TechKaraoke SXSW Photo Credit: Wayne Kurtzman @WayneNH

Despite the fact that I completely lost my voice during the conference, I did manage to sing with the help of my pal, Margot Bloomstein, who carried the vocals as we belted out The Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun” with the live band. Not sure how great we sounded, but it was pretty awesome to have the fans blowing our hair in true “80’s big hair” fashion. Hey, I felt like a rock star for a good 3 minutes!

So, here is the video with Jen where I found out a bit more about her company Pinqued why she colored her hair pink.

Thanks Jen and Kate!

According to OurCompassion (OC), the community, which was launched in June 2009,  is “a place for all of us to come together and get organized on behalf of children living in poverty.”

This is an amazing organization that serves more than 800,000 supporters who are sponsoring more than one million children worldwide. The OC community serves as a place for supporters to share, organize and speak up on behalf of children living in poverty.

During our discussion, Katie shared how the OC community was instrumental during the Haiti Earthquakes as it played an important role in facilitating communication with supporters around the world. Through this tragedy, the community went from being a new, young endeavor into a key player in the grand scheme of Compassion’s social media strategy as it became an integral part of their disaster response approach.  With the community, they were and continue to direct Compassion sponsors to the community for further support and information.

What they also found was that through this, the community naturally displayed new levels of “social maturity” (commonly looked for on social networking environments) as members showed deeper levels of friendship and honesty as they all worked through this tragedy together.  

My video interview with Katy is below. Please take a moment to hear what she has to say about OurCompassion.org and please check out their community for more information on how you can get involved.

And I was right.

The premise of the session was that in business, we all use metaphors of one kind or the other to drive home a point. The problem with doing that is in most cases, those metaphors – no matter how cool or relevant they seem to you, might mean absolutely nothing to the person you are speaking to. It’s important to remember, if using metaphors to explain a concept or topic, that you first make sure the person you are speaking to knows what they hell you are talking about or it will go right over their heads.

Tim, Aaron and Kyle all shared their personal sports metaphors and explained how they related to business and then opened up the floor to the audience to share their own sports metaphors.

Tim shared with us his bowling metaphor and how a professional bowler, in order to succeed, needs to consistently bowl a strike or spare in every frame. Deviate from that pattern and that bowler will drop down and ultimately lose the game. In business, to be successful, you must push out consistent, quality content. Tim used David Armano and Chris Brogan’s blogs as examples of this consistent quality and recommended that others observe and emulate them.

Kyle Flaherty’s metaphor – “Break Four Minutes” was a mystery to me at first and apparently was to him until his boss at the time explained what that meant. The break four minutes analogy was in reference to Roger Bannister, who in 1954 was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes – he did it in 3′59.4. Up until Bannister came along everyone thought it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Once he broke that barrier, 16 other people attempted and achieved what was once thought to be physically impossible.  In business, and more specifically in sales, once someone goes and “Breaks four minutes” then others will soon follow suit.

At the time, I didn’t have any sports metaphors to share, but have since come up with one that I am sure many are familar with.

“Be The Ball Danny”

This, of course, is from Chevy Chase in Caddyshack.

How does this sports metaphor relate to business? Well….you see “There is a force in the universe that makes things happen. All you have to do it get in touch with it and stop thinking. Let things happen and be the ball.”

Just be the ball…

While Battle Decks is predominantly for fun, it is a great exercise for the public speaker to be able to speak on their feet about a topic they know nothing about and convince the audience that THEY are the expert at that particular topic. All of the speakers & judges did an amazing job thinking on their feet while, most, made us believe they were the experts on the politics of social media dancing and the dying art of the moustache!

The judges, who were scoring all presenters on a scale from zero to 10, all agreed that both Diane Vautier and John Herman were the big winners of the day as they faced off during the Battle Decks Deck Off. Five slides into the Deck Off,  John Herman determined that there was room for two winners – even though he felt “3″ would have been more appropriate – and stopped.

Thanks to presenters Ed Justen, Steve Garfield, Anthony Liang, Diane Vautier and John Herman and judges Seth Cohn, Tara Sullivan and Leah Carey for participating and making this session a success. You all rock! I can’t wait for the PodCamp NH in 2010 where Battle Decks will be bigger and badder than ever!

Since many of the attendees were from smaller companies, I stressed that any business – big or small – could benefit from implementing some form of social media strategy into their organization. An example I used to help make my point was to compare Starbucks with the Crème Brulee cart in San Francisco. Both businesses are using Twitter and seeing great results to drive business to their location, but one is a multi-national chain and the other is a small food cart roaming around San Francisco. They couldn’t be more different, yet they are using the same tools to connect and engage with their loyal fans.

If you don’t think you need help managing your social media efforts, you might want to take a closer look at the time investment required to ensure it’s done well. Sure, some of you may be able to manage it all while also running your business, but to do it right, it needs to be more than an afterthought – and most executives just don’t have the bandwidth to focus on doing both jobs effectively at the same time.

You also aren’t likely to have the time to “be everywhere” – listening, engaging, responding – but a dedicated social media professional can do this for you. Consistency is crucial to ensure results. A dedicated focus on social media efforts = a quicker time to value.

You also don’t want to have a “Nelson” moment by not paying attention to your brand online. Some examples I used during the Chamber Breakfast included Domino’s Pizza and United Airlines to show the difference between a brand listening and responding immediately (Domino’s) and another that chose to ignore for more than a year (United).

So, what should you look for in a social media professional? We asked David Meerman Scott this question while attending SXSW Interactive earlier this year. You can check out the video here, but I summed it up with this intricate graphic I call “The Anatomy of a Social Media Professional.”

As David also pointed out in his interview with us, when you are seeking help with your social media efforts, it’s important that you do your homework and make sure whoever you hire has the qualifications needed to get the job done. If they aren’t out there practicing what they preach, or if they can’t point to any ROI as a result of their efforts, than you might want to keep searching.

What do you think? Do you think a dedicated social media professional is necessary in business? What qualities do you think a social media professional should have – did we miss anything in our anatomy slide? We would love to get your thoughts in the comment section below.

*This article is also posted on the PerkettPRsuasion blog.

So without further ado, for your viewing pleasure check out what some of this year’s SXSW Interactive attendees had to say for themselves. I am sure you will recognize a few of your friends and hopefully have a few laughs along the way.

A special thanks to everyone who participated and shared their two (and sometimes more) words and thanks for all the memories. See y’all next year – SXSWi 2010!

Disclaimer: The video quality and lighting varies slightly due to the ‘extreme’ shooting conditions of SXSW.

Translation: This was my first attempt and I didn’t lug around all the lighting and sound equipment with me for these impromptu shots, so some responses were a little more difficult to see/hear, but you get the point.

Music: Dan Tharp, Guitar Suite I – Movement I and II
Camera: Kodak Zi6 HD