FUEL Social Media Presentation

I had the opportunity late this afternoon to do a presentation to FUEL, a relatively new group sponsored by the Rochester, MN Chamber of Commerce, on “how to use social media to grow your business and advance your career.”

Here are the slides:

After my presentation, we had a panel discussion that included Wade Beavers and Joe Shriver of DoApp, Becky Ross of Fox Sports North and Fox Sports Wisconsin and Alan De Keyrel of Corporate Web Services.

We started a Twitter hashtag for Rochester community conversations, #RSTMN.

It was a great discussion with lots of good questions, and I appreciated the perspectives the other panelists brough. Becky made the great point the given the intensity of sports fans, it was important for @FSNorth to keep up a strong Twitter stream, because people who follow them. Alan beat me to the punch in saying that people need to stop thinking about the separation of personal and professional lives in social media, and realize that the distinction is really futile. I don’t think it’s even really desirable. Wade and Joe also brought a lot of good insights.

High-Speed Blogging (In a Sense)

This is a REALLY cool new benefit of my daily commute on Rochester City Lines. We now have WiFi on the bus!

I took a little video of one of my bus buddies, Dave, asking him what he thinks about this new service, and tried uploading to YouTube while we were traveling. I will likely be posting that video likely when I get home, because with the speed of the connection I have my doubts as to whether it will be done by the time I get off the bus.

This is a combination that show both how cool the Flip video camera is, and what you can do with bus WiFi.

I will say that the speed of the WiFi is slow (at least today.) So when I call this high-speed blogging, it’s referring to my velocity through space (about 60 mph), not the bandwidth. I’m just going to publish now, and will embed the video from home.

Video blogging may not be the best commuting application, but I’m thinking Twittering would be great.

Thanks to Rochester City Lines for providing this new service!

Updated: Here’s the video referenced above. Not likely to become a viral sensation, but an example of what you can do really quickly with the Flip (and with mobile WiFi on the bus.) Considering that I started this post about 90 minutes ago, it’s not too bad. You get to see what this bus-WiFi unit looks like, and I get to embarrass my buddy Dave.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xSejq54bRk]