Recap of the #140conf in Los Angeles

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Recap of the #140conf in Los Angeles

I arrived at the Henry Ford Music Box Theatre 15 minutes before registration – I’ve lived in LA long enough to know you leave early if you want to make sure you arrive on time, thank you LA traffic. The theatre is a very cool place; I was most impressed with the interior, which is quite gothic and includes blown-up scenes from Hieronymus Bosch paintings.

I finally registered, talked with a couple people and waited for Jeff Pulver to open the conference.  This conference followed the same format as the one last year: individuals speak from 7 to 10 minutes, panels last 15 to 20 minutes – this gives the conference a fast pace and, like Twitter, forces compression of ideas into a tight form.

And the pics are at the end – all taken with my iPhone, which isn’t good in bright light/low light it turns out.

And now for my notes, which I assembled from my tweets (all tagged #140conf of course, culled using Twitter Search) and some other notes I took in EverNote, my favorite note-taking tool on my iPhone:

Eric Weaver talked about social media and advertising:  interest and originality beat knowledge and facts in social advertising, link of social and broadcast, the emotional hook matters, and social media can extend traditional marketing.

There was a interesting panel on influence in social media.  I really liked this comment from the panel:

– RT @earthxplorer: RT @mayhemstudios: RT @MCDUMLER @tap11 True klout comes from relevancy not celebrity.

The panel included the CEO of Klout, a tool I use to monitor how I’m “doing” (am I as active as I want to be, engaging people enough – I get busy like anyone else).

Twitter can be useful for finding researchers and validating emotional style. (@Mojojohanna)

The Kodak Chief Blogger was up next – she mentioned the Kodak Chief Listener, @KodakCL (who said hi and who I’m now following) – this appears to be a growing title for the person tasked to follow social media conversations about the company.

The following panel on the effect of the real-time web on news gathering was very interesting – I now get a lot of my news from Twitter, and I loved this one:

– Twitter is a giant tip sheet (for news reported) @webjournalist

And since we can’t be absolutely sure that something is true, @dangillmor suggested a “slow news approach.”

The big issue is curation, which came up often over the 2 day conference.

Stacey Soleil (@staceysoleil) interviewed Robert Moran (@RobertMoranLA) on social media and autism; its neat to think that social media might provide a better alternative for some communications for autistic people.

Luke Renner (@firesideint) then talked about the positive impact of Twitter during the Haitian earthquake: “Twitter ssaved lives.” I also loved his quote, “Each one of you is a message in a bottle.”

The cast of the TV show Look talked about the show’s premise, that pervasive video is changing who we are and what we can do, and what privacy means, as well as the impact of social media on advertising and spreading the word about the show. Favorite quote: “We are the new network, you are the new network.”  Another message from this session: “View of the world through the ‘eyes’ of surveillance cameras – big brother – and Flip, cell video – little brother.”

Sol Lipman (@thesolster) announced that 12seconds.tv would be shutting down; I remember when @justlikeanovel posted a few 12 second videos, I thought it was a great simple way for her to reach out to all of us. I hope something else comes along, because the current video offerings I’ve seen are not social, they are “store ‘n find.”

Loved this quote from Shuki Lehavi (@slehavi): “The only company you can build is the company you build. Build what you have in mind.”

Sarah Kay Hoffman, who I got to meet before her pitch, gave an excellent presentation on how she used online and social media to get a job during the recession by aggressively self-branding; I urge you to visit digitalmention.com/… to see what she did, its pretty amazing.

I liked @CathyBrooks first ‘rule’: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

To break through, your message must do one of these 4 things (from @TiaDobi): “Comfort, amuse, make me sad, make me dream.”

Very nice Q&A with @ilenechaiken about social media’s impact on TV, handling negative comments.

As always, @kevinpollak is very very funny!

“One Day on Earth” is up, this is a great idea, volunteer at http://onedayonearth.com (@onedayonearth).

I got to meet Khayyam Wakil (@iamkhayyam) – really cool dude! Got two meaningful quotes from him: “The challenge of emotional connection without guilt” and “Social media doesn’t replace traditional activism – it provides more ways to find people.”

I attended the first #140conf in LA last year and enjoyed it immensely. This conference was also very cool – lots of great speakers, ideas and networking in one place.

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