would throw down the two brochures and ask “how do you want your house sold?”, they would always point to my color brochures and say, “we want that”. My response was always “Good news, I’m the only one doing those”. I would then turn to the agents in the audience, that I was telling the story to, and say even a Head of Lettuce could tell the difference between what I was doing and what my competition was doing.

The fact of the matter is that when it comes to all the elements of “Social Media” there are way to many facets for most people to understand or follow it all as studying social media is a full time study, but even a Head of Lettuce can tell you it is important, and you need to be involved in the conversation. Hence the “Head of Lettuce” was born, now go tell your friends

data-text=”Story behind the Name Head of Lettuce media” data-url=”http://headoflettucemedia.com/2010/08/story-behind-the-name-head-of-lettuce-media/”
data-via=”" >