Saturday, May 16, 2009

2 Great Events in One Week

Ever since Boston Tweetup was created, I have found my calendar filling up really fast. Some people might not enjoy a full calendar but I really love it. Although I don't go to every event that I find or throw into my calendar, I try my hardest to attend them all. To tell you truth I don't know how Joseline Mane (@JoselinMane) and Rachel Levy (@BostonMarketer), creators of Boston Tweetup, are able to attend all the events!

Last week I attended 2 well hosted events, Mass Innovations Nights and a panel on
Integrating Social Media Across the Big Brand hosted by Social Media Club Boston and Hill Holiday. Although they were two different types of events they had one thing in common, good networking.

Mass Innovation Night is held once a month at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, MA. This location is easy to access coming from Cambridge and there is inexpensive parking. MassInno night gives Massachusetts-based innovators the opportunity to showcase their products. The innovators this month were, AllFocus, Blitz Innovations, Inc., Clickhealth, IBM/Lotus, Hubunity, Mixandmeet, Nexiwave, Pixily, and WherePhone. These companies innovations were all very different from a social network available for school communities by Hubnity to a phone conversation transcription service by Nexiwave. One innovation that blew my mind was Clickhealth. This company provides cell phones to doctors in 3rd world countries allowing them to take photos of infections or conditions that they are unable to diagnose, upload the photo and information to a message board, where doctors who have Internet access and resources can provide consultation. Having been to an orphanage in South Africa, I have seen first hand the limited resources that doctors in these countries have, and I can see how this will be useful to them. I have a few questions for the company, I'm hoping to speak them shortly to do a longer blog post about this great idea. Check back here soon for it!


The night after Mass Innovation Night, the Social Media Club of Boston organized a panel on Integrating Social Media Across the Big Brand hosted by Hill Holiday. There were 5 panelists: Terry Lozoff – President, Street Attack, Ken Peters – Vice President, Text 100 Public Relations, Vicki RellasCMO, Mom Central, Mike Spataro – Vice President, Client Strategy & Channel Partners – Visible Technologies, and Sean Corcoran - Analyst, Forrester Research. The night started off with networking, presentations by the panelists, pre-written questions, and questions from the audience. A few takeaways from the panelists were, "mistakes in social media with big brands are really public and costly, this needs to be understood" and "to understand social you need everyone involved." "Are brands better off working with companies who specialize in social media marketing or with integrated agencies that have social media capabilities?" was a really good pre-written question, asked by panel moderator by Mike Proulx, Vice President, Interactive for Hill Holliday. The best panelist comment of the night was, "Social media is A1 sauce not the steak. It's a supplement not a substitute."

If you missed these events, don't worry, you can attend new ones, next month thanks to Social Media Club Boston and Mass Innovation Nights. Looking for other upcoming events? Check out the often updated calendar by Boston Tweetup.