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Aaron Strout

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Bring on the Content at SXSW 2012!

August 24, 2011 By Aaron Strout 6 Comments

The guts of this post were cross-posted from colleague, Meredith Owen’s, fabulous write up on the WCG blog. Big thanks to her for doing the heavy lifting on this.

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s that time of year again. Yes the time where all of your social media friends flood your Twitter stream and Facebook walls with pleas to vote for this panel or that panel at the grand daddy of all digital/social media conferences, South by Southwest (SXSW). While some people look at this as a nuisance, I take it as an opportunity to look at trends in the space. I also like to keep my eye out for new faces and voices in the world of digital/social.

To that end, a number of my colleagues at WCG have submitted panels this year. All of them look great on paper and having listened to most of them present, I can tell you that it would be worth your while to vote any/all of them through. I’ve also included my panel in the mix. In addition to the one I’ve submitted below, I am also lucky enough to be in the running with friends, Tim Walker, Kate Brodock and Troy Nalls for a panel titled, Down in Front! How to Control Bad Fans. While SXSW only allows panelists to sit on one session, I’m hedging my bets to increase my odds. I’d be thrilled to get the thumbs up on either of the two panels.

Without further ado, here are the eight panels submitted by us WCG-ers:

  • Ultimate Healthcare Reform – Reshaping Our World – Bob Pearson, WCG’s Chief Technology & Media Officer, sits down with Jeff Arnold, founder of WebMD and Sharecare, for an epic discussion on how the technology leaders at SXSW can take people from information to action to create healthier world.
  • Social Media…A Responsibility of WHICH Department? –Matt Snodgrass tackles the elephant in the room during this solo presentation that will dissect various industries and companies to examine where social media responsibility should lie.
  • Friending Pharma: Patients, Industry & New Media – Last Monday was a big day for pharma too. WCG Director Brian Reid joins a sundry team of health influencers including Pfizer VP Ray Kerins, Cancer Health Activist and Patient Expert Alicia Staley, and diabetes bloggers and patient advocates Kerri Sparling and Allison Blass as they examine the risks and benefits of connecting patients and biopharma companies online.
  • My Doctor Poked Me. Giggidy! – Anecdotal evidence suggests that health care providers’ use of social media is in the early stages of an explosion.  Social media analysts Andy Booth and Naimul Huq sit down with long-time MD and leading blogger Dr. Bryan Vartabedian to explore how social media is changing the future of the doctor-patient relationship.
  • Social Networks are Killing the Company Org Chart – Every company has an org chart – but we all know intuitively that work is done based on relationships and connections across the organization.  Mapping those connections can reveal a whole new world to smart corporations. Greg Matthews (a former HR exectutive) and Humana’s Director Learning Innovation Brian Foye explain how social media can map and measure the real corporation underneath the org chart.
  • Inside Out: Internal Social Media & Big Business – Industry leaders Brian Snyder, Jonathan Mast and Blair Klein join WCG Director Brad Mays to bring together the collective insight of some of the biggest corporate brands on best practices for using social media for internal collaboration and productivity.
