Morning came quick. Perhaps too quick. Nevertheless, rising this particular Friday morning, October 24, was not the laborious chore that I would normally struggle through. It was the first day of Podcamp Hawaii. As I munched on my Frosted Flakes cereal, I ran my checklist of needed gear and made sure I got one of my Podcamp Hawaii shirts out. I worked out my plan of attack to tackle traffic and ended up leaving at about 7:30.

While it wasn’t a smooth ride, I got to the Hawaii Convention Center at a reasonable time. Parking was easy to find and was given directions to the location of the event. After a very quick check in, I spotted Dave Zuls and met his co-worker Kathi. I also met Nathan Kam, Chris Heuer and Kristi Wells. Then it was off to the opening ceremony and start Podcamp Hawaii!

The opening ceremony began with a Hawaiian chant and a couple of hula dances. With a short speech from Roxanne Darling done, we began. Everyone went off on their own path to check out the first discussions of the day. My first was “Introduction to Social Media,” which had Chris Heuer as the speaker. It was more of a discussion rather than just him talking, which was great.

A couple questions asked (with answers):

* How to bring more users to websites via social media?
** Interactivity with customers. Post a basic overview of services and allow potential customers to ask questions.
** Blog posts
* How to get started? / How do people get to blog/web site?
** Start relationships one at a time. Networking.
** Swag is social objects, stuff we can give each other that also helps with networking.

What I’ve learned from the session:

* Social media isn’t what it is but what you do with it. Connect with other people.
* Social media is tearing down the walls that keep us apart and changing the rules that have kept us from being human inside our companies.
* Era of conversation
* Reputation is more important than ever
* Social media principles
** Be: human (be yourself), aware (be smart), honest (have integrity), respectful (live by the golden rule), participant (contribute value), open (be an agent of change; show customers you are listening), courageous (be willing to fail)

My next session was “How to set up a Wordpress blog” with Roxanne Darling as the speaker. The particular method discussed entailed setting up an account with wordpress.com and that’s it! The method I’m used to (installing it on a hosted server) was briefly touched upon. The interesting bit I learned was that CNN.com runs wordpress. There were questions about customizing Wordpress and some concerns about blogging, which were going to be covered on Day 2. With that, we took a break for lunch.

The food was overpriced but, being too lazy to walk elsewhere, I got the hotdog combo. A can of soda and a bottle of water were both priced at two bucks. Ouch! However, if you wanted a drinkie there were water coolers situated throughout the hall.

After lunch, the next event I attended was “Finding Users, Building Community” held by Kristi Wells. The key points to building a community (while mostly with a business tilt, I see also applying to personal) were:

* Participate
* Relinquish Control
* Educate
* Communicate
* Appreciate
* Find brand champions
* Communities are not built over night
* Participate on their platform (blogs, groups, etc.)
* Provide education about a product or service
* Communication is key
* Dedicate time each day to review what is being said about you/your company
** You get what you put into a community
* There are many tools available to help with community and communication (blog, video, picture, etc.)
** Tools are not meant to replace but augment

The next session was an introduction to Alltop by Neenz. If you don’t know what Alltop is, it’s basically and aggregation service listing the top news of a given topic. Learned about the start of the service and some things planned for the future, like a “MyAlltop” feature.

Sadly, the final hours came and I spent my time in the “Making Personal Connections” discussion hosted by Charlene Amsden and Ryan Ozawa. Wonderful stories of how they started and why they continue with an online presence and making friends via the Internet. Most pleasant of all stories was one where Charlene Amsden had a negative experience but in the end, turned out much better than it started.

I’m not a shutterbug however, if you would like to check out some photos, please see what folks have uploaded to flickr.

Great first day and won’t be surprised if Day 2 is equally great!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 3:47 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.