Improvement Ideas

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.

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!

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.   

Schedule

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

Looking for presenters

We’re look­ing for a few good speakers.

Each 60-minute slot¹ will be teach­ing ses­sions designed to com­ple­ment and improve the atten­dees’ exist­ing mar­ket­ing and sales efforts. There will be a learn­ing track, so if you’re a com­plete new­bie, fol­low that track in order to get the most from your time.

Speak­ers will be pre­sent­ing top­ics such as: “How busi­nesses can attract return sub­ur­ban cus­tomers” to “How to cre­ate and imple­ment a company-wide social media plan” and “How civic involve­ment can improve your com­mu­nity” to “No– and low-cost meth­ods for sales­men”. A series of more technology-oriented top­ics will also be addressed along its own track.

Three pre­sen­ta­tions will be sched­uled per hour, with a few speak­ers repeat­ing their ses­sions in an effort to cater to the begin­ning track.

In order to cover the widest vari­ety of top­ics, pre­sen­ta­tions will be deter­mined before­hand. If you have an idea or would like to present, please email us or leave a comment.

All speak­ers will have a pro­jec­tor and wire­less mic. Please bring your own lap­top,² a VGA con­nec­tor and/or USB drive. You will have inter­net access dur­ing your pre­sen­ta­tion. Pre­sen­ta­tions do NOT have to be Powerpoint/Keynote based, but we do sug­gest visual aids of some kind.

1. 45 for speak­ing, 15 for ques­tions [↩]
2. Let us know if you need to bor­row one [↩]