Have you always wanted to be a mentor? Are you looking for a mentor? If you answered yes to either of these you should check off the happy hour kickoff event KCITP is putting on next week here in Kansas City.
The event will take place at McFadden's in the P&L district from 5:30 to 7:30pm on Wed April 6th.
A great mentor will positively change your career…and an inquisitive mentee can reinvigorate passion for what you do best! Regardless of which role you’re looking to fulfill, our goal is to get you connected…and we’ve invited local experts in local experts in the fields below to participate!
Each physical area of McFadden’s will be assigned a specific topic:
- Software Development/Architecture
- Security/Network
- Infrastructure/Systems Administration/DBA
- Project Management/Agile/Lean methodologies
- Startups/Entrepreneurship
- Social Media
Space is limited so make sure you REGISTER and if you are gonna be there I will see ya there as I plan to attend the event. Overall sounds like a good time and a great way to do a little networking in the process.
Be sure to check out KCITP on Twitter and on the web for more information.
One of my favorite speakers at Free State Social was Sarah Evans who spoke on How To Make Your Brand Stand Out Online.
It's busy online and everyone is competing for your attention. One out of every three online Americans update their social media statuses at least once a week. So how do you stand out or make an impression? Sarah's goal is always to share practical advice you can apply or modify. She'll share nine ways you can stand out online in a non-spammy way. Hear a personal case study to see what "Find an opportunity to showcase what you do best" looks like in action. Be ready to participate during this session...Sarah always likes to get the audience involved.
(note : i missed a little of the end when it came to question time due to my flip cam dying)
Are you one of the millions of people whose lives have been ruined by a never-ending torrent of tweets, friend requests and ‘Which kind of pasta are you?' quizzes? Then it's time you joined the Social Media Addicts Association.
SMAA is run by reformed social media addicts who all had the courage to stand up and admit to their problem. Will you stop poking people you haven't seen since college, and join us?
The Social Media Club of KC had their monthly breakfast yesterday. This month we had the opportunity to go to the Kansas City Cafe [twitter] which is a pretty kool place with some great food and a great staff. So check them out sometime.
This month we got to hear from Whitney Mathews who works for Spiral16. She talked about tools she uses professionally as well as personally. Check out the video below...
As always it was a great breakfast with some new faces which is always kool. If you have not had a chance to come out to a breakfast we hope to see you out at one of the future events. It is always a great time with a bunch of great people.
Jump over to the website for more information on the group as well as future events as well as you can follow the smckc on twitter or the hashtag #smckc.
I recently purchased an rss pillow from Craftsquatch and thought you know what would be kool is to get other pillows with social media themes. Well not much later I discovered you can now get pillows with the FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Myspace logo's!!! How kool is that?
Now I just need to get some cash together to purchase these and turn my living room into a social media mecca!
So this morning we had the monthly social media club kansas city breakfast at Crown Center here in Kansas City. There was a great crowd with some new faces as well as the regulars.
We split into two groups with one talking about social media and the law (I believe) which I think Chris (aka Duckman1221) took some video and I was in the group that talked a little video blogging and a little social media tools.
As I had mentioned it was a great breakfast and if you were unable to attend here is a little bit of the action and we hope to see you back soon and for all the new faces we hope to see you again.
local Kansas City company Spiral 16 recently did a presentation on how social media monitoring can benefit your business - and how to do it successfully. Below is the presentation they did.
Some great information and if you are a company looking to understand or get a better grip of your social media presence I highly recommend you check out Spiral 16.
Going to the social media breakfasts here in KC I have discovered some great companies right here in the area that can help companies or individuals looking to jump into the social media scene.
Below is a list of some of those companies in the area with their twitter accounts listed as well as some of the individuals that are a part of each of them. Be sure to check them out.
Ideas And Angles Ideas and Angles helps people and businesses in Kansas City connect with their customers on a new level. Leveraging social media tools and emerging technologies to assist marketing efforts. [twitter]
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The Social Lites The Social Lites, Inc. was formed in early 2008 as a solution for businesses and organizations looking to successfully implement social media and networking into their web marketing campaigns. Our goal is to help your company achieve a strong web presence by helping you correctly utilize social media to promote your products, services, and ideas. By building relationships with your audience through social media, you can increase sales, gain supporters for your cause, and attain better search engine results. We can show you how!
LightThread LightThread is a next generation, services, platform and intellectual venture capital company specializing in strategy, innovative applications and building connections between businesses. [twitter]
Spiral16 Spiral16 is an informatic software development company with one goal: to create innovative business intelligence tools that help you manage the impact of your enterprise.[twitter]
Ok kids it is that time....time for our monthly social media club kc breakfast. If you are into social media or looking to learn about social media or maybe just want to have breakfast with a group of awesome people then this is the place to be.