  • Future of Location Marketing: Dummies Perspective – 2012 marks the three-year anniversary of Foursquare’s launch at SXSW.  Location-based gurus Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider will walk through the 5 golden rules of location-based marketing and how to leverage the “there” there.
  • Social Media Strategies of Top Tweeting Businesses – WCG’s Ricardo Guerrero understands the business of Twitter- if fact, he created most of Dell’s Twitter accounts, which generated $6.5M of revenue in their first 2.5 years.  During this panel Ricardo will examines the top 1,000 business Twitter accounts to analyze whether or not Twitter success translates across social media channels.
In addition to some of these potentially awesome panel submissions, I also have another seven I am excited to see. In no particular order, here they are:
  • The community revolving door: staying a step ahead – Welcome to the biggest challenge presented by community. From continuing to seek out new members, to finding the next evangelist, membership evolution can be an unexpected challenge, but so is content evolution and most importantly, strategy evolution (Heather Strout, Farland Group, Jim Storer, The Community Round Table, Mark Wallace, EDR and Mike Pascucci, Ektron).
  • Aristotle Shops @WalMart | CSR, Ethics & Community – Today, Aristotle would be a Wal-Mart greeter, or perhaps manage its online community. What happened? The company changed their vision when CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. launched a massive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign to, in his words, “…create a better story”. (Kyle Flaherty, Breaking Point Systems & Alex Hahn, Vox Global)
  • The Facebook Customer Service Challenge for Brands – Managing customer service on a Facebook Page is a messy proposition, particularly for large businesses and brands. Increasingly impatient customers and fans are flocking to the Facebook Wall to fire off specific questions or complaints about product and service issues, with the expectation of receiving a rapid-fire satisfactory response and the threat of making a big stink across their social networks if they don’t.  (Bryan Person, David Berkowitz, 360i, Molly DeMaagd – AT&T, Eric Ludwig, Rosetta Stone).
  • No Wallet? No Problem. Enter Mobile Payments. – The days of having that lump of a wallet in your back pocket or forgetting your wallet at home are over. Consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014, according to Juniper Research. Google already has merchants like Macy’s and The Container Store are using Google Wallet, powered by NXP’s secure NFC chips, to increase engagement and offer deals to consumers (Allen Tsai, David Berkowitz, 360i, Rob von Behren, Google, Jeff Miles, NXP Semiconductors, David Messenger, American Express).
  • Will the social web build a world we want? – Social media is transforming politics, the Middle East, corporate behavior and social activism. But how far can it go? Can citizens and customers, armed with social media and connected by shared values, create the movement for change that our world needs? Or will political manipulation, corporate self-interest and consumer fatigue overwhelm them?  (Simon Mainwaring, We First)
  • Can growing a moustache change the world? –  Join Adam Garone, CEO/co-founder of Movember, as he discusses how Movember leveraged the support of a few daring partners and pockets of loyal fans to generate a global movement that saw 450,000 moustache growers in 2010. Learn how Movember captivated the attention of a demographic infamous for not discussing their health, converted them into evangelists by turning the brand over to them, and sent them off to build the campaign. (Adam Garone, Movember)
Did you submit a panel this year? Or is there one that you know of that should absolutely make it to the next round? If so, feel free to include the link in the comments along with a little plug.

