Ahead of the curve

Dis­claimer: Cen­Pho­Camp is not affil­i­ated with Cronkite School or Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity in any way. We are grate­ful to have the use of their world-class facil­i­ties for our event.

Looks like we’re not the only ones who think that spe­cial­iza­tion and focus is good.

Great arti­cle from Wired on why smaller is often better.

Improvement Ideas

Great ideas for next time so far.

–Shorter time frame (4 hours)
–Mod­er­a­tors for round­table dis­cus­sions
–Have food and reg­is­tra­tion table in OWN room
–Keep one room open for impromptu pre­sen­ta­tions
–Keep the pre­sen­ters fresh
–Nobody presents more than once

There’s more, but those really stood out. Keep it up!

Survey

While we work on get­ting the videos and slideshows up, please help the next Cen­Pho­Camp out by giv­ing us your thoughts.

Be spe­cific. “I wished it was bet­ter”, “park­ing sucks” and “I would have like more info” aren’t help­ful. Give us ideas that we can run with.

That was awesome

Noth­ing great ever hap­pens in a vac­uum. It takes effort from every­one. Cen­Pho­Camp was no different.

Thanks to every sin­gle per­son who helped with Cen­Pho­Camp, includ­ing Katie Char­land, who took charge when it was nec­es­sary, Stephanie Sim­mons, who ruled room 314 and Andrew Knochel, who never moved from room 252 because he was con­stantly man­ning the cam­era and guard­ing the food. You stepped up and we thank you for it.

We, mean­ing Tyler Hurst and Yuri Art­ibise were more than stoked at the con­ver­sa­tions, the shar­ing and the atmos­phere enjoyed from 2pm to nearly 11pm last night. It was fun, it was use­ful and it’s worth doing again.

So keep up with us. Tyler is con­stantly on Twit­ter, Yuri is more of a Phoenix cof­fee shop guy, but you can eas­ily track either down. Give us sug­ges­tions, feed­back and offers to help. We’ll take them.

Videos are being processed know, expect to see those pop­ping up, in sep­a­rate posts, this week. We’ll also include links to pre­sen­ters’ slides on SlideShare.

Plans are already in the works to have sim­i­lar events in Scotts­dale and Chan­dler, and a fol­low up Cen­Pho­Camp in October.

Stay tuned, stay talk­ing and most of all, get to know your com­mu­nity.

No turning back now

The rooms have been paid for.

Thanks to Phoenix Inno­va­tion Foun­da­tion (PIF) for their help with that.

The agenda has been set.

Thanks to Mark Dud­lik for mak­ing that pretty.

The ses­sions are ready to go.

Thanks to the ses­sion spon­sors for that.

In addi­tion to their dona­tions, Rhonda Ban­nard of Inspired Con­nec­tions and JoMarie Mac­Don­ald sent out infor­ma­tion to their dis­tri­b­u­tion lists (Rhonda sent it to 500 con­tacts alone). Nick Bas­t­ian wrote a great blog post on Raillife.com. CenPho.TV men­tioned it in their weekly vlog. Down­town Phoenix Jour­nal pub­lished a really fan­tas­tic story. Joan Koerber-Walker opened her net­work to us.

We thank you for that.

Jim McPher­son and Steve Weiss from Down­town Voices Coali­tion invited Yuri to present to their monthly Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Meet­ing as well as the Vision­ing Con­fer­ence. Jim also posted the event on the DVC web­site. Jeff Mori­arty men­tioned us at Social Media Club.

Thanks for that.

Izzy Video let us bor­row one of his cam­corders. Gang­plank lent us two coolers.

Thanks to you both.

Also, thanks to Don Cross­land and kon­tak­t­mag for get­ting me to care about down­town Phoenix in the first place.

Thanks to Katie Char­land for edit­ing the ses­sion descriptions.

Thanks to Dean Calla­han for trust­ing us not to tear up his building.

A HUGE thanks to all the speak­ers and pan­elists. They are the shin­ing stars of this event.

See you on Saturday!