We will be meeting at First Watch in Westport around 7:30am Friday (2/6) so make sure you jump over to the SMCKC site and rsvp so we can get an early count of how many to expect.
Local company Spiral16 put a little video blog together highlighting the Social Media Club KC meetup from last night. I even make a little appearance where you can see my smiling mug!!!
Great job guys!
Time for a little plug: Spiral16 enables businesses to discover patterns and relationships hidden among large data sets by organizing them through various interactive displays.
Last night there was food, there was beer, and most of all there was a huge crowd. Nicholson Kovac was the location and the audience was hovering around 90 or so.
Social Media Club KC put on a meetup for those in the community who are interested in all types of social media and the social web.
I got the chance to be on a panel that discussed using twitter to help your business and what was kool about it was in social media fashion the panel pretty much grew to the whole room. Social media at its finest!
The crew from the Life In The Tubes Video Podcast were there with their cameras so once that video makes it's way on the interweb you can bet I will be sharing it with everyone.
Are you interested in learning about social media? Do you use it now and want to find like minded people to discuss your thoughts and ideas? Well then we invite you to come to our events some time. We have an events page on our site keeping you upto date on what is going on and they are open to all in the public.
I have to say over the last few months we have seen incredible growth in attendance and participation and with some more great events coming up in the Kansas City area like Startup Weekend and in the midwest with Big Omaha we are really seeing the region grow and make its presence felt in tech/social media arena. It is exciting times and I am glad to be a part of getting things going.
If you follow my blog or my twitter stream you know tonight is the big SMCKC meetup here in Kansas City and yours truly will be on a panel talking about twitter.
Now if you are in the KC area you can jump over to our site and get the details on the event but if you are unable to attend or you are outside of the area we will be streaming the event live online. Streaming should start around 6pm-ish central or 7pm eastern.
I think we are up to around 70 attending with an additional 15 or so maybe coming so look forward to meeting some new people as well as seeing you all online.
[note : during the panel if you have a question feel free to send us a message with the hashtag #smckc and we will see your question in the stream.]
This week I have a couple of events I will be attending here in the KC area and would love to meet some fellow twitter users, readers of my blog, new peeps in general.
First we have the SMCKC meetup thursday night at Nicholson Kovac where the topic of discussion will be using twitter/social media with business and yours truly will be on the panel to discuss this topic...now I know you are saying I really don't have any experience in that area but hey I do have experience with twitter and using for my own personal branding as (jeff)isageek as well as you first need to understand twitter/social media tools in order to use them for your business needs so I think I will fit in nicely there. Should be a good time and a great discussion.
Second we have the tweetup/meetup/calling all geeks for the pool hall tweetup at Side Pockets in Lenexa Saturday night. This is just a come and hang out, meet some fellow social media/twitter/blogger/brightkite ect ect. types.
Both events should be a blast and if you get a chance drop on by. Hope to see you all there!
First off let me say sorry for the delay in getting this video loaded and up on the interweb. Seems like everything that could go wrong did. With that said it is now ready for all to view. I missed the last few minutes due to running out of room on my flip but got most of what was a great conversation.
This took place at our monthly kansas city social media club breakfast on the 9th and we had a bunch of new faces. It has been great the past couple months seeing so many people show up. I remember the 1st breakfast we had where there were like 5!
If you get a chance come out and join us some time. For more info on meetups and to find out who is a part of the group check out the SMCKC site.
Just wanted to pimp out an event I will be attending on the 22nd of January and will actually be on a panel talking about twitter! If you are in the KC area would love to see you at the event and if you are out there on the interweb we will be streaming it live as well. See the details below.
Ed Roberts, founding member of the Kansas City Chapter of the Social Media Club and co-owner of LRCWeather LLC, will kick off the meeting with a social media monitoring overview.
A business panel from large enterprise to non-profit will discuss Twitter for business.
Right before Halloween I got the chance to check out a new concept by AMC Theatres called "Fork And Screen" which brings the concept of movie night to a new level.
Now for AMC they saw a way to help promote their brand as well as promote a new product by reaching out to the blogosphere here in Kansas City and it appears that it worked great for them.
I asked Justin Gardner the other day how the new concept was working and he came back with "It’s actually been going extremely well both from an operational and promotional standpoint."
For me this is a great example of a company taking their brand, using social media to promote, and then seeing the success. Just an example I went to the tour/free screening and loved it, I therefore in turn blogged, tweeted, and took video to share with everyone about my experience and then the next day went to a local tech event and talked about the new kool setup AMC was bring to the public.
Great job AMC and great job at using social media (something more companies need to do). Below is a list of links from other local bloggers so check those out and see social media at work.
I saw one of my fellow bloggers I follow Jessie Stay had the opportunity to be on a panel of tweeters recently in Utah and since I am always up for listening to how people are using technology/social media as well as just great discussion I figured I would throw the video up on my site for you to enjoy.
