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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Up to date in Kansas City

I just delivered the opening keynote talk at the Business Communicators Summit, an annual event put on by IABC’s Kansas City chapter. Attendance is about 210 or so, up from about 130 last year.

Shel Holtz

The conference has embraced a variety of technologies, mostly Twitter. There’s a hashtag (#kcbcs) you can use right now to follow the conference, and participants were encouraged during introductory remarks to tweet freely (enabled by robust WiFi made available for free to all) and apply the hashtag. At the registration table, a flat-panel TV is streaming #kcbcs tweets. The image above features chapter leaders Justin Goldsborough (who also uses Twitter to address issues raised by customers of his employer, Sprint) and Jill Paulsen and the Twitter stream. (Incidentally, I first met Justin when he reached out to me to resolve a Sprint issue, not through IABC.)

It’s great to see an IABC chapter embracing, rather than resisting, the future of conference participation. It’s small wonder that, even in a down economy, the conference has attracted so large and engaged an audience.

02/11/09 | 6 Comments | Up to date in Kansas City

Comments

  • 1.Holtz: Up to date in Kansas City: A local IABC chapter has integrated social media into its conference wel.. [link to post] - Posted using Chat Catcher

    http://twitter.com/prblogs/statuses/1203107797 | February 2009

  • 2.a shel of my former self - [link to post] - Posted using Chat Catcher

    http://twitter.com/TwURLedNewsSM/statuses/12039897 | February 2009

  • 3.Shel,

    Thank you for the terrific presentation this morning. Everything you said supports and justifies the socmed strategy activities and discussions taking place where I work. Looking forward to sharing your comments to support our efforts.

    @wrytir

    (And, yes, GrammarGirl was great, too!)

    Michael Burns | February 2009 | Overland Park

  • 4.Check out my friends @jcpaulsen & @jgoldsborough on @shel 's blog! [link to post] - Posted using Chat Catcher

    http://twitter.com/AmyStewart82/statuses/120521970 | February 2009

  • 5.Shel, thx for joining our #kcbcs conference yesterday. As always, your presentation generated a lot of thought and conversation, which is what a great presentation does.

    My biggest takeaway was that companies need to work to make their employees comfortable engaging with each other and their customers now so that when they really need to rely on that relationship, the trust already exists. As you said "build up goodwill to rely on when times are tough."

    Seems like the reason more companies aren't taking the steps GM and Dell are is because they're worried about what they're employees might say. But as Jim Collins said in his interview with Fortune the other day: "Any employee you have to micro manage was a mistake in hiring."

    You either trust your employees or you don't, and if you don't, you have a much bigger problem than what they might say in the blogosphere.

    I was extremely encouraged by the amount of discussion I heard about Twitter in between sessions & the number of new folks I saw who posted their first tweets yesterday. Great to see folks understand the importance of connecting with people and building relationships...and that social media can help them with both goals.

    Justin Goldsborough | February 2009 | Kansas City, MO

  • 6.By the way, just what were tech and communications like BT (Before Twitter?). Having trouble remembering :)

    Bryan Person | February 2009 | Austin, TX

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