SMWTO Snowpocalypse

Wow last week was a very busy week in Nusland and there is much to report. Many of you probably attended a social media event in one of the 9 cities it took place in:  New York, San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Toronto, Sao Paulo, London, Hong Kong, Istanbul.

Social Media Week toronto 2011For those of you who have yet to hear about Social Media Week, it’s an internationl conference that takes place in various venues in the cities in which is takes place. The conference is in its second year and, you guessed it, is all about social media, its practices, applications, and upcoming trends. This was my first year attending and there was lots to catch with 70 events in Toronto alone! I highly recommend going out to a few seminars, panels or presentations if you get the chance to do so next year as it’s a great way to learn a few new tricks and meet new people to grow your own network.

This year was particularly interesting because I think that social media has matured to a point where the body of knowledge surrounding it has been refined through its wide usage and the boiling down of social networks to the major ones like Twitter and Facebook. This time last year you will remember that there were still lots of other social networks to consider in a social media push and it was overwhelming. Google Wave was supposed to be the next big thing and Delicious and 4chan were still going strong. Now we’re in a spot where some of the old giants have fallen and Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and (arguably) Tumblr are at the top of the mountain with no intentions of moving until at least 2012.

Additionally the field is getting to be better understood even by dilettants – at least to a point where they appreciate the value for social media and community management. It will be interesting to see where the game is by next year but for now it seems that social media is just the way of the web, period. My prediction is that mobile will be even more important by next year and will be (if it isn’t already) the next frontier to conquer and saturate. I’m looking your way, RIM – reinvent or get out of the way of Apple, Android and Symbian. The Playbook is a good start, let’s see what else is up your sleeves.

The highlights this year were weighted heavily in some really valuable sessions and counterbalanced with some great meetups. I attended quite a few sessions but was rather selective with them at the same time as it’s impossible to attend all the sessions. Personally I think Wednesday was the most action packed day of the week as the stars seemed to align to feature some of the most interesting sessions all on that day.

Social Media for Mayor - SmwTOIt started early in the morning with a great analytics session from Sysomos and Fleishman Hillard with Sheldon Levine and David Bradfield, then moved on to the panel I moderated called “Social Media for Mayor” with some really great speakers, including my friend Dave Fleet. I was actually taken aback by how quickly my session filled up and even more humbled by the interest generated by it – it trended in Toronto and was watched by quite a few people on the Ustream feed. Big thank you to Bnotions and the Yorkville Media Centre for providing the venue and stream. For you sports fans, Jon Sinden did a really great presentation at Real Sports about connecting fans to brands in the sporting world and finally Sean Ward’s tutorial on how to get up and blogging with style. I missed the NKPR event on account of not being able to clone myself to be in two places simultaneously.

I lamented missing “The Social Family” event but I was so drained by Thursday that I had to recharge before dragging myself to the Hideout for the Love a Heart bachelor/bachelorette auction. You may have heard that Gail Gabrielle of Real Sports, the final person on the block, was bought for freaking $2002 cash! Unreal.

Friday was a great denouement and meeting the folks at Facebook Canada in the morning was really interesting. There are some cool new things being rolled out and you should be hearing more about them soon on your Facebook feed. Many of us were delighted to see nearly the entire twitter community all in one room at Lee’s Palace for Gen Y TO, immediately following a rousing round of powerpoint karaoke – I hear Alkarim and Paul Crowe cleaned house.

Head on over to Casie Stewart’s blog for some great pics of the GenYTO party. You’ll recognize a lot of familiar faces. By the way, Casie and I kicked some serious butt at the foosball table. Ghetto fab.

Stay tuned for the Valentine’s day post!