Four things you should do after this conference

1) Hunt beyond your industry (Jeremy Gutsche) http://www.trendhunter.com/
2) Listen to your members, staff team members, customers, and colleagues (Julie Evans of Project Tomorrow)

3) Play - don't be afraid to fail - these last two are mine!

4) Try some of the advice from the Digital Now network and sepakers..

Don Taspscott had it right eight (8) years ago, when he warned us about the tsunami of changes coming at us from technology and the generation that was "bathed in bits" (in his book, Growing Up Digital).

He said that if you want to keep up with technology, hire a 16-18 year-old in your tech team. That was how we got started in Second Life and produced a video we showed our our panel at today's session on Tomorrow's Members, Listening to the Voices of our Future. Don't be afraid to let these digital natives help you figure out this technology thing...

What have been your takeaways?

Reason # 436 to start blogging and use other forms of "Social Media"

Ok, I am not really sure if it is reason #436 or not but Debbie Weil's latest post on ROI of Social Media is worth a read. And ROI is not Return on Investment... It is Return on Influence.

The article goes on to talk about how the new forms of social media (which includes blogging) can boost marketing and more importantly your relationship with your customers and members. This has been our experience since 'taking the plunge' into blogging and Web 2.0 over a year ago. And yes were were totally inspired coming from the DigitalNow conference.

Let me give you two examples of how this works...


1. Our blog (http://www.cpaisland.com/) caught the attention of Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski. We then connected to John when he was visiting our "island" in Second Life. One thing leads to another and then we end up hosting him in Second Life doing a "mixed reality" session with him "live" from the real world conference in Orlando and a live "virtual" session in our BLI conference Center on CPA Island. Then CFO magazine's blog picks up our work on Second Life and the amazing viral connections of the Web 2.o world are unleashed...


Next is Youtube and what I like to call the Long Tail effect...

We produced a video with our friends at the AICPA, promoting the CPA profession in Maryland. We loaded the video to Youtube and have since had 2,271 views without any marketing at all! Check it out here: Defining America's CPA - Maryland. Then in an interview with a local business paper, they love the Youtube idea and we get some great press. Another one of the trails that results from playing around with the Web 2.0 stuff...

How about you? what has been your experience with Social Media?