Panelist’s last names: Oberkirch, Becker, Halvorson, Byron, Gupta
#roux is the hashtag
Moderator thinks threadless.com does this well
A couple of points from the moderator:
– apprentice yourself to great work – whose work means something to you? Watch it.
– Give side projects front and center. Twitter, blogger, etc started as side projects
– focus on delicious details
– go long
– share
Bikehugger.com –
– instead of “getting the message out” celebrate all the cool stuff you do
– they have a “Latest Activity” page that brings in all their activity (which is mentioned online, so it’s rss aggregation of flickr, twitter, comments, etc)
– also holding Bike-related mobile socials. They get together with like-minded people to socialize
getsatisfaction.com (a crowd-sourced customer service & support community)
– Companies can be here (hint hint – libraries can, too – in fact, there’s a couple already there!)
Gupta:
– does an event called “Jelly”
– basically, you allow strangers to enter your living room and work (& probably use your wifi)
– it spread to other cities, they made the morning show because of it
– He also does photojojo
braintraffic.com
– plan – what happens next? IE – you want to start a blog …. what happens next?
– self knowledge – knowing your limits, & not letting it obscure your potential.
– courage. You are “out there” & have visibility. Make sure to stay focused, and remember your original goals/who you are/why you’re there
How do we know it’s working?
– stories, knowing what to measure
– how do you measure engagement?
– Gupta says “we measure love” – It’s an ROI thing that attempts to measure how much money they’re making vs how much “love” (good comments, etc) [i think – he didn’t actually go into much detail]
Treat people like humans!
– don’t treat customers transactionally – that can dehumanize the experience
– move to a relationship model
– we need to figure out how to measure relationships
“Waiting for the tourists to leave” – talking about people signing up for a new social network & trying it out
Is marketing dead (audience question)? Is advertising dead (panelist reframed the question)? She seems to think so. She’ll find word of mouth stuff about product/service from other real people rather than get info from the advertisement.