Got back from Little Rock on Friday. The conferences were amazing! At PRSA I got to listen to Chris Brogan, Adam Denison from GM Blogs, David Neff from the American Cancer Society – the two of them are doing some amazing things in social media, check out http://www.sharinghope.tv/ right now! (All three of you reading this! 😉 ) it’s amazing! There is some great work going on in the PR Social Media-sphere! And some of the speakers, like Adam Broitman and C.C. Chapman, that I really wanted to but didn’t get to see.
Plus I got to hang out with the Marketing Diva herself, Toby Bloomberg was speaking at the conference as well! Talked with her quite a bit about how to introduce social media to my organization, and hopefully will see some of the fruits of that labor come to pass sooner rather than later.
And, just as an aside, I got to listen to Duncan Wardle, VP of Walt Disney World and Global PR for Disney Parks talk about branding and social media and a lot of the cool stuff that Disney was doing in that sphere. Oh yeah, and there was Richard Edelman, one of the godfathers of PR and Social Media, discussing Authentic Communications. It was an amazing discussion, and one that I’m glad I have the PPT to – since there is a lot to digest in that presentation.
Then there was me.
As the three of you 😉 who read me regularly know, I was a little nervous about speaking at the conference. But the Arkansas PRSA and a lot of the other speakers I was hanging out with were great and helped put my mind at ease that I knew what I was talking about. And Adam and David (and Chris Brogan bounced in and out a few times) were in the audience and I saw them nodding in agreement a few times so I figured I was making sense. 😉
There’s more to talk about, like the hotel we were staying in – the Peabody – and the twice daily duck march (which I have pictures of and will post more on later) and the Clinton Library. But I’ll get to that in a bit, now it’s off for some coffee and taking the dog outside for a run around the yard.
Benson Hendrix - Brain for Hire 
I was really impressed by the caliber of the speakers and the knowledge of the attendees. Very impressive conference. Sorry you didn’t get to make it to my session, but David’s I’m sure was amazing. I got to talk a lot with him
Thanks C.C.! My friend Maureen was in your session and we are going to meet and compare notes to see what we missed in each session. There were so many great presentations that I wished we had been able to record them for all of the attendees.
I agree with C.C. It was a great conference, and I took alot away from it. What a great lineup of speakers. Thanks for the shout out!
Loved hanging out with you last week and sorry I missed your session. Without a doubt I bet you were great.
Ditto CC and Adam, PRSA did a wonderful job not only with the speaker line-up and venue (the duck parade was too funny) but helping the speakers feel comfortable and appreciated. Btw .. few groups get that one right.
Count me as #4 to your community 😉
Yeah yeah yeah. Sure, I show up late and all the cool kids have said all the good stuff. Well, yeah, it was great to see you and I thought it was astounding having so many smart folks around.
Sorry about bouncing OUT. I couldn’t seem to convince the world that I was otherwise occupied. : (
A workmate of mine heard your presentation and forwarded me your slides. Good stuff!
Hey y’all! No worries about bouncing out and back in Chris, I’d probably bounce out of my presentation too if IBM were calling me ! 🙂
And your slides looked great Toby! I picked up a lot from them for an upcoming meeting on incorporating more social media into the school! The Arkansas PRSA team gets big props from me on their treatment of the speakers, they were great!
Thanks for the kind words Drew! I hope there is something you can pull from them! And if you can get a copy of Adam’s slides as well, he really hit a homerun on using blogs to talk to your employees and co-workers!
I loved hanging with all of you, and learned so much more about social media!