As I wrote about a bit last week, I had the great pleasure of hosting a session at the Frederick Chamber of Commerce’s Social Media Conference today. It was a great time. Before I get too far into this, I would be remiss if I did not take the time to send out a big congrats and thank you to Jessica Hibbard who did an outstanding job of pulling all of this together.
It was really nice to actually get outside of our little echo chamber that we have created closer in to the city and meet some new folks who are new to social media and hopefully be able to impart some wisdom I have picked up over the last couple of years.
The turnout was great, over 100 folks braved the dreary weather to listen, communicate, and learn from each other. The day started out with an outstanding keynote by our good friend Mario Armstrong and then we broke off into the breakout sessions. The attendees when registering had self identified themselves with a level of social media knowledge, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, and there were three tracks dedicated to each of those levels. My talk was for the Beginner’s and was titled HR102- HR and Admin Aspects of Social Media, see slides below.
I thought the session went really well. It was actually nice to be able to chat to an audience very new to social media. They had great questions and I hope I was able to answer them and guide them into the social media maze a little better. We get so used to those around us being as knowledgeable about topics as we are and it was really refreshing to chat with an audience whose heads were not buried in a laptop and were paying attention 
As I sat at lunch I was able to speak with Ric Adams, the President of the Chamber. I was very impressed with his foresight and willingness to have the chamber host such an event. He told me that this is the time period they usually host a local job fair, but said that they obviously saw the writing on the wall a while back that this may not be the best time to hold a job fair when companies are simply not hiring. It was then they began looking into some new and different things, and with Jessica’s help the idea of the Social Media Conference was born. Ric was very understanding of the need to reach out to a younger generation in new ways and I applaud him for that. Some organizations like a chamber of commerce may not understand this, and the fact that his organization realizes this and is proactively looking to adapt to new ways is awesome.
I look forward to their next event and hope I can again help out and be a part of it. I met many new people and will be reaching out to them on their new journey into the social media “jungle”. Good luck, let me know if you ever need anything.
All of the presentations, or many of them should be in http://drop.io/fredsmc so be sure to check them all out. Also feel free to drop in links, media, or questions for others to be able to share.
