Tag: Blog Council

Social Media Conferences, Panels and Tweetups

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be traveling for several conferences and presentations relating to social media. Some of these are open for additional registrations; if you can attend, I’d love to meet you. Otherwise, if you see I’m going to be in your area and would like to Tweetup, you know how to reach me.

  • On Monday, April 27, I will be in Philadelphia for a presentation on integrating social media with mass media at the annual meeting of the National Cancer Institute Public Affairs and Marketing Network.
  • Then I head to New York for some meetings on the 28th and for BlogWell on the 29th – (Registration is still open, and if you use the discount code “friendofmayo” when you register, you’ll get a $25 discount.) I got to present at BlogWell in Chicago in January, so I look forward to hearing these case studies. The Blog Council member meeting and unconference is on the 30th, also in New York City.
  • On May 7, I’ll be part of a panel at the National Press Club with Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post, George Strait of the FDA, Robin Foster of HealthDay and Bridget DeSimone of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Right after that, I’ll be heading to Chicago for an afternoon presentation/workshop on social networking, and then on May 8 I will be presenting at the Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference.
  • On May 12, I’ll be in San Francisco to present at the Community 2.0 Conference.

I’ll be tweeting and blogging from all of these, and would love to get to meet SMUGgles (or even just casual readers) either at one of these events or via impromtu Tweetup. (Although I guess it’s not really “impromptu” if I’m giving you more than a week’s notice, is it?)

At any rate, I look forward to these events and the connections I’ll be making.

My BlogWell Presentation on Mayo Clinic Social Media

The Blog Council today posted video, audio and slides from my January 22 presentation at BlogWell. I’ve embedded the video and slides below.

BlogWell Chicago Social Media Case Study: Mayo Clinic, presented by Lee Aase  

View more presentations from GasPedal.

One interesting point that’s changed since my presentation is that the Facebook pages have again been redesigned, and I think they have become much more useful. We had 4,300 fans of our Mayo Clinic Facebook page in late January, and now we’re at 6,100.

Here’s the link to our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog, mentioned in the presentation, and here is the prototype patient post I mentioned.

I hope to be at BlogWell in New York later this month, listening to and learning from organizations like Coca-Cola, GE, Turner broadcasting and Microsoft. I hope you can join us.

Blog Council Names Dell’s Bob Pearson President

I received a note from Andy Sernovitz yesterday, about an exciting new development with the Blog Council, an organization of large business organizations (and not-for-profits like Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente) that are engaged in social media.

Bob Pearson — former vice president of Communities and Conversations at Dell — is joining us as President of the Blog Council.  Bob’s experience as one of the first executives to build a full social media function in a global enterprise will add a new level of knowledge and credibility to the team and our industry.   

With more than 25 years at three Fortune 500 companies and as one of the pioneers of corporate social media, Bob brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to GasPedal and the Blog Council — and he’s as excited as we are to make our communities a better experience for all of our members. 

I think this move is an important signal that social media is going mainstream. Under the duress of Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell,” Bob helped Dell transform itself from a company with a “look, but don’t touch” approach to bloggers to one that actively listens to customers and solicits their ideas. Dell is a different company today because of that experience.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m still a Mac guy. But Dell made important strides under Bob’s leadership, and I believe he’ll champion that same approach in his new role with the Blog Council.

We’re moving beyond the experimental phase in social media. In the near future, a company without a social media strategy will seem seriously antiquated. I’m excited to be part of a group that’s working hard to make sure we do it right, and that we help keep social media in the enterprise from sinking to the level we saw with the email spammers half a generation ago. With Bob’s leadership we’ll continue working to realize the promise of social media, stressing ethics and transparency and proving the benefits of social media done right.

We’re going to have our first Blog Council member call with Bob in his new role on Thursday, and I look forward to what he and Andy have to say about the future direction of the organization, and what that will mean for accelerating adoption of social media in the business world.

Update: The Blog Council’s blog has a post with this announcement and further details.

FREE “Best of Blogwell” Conference Call Thursday

On Thursday, April 2 at noon CDT, I’ll be offering a recap of the presentation I did at BlogWell in Chicago, through a free conference call sponsored by the Blog Council. I hope several SMUGgles will be able to join the call and discussion of what we’ve learned about applying social media to our work at Mayo Clinic. Register here.