So check out the video and listen in on some great conversation that took place at the coworkutah tweetup.
So there ya have it!!! Isn't it great how technology and social media has allowed us to attend events, revisit events, and share events that are going on around the country and around the world even.
As I mentioned before I am always excited to go to local tweetups and events here in the midwest and its great to be able to follow others where every they might be.
My buddy and fellow Social Geeks panelist Wayne Sutton hosted a very good and informative panel in Charlotte, NC with some local social media types there today.
From Wayne:
I’m excited to announce tomorrow’s live show on WayneSutton.TV I’ll be facilitating a conversation on Social Media, PR 2.0, blogging for community building, online journalism and social networks with some of the leaders of Charlotte’s social media community.
I think it is kool to see other events around the country to see others thoughts in the area of social media, trends that are maybe different in other areas, and just a way to find some new people to follow out there on the interweb.
At the Social Media KC breakfast this past Friday the discussion led by the gang from the Social Lites was on the subject of public relations and Social Media. I made sure I had my camera to catch the round table discussion so check it out below.
This took place at our monthly breakfast here in Kansas City. If you are in the Kansas City area and a fan or user of social media or just looking to get into it feel free to join us at future breakfasts or events. You can get all the up to date news on the website socialmediakc.com .
I wanted to take this chance to pimp out a new video podcast created by some buddies of mine here in the Kansas City area called Life In The Tubes.
Life In The Tubes is a video podcast that talks about social media and cloud computing. The crew is comprised of Tom Jenkins (techguytom), Brian Caylor (Caylorb), and Chris Duckett (Duckett1221).
In the first episode they discuss the following topics:
As with anything new there are gonna be some growing pains, changes, and mistakes but this is a great group of guys with a passion for what they are talking about so give them a few episodes and I am sure you will be happy with the knowledge and information you will get.
Recently all of us social media types got together for our monthly breakfast and we had a great turn out and some great conversation.
If you are in the Kansas City area and a user, fan, or just interested in social media please join us...its free to everyone, casual and very laid back.
Introductions at breakfast
Upcoming Events
Dec 5th - Our next breakfast meetup (time and location TBA)
Dec 18th - Social Media KC Christmas party (time and location TBA)
Jan 22nd - Next evening event with a speaker (time and location TBA)
As you can see we have some events coming up in the next few months but they are still in the early stages of planning. We have a few groups getting together to iron out the plans for each of the events.
Sponsor/Hosts?
Are you a local company that would like to host/sponser the group or a meetup? please feel free to contact me and I can get you together with the right people to speak with.....any help or venues that we can get are always appreciated.
We are also currently working on getting a new website/blog setup but for now you can visit us at socialmediakc.com
I have added two new places on the web that those who are part of the Social Media Club in Kansas City or those interested in getting more information on events and such can visit.
First I created a Facebook group for all to join. Facebook is one of the biggest social networks out there right now so it just seems like a given to put something on there to keep in contact with each other as well as to find new social media types out there that my not know we even exist.
Second I created a Flickr group after we discussed setting on up to host all the pics of events we have had or for future events to share with all.
This is all for now....keep your eyes on your rss feeds as there are many projects in the works as well as some kool events coming up in the social media kc space.
Its that time kids when all us social media types get together for breakfast. This month we are gonna meet at the First Watch in Olathe (11/7).
If you get a chance please join us as we always love new faces and if you been to one before come back as we would love to chat some more. It is open to anyone so don't feel like you are not welcome.
Think we are gonna start meeting around 7:30 and will be hanging out for the morning so if you cant make it early then come by a little later.
Is your company looking to jump into the social media arena? Do you need some guidance? Maybe you are in the midwest and looking for some local companies who can help you jump onto the scene? Well if you are then you are in luck as I have a list of 3 companies that could be great resources for you.
The first two are located in my city of Kansas City and they are The Social Lites and Ideas and Angles. The other is out of Des Moines and they are known as Lava Row.
The Social Lites (Blog) Jennifer Bailey, Christina Maki, and Shelby Garlock
Great ladies who have a passion for what they do. I actually recently did a video of Christina's presentation at Highlight Midwest you might want to check out.
Ideas And Angles (Blog) Zachary Cobb, Chris Culbertson, and Aaron Henderson
As with The Social Lites a group of great guys who really have a passion for social media.
Lava Row (Blog) Nathan T. Wright and Hillary Brown
Of the three I have to say I do not know the Lava Row gang as well but from the feedback I get from others they have a great reputation and would be another great resource.
There you have it a great starting point if you are looking for some companies that can help you get started with social media and if you are a local company in the midwest a great way to promote a local product.
Know of any other Social Media Strategist here in the Midwest that could be added to the list? Leave a comment and we can get a nice list going.
