Live Blog: My Day At NY Social Media Week (#smwny)

This is my first attempt at a live-blog, and will be updated throughout the day on Wednesday 2/20.

Today I’m traveling to New York to join The Muse’s panel, The 140 Character Resume: How Your Social Media Footprint Can Get You Hired (#smw140resume), at NY’s Social Media Week – and I’m taking you with me. The day will be filled with coffee, trains, wifi, sessions, meetings, coffee, and mixers. I’ll be taking pics, vines, and video along the way. I think it will be an interesting way to share the experience and what I learn – and hopefully it won’t suck.

5:30am: Good morning. Here we go…

Rise and shine

7:03am: Arrived at Union Station. Checked in. Bought coffee. Wondering how many times I’ll write ‘got coffee’ today. Also, learned how to embed a tweet into WordPress.

Starting my #AmplifySMW day at Union Station. Must find coffee. (@ Union Station w/ 8 others) 4sq.com/Y9qAEi

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

8:13am: We’re off. I’m reminded again how much I prefer traveling by train over flying – no stress. Wifi is strong. Time to get some work done. See you in New York.

Morning #AmplifySMW tunes: Swedish House Mafia – Until Now. @ AMTRAK Acela instagr.am/p/V9DxVGjCAC/

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

10:12am: Two hours into the train ride and my ‘getting work done’ has been reduced to a 2 hour solid block of responding to backed up email. Sigh.

11:09am: Penn Station. Took a Vine video in the cab line, but having issues embedding it into WordPress from my iPhone. Link below:

Vine video: Penn Station

11:25am: Badge in hand. Next stop: hotel

#smwny Badge

12:20pm: My first #smwny session: Future Of Work: Making Social Work In Collaborative Workplaces. Full house. Opening with a discussion on ‘talent marketplace’

@smwFutureOfWork attendees

#CoolTool: @brewsterapp – supplements address book w/social data for more informed interactions. #smwny #AmplifySMW cc: @fishdogs

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

‘Empowered workers drive the innovation and success of forward-thinking companies’<– truth, we need more of this #smwny #AmplifySMW

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

#SMWFutureOfWork panelists include: @nitinbrao @lynneluvah @sgreenwood @aarondignan. #smwny #AmplifySMW

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

The report from PSFK I think the #SMWFutureOfWork session was based on (link on #smwny session overview). ow.ly/1SB7b2 #AmplifySMW

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 20, 2013

6:06pm: we’re getting ready for The Muse #smw140resume panel. Say hello to the crowd.

#smw140resume Attendees

9:15pm: And the winner of the #smw140resume contest goes to….Dawn Siff (@DawnSiff)! Her creative use of Vine to create a 6 second resume was awesome. It even led to a #HireDawnSiff response from Twitter’s Manager of Journalism & News Mark Luckie (@MarkSLuckie). You can see it below:

Check out @dawnsiff‘s incredible #VineResume – vine.co/v/b6wxtwrwP7P < Brilliant!@dawnsiff you’re hired

— Craig Fisher (@Fishdogs) February 21, 2013

She was gracious enough to allow me to interview her in the #VineResume…via Vine of course.

An interview w/ #vineresume @dawnsiff shot masterfully by @kmin. #smw140resume #AmplifySMW vine.co/v/b6DExlKiXxX

— Lars Schmidt (@ThisIsLars) February 21, 2013

Click to view The Muse’s Storify recap of #smw140resume

11:15pm: Terrific event held by The Muse tonight for #smw140resume. I’m grateful to be a part of it, and ended the night catching up with my friend Jason Seiden (@seiden) over dinner.

Thanks to everyone who came along for the ride on my first live-blog today. I’m visiting Mashable in the morning so will add some bonus posts to round out this live-blog. I hear they have cute dogs, and it would be wrong of me to not include them. See you tomorrow!

11:28am: Just left the Mashable HQ after a tour and chat with the recruiter, Kamilla Lawson (@KamillaLawson). Cool space with several open areas for collaboration, games, and dogs! Sadly, I didn’t get any photos of the pooches, but did get a couple shots of the office below.

Mashable entrance

Photos from the lounge

Social Media Wall – a wall paper mosaic of Mashable fans

2:03pm: Leaving Penn Station on a train North to DC. It’s been an action packed 2 days. I met interesting people, learned some things, and discovered some cool new tools like Brewster I’ll be testing when I get home.

So how was this whole live-blogging experiment? 

In a word: interesting. My main goal was to share what I was learning in #smwny sessions. I hoped to attend four, but was only able to make it to two sessions. Without those sessions to share, it felt a bit like ‘look at me’, which is kinda lame and not very compelling blog content if you’re not a Kardashian. 

It take a lot of effort. Tweeting, vining, instagramming, blogging on iPhone/iPad/Macbook (now I’m just pandering to Apple), embedding media into WordPress, etc. This statement is probably obvious – but you’re not really ‘present’ when you’re constantly thinking about what and how to capture what you’re experiencing.

My friend Matt Charney (@mattcharney) raised a good point when I told him I was going to do a live-blog, “You already do that – it’s called tweeting”. Most conferences and events these days have hashtags, with numerous people tweeting. I’ve used tools like Storify to capture those tweets and present them as a cohesive story (here is an example from #NPRTwitterChat), and think that may be a better way to capture conference-specific content to share.

I really appreciate everyone who came along for the ride and shared their feedback over the past 2 days. It was an interesting experience, and something I learned from, but I don’t think live-blogging a viable format for regular content sharing for me.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging and tweets…