PJNet

More than 300 people were at our SoCon09 event yesterday and maybe I heard the word blog used a few times. This year it was all about: Twitter, Twitter and more Twitter. Indeed read all about the full day Saturday Tweet by Tweet here.

Here are a few of my favorite Tweets:

tarynp: I’m still amped from yesterdays #socon09! So many great relationships forged.I’m committed to going to as many similar events as possible.

garbers: Back from #socon09. Great sessions, interesting people, stimulating conversation. Will certainly attend next year. Thanks to all who helped!

Mallory8: Great day at #socon09 now need a nap. (Witt: At least one other person, said he needed a nap, I think that is a good thing, we wore them out. )

Co-host Sherry Heyl gives a quick overview of the day at her Concept Hub Inc. site.  She says she misses the live blogging, and I do agree. Twitter is fast and furious, but alas a bit of depth is lost. However, parts of the day will be captured by the Georgia Podcasting Network thanks to Rusty Tanton and Amber Rhea . We’ll let you know when they post the podcasts.

Of course, if it had been liveblogged, the person or persons doing that heavy lifting would have had lots of people pushed their way by the the Tweeters. Personally I am much less interested  in the Twitter chatter than I am in using the Tweets to link me to  more interesting more in-depth reporting.

Of course, out of eight possible breakout choices in the early afternoon, I picked the one on Twitter run by Grayson Daughters. Lots of interesting information. Most interesting: UPS has a team assigned to do customer relations work on Twitter. One of the team members was at SoCon09.

Of course the whole day was perfect for me, starting with the announcement of the $1.5 million Harnsich Foundation gift for the Center of Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University and having  Daniel Papp, president of Kennesaw State University, and  Ruth Ann Harnisch (virutally), president of the Harnisch Foundation, there to make the announcement in front of the 300 people.

When Lauren Booth and Jeannine Jones, who were taking care of the event logistics, ran up to me mid-morning saying we had to order more food, I knew we were breaking new attendance records. Fortunately, we got the food. You don’t want to disappoint 300 people with Twitter power at hand.

Personally I made several great new contacts, two I need to speak with soon — Lyle V Harris, who left the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to start the Georgia Online News Service, and David Pope of Inteletix.com which does Social Network Analysis. I am hungry for that kind of information.

I counted 40 people still hanging around having conversations half hour after SoCon09 officially ended, then headed over to the Mellow Mushroom to have a couple of beers with probably another 30 people from SoCon09.

Should have gone home and had my own nap, but went to the Kennesaw State men’s basketball game at which one of the KSU’s team members lobbed a three-point buzzer beater, tied the game and drove it into overtime, during which KSU came on strong and won amidst great cheering by the multitudes.

As I said I had a great day yesterday. Let’s end with this Tweet from Eli Wendkos, product manager for Social Media, mobile, video at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

ewendkos: Refreshed after #socon09. Good news: future looks good. Just going to take much work. Made many friends at the con – hopefully they help

(Photos by Hyku, see more SoCon09 photos here.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Harnisch Family Foundation, SoCon09, Social Media, Social Networking, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.