Sadly, most of the meetings I've been to lately haven't done much with social media, except for ASAE. My best from this year's ASAE con was when I was hanging out with some friends, talking and texting and tweeting. I just had said something about feeling guilty about not putting my full attention on the people I was with when the person next to me held up her Blackberry to show a Facebook message from a mutual friend who also was at the meeting.

The message: “just realized that the use of social technology during meetings actually makes you less social–at least to the people sitting next to you!”

It was just one of those moments.

Sue, you are exactly right. I say social media to engage with other before and after, but maybe not during! Build social capital and currency leading to the meeting, but spend it like crazy at the meeting. Read: put your laptop and phone away if it prevents you from actually talking to people. SM does not replace the face to face.

Our VP Paul Wehking had a great experience recently at e4 Experient. He lost his iPhone at the event: His solution: tweet to the conference hashtag that he lost it and how to return it to him.

He got it back within hours!

Hmmm...most memorable social media experiences at an event? I guess getting to know the other association SM peeps face-to-face at ASAE's meetings counts, but one specific event does stick out in my mind. The president for my previous organization told me to invite all the chapter leaders to his suite for a party later that evening. We're talking about over 100 people from all over the world being invited spur of the moment to a party that night and I had already dismissed them from the room we had been meeting in. I sent out a Tweet (fortunately I had been getting them to use Twitter before the meeting) and sure enough well over 100 people showed up at the president's suite that night! :) He turned to me and said, "KiKi, you've convinced me that this social media thing is something to invest my time in" and from that point on, I had an easy time getting executive support for my tech efforts.

My most memorable experience actually has to do with a presentation Lindy was doing on Twitter. I volunteered to tweet the session, and relay questions from Twitter should there be any coming in from people not in the room. Lindy had the Twitter stream up on the screen as she was explaining it, and it was truly fantastic to see people's faces as they not only saw the twitter stream flowing by in real time from people at the conference in general, but also from us in the room, and then when someone did actually tweet a question from afar. The absolute best way to show "newbies" what the value of social tools like Twitter could add to a presentation.

The 2008 ASAE Secret Session - No Doubt!

Being apart of the planning and execution of the great social media debate between Terrance Barkan and Jeff De Cagna (moderated by Andy Steggles) was a pretty neat experience.

I helped spread the word via blogs and contributions to other groups. Then in San Diego, we captured the debate on video (I actually shot the footage - LOL). All of this got me introduced to Jeff, Terrance, Andy and a bunch more people whom I only knew through email, listservs and facebook.

It was like a big social experiment. We used social media to promote an unofficial session and rallied almost 200 people to the session. WOW!

I took the video and chopped it up and placed it on youtube, wrote some more articles about it. created even more buzz.

http://blog.omnipress.com/tag/asae-secret-session/

Here is an experience that stands out - In November 2008, I was giving a presentation at a conference in Oslo, Norway. The entire conference was in Norwegian except for my presentation. I took Live Q&A only through texting. I got more than 25 questions and was able to answer most of them in the presentation. Had the organizer used microphones - there would not have been nearly as many questions.

Buzz2009 was it for me.

It was memorable on a number of levels:

1) Backchannel participation -- it got me hooked on being part of the backchannel and virtual events. I felt like I was "in the know" by being there and participating in the conversation. It also meant that I was taking many more notes that I have at previous sessions. It gave me a sense of ownership in the content and personalized the experience since I had more at stake.

2) I met my heroes... or at least those I know from social media -- The AHA moment was when @DeirdreReid and I recognized each other from following each other on twitter. But along the way I met a number of other thought leaders and people I had conversed with/followed online. From @maggielmcg to @kikilitalien to new people like Tony and others it was great to take virtual relationships to the real world and vice-versa.