Session Descriptions

Social Media Inte­gra­tion
Chad Swaney
It can be frus­trat­ing when you are the only one in your busi­ness who seems to get social media. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, Chad will talk about strate­gies that have worked for him to help get every­one on board and excited about the pos­si­bil­i­ties that are avail­able when you con­nect with your community.

Face­book apps
Kim­ber John­son
Kim­ber will dis­cuss how to let tech­nol­ogy do the work for you in the realm of social media. With Face­book up to 132 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors in the United States alone, a Face­book app just might be the mar­ket­ing boost your busi­ness is look­ing for.  Kim­ber will focus on the all to impor­tant plan­ning and design phase and give you some great insights into how to cre­ate an app that gets used and shared and cre­ates real results for your business.

New Media Dis­cus­sion
Nick Mar­tin, Si Robins, Brahm Resnik, Matt Wynn
Round­table talk cen­ter­ing around the future of news­pa­pers, jour­nal­ism, TV news and blog­ging as a news source.

Telling your business’s story
Shane Cathers
Just as the sto­ries you share about your­self help peo­ple iden­tify and build rap­port with you as a per­son, shar­ing the story of your busi­ness will help peo­ple iden­tify and be inter­ested in your busi­ness.
Essen­tially, your busi­ness is con­nect­ing with cur­rent and future clients while plant­ing the seed for viral mar­ket­ing, get­ting peo­ple talk­ing about your busi­ness via word-of-mouth and social net­work­ing sites.

Low– to no-cost sales meth­ods
Chris Con­rey
Sales is a pain in the ass, dou­bly so when you’re try­ing to run your busi­ness, do sales, and pro­duce what­ever it is that you’re doing.  There are lots of tools you can use to help make this whole process eas­ier from day 1.  I’ll spend some time talk­ing about some of these and how you can use them to your advan­tage while still doing what you love to do. 

From sub­ur­ban to return­ing cus­tomers
Matthew Petro
Your Cen­tral Phoenix busi­ness needs a solid base of repeat cus­tomers to achieve last­ing suc­cess. But how do you get peo­ple out of their sub­ur­ban homes and into your busi­ness on a reg­u­lar basis? Tools like Twit­ter, Face­book and Yelp pro­vide tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness own­ers look­ing to turn first-time cus­tomers into reg­u­lar patrons. The ses­sion will dis­cuss many of the ways you can lever­age social media to stay con­nected with cus­tomers and build a loyal base of patrons.

Build­ing Event Buzz
Oden Hughes, Jeremy Smith, Katie Char­land
Round­table dis­cus­sion on how to plan, pro­mote and exe­cute an event with lim­ited funds using read­ily avail­able tools.

Intro to Twit­ter
Jack Smith
Twit­ter seems to be every­where — news­pa­pers, celebri­ties, ath­letes and your next-door neigh­bor.  But why should you and your busi­ness care about this new online tool?  In this ses­sion, we’ll talk Twit­ter basics, where it’s being used in busi­ness and how to get started and some pop­u­lar tools to help you man­age it within your business.

Acti­vat­ing pas­sion­ate groups
Derek Neigh­bors
How to make pas­sion­ate, highly-connected peo­ple do some­thing that ben­e­fits them.

Ben­e­fits of work­ing with higher edu­ca­tion
Nina Miller
Con­nect­ing and sup­port­ing higher edu­ca­tion is a long-term solu­tion to prob­lems our com­mu­nity faces. Come learn how to con­nect with the sys­tems in place at Arizona’s uni­ver­si­ties to help your busi­ness and your community.

The 3rd Place
Nina Sim­mons, Sunny Thaper, Real Joe, Zack New­some
Round­table dis­cus­sion focus­ing on the impact that 3rd places (des­ti­na­tions that are not work or home) have on our social lives, our com­mu­nity and our growth as individuals.

Intro to pod­cast­ing
Deb­bie Walker
Pod­cast­ing for you! Sim­ple steps to get started and the phi­los­o­phy behind mak­ing your pod­cast great.

