Christian Compagnuolo of Blackboad leading a session called Blackboard's story. But in an interesting twist, he's relaying the story by telling us about how brands need to create - and be a part of - their tribes. 

Jason Keith of VistaPrint is about to start.  Really like how Jill Foster is meeting all the people who are here between sessions who she hasn't met. Gotta remember this for the first time I am asked to emcee a business conference event/track.

Breakout room 2 Jocelyn Simpson

Informative session about starting different types of informal social networks. Main example was IBM's alumni network. However she also cited alumni customers which sounded like a novel idea. Imagine the hidden river of lifetime referrals  in either direction.

She also made reference to how this plugs into hiring - sometimes a former employee best fills a new position or has the network you need.

A question came from the audience regarding how one could get HR to cooperate with this. She responded with several examples of where she could show positive, measurable results.

Breakout room 2 : 3:30 pm -  About cleaning up social media sprawl (Came in late, will have to figure out actual title later.)

About cleaning up social media sprawl - the constant building of new FB,twitter & other social media properties for each campaign in enterprise, rather than centering on one master account.

Mess that exists: brands have checklist syndrome - building social media"stores" then abandoning them after an event, typically the launch event.

Purpose is important - knowing what the collective decision s for using a certain channel helps.

gave the example of Lenovo - Apparently this  is an ongoing, major issue for bigger brands and the enterprise. The fractured fan base truly causing a big mess and missed opportunities.

Breakout Room 1: Katie from Facebook discussing political campaigns and Facebook.

Why do campaigns want to be on FB?
More than 1/2 of users come to FB every day. (surprised how consistent this has been over the years.)

50+ demographics is fastest growing on FB. FB users are 57% more likely to vote according to a Pew Internet study, which has lot of other activities on the political action of the FB user

Wisdom:
90s- By browsing
00sBy search
10s- By discovery ie friends

Somewhat disagree with this -  people still search, just not primarily on search engines. They search on mobile and on social networks.

Gave the example of the announcement of Obama campaign. She pointed out that it wasn't just about getting connected to your friends - now they can target your friends in swing districts or cities, as FB Allows micro-targeting at that level.

She spoke about the Newt Gingrich campaign and how they have used FB to share how much phone tree activity a volunteer or voter has done.

She went over the like, commenting & registration tools, as well as placement in TV ads. It's a " much lower threshold of engagement" than a directive to visit your site.

sidebar: I find that to be true but long term, what is the expense of letting a 3rd party  continue to own the relationship you've created? if businesses do this we should take care to follow up & make sure we take proper responsibility for those connections.

Interesting note: businesses can turn sharing actions of friends into ads after you've done the share. Not intrusive to new people who haven't already opted in, but rather an increase in visibility to make sure more friends could see it.

Now talking about their ad options. Non-social ads are east effectives.

Example: Senator Corryn posts to his FB profile himself. His fans can tell and his engagement has gone up.

Social networks are often the backup tool when the campaign or political office site goes down.

Consider images in status updates, including info graphics. Cites mashable's eye tracking study.

Came to this session completely by accident, but enjoyed it a great deal.

Pictures with faces always do better.

Codeacademy.com - good site for learning to code even basic HTML. Free.

Chris Traganos' Blog post on What's Next DC