Sessions

BlogOn 2004 Boot Camp

BlogOn's half-day pre-conference boot camp is designed for senior level technology, media, investors and communications professionals eager to understand the ins and outs of social media. You'll learn the core concepts and become familiar with the tools of social media from leaders in the social media space: Susan Mernit, Partner at 5ive (blog); Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext (blog); JD Lasica, author, journalist and (blog); Halley Suitt, Senior Editor, Worthwhile Magazine (blog); Steve Rubel, VP of Client Services of CooperKatz & Company (blog) and Mary Hodder, of Technorati, (blog).

This interactive and intensive session is an accelerated hands-on course in social media. You'll be coached by experts to set up and converse on a blog, send an RSS feed, use a newsreader to read content from many publishers and see how your own content is used by others, use a wiki to collaborate with others, and make your own social networking profile.

Social media aggregate interaction between people, both in the room and across the internet. We'll show you how your use of social media enters these conversations, is tracked, and others see you and respond to your activities so that you can respond back. In addition to hands-on experience with the fundamental tools of social media, you'll also see first-hand demonstrations of moblogging, video and audio blogging, as well as examples of blogs used for knowledge management applications, a business-customer relationships, and public relations.

In the second half of the session, you'll learn how these components of social media come together into new marketable products. You'll cooperate with other participants and session leaders to develop a new social media product with a small team, with individual attention to the special needs of this kind of media. The process will highlight what is important in social media product offerings to both the business and user community, as well as what areas of product development are different for social media.

You will leave the Boot Camp with a greater understanding of what you need to do to succeed as you make social media products within your company.

To keep this session highly interactive, the Boot Camp is limited to 30 participants. We recommend you register early to insure your place at this highly valuable workshop.