Online Risk Man­age­ment
Paul Valach
Can you just be you online? Can you just tweet away every lit­tle thought that enters your mind? Who really cares who you fol­low or who your friends are on Face­book? Can you be a fan of The Ugly Big Bear and still main­tain a pro­fes­sional image? What about all those party pho­tos on Flickr? We’ll take a look at these things and see what we can come up with. By the way how many social sites can you name? Maybe we will have a con­test. Prizes!

Per­for­mance as a Com­mu­nity Path­way
Jose Gon­za­lez
Part per­for­mance, part pre­sen­ta­tion, and part explo­ration of community-building & con­nect­ing with peo­ple in the Val­ley of the Sun, Team ABC seeks to stir up your spirit of play­ful dan­ger, get your ideas out of your head, and get mov­ing. None of what will be cov­ered is guar­an­teed to grow your busi­ness or max­i­mize your prof­its because noth­ing in life is guar­an­teed. Once we all get com­fort­able with that idea we can stop fear­ing uncer­tainty and look at all the pos­si­bil­ity it affords us. That’s what Team Adven­ture Beta
Col­lab­o­ra­tion is all about, Char­lie Brown!

Get on Track with pub­lic trans­porta­tion
Tony Arranaga, Nick Bas­t­ian, David Bick­ford
Round­table dis­cus­sion on the impor­tance of using mass tran­sit as an adver­tis­ing and event vehicle.

Mobile Apps
red­Pear
We’re a cul­ture going wireless–going remote. We’re work­ing less from a desk­top com­puter and more from our lap­tops, Mac­books, net­books, and mobile phones. We need access to our con­tacts, our essen­tials, our every­thing from everywhere. We’ll tell you about the apps that already exist that you shouldn’t live with­out. And we’ll tell you how you can build new apps that work just for you and your business. 

Niche Blog­ging
Kate Ben­jamin
Kate Ben­jamin is the founder and edi­tor of pop­u­lar cat-style blog Moderncat.net. Since its cre­ation two and half years ago, Mod­ern­cat has grown to become a lead­ing online resource for design-conscious cat lovers. The site cur­rently receives 150,000 page views per month, reach­ing an inter­na­tional audi­ence. Kate will dis­cuss how Mod­ern­cat got started, as well as what she learned about turn­ing a pas­sion into a suc­cess­ful online business.

Civic Involve­ment as Adver­tis­ing
Sam Richard
Com­mu­nity ser­vice has always been a large part of Richard’s life. This pre­sen­ta­tion will cover the foun­da­tions of ser­vice he has learned through­out his life includ­ing; respon­si­bly car­ing for the earth, the foun­da­tions of lead­er­ship, civic engage­ment, and group dynamics.

Ana­log to dig­i­tal and back again
Kyle Jor­dre, Cat­rina Knoebl, Mor­gan McNally, Kim­ber Lan­ning
Round­table dis­cus­sion on how to take tra­di­tional meth­ods and apply them to a dig­i­tal mar­ket, then using those con­nec­tions to build a greater offline following.

Intro to blog­ging
Paul Mar­tinez
Intro­duc­tion to blog­ging will cover infor­ma­tion on some of the tips and tech­niques that you can use to get your blog up and run­ning with full steam. From choos­ing your domain name to mar­ket­ing your blog, this pre­sen­ta­tion will pro­vide you with all of the infor­ma­tion that you need to get your blog started on the right foot.

Rela­tion­ships and the web
Katie Char­land
With social media explod­ing at such a phe­nom­e­nal rate, the gen­eral pub­lic is left scram­bling to keep up not only with the tech­nol­ogy, but with the rewrit­ing of tra­di­tional social scripts and human inter­ac­tions. This ses­sion will explore how social media is chang­ing the way we form rela­tion­ships in all instances – from dat­ing, par­ent­ing, in the office and when mak­ing friends.

Make busi­ness mem­o­rable
Justin McHood, Susan Baier
Learn the key to being mem­o­rable in busi­ness. Find out how to have top of mind aware­ness with your tar­get cus­tomers who will want to buy, buy more and come back and buy again. In today’s busi­ness world, if you are not mem­o­rable, you are going to be for­got­ten — and being for­got­ten means (at best) barely stay­ing in busi­ness. The essence of being mem­o­rable can be found in one word… and you have to be present to learn what it is!

