I attended my first conference last weekend! Bloggers from all across Indiana (and even some Cincinnati folk) came together to discuss blogging and social media. I thought the overall experience was great! I met some other bloggers that I may never have known about and some I had no idea were in my own backyard.

My main reason for attending was to gain exposure to local tech companies. ChaCha is the only Indiana based tech company I hear about and keep tabs on, mostly because I interned with them last summer. Every so often my mom will email me about some new start-up by Informatics grads, but for the most part I don’t hear about companies I would want to work for after I graduate.

The conference offered three different “tracks” you could follow (basics, business, and general) but you bounce around if a speaker or topic interested you. I tended to stay away from the business track since it was mainly aimed at corporations, but I did do a good bit of bouncing around and getting a taste of everything. It was a lot like being back in class- half paying attention, poor slides, multitasking on my phone or laptop. The most interesting part was following everyone’s activity on Twitter. I’ll summarize the rest based on my tweets:

Swung by Dunkin Donuts on my way to the @blogindiana conference at. IUPUI

I fell in love this week with Dunkin Donuts coffee.

First talk – Legal Issues in Blogging. Lots of chicks turned out for this “Sili-corn Valley” conference

I thought the “Sili-corn Valley” was a nice touch in the morning announcements. After taking Legal and Social Informatics in the Spring semester, I was interested to see what they might cover. It was mostly a review of copyright law (don’t use what isn’t yours), but I was curious about forming an LLC for legal protection. Andrew Paradies, who led the talk, made some good points on why to have one, but it was a bit much for a college kid like me. 

Oops, looks like I didn’t tweet for my second talk about “Writing for Blogs”. It was simple stuff, but after only writing college papers and essays for the last few years it was good to be reminded that simplicity goes a long way.

Sitting patiently for the panel on How Social Media Impacts Elections to begin

This would have been more interesting if it had less of a Republican tone and focused on all social media and not just blogs.

Third talk- Between the Blog Posts with Mitch Maxson. Ppl r still trying to get on wireless. IU remembered my iPhone :)

Mitch Maxson of MediaSauce gave some nice tips on promoting your blog when you’re not blogging. Less SEO leaving your URL in comments everywhere and more exploring alternative outlets like Twitter.

Fourth Talk- How to Make (More) Money From Your Blog by John Ramey, friend of @GameZombie

My first encounter with John Ramey, who I had heard a lot about from my work with GameZombie but never actually met or knew much about. He was very knowledgeable about different advertising plans and how to attract advertisers. He threw in a sneak peak to the new iSocket and gave us all special invites for all that attended the talk since iSocket is still closed beta.

Very impressed by @isocket and pleased with the day at @blogindiana ! Grabbing Red Bulls and heading home to code and of course blog

That concluded my first day at my first conference. I was really excited and ran home to apply all that I had absorbed.

I ALMOST felt bad for these kids being up this early to work at Dunkin Donuts until I saw two taking a break by their BMWs

Wasted most of my time in the first session working on the BMOC site, now web analytics

I told you I was addicted to Dunkin Donuts that week and I had to wake up somehow to get downtown by 9 a.m. Ironically I was wasting time in the first session that was entitled “Stop Wasting Time: Ten Things You Can Do to Make Yourself More Efficient”. I was pretty efficient, but should have taken better notes on some of the online tools Scott Abel suggested. To summarize the Web Analytics talk – Google Analytics. Pat East from Hanapin Marketing in Bloomington have based their entire business on knowing Google Analytics inside and out. I wasn’t very impressed.

Listening to the panel about Building Community Around Your Blog @blogINDIANA

This panel bounced ideas around as to how to attract a crowd, but I was most impressed with the anecdote John Ramey shared about a wine company promoting themselves by giving away their bottles of wine at parties and allowing them to become social objects. The social objects are what social networks (communities) are built around. If you don’t have the social object, you can’t have the social network. I loved it so much I made a mental note to remember it by tweeting:

@jpramey great example of the wine being used as social media. I’ll have to remember that!

More of the entertaining Scott Abel talking about Syndication and Web 2.0 Tools. Semantic Web FTW!

Unfortunately, I was stuck in a room of newbs who didn’t really understand the basics of the topic so the juicy stuff I was hoping for was never brought up. I wouldn’t mind running into Scott Abel again, though. His presentation style was very upbeat and interesting.

I ended up leaving early from the second day. None of the last round of talks interested me. I was itching to go home and share with my family all that I had learned about blogging and social media. It actually led to me convincing my step-mom to start a Ning site for my sister’s 8th grade.

I had a very enjoyable time at my first conference. The people were great, the material a little beneath me, but for $50 and two free lunches it was a great deal. I’m not sure if I’ll be around to participate in next year’s conference, but if I’m in the Indy area I’ll definitely be in attendance.