 

What Do Facebook, The Social Network, Guy Fieri and Scott Monty Have in Common?

July 19, 2010 By Aaron Strout 15 Comments

The title of this post is hands down the longest title in the history of this blog (I think). But I couldn’t think of a better way to respond to my friend over at Ford Motor Company, Scott Monty’s, blog post today. If you haven’t seen it, he riffs off the new movie, The Social Network which parodies Facebook and their march toward 500 million members.

As part of the fun, Scott decided that he would pick a few of us out of the social media marketing crowd (some more prominent than others, ahem, Seth Godin) that could possibly appear in the movie. And if we did, who would play us in the movie? I got a kick out of my dopplerganger and Food Network star, Guy Fieri, who ironically, I met last summer in New York City. Some folks including my darling wife thought better comparisons for me might be Ben Affleck, Billy Ray Cyrus or even Bruce Springsteen (Stephanie Agresta insists I am his long lost brother).

But that’s why I’m writing this post… instead, my goal is to continue with the meme that Scott started. In his post, he asks…

If they were holding open casting calls for extras and you were going to be featured, what famous person, dead or alive, would play you in the movie? Leave a comment below or reply with a post on your own blog with a link back to this post.

So I’m adding a few stars of my own. What do you think?

David Armano, sr. vice president, Edelman Digital / John Leguizamo [updated 7/20]

Maria Ogneva, social media director, Attensity360 / Scarlett Johansen

Brett Petersel, business development and events lead, Mashable / Christian Bale

Shannon DiGregorio, social media marketing, The CR / Angelina Jolie



Adam Cohen, partner at digital agency, Rosetta / Rob Thomas

And last but not least…

Kyle Flaherty, director of marketing, BreakingPoint Systems / Jack Black

[updated 7/20] And apparently, I look much more like Josh Beckett in this pic than any of my other dopplergangers above… (thank you Kyle)


Five Minutes of Me: Why I Like Plancast

March 26, 2010 By Aaron Strout 7 Comments

I’ve decided to start a new podcast series. I don’t have a regular schedule but 2-3 times a week I want to start recording five minute blurbs about things I’m thinking about (or follow ups to conversations I’ve had with folks). The working title of this series is Five Minutes of Me (I’m also testing auto-syndication to this blog, Facebook and Posterous).

http://www.ipadio.com/embed/v1/embed-352×200.swf?phlogId=22858&phonecastId=23265&channelInView=WEBSITE_CHANNEL_22858&callInView=local_23265

Yesterday, I did my second installment (1st was for AdVerve on location-based services: my segment is about 43 minutes in) and it focuses on reasons I like the new “planning” application/service called Plancast. Think of it as FourSquare but in the future. Two reasons why it works for me (Kyle Flaherty take note):
  1. I follow the right people — and they happen to be people that I actually know
  2. I’ve subscribed to the digest which is essentially an itinerary of cool things to do
If you like Plancast or hate it (or fall somewhere in between), let me know why in the comments below.

Pluralitas Non est Ponenda sine Necessitate

November 27, 2009 By Aaron Strout 8 Comments

For those non-Latin speakers out there, you are asking yourself right now, what the hell does “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” mean? Literally, it means “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” It’s a theory made popular by 14th century friar, William of Ockham, and is better known as Ockham or Occam’s Razor.

Why am I thinking about 14th century friars and Latin phrases about plurality and necessity on the day after Thanksgiving you ask? The short version of the story is that my friend, Kyle Flaherty, recently shared a great post with me by analytics wizard, Avinash Kaushik. Avinash writes a well known blog called — get this — Occam’s Razor. After reading his lengthy, but thought-provoking, post on social analytics, it got me wondering about the inspiration for the name of his Avinash’s blog.

Now I think it’s mandatory that we all learn about Occam’s Razor at some point in high school or college but of course that, along with billions of other pieces of knowledge that don’t fit into our everyday lives, somehow fell out of my head along the way. But after reacquainting myself with this concept of seeking the “simplest answer,” I’ve been thinking a lot about streamlining my work and personal life these days. In particular, slimming down my information sources and my day to day work flow.

I wrote about taking steps in this direction several weeks ago following my brief retirement from Twitter. But the place I’ve really fallen down is on keeping up with my Google Reader. I know some people like Bob Scoble have abandoned their readers altogether but I realized the other day that there are a dozen blogs, mostly written by friends, that I haven’t been keeping tabs on as closely as I would like. And the reason was because their quality content was getting drowned out by the 50 plus other blogs that I was keeping in my Google Reader, many of which contributed to my reader consistently registering 1,000 unread posts mark.

Maybe I’m unique in this fashion (although I doubt it) but thinking about 1,000 unread posts is just too daunting. Instead of going in and chipping away, I tend to ignore my Google Reader and thus miss out on dozens of great posts by people like Kyle, Peter Kim, Rachel Happe,  Tim Walker, Greg Verdino and others. So in a fit of “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” (which is really more about the concept of “the simplest solution is usually the correct one), but inspired me to “simplify” or slim down my reader to about 15 blogs.

The result is a much more manageable, 137 posts, all of which I was excited to read. The downside is that I will miss out on the good posts on ReadWriteWeb, ChrisBrogan.com and the HBS blog. But the way I look at it, it’s better that I read a few blogs all the time then have lots of great blogs that I never look at.

What about you? Are you able to keep up with it all? If so, how?

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