Small biz strat­egy
Bran­don Stout, Nick Bas­t­ian, Petit Fro­mage
Round­table dis­cus­sion on mar­ket­ing strat­egy, over­all imple­men­ta­tion and ques­tions from the pre­vi­ous presentations.

Intro to video blog­ging
Clin­tus McGin­tus
Let’s talk video. Video blog­ging, online shows, video mar­ket­ing… there are tons of ways to use video on the web. We’ll explore a few of the more pop­u­lar ones and why you should use it too.   

Thanks to our room sponsors

Com­mu­nity events are never pos­si­ble with­out the sup­port of those they aim to serve. Thanks to the fol­low­ing four com­pa­nies, we had our room spon­sor­ships taken care of in less than a week. We and all the atten­dees are look­ing for­ward to see­ing what they’re going to do with their rooms.

Big kudos to our four room spon­sors. With­out Tony’s Light Rail Blog­ger in room 252, Kimber’s Verve Co tak­ing over room 202, Derek Neighbor’s Inte­grum slap­ping ban­ners up in room 444 and Jane’s Prac­ti­cal Art dec­o­rat­ing room 314, this event wouldn’t have been possible.

Schedule

The event will start at 1:30pm, with a keynote by orga­niz­ers Yuri Art­ibise and Tyler Hurst.

Show me the money!

Look on the right side­bar. Yep, right where it says donate.

If you’re a spon­sor or phil­an­thropic cit­i­zen, that’s the best way to get your hard-earned cash to the Phoenix Inno­va­tion Foun­da­tion (PIF), who is work­ing with us to han­dle the finan­cial com­plex­i­ties of CenPhoCamp.

Your money, while not tax deductible, will pay the $500 fee Cronkite is charg­ing us, while the rest will go to our after party. Spon­sors, please email Tyler a copy of your receipt so we can record it.

If you’d like to pay by check or cash, please email tyler@tdhurst.com and he’ll be able to help you out.

Thanks in advance for your support!

CenPhoCamp Description

The time is get­ting near. Here’s a one-page descrip­tion for to email or print. Down­load here.

Event: Cen­Pho­Camp

Loca­tion: Cronkite School
555 N. Cen­tral Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85004

Date/Time: Jan­u­ary 23, 1:30 to 8pm

Web: http://cenphocamp.com

Con­tact: tyler@tdhurst.com

Cen­Pho­Camp is an uncon­fer­ence designed to bring small, local orga­ni­za­tions together with the cus­tomers they serve. Unlike a typ­i­cal sem­i­nar, par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to ask ques­tions, to leave ses­sions they don’t think are help­ful and even con­tribute to the learn­ing as they see fit.

Devel­oped as a series of tracks, each hour-long pre­sen­ta­tion adheres to one of the fol­low­ing themes: Begin­ner, where those new to mar­ket­ing can learn about basic approaches, Tech­nol­ogy, offer­ing instruc­tions on the lat­est web apps and Com­mu­nity, designed to help busi­nesses enable their cus­tomers to be their best adver­tis­ers. A Round­table dis­cus­sion led by indus­try experts com­pletes each hour’s offerings.

Cen­Pho­Camp, held free of charge, is being run by vol­un­teers only. Rent for the Cronkite facil­ity is being paid by gen­er­ous ses­sion and room spon­sors (ses­sion spon­sor­ships still avail­able for $20).

Speak­ers include Designer Nina Miller of ASU, Inno­va­tors Derek Neigh­bors and Chris Con­rey of Gang­plank, Chan­nel 12 News Anchor Brahm Resnik, Free­lance jour­nal­ist Nick Mar­tin, Light Rail blog­gers Nick Bas­t­ian and Tony Arranagaand Small Busi­ness Man­ager Bran­don Stout.

All of these pro­fes­sion­als will share solu­tions that have worked for them, instead of the­o­ries they’d like to see happen.

Admis­sion is com­pletely free, although we ask that par­tic­i­pants bring food or drink. Please sign up here: http://www.cenphocamp.com/registration-is-now-open/